Category Archives: Pittsburgh

On Wet Rags and Crocodile Tears

30 Saturday Jun 2018

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The tears of Allison Ettel, a.k.a., #PermitPatty, NBC’s The Today Show (cropped), June 26, 2018. (http://bet.com).

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, probably for at least two years. But it does help when others closer to the subject write about it as well. Between @ProfessorCrunk Brittney Cooper’s chapter “White-Girl Tears” in her hard-hitting Black feminist primer Eloquent Rage (2018), @blackgirlinmain Shay Stewart Bouley’s recent blog post “Weapon of lass destruction: The tears of a white woman,” and Ruby Hamad’s piece in The Guardian, “How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour,” what can I really add? (Everyone who believes in feminism and wants to support women of color writers ought to read these essays, by the way). Oh, just the idea that men of color deal with White women’s/girl’s tears as well. And that some of us have been just anti-sexist enough to recognize how our Whiteness and patriarchal-dominated society privileges and legitimizes such tears, often to our detriment.

Over the years, I’ve taken to calling those who cry over the least amount of adversity and stress wet rags, and those instances in which sobbing becomes a central theme “wet-rag episodes.” This started for me in the late-1990s, when my then girlfriend (now wife of eighteen years) would spent upwards of 12 hours of her Saturdays watching Lifetime movies (some of which were originally NBC, ABC, or CBS specials, before the dominant return of reality TV in the double aughts). At first, I did a play on Lifetime‘s slogan back then, “Lifetime: Television for Women,” adding, “not for men” whenever the tag line appeared during commercials.

But Lifetime is an addiction, if you sit there long enough watching the ups and downs of romances, the constant threat of stalkers, date rape, teenage pregnancy, and drugs, and the upbeat endings and vindication at the end of every two-hour movie. What I noticed most of all, though, were the waterworks. Everyone from Lynda Carter to Lindsay Wagner, from Elizabeth Montgomery to Jaclyn Smith could cry at the sound of a book drop!

Cartoon character from Fairly Odd Parents crying an ocean of tears (cropped), June 30, 2018. (http://fairlyoddfanon.wikia.com).

Admittedly, I cry very easily while watching emotional and gut-wrenching scenes. I cried when I saw Viola Davis take on Denzel Washington’s character in Fences (2016) over his years of cheating and his secret family. Especially when Davis blew a snot bubble in the middle of the scene. I was through for the next three minutes!

With Lifetime movies, though, I stopped crying for these White women over the twists and turns in their lives. I watched one scene in one movie where the main character broke out and cried at her dining room table in her laid-out, five-bedroom home when she realized she only had $10,000 left in her bank account. I didn’t just laugh. I howled. As someone for whom poverty and financial struggles have been a constant companion, having that much money in any account at any time has always been a time of celebration. “You shouldn’t laugh. Poverty is relative,” Angelia said while also laughing. “No, it isn’t. She’s a wet rag!” I responded. I’ve spent a good portion of my career proving this point, too.

That scene took me back to so many wet-rag episodes in my life. Like when my high school valedictorian classmate cried angry tears over a 67 on an English essay exam our junior year, losing 25 points because she didn’t underline James Baldwin’s book title Notes from a Native Son in her essay. I didn’t feel sorry for her, Ms. 5.45 GPA, not one bit (it’s all in Boy @ The Window).

Or, during my second year in grad school at Pitt, when a student in one of my US History to 1877 sections tried to proposition me to raise her C- average. When that didn’t work, a fountain of tears poured out. I handed her a tissue, but said, “Your tears in no way are a substitute for studying and working harder in this class.” She didn’t exactly give me 5’s on her evaluations of me in the course at the end of that semester.

Ten years later, I had White women as co-workers and students who could cry about almost anything. My one-time boss Ken blamed me for making a former co-worker cry because I refused to take her “I hope you had a wonderful vacation!” the week after 9/11 in stride. Yeah, sure. It was a week in which I was stuck in Atlanta for four days after a one-day work trip and had to take Greyhound for 15 hours back to DC, not knowing if my older brother was dead or alive. I said as much to my co-worker, and she ran away from me crying.

