Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 140

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Brave," by Rose McGowan:

Our apartment was clean, but it was devoid of any kindness, which matched what was going on inside the walls. At this point, my father was deep in a rage he had had against women all his life, but now it had a clear focus: me. He would go off on me, and all women, calling me a “feminazi.” He sounded like your average schizophrenic on the street, arguing with some nonexistent entity about women, except I existed corporeally. 

I have been dealing with men’s hatred of me simply because I am a woman for my entire life, and it all started with my dad. We were born enemies based on gender. His excuse for his rage, for every failure, was women. All women were to blame. Therefore, I was to blame. I came to hate him as he hated me. The worst part was remembering what a magical being he had been when I was little. This monster in his place was the worst kind of betrayal. There are few photos of me that exist during this period, because my father said I was too ugly to photograph. After my years in Oregon, I was used to being called ugly. I would roll my eyes when he said that, but it still stung. 

We had no silverware at the Cave, or at least I didn’t. I was told I wasn’t worth buying silverware for. So I stole utensils from restaurants. I didn’t have a bed because I was told I wasn’t worth buying a bed for. My bedroom was the closet, where I slept on three pink square seat cushions taken from my aunt’s house. I wasn’t worth a lot in these days, apparently. 

My father often said things like “I can’t imagine anybody would ever want to be your friend” or “I can’t imagine anybody liking you.” He called me a whore almost daily to the point where I’d finish his sentences. I’d verbally mimic him as he went along. 

I knew he was wrong. I knew it was bullsh*t. The thing is, it still sticks. It gets through your walls of defense no matter how high you build them. It grinds you down, hearing this sort of stuff, day after day, being told you’re worthless or ugly. 

Being a free-spirited, strong-willed, independent young woman (to put it mildly), with a manic-depressive, woman-hating father was exhausting (to put it mildly). 

At least I could slide the closet door shut and be peaceful in the dark. Except I was not at peace. I never knew when he would come home, enraged by God knows what, spittle flying out of his mouth, wild dark eyes that refused to see me as anything other than everything he hated—a representation of all women. 

One night the closet door got thrown open. A shaft of light blinded me, but I knew it was my father standing there. He let out a yell and grabbed me by my neck. He dragged me out of the closet and onto the floor. I managed to choke out that I was going to call the cops. He said, “I’ll staple your tongue to the floor.” I’ll never forget the hatred in his eyes, but it wasn’t even me he was seeing, it was all women. I knew this, but it didn’t make it easier. 

Once I tried to tell my aunt what he was doing, but she got mad at me and told me he was the best father she knew. That effectively shut me up. I was stuck with him and I couldn’t see a way out. I used to sit in my bedroom/closet and write by flashlight on a yellow legal pad. I would write one thing, over and over, something I called “The Death Monologue.” It was a catalog, essentially, of my father’s sins and wrongs. My plan was to stand over my father while he lay in the dark on his bed and read it out loud. After delivering my blistering, operatic condemnation, I would then kill him with a meat mallet. Smooth on one side, spiky on the other, with a nice heft to the wooden handle. I was going to beat him to death. 

Ironically, the perfectionism that had been ingrained in me by the cult that he’d forced me into probably saved me from spending my life in jail for murder, because I could never get my monologue quite right: each day I had to update the list of his a**hole-isms, so the list was never finished. Well, that and the fact I knew my father at this time wasn’t worth jail.

My Completely Uninformed Take on the 10 Most Consequential Movies of the Past 30 Years

I largely stopped going to the movies when I left for college.  That is now going on (gulp!) 27 years ago.  And it wasn’t like I was even an average let alone avid movie-goer before then. 

It’s not for lack of appreciation of the art form.  In fact, I think movies are an incredible slice of culture to consume.  Think of how many layers there are to a good movie (and even to a bad one): acting, sound, visuals, effects, character development, and narrative trajectory.  To say nothing of the time capsule they represent, providing social commentary about the trends, issues, and moods of the moment. 

Someone my age would probably have seen a few hundred movies in their adult life.  I have probably seen a few dozen.  That’s a big gap in the consumption of a rich form of art and culture. 

Yes, I am busy.  And yes, I have chosen other forms of leisure over movies.  But, this gap pains me, and not just because movies are just so enjoyable to take in.  As a studier of pop culture and an absorber of social commentary, I feel acutely this void in content and in the resulting contemporary conversation at around it.  So while I’m not sure when I will have the time to rectify this void, I do want to at least develop a running list of movies I ought to see in order to properly touch this era in our society.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 139

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government," by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).



