Families with stars

In the Winter of 1994 I rode a train from Missouri to Oregon, stopping along the way to visit friends and relatives without any schedule or structure, without a plan really. One of the stops I made was in Kansas City, where a friend had recently connected with a woman called Annie, who had become somewhat obsessed with the Phelps family, which presided over the Westboro Baptist Church not far across the state line in Topeka, Kansas. One day while my friend was at work, Annie and I took a drive out there to go to a protest against the family that brought us the slogans “God Hates Fags” and “GAY = Got AIDS Yet?” The family was appearing in court for some reason – most of the family members are lawyers, so there’s nothing too noteworthy about them going to court. Still, it was exciting: There were bullhorns and posters and tee shirts and lots of angry, loud homosexuals. At one point I looked directly into Fred Phelps’ face.


If Fred Phelps isn’t evil, a word I hesitate to use, he is certainly in the neighborhood. It wasn’t their signs that bothered me – I think God Hates Fags is actually kind of funny. What’s really gross is the fact that they took their signs and their loud mouths across the country and around the world to memorial services held for men and women (though mostly men) who had died of AIDS. Behavior like that is hideous, but what was really uncomfortable for me about the Phelps family is what a weird space I had to go into mentally to really think about them. My problem is that it’s hard for me to decide which is worse: tormenting people after a loved one dies, or legally prohibiting groups and individuals from doing so. I’m old enough and twisted enough to realize that if there’s enough money and power in the equation, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly rarely go beyond the realm of conceptual, but at the same time I do think they’re beautiful notions, ones worth fighting for.

So I was surprised yesterday morning when one of the local conservative talkies in Portland started in on the Phelps family, ranting for a good 10 minutes about how sick and demented they are. Why? Well, because the Phelps family – in what I think is a truly brilliant PR move – has updated its tactics. There aren’t that many fag funerals anymore for a couple of reasons. First, most of the fags who had AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s are now dead, the funerals so long over that the print on the programs has faded like grandma in the Alzheimer’s commercial. Second, most of the fags infected with HIV are taking drugs that hold the disease at bay. So the Phelps have moved on and now protest at funerals for people who have died while serving in the military. The death of the young servicemen and women, according to the Phelps, is yet more evidence of God’s wrath toward the U.S. for being a country that has failed to eradicate all fags.

And the Phelps, of course, are in the spotlight like never before. So in the spotlight, in fact, that funds are being raised to take them to the supreme court because, as a guest on the radio said yesterday, nobody should have to listen to the venom spewed forth by the Phelps at what should be a somber, dignified occasion. But what about the fag families? I wondered bitterly. Didn’t the parents and brothers and sisters and maybe even the boyfriends of dead fags deserve some peace and quiet? As a fag, it’s just kind of normal to be insulted by your country, but even I was a bit alarmed at how strongly I reacted to the radio guest explaining the urgency of this issue. “These are gold-star and blue-star families,” he said.

An education

I go back and forth, but what I generally believe goes something like this: the danger of recycling religiously and boycotting Styrofoam is that it’s tempting to congratulate yourself straight into complacency for doing your part, or doing what you consider your part. Me, for example. I don’t own a car. I generate less than one grocery bag of garbage per month. If at all possible, I refuse to use plastic or paper cups. I have never bought bottled water. I don’t water my lawn or put chemicals in it, ever, which is pretty easy since I don’t really have one. I ride the bus and the train most of the time. I don’t buy devices I don’t need. With the exception of socks and underwear, I am the second if not third or fourth owner of almost all of my clothing. And while I have no business being proud of this – for me, it’s an issue of convenience – I am, in fact, quite proud of the fact that I’ve never been inside a Wal Mart.


And yet, I own a house. A free-standing house, surrounded by a small yard and sidewalks, hooked up to sewer and gas and electricity via individual connections. I pay NW Natural every month for heating I don’t share with anyone else. When I turn the porch lights on, they light nothing beyond my own little patch of earth. Everything in my house, from toothpaste to toilet paper, is an assault on the balance.

Sunday was a pleasant though strange day. In the morning I read yet another article about the utter hopelessness of the suburbs and the horrific ways we’ll all eventually pay for it, kind of like the Wall Street bailouts. Once we’re out of gas, all of it, according to this article, all of it is going to simply collapse, which will be the end of life as we know it, probably much sooner than any of us, me included, care to consider. These articles are depressing, so wrought with despair and metaphor that I read them two or three times, just in case. Then I usually log onto Netflix and see if there are any related documentaries I can add to my list. That’s because reading about short-sighted stupidity and its disastrous implications is not enough for me: I need more.