A student in my History of American Education Reform graduate course cried when I refused to change her grade from an A- to an A. I was in the middle of explaining how she could revise her research paper and still end up with an A. It was just before Thanksgiving, and until that moment, I had thought that this was one of the best courses I’d ever taught, with one of the best group of students I had had in one of my courses. Her sudden sobbing actually pissed me off. I tried not to show it. But I did say, “What are you crying about? There’s nothing about your standing in this course for you to be crying about.” I said it in a tone that I’d only find again once my son became a preteen.

Caitriona Balfe as Claire wailing over the loss of Jamie and the Battle of Culloden, July 9, 2016. (http://www.bookbub.com).

It’s to the point now that I don’t even watch wet-rag shows anymore, at least once the character becomes one. For example, I watched the split first season of Starz’s Outlander with Caitriona Balfe as Claire, and found it mostly enjoyable. Until she began turning on the waterworks in practically every episode. My wife continues to watch, but laughs every time I ask, “What happened on Wet Rag this week?”

I know that White women and White girls, like all human beings, have plenty good reason to cry. Every time I saw video of Kyle Stephens‘ sentencing-phase testimony about what convicted rapist and felon Larry Nassar starting doing to her when she was five years old, I cried for her and with her. Trauma and tragedy are good reasons to cry, wail, sob, and weep. But, so many wet-rag tears are drop-of-the-hat, crocodile tears. About getting caught in lies, about making racist and anti-poverty and anti-women-of-color statements that don’t go over well, about anything that would otherwise paint them as narcissistic and not-so-smart brats.

While I know I don’t have as difficult a row to hoe as so many women of color in the public sphere, one thing I know I’m not allowed to do in a hyper-masculine world of Whiteness and patriarchy is cry. I got hit with the f-bomb so many times growing up, from Black boys, Black men, and Black women, and faced threats of violence as a result. I would’ve been recommended for psychotherapy if I had ever cried over an A-, and been laughed at for complaining about my workplace conditions. Women of color can lose careers over their tears. Black boys and men have lost their freedom and lives over them. One isn’t less damaged over the delegitimization of our tears, but the damage can be differential, depending on gender, class, sexual orientation, and the level of toxic hyper-masculinity surrounding you.

That is why I can’t stand wet rags. Their tears fill the world with concern and fear, and marginalize and dehumanize the rest of us. I have no sympathy for crocodile tears. I don’t know if I’ve ever had sympathy for them.

It’s Been A While Since I’ve Been a Sports “Fan”

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Sports, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Cropped image of seven year-old Linus Van Pelt sucking his thumb and holding his security blanket (like the average American sports fan), May 3, 2018. (http://amazon.com).

If my 25 year-old self and my 48 year-old self met in the same hotel bar on Rolling Rock Beer and Wings night in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, or Cleveland, they would have so much in common (or explode space-time). But they would have one hell of a disagreement about the quality, purpose, and feeling of being a sports fanatic. We’d both be ex-baseball fans, courtesy of the sports’ over-inflated view of itself, its long history of racism, exclusion, and paternalism, and George Will’s ludicrous books on America’s so-called pastime. We’d both watch NBA basketball, NHL hockey, a fútbol match or a tennis tournament or a golf major here and there. But the reasons for watching, the rationale for whom to root for and why, the purpose for either of us to indulge in such athletic delights? We would be at an obtuse angle, at least 120 degrees apart.

My history of sports fandom began pretty much in middle school, even though I’d been exposed to all of New York’s underdog teams from the womb. Mets, Jets, and Knicks (Mom still doesn’t watch or understand hockey, by the way) were her teams by the time she and my dad conceived me. But me being me, I reinvented the wheel between the end of ’81 and the spring of ’84. I watched/listened to Yankees and Mets games, as well as the Knicks and Nets, the Islanders, Rangers, and Devils, and the Jets and Giants.

I picked my childhood teams based on low expectations, the balance between them being underdogs and being doormats, the players I’d most likely would want to emulate if I ever wanted to be a professional athlete. And, mostly important, based on that team’s ability to help me forget about all that was wrong in my world, for at least three hours per day (in baseball), or six hours a week (between the other sports combined).

