i wonder…

…how gender works in the academy, and in academic spaces of knowledge production. This will be a short post, largely because I’m still in a basic quandary and only intend now to offer questions rather than generate answers. For me, the post is more of a thought experiment than an observation.

Recently I have just put together a few experiences in my PhD quest that I think disturb me. One, I’ve had a few strange experiences interacting with men in the academy, some of whom openly write about, talk about, or claim solidarity with some level of gender/sex/queer political or intellectual projects. By strange I mean they made advances to a woman nearby that were a bit aggressive, or they said insulting things about women (in two cases, gender slurs about colleagues) in my presence. This is not at all frequent, but it has happened.

Two, I just realized that two prominent reading groups operate in and around my department, both of whom have read or are reading works by authors or on topics about which I’m currently writing or already published, and neither has extended me an invitation. Nor when I learned their membership makeup for monthly sessions can I count even one woman in their midst when they gather. Granted, I don’t write as prominently and directly about feminism or gender studies as I do about other systems in which I believe those subjects to be at work in intersection, and I wonder if I did write about feminism or gender as my sole focus (as opposed to Marxism, materialism, anti-capitalism, trans-nationalism, Middle Eastern and African Studies, decolonial theory, critical race theory, etc.) if I would be invited to a reading group, and if that reading group would be comprised of more than one woman.

Three, I’ve begun to realize as I move deeper into writing about global Empire, materialism, capital, and so on that more and more of the scholars, philosophers, and intellectuals who are published on the subject are men, many European. That’s not to say there is no interrogation of this European foundation (several authors problematize anti-capitalism’s Euro-centric focus and roots) but it is to say the book pile on my desk/in my bag is increasingly white, but even more markedly, almost completely male. In fact the two women I’ve recently read are in edited volumes only, I can only cite one with her own book length text on the issue, and she’s a communication scholar specifically. There are a few more women who write in intersection with these male scholars, but almost always the men are cited and circulated as the central canon, even in contemporary academic time/place/space. For one very recent example of this in practice (but not the most powerful), I would point folks to the video feeds of the Slavoj Zizek conference that recently occurred in New York. While I did not attend, I watched Zizek himself deliver the keynote talk, and in the Q&A it became comical that not ONE woman stood to offer a question…the questioners, and there were many, were all male. He began calling attention to this fact in a humorous way (e.g. at one point he says, “Please, let’s have just one woman! We can pretend to be good liberals!”)

Four, in a recent Facebook news feed observation… {Timeout} I do have to assert my current problems and quandaries over Facebook here before I continue. I recognize increasingly its difficulty as a space for open dialogue and relational navigation, especially in the wake of a more aggressive job search. And, I wonder about my own use of the space in terms of interaction with others and portrayal of self. More questions for another time perhaps? {Timein} In a recent Facebook news feed observation, when one of my colleagues wanted to talk more about a subject on which I’m currently reading about, writing about, and on which I have an article coming out in Winter about, he posted to one of my male colleague’s wall to ask for help on understanding it, to “chat about it over beers”. To be very clear, I like both of these people as scholars. The one who was asked to do the explaining/informing is a wonderful friend, and one of the smartest people I have ever met, plus has published works on the issue as well.

Five, at a dinner party in the last few months, when sitting with one male scholar on my left and two male scholars on my right, the subject of Turkey and its relation to the Middle East, Iran, and Obama’s reelection campaign came up in the larger dinner conversation (there were more than just the four of us at the table). The two male scholars to my right began to chat about Obama’s hardline rhetoric against Iran. I offered my ideas, specifically because I believe I’m at least decently well versed to comment on that at this point in my career based in my international relations, political science, communication, and most importantly Arabic/Middle Eastern Studies backgrounds. I was able to get out two sentences, the conversation went on for less than a minute more, then the scholar to my right turned his chair physically to face the other male scholar and they continued the conversation. I am really making every effort not to exaggerate this happening, but chair turning occurred, and eye contact was not made with me again by either scholar throughout the remainder of the chat about Iran, Turkey, and Middle East positioning in terms of Obama’s policy.

Six…I have been directly told (at one point only, by a female scholar in my department) that I communicate ideas “in a more masculine way”, although in the moment at which I think she noticed my facial expression after her comment, she quickly retracted and re-framed the comment before I had a moment to respond. Hmmmm. I humbly offer a nod here to Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s work on feminine style, and I think Campbell clearly explicates the idea in her two volume work (Man Cannot Speak For Her) constituting feminine style, and understanding it as a rhetorical approach adopted by many historically significant women due to their subordinate status, and their inability to participate in social discourses and public spheres. Campbell unearths lots of texts from nineteenth and twentieth century feminists that might have been lost without her almost twenty year effort to publish the work, and our discipline owes her a debt for doing so.

Now, please, before any notions of inflammatory or accusatory statures emerge here, I want to say these might all be coincidences. Really. Perhaps some of my colleagues don’t love my personality, so they choose to have a reading group without me. That’s totally fine, and very understandable – reading and writing groups are comprised often of individually chosen people that best fit that group. My male colleague that was approached on Facebook instead of (but also not along with me and others who write on the subject) perhaps is just a better friend to the approacher, or again, a more well liked personality. It’s very possible (in fact, probable) that I have missed some critical female scholars that write on issues I’m thinking about – I discover new work I need to read almost every day. Hence, my “vacation” is saturated with new books and articles I am excited to tackle! Dinner parties are dinner parties, and perhaps the turn of the chair was unintended, and was only about something as small as different interests within the conversation. No excuse for the ugly comments about female scholars, but that is hardly a signifier of an epic trend of sexism in the academy, every collective has a few folks who just aren’t nice. I was a debater in high school and college, and I coached a Texas high school speech and debate program for two years (as argument and speaking coach only) plus another five years (as director of the program). I know that “debate style” is part of my linguistic lexicon after so many years in the activity, and I realize its potential to alienate some in its approach. The Zizek conference did feature two other prominent scholars, both female. Yet, it seemed they were not the headline names of the event, and that they both have significant segments of their careers dedicated to reading Zizek’s work. Lastly, two caveats. First, I don’t mean to advocate tokenism in academic spaces. Some good collectives have one woman, no women, or lots of women. I just wonder how power interacts with that assemblage when it seems to be perhaps privileging male perspectives, or at the least, excluding female ones. If women are more frequently invited to reading groups about feminism than ones about anti-capitalism, maybe that’s a good thing in some ways – but could it also present some problems? Second, I don’t mean to suggest this is only an issue relevant or present in the academy. I have also had thought-provoking chats with my neighbor, a woman who is not an academic, about women, feminism, and the current status of women with regard to rights, burdens, and relational norms.

So I don’t know. But I’m wondering. And for this particular quandary, it doesn’t feel good to be wondering. Hopefully I can wonder aloud soon with others who perhaps wonder about the same sort of questions.

