Inauguration thoughts

I was delighted to watch the inauguration with my students yesterday. We started out watching the CNN.com feed (with the Facebook updates) but it froze and we switched over to TV instead. We found the Facebook updates interesting but a little unsettling; one student astutely noted that they must be filtering, because nothing nasty or "inappropriate" was being shown. It's sad that he assumed that it was being said, if not shown, and perhaps sadder that we all agreed.

We tuned in just as the invocation was wrapping up, and got to see and hear Aretha Franklin lead us in with song; class was ending just as Joseph Lowery was giving the benediction, and only one student stayed to the end of that, but I think she and I were both glad we did. Having grown up among preachers, whose everyday speech often incorporates snippets of scripture, familiar poetry, and well-loved hymns, I loved the way his prayer did the same thing.

I can't say I was as enthusiastic when I heard Elizabeth Alexander read her poem, but looking it over later I find myself moved by it, by its evocation of the everyday, its pleasure in precision, and its comprehensiveness. It's worth reading with the line and stanza breaks preserved. I like that both Alexander and Connecticut's Marilyn Nelson wrote praise songs for the day.

President Obama's speech also had that comprehensive reach, and I loved its inclusiveness. I was saddened to hear that the official Chinese press cut off their transmission of the speech right at this point: To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

Finally, the children's lit link, from Rebecca Traister's report in Salon.com on the festivities yesterday. "Happy Inauguration Day!" they said as they passed, greeting each other with a level of joyful familiarity typical of days on which Voldemort has been defeated.

Suddenly I'm back in that scene from the opening of the first HP novel, and I know just what it was like. Wow.

Revolutionary Moments

I'm teaching a new course this semester, and I blogged about it for IHE today. I felt a little badly that I didn't have an inauguration post for IHE, but it just didn't happen. I'm not there, I'm here--and in fact I'm teaching from 11:15 to 12:30, right when the action will be happening. But then it occurred to me--my course is about revolutionary moments, moments when things changed in some significant way. And so I've decided that we'll take a little break in my class to watch it live, just so we can say we, too, saw the moment. Maybe we'll even think about analyzing the rhetoric of the speech, if we have time.

Check out this gorgeous photo essay here, too.

And there's lots of great children's lit/inauguration blogging going on, too. I probably won't find it all, but don't miss Monica Edinger's link to her earlier "Letters to Obama" post. And Betsy Bird has some great stuff up at Fuse#8. The incomparable Julius Lester has an inspiring post (ok, it was from yesterday). There's more, but that will get you started.

Ha!

Poetry I teach doesn't often make it into the news, but apparently Blagojevich finds solace in the words of 19th-century British poets. He really should have quoted Robert Browning, of course: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's a heaven for?"*

*From "Andrea del Sarto," and of course heavily ironic in context. The speaker is at best a hack, at worst a crook, and lamenting (sort of) his own failure of ambition. I see this passage quoted often, unironically.

Telling our Stories

One of my favorite feminist teachings is the oft-repeated mantra that the personal is the political. This doesn't, of course, mean that George W. Bush offers us advice for daily living (whew!) but that the power structures outside our homes don't necessarily stop at the doorway. We don't like to remember that, always--sometimes we want our decisions to feel free, open, disconnected from political realities. But they rarely are. This week in the Mama, PhD blog over at Inside Higher Ed I tell a little more of my story of balancing academe and family. Like all such stories, it's both idiosyncratic and representative, personal and --possibly-- political. Let me know what you think.

But don't stop there. In Capital-P politics, as you already know, there's a lot going on right now. Literary Mama columnists Ericka Lutz (Red Diaper Dharma) and Shari MacDonald Strong (The Maternal is Political) have terrific columns up now about the election, both telling different, but important, stories.

Two more columns at Literary Mama tell stories that don't feel political at all, stories of farewell. But Rebecca Kaminsky (Down Will Come Baby) and Vicki Forman (Special Needs Mama) know well how their stories of love and care are connected up with larger concerns--of how we treat women's particular health care needs, how we care for disabled children, how our families form part of a larger community of love and care.

The first time I ever wanted to take a political action was when, six months pregnant with my first child, I went to a meeting about doing clinic defense. Heavy with a chosen and deeply-loved child, I knew in my bones, my joints, my aching muscles, just how important it was for all mothers to have that same choice, to know their children were chosen as well. Organizers wiser than I dissuaded me, realizing that my condition would be a distraction, a potentially dangerous one. I've mostly stayed behind the scenes since then, hoping that my words and example in the classroom would be seen as the political statement I knew them to be.

This year I've been a little more mobilized--in July I walked a precinct with my newly-registered-to-vote daughter, and we signed up new voters together in the summer heat. She's spending part of her gap year doing more of that, registering voters and phonebanking and trying to be a part of something bigger than she is. Yesterday she finished working on a voter guide for a local progressive organization, and I saw the pride in her eyes as she told me of sending it off and getting it approved. "People will use my work to help them decide how to vote!" Seeing her and other young people get excited about this election is one of the things that gives me hope for the future--as does this new project, YA for Obama (check out Judy Blume! check out John Green!).

