Unacceptable

On Friday, November 18th, now infamous incident occurred on the campus of UC-Davis. This, a college where one of my best friends went to undergrad was the scene of an act of police brutality extraordinary in its horror and the nonchalance with which it was carried out. Over the weekend, the responses and details flowed out of the campus, particularly after Chancellor Linda Katehi defended police actions, refused to resign, and felt it necessary to negotiate her own exit from her office building because she felt threatened by crowds of students angry they were excluded from a press conference. I understand that police officers have a job to do and that policies should exist to protect both cops and protesters. I understand that citizens (including students) conducting peaceful protests and acts of civil disobedience should expect the possibility of arrest. What I do not understand is how the events of this video can take place on a university campus in the United States of America in 2011. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we have lost our way.

Below, my friend (and UC-Davis alum) and my letters to Chancellor Katehi, sent via her website:


Dear Chancellor Katehi,
 
I graduated from UC Davis in 2006 and from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in 2009. I am the daughter of public school professors, a committed public servant, and a proponent of the University of California, which I consider to be the finest public school system in the world. I took advantage of every experience UC Davis had to offer. I participated in the University of California, Washington DC internship program and studied abroad in Vienna. I joined political and social organizations on campus and developed a strong compulsion to serve. I believe in public service and in public education. The degree of success I have achieved since my undergraduate career would have been impossible without the insight I gained at UC Davis through lively debate and exposure to new ideas.
 
The video I saw via CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, Twitter, and celebrity gossip blogs alike of the events that took place last Friday horrified me. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of learning that the campus police, donned in riot gear, were acting on your request. The implication is that you are concerned with the content of the protest (a strong word to describe a group of students peacefully seated on the main quad) occuring on our campus. For this to have happened on the same campus that helped me develop and express my opinions is heartbreaking. 
 
There are many issues facing UC Davis, not least of which are unprecedented budget problems. It is essential to have strong leadership during times like these. We cannot address these problems without trust, which will be impossible for you to regain. Your actions directly caused physical pain and emotional insecurity of your students who pay your salary. Given the brutality of the reaction, it is almost irrelevant that the students were engaged in a peaceful, free-speech demonstration in what must be maintained as a safe environment. I would like to add my voice to that of the faculty, students, alumni, and supporters of UC Davis and call for your immediate resignation.


##
 
and mine:


Dear Chancellor Katehi,

My only connection to UC-Davis is that one of my best friends from graduate school got her Bachelor's degree from your institution. Other than that, I am simply a deeply concerned American citizen, public school graduate, and supporter of the students who were treated brutally by UC Davis's police force. 

While I appreciate your decision to suspend the Chief of Police, this action is not near enough. You must resign. Your initial support of the police's obviously unnecessary and brutal action against peacefully protesting students is unforgivable. And while I understand that a task force will be directed to investigate what happened--there is already plenty of understanding about what took place, because it was caught on tape. Details are important, and of course we (the public) will want to know exactly how such brutality was allowed to occur. But in the meantime, the image of a group of students sitting down and being pepper-sprayed at point-blank range by a police officer seemingly not feeling threatened (visor up, casual posture) is all we have. And it turns my stomach. 

You have demonstrated you are unable to stand up for students when they are in danger; your inability to protect them from the very police force that is supposed to keep them safe is not going to be forgiven by a task force and a police chief on administrative leave. I join with Professor Nathan Brown and the others who have called for your resignation. Because you need to be held accountable, and also because if this took place on the campus of one of my alma maters, I would insist on the same. 

##

Theory on Cheating

So, if there's a group of people who hate dating more than 20 and 30 something women, it's probably 20 and 30 something men. They might be down with boozy hookups and emotionally detached exchanges over text, but ask any married 20 or 30-something man if they envy their comrades still on the market, they'll likely say no. I'll put it out there now that the serious, methodologically sound study done to support this entire argument is based on two conversations and my own guessing. Still, it's the internet, and I digress.

So, my theory is this: marrieds who are super glad not to have to take ladies on dates and maneuver through the complexities and insanities that come with courting the fairer sex, might cheat because it's kind of like dating, without the pressure. It's like how you feel a lot more comfortable trying on (and maybe wearing) outrageous shoes or a crazy top after you've finally found the perfect brand of jeans, and riding boots. The comfort that comes from knowing the reliable standards are in your closet allows your brain the freedom to move beyond those very pieces you had worked so hard to find in your early-adult years. (And yes, the perfect jeans and the perfect boots/shoes are that elusive. And, like mates-for-life, everyone is looking for something different.)

