On Richmond and Loving

There are cities on their way up, and cities on their way down, and then there is Richmond: perpetually imagining herself as most assuredly one or the other and never really changing. Any powerful flux here is entirely contained in avid speculation: the rush of imaginings and the eventual, inevitable, maddening return to herself as she simply is, like someone trying on clothes for hours, only to leave a store with nothing more than a potent dissatisfaction with her original outfit.

She is a city of failed slogans, ill-considered or just ill-timed. It didn't take any great wit to see the potential for irony in hanging “Easy to Love” banners above the heads of the busiest prostitutes in the city. But every year there seems to be another effort to sum up the best of all the city wishes she were in five words or less, and by August, when the banners have the unmistakable look of mold along their edges, someone is surely thinking of the next one, because what else can we do? How else to convey this strange stasis but to pretend we are always fast-approaching some kind of radical change.

Before reality shows became their own industry, in those innocent days when one could still glimpse actual discomfort in the faces of the participants, they were often caught saying, “I'm the kind of person who...”, so much so that it proved to be a fairly effective drinking game. There they were, suddenly very much on television, nothing but the evershifting blobs of post-adolescence, and their job was to take the potential richness of their interior lives and distill it to a bullet point on their emotional resume. I'm the kind of person who is just really honest; people need to get used to it and stop talking shit about me. I'm the kind of person who really sees the good in people, and if Delilah can't see that she's a fucking bitch. Then they would join a threesome.

Richmond is an early 90s reality show participant: I'm the kind of person who is Easy to Love! I'm the kind of person who is Up and Coming! -- then Richmond spends the most of the episode trying to get the Performing Arts Center and the Convention Center into bed, and is finally found by the cameraman and the sound guy, drunk and crying in the hallway, going on and on about how no matter what she does no one will ever let her forget that the city schools are falling down. Maybe I just need another slogan, and another center, maybe a business center. I'm the kind of person who really likes business...

We were going to move and now were are staying, voluntarily. Now we have chosen Richmond for a second time; we've really picked this place, and I think that must mean I love it. Richmond is not easy to love. Loving Richmond is like loving an alcoholic ... hard. But this is our city. It hurt to think of leaving, so we stayed. I'm not sure when this loving begin. Goddammit.

Webb commits to Senate run

According to the Times Dispatch, former Navy Secretary and author James H. Webb will be seeking the Virginia Democratic nomination for US Senate. A potential challenge to George Allen's seemingly charmed and GOP-determined rise from the senate to the Presidency? Perhaps. Took a quick glance at Webb's site and am hoping to learn more in the days ahead. One speech I found particularly intriguing begins:

It pains me to point this out, but in my view the United States invasion of Iraq was one of the most ill-advised and reckless actions that the US government has ever taken. I make this statement not as a knee-jerk anti-war activist, but as one who still proudly defends our effort in Vietnam, and who has spent a total of five years inside the Pentagon.

We should start with the premise that a unilateral war - a war in which a country attacks another when it has not been itself attacked - must be undertaken only when the country's national survival is clearly at stake, or under circumstances where the international community is so threatened that a strong power such as the US must save it from an enormous menace. Iraq clearly did not meet either of those tests.

Additionally, I find it regrettable that the Bush administration squandered an historic opportunity to unify most of the world against the notion of organized international terrorism, and through its relentless pursuit of war against Iraq created instead an era of unprecedented bad feelings. The present administration accomplished this through a puzzling campaign of arrogance and condescension toward long-time allies, and by completely redefining the war against terrorism until it became a war against Iraq.

Clearly written, authoritative, and (am I dreaming) willing to address specific failings of policy while also pointing out the destructive psychology of the current administration. The writer of this might be a US Senator from Virginia?! More investigating of his positions is warranted before I begin dancing in the streets, but man, it's good to have some hope.