On Sunday afternoon a friend and I went to see a movie at the Academy Theater, a few short blocks from our homes. As we were standing in the lobby in the line for popcorn and pizza, I got to thinking. The pizza is from two doors down. The coffee is from across the street. And after 6, the sign behind the register announced, sushi from the new restaurant two blocks away will be available. I noticed a sign for PBR on Sunday, but most of the beers there are locally brewed. Then there’s the theater itself: it’s on a street with sidewalks and businesses and people. Within a five-minute walk of the front door there are hundreds of homes, both singles and apartments, and two major bus lines. Within a 15-minute walk there are four major bus lines and light rail. There used to be a street car line that went right past the theater – I’ve seen photos of it – but that was torn out at the beginning of our love affair with highways. You don’t drive into a parking lot to reach the theater: you buy your tickets, which cost $4.00, while standing on the sidewalk. Sometimes, if it’s raining, you get wet while waiting, and sometimes surly people walk by, going to or from the pub next door. The Academy offers babysitting services, and, true to its name, it held a free screening of the Academy Awards a few weeks ago. Most importantly, though, it occurred to me on Sunday afternoon that the Academy Theater is an actual theater, an old one, one that was built long before I was born and will probably be here long after I’m gone. It had fallen into disrepair, of course – even “the movies” fell for the apples handed out at the mall – but a few years ago it was bought and restored back to life. As I’d imagine was once the case with the little groceries and barber shops and hardware stores with an actual person’s name on the front door, my neighborhood theater is a quiet, understated presence on its block. The lobby, with its mood lighting and curvy elegance, reminds me of an old-school cruise liner. Standing there I recalled what one of my brothers, an architect, said a few years ago: There is no amount of bamboo flooring that can make new construction green. Perhaps that’s why places like my neighborhood theater don’t generate a lot of self-congratulatory razzle dazzle, amped up with terms like “green” and “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” – terms brought to us, I believe, by the same kind of people who not long ago were pimping the good life that lay just on the other side of stately entrances to gated communities, where four-member families could remain strangers while living in 5,000 absolutely new square feet. And that was when I had the kind of moment I try so hard to avoid. I stood there with my friend, smugly at peace, thinking, for a blissful second, this, this right here and now, is how it should be. Then I snapped out of it, and my friend and I took our seats and watched a movie called, aptly enough, An Education.

Propaganda

Technically speaking, I suppose my childhood and early adulthood took place during the cold war. In my mind, the term propaganda conjured forth images of posters with mostly primary colors, usually depicting some type of equipment, airplanes and ploughs and such. Believing these posters were somehow related to an ongoing war, and that they were also somehow connected to the term propaganda, words like “Soviet” and “republic” scared me a bit. They had bombs, I’d been told, and they did not like us. In Hong Kong, the flashiest gay bar – as of early 2006 anyhow – was called Propaganda. As is the case with most of the gay bars in that city, it was hard to find and shadowy with a vaguely illegal vibe about it. Last night I watched Capitalism: A Love Story. Michael Moore annoys me: he’s a little too quick with explanations that strike me as a little too simple. But when I was watching the movie last night, it occurred to me that in order for me to be annoyed by someone, a certain portion of my mind has to also be intrigued. After watching the movie, I do still wonder why Larry Summers has a job in the Obama administration (he played a key role in deregulating the financial industry during the Clinton years, then made a nice profit as a consultant advising the companies he’d helped deregulate). I do wonder why we don’t hear more from the U.S. representative who stood before her chamber and suggested people who’d been foreclosed upon simply demand to see the paperwork before surrendering their homes (her name is Kaptor, and she’s from Ohio). And I wonder why Elizabeth Warren doesn’t get more air time. She’s the Harvard professor overseeing some of the money maneuvers, and she said on camera that she’s asked the former treasury secretary, many times, why he didn’t put some conditions on the bank bailout.


But what really stood out about the movie, to me, was the explanation of the term propaganda. The guy talking about it was handsome in an odd sort of way, big white hair, big white beard, sort of mischievous in a way not normally pulled off successfully by men older than me. Propaganda, he explained, is the art and science of convincing people to believe and act against their own interests, and it’s at the heart and soul of capitalism. I thought it was a great definition, succinct and easily applicable. What surprised me, initially anyhow, is that the guy Michael Moore was interviewing was a Catholic priest.

We can hear the emotion

A few months ago my blood pressure went up a bit when I read that a large portion of the electorate disapproves of Barack Obama because he isn’t sufficiently “emotional.” Why, I wondered – and I still do – would anyone in his or her right mind want the president of the most powerful (for now) nation on earth to be more emotional? This is not a Hallmark card, I thought. This is not a love song, or a eulogy. This is a country, and running it, or trying to, seems to me a job best done by someone who is not prone to the maudlin stupidity that plays well on the local news, where there are tears for every occasion, from wheelchairs for veterans to trips to Disneyland awarded to terminally ill children.