And, of course, there remained the vexing question of who could vote. Women were still blocked from the ballot box, as were slaves and indentured servants. Even free men could find themselves disenfranchised for not owning land. In Pennsylvania only 7,383 persons voted. In Virginia it was a mere 4,333. In our first presidential contest, in which balloting was conducted from December 1788 to January 1789, only 43,782 individuals in a nation of 4 million souls cast presidential ballots.  Had newly freed America merely become the world’s newest aristocracy?

Also critical to the Great Law of Peace was what it did not do—it did not meddle in

the internal governance of the constituent tribes. When the Great Council met to make important decisions, the representatives of each tribe would discuss the matter among themselves before a final verdict was rendered by the full council. Even other tribes who were absorbed into the confederacy through conquest had the right to continue to manage their own affairs, as long as they remained peaceful.  The idea of separate political entities uniting for common good but retaining their own rights—what later became known as federalism—did not miraculously materialize in the summer of 1787 in the State House at Philadelphia. It had been born centuries earlier in an Iroquois longhouse.

Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights drew upon the timeless wisdom found in the Magna Carta and other bills of rights, as well as all the writings of political philosophers, both ancient and modern. What made it stand out as an altogether new and more dangerous clarion call for freedom was its unabashed emphasis on the personal rights of every individual. Its bold language and sweeping, subversive contentions would pose an immediate threat to any king. But it was even more ahead of its time in another way. By Mason’s careful calculation, the document contained language that would eventually pose a threat to any man wishing to own another.

Once the convention resumed, George Mason got back to making his helpful and hopeful contributions. Up to that moment, so much of the debate had been about parliamentary facets of the emerging government. But as August wore on, Mason found himself repeatedly on the losing end of the most important issues nearest to his heart: free and open commerce. 

Mason could debate the finer points of whether the executive branch should be headed by one person or three—and he did!—but what really mattered to the Virginia planter was an assurance that this burgeoning new monstrosity would leave people’s business interests alone. 

For instance, he wanted the new constitution to specifically prohibit Congress from imposing any sort of taxes on exports. Even a compromise requiring taxes to be approved by a two-thirds supermajority vote in both houses of Congress failed. It failed narrowly, but it failed nonetheless. 

One compromise whose failure was especially troubling to Mason involved congressional meddling in navigation acts, which Mason viewed as a backdoor attempt at taxing exports. Mason, after all, was an expert on interstate commerce, being a merchant himself and having painstakingly negotiated trade deals between Virginia and Maryland. 

Empowering Congress to enact laws “by a bare majority,” Mason argued on September 15, “would enable a few rich merchants in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, to monopolize the staples of the Southern States, and reduce their value perhaps fifty percent.”

He urged fellow delegates in Philadelphia to prohibit any such “navigation acts” before the year 1808 without the consent of two-thirds support in both the House and the Senate. In other words, Mason wanted to set a very high bar for allowing the federal government to interfere with commerce between the states and abroad. 

Unfortunately for Mason, his was a lonely voice. Only his native Virginia, along with Maryland (whose delegates were certainly aware of Mason’s interstate commerce expertise) and Georgia shared his fear of federal interference in trade, and voted in favor of his motion. 

The rest of the Southern states that should have shared Mason’s fear of unfettered federal control over commerce had, it turned out, made a dirty side deal with industrial Northern states—one that would keep the booming slave trade in business. Mason would later recall with considerable regret how he lost the fight. 

“This business was discussed at Philadelphia for four months, during which time the subject of commerce and navigation was often under consideration,” he recalled to delegates to the Virginia ratifying convention. “Eight states out of twelve, for more than three months, voted for requiring two-thirds of the members present in each House to pass commercial and navigation laws. If I am right, there was a great majority for requiring two-thirds of the States in this business, till a compromise took place between the Northern and Southern States; the Northern States agreeing to the temporary importation of slaves, and the Southern States conceding, in return, that navigation and commercial laws should be on the footing on which they now stand.”

These debates over the government’s role in navigation and trade would eventually result in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause—in Article I, Section 8—which gives Congress the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

Mason’s frustrations came to a blistering head when the debate turned to slavery. Mason, himself an owner of slaves, called for an immediate end to the importation of new slaves. 

“Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant,” Mason declared. “They bring the judgement of Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.”

Needless to say, this excoriation of slavery was met with hostile opposition from his fellow Southerners. And Mason’s fellow delegates from the North were all too happy to keep the slave trade alive if it meant they could get something of their own in the bargain. 

And what the Yankees wanted was to allow Congress a free hand in passing navigation regulations.