To be in Richmond, today

As the the initial news of the brutal murders of the Harvey family swept the city, I like so many here, was stunned, and deeply deeply hurt for the community that loved these people so very much. Over the next six days, as details emerged and the reality of what happened began to penetrate the part of people's minds that seeks order and logic, it seems an entire city and much of the country began to develop theories of what could have led to the awful crime scene in Woodland Heights (some general, some frighteningly specific, most, as the news of the apparent killers arrests reveals, wrong). Like many, I became an obsessive reader of the message boards at Courttv.com and other sites -- knowing even as it was happening that by any objective standard it wasn't healthy. Late into the night, with our doors chained, I would read peoples' take on whatever news was emerging that day. I would theorize to my husband and simultaneously try to prevent my own mental pictures from forming. The mind doesn't allow us such protection though; it was only a matter of days before I began having nightmares. As of today, no more board reading, no more theorizing. This really happened, this family is gone, and with every day that passes, it gets less comprehensible.

Theories, speculation -- I've read several writers' criticism of this mass drift into amateur detective work and I'm of a divided mind about it. Yes, it ultimately serves no outward purpose, can give rise to thoughtless, hurtful accusations and outright lies, and it's this inclination of group think that will keep me away from such sites from now on. But the need, in the face of the incomprehensible, to impose some sort of framework (even if it proves to be wrong) is nearly universal. It seems though, that speculation is a sort of comfort, or at least distraction, only for those most tangentially connected to the Harvey family and their friends (customers at WoM, old fans of House of Freaks, fearful residents of other neighborhoods). For those who knew them, this may well be a torment. Before the internet, under such circumtances, a grieving friend may have a dim knowledge that strangers were wondering, remarking, throwing out names as possible suspects. But now, in this age, they know; now it's right there after a second on a search engine: strangers, many with the best of intentions, are beginning to take the personal, visceral loss of a family and crafting it into a kind of fiction. This morning brought an unavoidable recognition of my own participation in this process, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.

How awful that these families, the Harveys and the Tuckers, are gone.

What terrible losses.

Eyes on Target and a voting update

In response to Target's astonishing emergency contraception policy, word of a Planned Parenthood boycott of the store, and a Dan Savage (last item) column that shamed me into action, I phoned their customer care center for a chat about the policy. After having a surprisingly thorough conversation with the phone bank fellow, I heard Target's response to the issue. They are assuring customers that, while their pharmacists can cite religious reasons for not filling a prescription, it falls to the objecting pharmacist to find an alternate location for the customer. The otherworldliness of this "solution" is stunning. In many, many communities small pharmacies have been put out of business by the big box department stores, thereby making places like Walmart and Target the only game in town. But even if a woman trying to fill a prescription is lucky enough to live in pharmacy-ville, the inevitable delay -- the looks, the knowing that this pharmacist objects to her choice and the medical intervention of her doctor -- is unacceptable. For anyone who feels the same, Target can be reached at 800.440.0680 (fair warning, many layers of phone menus before an actual person takes the call).

Regarding the likelihood of voting irregularities in this latest election, still investigating the distribution of voting machines in Richmond's poorer neighborhoods. On the national front, in an examination of the role of electronic voting machines in Ohio this report from the GAO, shows that, among other things: "studies found (1) some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected; (2) it was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate; and (3) vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level." The report is beginning to get some blog-driven attention, but any mainstream attention in the near future seems unlikely.

On a more optimistic note, Mr. Deeds may yet go to Richmond. The race for Attorney General remains up in the air, with the two candidates separated by less than 500 votes. Deeds remains resolute and does not plan to conceed. Looks like we'll be getting a recount for Christmas.

Pat Robertson, how I loathe him

In his neverending quest to keep God, his own countenance, and idiocy on the front pages, Pat Robertson weighed in with this gem of pastorly wisdom: "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city." Oh, and it goes on: "God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in His eye forever," Mr Robertson said. "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