I suppose this could work for why women cheat too, just replace "insanities" with "frustrations" and "the fairer sex" with "pompous jackasses". This is an (almost) equal opportunity theory-of-bad-behavior. But it's not even that, it's really just a testament to how awful dating can be, even less than 24 hours after a relatively decent date. I can't even really bring myself to think of a clever name for my theory, because it's mostly bullshit. However, I stand by my assertion that dating is overwhelmingly terrible, confusing, and exhausting.

A Not So Horrible First Date

My first Match.com date was last night. I have to say, I am extremely happy with how it went. The e-mails leading up to the meet were breezy and laid back so I was not having any of my usual pre-date maybe-being-a-spinster-cat-lady-wouldn't-be-awful feelings. Of course, since I can't possibly have gotten my shit entirely together that quickly, I went to happy hour with some people from work first. You know, to take the edge off. Two and a half beers later, I was off. Date went smoothly, conversation was good, beer was good, oysters were  good. He was nice, funny, and obviously bright. Points against were for seeming almost too smooth in a slightly ADD way, but he was down when I started talking about the zombie apocalypse and BSG (why, oh WHY do I do these things) so, that's always good. Because, if you can't handle the nerd, then really there's no sense in a second date. We parted three hours later, after I'd gone from not being that into him to thinking I'd like to see him again, so we'll see if a second date materializes. Regardless, I'm no longer terrified of match dates, despite telling my co-workers that it was a "set-up" and not correcting them when they assumed that meant friend-of-a-friend.

Slow Your Roll, and other notes

In the last 13 days, I've fallen in love with my neighborhood bar(tenders), celebrated Halloween, come up with a life plan, suffered through the death flu, and scheduled my first Match date. I also ordered new flats, bought a winter work skirt (on sale!), purchased my bridesmaid's dress (25% off!), ordered various necessities from drugstore.com while sitting in my towel in bed (win!), upgraded to unlimited texting, mailed things, and made chili. Take that, 13 days. Since I've fallen behind, I will do a data dump of everything that comes to mind in the next 15 minutes.

I just read this article which is about a study that I should probably also read, but won't, and have happily determined that I have an above-average number of close friends with whom I discuss "important matters". One may be out of the country, two out of the city, and between one and five in town (depending on what segment of "matters" we're talking) but yeah, I have definitely discussed "important matters" with more than 2.03 people in the last six months. Way more.

I got very pumped up about a few things at work that, in my mind, indicate an inability of this institution to move beyond Cold War-era thinking. Everyone talks a big game about being innovative and harnessing the energy of the younger generation, but in reality, the young people show up all energetic and ready to be harnessed and quickly discover that they can't be successful in their chosen organization if they don't bend to the will of their elders. I'm not just talking about being respectful and paying dues, I'm talking about thinking like them. This, obviously, leads to the successful ones being those who have learned to think like their bosses, thereby discounting any innovation in thinking that might have been possible had creativity been fostered. Depressing. And, cause to start something new. More on that later...

And, that's really all for now. I'm currently waiting for the phone to ring to chat with the bossman for a while, since he's been in and out of the country for weeks now and I can't imagine he remembers what I look like. More later.

Why I Work for a Non-Profit, Ctd

If it wasn't obvious, the "why I work for a non-profit" bit is an effort to differentiate myself from those who work to make as much money for themselves and the companies for which they work as possible. I in no way am presuming to be  better than them or that saying that they're all evil, just pointing out that that fundamental difference might be more explanatory than we think. And, for good measure, a little humor from the Occupy-ers.

via: mountains beyond mountains

Why I Work for a Non-Profit

There is something innate about me that prevents me from being interested in profit margins and maximum annual returns. I am not built to have making money be the object of my 40 hours a week. Sitting across from a perfectly nice, very well dressed one percent-er. We were talking about (I'll be purposefully vague here) electricity markets and investment risk, and somehow got into a discussion of health care. I steered the conversation there because I've been itching for the opportunity to poke one of these guys on the inequality issues we are seeing to start boiling over and this guy is not my boss.