Lazy Linking, 206th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

206.1 Hidden in plain sight: art images on the edges of book pages bit.ly/2NvJftS @thisiscolossal

206.2 Surprise (or not): open office formats led to fewer social interactions and more digital communication bit.ly/2Jjrc7s @rsocpublishing


206.3 100 yrs ago it was Mexico that built a wall & approached the US to build one too as a cooperative gesture bit.ly/2JHnapC @smithsonianmag

206.4 How postcards fixed the information asymmetry that had enabled massive aid fraud n.pr/2KMZTbu @npr 

206.5 Trevor Noah on why France's World Cup winning black soccer players are French AND African bit.ly/2uwQlHi @thedailyshow

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 138

Here are two excerpts from a book I recently read, "Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy," by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant:

I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain, so I asked Adam how I could figure out how much I had. He explained that our amount of resilience isn’t fixed, so I should be asking instead how I could become resilient. Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity—and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 137

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living," by Dan Savage and Terry Miller, a compilation of messages that were originally featured in a YouTube campaign in response to the suicides of teenagers who were bullied for being gay.

Btw the point of "Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet" is to present excerpts without context or endorsement.  However, I do want to append this: if you are struggling with suicidal thoughts because you are being bullied for being gay, help is here; for example, the Trevor Project runs a 24-hour hotline which you can access by calling 866 488-7386 or clicking here.  And, if you are bullying someone for being gay, STOP.

I do remember the first time like it was yesterday, though. In the fifth grade, I had a friend named Gwendolyn. We stuck together at school and hung out in the afternoons. Gwendolyn was tall, athletic, kind of a big girl. We were alike in a lot of ways; butchy, indifferent to what the other girls seemed to care about, and, the big one, uninterested in boys. But when one boy teased us, saying we were “tomboys together,” Gwendolyn turned to me and said, “No way!” and pushed me. She chased me home until she caught me. She told me she wasn’t my friend anymore and hit me in the face. I didn’t understand what I had done, but I felt terrible about myself. It felt like something must be really wrong with me if Gwendolyn, I was afraid to make friends after Gwendolyn. And I was teased for years after that. 

I was pretty isolated and often lonely in middle school and high school. I went to the prom with my own brother. I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t like more of the girls in my grade, but at some point, I realized that what set me apart was not what I was wearing or eating for lunch or listening to on my headphones, but that I was gay. Once I knew that, which wasn’t easy to realize, I looked outside my class and outside my school for a few people who I thought might recognize me. And there were lots of them once I looked. With a little time and a few people on my side, I became brave enough not to care about the people who didn’t like me. I even became brave enough not to hate them for being mean to me. My world did get better, but I got better, too.

Me'Shell Ndegéocello, singer/songwriter

Car-Free Urban Existence

Much of suburban existence is predicated on the notion that you drive to everything.  In some
communities, the only thing you can do when you walk out your door (besides get into your car and drive somewhere) is walk your dog.  The thought of picking up dry cleaning or grabbing a gallon of milk without having to fire up your motorized vehicle is laughable.

Not all cities are like this, but Philly can very easily be largely car-free.  My wife and I both take transit to work, and our school-age kids both walk to school.  So during the school year, that's 40 car trips not taken (5 days x 4 people x 2 ways = 40).  (To say nothing of my early morning jaunts to the local Y to either swim or run/lift, which I never use a car to go to.)

But beyond the morning and afternoon commute are many more car trips not taken.  I have tons of meetings out of the office, and I walk or take transit to literally all of them, unless I am literally leaving town (and even then, there are many cities I regularly go to that I can get to and circulate in without setting foot in a car, like Baltimore, Camden, New York, Trenton, Washington, and Wilmington). 

There's also personal errands.  Just this week I did the following without ever coming close to needing a car: grocery shopping (a full week's worth, plus a second trip for supplies for a party), dropping off a package at UPS, picking up enrollment forms for day care for Asher, picking up Aaron's glasses, taking Jada to the orthodontist (yes, by day I'm a high-powered consultant but I also moonlight as a mule for my children), and withdrawing cash from the ATM.

To be sure, if you have a nice car and you can avoid traffic, driving around can be quite satisfying: a climate-controlled existence in which you can listen to tunes and control your own destiny in terms of arrival and departure.  But there's something to be said for walking and transit that cars don't provide, like exercise and fresh air and absorbing the feel of a place and serendipitous encounters with friends and colleagues.

