Harlem Nocturne

I have been teaching music lessons for a private tutoring and music business since October 2019.  Twice a year they have a recital and encourage faculty to also prepare a piece to perform.

Since I had just started teaching with them and didn't have anything prepared, I ducked out of the Dec 2019 recital.  When the June recital rolled around, I had the pandemic as an excuse, even though I had started learning Harlem Nocturne.  

 I could not figure out how to play without an accompanist:  my jazz pianist friend Kelly Flemming Dallmann had suggested I learn this awesome piece, and then we found we could not rehearse together or apart.  I started trying to learn how to accompany myself, to record a solo oboe track and then play chords as a second track (oh hi D7b9 chord!).  I also considered tricking my boyfriend into learning these complicated jazz chords to play with me (I did succeed in tricking us both into playing Bach two-part inventions/etudes as a duet).

Kelly and I exchanged dozens of takes of us attempting our parts without the other player.  These takes were very helpful to me and also very frustrating as recording oneself without another player's part causes me to scrutinize every sound, the beginnings and endings of every pitch, the gasps of breath trying to make it to the next phrase without any cover. Cringe after cringe.  It's sort of the worst part of music for me--the solitude of playing out of context, without the magic of communicating with other musicians.

As the deadline loomed for submitting a video for the Dec 2020 recital, Kelly and I stepped up our rehearsing and recording.  A week before Christmas, with all the busyness of that time of year, Kelly made the trip to my house for a masked socially-distanced take or two (or ten).  There were many good moments musically, and this is the one I chose to share:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xsFsVdaCoT8neg5cPIQQ3i3bQG4pQR34/view?usp=sharing

Getting run out of town

"I had no idea that you felt driven out of town and college here, it makes me sad. I thought you left because it was impossible to finish your degree from here. I know academia is often as cut throat as business or government, I didn’t know that this is what happened to you."

It was "impossible" to finish my degree at a distance, which of course, people are now doing due to Covid.  So many things which were "impossible" were just excuses not to make education accessible to more people, part of what is so broken about higher education in general.

In 2007 when I was the interim director of the developmental education program at Adams State, I applied for the position when it was advertised.  The job description indicated MA required/PhD preferred but not required. At the time I had an MA, relevant experience at other schools/orgs, and was successfully doing the job.  The committee decided to change the requirement and told me I was not eligible for the position. They then had a failed search, finding no one to fill the position.  I continued to do the work, and the business office just renamed my position to something else (a "coordinator" rather than a director).  It kept the same budget code for my salary.  I basically did the same work, but seemed to have been reclassified as non-faculty.  No clear answers about who decided what, what things meant, etc, so my boss basically empowered me to keep doing the work I had been doing but to be wary and innovative, to work on grant funding opportunities, so that if at some point they eliminated my position I would have other options. There was a lot of precarity starting in 2008 through to when I left in June 2015 (you'll recall 2008 was a recession year as well).

In 2012 I started a (mostly online/summers) post-masters Specialist in Education degree, because my then boss said I could get a pay increase.  I completed the EdS in 2014.  Was then told there were no funds for a raise at that time.

As you'll recall, the RGFP lawsuit was occurring during that time.  Before I agreed to be a plaintiff, I asked my then boss what he thought about my participation with the case, if there was a conflict of interest, if there was any reason he saw that I shouldn't become a plaintiff.  He saw no conflict, didn't think I would receive retaliation for participating in the lawsuit.

The EdS degree was essentially the first two years of a doctorate of education, and the university where I completed the EdS was willing to accept 24 credits of it into their doc program, which I applied to and to which I was accepted.  Before I applied, I talked at length with my boss about the feasibility of me being able to do a leave of absence for the four semesters that the university REQUIRED to take place in person.  Over several months the doc program director, my boss and I put together a personalized degree plan which would allow me to attend in-person for the sixteen weeks of the semester, to keep my health insurance through ASU, and to do my research projects as ASU-benefitting research projects, including me promising to write my dissertation as an ASU project.  I planned to return to Alamosa during breaks from the semester and summers, and to do my fieldwork for my dissertation in Alamosa.