So I suppose I should not have been surprised when I turned on Good Morning America on Monday. There, in all her glory, sat Robin Roberts, who I think is one of the most toxic individuals on the airwaves. I know nothing of her personally, but her on-air conduct is so devoid of anything I’d call intelligent that I often wonder, when watching her, just how humiliating it must be for the correspondents, the ones who have covered and explained actual news over the years, to have to defer to her on national television. In all fairness, she is probably playing to her audience, which is even more disturbing to me. At any rate, her coup d’état for the morning was an interview with Patrick Kennedy, Teddy’s son, whom she was interviewing, allegedly, about the late-night passage of the healthcare reform bill. “Can you tell us what it was like … emotionally?” she said. Jesus Christ, I thought, here we go. She managed to get him almost in tears, which is such a common thing that it doesn’t even make me cringe anymore. That would be like being shocked to hear that someone once had a serious drug problem and has written a book about it. So the morning after the passage of what I think is the most historic legislation of our time, once the younger Kennedy was finished talking about his father, Robin Roberts, having earned her money for the day, I suppose, thanked him for his time, adding, “We can hear the emotion in your voice and see it on your face.”

Moral authority

I cannot make up my mind about the most recent Catholic child molestation scandal. I grew up in a marginally Catholic household. My father was brainwashed by it as a child – he was, and remains, even in death, the only member of his clan, which my mother called the ingrown toenails (doesn’t that sound like a punk band?) to marry outside of the church. My mother despised the Catholics. Once we were driving through town and the youngsters from the Catholic grade school were waiting to cross the street. “Oh look at the little Papists,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be a shame to run over one of them?” Her bitterness was not without cause: my father’s people regarded her as a damaged subordinate, and if their loathing of her represents Christian compassion, sign me up for atheism. My father parted ways with the church in a understated, mostly wordless kind of way, although they did get a nice check when he died, which bothers me to this day because some of that cash was my mother’s. We went to mass from time to time. I loved the stained-glass windows and the fleshy, faggy goth artwork all over the place. I’ve been to mass a few times in Portland, believe it or not, at a cathedral where it’s still said in Latin. I have no idea what it means, and I don’t care. I went seeking ritual.

I am completely conflicted about the sex scandals. On one hand, my first thought is to think of myself and millions of others like me who had the courage, or the foolishness, or perhaps just the hormones, to acknowledge the fact that I am a homo. Why, when someone who has chosen a life of wearing robes and issuing judgments and never having to worry about the bills, be a part of my parade when he gets caught inflicting his weird shit on some boy unfortunate enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? That’s selfish of me, to be sure, but seriously, a good portion of what the gay movement struggled against over the years took form within the pope’s palace.

On the other hand, I find myself wishing the media would amp up the gay angle a bit more. The other night I watched two stories about the latest cases – one on CBS, the other on the PBS Newshour – and I fail to understand why the reporters do not preface their story with, “Even though they condemn homosexuality, yet another senior member of the Catholic church has been caught having sex with a boy …” or something along those lines. I was particularly surprised by the interview Gwen Ifill did with a guy from the National Catholic Reporter. Why someone from that newspaper was chosen is baffling to me, but as I thought about it, maybe the other molestation experts were already booked on other shows. She asked him about the ramifications of the scandal and he began his response with an appropriately superior, “Well, if what you mean is this most recent scandal, centered in Europe …” Yes, that’s what she meant, pretty clearly, I thought. (Sorry, but I have no patience for people who preface an answer with “If you what you mean …” Quit posturing and answer the goddamn question.) The thing that really got me laughing, though, was the guest’s response to a question Gwen Ifill asked him about how this will impact the current pope, into whose orbit the latest scandal has glided, or crashed. I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic, or sarcastic, or humorous, but the reporter said that the impact of this latest scandal is that it will erode the pope’s moral authority.

I can't hear you

Even though we did our twice-yearly clock screw up last weekend, I was up early enough Sunday morning to watch Face the Nation. At the beginning of the show, Bob Schieffer introduced his two guests: the head honcho of an organization representing insurance companies and a US congresswoman from Florida. Bob Schieffer asked the health insurance woman a question, which she addressed – I wouldn’t use the word answer – with a lot of talking points and platitudes about how the insurance companies are really quite committed to reform and in doing their best to help people. Then the floor was turned over to the congresswoman, who was beamed in from Arizona. She got a few good ones in, I thought. I honestly don’t know what I think of the latest push for healthcare reform. I am beyond confused as to what is implied by being in favor of or against, which I think is a good sign that the lobbyists are doing their jobs and doing them well. One of the things the congresswoman said was that it struck her as curious that if the insurance industry comes to the debate in such a spirit of partnership and collaboration, why is it spending millions of dollars for aggressive commercials aired in districts where representatives remain undecided? The smarmy health insurance woman appeared on the screen, in the lower corner, pawing at her earpiece: Ooops, there were audio problems, and she couldn’t hear the question, so Bob Schieffer repeated it, minus the part about the commercials. So the health insurance woman – saved by the audio problem – crooned through a list of messages and talking points that I would imagine were crafted by PR people with spectacular health insurance benefits. I have absolutely no idea what went on in the studio that morning. I know nothing about audio and video equipment. I do know that the woman representing the health insurance industry on Sunday morning got a big old pass on what I think is one of the most important questions: how much money is the industry willing to spend to make sure it can continue to serve itself? That part of the discussion didn’t happen on Sunday morning, because by the time the audio issues were resolved it was time for a commercial break.

