Let’s start there, at the blackout. It has been hard to ignore the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are abuzz with re-posts about internet censorship and First Amendment rights. WordPress, Google, Wikipedia, and more of my frequently accessed sites are all in visible protest of these bills. I’ve joined the protest by penning a couple of letters to my congressional representatives. I am heartened by what seems to be widespread civic participation on an important issue. This participation is clearly motivated by corporate power – when Wikipedia restricts access to its services and Google offers people an easy petition to sign, people respond. I don’t think this is a bad thing. In fact, I’d argue that this serves as an example of corporations using their influence for good. Still, I find myself baffled that we can rally so quickly and so powerfully for the defeat of this bill, but we can’t get ourselves together to support legislation that would, say, end homelessness.

The blackout is working already, and the protests against the construction of the potentially hugely destructive Keystone XL pipeline seem to be gaining some major ground. Three cheers for democracy in action! I just wish we were better at getting good legislation passed, rather than just defeating bad legislation. 

And on that note, yesterday I attended a forum hosted by the Annie E. Casey and W.K. Kellogg Foundations called “The Politics of Economic Opportunity: Will Growing Poverty Affect Election 2012?” The forum’s first panel contained a bipartisan spread of pollsters and famed political strategists who all said that despite the public’s growing concern about poverty in the U.S., the presidential candidates are not doing enough to address the issue in their campaigns. In a Kellogg-funded study:

• 88% of likely voters said that poverty is “very important” when deciding their votes for president.
•  88% also said candidates’ positions on equal opportunity for children of all races is important to their decision. 
• Half of the voters surveyed also said they had not heard enough from the candidates or the media about reducing poverty during the campaign.

I’m glad to see people saying that poverty issues are important to them, but I find myself suspicious. If that many people care that much about these issues, we can force the point. We can demand that our candidates answer tough questions about poverty in order to get our votes, but we’re clearly not. How do we change that? How do we motivate each other to demand that our government representatives actually do something about these issues we say we care about? 

Our disapproval rating of Congress is now at 84%. That’s a historic high. 

The blackout and these initial Keystone pipeline victories demonstrate that the power of the collective still exists. The Occupy movement and Tea Party demonstrate that we’re still willing to organize. My hope is that the strength of “we the people” is on the uptick, and the change we’ve been waiting for is just around the corner. 

It’s probably a bit premature to declare victory, but it feels like a success just to have these interviews after close to a month without one.  Here’s hoping one of them turns into a job – what a spectacular Christmas gift that would be!

Speaking of Christmas, my roommate, roommate’s boyfriend, and I are doing Christmas stockings this year. They’re festively hanging above the window that looks out from the kitchen into the living room, and they’re already filled with a few goodies. I love the challenge of finding small things that will delight them, and it makes things feel a bit more like the holidays don’t have to wait until I get home to Kansas to be with the fam. We can celebrate right here, together, in our happy little home.

This is a short one, I know, but I primarily wanted to share the good news about the interviews. If you’re the praying type, I’d love for you to say a few for me. If you’re not, wish me luck!

***

I’m not very good at talking about my emotions. I have words for all kinds of other things, but when it comes to matching words with feelings, I’m really no good. That’s probably why I don’t even try to be a poet. It’s not that I don’t feel things, of course, it’s just that I don’t always express them well. This would be fine, except I always want to find ways to talk about everything.

When I was headed to graduate school the first time, my dear friend/mentor Heather told me she hoped it would help me gain some insight into why words matter to me so much. It did, somewhat, but I actually think that’s a question it may take a lifetime to answer.

Even still, as I was writing my personal statements for this round of applications, I tried my darndest to explain why I wanted to study rhetoric, rather than working in a homeless shelter or at a policy org. There is tremendous value in both. Tremendous. But neither felt quite right for me.

I thought that I might share with you tonight the why that I’ve come to for now. Another friend, Jeff, asked me a very important question when we last talked about my desire to go to graduate school. “Whitney,” he asked, “which are you more concerned with: changing attitudes or changing policy?”

In my personal statements, I strove to express why I’d come to the conclusion that attitudes are what compel me:

“When I worked in the shelters, I found myself frustrated to only be able to meet people’s immediate needs. When I worked on policy, I felt that even while striving to implement broad ‘solutions’ for those needs, we rarely addressed what causes the attitudes that create and perpetuate them.

As Kenneth Burke explains in Attitudes Toward History, ‘we form ourselves and judge others…in accordance with our attitudes.’* This formation is not just individual, but social. In order to reduce homelessness and poverty, I believe we must seek to understand how attitudes toward these issues and the populations experiencing them are formed, and seek correctives to create a more just and democratic society. Ultimately, I find that only academia prepares one to conduct this kind of critical inquiry.”

Words create, shape, and uphold attitudes. Images do the same. The signs and symbols we use to describe and interpret our world are cornerstones in how “we form ourselves and judge others.” That’s part of why words matter to me so much. It’s also part of what makes me believe that if we’re ever really going to change systems and/or cultures, we have to examine the language we’re using.

