Jill Rants and Raves

what's a liberal to do?

This is the question asked by my liberal, dog fanatic, Bernal Heights dwelling, almost retiree, boy buddy Barry. Bear, I have no freakin' idea. You've all messed this up something awful. America should be feeling morose today about John Edwards decision to quit the campaign. But I've a feeling that, being in lust with Obama and in love-hate with Hillary, most 'liberals' won't even notice that the best candidate has gone.

Photo: Jill Posener, Melbourne, 1985 © 2008 All Rights Reserved

Think on this - it is just the start of February, the vast majority of the states have yet to vote in primaries, but the internet, media, radio and celebrity endorsements have already decided which ideas and visions you get to choose from. This is known in any other industry as bait and switch.

That liberal talk show hosts are giving Edwards more airtime today than they ever gave him while he was a candidate is all the more depressing because they refuse, like all addicts in denial, to take some responsibility for their own actions. Who is the media if it isn't talk radio? They all act as if they are somehow marginalised minorities. Talk radio is among the most dominant influences in US culture today, so if y'all thought John Edwards was the most progressive and most principled person on the national stage, why the freak didn't you say so?

The primary system is, if anything, more broken than any rigged Diebold voting machine. The scandal of the Democratic National Committee's punitive action in disqualifying Florida's delegates because of the decision to hold an early primary is just one example of how fractured the system is. The winner yesterday (Clinton) can claim a win of the popular vote, but has no delegates to show for it. Florida, popular vote, delegates ...and the Republican legislature playing a role as well... is this deja vu all over again?

Some commentators are oozing self congratulation because America will be making history - by nominating either a woman or an African American for a presidential race. Geez, it must be me - but we got a good look at what voting gender can bring when we elected Maggie Thatcher in the UK, and as far as I can see, people of colour have been elected around the world for as long as there have been elections. It is a measure of the American myopic obsession with race that Obama's candidacy and possible nomination is even seen as unusual.

I did believe, somehow, that Edwards could emerge victorious as the nastiness of the campaign between the two 'history makers' would leave most everyone with a bitter taste. I was right about the bitterness, I was wrong that Americans could choose a path other than the popularity contest where the list of endorsements became more important than the list of accomplishments.

And on the Republican side, I believe the right is wondering how best to challenge what they see as an inevitable Obama nomination. Will McCain be a better choice for them? A man who appeals to independent voters, and to many white southern democrats who have said they are not ready to elect a black man, or will they push the man who might appeal more to evangelicals, Mitt Romney. But there are many evangelicals who are disgusted by both - Romney after all is a mere Mormon and McCain is a centrist flip flopper. The enormous power of the evangelical bloc vote may well be nullified as many may sit this one out. A tiny footnote is the colossal failure of Rude Boy Rudy, the arrogant thug who had the best hand of any Republican candidate and squandered  it. Amazing!

Maxine Waters one of the most dominant African American politicians on the West Coast endorsed Hillary - making herself a stand out for loyalty. She knows the debt liberals owe the Clintons and she's paying dues. The rest are fleeing for the Ship Of Good Hope, clinging to the shirt tails of the new knight in shining armour. Eager not to be left on board when the Clinton big rig explodes, they are lining up at the gate of the Obama Express.

I think this is a sad day for the Democratic Party. As a lifelong British Labour Party supporter - you vote Labour (with no illusions). Here, you vote Democrat (with no illusions) that's all there is to it. But without meaningful campaign reform, America may as well just employ Simon Cowell to run the election and we can all punch in our votes on our cell phones come November.

Obama - the retro candidate

So, I guess this is how it is - a fairly average Senator from Illinois has assumed the mantle of Camelot, the Kennedy's having turned their backs both on Edwards, the more progressive candidate, and Hillary who was First Lady to one of the most successful Prez's in Democrat Party history. Clinton oversaw a transformation of the national debt through job creation, stimulus, and reduction in big government - to disprove the insiduous conservative trickle down mantra which had taken America by the throat. Clinton's failures are huge - most notably (for me) his failure to intervene early in the ethnic cleansing, rape and pillage in the Balkans, the 'don't ask don't tell' policy and the shameful welfare reform fiasco. His own dark moral pond meant he was unable to stand up to Republican power grabs.