The Mookie Wilson-Bill Buckner connection, Game 6, 1986 World Series, Bottom 10th, Shea Stadium, Queens, NY, October 25, 1986. (http://halloffamememorabilia.net).

That gradually began to change once my teams started winning championships, or at least, regularly competing for them. The change accelerated once I left the New York area for Pittsburgh and its Western Pennsylvania ways. Between my Mets winning a World Series and my Giants winning two Super Bowls between ’86 and ’91, I found myself no longer a fan of hometown underdog teams. Sports weren’t an escape from my reality anymore. Especially as I began regularly working out and playing sports myself.

But I still saw sports fandom as a good thing, something that could unite people and cross the barriers of racism, classism, and even sexism (depending on the sport). That was my next phase of fandom, beginning around ’93. This view was what fueled my divorce from baseball after the ’94 MLB strike and lockout, and what caused me to begin watching more golf and international soccer, and not just falling asleep to it.

I still rooted for my Giants, Rangers, and especially the Knickerbockers. Too bad only the Rangers broke through in the ’90s, although the Knicks had their chances between ’93 and ’99. With living in Pittsburgh, though, I also began to cheer for the Steelers, the Penguins (except when they played the Rangers), and sometimes the Pirates.

But even in this phase of my fandom, I recognized the basic truth. I was cheering for athletes and their talent and will to shine in competition. That they happened to be a linebacker for the Giants or a pitcher for the Mets was a bonus, but I would’ve enjoyed their talent on other teams and in other athletic contexts anyway. I recognized this already with Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield in the ’80s, and I saw another glimpse of it in ’96, when Dwight Gooden, at this point with the Yankees, finally threw a no-hitter. I wasn’t even a baseball fan anymore, but I was so happy for the diminished Gooden to achieve this feat.

Venus hitting a backhand against Elise Mertens in 1st round of Wimbledon, Wimbledon, England, UK, July 3, 2017. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/; John Walton/PA).

I think that’s why I started rooting for Venus (who does not get nearly enough credit for being an elite athlete and tennis player) and Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, and so many others while they were still in their teens. I’m sure that’s why I stopped putting up with cockamamie excuses from other fans about too much money in professional sports, about free agency, about the difficulties of running a franchise, when I’d see the same teams losing year after year. It didn’t help that the athletes I rooted for growing up or in the ’90s began to retire, often with a vocal and unappreciative fan base trying to shove them out to door.

Most importantly, I saw the greed and narcissism and conservative politics and racism and misogyny and homophobia that is embedded in the ownership of teams and in the building of franchises. That sports are no more divorced from the politics and malignancies in society than our choices in food and clothing, or the decision of most Americans to berate the poor for their poverty. That sports teams and franchises are about as “clean” and “merit-based” as legacies in college admissions (the ultimate form of affirmative action) and the American election process at any and all levels. Despite this, a hundred million people still entertain this naive view that sports fandom is an essential good, a form of escape, a place for camaraderie. It is not. It’s escapism, a form a narcissism that allows millions to feel a bit better about their lives without doing anything to change their lives and the lives of untold others for the better.

Maybe my jadedness comes from nearly two decades in the DC area, where I regularly root for the local teams to fail, because I love it when the fans here are disillusioned. Maybe it’s because of the poor quality of most of the sports I watch (or in the case of the NFL, have stopped watching for going on three years now). Or, maybe it’s because my Knicks haven’t a title since Nixon was president! Whatever it is, I will continue to root for athletes, but not for teams. Especially those who take a stand, those who have a purpose beyond their athleticism, those whose bodies make me a bit envious, but only envious enough to keep working out, to keep running, to keep draining Js. Also, the NFL is still blackballing Colin Kaepernick!

 

 

Rich, Lorde, and What I Care/Don’t Care About

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Audre Lorde, Meridel Lesueur, and Adrienne Rich after leading a writing workshop, Austin, TX, 1980. (K. Kendall/Flickr, July 15, 2007). Released to the public domain via CC-SA-2.0.