Making better people

A couple of weeks ago, Christine Brennan came on the PBS Newshour yet again, this time not beamed in from Vancouver but live in the studio, sitting right across the table from Judy Woodruff. It is one of the last principled tables in U.S. journalism, and to see her there sickens me, so I got up to tend to the black bean chili I was working on. But, I live in a small house, and Christine Brennan, like many sports reporters, doesn’t know how to speak without shouting, so I listened to her from the kitchen. For some reason the women’s basketball team at the University of Connecticut is a big story, so for reasons I’d rather not contemplate, one of the few remaining news programs that focuses on actual news decided to bring this USA Today reporter on for some commentary.

Am I a snob about sports? Am I an elitist? I sure am. Personally, I think sports draws out the worst in people, whether it’s the players, the fans, the managers, the marketers, or the commentators. The amount of money and attention thrown at sports is shameful. The mentality of most of it is so tribal that it makes me nervous to be around groups of sports fans. The biggest day for domestic violence is Super Bowl Sunday. The words “uniformed” and “uninformed” are different by only one letter. NFL players suffer from a disproportionate number of head injuries. Sports has already contaminated every form of media imaginable. The sports cult even has its own cable network, and I wish they’d leave the Newshour alone.

Anyhow, Christine Brennan has a voice that would play well in a locker room. She’s appropriately hawkish and prone to all sorts of grandiose statements that don’t, in my opinion, quite add up. Her comments made during the Olympics were so clearly biased in favor of the U.S. teams that I faded from being aggravated at her to being embarrassed for her. It was okay for us to be happy for the young girl from South Korea whose skating performance broke the scoring machine … even if she wasn’t from America. I guess even Christine Brennan thinks it’s okay if the U.S. – or America, as she insists on calling us – doesn’t dominate every single sporting event. And a couple of weeks ago, after grating on for a bit, she got into the gender angle. As I seasoned my chili I listened carefully. The increased attention on women’s sports, she announced, is a good thing. I couldn’t disagree more, but that’s another story for another time, because what followed was even better. Playing sports, according to Christine Brennan “…quite frankly, makes for better people.” Including, I suppose, the guys who made headlines a few days later, University of Oregon football players – the Ducks – who, quite frankly, got busted for robbery. I’ve never cheered for a football team before, but I guess there is, quite frankly, a first time for everything.

There should be no excuses from anyone!!!

Along the same lines as the logic that says it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people who kill people, I am beginning to wonder if it’s Facebook itself that is troubling, or is it the people who use Facebook who are troubling? Or is it simply that Facebook provides a troubling venue for troubling people?


The reason this question is clunking around in my mind is that the frequency with which people post status updates telling people to simply cut and paste their message into their own status updates seems to be on the uptick. Write the color of the bra you’re wearing and post it in your status update. Okay! If you’re a Christian, stand up and be counted and proud by cutting and pasting this into your status update. Hallelujah!!

Here’s a good one, from yesterday morning: Lets support our troops. If you support our troops then please post this on your status and leave it there for one hour. There should be no excuses from anyone!!!! This should appear in everyones status. Please do this for the ones that make this the Home of the Free because of the Brave!!!!

Don’t waste any time thinking about it. Don’t bother using Facebook to actually say something about yourself, or what you’re doing or, God forbid, what you’re thinking. Just cut and paste and tell the world you ‘support the troops’ by doing nothing more than clicking a few keys. Isn’t it awesome?

Not improved

The yellow signs that announce the dirt roads in Portland have always amused me. They say “Roadway Not Improved.” These roads are sort of charming, in a frontiersy sort of way, although walking on them after dark is nerve wracking: one misstep into a hole is all it would take to break an ankle, or more. For the sake of accuracy I think the word “Improved” should be removed, but in a city that puts up street signs that are printed on only one side, I’ve learned to not expect much. And the City of Portland, I am sorry to say, lives down to my lowest expectations.