But hey, this was the guy adored by the liberal intelligensia, and by the wimps on the Democrat side who rode his shirt tails until they were semen stained, and now can't distance themselves fast enough. Somehow they forgot he was Hillarys' husband until he started running the campaign the way the Clinton's took power in the first place - by taking names and talking tough.

It's as if Michelle and Barack (and their photogenic kids) have become the anti Clintons - and that's good enough for most Democrats it seems, and a helluva lot of god fearing rightists as well. The battle between McCain and Romney (because that, as I called it, is where the Republican decision rests) is a sideshow. They are duking it out to see who gets the privelege of coming up with campaign insults that don't cross the line. Which line? You know the line, and it could be re-drawn at any moment.

Obama has been anointed with the glistening balm of something Amerkuns seem to be obsessed with - the new. Not 'change', because honestly haven't we seen enough change in the last 7 years to cure us of that cliche - no?  But it is not new. Obama's campaign looks more like returning America to a lingering memory of the past, than to a greater future. How retro can you get? To have Chappaquidick Ted become teary eyed as he makes his last great stump speech. He is wishing himself back to 1968, to the night in Los Angeles when it all ended for RFK.

It is as if, through glistening tears and hope-filled dreamy eyes we are being transported back to a White House where youth and style and interior designers once more create a vision of energised hopefulness and we can fill scrapbooks with pictures of little children hiding out in the Oval Office and clinging to their Daddy's legs as he conducts the important business of the state. Oh, JFK why didcha go to Dallas that day? Violins, steel guitars and harmonicas soar over Oprah conducting a prayer service in the Rose Garden with Republicans and Democrats alike holding hands with AIDS victims from Africa, legless veterans in wheelchairs from Camp Pendleton and miners from Pennsylvania all crying in unison 'Thank you lord, he is risen again'.

Do you get the picture? This is not how you should be choosing your president. Where is your outrage? How does the media get to decide that you cannot hear Dennis Kucinich debate any longer? Or Guiliani for that matter.

Jeez, I'm just frustrated with y'all. Gotta go to work now. Put up a fight - vote Edwards.

transcendental dogs and cultural outbursts

I don't think many of you enjoyed the turkey story - that's OK, I liked it. So I'm gonna bore you with more animal stuff just so you don't expect I'm always going to write about the inner turmoils of an aging butch. Mind you - butches...dogs - it's a theme.

Here's the link for an article I wrote in The Berkeley Daily Planet about dog stuff in the East Bay. It's a sweet little piece actually, because I'm feeling so transcendental at the moment. And I'm talking Emerson and not the Maharishi. Though I did once go to a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi event in London, in the hope of seeing George Harrison (I didn't) and laughed myself senseless. Works for me.

I'm facing something many of my generation is facing - especially women whose headlong assault aganst the prevailing culture of the 70's and 80's caused us to throw away the little time-piece we're meant to carry that tells us when to give up the struggle in favor of the 'safety net' a more conventional life provides. Uh.Oh. Time has moved on. I am thoroughly annoyed at being 54. I am in flagrant rebellion against aging gracefully.

Perhaps I'm wondering how someone like me, with no savings, no 401k, no inheritance coming my way, no-one to set me up in a chi-chi Sausalito gallery selling photographs of sunsets printed on canvas and no visible means of support, is going to make it into any kind of older age, let alone a graceful one. My body feels sort of achy, I have started buying those $17.99 reading glasses at the local hip pharmacy, and sensing that knees, bumps and oopsy daisy are breaking down a tad. This is a downright freakin' shame.

I saw one of my big loves the other day - though we were never actually lovers except for one afternoon when we tried and then giggled and said 'oh well, good idea, poor execution'. Susie Bright - who has the right name to be a big love of mine - has been my friend and co-worker for 20 years and took me to lunch the other day during a break from her weeklong sewing seminar in downtown San Francisco. I picked her up outside her hotel and we headed over to Hayes Valley, where we cozied up in a comfortable booth at a prestigious restaurant. Susie treated me to a soothing meal, and a pep talk on the art of re-invention, which is a bit like getting sparkling water up your nose. It lights up your whole head.