Among the literary arts, poetry is somewhere between okay and blech for me. At least most of the time. That doesn’t mean I hate all poetry or all poets. I fully appreciate the rhyme and meter (and lack thereof) of so many, from James Weldon Johnson and Archibald MacLeish to Phillis Wheatley and Langston Hughes. I love the emotional layering in the choice of the words, and in more modern times, the delivering of such words, with The Last Poets, with Gil Scott-Heron, and of course, Maya Angelou. Rap legends like Tupac, Nas, Eminem, Public Enemy have lyrics that are essentially spoken-word poetry put to bass, beats, and music loops. Heck, I’ve even enjoyed W. E. B. DuBois’ forays in the art in my scholarly research (when I more regularly did it) over the years.

But as a writer of prose (and often, long-winded prose), I also find the form of poetry ill-fitting. For me, it’s like being a home-run hitter in baseball playing hard-court tennis. It’s not that I can’t hit a baseline winner or an ace. But for every one of those, I could easily hit four tennis balls in a row out of the court, and literally onto the roof of a house half a block away. I prefer the ability to lay out my thoughts and explain them in full sentences, without worrying over every single word and the rhythm that a sequence of carefully chosen words may or may not bring.

I barely read any poetry during my Humanities years, unless my English classes forced me to. Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, Alexander Pope, all for 10th grade English, and with the exception of Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” not particularly entertaining. I was convinced after high school in ’87 that I’d never read poetry again.

What brought on a new interest in poetry came from my sophomore year at Pitt. I had to take a General Writing class in Fall 1988. I had to because if I wanted to take upper-level History classes as a History major, this general education requirement needed to be knocked off.  But I had an enthusiastic graduate student as my instructor. When I say enthusiastic, I mean someone who knew their students wouldn’t be, but whose passion for teaching and literature of all kinds made the class and the readings more interesting. She told me early on, after reading one of my first essays, that I should’ve been able to pass out of General Writing through the diagnostic tests Pitt gave my freshman year. “I wasn’t exactly awake when I took it last year,” I said in response.

Ways of Reading anthology book (2nd edition), used in 1988. (http://ebay.ca).

When we got to the poetry portion of the course, I thought at first I was going to die from boredom. But our instructor didn’t assign us the usual suspects. The main poet we read that week was Adrienne Rich. She was someone I’d heard of growing up, but that was about it. Until the assignment of reading both Rich’s poetry and her essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” that is.

There were three things I’d never considered before reading Rich. One was the idea that writing was both art and craft, and that most writing was editing and re-envisioning one’s work. Two was the notion of transforming and being transformed through the writing process, and all as a proxy for a meaningful life. Three was the positioning of poets and other writers in literature, the privileging of men over women, of White males over feminists, of White heterosexual feminists over lesbian feminists, and especially Black lesbian feminists.

That last one about power, privilege, and positioning, it really grabbed me. So much so that I read more Rich that October weekend, in between pangs of hunger from lack of money and my Saturday evening shift at the Cathedral of Learning computer lab.

And the more I read of Rich, the more I decided to read about one of Rich’s contemporaries. I moved on to Audre Lorde the following week. She wasn’t among the long list of readings we had for General Writing, but she should’ve been. I couldn’t believe that someone who lived only miles away from my growing up experience in Mount Vernon and in New York could yet have such a vastly different experience with the city and the area.

I picked up Sister Outsider (1984) for the first time near the end of that fall semester. Lorde’s collection of essays about civil rights, about Black feminism (or womanism), about what we now call intersectionality, opened my eyes to how even Rich’s brand of feminism could be problematic. But more than that. Lorde, along with Rich, helped me realize, and not for the first time, that I didn’t care if the person I read or learned from was straight or gay, male or female (or later on, transgender), Black, Brown, or White. This despite what the Hebrew-Israelites and the evangelicals tried to teach me. They just had to be excellent in their work.

Excerpt of Audre Lorde’s Power (1978) (screenshot). (http://poetryfoundation.org).

Sister Outsider also opened up my eyes to the possibility that even my poetry-loathing ass could appreciate a true master at work in the art. So early on the following semester, I read Lorde’s poetry for the first time, likely some poems from her Coal (1976). Lorde talking about her upbringing, her relationship with her mother, and her issues with her own skin color, resonated with me.

But that was it with poetry for me until I borrowed my friend E’s recording of The Lost Poets 1971 album, and then read Angelou’s poetry, both in the summer of ’91. By then, I knew that while I’d never be a full-fledged fan of it, I could still appreciate the work, the art, and the layering of ideologies, emotions, and ideas contained in the best of poetry.