On Monday night, I went to the monthly neighborhood association meeting because I didn’t have any other plans and I didn’t feel like sitting at home. I’ve developed some very odd habits since I stopped drinking, and the neighborhood association is one of them. At the beginning of the meeting, a man stood up and explained that his property is on a dirt road and he’d like to know why the city no longer “grades” it. I have no idea what this means, but the long-winded answer from the very awkward city employee, who works with the Bureau of Transportation, went something like this: sorry, but the city doesn’t have money for that. Then the weirdest thing happened: the cop who comes each month and gives a report on crime statistics in the neighborhood spoke up and said she won’t drive her squad car on most of those streets. I have no idea if she said this to annoy the bureau guy – in Portland, as is the case in most large cities I’m familiar with, there is no love lost between the law and City Hall. The bureau guy, at any rate, was unfazed: he got up and gave a presentation about the millions of dollars that are going to be spent on bike paths. Just for fun, I wanted to ask the guy if the bike paths were going to be “graded,” but a group of angry old ladies took over and demanded answers about the parking situation on their street. “We were all presidents of the PTA at one time or another,” one of them said, “so we have a few things to say.” And for the next 20 or 30 minutes, they did.

On Wednesday morning I was out running errands and saw one of the white Bureau of Transportation trucks pull up a few blocks from my house, and sure enough a woman with a bright vest got out and started making markings on the sidewalk. Spring must be right around the corner, I thought. I do not make promises but I will do my best to not use this blog to write about the sidewalk situation in my neighborhood. I’ll just say that whenever I see one of those trucks pull up I picture a thousand-dollar check with my name on it, honest money handed over to “fix” a few fantasy code violations. Anyhow, when I came home Wednesday morning I heard the news that the city council plans to approve a plan to take money from sewage and water budgets to pay for the bike paths. So everyone’s pissed off, including, believe it or not, the cycling community – that’s what they call themselves in Portland – which believes the mayor is doing this to shore up support for his next election, when he’ll need all the support he can get.

The time has come

Aside from the fact that the award was announced by the uniquely insufferable Barbra Streisand, and that the nominee’s ex-husband’s name was mentioned in the news of the nomination as much as hers was, I was thrilled on Sunday night when Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for best director. It’s shocking to me that it took until 2010 for a woman to win the award, but it’s no more shocking than the fact that we haven’t had at least 20 female presidents of the country by now, and that the names and images of women do not adorn our currency. But better late, I suppose, than never. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed by her acceptance speech. Saddened, perhaps, is a better word for how I felt when she held her award up and said that it was for the women and men in uniform, for all they do. The audience applauded wildly and the following morning the conservative talkies were beside themselves with joy that “Hollywood” finally said something supportive about the troops. That’s the level of dialogue – if it can be called that – in this country, and that’s what not only saddens me but scares me as well. When you express anything other than absolute allegiance to the wars in which we’re engaged, you’re attacking the troops. That this sort of nonsense is still accepted blows my mind. I don’t like the idea of war, I don’t like the concept of war. I don’t like it when people kill each other intentionally. I don’t like it when groups of adults – nations, let’s say – need to use force to resolve differences. I don’t like it when stuff blows up. Saying that in public, somehow, has come to mean that I do not support the troops. Here’s how I feel about that: I’m not talking about the troops, I’m talking about the war. Those are two completely and utterly and absolutely separate nouns. The business of sloppily ladling one topic onto another like hot fudge onto ice cream is so infuriatingly stupid, almost as dumb as taking something one director says – Kathryn Bigelow, for example – and attributing it to Hollywood, as if Hollywood has a point of view, and opinion, as if Hollywood were somehow an actual person, which it is not (they don’t even make movies there, but that’s an even more complex subject). But as long as I’m on that path, it’s like saying that if you don’t like the entertainment industry, or aspects of the entertainment industry, you therefore – automatically and unconditionally – believe that there are no movies made that should make it to the big screen.

International Women's Day

I suppose my perception of gender issues is based on my childhood. My grandmother waited on my grandfather as if she were his employee. My mother, on the other hand, would have laughed my father right out of the house had he even considered her telling her to do anything. You did not tell my mother what to do: you asked her, and nicely. My father was actually more nurturing than my mother, but his nurturing wasn’t the variety that called for covering the refrigerator with gold stars and saying “I love you” every five minutes.

My brothers and sisters are a mixed bag when it comes to gender issues. When compared to his son’s mother, one of my brothers is more nurturing, but only if making a doormat of yourself is your idea of nurturing. And speaking of gender issues, he expected our entire family to genuflect when, following four girls, he and his wife issued forth the first male child. As of today, his expectations remain unfulfilled. One of my sisters goes back and forth. I’ve heard her girls get away with saying things to her that would have earned me, at the very least, a not very gracious trip to my room without dessert. I’ve also heard her house fall completely silent after she told one of my nieces that she was about to use her head as a basketball.