I suppose the burden is now on me to come up with some pithy, yet politically relevant response to this, but you know what? Fuck that. The man is a grasping, shameless, nutjob. A dumbass of the highest order, the Reverend Dumbass, if you will. I grew up right in the buckle of the bible belt, and to those folks for whom wacky, smiling, genteel religious freaks are just the stuff of molasses-paced southern fiction -- funny, like Raising Arizona -- please take a moment to count your lucky, lucky stars. For a staggering number of people, this man's words carry very real weight. I wish I could dissect this a bit, but frankly I've spent too much of my life trying to figure out the allure, swinging from blind anger to casual dismissal and back again, never coming any closer to some sort of comfortable understanding. The old people, that I get. The sick people, alright, fear of death or pain can take anyone to some very scary places, the 700 Club among them. But there are millions of healthy, thinking people in the world who not only craft reality to "prove" the existence of an interventionist god, but see this man (who like Jim Bakker before him, actually makes Jerry Falwell look like a statesman) as the interpreter and, if you listen to him carefully, often the determiner, of that intervention. That so few of his "parishioners" see this as contradicting...ummmm...the bible is worth pointing out, but only just. This selective blindness is so pervasive, cemented so deeply into the increasingly fundamentalist world of suburban and exurban Christianity, that it feels somewhat silly to even mention it anymore.

SO people of Dover, Cease your Trembling! Rejoice! For upon you has fallen the wrath of one lonely, pathetic man from Virginia Beach, VA and his legions of followers. But as for disaster striking, and your dear community being forsaken by God, well, keep investing in holy public health and anointed emergency services and you'll be worlds ahead of most of the communities in Robertson's godfearing South.

Great day in the morning, he won

The relief in this house is palpable. Tim Kaine has won the governor's race in Virginia. I think my fella and I remain a bit bruised from the election last November because, despite the good news from the AP around 9PM, as election results trickled in we lingered over the State Bd of Elections site, obsessively refreshing until we were absolutely sure there wouldn't be some last-minute turnaround. On a more practical note, we were also monitoring the maddening (and encouraging and yet still maddening) closing of the gap between Deeds(D) and McDonnell(R) in the race for Attorney General. At this writing, it stands at McDonnell 50.04% to Deed's 49.88%. Eight districts have yet to be included in the reporting, and there is the inevitable recount. The word recount actually causes a dull pain. I suppose saying I was "bruised" after the last elections doesn't really cover it; "broken", now there's a word.

As for voting irregularities, I still plan to follow-up on the placement of voting machines in various districts within the city. Then there's this little tidbit. I think, somewhere in all of us, there lurks a conspiracy theorist; something about the way we're wired, our inclination to see patterns and ordering influence, a system-seeker that can be tapped unexpectedly. Now call me crazy, but isn't the consistent switching of candidates' names (the same candidates' names) a rather specific malfunction? After hearing this great report on the vulnerability of voting machines to, ummmm, adjustments, word of such switching is hard to ignore. Awaiting news of an official investigation. Until then, the system-seeker is stirring.

Richmond voting

This is it -- Election Day -- and I'm all aquiver. Too much caffeine despite breastfeeding: yes. The thrill of participating in representative democracy: actually, yes. The possibility that I'm going to fight the good fight against voter suppression prior to the next presidential election: damn straight.

Now perhaps there is a logical and practical explanation, but hell if I can think of one. Here's the situation. Last year, while great with child, I waited with my fella for three hours along with hundreds of other people (many of them quite elderly, or disabled, or late-for-work, or just tired) to use TWO voting machines. Now this isn't at some podunk polling place, this is the annex of city hall. Sucked, but we waited, and we voted; but a lot of folks couldn't wait. Our neighborhood at the time, while frosted at it's southern edge with a wealthy district, is predominantly poor and working class, mostly African-American. Since then we moved to a cheaper apartment in a swanky neighborhood (saving 40% on rent; 50% on utilities -- bizarre). Now when I went to vote today, what should I find but six voting machines. Perplexing. I phoned the Registrar's office and found that they use a formula based on the number of registered voters in a district to determine the minimum number of machines to place at each polling place. What remains unclear is what determines a district's ability to go above that number. Are poorer (and largely Democratic) districts less likely to have more than the minimum number of machines? I'm on the trail of answers. As exciting as voting today was (Go Kaine!), I left the swanky elementary school, in the swanky neighborhood, surrounded by swanky people who didn't have to wait in line, didn't have to be late for work, and I felt a bit sick. This is a poor city, yet half a year in this neighborhood and the poverty becomes harder to remember. This voting machine thing has me shaken back to reality and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. Perhaps it's nothing -- but these days it seems voting issues rarely come to nothing.

"One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't waste a lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either. OK, so it's not that bad yet -- but it's getting that bad." Molly Ivins