“Grace,” #MeToo, and Our Binary World

20 Saturday Jan 2018

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Water buffaloes in mud, January 2017. (http://reddit.com).

Part of me knows that some of you will assume that I shouldn’t be discussing this on my blog at all. I’m a man, a Black man, a middle-aged Black man, so what do I know, really? I haven’t been on a date with anyone other than my wife since 1995. And my own history with hypermasculinity and sexism combined with my exposure to patriarchy and misogyny should disqualify me from making any comments on Babe.net’s “Grace” piece, right?

But I do have a few things to say. That is, after a week of reading tweets, articles, Facebook posts, as well as conversations with my wife and a couple of friends. Most of the divide has been between those adamant that “Grace” was a #MeToo victim of some form of sexual violation and those who believed that her evening with Aziz Ansari was little more than a bad date. This is yet another time in which the American penchant for seeing the world as white or black, or in computer code, as 0s or 1s, can literally blind most from the truth. Both sides are sort of right and sort of wrong. And like an electron (which can be in two places seemingly at once), this isn’t a binary issue. It’s a both-and situation.

Either-or thinking, December 2014. (http://survivingchurch.org).

Ansari was a doggish pig. Period. His intent with “Grace” was purely sexual. He saw her as a piece of meat (or, really, a “piece of ass”). That would explain both Ansari’s words and actions as Katie Way wrote them last week. Does that make his sexist? Of course!

Ansari also tried to persuade “Grace” into full-blown intercourse a couple of times after she had expressed her uncomfortability with moving beyond kissing, oral sex, and other fondling. Coercive behave is also doggish, venturing toward the misogynistic. All of this is true, and is certainly part of how entitlement and patriarchy can work together in sexual relationships.

Context, however, is always important in any situation. Especially one that isn’t as cut and dry as what Way described regarding “Grace” and her Ansari date. So many have harped on the idea that questioning “Grace’s” decision-making in any form is the equivalent of what misogynists do to rape victims. Not true. Not when the power dynamic is limited and diffuse at best. Not when Ansari never used physical coercion or the threat thereof to get the sex he obviously wanted.

And certainly not when “Grace’s” actions didn’t line up with her word. Some have argued about the inability of men to read the subliminal subtext of women when they are saying “No” or “I’m leaning toward no.” And for many men, this may well be the case. For so many women, being too direct may well lead to a verbal or physical confrontation with a misogynistic man. But that negates the context of Way’s piece. “Grace’s” physical responses and cues throughout the sexual encounter either belied her words, or her words were simply unclear.

Truth is, after their first try, Ansari should’ve not only just stopped, which he did. He should’ve also immediately called “Grace” a cab and sent her home. But in even writing this, isn’t this as much a form of ceding power to patriarchy as it would be a sign of sexual maturity, at least on Ansari’s part? 

Truth is, “Grace” should’ve also have been clearer with herself about what she wanted from her date. And should’ve just ended the date, rudely, discreetly, with clearer words and clearer actions, either at the restaurant or after the first sign of being uncomfortable. Because feminism is about taking charge of one’s own womanhood, and not just merely resisting patriarchy and misogyny with mealy-mouthed language.

Truth is, “Grace” had very different expectations of Ansari and that one-and-only date. The kind of expectations that are a bit immature, especially for a women who thinks that “[y]ou guys are all the same. You guys are all the fucking same.” That the main divide among women who’ve commented on “Grace” is age (with the over-under around 35 years old) is telling. Some will say that women (especially younger women) shouldn’t put up with legal yet boorish behavior, either. So don’t!

Truth is, “Grace’s” story via Way’s article is a hit piece, a sort of revenge for Ansari bursting her internalized image of him as one of the few “good guys.” “Grace” got to violate Ansari’s private life because she was enraged that Ansari saw her as little more than a piece of sexual meat. And while Ansari showed himself on this date with “Grace” to be a sexist pig, this isn’t a #MeToo moment.