Two weeks before the end of the fiscal year (and my contract renewal date) in June 2015, I learned that my boss' job and my job, our whole division, were being eliminated and reorganized.  He had tenure, so he lost his VP role but is now warehoused in an academic department awaiting his soon retirement.  My position was eliminated.

I had a few short weeks to figure out what to do.  I wasn't planning to sell my house or step away from my relationships with the LFC (I was board president) or the other organizations I was involved with, but suddenly I was faced with lost income I had planned on, trying to rent/manage my property from a distance, or find a house sitter? Plus manage my expenses with out of state tuition, (no tuition support from my employer) and full-time student status?  I needed to liquidate the equity from my house. I decided it would be best to sell and make a clean break since there was no future guarantee of employment there. I ended up selling my house at a loss to the university because of the short time frame of getting my affairs in order after losing my job (and health insurance) with so little notice.  I had also just started long-distance dating my now partner and knew I would be attending classes in North Carolina starting in the fall--it was likely I could find full-time work there if I was open to it.  So I made the decision to sell the house, give away everything that didn't fit in the trailer, and start a new life wherever I landed.  

That isn't exactly getting run out of town, but it certainly didn't feel like I was "appreciated" for all the work I had done in the community.  I know I'm an asset to employers, but ASU definitely didn't signal that to me.  In fact, since the strange job search that wasn't in 2008, I had felt like I constantly needed to justify my existence, to take on more and more responsibilities in order to legitimize my role there.  As if I was merely tolerated.  I had always been a high-achiever kind of person, but that specific set of pressures caused me to throw myself into grant-writing, creating new programming, developing and teaching new courses, bringing the AmeriCorps program to campus (Mary Hoffman had been trying for years to make that happen), partnering with TSJC, partnering with all the Valley K-12 districts, organizing an all-valley HS junior visit to campus for ACT academy, teaching faculty development workshops, integrating service learning into the curriculum of a dozen different departments, serving on planning and hiring committees, inaugurating the common reading program, redesigning the library/renovation.  There were days I was on campus at 7 am.  Sometimes I'd be in my office late into the night. Unsurprisingly, my marriage ended in 2009.

I cannot claim that I lost my job because of my involvement with the Farm Park, but I know the lawsuit created a rift in the broader community as well as the university employee community.  As I said, I felt like I was merely tolerated because ... maybe I made people look bad because I was doing so much?  And also the only way I could make a little more money was to get supplemental contracts for projects and teaching overloads--there was no promotion line for me to any salary higher than $40k.  Forever.  I also wrote grants in order to have money to do programming--there was never enough money for things like tutoring and supports (ADA required) for students with disabilities, mentoring, service learning, etc.  My AmeriCorps program alone brought in $250k of scholarship money for our students.

Five years later, I see my leaving ASU as saving my life.  It was a toxic environment.  My inputs were not appreciated, or perversely were simultaneously required and yet scorned.  I gave a lot of loyalty to that place, and it was not reciprocated.  I was made promises which were broken, such as getting a raise if I pursued a terminal degree.  I fulfilled my promise to write my dissertation project about ASU and did my field work in the valley in the fall of 2017.  After I defended my dissertation in 2019, I emailed it to everyone whom I interviewed for the project.  The only feedback I got back from anyone at ASU came from someone who said they were deeply disappointed that I had chosen to characterize the university--I used a pseudonym in the manuscript--in a negative light.

I also need to say that the campus police department extorted $250 from me during those weeks.  As you probably recall, my house was across the street catty-corner from the McDaniel building.  As I was cleaning out my house, I threw a few empty 5 gallon buckets (clean meadmaking equipment) and trash into that dumpster in the parking lot, which is technically illegal dumping according to the campus police chief.  I repeatedly asked for the police chief to give me an email or something explaining what the $250 was for, and not getting an answer and yet feeling intimidated, figured it was safer just to pull out my checkbook and be done with it.  To be a smartass, I wrote in the memo line: "paid in full".  He never deposited that check.