Peace.

on post-racialism, or teaching African American Civil Rights, part II

As promised, my second reflection on teaching African American Civil Rights this semester. I just finished grading the final papers and final exam, and was really humbled by my student’s hard work, dedication, and investment in the class. Some of them wrote truly incredible papers, and I genuinely enjoyed reading them. One of my favorites used Alondra Nelson’s new book (published by the University of Minnesota press woot woot! – pick it up if you’re interested, it’s great) about the Black Panther Party’s health care outreach in Black communities as a way to think about health care outreach in poor communities in 2012.

My second observation from this semester is about the myth of “post-racial” politics. This is a longer discussion than I have space for in this post (but if you see me and wanna chat it up, let’s do it!), yet suffice it to say that I am referring to the wave of opinion that circulates around an idea like this: “We elected the first Black president, and that proves that racism no longer is a factor in America”. This idea manifests itself in many ways. We see it most prominently in news coverage of race in politics and in everyday America. We see it in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin case, when those who argue that referring to racial difference in relation to Martin’s death is “race baiting”. We see it in the constant quest of many to certify President Obama’s “birth record” despite authentic certification of every sort, fully verified by every external course who has reviewed it. No other president has faced such rigorous questions about their religious views and birthplace, ever in history. It’s no coincidence that no other president has been a person of color.

We even see it in the academy. A few weeks ago, I was incredibly disturbed to read a blog opinion editorial for The Chronicle of Higher Education, a magazine circulated primarily (if not solely) by and to an audience of graduate students, professors, and administrators in the university setting. The post was written by a freelance blogger who writes periodically for The Chronicle, Naomi Schaefer Riley. Riley wrote her post in response to Stacy Patton’s (a full time writer for The Chronicle) article on the future of Black Studies programs, published on April 12. Patton documents some of the new PhDs from Northwestern University’s newly developed Black Studies program, and relates the dissertation topics to the future of the field and its importance.

Riley’s blog post (on the official Chronicle site, authorized and published by the Chronicle editors) was titled “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations”. You can read it here. (I would post Patton’s original article, but it is only available to those who have Chronicle subscriptions.) A few notable parts of Riley’s response include:

• In reference to the dissertations coming out of Black Studies, particularly the five featured in Patton’s original article, Riley opens by noting, “What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.” First, “left-wing victimization claptrap” is hardly anything that should be used by an academic, to academics, or about academics. The point of academic discourse is precisely that it is based in argument making and critical thought in a way that makes every effort (although it’s certainly not flawless) to avoid using these sort of trigger words that are not descriptive or useful in either furthering understanding or developing new arguments. Second, Riley claims the topics are so irrelevant “no one will ever look at them”. This is a remarkably flawed argument because I feel like if your dissertation is featured in The Chronicle, it’s probably going to be more well read than most. And, I contest the argument that no one cares about the dissertation topics she takes aim against.
• The topics of three dissertations Riley goes after as “irrelevant left-wing victimization claptrap” are as follows: a dissertation on childbirth options, specifically knowledges and their association in communities of color titled “So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth”; a dissertation about housing and urban development trends that began in the 1970s and their racial implications titled “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s”; and finally a dissertation about Black conservatives and their political approaches to civil rights. I feel shocked that Riley really believes no one would be interested in these topics. According to Parents magazine (I feel a relevant site on the discourses of expectant families), 79% of expecting mothers believe there is a current lack of good literature on birth plans and childbirth information. The same survey argues that 82% of women believe the current literature “does not specifically speak to them, and their circumstances”. The article, and the data, was published eight years ago, but I feel it adequately demonstrates a need for more variety of study on childbirth. If you don’t buy that, ask any expectant Mom if she is interested in reading something on childbirth options that are tailored to her needs. If she’s a woman of color who says yes, I feel like a dissertation on childbirth and women of color is pretty darn relevant, not just in academic spaces, but outside of the university as well. Next, a dissertation on housing and urbanization? We have a secretary in the cabinet of the United States that still works daily on these issues, in addition to a surge in interest about housing markets in the aftermath of the housing crisis of 2008 (which arguably led to the financial crisis). It really seems questionable that anyone would argue this topic is uninteresting or irrelevant. Finally, Fox News spends a one hour segment every other day on either Sean Hannity’s show or Fox and Friends about Republicans of color, and has a strong market demographic in terms of United States news networks. How again does anyone claim these are uninteresting topics? To be clear, I (both personally and as a professional academic) think they are of value because we need more Black Studies departments within the university, and I believe systemic racism is still a major problem (I’ll get to this). But, my argument here is that even for those outside of the academy who may disagree with me, there are still readership sites for the work produced and the discussions opened up by these dissertations.
• In perhaps her closest nod to poast-racialism, Riley argues, “the entirety of black studies today seems to rest on the premise that nothing much has changed in this country in the past half century when it comes to race. Shhhh. Don’t tell them about the black president!” I find this almost laughable, especially considering that one of the dissertations (the one on housing and urban development) specifically begins its historical inquiry in the 1970s! You know that because the author put “1970s” right there in the title of the dissertation, a fact I guess Riley missed. And here is the form of the argument I take issue with – the Black president means no racism now (again, I’m getting to this).
• Finally, I want to point to the most important part of Riley’s post for me. It lies in her title, “the most persuasive case for eliminating Black studies”. To be clear, Riley does not only want to offer a post where she critiques the overly complicated language of academics and the academy via Black Studies (an argument perhaps that would make sense), she takes aim at every Black Studies department in the country, using these three dissertations as her evidence that all of these departments should be not only trimmed, but outright eliminated. Please absorb the full effect of that argument – no more Black Studies professors, classes, graduate students, undergraduate students, public forums, dialogues about race and politics, interdisciplinary missions, nothing.

As I’ve said Riley certainly has a right to her own opinion, and can blog about it all she wants – as I do here. However, when that opinion advocates a major change in university policy, it is written by an unprofessional (at best), unethical (at worst) journalist, and it is authorized by The Chronicle’s editors as worthy of their selection, it no longer constitutes “just someone’s opinion”. Why do I say Riley is unprofessional and unethical? Not simply because I disagree with her (although I feel most fellow academics would), but rather because of turn of events after Riley’s post. Apparently The Chronicle received so many letters and requests for response from those who disagree with Riley, they published two (one from the actual grad students Riley goes after and one from Northwestern’s Black Studies department members) and published a note from the editors claiming Riley was just a freelance blogger for them, they did not endorse her opinions, but did stand by the choice to publish the post. The catch is, despite such overwhelming response in disagreement with Riley, The Chronicle decided to give Riley an opportunity to respond to her critics. Here the conversation turns very nasty, in my opinion.