Unless, of course, we distance ourselves from context, privilege, and intersectionality. Most assume that “Grace” was a 22-year-old White woman. Probably. But even if not, Way’s article about “Grace” is drowning in Whiteness. Especially when considering “Grace’s” relatively lofty expectations that Ansari would be different from other men. Especially when taking the approach that she wanted Ansari to calm her down after the awkwardness of their first sexual try. What made “Grace” think that he was so different? What made her actions as confusing as they were?

A lock of blonde hair (an allusion to Pope’s Rape of the Lock), June 18, 2013. (http://allure.com).

The Sturm und Drang over this hit piece reminds me of when I read Alexander Pope’s mock epic poem The Rape of the Lock in tenth grade. I might not remember much from Mrs. Buckley’s otherwise boring-ass English class in 1984-85, but I do remember the story of how a war started because a baron cut a lock of Belinda’s hair and kept it. It’s also typical of how race riots and lynchings of Black men often occurred, over perceived slights and embarrassing winks.

Speaking of intersectionality, where have all the “Grace” defenders been this week on serious #MeToo issues? Where have they been on Jade Martin for the past week, as a video of her assault at the hands of a Pizza Milano manager in Pittsburgh went viral, an instance of both racism and misogyny? Where have they been on the sentencing phase for Larry Nassar, a man who sexually assault over 100 young women and girls over decades? Where are they on the Rohingya, as the Myanmar security forces have admitted killing and raping women and children while driving them out of the country?

No, for so many privileged, younger, and White American women, a bad sexual encounter with a man whose sexual sexism was obvious is more important that the felony assault of a Black women for wanting to use the bathroom. The last week has shown yet again the racial, ethnic, class, and even age divide that has plagued #MeToo ever since it became more about White women and less about marginalized women and people.

“You Can Tell From The Lines On Her Face…”

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon New York, music, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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One of the more haunting songs for me from the ’80s is Phil Collins’ “Another Day In Paradise.” It came out in the mid-fall of 1989, and ended the ’80s as a #1 hit. It was also #1 to start the ’90s. For those who were younger than ten in late ’89, “Another Day In Paradise” was a song about chronic homelessness and the callousness of folk toward the homeless, in the UK and in the US.

There were at least three million people living on the streets between Battery Park in New York and the Santa Monica Pier in Southern California when Collins released his admonishment for the world and God to do something about what was then considered a serious crisis. It’s not Phil Collins’ best song. But if you gave a damn about people you saw every day, leather-faced, wearing tatters, obviously sick in body and broken in mind, then this song may have touched you in some way.

It touched me. Just sixteen months removed from five days of worry about my future, sleeping on a concrete slab, and washing up in public bathrooms, I was going to be moved by “Another Day In Paradise” anyway. Unlike most Americans, I cannot walk by someone homeless and not have it register that this could be me. I don’t give change every time a panhandler asks me. I’m not made of money. Sometimes, though, I do tear up, because seeing families without a place or home sitting on a sidewalk in the rain should make anyone sad or angry. Especially on days like today, when much of the nation is around 10ºF (-11 or -12ºC).

America had as many as five million homeless people during the height of the Great Recession, and as few as about 600,000 as recently as a year or two ago. But as with most social statistics, this is likely an underestimate. There are plenty of well-washed, well-kempt, and somewhat healthy folk in this country who don’t have a place of permanent residence. They bounce from friend to friend or from extended family member to caring loved one. They may have access to a bed or some halfway house or temporary housing. Still, they aren’t guaranteed a place to sleep, sit, or rest from one day, week, or month to the next. And this takes a toll.

It took a toll on my own family between April 1995 and March 1998, especially the first seven months after the 616 fire. I’m convinced it’s why my younger siblings struggled for years afterward to earn a high school diploma or GED. The disruption in their lives, of their dreams, in their peace of mind. It can and does drive many people to drink, drugs, and madness. It drives those who are with mental illness to the grave, like my former classmate Brandie Weston.

Yet our nation homeless-proofs itself with jagged spikes on stone walls, covered steam grates, and patrol officers hell-bent on making sure homeless Americans will not see one moment of sleep and rest. We treat our most vulnerable Americans as if they’re some form of contagion, a diseased sort of garbage that we’d love to put on a barge and dump in the middle of the Pacific.