Dear Aunt Patti

 Hi Patti,

Aunt Patti.

I saw your facebook post about abortion and personal responsibility, and it really upset me.  I've been deliberating calling you out online about it, but I want to connect with you personally instead.

Your father made a choice to abandon a pregnancy.  He did not assume responsibilities for his actions.  I urge you to read Men cause 100% of unwanted pregnancies: https://humanparts.medium.com/men-cause-100-of-unwanted-pregnancies-eb0e8288a7e5 

A man choosing to walk away from the woman he impregnated is like abortion.  He had the opportunity to make a pregnancy go away, and he took it.  He received no shaming about it, then nor now.  He in fact probably has been held up as a pillar of what fatherly responsibility looks like.  From everything you've told me, he's been a respected member of your church, community, etc.  Much of that likely would not have happened had he accepted his personal responsibility in impregnating Dorothy Pifer in 1945.  Some women in her circumstance (and there were many women impregnated by GIs at the end of WWII) committed suicide.  Some sought illegal abortions which were dangerous and also sometimes deadly to the women.  They also gave up their babies to adoption and orphanages, to live with other families or in institutions rather than with their mothers and other blood relatives. Families fractured because of the chant of personal responsibility and the denial of the responsibilities of men.  

  

And

I'd like to continue to think of your father as a good person. This requires me to recognize that there were complex forces at work on him which caused him to make that choice.  I am assuming that those forces/fears are related to rejection from family and church and fear of losing economic, educational and social standing and future opportunities to afford familial responsibilities, to be seen as an adult man.  I assume it really was as grim a choice as I imagine it---that he felt like he was between a rock and a hard place (marry this non-LDS woman he hardly knows or walk away from being a father (from what I can tell, he's quite proud of being a father to you and your siblings)) and the best option he saw was to pretend the pregnancy never happened and go home to family support.

Had he followed through on his initial responsibility for that pregnancy, you and your siblings would not have been born.  I am glad that he made that difficult choice and that you and your siblings and all your kids and grandkids were able to exist.  Aren't you?

So I feel the need to point out to you that it is problematic to celebrate personal responsibility without acknowledging that really hard circumstances put people in impossible positions which lead to people choosing what appears to be cowardly or evil or whatever simplified way people think about how a person could choose to abandon a child they conceived.  It's really cruel and intentionally oversimplified. And it lets men off scot free while shaming women, who are the ones demonized about abortion and failing at personal responsibility.  

The mantra of personal responsibility that many are chanting these days (we don't need government telling us to wear masks!) is at odds with the ideas of collective responsibility.  Collective responsibility involves using tax dollars to solve big problems, whether it's confronting a pandemic or creating economic conditions where a single woman (ie who's impregnator isn't willing or able to support a family) could raise a child.  And it's much easier to chant about everyone taking personal responsibility rather than making resources available to actually solve complex problems.  It also makes it so men can TALK about personal responsibility related to reproduction without actually having to be personally responsible, or even collectively responsible, via paying taxes for services which help women and children they don't acknowledge being related to.

A feminist pro-life take is that we should work to eliminate the need for abortion, by making sure that every baby conceived (and their caregivers) gets access to healthcare, education, clean water, a liveable planet--the so-called socialist agenda.  Shaming women for their failures at personal responsibility allows people like your father to walk away from their failures at personal responsibilities without any consequence.  And for their daughter (who I assume many people admire and look up to) to publicly celebrate personal responsibility at the expense of collective responsibility, at the expense of people who are poorer, browner, less ___ than her, signaling that people like my GRANDMOTHER failed to control their biological urges when they should have just been more responsible.  

That's what I read when I saw your post.

Many may consider my wish to see my biological grandfather as a good person as too pollyanna.  That it was much more likely that a person in his situation wanted to shake off a clingy pregnant girl, that he maybe even laughed about it with his friends.  I've been pained to not write anything that might hurt or embarrass your father, or you, about the circumstances which led to my dad's conception and adoption because I really really want to think of Max Gardner as being a good person.  