• Riley, in her second post, argues “I’ll forgive the commenters for not understanding that it is not my job to read entire dissertations before I write a 500-word piece about them. I read some academic publications (as they relate to other research I do), but there are not enough hours in the day or money in the world to get me to read a dissertation on historical black midwifery. In fact, I’d venture to say that fewer than 20 people in the whole world will read it. And the same holds true for the others that are mentioned in the piece”. This perhaps is the most problematic part of Riley’s position. She never read the very dissertations she argues prove that we need to eliminate Black Studies department everywhere in the United States. This seems to be just bad journalism. If you want to win an argument that entire professions and the livelihoods of people who spend years working toward new levels of socio-political change should be eliminated, I think journalistic ethics would dictate that you read the dissertations you suggest demonstrate their worthlessness. It seems precisely your job Ms. Riley (again, it is notable she has no advanced degree in the subjects about which she writes) to read those dissertations before you post a piece claiming they are “claptrap,” “left-wing vicitimization,” “irrelevant,” and justify elimination of their author’s careers.
• In her opening of the second response, Riley says, “My last blog post has earned me even more opprobrium than usual among the Brainstorm commenters, and it seems that they have decided to take as a personal attack something that is clearly not.” How can you win a claim that your attack is not personal? You name the authors, you name their dissertations, then you attack them, you offer few warranted arguments, then call for them to be out of jobs. Riley didn’t even bother to read the book by it’s cover, she just read the book by it’s title.

Nonetheless, I’ll close with my thoughts on post-racialism, as promised. Riley for me demonstrates the very ways that racism still works in the academy. Although Riley answers this claim by stating, “Black studies is now an academic discipline at most universities, which means I get to comment on that too. If the dissertations in question were written by white people, I’d call them irrelevant and partisan as well.” Excellent, except you didn’t. You didn’t call for the elimination of anthropology, biology, gay/lesbian/queer/transgender studies, or (yeeeks!) communication. You called for the elimination of Black studies. Why single it out? Granted, her book (which I courteously read before writing this blog post in an effort to be fair to Riley) does indict the entire academy for its increasingly entrenched academic jargon. However, she only argues for the elimination of two types of departments in any of her work: Black Studies and Ethnic Studies. The notable omission of a call for eliminating feminist studies or queer studies further proves that Riley is not truly anti-left-wing as she often claims (although I strongly disagree that the academy is partisan in this way), she’s anti-Black and anti-Ethnic. In calling for the elimination of academic forms of knowledge about race and ethnicity in the context of the post 9/11 world, Riley shows her cards as someone uninformed (at best) or woefully ignorant (at worst) about race politics. A few notes to help nuance my argument here…all point I make stem from after Obama’s election, and all result from my intense research this last six months to teach a course at the senior university level in African American Civil Rights.

• Black incarceration rates are up 6% since Obama’s election. That officially means that Black rates of incarceration are at an all time high in American history. Black men and women are locked up at rates eighteen times that of their White counterparts, for the exact same crimes. I’d cite a lot of evidence here, but the work is best done in the new book length treatment of this crisis by Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, 2010).
• Black women are, as of 2009, thirteen times more likely to be raped by age 23 as White women
• In the area of housing and urban development, Black home ownership took a 28% dive in the housing collapse of 2008, and Black workers have lost jobs at a rate of seven to one to their White counterparts in the same jobs since the financial collapse began.

I could go on, but It’s a beautiful day and I’ll just get too depressed. The point is, statistics (if you put your faith in those) prove the racialized issues still facing this country. If you’re like me and you’re interested in the layers of nuance of assembling social spaces, you can point to much more. Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman in Florida. Zimmerman claims he’s protected to not be prosecuted under the “Stand Your Ground” law in which he was acting in self defense. He is not arrested for over 40 days after the shooting and still is not convicted of any crime. CeCeMcDonald is walking to the grocery store in North Minneapolis, is called a number of racist, transphobic slurs then has a glass bottle broken against her head. She pulls scissors from her purse in defense and stabs her attacker. She is arrested and charged with murder withing four days, and is currently serving time in prison for manslaughter, a plea her attorneys urged her to take because they did not believe she would win at trial. What is different between Zimmerman and McDonald? The facts of the case make self defense much more believable in McDonald’s case (there were police photos of her smashed face, include a severed salivary gland). Zimmerman has not produced photos with any such injuries. He pulled a loaded gun and shot Martin, McDonald pulled out craft scissors and stabbed her attacker. What factor could possible account for the different outcomes in these cases? Race is one glaring answer. Zimmerman is not Black, and while he has a Hispanic background (or his family claims to), he can pass for While. McDonald is Black, she cannot pass for White. I think the operation of race in these two cases is worthy of much more study and exploration.

In short, I learned over the course of this semester that post-racial, as a category, is not only unhelpful and flawed, but it’s probably working to encourage systemic racism. I knew this already – and knew it well, but this semester made me more invested in opening up these discourses and exploring them, something I think the academy, and academics, despite Riley’s uninformed critiques, might can lead the path in working toward.

 

suck my intergalactic appetite for destruction

OK, before the title puzzles those who think I am perhaps very strange… I borrow from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Suck My Kiss”, Guns N Roses “Appetite for Destruction”, and Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic”…an intersection that brings me to my ideas this week.

I sometimes wonder how we craft our political and social ideas in, around, and about the world. Specifically, I wonder about those of us who choose lives of academic inquiry in which we consistently chatter, explore, and dialogue about theoretical approaches to pretty specific intellectual segments of social inquiry. That said, this weekend I got a chance to feel the pure enjoyment of one of my first foundational modes of socio-political investigation: music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction aired on HBO, and I finally got to sit down and watch it late Saturday night, after a busy day working to help plan and execute our department’s end of the year picnic and furiously finishing grading a large stack of student papers.

I don’t really have good reasons for why music dominates such a part of who I am. I don’t have family members who taught me musical instruments when I was young or who were famous musicians, in fact I wasn’t exposed to any formal musical training outside of three years in middle school choir, which I ultimately gave up for volleyball – but I taught myself a number of guitar chords and the piano when I was around 24…and by almost all measures I’m still pretty bad at both. But something in my soul definitely has always been inexplicably moved by beats, rhymes, lyrics, and melodies. For me, looking back it probably was the first time I knew I’d be a little revolutionary, challenging authority systems that disadvantage unfairly, fighting what I hope is the “good fight” with comrades well into the future. I’m somewhat shamed to admit when I was very young I was a conservative enthusiast, most likely from growing up in a conservative family (absorbing parental political views), in a conservative home town (experiencing conservatively-valenced educational interaction), all in a pretty conservative state (larger social and political systems were dominated by the far Right for most elections, with Ann Richards as one perhaps shining difference I remember). Granted, I had lots of global exposure and travel plus a terrific undergraduate education to help push me in my views and help me develop as a critical thinker. Even though I was a staunch activist with the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty all of my post-collegiate adult life in Texas – including having two death row pen pals for whom I was in attendance for their executions – it took me living for a long period of time in Minnesota to realize how absolutely ridiculous it is that Texas still even has the death penalty, much less that any citizens of Texas are willing to defend it as a legitimate mode of political discipline for a social collective.