Listen to the stories around you--tell your own--you'll make a difference.

(cross-posted at the other blog)

Link Love

Not much time to post today, but lots of links:

• My new column is about growing up, and Peter Pan--who doesn't.
• I'm also blogging about Sarah Palin today at Inside Higher Ed's Mama, PhD blog.
• Even if you don't read my post on Palin, you must read the two excellent op eds over at Literary Mama, by Rebecca Steinitz and Nicole Stellon O'Donnell. Truly, these are must-reads: informative and opinionated in the best ways.
• I linked to this in my blog post, but in case you miss it: the best coverage I've seen on the Sarah Palin/book banning story is in last Friday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Thanks to Betsy at Fuse8 for the link.
  

I'm sure there's more, but that will have to do for now.

(cross-posted at the other blog...)

YA writers take on the issues

OK, I've been following the various Palin stories for a while now (and posting about them a little bit on the other blog), but today I read two great posts from YA writers that I just have to highlight. First, John Green talks about Sarah Palin's alleged history of attempting to ban books. Now, as you probably know, YA books get challenged an awful lot, and Green's Looking for Alaska is no exception. However, in his Alaska (a person, not a place, but anyway) no one gets pregnant. And the sex is so unsexy, I can't imagine anyone wanting to emulate it. Nonetheless folks get a bit queasy about it and try to ban it, which is --surprise!-- usually unconstitutional as well as counter-productive, since nothing says "Read Me" like a big "banned in your teen library" notice.

And then Maureen Johnson weighs in on Bristol Palin in the best possible way, by reminding us of the need for comprehensive sex education in schools. (She tells funny and sad stories while she's at it, so go read!) My daughter, who just graduated from high school, helped give a great presentation at her school last year about the same subject because they provided only the briefest sort of "Family Life Education"--uninformative at best, counter-productive at worst. So I'm with Johnson on this one.

OK, back to your regularly-scheduled programming. I think I have a couple of book reviews coming up, if I can just find my notes. And, um, the books. Getting on it, really.

ps to Sarah Beth Durst, who I hope will google her name and read this: I would really love you to take on The Black Bull of Norroway in your series on obscure fairy tales. I just taught it today and it is so mind-bogglingly weird, we barely skimmed the surface. A little bit Beauty & the Beast, a little bit East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and a whole lot of weird, with two burned-up women at the end. Ick.

Picturing Politics

I spent most of last week rapt in front of one political speech or another--the Democratic convention offered all kinds of delights for the sometime political junkie. (I don't follow politics as closely as many, but election years do get me going.) As I watched the speeches and the reactions of the crowds, I kept thinking of two picture books I just finished--Big Plans, by Bob Shea (illustrated by Lane Smith), and Madam President, by Lane Smith (also illustrated by the incomparable Lane Smith). In both, we get a child-sized view of the political world.

Madam President offers us a girl moving through her presidential day, from kissing babies to state funerals (a pet frog), photo ops to negotiating treaties (she makes peace between a dog and cat). She selects an admirable cabinet--Mr. Potatohead as Secretary of Agriculture, a sock monkey as Secretary of Naps, and a piggybank as Secretary of the Treasury, for example--and still makes it through a fairly ordinary schoolday (mostly by exercising her veto power, over tuna casserole in the cafeteria and other indignities). Sly visual jokes permeate the pages, from the portrait of Susan B. Anthony on her wall to the books--about Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Teddy Roosevelt, among others--under her bed. And under the Frederick Douglass book is what appears to be a copy of Smith's other political contribution this season, Big Plans.

Big Plans leads with a somewhat scary cover image, at least to me in this political climate: a grinning youngster in what appears to be a skunkskin cap treading purposefully atop the globe. He's got big plans--even though, as the story opens, he's sitting in the corner of the classroom, staring at a map. (The visual jokes continue here: the bookshelf next to him includes a U.S. Atlas, a book about rocketry, a collection of tall tales, and a book about the presidency.) As the boy outlines his plans, he dreams bigger and bigger. Enlisting a mynah bird as his second-in-command (and eventually picking up the president as the mynah bird's assistant), he moves from business to politics, politics to space exploration. In my favorite line, he announces that he will "blast off into uncertainty"--and then returns, back to his corner, free to continue exploring his "Big Plans."

If there were an election pitting these two against each other, I'd vote for Madam President, whose heroine appears to me to have a slightly more realistic grasp of the position of president. The "Big Plans" types make me a bit nervous, frankly--but we've got enough of them around, this year, that we may need both books to keep us grounded throughout the coming months.


(I received both books as pre-publication unbound copies from the publisher. Both books are in bookstores now.)