I've been trying to frame this story in different ways in order to not embarrass you.  And yet, perhaps the right thing to do is for your father and you to own his story, to *talk about personal responsibility in ways that make sense*, that acknowledge reality:  people walk away from responsibilities.  Maybe it's shameful.  Maybe it caused hardship to others, hardships the person who made the choice to walk away don't see and therefore don't think exist.  That doesn't mean that denial is any way to live as an adult.  

To me, it would be a courageous act of personal responsibility, for Max Gardner to say, "I don't even rightly remember what happened 75 years ago, but it's come to my attention that I conceived a child with a woman in 1945, and for whatever reason I was not able to support her and the baby.  And through some strokes of luck, new technology, and my weird granddaughter's obsessive researching, I got to meet my son for the first time in 2018.  I'm so glad that there were social safety nets in place which covered for my inability to support my son.  In some ways I am deeply ashamed that I could not do the fundamental thing a good parent does.  And in other ways, I forgive myself for having made a difficult decision that some may say is selfish but others would point out made it possible for me to be a good parent to the children I eventually had with my wife."  

That's what personal responsibility looks like.  It's also inclusive of collective responsibility, getting past the notion that anyone is "self-made", is able to navigate this life without other people loving them and supporting them, without safety nets for when a person cannot fulfill their obligations, for when people find themselves in impossible situations.  It's deeply corrosive to advance the idea that personal responsibility is all that is needed when obviously at different times in our lives we find ourselves needing help from others.

As far as I can tell, the Church of Latter Day Saints has historically been very supportive of collective support of each other, the beehive symbolism, etc.  

When you reached out a few months ago, Patti, I gave you a terse reply because I really struggle with what kind of relationship I can have with you.  I had literally been searching for my grandfather for 25 years. I am 49, so that research spanned more than half of my lifetime.  Had I been given the weird choice of finding out the truth about my grandfather versus finishing my doctorate, I think I would have chosen the former over the later (thank goodness I am blessed to have both).  It was a decades-long obsession.  It's difficult to express how much I wanted to find out the story that haunted my childhood and became a specific project assigned to me when my grandmother before her death asked me to write a book. I'm a good student, Patti.  It's very hard to have this overdue assignment hanging over my head.

And when I found him, he wasn't dead as I had been told.  I am still trying to figure out how much my grandmother really knew in 1945 when she mailed the letter to that sailor who she thought was going to marry her (or if even that story is true).  Other possibilities get ominous--was it consensual?  Did he lead her on, telling her that he'd marry her and then got cold feet?  Was it just too difficult to communicate because he was transferred away and she didn't have a forwarding address?  And if so, he didn't have the personal responsibility to write her a letter from his new duty station?  It gets difficult for me to hold him in positive regard when I really will never know these answers.

Part of why I am not particularly interested in connecting more with your father is because he just doesn't give me any information like that.  He was happy to show me off as his musically talented granddaughter at the nursing home, but he doesn't really say anything about how it is that this new person is his granddaughter.  I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet him--again, for literally decades he was the answer to the question "who is the one person living or dead that you'd most like to meet" for me. Yep, we met.  And he is a sphinx.  A genial grampa, but no context for how it is that we're just now learning that we are related. 

So I am ambivalent about what kind of relationship we can have, and I put you out of my mind until I saw your post this week.  I have been trying to put other people I am related to out of my mind too because of their chanting about personal responsibility.  And yet the best way forward, in terms of reconciling family differences, political differences, coming to some shared agreements moving forward with regard to say, how to address big collective issues like climate change, requires engaging with family members with whom we don't see eye to eye. And Patti, I *do* think of us as family members; I just didn't want to do the hard work of reaching out and engaging.  

That is why I am sending this email. I am trying to do the work of engaging on the difficult topic of abortion with my aunt who sees things differently from me, rather than letting it go.  I do not expect any quick reply--perhaps you may never find words for a reply, and I accept that.  Know that I have thought of you as family even before I knew the name Max Gardner.  I knew some man had to have existed, and he was situated in some sort of family, whatever his circumstances, and that we are all kin.  For all I know I might get some email years from now from someone who KEN fathered, which had not come to light previously.  