There may be things, still, that words cannot express. There are certainly things for which I continue to struggle to find words. I think that is good and healthy. But words matter. They sure do matter.

*Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History, 2^nd ed., (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), 92.

But tonight I went to see Dr. Cornel West speak, so I’ve got other things on my mind. West is a brilliant scholar and civil rights advocate. In case your memory needs jogging, he wrote Race Matters. In case it needs more jogging, you might recall him from The Matrix.

West is so charismatic. I’d expected a very academic lecture on democracy and public address, which is kind of how the event was billed, but I should have know better. Half the time, I felt like I was in church. The rest of the time his cadence made him sound the a poet.

That man is fighting for justice in the best way he knows how. I love it.

He made me stop in my mental tracks tonight several times over, but especially when he said, speaking of the American university system: “The academy does not put a premium on courage.”

Them’s fightin’ words, Dr. West.

And I mulled them fightin’ words all around in my head.

He went on to say that in the academy, there are too many people patting themselves or others on the back for being the smartest person in the room. But there are smart people everywhere. There were some really smart Nazis. Instead, West says, we should be applauding the academics who will use their work to do something about injustice. He wants us to take dramatic stands, and to fight hard.

If you’ve ever talked with me about academia, ever, you know that I think scholarship for scholarship’s sake is problematic. There’s this deep part of me that recoils at the thought of writing only for other academics. It’s the same part of me that tries to avoid jargon or big, fancy words when simpler words will do. I desperately want to be a scholar-advocate, a scholar who always has one foot inside the academy and one foot out.

The academy is not structured to encourage this. Perhaps, indeed, “the academy does not put a premium on courage.” The people who do successfully keep one foot in and one foot out have to fight for it.

I am much more timid than I wish I were. I’m not a huge risk-taker. I’m a rules follower. I’ve never been part of a protest or been even close to being arrested. I think publishing is terrifying because, well, what if I’m wrong?

Let me tell you, though, I really, really want to be a courageous scholar. If I am privileged enough to get that much education, and to work with this many brilliant, talented people, I want to use that to fight as much injustice as I can. Together. With those people. I’m going to have to shed a lot more timidity to make that happen.

I’d been seeing it, and ignoring it, on people’s facebook feeds for months. Yesterday, I decided to try it for myself. O.M.G.

Better than Grooveshark. Better than Pandora. Better than iTunes.

You can listen to just about any album you want to, any time, for free. On top of that, you can create playlists and share them with your friends – without ever paying for any of the music.

And the best part is, the musicians and their companies still get paid!

Wait. So, I get free music without having to buy any albums or songs, I get virtual mixtapes as often as I want them, and everybody still gets paid?! Why would anyone ever buy music again?

Oh, you say you want to buy music so you can carry it around on your iPod? Problem solved. You can pay a small monthly fee ($9.99/month) for Spotify premium and get all of its functions on your smartphone. Any album, any song, any time, anywhere for $10 a month. That is awesome.

I sound like a salesperson, but I don’t care. Sign yourself up for Spotify. I’ll even offer a money back guarantee that you’ll love it.

And to get you started, I offer you this Best of 2011 playlist by a friend of mine who writes for Pitchfork. It’s 11 hours of gloriously free music. Do it. Love it.

It’s really pretty amazing. For example, did you know that the cliff swallow sometimes flies up to 6,800 miles, one way?! Birds use the sun and stars to navigate, and often they’ll have to cross an ocean without stopping, unless they encounter a boat or someplace else to rest along the way. 

I can’t imagine doing anything but sitting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle for that kind of distance. As I sit here watching them flap continuously, I think about the energy it must take to travel that far, the dedication that has to be built into them in order for this to work. 

When was the last time you actually stopped to think about migration – or the miracle of flight, even? I’m sure I hadn’t since childhood. But tonight I’m in awe. 

 And have you ever seen the greater sage grouse in action? What a weird little creature. 

Few things inspire more reverence in me than nature. The beauty of the horizon, the interconnectedness of an ecosystem, the machinations of birds on migratory flight paths. 

I just nearly wrote that I wish I could live in this state of awe and reverence all the time, then dismissed the thought as silly. How could a person get anything done in that mindset? But, actually, why can’t we live in that state? It seems to me at least a worthy goal to deeply appreciate how cool is this very complex and lovely earth we find ourselves living on.  

I was a very slow typer. It wasn’t until college when I had instant messaging capabilities and constant internet that I was able to finally learn how to actually type, rather than using the old hunt and peck method. But, man, come college, a whole new world opened up to me. I had loads of music at my finger-tips (this was before Napster became officially illegal), and even a long distance boyfriend that, get this, I met via AIM.

If I were to write down everything I do on the internet these days, particularly the tasks I can no longer complete offline, I think I might be frightened by the length of the list. And yet, I love that I can carry the internet around in my pocket. It’s so easy to get from place to place when Google maps travels with you constantly.