We are aging - this incredible generation of mine whose revolutionary attack on the traditional family, whose assault on the citadel of jobs for the boys, whose demand for shameless visibility for the love that dare not speak its name, and whose blatant in your face cultural outburst changed the landscape forever. For the better.

Sometimes I simply need reminding that my future lies in the body of work I have built so defiantly over the last 30 years, and to look at it with wonderment when starting work on something new. I'm able to look at other women's work and shake my head in awe at what they were doing - pioneering lesbian photographers like Honey Lee Cottrell, Morgan Gwenwald, JEB, Happy Hyder, Tee Corinne and many others. When I first saw photos by Morgan or Honey Lee I knew I had never ever seen anything like them before.

That, above all, is what I aspire to, to know that I did the same, on occasion. That there were moments when someone looked at a photograph I had taken and felt that they were seeing something new. And the desire to keep doing that if possible is the key to not aging gracefully, if not to transcendentalism.

turkeys gone hog wild

There are news reports of turkeys taking over an extremely prestigious science lab in Berkeley. And I ain't talking about the management of UC Berkeley. But we all need distractions from our lives and I'm sure the journalist who has been covering this story for the local rags couldn't be happier about using his collection of warmed over turkey cliches to write a story which gives everyone a good laugh about whacky Berkeley, but is really another example of how humans, having encroached forcefully into wildlife habitat, now want to 'rid' the landscape of another species that can be called a 'pest' at our whim.

The uproar started in December when an internal Newsletter alerted the employees of Berkeley Lab that around 60 wild turkeys 'have been responsible for at least two broken windows - one a large view window in the cafeteria smashed when a turkey tried to escape after wandering inside the dining hall. Turkey droppings have resulted in slip hazards for pedestrians.....and the birds have been road hazards for bicyclists and drivers'.

"It is getting to the point" said Don Lucas, chair of the Berkeley Lab Safety Committee, "that employees are expressing concern about their own safety". Did none of these 'scientists' ever blow themselves up when they were kids playing with their science sets? They're afraid of some wild turkeys? "Some scientists" says Don "mentioned that the droppings could contaminate experiments". Whaaaaat??? Exactly what kind of experiments are these guys conducting in the cafeteria?

The newsletter discusses the need to get rid of the birds. But by January 16th, the Lab was taking a slightly less confrontational and deadly tone. Having been asked whether they intended to kill the birds, by the Manager of Animal Services, the spokesman said "Kill them? Are you kidding? I don't think in Berkeley we could get away with that."

No mention was made in any of the articles that the poor bird who threw itself through a plate glass window was petrified by the sight of some large two legged species barbecuing some unspecified meat in the dining hall.

Perhaps the turkey with the feathers has got a better perspective on the power relationship here than the turkey scientists who can't seem to get along with the natural science trying to co-exist with them.

misogyny - the permissible hate

There's a bloodlust rising in America in these first weeks of 2008. And there is palpable glee that the bloodletting will involve watching either an uppity woman or an uppity black man get reminded that they may be allowed a limited place in the House but not in the Big House. You think there will be a discussion of issues in 2008? The maelstrom media, left, right and in the so called middle will ensure that you hear a steady diet of 'inexperience' - meaning 'black' and 'unable to govern' - meaning 'woman'. If Clinton were not such a lightning rod and if Obama gave more substantive answers about his actual beliefs, this might have been a moment in history to slap every prejudice upside the head. A black man and a woman in the Diversity House. The problem is that these two will battle it out for the right to go to the Main House, while the majority of American males seem to be stuck in the Frat House. 

Have you noticed the language being used about Hillary Clinton? In print? On the radio? In the malestream media? On her own damn side?

Bitch, Witch, Frigid, Emotional, Hysterical? There isn't anyone in mainstream media using epithets when talking about Obama. It may be, as my dear Gillian suggests, that America has grown up enough not to refer him in openly derogatory terms. But women? It's open season dudes, get your rifles cocked.