All this said, yes – I kept a Rush Limbaugh book by my bed when I was in middle school. Ugh. But, at the same time, my current social, political, and intellectual life probably still could have been predicted. The same year I read Limbaugh’s book The Way Things Ought To Be (1992) as it circulated through my family and their friend groups, my favorite record was Licensed to Ill by The Beastie Boys. Sure the record had been out a few years, but I was only 14 and my parents still were pretty interested in restricting what I listened to in terms of music. We had epic fights over a few more records, but I’ll come to that later in the post.

The Beastie Boys for me were like a breath of air I didn’t know what to do with. As soon as I started listening to them, I wanted more. I played the record over and over, and when I found out their musical influences I went and listened to them. And I wanted more. Some I had to listen to behind the backs of my parents (I can’t imagine what they would have done to find that their 14 year old daughter was getting into N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton or Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life Of… Or what about De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising or anything Grandmaster Flash was doing? Yikes! White fear, for sure.) I was scared they’d ban it from the house, so I listened to these records from friends, after I went to bed at night, or anywhere away from the disciplining eyes of authority that would have found my music choices illegitimate. My first favorite hit? You Gotta Fight….For Your Right…To Party…..

The fact that I grew up with two parents who smoke(d) most of my life just made the lines about smoking even more poignant somehow in my mind. Ha! Once I knew what I liked about beats and rhymes, and as a result, what I liked about hip hop and rap, I pushed on. Sabotage (probably still one my my favorite Beastie Boys tunes) played on repeat when I started running regularly as a young teenager. I developed huge respect for the art of the spoken word, and its integration into a beat, and picked up lots and lots of other hip hop and rap groups, including Public Enemy and Tribe Called Quest. It’s not a mystery why I ended up (just three weeks ago) spending a week exploring rap and hip hop’s revolutionary potential in Black communities and beyond with students in my African American Civil Rights course.

Watching the Hall of Fame induction was so emotional. Partly because the week before had brought the untimely and sad death of The Beastie Boys’ own MCA (aka Adam Yauch) due to a long, vicious battle with cancer. The induction was filmed before Yauch’s death, but that made watching it all the more sentimental in some ways. I went from tears to sitting in my living room under a blanket on the couch, hands pumping in the air, grooving to the dedication performance. (Bella was highly confused by this behavior, then decided to join in.) It was awesome (check out the performances if you’re so inclined). But, the Hall of Fame induction was a roller coaster of memory and emotion for me overall – sure, because of the Beastie Boys and my undying love for them – but also because three other bands/musicians were inducted that kept me up another hour and a half watching when I only intended to check out the Beastie Boys induction segment.

First, “Texas Cannonball” Freddie King was inducted by ZZ Top. I do love my home state, despite its shortcomings. Freddie King is one reason I love it. His induction, the dedication performance, and his daughter’s emotional but delightfully sincere acceptance on his behalf was a joy to watch. ZZ Top is another Texas band I’m proud to like, and own much of their stuff on vinyl. They recorded their first records in my home town at the recording studio of one of my Dad’s oldest friends, Robin Hood Bryan.

Next up for induction (after the Beastie Boys and Freddie King) was Guns N Roses. Whoa! I couldn’t believe it. It was a weirdly controversial moment in the ceremony since Axl Rose decided not to show due to some old conflicts he has had with the direction Guns N Roses has gone since their most prominently successful years. But, my memories emerged again – of the time when I wanted to play a few songs off the record Appetite for Destruction at my 13th birthday party (specifically my favorite GNR tune at the time: Paradise City) and my parents vetoed it, claiming that other kid’s parents might have a problem with the parental advisory sticker the album earned. Damn that Tipper Gore for her crusade against music! I still haven’t forgiven her for the “Parent Music Resource Center” and its relentless quest to ban rap, hip hop, and certain rock and roll music from public consumption. I imagine it was much like what my own mother experienced when her parents tried to ban her from listening to Elvis (despite her undying love for him, still strong today!) because he shook his hips too much.

The icing on the cake of the induction ceremony? Red Hot Chili Peppers was up last. Double whoa. The two biggest fights over music I ever had with my parents? Guns N Roses Appetite for Destruction and Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Not really sure why I expected them not to interrogate a record when I was 13 that (GASP!) had “sex” right there in the title. They did. I resisted. They then decided to ban only the “dirty” songs from the record as a form of compromise (Suck My Kiss was considered dirty), so I listened to “Under the Bridge” enough to make them want to pull their hair out. Ask them, I feel confident they remember it still today.

Now I won’t hold that either GNR or the Red Hot Chili Peppers are the caliber of innovators that The Beastie Boys are, although I do think both get an unfair shake in our public memory of music, particular the Chili Peppers. But, they did all represent for me a process, both of loving and growing in musical tastes but also of forming my personality, of finding my voice, of thinking about what different forms of socio-political and aesthetic resistance could be present in my life. Even in reading Anthony Keidis’ autobiography, Scar Tissue, I was pretty moved by his embrace of non-normative forms of queerness, his handling of a childhood in which his own parents and guardians crushed up drugs in his bananas to experiment with their effects on children (NOT a metaphor), and his conquering of heroin addiction alongside his own organic treatment approach to hepatitis C that seems to have been fully effective – he no longer tests positive for the disease, yet never took many of the suggested prescription pharmaceuticals.

So I dedicate this post to these bands, and many many more, that helped shape me, inspire me, make me wanna sing and dance, and still work as one of the best forms of pure enjoyment I can find where work woes, life woes, money woes, and more can’t interrupt. Sure, if I was in my intellectual zone of inquiry, I’d say Lacan might want me to think about my relation to the concept of joissance and why I enjoy what I enjoy or Marx’s thoughts on how the aesthetic participates in the general intellect, and so on…but for now, I offer a few more bits of music I like, that you may like – or not. In the meantime, you grab a bottle/I’ll grab a cup/Come on everybody let’s get……well, you know, it’s 1:58 in the video.

PS – Doomtree’s “Bolt Cutter” is from their new record No Kings, which wins my vote for best hip hop record of the year, or perhaps ties with The Beastie Boys’ Hot Sauce Committee, Part II. No Kings gets my vote both for its politics (“Bolt Cutter” should be the new anti-capitalist love anthem, I’d swoon if it was dedicated to me) and for its innovative mixes and lyrics. And yes, they just happen to be based here in Minneapolis!

