Stonewall's prediction for the Obama/McCain contest.

The following is at the request of Stonewall. He would like me to let the record show that he has a theory about the US presidential elections. He believes that, come November, Barack Obama will win by a landslide and that it won't even be close. And that any suggestion by the media that this will be a close contest is an attempt to boost their ratings by creating drama and suspense. Stonewall believes that in November, people will be shocked at how easily and by how wide a margin Obama defeats McCain.

Let's say I'm not so optimistic. But Stonewall insists that I put this theory in writing, so that in November when he's proved right, he will be able to point to this and show how astute he's always been. Here's hoping he's right.

Political statements on So You Think You Can Dance

Someone else must've seen that. I turned on So You Think You Can Dance, and what should I see. The guy who just danced disco (Gev), during the rehearsal segment, was wearing a t-shirt with an emblem of one of the famous Abu Ghraib photos, the one with the hooded man standing with his arms slightly apart. And across the front of the hooded man's silhouette was a stained American flag. I'm sure it was a deliberate statement on his part. Now I just wonder how or if people will react.

Thoughts on fears almost forgotten

I decided to break out my iPod on the subway today, tuning into the podcast NPR Driveway Moments. I don't know how long this particular radio story had been languishing on my iPod, but I am glad that I finally got around to it. It's long, almost 25 minutes I think, but completely engaging.

The host asks him whether he was afraid of dying, and while he did say that he really did not want to leave this life, he said that he wasn't afraid. All of the things that people worry about when they think about death--feeling pain, being alone, being afraid--he said that he didn't occupy himself with those thoughts.

I found myself thinking a lot about my father and about when he was sick a few years ago. There is a world of difference between how Gottlieb feels confronting the possibility of death, and how I felt confronting the possibility of my father's death. Thankfully, in the end, he was fine, and he's healthy and strong as an ox today. But at the time, all I felt was pure, unfiltered terror. We knew that something was wrong, but no doctor seemed to be able to tell us exactly what it was. But the options that they threw around, like lung cancer, were terrifying.

Maybe it's always different for the ones who face the prospect of being left behind. My father, with his very strong personality and just with his presence, he's always been at the center of things. I could not imagine how we could begin to function without him. Any time that I allowed myself to think to the future, my imagination would shut down. It was unimaginable. And with every test they did, trying to diagnose, it felt like I was walking on thin ice. I was always afraid that the next step I took--the next test they did--would be the one where it all fell apart.

I wonder if this sounds selfish. In the middle of drafting this entry, my laptop completely crashed and I considered the possibility that it was a sign, that I shouldn't write this entry because it's too self-absorbed. I'm going to stop here.

Some thoughts on a historic night.

It was a long day at work, and I'm just wrapping it up now. I watched Hillary and Barack give their speeches tonight, and my Washington Post news alert in my email inbox confirms it: Barack did it. The nomination is his. I'm almost too tired to process this, and I'm exhausted just thinking about the months ahead. How many times we're going to rehash the same-old-same-old nonsense, about Jeremiah Wright and flag lapel pins and such. And how every step he takes will be analyzed and picked apart endlessly.

Every time I hear him give a speech, I'm on pins and needles -- and not just because I'm moved by his words. It's because I'm waiting for him to slip, waiting for a careless moment or for the words he will say that will be twisted by everyone who's also waiting for him to slip (but not with my same motivations). While all the candidates will face the scorching light of public scrutiny, I have no doubt that Obama will have to overcome the low expectations and serious misgivings of people who still view him with suspicion -- because he is a black man.

I worry that the ones waiting for him to fail are not just in the Republican camp. I worry about all the bitter (yeah, I said it -- "bitter") Hillary supporters who are angry that she's not the nominee. Are they really going to defect to McCain? What the hell is that about? Then what were they supporting in the first place? I understand that you can become invested in a candidate and feel deeply disappointed if they're not nominated. But seriously?