My Oklahoma nieces are even more of a mixed bag. The oldest, who is 20 and is named after my mother, is some sort of throwback to the 1950s. She and her mother – my sister – carry on like co-conspirators, with my sister teaching her daughter the ins and outs of snagging a man with the means to keep the trains, if you will, running on schedule. My niece dropped out of college after three weeks and moved back home – home being something of a spa where everything is provided, so I cannot exactly blame her, although there’s not much I wouldn’t have done at the age of 18 to have parents who would pay for me to go away. She takes courses at the community college and waitresses. She has her own apartment although I seriously doubt she pays all of her own rent (I could be wrong on that). She brings her laundry over for my sister to do, and when there are car problems or burned out light bulbs daddy is but a phone call away. My niece is tall and beautiful and her main objective, she told me, is to know how to make a good roast and mix cocktails and have dinner parties for her and her eventual husband’s friends. Her three-week university career was not without some accomplishment: she met a guy to whom she’s now engaged. He’s in the military at the moment and stationed overseas, but he’ll be home, in the word’s of her father – my brother-in-law – quicker than three shakes of the lamb’s tail. Since this is my blog, I have the right to say what I really think without cushiony adjectives: what a disaster.

My other niece, who just turned 18, couldn’t be more different. She shaved her head in solidarity with her mother. She is an aspiring tattoo artist, but when I talked to her last summer, she said she needed to come up with a backup plan because she didn’t figure the tattoo business was the surest bet. A backup plan wouldn’t occur to her sister in a million years. The younger of my two nieces in Oklahoma is unimpressed with boys, so unimpressed, in fact, that she’s a lesbian. This is an issue that was pushed by my sister, of all people, a few years ago when she decided she didn’t like the idea of one of her daughters not “bringing her girlfriend around.”

And so she does. When I was growing up, our dinner table conversations usually revolved around politics but at my sister’s table, the discussions are a little more immediate: my older niece’s fiance’s whereabouts, Business 101, how much longer my younger niece’s girlfriend is going to be grounded, the potential risks of the ink used for tattoos, the best – and worst – ways to treat constipation (my sister’s all-time favorite topic) and what needs to be added to the QuickTrip shopping list. It’s a different world down there in the Mid City neighborhood, but when I was there last month, when the lighting was set a certain way, when certain angles were employed, I’d look at my nieces and see, for one brief moment, my mother, which was a surprisingly pleasant experience.

Fun with breast cancer

The main reason I went to Oklahoma last month to visit my sister is that in December she found out she has breast cancer. She goes for chemo once every three or four weeks, so back in December, when I booked my trip, I chose the first week in February to coincide with one of her treatments. I could drive her around, I figured, run errands for her, do some grocery shopping and cooking. My sister doesn’t cook much. In fact my sister doesn’t eat much. Plus, if she was sick as a result of the chemo, I could help out with moral support, or do my best on that front, although I’m not very good at it.

So a few weeks before I left my sister called to tell me that her chemo schedule had changed. That’s because at the time she was supposed to start the doctors discovered that her white blood cells weren’t at the proper level. My sister’s husband is a doctor, and their devotion to modern medicine is unswerving. Theirs is a household of prescriptions and appointments and voicemail messages from the offices of various doctors with various specialties calling to confirm appointments, cancel appointments, reschedule appointments, discuss test results, talk about prescriptions.

I asked my sister if she wanted me to reschedule my trip, which could have been done easily. “Oh no,” she said. “There’ll be no shortage of things to do.”

On Friday afternoon, after a particularly slow start, we wound up at Dillard’s, the flagship store at one of the city’s several relentlessly beige shopping malls. This mall, like the others I saw, was comprised of hundreds of long, horizontal lines, so neat and even that I wasn’t convinced the buildings weren’t an artist’s rendering until the sliding glass doors parted and we entered. My sister, whose hair is gone, wanted to buy a few scarves. She also wanted some earrings, clip-ons, because the holes in her earlobes are prone to infection. “I need to feel a little more feminine,” she told me as we looked though the scarves, hundreds of them in all colors and patterns and textures. I picked one, ivory colored and crinkled, and wrapped it around my head and looked in the mirror. My sister told me once again that I do look an “awful lot” like our father looked right before he died, so I took the scarf off and put it back on the shelf. Do you know what it’s like to be told you started looking like someone just before he croaked? My father was a handsome old man and all, but it’s a bit disconcerting, hearing that.