I’ve learned living in Minneapolis that in some circles, liking Johnny Cash has become a hipster way to say “I hate country music, EXCEPT for Johnny Cash”. Pshhhht! Silly. But nonetheless, Johnny should be around more often, and his legacy of prison outreach and reform advocacy is worthy as the highlight of his later career.

Amazing.

This lesser known track from the Chili Peppers’ two disc set Stadium Arcadium has moved me since the first time I heard it. Can’t say why. Just an affective love of the tune. “My love affair with everywhere/Was innocent/Why do you care?” Mmmmmmmm.

I have a theory that when George Harrison (by far my favorite Beatle) wrote “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” he had a premonition of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s coming and knew that Vaughn would be able to play the blues so uniquely beautifully, he needed a song to describe it. You know, several decades ahead of time.

The Hurricane

Closing with one of my favorite protest songs, from a Minnesota native. “The Hurricane” demonstrates Dylan’s commitment to justice for Ruben Carter, as dis his organizing of a significant set of concerts that were played in New Jersey prisons to bring attention to Carter’s case.

on histor(ies), or teaching African American Civil Rights, part I

This semester I got a cool opportunity. I was assigned to teach COMM 4616 at the University of Minnesota, African American Civil Rights Rhetoric. This course has a long legacy, not least of which is the development of the course’s vision by one of the best professors and teachers I’ve had the opportunity to take courses with, Dr. Kirt Wilson, formerly of the University of Minnesota but now at Penn State.

I’m coming to the end of my semester, ruminating on the experience, and have honed it down to two main ideas that have emerged for me as I’ve gone on this turbulent and amazing ride with 26 students. One is the basis of this post.

1. History (and herstory!), and the study of histor(ies), is a big deal.

In her book Doing Rhetorical History, Kathleen J. Turner notes, “through rhetorical history, we can understand how rhetoric has enabled, enacted, empowered, and constrained the central concerns of history: human action and reaction” (p. 8). Since I first experienced Turner’s book at the beginning of my graduate career, I’ve always thought rhetoricians and scholars of both discourse and politics can extend their work in meaningful ways by understanding the histor(ies) associated with their objects, texts, and moments. The notion of rhetorical histories has become increasingly important to me as one way to conceptualize movements for social justice, and when given the task of teaching a specific movement, the value of historical study re-emerged for me. Simultaneously, the increasing evidence of how little historical knowledge many of my students had (and at times, me too) is one of my most interesting take-aways from the semester.

Consider asking the question: who are the central figures of the African American civil rights movement? At some level, the course requires asking this question, and in the selection of materials for the syllabus and course outline, the complications presented by the question became more evident to me. Most students on the first day said Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X. In fact, there were very, very few other answers beside Abraham Lincoln and the Kennedy brothers (that is, John and Bobby). To help me think through this dilemma, I turned to public memory scholarship. For me, the preferred approach to public memory studies is well described by Kirt Wilson himself in his article on public memory and Abraham Lincoln’s association with slavery and emancipation: “history is best understood as a system of ‘referential symbols’ that signify known facts about past events and their sequence. Commemoration is a parallel though distinct systems of ‘condensation symbols’ that constitute the value, meaning, and communal relationship that a society has with its past.” While Wilson draws heavily from the work of Barry Schwartz, the point here is helpful I think. National, international, personal, and other histories are works in progress. A community of people, in this case, society, chooses a set of referential symbols that signify the past, and the communal relationship that that society has with its past. American history classrooms, teachers, textbooks, and other systems of knowledge production have chosen to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln as the primary grandfathers of the African American civil rights movement, King for his nonviolent approach and Lincoln for both his role in the Civil War and in signing the Emancipation Proclamation.

What becomes more interesting for me is how much of history then is left behind. Particularly fascinating were moments as we read women in the movement including Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, Ida B. Wells, and Angela Davis. These women played huge roles in a movement (Davis still does), and in their respective historical moments, yet few people know who they are. Or, there was the moment in class where we studied the Black Panther Party and individuals like Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and H. Rap Brown. A few students knew these names, but knew incredibly little about the Black Panther Party’s platform, its link to drives for systemic economic change and its advocacy against new forms of racism such as the prison industrial complex. On that note, next to none of the students even knew that Martin Luther King, Jr. became heavily involved primarily with economic issues late in his career, or the simple fact that he was assassinated while in Memphis for a garbage workers strike as he planned the Poor People’s Campaign rally in Washington, D.C. for the summer 1968.

Angela Davis

Memphis Garbage Workers Strike, April 1968

I don’t mean to suggest there is an “accurate” history students should learn, although some oppressed and underprivileged community organizers might rightly disagree. Rather, I’m interested in how history is constructed and taught in our social spaces, what are the best practices associated with that task, and perhaps most importantly, how we make peace with teaching history, making choices of inclusion and exclusion while preserving both 1. an extension of the life of the mind as it relates to current conditions of possibility for social justice and 2. fidelity to the discursive context of the subject area.

Finally, why does history matter? This seems a “duh” question to me, but believe it or not as I have shared my experiences with non-academics throughout the semester, a few people have prompted me to account for how a history course “only about the 1960s” speaks to current conditions. First, courses like this are often a history class, a rhetoric class, a class in sociology and anthropology, a class in media literacy, and a lot more. They (most of the time) are highly interdisciplinary, as they should be. Second, the civil rights movement is not just about the 1960s. I’ll cover this a bit more as it relates to Black populations specifically in the next part of this post, but the battle for civil rights is still very much alive and well around the world, in many populations. Gay marriage rights are under attack this November in at least two prominent states, Minnesota and North Carolina (Amendment One). I’ve had an opportunity to do some work with Minnesota United for All Families (http://mnunited.org) and observe as well as participate in their organizing tactics to align support against the amendment. Most of that rhetoric focuses on narratives, stories of happy couples who are straight for whom marriage has been monumental in their happiness and stories of happily monogamous gay and lesbian couples for whom the barrier to marriage has been divisive and painful. The enthymematic conclusion expected of voters? Gay and lesbian couples are just like “the rest of us”, thus deserve the right to marry just “like the rest of us” because marriage in and of itself is a social good we should support.

Now, I won’t take aim at marriage too much here. Suffice it for me to point to the overwhelming statistics that marriage is failing (51% of first marriages in the United States, as per 2010 statistical data) or that marriage has significant economic implications associated with its connection to the state apparatus (e.g. state by state “community property” laws that can lead to a loss of half an individual’s net worth via the legal act of divorce) or the gender implications of marriage (e.g. the fact that the institution still overwhelmingly advantages men, from economics and children in its best cases to abuse and violence in its worst cases). Not to mention the fact that very few of us even really interrogate the expectation of name changes and bank account merging, which 97% of the time (2010 statistics again) still favors men in marriages.