And a side note about the "inadequate" comment. This is the way it is going to go. Many people will assume first that he is "inadequate," and his burden -- before he can even begin to speak about the skills that make him a worthy and fully qualified candidate -- will be to prove that he is at least "adequate." For too many, there is no assumption of even basic capabilities on his part. This story is not at all new. In school, my brother (a young black male) has always had to prove that he was minimally capable before a teacher could even begin to see that he is exceptional, and some teachers never got that far. I remember in middle school having teachers who would enthusiastically congratulate me and my parents on the frankly average work that I was doing, and my parents -- already suspicious -- would point out that I was not being pushed to do any better. Maybe this is a digression, but these are the memories that come to mind when I hear people dismiss him as an under-qualified candidate or commend him for being ... "articulate."

But back to tonight's news. A few months ago, when I was seriously contemplating the possibility of a Clinton nomination, I knew that I would vote for her in a general election. That was never the question. But much as I will when I vote for Obama in November, I knew that I would have some serious reservations and that I would want to make those reservations known. But again, it was never, ever, a question of switching to McCain out of misguided anger. So I hope we can get it together before November.

How many more months?!

LOST was AMAZING tonight. I was in a trance for hours.

Some thoughts and questions:

• Sun and Jin have always been my favorites, and I have argued endlessly about whether he was dead or still alive on the island. The scene where the freighter blew up broke my heart
  
• I totally called who was in the casket! I knew all along that it was Locke! Although the events of this season did cause me to reconsider my initial guess, and I did think that is was Michael/Kevin for a while. So maybe not "all along."
  
• So they all have to go back to the island. Does that include Desmond? And now that Sun is supposedly in league with Widmore, how will that play out? Will she refuse to go with them and state her allegiance publicly? Or will she play along and then betray them?
• WHY do they have to go back to the island? Did their departure trigger some sort of cosmic rupture?
  
• What happened to Farraday and the others who were on that life raft on the way back to the freighter?
• What happened to the island? Where did it go?! And what happened after they left that was so bad that it sent Locke on a mission to the mainland?
• I think Kate is going to be convinced to take Aaron back to the island. She looked over him sleeping and said, "I'm sorry." That must mean that she's decided to do something that she thinks might not be in his best interest.

Amazing. And when does season five start? Not soon enough.

That's not a bomb she's hiding.

This is interesting.

MADRID: When she was appointed Spain's first female defense minister in April, the aspect of Carmé Chacón that drew the most public attention was not her gender, nor her rapid rise through the ranks of the governing Socialist party, but her prominent prenatal bump.

Chacón, who began leave Tuesday after giving birth to a boy, became an instant symbol of the Socialist government's commitment to gender parity in Spain, a traditionally macho society whose new equality laws are among the most progressive in Europe.

I don't know much about Spanish politics, but I can certainly buy the argument that this is a symbolic gesture meant to force a rethinking of what the military means or to signal a shift in the identity of the military. While I do have some hesitation about swallowing the idea of a pregnant woman being reduced only to her symbolic value as the creator of life, I can appreciate the effort to juxtapose concepts that we don't normally associate with each other. It also makes us question how we understand ideas of manliness and womanliness.

Women who have risen to positions of power elsewhere have assumed the mantle of "macho," whether they contribute to that image or not. In order to even attain that position, they certainly have to exhibit characteristics often associated with being a man: assertiveness, aggressiveness, confidence, independence. And here we have a woman who has presumably done all that, and she occupies one of the most typically aggressive positions in government -- but the fact that she is a woman is inescapable. Her baby bump is showing.

And this:

However, José Conde, president of the Association of Spanish Soldiers, a group composed mainly of retired military personnel, called the appointment of "a Catalan, pregnant, woman" an "insult" to the army. Catalonia, the semi-autonomous region where Chacón grew up, is viewed by conservatives as an enclave of anti-Spanish sentiment.

Which part is the "insult"? Catalan? Pregnant? Woman? All of the above? I think some people are feeling the itch of cognitive dissonance.