And so again, I choose to give men the benefit of the doubt, the privacy with their decisions, the acknowledgement that there are forces which force choices which some find reprehensible but which nonetheless appeared to be the best option in that unique set of circumstances.  I also choose to give women the same benefit of the doubt, privacy about their decisions, and acknowledgement that I don't understand what forces they have to make those decisions within.  And that is why I support access to abortion.  

So instead of calling you out on your page (I don't know how many of your fb friends knows that your Dad knocked up a Lutheran lady in Wisconsin eight decades ago), I am calling you "in", because I want to create space for us to understand each other, and to me that requires being honest about the limits of the personal responsibility argument.

With love, Karen

The power of the White maidenhead compels you!

This week an image of a  naked White woman protester in Portland went viral.

White woman practicing yoga, naked, in a Portland Street, facing officers in riot gear.  Officers backed away and left the demonstration.  Credit: Donovan Farley, https://twitter.com/DonovanFarley/status/1284412288774975489

Video here: https://www.mediaite.com/online/watch-naked-athena-faces-down-federal-cops-at-portland-protest-and-they-back-down/?fbclid=IwAR3io8RUJdCzi06yjtxfxaDcpk3YG-GPfTKtg9H9NQ9IJyPY4Ksxg6ETCTw

It is significant that she appears White, able, youthful and lithe.  I cannot imagine a darker skinned woman, a fat woman, a woman using a wheelchair, getting the same treatment.

I felt a strange energy at the Women's March in Washington DC in January 2017--I had prepared myself to be potentially arrested and tear gassed.  Instead, Police Officers were high-fiving us.  It took the perspective of Black women walking with our group for me to realize, duh, it's because we are white women.

The Slave Patrols from which our police systems emerged were ostensibly to protect White womanhood from Black rapists.  I think this phenomenon occurred, of (mostly) White militants backing away from this literal display of vulnerable femininity, because of this history.  These men were moments earlier firing tear gas and rubber bullets.  When she walked up to them, pointed to them and began doing yoga stretches/positions, it shortcircuited something.  The confused men backed away.

So much of the problems we are facing today are due to toxic masculinity structures like fear of the "nanny state."  Nannies.  Mother-adjacent.  The power of a woman saying "no" to a man.  Making him feel small, like a child, chastened by a person with authority over him.

Also meme-ing this week are Karen memes.  I happen to be named Karen, and I've had 5 different friends reach out to me recently to say something like "these are funny, but I don't think you're one of these Karens! :) "

I have lots of thoughts on the Karen memes, and I think they are connected to this Portland "Naked Athena" as Farley the photographer calls her.

My take on the Karen memes (as texted in response to one of those friends)

Yes the Karen meme is about white women weaponizing their “tears” in service of creating and maintaining White-only spaces literally and figuratively. From public parks to higher education etc. some of these memes however are created by WHITE MEN which is rich, given that the karens are doing this unpaid dirty work which white men overwhelmingly benefit from

Karen

Also, the Wine Mom part of the meme touches on how cis-hetero white women who are married to (wealthy) white men have the free time during the day to do their mischief and overwhelmingly work to improve the conditions of their (white) children at the expense of everyone else’s. Private schools for us, decaying public schools for them, etc. and we know plenty of progressive “democratic” white women who may post Black Lives Matter icons etc to virtue signal but will make family/kid based decisions about which school district to enroll in etc which do the opposite of affirming those values

Karen

And me personally, I’ve got extra Karen energy because white women are overwhelmingly teachers (English teachers!) who police the margins of language, expression, what is allowable to write your term paper about etc
White nurses policed the margins of racial identity by coding which children were biracial etc on birth certificates. Karen energy is about policing who counts, who is discounted in these power structures. their proximity, access and affiliation to white men is the motive, and the desire to protect their children and create the best conditions possible for them (giving them an edge over others) is a very strong urge.