I can't fathom a suburban existence in which every trip I described above I'd have to take by car, just as I'm sure my suburban friends and colleagues couldn't imagine not getting into a car to do these things.  I'm not saying anything earth-shattering here.  I guess I am a bit surprised at just how many car trips my life would involve if it got lifted into a suburban setting.  And I wonder if my suburban friends and colleagues would be surprised at how easy, fun, and pleasurable a car-free existence is.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 136

Here are two excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Woman Upstairs," by Claire Messaud:



I always understood that the great dilemma of my mother’s life had been to glimpse freedom too late, at too high a price. She was of the generation for which the rules changed halfway, born into a world of pressed linens and three-course dinners and hairsprayed updos, in which women were educated and then deployed for domestic purposes—rather like using an elaborately embroidered tablecloth on which to serve messy children their breakfast. Her University of Michigan degree was all but ornamental, and it always seemed significant that it stood in its frame under the eaves in the attic, festooned with dust bunnies, among a dozen disavowed minor artworks, behind boxes of discarded toys. The first woman in her family to go to college, she’d cared enough to frame her diploma, only then to be embarrassed about having cared, embarrassed because she felt she hadn’t done anything with it, had squandered her opportunity.

If I’d married Ben and moved to Westchester (you know, don’t you, that we would have moved to Westchester?), then, years later when my mother got ill, I wouldn’t have given myself over to her as I did, because there would already have been children (you know, don’t you, that there would have been children? Just as you know that eventually, inevitably, there would have been a divorce), and at least one of my life’s exam questions would have been properly answered. But there would have been no art, no oxygen; and there would have been those jobs, and all the things that went with them, and there would have been Ben, who, guileless as he was till the last, I came to despise for his very malleability, his likeness to myself, almost, and to look upon—quite wrongly, I now see—with contempt.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 135

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "When Breath Becomes Air," by Paul Kalanithi:

While all doctors treat diseases, neurosurgeons work in the crucible of identity: every operation on the brain is, by necessity, a manipulation of the substance of our selves, and every conversation with a patient undergoing brain surgery cannot help but confront this fact. In addition, to the patient and family, the brain surgery is usually the most dramatic event they have ever faced and, as such, has the impact of any major life event. At those critical junctures, the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. Would you trade your ability—or your mother’s—to talk for a few extra months of mute life? The expansion of your visual blind spot in exchange for eliminating the small possibility of a fatal brain hemorrhage? Your right hand’s function to stop seizures? How much neurologic suffering would you let your child endure before saying that death is preferable? Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?

First School Board Meeting is Tonight

Just a reminder that the newly formed Philadelphia Board of Education will be holding its first meeting tonight at the School District of Philadelphia headquarters at 440 North Broad Street starting at 5:00pm, with a meet-and-greet to follow.  Click below for more info on the meeting.

Agenda for first meeting on July 9

List of resolutions we will be acting on at our first meeting

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 134

Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America," by Nancy Isenberg:



Male dominance was unquestioned, and ranks so clearly spelled out, that no one could miss the power outlined in something so simple as a seating chart. Members and nonmembers sat apart; husbands and wives were divided; men sat on one side of the room, women on the other. Prominent men occupied the first two rows of benches: the first was reserved exclusively for magistrates, the second for the families of the minister and governor, as well as wealthy merchants. The more sons a man had, the better his pew. Age, reputation, marriage, and estate were all properly calculated before a church seat was assigned.

Puritans were obsessed with class rank. It meant security to them, and they could not disguise the anxiety that even the thought of its disruption—or dissolution—produced.

Go, Fourth!

Warts and all (and there have been a lot of warts in our past and present), give me modern-day America over any other country past or present.

There is so much baggage in the closet of our history, so much wrong about society today, and so much danger that could lie ahead.  So we must be vigilant and not complacent, aggressive and not passive, actively hopeful and not fatalistically pessimistic. 

But we also have much to celebrate, about this country and about the idea about this country, that all men are created equal, that government is for the people and by the people and of the people, and that life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness are worth working hard to make sure are freely available to all.

And so I say today, Happy Fourth of July!  U!  S!  A!

Lazy Linking, 205th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

205.1 A rubric for determining which global cities are best for people-watching at street cafes bit.ly/2KCyQhS @margrev

205.2 Who's more authoritarian, Obama or Trump? Surprise: based on executive overstretches that the Supreme Court has had to declare unconstitutional, it's Obama by a mile bit.ly/2z0IA1b @bansisharma

205.3 Groundbreaking analysis of racial bias in hailing taxis vs. using Uber/Lyft bit.ly/2tX3Df0 @UCLA_ITS

205.4 "In a world where SC appts are a prime motivation for voters to go to the polls, is it really so hard to imagine that the composition of SC might one day come to be the only electoral question that matters?" wapo.st/2KE7t43 @assymetricinfo

205.5 Progressive sensation Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on how her Catholic faith informs her fight for criminal justice reform: "a society that forgives and rehabilitates its people is a society that forgives and transforms itself" bit.ly/2Mv7JD0 @americamag