Fretting about History’s Ghosts

So, I got in touch with Alyssa Rosenberg and she said I could totally use “History’s ghosts are powerful. Those who dare summon them should be clear about what they want, and be prepared for the consequences.” as an epigraph for Remind Me of the Dreaming Dead as long as it’s clear she said it.

I am, of course, back to fretting about the book, though my fretting is pretty amorphous. I can’t really hone in on exactly what about it is making me anxious today, just that I feel like I should be doing something… anything… to make it better. But since I’m not really sure what that “anything” would be, I just need to sit down and shut up and wait for the beta readers to finish up.

So much of life is teaching you the things you never wanted to learn. And I am afraid that I’m not a very good writer. No, that’s not exactly it. That would be something. I’m afraid that I am trying my very hardest and falling two inches short. But because this is the best I can do, I will never have it in me to clear those final two inches.

That scares the shit out of me. And yet, you know, I can’t stop trying, because that scares the shit out of me worse–that I could make it, because I’m so close, except I gave up.

Things and, Oh, You know, Just Rivers Running Backwards, No Biggie

–So, overnight, the Mississippi ran backwards.

–“History’s ghosts are powerful. Those who dare summon them should be clear about what they want, and be prepared for the consequences.” Do you think it’s too late to add that as an epigraph to the Sue Allen project?

–Apparently, I should have just bought some reviews for A City of Ghosts or something. How is this remotely ethical? How does that not result in Amazon reviews you simply can’t trust?

–The Professor, excuse me, Dr. Professor, ruined my lunch by sending me this quote, “I believe that if you have to choose between new life and existing life, you should choose new life. The person who has had an opportunity to live at least has been given that gift by God and should make way for new life on earth.” This is Paul Weyrich explaining why it’s totally cool to let moms die. And this is pro-life. I am convinced women do not count as life in some circles.

–I will give you a dollar if you can explain to me how

Carr, who is a delegate at the convention, was summarized Tuesday in a publication called the Memphis Flyer as saying that he agreed with Akin that women are capable of terminating pregnancies after being raped.

He denied saying that on Tuesday.

can be immediately followed by

“I understand there is a body of scientific evidence out there that suggests that a woman who has been violently raped has some biological mechanism that may inhibit her ability to conceive,” Carr said.

and make a lick of sense. Are reporters really under the delusion that what Akin said is different than what Carr is saying? If Akin was actually implying that women could abort a pregnancy through sheer force of will–if anyone believed that–, conservative church services across this land would look a lot different. They believe abortion is wrong. There’s no “Unless you use witchcraft to bring it about” exception.

The Problem with “Small Business Owners”

The Butcher and I watched some of the RNC until I begged him to turn it. I thought everyone did fine, what I saw of it. They were obviously fairly successfully walking a thin line by trying to prove that women are Republicans without bringing up any unpleasantness about why they might feel the need to prove such a thing.

But the Butcher and I were talking about how hard they kept hitting the “small business owner” talking point. Romney needs working class white people to vote for him. They are not business owners. They work for business owners. And here’s the problem Romney has–think of your own jobs you’ve had. For every business owner you’ve worked with, who was behind the counter with you or stocking shelves or running some day-to-day part of the business that seemed as difficult as what you were doing, how many did you have who were rarely on-site or who sat at their desks farting around on the internet all day or who had an administrative assistant who really seemed to run the joint?

Or worse yet, how many of you worked some place where you, doing the manual labor, didn’t have air conditioning, but the front offices did?

Working class people don’t have any problem voting for the small business owner who is running the bobcat while you’re pouring concrete. They don’t want to vote for the guy who’s playing solitaire in the air conditioned office while they’re sweating their asses off in the warehouse.

And the Butcher strongly felt like almost everyone they put on stage was an air-conditioned person and it was a mistake to keep reminding voters of it by referring to them as small business owners.

I can’t say I disagree with him. But I don’t know how it will play. We have a strong desire in this country to believe we are better than someone. It may be possible to get voters to throw their lots in with people they hate in real life if only to prove that they are not like those poor people on welfare.

I don’t know.

The Question I Ask This Morning

In the time we’ve lived here, two different houses on our side of the street have gotten robbed. One twice.  We have some junk of ours in the garage. It is filthy because it was in a ceiling collapse and now it’s sitting in the garage. But it is of sentimental value and could appear to have actual value.

When Mrs. Wigglebottom and I were out on our walk this morning, I noticed either two sets of tracks going from Lloyd to the general direction of the back of our house or one set of tracks coming and going.

The garage door is pretty well barricaded from the outside. My question is, do I barricade it from the inside and just leave out the front door?

Or do I assume one of our neighbors was walking even earlier than us?