KarenAnd creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

KarenAnd creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

Karen

KarenWhite nurses policed the margins of racial identity by coding which children were biracial etc on birth certificates. Karen energy is about policing who counts, who is discounted in these power structures. their proximity, access and affiliation to white men is the motive, and the desire to protect their children and create the best conditions possible for them (giving them an edge over others) is a very strong urge.

KarenAnd creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

Karen

And creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

Karen

Love is the only way through this. And by love I mean, we have to love other people’s children, black children, immigrant babies in cages, people we will never meet, as if they were our babies, our grandchildren etc. and gently but firmly bringing our other kin (like my Trump supporting Mom) along on the journey towards wholeness

Karen

So that is part of my thoughts on this Karen meme.  And since White women and our Very Powerful Tears have this sort of power to either prop up the structures of White supremacy or work against it, let us consider how we might use this power differently.  Not all of us look like the Yogani pictured above (nor have the ovaries to walk naked into a crowd of riot police).  But a lot of us look like we are somebody's White mom.  We can do things like this too:

https://ntvhouston.com/2020/07/moms-protest-use-of-federal-officers-in-portland-calling-it-unacceptable/

A ring of Moms, arms linked, surround protesters and chant "Feds stay clear!  The Moms are here!"

Banty chickens as beings of light

My 93-year-old friend called me this weekend to let me know she was thinking of me, that she loves me, that she doesn't expect me to call back.  Of course I called back.

After catching up a bit she said she wanted to share a story with me, but it would take about 5-10 minutes--would I be willing to listen?  Of course.

She said that she has started seeing tiny bantam chickens everywhere, just like the little chickens of her girlhood on the farm in North Carolina.  She knows they aren't "real" as in something that others can see, but they are real to her.  She only sees them when the sunlight is just right.  Sometimes they are walking around outside, coming out from under bushes.  Sometimes they are walking across the pond, four steps to get across, not dipping into the water like you might expect a bird like a duck to do, but walking across the surface of the water.  They are brilliant vivid colors, and they bring her so much joy.

She made a point of telling her ophthalmologist about them, prefacing her story the same way, that it will take a few minutes for her to tell it, and don't dismiss her as crazy because she knows they aren't "real real" but they are real to her.  And thank goodness that doctor just listened to her and explained that her brain was making sense of things, and there was nothing that she needed to do, no medication to take to make these visual hallucinations go away if they aren't upsetting her.

And so here I sit, crying, because I think my friend is preparing to transition to the coming after.  On one of our last calls she asked if I would visit her, and I told her I didn't think that would be possible for a while.  And I'm comforted that she is seeing these beings of light as a joyful reminder of her childhood.

This spring has been weird for me.  A few weeks ago were the holidays of Easter and May Day, usually celebrations of the beginnings of life, bunnies and eggs, honeybees pollinating flowers so they become fruitful.  But instead, I pulled out some Halloween decorations because I feel overwhelmed by the endings of life.  It feels like a dying time of year, so I pulled out a plastic skeleton decoration and put it into a babydoll cradle.  Nurturing death.  Embracing the endings of lives, just at a different time of year.

I had installed a beehive this spring, and for the first time in my 15 years of beekeeping instead of it growing with activity, it died.  There weren't enough spring flowers in April, and a cold snap meant this tiny ball of writhing insects went into survival mode, not able to forage for calories to keep them warm, and clinging around their last hope, the queen in the center of that blob, with the intent of keeping her alive long enough to lay eggs to start the cycle anew.  They failed.  I failed to keep them alive.

So here I sit, contemplating my favorite beings of light, metaphor of angels, the intermediaries between the worlds.  There is a beekeeping custom of whispering to the bees news of deaths and births, and I have no idea what to whisper to the bees.  There are many deaths this spring.  I don't know all of the names.  I want to whisper about new possibilities, new things being birthed by these transitions.  Perhaps it's best to be still and listen deeply for now, and be grateful for dear friends who reach out to tell me they love me and banty spring chickens.