But, all this aside for a moment – I choose the big stick civil rights/historical defense of gay marriage. It’s about the rights of human beings. No matter how rotten marriage is as an institution (and, I’m not a total pessimist, I know couples in amazingly good marriages) everyone should have the option to participation in said institution. Even if you’re on the far religious right and believe those who are not straight are “sinners”, there is no argument about why government (in the United States, still supposedly a civil institution separate from religious praxis) should give a right to certain people that it’s not giving to others. Which brings me back to my point about history. Read the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967). Really. The blog can wait. At the end of his majority opinion, Chief Justice Warren wrote, “Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.” In my view, this piece of history is perhaps pretty important in thinking about whether or not to vote for laws (at least in MN and NC) worded almost exactly like the Virginia statute that this case struck down over forty years ago.

Mildred and Richard Loving, awaiting their Virginia state trial verdict, 1966

Second, this helps reflect the fact that the relevance of courses like African American Civil Rights Rhetoric is perhaps more important now than ever. Consider the words of historian Howard Zinn, who argues in his seminal text A People’s History of the United States, “in telling the history of the United States, it should be different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.” If we’ve learned nothing from the financial crisis, the housing bubble burst, the emergence of Occupy Wall Street as a national movement, and much, much more from revolutionary 2011, we should know that individuals, when arriving at a set of particular circumstances, will work, sacrifice, and fight to change them. That’s not an American tendency, its a human tendency. Throughout history we can point to thousands of times when those in power grab for more power, then more, then more, until finally the systems of inequity and inequality are so entrenched, communities that have been disadvantaged by those norms of power stand up. They protest. They take to the street. They strike. They change their own conditions. Thinking about the histor(ies) of movements make current and future organizing that much more powerful, mostly because its the precise history of organizing and developing arguments for rights that allows us to develop stronger arguments for rights in the future, something every human can find central. At the University of Minnesota, the graduate students just lost a nearly year long organizing campaign for unionization, and lost big: by over a 20% margin. One lesson that campaign, its rhetoric, and its arc of power helped me understand is that reinventing the wheel when it comes to fighting for equity, equality, rights, or justice is not something any movement can afford.

In short, its not just my class, and my students, who should be talking about African American Civil Rights Rhetoric, and rights of all peoples in the post 9/11 era, it is everyone. From the passage of the Patriot Act to increasingly restrictive border protections to re-envisioned notions of “war” via “War on Terror” rhetoric and more, we’re still having this conversation. And this conversation impacts the norms of surveillance and control that are adopted and those that are socially rejected. Whether you teach or you are a laborer or you are unemployed or you are a manager, and so on…it matters. The histor(ies) and the conversation about public memory of rights battles is worth your, my, and all of our collective time. We forget it at our peril.

Tune in for Part II of this post, where I discuss my second observation from the semester, next week….

Peace.

.one. (no longer the loneliest number)

It is funny and refreshing the growth and change we go through as we get older. For me, part of that growth has included finally feeling awesome about being my age and being single. Not that I’m old, or that there’s anything wrong with being single. Rather, I’ve become increasingly surprised at how engrained coupledom is in my networks of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Almost everyone I know is in a relationship, some good, some not so good in my view, and many of the people I’ve come to know, despite even the most radical political and/or social convictions seem to gravitate toward quite normative romantic relationships, or just don’t seem very comfortable being single. Ever.

That said, it has taken me almost 34 years to get here. I’ve felt the sadness that social norms have captured and pushed toward me about what normative life choices in partnership are supposed to look like, but I look around and I know that some of the relationships I see just wouldn’t be for me, that I’m far better off with my solo coffee mornings, my hikes with just the pup to watch the spring sun set, and a lot more time to dedicate to friends and family who love and value me. I’ve tried to stop putting effort into a relationship just for the sake of having one, or for the sake of not wanting to be alone. Being in my own skin is finally truly awesome instead of just a passing state while awaiting a new partner. And it’s a breath of fresh air. I’d love to meet someone someday, someone who is right for me, and someone with whom I can have everything I imagine. Until then….I really like my life, stress and all.

So for this foray into my third year with the burning circle (a group I was asked to be part of when I moved to Minneapolis where we each make a mix for the other eleven members in our chosen month – March for me – then the other months we receive mixes of music from the other members….a pretty awesome way to hear new music and old music you’ve forgotten about organized in fun themes), I’ve chosen to celebrate the musical and artistic equivalent of singledom: the solo artist. Not just solo artists, but solo artists who became known by audiences first through a relationship (i.e. a band) and then broke up that back in order to record on their own, almost always proving that a) they were the prominent impetus for the group’s success and b) they really could grow their artistic talents and creativity beyond all possible limits once out on their own. Just like life, not all these break ups were pretty, and not all these singles were very Zen about their solo careers and later successes.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy my valentine to being strong, creative, and happy as a single. Here is the track list and when I could find them, videos, for .one.

1/2. Michael Jackson, formerly of The Jackson Five

As all good mix tape pop culture lessons tell us, you have to start a mix tape strong, and the a side of .one. brings a powerful intro with one of the most memorable artists of the last fifty years. No matter what you think about Michael personally, it’s incredibly difficult not to notice when he croons those riffs on ABC (track one) that he was the driving force in The Jackson Five’s success. By the time we get one of his biggest solo hits (one of many, many solo hits), Billie Jean (track two), if your feet aren’t moving I’ll be shocked. Michael worked hard to establish his creative vision as a solo artist and break out of the (largely dysfunctional) mold provided in his childhood years. The tragedies of his life, death, and family/business conflicts point to the ways in which relationships, when they’re bad, can damage us, sometimes irreparably.

3/4. Van Morrison, formerly of Them

I’m a huge Van Morrison fan and to this day think Moondance is one of my all time favorite records. Them (the band) became popular with a few hits like Baby Please Don’t Go (track three) largely because it became clear that Morrison’s unique voice and his inventive talent on the guitar, blending blues, a bit of jazz, and a hint of rock and roll plus more, were the center of the band’s success. He went on to become a remarkably significant and strong solo artist, and Into the Mystic (track four) still rocks my gypsy soul every time I hear it. His move to solo status allowed him to become much more creative in his approach to songwriting, in my view.

5/6. Aimee Mann, formerly of ‘Til Tuesday

Female singer-songwriters, especially when they also can rock the bass, are pretty kick ass. That said, Aimee Mann is rarely remembered for her earliest work with the rocking punk band ‘Til Tuesday, despite having a few popular hits like Voices Carry (track five). Her real expression of talent came with the freedom to write her own tunes and craft her own approach to music via her solo career. Save Me (track six) is usually remembered for its role in the 1999 film Magnolia although Mann re-released the tune on two later albums. I think that’s a testament to its haunting vocals and amazing ability to move its listener through Mann’s raw blend of voice and instrumentality.

7/8. Ice Cube, formerly of N.W.A.