After a long discussion during which he lays out costs and structural arguments against universal health care (health care wasn't a right in 1776) and for the idea that insurance companies be allowed to refuse coverage of those with pre-existing conditions (goes against the definition of insurance, which is payment for protection against an unknown and presumably if you have a pre-existing condition, there is a definite known.) I'll be generous and ignore the scenario where someone goes into an insurance-required check-up and discovers right then that they have cancer. Regardless if these are valid arguments in terms of nothing he's saying is in fact untrue there is still the issue of values. I value a society that thinks it's important to provide basic health care to all of its citizens. I value a government that adjusts its own goals as time passes and looks to the future needs of its people.

People that think we shouldn't have universal health care or protections for people with pre-existing conditions are hiding behind balance sheets and the Constitution. So what if the Founders didn't lay out a particular right to universal health care? They also didn't say women should be full citizens, and we adjusted to that reality when progress made it prudent. And screw the technical definition of insurance, the government should support people who get catastrophic illnesses because it can. If we didn't spend over $663 billion [PDF] on defense, maybe we could scrape by with making sure everyone had access to basic, preventive care that would avoid a lot of cost in the long-term and ensure that catastrophic illness doesn't cause bankruptcy.

The idea that makes me a liberal is that I think people matter. The collective people. Everyone. Together. And the reason I support the Occupy movement is because I think their attempt to galvanize those who recognize that our current state of inequality is driven by those in power being less concerned with the collective good and people than individual profits. Of course, the man across from me (with his monogrammed cuffs) would say that makes me a Communist.

Occupy Guilt

Yesterday was jam-packed. In a good way. I've got real things to do at the old trabajo and that feels good. Except when a good day is followed by a (great) run through McPhearson square, Occupy DC's homeland. I'm thinking--I really want to be with you guys in this. Of course, I'm with them on this, but I'm no there. They have a board of needs, the largest of which that I could read while running by was "Plates". So, I'm going to work on getting them some plates.

Urban Gardener-to-be

This weekend was one of the most fun in quite some time. The parents and brother were in town so there was lots of delicious food, the weather was gorgeous, and generally I actually felt rested at the end of it. Might also have had something to do with the fact that I worked from home on Friday. Because the office can be a bit of a toxic environment.

With Dad around, I started thinking about projects, and he helped me design a raised bed in which I will grow vegetables. I'm going to enlist the help of some friends this weekend and build it myself. I will grow lettuce and some root vegetables for the next month or so (until the first freeze) and then I'll get ready for spring. In mid-February I'll start seedlings in our front window and then plant them as soon as possible. Lettuce, eggplants, and beans are my major goals. Since I eat a lot of those. I'm also going to start composting. I will fully document what promises to be a hilarious undertaking.

Unsubscribe

I went on an unsubscribing tour through my e-mail today. It was awesome. Hopefully the 10 fewer emails I get every day will lighten the load a bit. And make the few that are actually substantive that much more awesome. I also "unsubscribed" to something else.... work drama. I've grown to know several dysfunctional organizations in my life, and the one of my current employ is one of the most severe cases of high-schoolesque antics I've known. Serious people doing serious work with seriously too much ego. I guess the difference between this and high school is the first two seriouses. Anyway, it's above my pay grade. Nose to the grindstone and try not to get trampled in the meantime. If anything, the experience will be worth its weight in gold the next time I have to interview for a job. This also makes me think that I might think about investing in an effort to veil my own identity a little less thinly...

On Moodswings

Yesterday turned out to be a good day. Information came into my world via the 5th of an undefined number of forums my project is hosting. These forums end up providing me a route by which to go forward on actual work for a while, and now I have 8 work days of Mr. One Percent in a communications black hole while traveling to an unnamed populous communist nation. These days will include work from home, reading and writing, and generally doing less admin stuff than happens when he's around and having tons of meetings. I'm actually excited again to be doing this work.

Tumblr Love.

I discovered this blog today. And I'm in love--one of the great things about the rise of the Tumblr (or at least the rise of me knowing about them) is the way people use them to put all the beautiful things/thoughts/people/images they observe together in one place. It's like a mobile reminder that there's beauty in the world. Thanks Sarah, for sharing. Below, some favorite quotes.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via friedarose)

"Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together." 

Elizabeth Taylor

 

"The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind."

  Humphrey Bogart (via getawaywithit)

Drivers

Mr. One Percent (the name I've now given my boss) just got picked up by a driver to go to a meeting that is literally two blocks away. I can't tell you how much I wish I had Rob Lowe's Chris from Parks and Rec standing next to me to narrate this episode. To be a little bit fair, I think he hopped into the car of his former colleague who was being driven to said meeting from Baltimore. But...come. on. It's two blocks. TWO BLOCKS. There's some upheaval happening with the project I'm working on right now, and it's small comfort to see him coming a little bit unglued about how non-corporate America works. As in, we think about things, make decisions based on consensus and critical thought processes, etc. The end goal is not just profits--it's trying to provide good information and analysis based on a variety of factors. Hence the term think tank.