Photo:Jill Posener, London 1981, All Rights Reserved, ©2008

Woman hating is so pervasive in this amazing land that I find my chest tightening every day as I read reports of the unbridled brutality towards women and girls. It kind of amazes me that other countries have managed to elect a woman leader - Bhutto, Gandhi, Thatcher, Golda Meir, Merkel - to mention but a few - and yet one of the arguments against Clinton is that leaders of other countries don't respect women as leaders. This is because most Americans never leave the USofA. We've had electricity and running water in England for quite a while now.

I've said before that I am a John Edwards supporter - I heard him give an interview about foreign policy and I was struck and impressed by his grasp of the various situations around the globe. I think he is an electable Democrat and that is what I want for the country I have chosen as my home. Personally, I would get excited about the possibility of Hillary Clinton on the Supreme Court and Barack Obama as a Vice Presidential candidate and President in eight years. But I don't want any of the conservatives dished up choosing another Supreme Court judge.

I'm getting agitated about the flip and easy use of the word 'fascism' by left wing commentators. We expect facile nuttiness from the other side of the dial - words like communist, marxist and witch being lobbed from the badly lit bunkers they inhabit, but I really hope for better from this side of the barricades. Women in this country and around the world need American men to grow up, and not just a bit.

patriarchy, it's just plain wrong!

Photo: London 1982 Jill Posener© 2008

This pic for all of you Hillary fans!

As you know I find it fascinating, in that car-wreck kind of way, to watch the amerikun way of electing a leader. Partly because every can-do-date pronounces that they are the date that brings 'change'. What does the right wing wanna change?  They have a rightward moving Supreme Court; the equivalent of 12% of our entire national budget is spent on one of the 51 states - that would be Iraq; bans on gay marriage are sprouting up; a still powerful 'Right To Life' lobby (this is the movement that believes civil rights end at birth); women still earning less than men; and consumers seemingly happy about being able to buy everything they need in KMart, cheap - courtesy of the most ethical factory in the world - China. I always get a kick listening to right (doesn't mean it's right) and left (doesn't mean its' wrong) radio, and never more so than Tuesday when prescription drug addict divorce king El Rushbo was being heralded by home schooling evangelicals as the only one they can trust to tell the truth. Rush Limbug - the Truth Fairy.

Last nights results in New Hampshire were no surprise - anyone surprised out there? McCain won NH in 2000, and if New Hampshire had any impact on the nutty right in the rest of the country we might have had a one term McCain presidency and the world might have looked a different place right now.

Clinton and Barack are going to duke it out. These two titans are going to bruise each other and the Democrats badly before it is all over. It won't be over until the Convention if Hillary does what many think she'll do, and refuses to concede, even if the primaries hit her hard. I am hopeful for a few good wins for Edwards to remind everybody that this is a campaign for the leader of the most powerful country in the world, and not American Idol on You Tube (owned by  Google), MySpace (owned by Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation) and Facebook (currently privately owned, but for how long?).

One sidenote - Melissa Etheridge (whom I adore) was chatting away on Green 960, my local lib station, about her continued support for Kucinich, the argument being that she and many others want to see his ideas at the table for as long as posible in this race. I can't disagree with that. Etheridge used the term 'soft fascism' as if it came straight out of Kucinich's playbook. But the man who said this, on Meet The Press, was the offbeat candidate on the right - Ron Paul. Paul is a man who has directly confronted America's role in Iraq and the power of the corporations (one and the same thing, really) It was Paul who said that although he did not see Amerika moving towards a Hitler like state, he believed we already existed in a state of 'soft fascism'.

I did get some of you riled about the sex, lies and lesbian posts. Don't worry - I'm not done with that!

panic button

You're all being very active on the comments these days - perhaps it was a New Year's resolution - 'must comment more frequently on Jill's blog'. Whatever the reason, even if it's just that the storms are keeping you indoors (or in Suzy's case the blistering heat of Australia), it's OK with me.

Here's the thing. I'm not that motivated by sex, and I think there are a bunch of butches like me. There, it's said. I'll check the archives to see if I've said it before. My dream world is one where all the important exes and my close friends live within a few blocks, with their gals, kids, animals, parents whatever. I would choose cuddling up watching a movie with most of my exes  and then dropping into bed in my Scottie dog flannel PJ's over a wild sex romp any day of the week. I am probably one of the most 'comfortable' seeking human beings I know.