We decided to go over to the jewelry section, and that’s where we struck up a conversation with a woman in a black dress, yellow boots and lots of glimmery, clunky necklaces and bracelets and earrings. My sister explained to her that she’d lost her hair and her boobs, so she was in the market for scarves and earrings. “Oh yes,” said the woman. “You have come to the right place, exactly the right place.” My sister asked the woman how often she works out, and the woman said hardly ever. “You’ve got real nice biceps,” my sister said, to which the woman said, rather proudly (and who could blame her?), “Well, in 1997 I was Miss Fitness.” Three scarves and two pairs of earrings later, we left. Miss Fitness had shown my sister how to properly tie a scarf as I sat at the makeup counter on one of those tall, prissy stools with chrome legs and white upholstery, watching her moves, which I thought were unimpressive. “That’s exactly how you do a bandana!” I said during the scarf demo, and then felt like an ass, immediately. I thought Miss Fitness was a bit obnoxious, but she did help my sister, and she said something as we were leaving that stuck with me. “Just remember to have fun with this,” she said to my sister, who thanked her for her help. I never thought of breast cancer as anything you’d have fun with, but for a few minutes I didn’t contemplate other things I'd never put in the fun category either, like the surgical removal of body parts, followed by injecting an already compromised systems with toxins. Instead of thinking about those kinds of things, my sister and I had a few laughs as we drove out of the parking garage and headed for the grocery store.

My new card

On Monday afternoon I did something I have not done in more than a decade: I applied for a new credit card.

My relationship with credit is very similar to my relationship with organized religion, political parties and certain members of my family: whenever possible, I avoid. I rebelled against my parents in many ways, but when it came to what we were taught about money – don’t spend what you don’t have – I was the best little boy in the world, and I still am. I am lucky that I can support myself, and for that I am grateful. At the same time, I don’t own the latest and greatest of everything, and believe it or not I do not consider myself deprived. I use the credit card to pay my monthly Netflix fee (it’s like a credit laxative – it keeps the account running) and for airline tickets or anything else I have to buy via the Internet, which is almost nothing. I pay it when the statement arrives, which, by the way, is almost always two weeks after the date on the statement and, therefore, two weeks closer to the due date, after which they can throw late fees my way. For some reason, the envelopes my credit card statements arrive in are not postmarked, so I have no idea when they’re mailed, nor can I prove anything. Does it take 14 days for an envelope mailed in Phoenix to be delivered in Portland? Perhaps. Or perhaps there is a regulation – a long one, spelled out over the course of several pages, in tiny print – that legally grants the credit card company a certain number of days between printing the statement and mailing it. Nothing would surprise me, really.

You wouldn’t have to know me for more than five minutes to know that I consider the credit card companies, the bankers, all the money people in general to be common criminals. They take as much as they can get, and we give readily. And we get up on our hind legs about people looting after natural disasters? Come on. Anyhow, up until recently, my attitude about the credit card was this. I have a backup, a Plan B in the form of several thousand dollars should I ever need it. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to pay an annual fee for that.

Reasonable, that is, until my tax dollars were diverted in order to help the big financial companies out of the pit into which they damn near hurled the entire country, if not the entire world. It’s for the good of us all, we were told. Things would be so much worse if these companies failed. Really? I’ve never seen proof of that. Have you? What would keep a company such as the Bank of America or Goldman Sachs from exaggerating a little about their significance to the stability of the economy in order to scare people into submission? They’re not exactly famous for honesty, in my opinion.

When the record-breaking bonuses were announced, my head exploded. And when I learned about “inactivity fees” my head exploded again. Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I am going to send some invoices to a couple of my clients who I haven’t done any projects for in a few months, just $100 or so, just to let them know I’m alive and well, and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

My new credit card, which I picked up yesterday, is issued through my credit union – which is right here, in Portland, and is overseen by a board of directors who are employed by companies whose offices are at most two bus rides from my house. My new card does not have an annual fee, and the interest rate on it is 9 percent. There is no fee for not using it. The amount of credit available to me, should I need it, is $5,000 less than the amount on my previous card, and I did lose a few points on my credit score, which I plan to earn back – that sounds like I was out skipping school or something, doesn’t it? – within a year or two by paying what I owe on a regular, timely basis. My new credit card has a very nice image of Mt. Hood on it, and when I signed my name on the back of it with a Sharpie marker and told the woman who helped me that it would certainly smear almost immediately, she pulled out a roll of clear tape, tore off a strip and covered my signature. “There,” she said.

So tomorrow I am going to call Bank of America and cancel my card. I would have done it yesterday or this morning, but I when I write out my to-do list for the week, I like to save the fun things for Friday.

All our friends

Everyone, it seems, has something to say – and write – about social media, Facebook in particular. I’ve written about it myself, and I’ve read lots about it, and most of what I’ve read is so unoriginal that I’m left wondering how it made it into print. The anti crowd goes on and on about how social media actually separates people from one another. I agree, but the amount of time and space dedicated to making that point is curious to me. The pro crowd – who are mostly PR people who stand to make a lot of money on it by pretending they posses some secret and highly technical insight into it – is just as repetitive, but also more entertaining. I read a blog recently by some expert who wrote about 700 words to explain that the Olympics in Vancouver were different than the ones in Italy because people were using Twitter and Facebook to share scores and stories and photos with the world. Who needs the networks? Where he really put his laser-sharp knowledge of “the communications landscape” to work was by concluding that things were different at the last winter Olympics, four years ago. I was blown away.