Wink-a-thon

Match has a feature called "winking". It's awkward and weird, but it's basically how you give eyes at someone through the interwebs. At least it's better than "poking". I am obviously a novice at this but was able to get some sage advice this weekend from an experienced (male) Match dater who also happens to be my cousin. His advice was this: as a female, get yourself set up with a good profile, some good pictures, and then wink at people you think are attractive/interesting. So, that's what I did today. A good half dozen winks went out--and I returned some emails. And we'll see what comes of it.

In other dating news, previously mentioned single lady friend of mine has a date set up with her cop dude. She, like me, is a notorious self-saboteur and so we are considering working out a plan in which I stalk her on her date. To provide mid-date pep talks and a possible mid-date shot. I would hang out at the bar (or the bar next door) and be available should my assistance become necessary. And yes, we get that we're slipping closer and closer to the not cute side of crazy.

Weekend of Weekends

Simply put, my family is awesome. This weekend was cousins/bridesmaids weekend and boy was it epic. Friday the bride (my cousin) arrived and we had a relaxing and fun evening at my 'hood's newest bar with the third lady cousin who lives in DC. Saturday morning we trekked to J.Crew in Georgetown to get our bridesmaids dresses and had a great experience. Next came mimosas with brunch, several hours of roof-sitting and beer-drinking during which the bride's big brother arrived and really got things started. Margaritas and dinner at Lauriol Plaza followed by a pit stop at my apartment led us eventually to H Street where we hit the Pug, played Skee-ball, Buck Hunter, and golf at the Country Club and danced in the laser lights at Rock and Roll. It was a fantastic day.

Sunday, we had brunch and walked around more--stopping again at Anthropologie. Which got me to thinking about a possible second job there--I love their clothes enough for sure. It also got me to thinking about if there's a market for independent personal shopping services that include closet consultations. Because I would be awesome at that.

I work for the 1%

And I'm struggling with that. My boss is a great guy. He cares a lot about his family, often comments that he's "fortunate" to be in the position that he's in (he works pro-bono, and I'm his researcher and coordinator), and he's generally not awful. Which, if you live in DC, actually means something. But he's most certainly in the 1%. Maybe even the 0.1%, but I don't feel like doing that math. Twenty years as a corporate executive, he's made bank, and while you might not realize it if you just had a regular conversation with him, it's obvious when you realize he flies a lot, had a driver most of his career, and--get this--is having this boat built in England right now. To replace a different, slightly smaller, boat.

I'm decidedly in the 99%. I'm not below the poverty line by any means, but I've got a crap load of student loans and I'm what they used to call "underemployed" before so many people fit that description that (I think) we've shifted to considering only those with less-than-full-time work who want full time work underemployed. So, does it suck a little bit to know that your financial troubles are equivalent to a rounding error for your boss? Maybe. I don't begrudge people with money--if you've chosen a path and been successful at it, then congratulations. What I begrudge is the nonchalance with which those same people tend to speak of the rest of us. From person to person, the source of this attitude ranges from active distaste for the working and lower classes to blissful ignorance at the human impact of their megamillion dollar salaries paired with layoffs to "save the company". So, I work for the 1%. It feels a little bit like I'm betraying my people--I wish I was less willing to participate in the system that I, at least intellectually, agree is severely flawed.

Fighting Singlism

DC is usually a bad example for most things culture related, because it's a city with a transient, uber-driven population of young people that often come here for a couple years--with or without partners--and leave to start real lives elsewhere. That said, this article, is a fascinating read. I haven't quite absorbed it yet, not have I drawn any conclusions that I'm ready to stick by, but the idea of thinking differently about being single and the importance that non-couple relationships carry in the lives of single women strikes me. My lady friends (because they are not girls and women-friends sounds weird) and I often joke about getting adjoining townhouses and tacitly acknowledge the importance we have in eachother's lives. While sometimes (maybe often) the support, converstaions and advice is about  men and dating, it's also about fashion, finances, cooking, restaurant choices, and politics. We "nerd out" together frequently--and provide one another the mental stimulation that we always note is a necessary characteristic of any romantic relationship. One friend and I have a commitment to visit each other as often as possible--and it usually works out to be every six weeks. She lives in a city that's an easy bus ride away, but I often go longer between visits with local friends to whom I haven't made the same commitment to spend time together than I do between our visits. That commitment is essential--and more than I've ever made to a man. I, like the author, have unbounded love for my three nephews and one niece, as well as the rest of my family. Their love and support is a large source of happiness and drive for me. Attitudes are changing, certainly, but being in a romantic relationship has to stop being the end to be reached by any means necessary. The first person I should convince of that is myself.