I'm known for doing almost anything to keep someone I love near to me, not to lose them. It's like the scene in a movie where the car is peeling out, driven by a determined and territorial new lover. My (ex) girl is sitting in the passenger seat and begging me to let go, and I'm that character gripping the edge of the door, trying to hang on while the car speeds away. You get the picture. Women don't seem to be able to live with me, but they can't put me in the blender either. And don't tell me different - lesbians are notorious for completely re-directing their energy on to the 'new' one, the one they fantasise will stay as profile perfect as the day she answered the ad on Match.com.

I want nothing more than a white picket fence fantasy world, OK? Not the actual fence. The problem is I can't mentally create the strategy of how to get there. I can see the picture but I am in the pitch dark with a staircase between me and there and the steps are either cracked or missing entirely. I can't see the future, and you may rightly say - hey Jill, no-one has a crystal ball. But I'm talking about something else. I cannot visualise beyond the immediate - that could be 20 minutes, or a day or two, but I am absent the ability to see how something might play out over a few weeks or months. It's one of the reasons I am so compulsively punctual. It's also one of the reasons I am so delightfully spontaneous.

If I can't get something completed quickly, I often feel incapable of doing it at all. I can see the whole picture, every detail - it's why I was a damn good stage manager - but if the picture can't be attained fast, I unravel. The other day my friend Betsy told me I was brilliant and then she added 'But you're hasty. Hasty.' I'm like that in my personal life. Sex for me has been the fast 100 yard dash to the safety of her heart. And then I just pray that whoever she is can handle the terrors I pull out of the little bag my parents packed for me and then unpacked without telling me. I have to tell you, I do some freaky things. Panic is a strange travelling companion.

So, all this because I seem to have got some of you a little riled by my cynicism. If the women who decide I'm no 'match' for them would just still cuddle in front of a movie with a hot dog, that'd be cool.

lesbian sex, lies and incompatibility

I am not feeling in a good mood at all. My buddy Karen sent me a photo she found from a couple of years back and she wrote me a note saying 'see, you do smile'. This is a good reminder.
You may have noticed I've been strangely muted about one of my favorite topics to rant about - the way in which lesbians get into and how they get out of relationships. I got into a bit of trouble on New Year's Eve with someone I had just met because I had made some comments about dykes and their dishonesty about sex. My view on things - it is all about the sex. I've said it before - lesbians (in common with most other species) will say (or do) what they have to, to get the sex they want and then will say (or do) what they have to, to get out of the sex they no longer want. If 'comfortable' is so much better than the thrill of the new, if sex is so unimportant to lesbians then why do so many cheat on their current relationships. Most of us want to be able to stay in our merged accounts, but take a ride on the wild side every so often. How many times have you said 'what she doesn't know, doesn't hurt her'? Personally I think it does hurt.

Everyone wants to feel secure - that's what it's about, right? And no-one wants to hurt someone else, right? Virtually every lesbian I know says 'intimacy' (whatever that means) is far more important than plain old sex. We just don't have the guts to say 'I don't want to have sex with you anymore'. We say 'it's just not a good match', or we find every reason to rationalise the fact that we want to fuck someone else - anyone else.

If it isn't all about the sex, why screw up your marriages or domestic partnerships, and then mope about when the new passion fades into the mundane, or you find out that the person you thought was so 'compatible' is as bad a 'fit' as the last one. Susie (the local ex Susie as opposed to the Adelaide based one or the London based one) says we all make a decision between tedium and loneliness. No-one wants to be alone.

On the subject of 'compatibility', America has created the perfect environment in which people find a partner based on what they write in an online profile. Have you ever wondered why someone feels it nesessary to say 'I like to laugh'? Or that they enjoy the beach, the moonlight and good conversation. Hell, give me someone who doesn't like going out after dusk, hates sand, doesn't know how to string two words together and doesn't have a sense of humour - that's my type. Yup. Right.

I think the word compatible is best used when talking about software 'Is this Mac compatible?' Or 'Is this software compatible with my other programs?' And what about the phrase 'good fit' or a 'good match'. What the fuck does that mean? The only person I am a really good fit with is me.