The history of Black expression through rap, hip-hop, and R&B/gospel is a fascinating one, and not without its own break-ups and solo flights. Ice Cube got his start with the infamously controversial group N.W.A. (Niggazs With Attitude), much to the ire and dismay of most of White America in the mid to late 1980s. While conversations about N.W.A.’s lyrical and symbolic violence, misogyny, and general offensiveness are still subjects of debate, their influence in expressing a moment in Black history is undeniable. Straight Outta Compton (track seven) immersed listeners (both in the track and in its video) into the worst parts of young Black life, socio-political conditions that ring even more powerfully true in the wake of Florida teen Trayvon Martin’s death.

However, for Ice Cube, N.W.A. was just a warm up for his significant solo career in lyrical rap, and in the production of many other significant rappers. His first solo record, Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, continued N.W.A.’s mission of exposing racism and everyday social disparity between White and Black communities. It Was a Good Day (track eight) was so influential precisely because it revealed much of the everyday Black experience, and incorporated a melodic background that is rarely incorporated into spoken word “gangsta” rap.

9/10. Nick Cave, formerly of The Birthday Party

Admittedly, Happy Birthday (track nine) is the only tune on this compilation I actually don’t like that much. I’ve never warmed up to the hard-core goth-punk genre, but I respect its influence on music and revolutionary resistance art. That said – the solo tune by Cave O Children (track ten) is one of my favorite songs of the last five years. Plus, the shift from track nine to ten works perfectly for the .one. theme. Cave has always been quite loyal to his gothic punk roots, and O Children is haunting, by any account. Yet, it demonstrates how his solo career opened doors for Cave’s innovative blend of genres and lyrics alongside his dark voice, making for some brilliant tunes.

11/12. Morrissey, formerly of The Smiths

The a side of .one. closes with an artist hailed by many as most influential in the indie rock scene. Once again, Morrissey is clearly the key creative influence in The Smith’s success, reflected in their hit How Soon Is Now (track eleven). The unique vocals along with the innovative indie sound really shine however once Morrissey branched out on his own, moving away from The Smiths and making solo records. His cover of Andy Williams’ Moon River (track twelve) is amazing to me precisely because he takes an iconic song (I love Williams’ 1961 rendition of a tune composed by Henry Mancini and written by Johnny Mercer) and manages to make a new interpretation that’s evocatively nuanced and incredibly re-envisioned.

13/14. Stevie Nicks, formerly of Fleetwood Mac

I think this pairing brings the strength to start the b side of .one., plus it is one of my favorite examples in this compilation. Fleetwood Mac, by any measure, was a dysfunctional relationship. It lost and gained new members almost every year of its existence, there are widely reported fights (some coming to blows) between members, and the influence of drugs and alcohol on their creative process became clear at many concerts and recording sessions. Rumours was made against this backdrop, and I argue that if you’re really pissed at someone, crank this record and nod your head to some of the deeply wounding lyrics and sharp guitar riffs. The Chain (track thirteen) is a great example.

Despite the ups and downs of Fleetwood Mac’s disbanding, re-envisioning, and coming back together, the clear solo to emerge from the group has been Nicks. Plus, the solo time she spent in the studio seemed to give her some foundational freedom to push both her voice and her creative process, as evidenced in Edge of Seventeen (track fourteen), a huge solo hit. In addition I think it reflects the dominant influence she had on the group’s success – most of their hits came heavy with her signature vocals.

15/16. George Michael, formerly of Wham!

George Michael is an amazingly successful artist, with over 100 million album sales to his credit, not a common feat in the music industry. In addition, he’s perfect for this complication because you can see the clear break between Wham!’s 1984 pop hit Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (track fifteen) and his solo work. The Wham! tune moved feet across dance floors all over the UK and Michael’s voice remains the clear distinction in much of Wham!’s music. Once Michael went solo however, he was almost completely repackaged from a poppy front man into the queer sex icon we remember, evidenced by his 1987 hit I Want Your Sex (track sixteen), released right before the first of Micheal’s two arrests for “lewd acts” in public parks.

17/18. Q-Tip, formerly of A Tribe Called Quest

Back in the days when I was a teenager/Before I had status and before I had a pager/You could find the abstract listening to hip hop/My pops used to say/It reminded him of be-bop… This is the infamous jam written by the DJ and spoken word artist known as Jonathan Davis/Kamaal Ibn John Fareed/Q-Tip. It perhaps problematizes my theme a bit since Q-Tip wrote the song Excursions (track seventeen) for A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 record The Low End Theory. I often pass Tribe’s work on to friends who claim they don’t like hip-hop – the infusion of jazz along with blues melodies and beats with a strong resistance message is unique. In addition, Tribe took a very different lyrical approach than many, invoking their Pan-African roots in a new poetic positioning that tried to sidestep much of the content that got N.W.A. labeled as misogynist and violent.

That said, I think Q-Tip is a prime example of a solo artist who left a really dysfunctional band relationship (the end of Tribe’s career is an incredibly sad story including member Phife Dawg’s near death from kidney failure, and his subsequent heavy criticism of and feud with Q-Tip). Yet, part of Tribe’s legacy is the acknowledgement that Q-Tip was the driving force behind the group’s creative success, and Vivrant Thing (track eighteen) is a great example. Though Q-Tip wrote and recorded the song with the band, he re-envisioned it as one of his first solo releases, where it gained its most commercial success. In addition, Q-Tip, despite heavy critique by almost all former Tribe members, has gone on to be an incredibly prolific rapper and producer…with arguably a much more successful legacy.

19/20. Belinda Carlisle, formerly of The Go-Go’s

Our Lips are Sealed (track twenty) is a beat almost every child of the 1980s remembers, loves, and can sing along with, at least through the chorus. Pop lady rockers The Go-Go’s patented their all-female presence in rock/pop history with the hit and more like it. Yet, once the band began experiencing some business controversy (a break with their manager being among the problems), Belinda Carlisle decided that she might creatively grow if she pursued a solo career. She’s the only member who ever gained any notoriety from the band, and her 1986 hit Mad About You (track twenty-one) was just the beginning of a vibrant solo career, arguably more successful than The Go-Go’s, especially considering the popularity of another huge hit of hers, Heaven Is A Place on Earth.

21/22. Phil Collins, formerly of Genesis

It is hard to not be embarrassed to be a Phil Collins fan. I admit it. The skewering he’s received everywhere from Rolling Stone to South Park makes him pop music culture’s whipping boy in many ways. That said, his presence in music really cannot be disputed. 2008 Billboard magazine ranked him 22^nd in the top 100 all-time hot artists. For the theme of .one., Collins always had a precarious relationship with Genesis, evidenced partly in the break-up/get back together roller coaster of the band. But, it does seem clear in Genesis hits like Land of Confusion (track twenty-one) that Collins’ song writing and vocals were the foundation of the group. And, his solo career gave him license to push his artistic approach beyond. I think this is evident in his solo hit In the Air Tonight (track twenty-two). Its commercial success and wide distribution across media (commercials and films included) is significant. And I dare you not to do some air drumming at 3:40 in the song.