Last week, on the long drives to and from South Bend for the holiday, my road trip buddy and I played hours worth of trivia, mad libs (mad limbs!), and brain teasers via my phone. We streamed music live from the internet. We double checked the maps to be sure we weren’t headed off course.

Today I searched for jobs, watched television, read the news, looked in on my friends, did research, and worked on school applications via the internet.

Last week I read a Washington Post about the “explosion” of apps released for young children recently. Scientists are concerned that relying so heavily upon a screen can hamper child development. I definitely understand these concerns, but the devil’s advocate in me wonders if the use of apps from such a young age might, rather, better wire children’s brains for a world in which computer screens are king. Maybe it’s of benefit to them to learn very early on. Or maybe not.

Either way, the internet is pretty amazing, y’all. It is not an overstatement to say it has changed the way the world works.

How’s that for a Cyber Monday post?

I am delighted to be spending mine in South Bend, Indiana (no, really!) with some good friends and our recently developed traditions. This morning, donuts and Black Friday ads, followed by Thanksgiving Parade watching.

I know, I know, way back on day H, I wrote about how holidays aren’t really that magical for me. Perhaps I wrote too soon. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about that post ever since I wrote it. I wonder now whether the absence of felt magic for me is due to the lack of children in my life. There’s no one to talk Santa with, for instance. Also, I don’t really have TV, so I don’t have a chance to get all caught up in the Burl Ives Christmas specials. In any case, today is Thanksgiving. I looked forward to it, and I’m enjoying it. Christmas will almost certainly be the same way. So, perhaps I wrote too soon.

Back to today, and my curious letter choice. This group of friends with whom I’ve spent the last four Thanksgivings has developed a tradition of cooking non-traditional foods for the holiday. This started in 2007 with a Chinese-themed meal. Our crab rangoon was AMAZING. Last year was Greek food, complete with homemade baklava. This year…Thai. We’re making pad thai, drunken noodles, and some kind of coconut cake, and on the road here, a friend and I made up #thairestaurants names on Twitter to keep ourselves entertained. My personal favorite was ThaiTanium.

It may not be turkey, but it’s always tasty, and we always have a good time. So today I’m thankful for an overwhelming number of great family and friends in my life. I am truly blessed.

For the uninitiated, Greg Ostertag is a retired pro-basketball player. He played for the Utah Jazz, mostly, but to me he’ll always be a Kansas Jayhawk. Ostertag played for Kansas in the early ’90s, when I first developed an interest in college basketball. Since then, I’ve come to love so many Kansas players – Jacque Vaughn, Paul Pierce, Jeff Boschee, Drew Gooden, Kirk Hinrich.

I LOVE basketball season.

I love the squeaking of the players’ shoes on the floor, the fast pace of the game, the tension that builds in the crowd (or in my living room) when the score is close. I love the trash talking, wearing my KU gear, and “waving the wheat.” I love the March Madness brackets and staying up late to finish watching a double overtime game. I just plain love basketball.

And I love that I feel like I somehow have a relationship with these players, even though I’ve never met most of them. When the team wins, I say “we” won. I speak with great pride in the accomplishments of “my boys.” As though I have anything to do with whether the team wins or loses. I’ve never felt that way toward any other sport, or any other team.

It’s November. It’s basketball season.  Tonight KU destroyed UCLA on the court. I am elated.

I read this on a billboard a couple of months ago. It was poignant enough to stick with me even though I saw it only once.

Today, this kid is a little bit scared.

I spent a little bit of time at Occupy DC today. Not enough time, but some. I picked up a copy of The Occupy Washington Post, listened to the “mic check,” wherein the protesters announced a march by repeating one another’s words loudly so the whole camp could hear, and wandered among the tents, reading sign after sign. Regardless of your feelings toward the movement, you’ve got to acknowledge that the pressure of the Great Recession has pushed many, many people towards desperate measures. And, recently, predictions show a greater than 50 percent chance that we’ll enter another recession next year.

Also today, the unsurprising, but deeply infuriating, announcement came that the “supercommittee” created to deal with the United States’ deficit problem has failed to reach a deal in time for its deadline, meaning that $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts will kick in. Not so super.

Perhaps it’s just that I grew up in relatively booming economic times. Perhaps it’s that I live in the national capital region, where there’s more talk about these things than elsewhere. Perhaps it’s that I’ve spent the last five years working on homelessness issues.

I’m a little bit scared of what happens next -
- when we slash budgets, sometimes removing support from people who’ll need assistance
- when we return to a recession when unemployment’s already at nine percent
- when we head into an election where candidates will be eager to impress us with their economic know-how (as I recall, that’s how the bank bailouts came about).

I saw way too many homeless people on the streets of one of the most powerful cities in the world today, and I wonder how many more I’ll see in a couple of years, when all of these things have come to pass. I pray we’ll come up with some solutions, and the will to implement them, quickly.