I probably won't ever find someone who is as punctual as me - except strangely, Aida who lives down a dirt road in Mendocino County and can still get somewhere within 30 seconds of her ETA. I probably won't  find anyone as comfortable with fighting as I am. In my defense, if you and I fight, it'll be over in under a minute. And I probably will not find anyone again who appreciates that unique but rapidly diminishing breed - the stone butch. If you need to google that, chances are you don't enjoy my blogs much anyway.

Thing is - I think that as long as you want to have sex with a person, you'll try your hardest to make the other things work - money, religion, politics, being on time (or not) - you'll put the effort in. The only thing worse than not enjoying the sex, is not liking her dog.

 

Rainy Day Tails

Some people like the rain. I don't much. Doesn't matter how much I know we need it, I don't wanna live in a place where rain is the norm - like Manchester, or Seattle. I don't like how it finds the gap in your rain gear and seeps down your neck, or how you feel your socks go soggy. But I do love the brilliant almost neon green released afterwards, as the first shoots of the new season burst through the yellowing dusty California landscape. But mostly I don't like that rain usually comes bundled in gray.

Summer showers - sometimes I like them, when the ground steams afterwards and smells of musky dirt, when the sidewalks are washed clean, and then the sun seems to emerge brighter, like someone took some Windex and wiped it off. I like being warm in the rain, like I did when I was a kid in Kuala Lumpur.

Garbage seems more nasty after it's wet, sitting limp in the gutters. I wince at how people's clothes smell of all of the hidden aromas released by wetness; I don't like the dogs trailing mud into the house, or how cat fur feels when it's damp, or rain splashing onto my jeans. I'm not one who thinks it's romantic to kiss in the rain. And when cigarettes unravel in the rain, the strands of tobacco burst the seams, and it all lies there like innards.

Animal rescue is hard in the rain. You watch a stray dog, fur drenched, searching for food on the streets, but she won't come to you, not sure what you offer. Safety is a relative term to an animal. She runs off. Driving home, when you know that dog will spend another night walking, not sleeping, searching, avoiding the risks - that's hard.

People drive crazy in the rain, get mad in the rain and shake their umbrellas off in the entryways of cafes; I don't like that much.

Rain feels like a tunnel. Or worse, like the 'zone' I go into when faced with a crisis I can't handle. And I can handle most everything. But there have been times in my life when I disappear into that zone of elsewhere, otherwhere, somewhere else, as if I am underwater, can't hear properly, sort of like being enveloped in grey opaque glass. My body moves, people are talking to me, but I am watching from a distance unable to impact or change the course of events.

It's a strange place - to be dis/associated, dis/embodied, dis/placed. It has happened most in my life around life or death choices for animals. I wonder if, at those times, I operate less like a human animal and on a more primal level. The ability to make 'rational' decisions is replaced by the need to act, to carry out something unpleasant - fast, unhindered by emotional restraint.

Strangely then, some of my most acutely sweet memories involve rain. Surrendering to it. A small cottage with a wood burning stove, lights dim and golden; the smell of pork loin roasting, apple sauce on the stovetop, and plum crumble waiting; the dogs lying, warm and drying around the floor on fleece beds after being caught in the downpour coming back along the dirt road, a game of Scrabble unfinished on the table, a glass of wine, the anticipation of a night under cotton bedclothes and wool blankets; hearing the persistent splatter against the windows, and oaks soaked with damp leaves, banging rhymically against the roof.

Then I don't mind going for a hike in the rain; when you've waited hours for it to stop and it doesn't, and then you just run into it, yellow rain jackets, green wellies, dogs at first hesitant in the doorway, then faces aglow with the thrill of dirt and wet and water between their toes, not talking 'cos you can't hear over the thrashing.

Today, a rainstorm moved in to the Bay Area. Nothing like the fury of East Coast chaos or snow piling up against houses and doors - but a storm none the less and the grey claustrophobia makes it hard to breathe. I'm someone who would prefer to be outside than inside. It's why California came like a blessing into my life after London and Berlin. And why I resist going back even though London always feels like 'home' to me. I wonder whether it is that sense of never belonging anywhere, and never being at 'home' though here is where I own a house and have lived for 20 years - that makes my own personal rainstorm far harder to shake off than any persistent water dripping from the skies.