23/24. Lauryn Hill, formerly of The Fugees

If you’d asked me in 1996 I would have had said that The Fugees record The Score would cement The Fugees place in music history….that is, until The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released in 1998. The Miseducation really delineated the talent in the dysfunctional Fugees recording and writing approach. Wyclef Jean will no doubt disagree, but I think it is clear that Hill was a lot of the driving force in the perfection The Fugees brought to their work. Fu-Gee-La (track twenty-three) flows so well precisely with Hill’s smooth vocals over the beats and breaks of the song. Yet, in Doo Wop (That Thing) (track twenty-four) you see Hill’s fully realized talent, with gospel, R&B, blues, and jazz all coming together with the spoken word and a Black feminist politic to make her solo presence a formidable force in music.

Lisa Quinlan Photography

Lisa Quinlan Photography

Not a post since February 1! Wow. Well, the good news is that I think I’ve made my peace with blogging. I almost deleted the blog, in favor of honing in on my academic, social, and activist commitments, but after a few conversations decided to keep it, renew it, make some changes, and press on.

I’ve added many new categories to try and make the blog easier to search and to categorize my ruminations plus I’ve streamlined the look so hopefully it is easier to read, make comments upon, and work as a conversation starter in many ways.

My first order of business is to reflect on my Valentine’s Day of 2012. As a single woman in my 30s, who spends a lot of time working and building my career, this will be my fifth Valentine’s Day without a partner. This is ok (see my next post about accepting and celebrating singledom). So this year I decided to dedicate Valentine’s Day to my partner in crime and life at this point, my baby dog Bella.

I live next to one of the most talented photographers ever, and I am so fortunate because she’s also an amazing woman, Mom, and friend. I asked her to take some family photos of Bella and I for Valentine’s Day this year, and we had a blast. I hope you enjoy them.

If you’d like to get in touch with Lisa, please contact her or check out her other work at the above link. All the photos here were taken by her in late February of 2012 near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, MN.

a few wines i love

Blogging can be really fun, and I need to make a commitment to do it more. My plan was to blog weekly – and that didn’t happen, so I’m recommitting to that. Part of my dilemma is trying to decide what level of self disclosure might be appropriate as I come to a critical time in my career and job search. What is appropriate to blog about? What ideas and discussions are worthwhile and expressive while simultaneously ensuring I stay a professional job candidate? Alas, these questions are on my mind. But I’ll set those aside for now…..So this week’s blog is going to be about one of my favorite hobbies, wine.

I’ve said on the blog before that I enjoy wine, and in another life I actually think I might get to viticulture degree and possibly train as a sommelier. I find the organic nature of wine so fascinating. At the risk of becoming a cliche from the movie Sideways, wine is such an intimate and amazing experience. Each bottle is crafted with particular labor, agriculture, bottling, and aging. One bottle of a wine from 2006 can be different from that exact wine and exact vineyard in 2007. The wine almost speaks to you. Since I normally enjoy a glass at night on my own at home these days, it really is an experience – one of relaxation and enjoyment. I have begun to become a person who spends more on wine now – in a sense, I’m willing to spend more a bottle but drink less to compensate in terms of my wine budget. So, the wines I’ve offered here are a variety of price ranges, not all of which are accessible for everyone on a regular basis. But, they are good enough (I promise!) that I think they would be worth at least a try if you have a chance to visit the vineyard, order a bottle, or see it in your wine store.

5. Apothic Red – Winemaker’s Blend, California

This wine I list first mainly because it’s easy to find in wine stores and its affordable. Even my family’s wine story in small town Texas had this wine. It ranges in price from $8.99 to $11.99, depending on if you can catch a sale. Overall, it’s honestly the best inexpensive wine I’ve ever had. It has a rich flavor and is quite smooth. It does have two characteristics that mark it as a less expensive wine. It has a high alcohol content for wine (at over 13% each year) and it has a bit of a sweeter, fruitier taste. It lacks some of the more dense complexity of a less blended wine, but overall – my opinion is that you can’t go wrong with this being the day to day wine on your table.

4. Argyle Pinot Noir – 2010, Oregon

I have to credit my friend Matt, who is from Oregon, for introducing me to this wine. It is one of my favorite Pinot Noirs I have had. It has the perfect appearance of a light, clear red coloring plus a delicious and smooth taste. I found it in a local wine shop in Minneapolis for $27.99 which is probably about the price point everywhere, although I’m not sure. In terms of Pinot Noir, I really think you can’t get too much better than this one – especially for the price!

3. Del Dotto Vineyard’s Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, 2009 – Cinghiale Vineyard

I think I may have blogged about this wine before, but it is truly amazing. And it is a nice following wine to post after talking about Argyle. I do believe Del Dotto’s pinot is a bit better than Argyle, but I’m not sure it is worth the drastically increased price point. Del Dotto is only available as an order from the vineyard or in some select restaurants. So there is the factor of ordering the wine and having it shipped. Plus, it comes in at $75 per bottle. Now, I have some great friends who work in the wine industry would would stress that this is fairly inexpensive for good wine. And, they’re right. That said, it’s more than I can afford at this point in my life to drink on a regular basis. But, I will admit – it is one of the best wines I’ve ever had. When I teach in the summer and obtain a few more funds, I will probably try and order a bit of it. If you try it, I can absolutely promise you won’t be disappointed. In addition, if you ever are in the wine country in Napa, you really should put Del Dotto at the top of your list to visit. The tour is pretty amazing, the staff is helpful, and the wines are really terrific.

2. Benziger Vineyard, Oonapais Red Blend – Sonoma, Ca, 2006

I just had this wine last week. To preface, I had a bottle of the Oonapais a few months back, but from the 2008 vintage. Admittedly, I was not overly impressed. It was good wine, but it was not great wine for me. This is a great example for me of how vintage can make a huge difference. The 2006 is truly amazing. I bought the wine a year and a half ago on a trip to the wine country and saved it for the last 15 months or so. I don’t know that this aging made any difference. Benziger still has this vintage available for order. I have not found it at a local wine store, although you can often find other Benziger wines. But, as a former wine club member there, this is really one of the best in my opinion. It comes in at $55 a bottle, and I really believe it’s worth every penny.

1. Gamba Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel, 2009

I’ve blogged about it before. Honestly, I don’t even love Zinfandel. But, this wine is just really really great. If you order it it’s about $29.99 a bottle and I have not seen it in a wine store yet. Both bottles I have had I was given as a gift from my friend Chris who is a Gamba wine club member. If you have any interest in Zin, you really need to try this wine. It’s amazing – and a decent price point.

So, I raise a glass to all the wine lovers who check out the blog, and wish you happy tasting!