Dating is Dangerous

So, surprise surprise, dating is a nightmare in DC. You know this is true when your former boss-turned-mentor-slash-therapist asks you about your love life in your monthly-ish coffee meetings. Those meetings generally consist of you (ie, me) gasping on and on about something terribly silly that the government or my organization of employ has done while drinking a much-too-sweet caffeinated beverage until he asks "and so, I guess still no boyfriend?". Yikes.

Anyway, this blog has been a lot of things. And, I know no one reads it. But there are certain things that should be preserved for posterity. Like my newest adventure--Match.com. Yes, that's right. I joined Match. I think if I keep saying it over and over again, it will get less weird. But that's only the secondary part of my story--the current goings on with one of my friends goes to evidence our being completely inept, but somehow awesome at the same time. And since besides politics and how idiotic supply-side economic policy is, the thing we talk about most is boys and dating and how annoying it is that our facebook feeds are blowing up with weddings and babies, my adventure with online dating is a perfect addition to the haphazardly-constructed "mission" of this blog-that-no-one-reads.

She met a guy in a bar (our favorite bar) a couple weekends ago and has sense struck up a conversation over text message with him. I think texting is our generation's version of note-passing. The back and forth rarely has content or meaning, often times it's just to hold the attention of another person between weekends. This guy asked her out on a proper date, but they haven't nailed down an actual date yet. He's going away this weekend. He's a cop. And she can't quite remember what he looks like. When they are texting, we have a parallel conversation going on that is mostly made up of me encouraging her that she can, in fact, flirt via text message and giving (probably horrible) advice on how to send witty over 3G. At the same time, I'm lusting after an imaginary person to be the subject of overly specific and analytical conversations between friends. So, having had no luck finding said person (and I'm kidding about the analytical thing..sort of..), Match is the way to go, I hear. If you don't find "someone special" in 6 months, they give you SIX MONTHS FREE!! It's like I'm trying to date via late-night infomercial.

So, that's where I am. 24 hours in to my Match experiment. I sent two emails after two glasses of wine last night. Because liquid courage isn't just for in-person flirting anymore.

Goat Cheese Round 2 & Home

My second batch of goat cheese is decidedly better than round one. I let it drain for a lot longer than the first batch (probably too long) so much more of the moisture was gone when I went to fold in the flavor I'd chosen (honey). It is a denser, more flavorful cheese but was difficult to work with because of how dry it was. I actually forgot about it overnight, so I think I'll maybe just do a 6 or 7 hour draining time, rather than the suggested 2 hours. It was also less cheese in volume, so that was probably a bit to do with the time difference. Regardless, this is definitely the Christmas present of choice for family and friends at this point. So, get ready.

Tomorrow evening, I'm heading home for a fall weekend in Rhode Island. I would go into more detail about all the excellent things I have planned for it, but I have to spend that time writing the talk I'm giving to a bunch of government and science students.... on science policy and the importance of cross-community-communication. All when Herman Cain is saying he hasn't "seen the science" on sexual orientation. Yikes.

The Key Fairy (continued)

The owner of the aforementioned set of keys was a guy. Said guy was not only super cute, but he had a super cute dog and bought me a Starbucks gift card to thank me for retrieving and returning his keys. People are quite awesome sometimes.

The Key Fairy

So yesterday while I was bikesharing to work, it started to rain so I hopped off early and parked my bike at 14th and R so I could walk the rest of the way with an umbrella. I discovered a set of keys that someone had lost, so I called Capital Bikeshare and reported the key number. I gave them my phone number and they emailed the owner. The owner texted me, and we'll meet tomorrow morning so I can return the keys to them. Gotta love Bikeshare. There is now a bet in my office about the gender of the owner.

 Yoga studio tag, budlight bottle opener, and a bikeshare key on a simple ring. I guess dude. My colleague doesn't think dudes do yoga. We shall see.