A love story.

Sometimes, I am overcome by the strength of my affection for Charlie. There are peaceful moments, when we sit together in silence. I am at the kitchen table, holding a cup of hot coffee between my hands, and he looks over at me with sleepy eyes and a handsome face. I remember all the times we've fallen asleep together watching TV, or the times he's waiting for me when I come home from work. Absentmindedly, I reach over and stroke his hair.

And then, this. In one moment, he's changed, and he turns his head to gnaw on my wrist, sinking his sharp teeth in and clawing at my arms. That's when I remember that he's a cat, and therefore a predator. If our roles were reversed, and he was my size and I was his size -- he would kill me. Without hesitation.

And then, just as quickly, he's ignoring me.

Eyes like a hawk.

I am currently in love with the song "No Air" with Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. But check out the video about 4min20sec in -- Jordin's nose ring switches sides!

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on me.

You can't be neutral.

I just finished watching You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the biographical documentary about the life and ideas of Howard Zinn. It has inspired me to re-read A People's History of the United States... sometime very soon. My reading list has ballooned to a daunting number, so I might need to re-shuffle the order and move it closer to the top.

My first encounter with Howard Zinn was as a sophomore in high school. My US history teacher used A People's History as the basis for our entire year of instruction -- which in retrospect takes on more meaning for me than it did at the time. I was young enough not to understand that the picture of US history that my teacher was laying out for me was not the generally accepted standard in most textbooks. I may have had some grasp of the fact that it was the first time I was hearing a history that placed women, Black people, Indians, workers in the center of the picture.

But I am very thankful to my history teacher, and maybe to my own naivete. Because this understanding of history was laid as a foundation, and I didn't understand it to be "alternative." And the absences in many other versions of US history that I have encountered since then have seemed glaring and sometimes ridiculous. And dangerous, in that they deceive people into believing that the intentions and actions of US governments have always been honorable, which make it impossible for us to see the follies and abuses that are entirely too commonplace.

I was very sad to see that Roslyn Zinn passed away recently. This obituary describes her as the "unseen hand" in her husband's work, as I've noticed is often the case in such long marriages. They were married for more than sixty years.

Thinking about the election gets me really thinking.

Let me start off by saying that I have supported Barack Obama since the beginning of this whole election process. The first time I found out who he was -- with his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention -- I was intrigued. I kept tabs on him every now and then, and I read first his book Dreams from my Father and then The Audacity of Hope. (I was much more impressed by the former.) He has always been my preferred candidate, largely because I see something of myself in him and in his ideas. His foreign policy has been the clincher for me, especially when others were saying that he was "naive" or willing to speak to our "enemies." I saw someone who looked at the rest of the world and understood the notion of a global community and the necessity of diplomacy. I identified with his international experience, and I was encouraged by it. I identified with him as an internationalist, which is not a four-letter word.

And these ideas are basic. These should be fundamentals.

I didn't see that in Hillary Clinton. So I chose Obama as an alternative. I've been thinking about that choice a lot lately. It is decidedly not that I determined that racism was a worse cross to bear than sexism. In conversations with other Obama supporters, I have sometimes been the one to say "not-cool" when it comes to sexist and totally unnecessary comments about Clinton.

I am a feminist. Now that it seems more and more that Clinton will be bowing out, there is a part of me that is disappointed. But I have not identified with the feminism that seems to be solely concerned with "breaking the glass ceiling." For feminism to mean anything, we need to broaden the definition. For example, the feminism I believe would look at the war in Iraq, the situation for women, the role that US militarism and occupation has played in creating this situation -- and address that as a feminist issue. I have been heartened to find places and learn from people who are insisting on a feminism that means more.

I'm not at all dismissing the "glass ceiling." Because of some lucky choices that I made and the organizations I have been able to work for, I have rarely felt held back because of my race or because of my gender. But narrow and exclusionary definitions of feminism have put a bitter taste in my mouth regarding the Clinton campaign.