Recently, though, I did read an interesting article in Harper’s. Harper’s, for what it’s worth, is my all-time favorite magazine. It’s the only thing that comes through the front door around here and gets read, cover to cover, regardless of whether or not I’m interested in the subject matter. Another thing I like about Harper’s is that the magazine adamantly refuses to use the word “content.” I’m not there yet, but I’m close to putting people who use the word “content” to describe what we read in the same category as those who use the word “leadership” to describe the lies we tell.

The article said, more or less, this: if social media technology is the future of human interaction, we need to downgrade our definition of the term relationship.

And downgrading we are. One heterosexual I know recently went on a long and sort of exotic vacation and got herself engaged. This, of course, was announced to hundreds of people via rather coy Facebook status updates, with the main one dashed off in another language, which gave the whole thing a sort of cool, international flavor. The onslaught on comments was amazing, not in terms of what they said – Awesome! Super Congrats! That’s so COOL! – but the number of them, which was, last I checked, well above 50, and the fact that I happen to know that a number of the comments were posted by people who not only dislike the bride to be but who actually loathe her. Why I spend my time doing this I cannot say for sure, but I scrolled down, reading one inane remark after another, and then I hit paydirt: a comment from the CEO! As I read the congratulations that morning, I was almost comforted in realizing that at least one aspect of human relationships does not require a downgrade: Even as we confuse friendships with technologically fueled posturing, the sycophants are as shameless online as they are in conference rooms. Regardless of the medium, fake trumps.

One of the last holdouts I know is a woman in Seattle. She refuses to sign up for Facebook, refuses. She’s also friends with the bride to be – in a real sense of the word, as in, they know each other from their growing up years, and they’ve done lots of things together, trips and boating teams and such. And since she’s not living via a Facebook interface, well, her friend didn’t get around to sharing the news of her engagement until a week after the commenting flurry, via a text message.

Let's get global

At some point during the blur in my memory that was 2002 and 2003, the PR agency I worked for decided it was time to become global. As is almost always the case when the PR people are at the controls, it was ridiculous. The term “global perspective” suddenly appeared in every e-mail and was dropped into nearly every conversation. The group I worked with had a number of people based in Europe – or EMEA, as it was called, because somehow Europe, the Middle East and Africa go together – so our weekly calls took place at 6 in the morning Pacific. We were lauded for “thinking global.” On the annual review paperwork, “global awareness” became something against which you were measured. And when new clients were pursued, we were all encouraged to think outside of North America and consider the client’s goals in other regions. This was key, said the PR visionaries, because technology – are you ready for this? – was knocking down geographic barriers more quickly than we could blog about it, and, well, Brussels is now practically next door. It was an exciting time, to be sure.

The most exciting part of it was when the company for which I worked decided to set up shop in Asia. The ladies – that is what we called the people in charge – were beside themselves with globalism, overjoyed at seeing the name of their company written out in Chinese figures. There were more mails, and more meetings, and more conversations, and what I learned, right before I went to Hong Kong, was this: in Asian countries, when you meet someone in a business setting, in addition to purring with orgasmic titillation over the person’s business card, the proper greeting is a bow. Before my trip, I was advised to bow to the guy who ran the agency’s office there, as well as to any clients who I may meet.

In addition to the fact that me bowing would look really stupid, I think that inserting yourself into other cultural traditions is a bit arrogant (suburban white folks, for example, speaking as if they’re Latinos at heart), so I didn’t bow then, and I am not bowing now. With that in mind, it was interesting to hear the chatter last week about the guy from Toyota going before the U.S. Congress to apologize for the mechanical issues. Will he bow? How low will his bow be? How long will it last? Unlike the PR people, the reporters took the time to explain the bowing tradition. According to them, it’s from the days of the Samurais. That’s Japanese, I believe, not Chinese, which is the country where Hong Kong is situated (technically speaking). But if you’re in PR and pretty cool, just call it APAC, which stands for Asia-Pacific, includes Australia and New Zealand and is pronounced “A-pack.” So there’s one major error. The second big one, I think, is that the bow was an apologetic gesture. People bowed before a Samurai after doing something wrong, and the longer and deeper the bow, the easier it was for the Samurai to use his sword for head-removal purposes.

But the decade-long laugh I’ve had at the expense of the PR people aside, the most interesting part about the Toyota story, I think, is the shock and surprise expressed by the professional talkers at the way business gets done in Japan. The group that regulates Toyota there, they exclaimed, is the same group that promotes the company. What a shock! What an outrage! Could it be, possibly, that mechanical problems were overlooked for the sake of profitability and reputation? Can you imagine? I mean, that’s as absurd as putting the bankers in charge of the stock market, or the housing market, or even the Federal Reserve.