America in our policies and our people visits indignities, malignancies, and wrath upon our homeless, whether military veterans, impoverished families, or mentally ill individuals. It’s what we do to anyone in our nation who isn’t a so-called winner. And if you’re a person of color who’s homeless, the best you can hope for is being near a college campus, where a steady stream of the well-off exploit your stories for A’s and writing jobs.

America does “to the least of us” whatever it can to take advantage, ridicule, hide, and even eliminate their existence. Proving once again that while America is a great nation, we are a horrible people. Phil Collins was right. We “can tell from the lines on her face” that America has forever calloused itself, human but often devoid of humanity.

Dateline: Noriega

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Patriotism, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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An army helicopter ferries reinforcements to the Vatican embassy in Panama City, where Gen. Manuel Noriega has taken refuge, Panama, December 21, 1989. (David Walters/Miami Herald).

It was on Wednesday, December 20, 1989 was the true beginning of the post-Cold War world, American style. It was on this date twenty-eight years ago that President George H. W. Bush sent in 20,000 soldiers and sailors to end Manuel Noriega’ dictatorial rule over Panama. It remains a date from which any student of history can infer as the beginning of blatant American aggressions abroad and increasingly craven governmental behaviors at home. At least without the counterweight of the Soviet Union to keep the US from running totally amok.

That week was part of my holiday semester break during my junior year at Pitt. I’d only been back in Mount Vernon and 616 for three full days, yet I was once again fully engrossed in my role as eldest child (in responsibility, if not in age). I was washing dishes post-breakfast that Wednesday morning between 11 am and 12 noon, as the national news of that day preempted The Price Is Right. It was no accident that within two months of the end of communist rule across most of Eastern Europe that the US hatches it first invasion of another nation. At least, that’s the thought I had in my head just before I cut the skin in between my middle finger and my ring finger on my right hand. This as I scrubbed out a glass that apparently had a chip around its rim. I bled profusely for a good ten minutes afterward, all while watching Dan Rather and company dig deep for analysis of what was happening in Panama and why.

It wasn’t even as complex as covering my second-level cut with a band-aid (which we didn’t have at 616). Noriega had become increasingly erratic and more difficult for Bush the puppet-master to control. It wasn’t as if his dictatorship and his running drugs through Panama had been any concern of either Bush or Reagan in the eight years before the invasion.

Drug trafficking and dictatorial crimes would be the excuses the Bush Administration would make for Operation Just Cause, an invasion that took 650 lives (150 or so Panamanian soldiers and more than 500 civilians), including 23 Americans. But it was essentially President Bush’s personal use of military forces to take down an asset that was the real reason for this incursion. Noriega was a man who Bush and other CIA officials had been using for the benefit of US interests in the Panama Canal and in Central America for nearly two decades. See? Much simpler than any justification over drugs and human rights violations Bush and Cheney (then Secretary of Defense) could muster.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) gaveling in ecstacy as House passed its $1.45-trillion tax cut bill, December 19, 2017 (http://twitter.com).

Both the UN and the European Parliament condemned the action. It didn’t matter. A year later, the US was part of the largest coalition of forces assembled since the end of World War II, this time to kick another former US asset in Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. That Hussein invaded Kuwait after getting mixed signals from the Bush Administration is pretty well documented. That Hussein would no longer wear the leash the former head of the CIA had put on him was the ultimate cause for an counter-invasion that ultimately has destabilized the Middle East over the past three decades.

This week, Congress is doing for the US what the US has done to countries and regions with increasing levels of brazen and calloused bigotry since 1989 (and in cases like Batista and Cuba, Pinochet and Chile, far longer than 30 years). What’s another trillion dollars between friends, especially friends who can donate to your congressional campaign or stash hundreds of billions of dollars off-shore?

Who can Americans count on to stop this ride of greed-possessed, craven people who believe that the only Americans who count are the one’s who count suitcases full of cash to go asleep at night? Americans can’t invade themselves, after all. Of course, Americans can resist, elect more Democratic candidates, yada, yada. But dear world, we need your help, because America’s leaders are doing their level best to decay the US from within.

Darren and Donald

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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A better picture of Darren and me, taken in April 1975, Sears, Mount Vernon, NY, July 6, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins).

My older brother Darren turned 50 years old yesterday. The start of my courtship with my wife of more than seventeen years began on this date and day 22 years ago, at her job’s Christmas party in Pittsburgh. The parallels wouldn’t be clear to anyone looking from the outside in on two of the more important relationships of my nearly forty-eight years. But one thing is apparent. The relationship that I’ve always attempted to have with Darren I’ve always had with my wife. One of friendship, sharing, caring, and rooting for each other.

Me and Darren were never that close, even when he taught me how to read, even when I taught him algebra, and even when we both were dodging rocks and bullies at 616. I have the scars to prove it. Three of them, exactly. Earned when I fought Darren over a chocolate Easter bunny on Easter Sunday 1977. Darren clawed my right cheek with his three middle finger on left hand to hold on to the candy, and then proceeded to eat while I was on the floor bleeding and crying.

The time between August ’08 and May ’09 wasn’t much different. My consulting work had dried up after the middle of the summer, as the Great Recession puckered up assholes and opportunities for additional work across the board. I had to dip deeply into my savings to get through, while only then teaching one class a semester at UMUC those two semesters. Darren caught wind of my job troubles through our father. During Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother’s Day during those months, Darren would ask very loudly, “Did you get a job yet?,” as if I wasn’t working at all. Of course, he was visiting Mom at 616 for free food during my calls to check in with family.

The third time Darren pulled this stunt, it sunk in what he was attempting to do. “Just because I’m not working full-time doesn’t mean I’m not working. I’m still teaching, and I still have some consulting work, which pays $550 per day,” I said. Darren responded, “Oh, oh, okay.” I knew he didn’t get the gig economy or the idea that I could work three days as a consultant and make as much as he would make in a month. Darren’s only goal through those eight months was to embarrass me with Mom and my siblings, to take glee and joy in whatever misery I was experiencing in the feast-and-famine consulting world.

It was all part of a long pattern of Darren wanting everyone in his life to be as miserable as he has been for nearly all of his adult life. I’ve long understand why he wanted all of us to accompany him in his abyss. Fourteen years going to a school for the mentally retarded and aping that behavior in a affluently lily-White context would mess anyone up. Coupling this with our lives, between Mom, our dad, and our idiot ex-stepfather would lead most to either self-loathing or suicide. Darren chose the former. It has meant him not having much of a life for more than three decades, though.

Given how we grew up, it’s amazing that I could form bonds of friendship and relationship at all. The level of distrust, anger, and disappointment was so great at one point that I could’ve lived as a hermit for the past three decades without anyone to notice. I wouldn’t be surprise if a group of my classmates from Mount Vernon High School have the caption, “Least likely to bond with another human EVER!,”around my yearbook picture. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if all of them were laughing while drawing a penis coming from out of my forehead. I did break out, despite them, despite 616, despite Mom, Jimme, Maurice, and Darren.

The five-day saga of homelessness in ’88 was just one of several events in my first two years at Pitt that made me see what I was doing to myself. But it was the most powerful event, in that it made me fully conscious of the fact that I didn’t like myself very much. It made me aware of the fact that I had maybe two people in the whole world at the time whom I called “friend” and meant it. The rest were acquaintances, former classmates, or soapbox types who liked bouncing ideas off me. Five days of staring into the pit of my possible future of misery — while looking at the seven years of grinding poverty and suffering before — fundamentally changes how I saw myself and my need to connect with other people.

By the time I first met Angelia in ’90, I was well past those events, yet it was as if I was experiencing a social life for the first time. In some respects, I actually was. So much so that I almost short-circuited a friendship before it actually began. Even after we began dating at the end of ’95, Angelia would sometimes call me a “tactless wonder.” That was usually in the context of someone getting on my nerves with their willful ignorance or witless prattle (the “getting on my nerves” part happens much more often than I let on) or being in a social setting after days of dissertation writing.

Beyond that, I’ve learned to accept that weird-old me is an okay person, that I won’t always succeed, that I have a love-disdain relationship with humans. Forming and maintaining friendships and my marriage, though, is hard, but not the impossible thing I thought it would be for me to do this time three decades ago. I remain happy about finding Angelia so many years ago. I remain hopeful that Darren may do the same, in this life or the next.