The book I’m editing this week is about bullying in our schools and how to avoid it. The radio I’m listening to this week is NPR talk radio and it’s talking about politics. Suddenly I’m hit by the confluence of the two.

Politicians are bullying the public.

Here’s a definition of a bully, quoted from my book:

Bullying occurs when one or more individuals (bullies) impose their power (physical, social, and/or intellectual) over one or more individuals (victims/targets) with the intent to gain control over, to embarrass, or to inflict harm or discomfort. Over time, bullies repeatedly pick on victims (Olweus, 1993). Three primary elements distinguish teasing from bullying: (a) imbalance of power, (b) personal pain (physical, emotional, or social), and (c) persistence over time. In summary, bullies attempt to gain power or control over victims; bullies cause pain either physically, emotionally, or socially; and bullies persist in these attempts.

Now try substituting “political parties” for the word bully—and what do you have:

Bullying occurs when one or more politicial parties impose their power … over one or more individuals with the intend to gain control over, to embarras, or to inflict harm or discomfort.

This isn’t a perfect correlation, but I submit that’s mostly because they embarrass themselves more than they embarrass the average citizen. But the rest of it? It holds. For both political parties, I might add, but mostly for the Republican Party (because that’s the way I’m wired, though I’m trying to be kind of objective here).

Political parties definitely have more power than individual people, and they want to gain control over our votes, our money, our lives (“Vote for me!” “Send a donation!” “You’re not allowed to [fill in the blank].” (My mind fills in “be gay,” “have an abortion,” but you could also fill that in with words of your choice. I’m not trying to make this about Republicans and Democrats, but about our political process.)

But what about the “intent to harm or discomfort”? I think they definitely intend to do just that, under the guise of “knowing what’s right for us.” I’m NOT advocating anarchy, but at the same time, I think greed and fear of change are driving our political parties to say and do things that are not in our best interests. They need to go back to their roots and get their power FROM the people, not OVER the people.

Part of me says, “Those are just words, spun so that they confuse us.” (I admit to being easily confused, even going so far as to confuse myself.) But let’s look at the rest of the quote: “(Political parties) attempt to gain power or control over victims; bullies cause pain either physically, emotionally, or socially; and bullies persist in these attempts.”

Who could argue with that? That’s exactly what politicial parties do.

I don’t know what to do with this revelation that political parties are bullies. I suspect the answer is that we need to rise up as a group and do something about the bully, without becoming bullies ourselves (and therein lies the problem). But running away from a bully only makes him stronger.

There–do with it what you will, but this is what’s on my mind today.

Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

McMurtry’s books have never disappointed me. I picked up this and another, ‘Buffalo Girls’, at a flea market last month, without any sense of when they’d been written, and simply tucked into them one after the other. They were a well-chosen pair, in that both novels are concerned with converting the histories of rather unpalatable people into characters in a story worth reading, but with greater honesty than the dime novels of the early 20th century.

In ‘Anything for Billy’, McMurtry’s narrator, Ben Sippy, is, himself, a dime novelist, and arguably the true protagonist of the tale McMurtry has spun from the real history of William Bonney. Sippy’s voice and vision, his sense and durability, and the depth of his own experience provide the narrative grist that allows detail, clarity and perspective in the telling of events. “Billy Bone”, himself, proves too simple and erratic to make sense of his own being. Billy’s other trail companion, Joe Lovelady, alternatively, is too steady and phlegmatic to lend his voice. Sippy’s story, however, arcs out of an escape from genteel circumstances in Philadelphia, to land, finally, on the west coast of southern California, the two coasts of the American continent being the only “parentheses” broad enough to encompass McMurtry’s West.

If this book interests you, I’d strongly recommend reading  this review by Jack Butler in the New York Times  back in 1988.

View all my reviews

This is a blog about what it’s like to live in rural Georgia. For a city girl, I might add. This is the first I’ve lived in a rural area, and there are parts of it that are thoroughly and awesomely beautiful and wonderful. And there are parts that are not. Today I’m concentrating on the not-so-thrilling parts because that’s the kind of mood I’m in. Now, if you grew up in a rural area, none of this is going to be all that difficult to deal with and you’ll consider the possibility that I’m a whiney citified sissy. Build a bridge and get over it. This is my blog and I’ll whine if I want to. (Alternatively, you could tell me that I’m here and might as well make the best of it—or, in other words, “Ann, build a bridge and get over it.” Words to live by.)

Distance. That’s the big thing. It’s so freaking far to anywhere. I grant you, it’s 25 or so miles to Wal-Mart. That is an extremely good thing, except when I need kitty litter right this minute.  And 12 miles to the nearest grocery story (the “Baby Pig”) or 25 miles (the “Big Pig”) doesn’t sound so bad, until you consider it takes an hour or more to get a half-gallon of milk and a cup of sugar (and don’t even think the word organic). This requires that I must plan ahead and remember everything on my list. I can do these things, but I prefer to “wing it.” A doctor’s visit? Might as well take the whole day off. Fresh vegetables? Well, if you want “grown in China with unknown pesticides on them,” sure, they’re available. Otherwise, only in the freezer section of the Baby Pig. What it boils down to is choice—I have limited choices, and I don’t like any of them.  I could drive an hour to find what I want—but at what cost? Sure the lettuce is organic and fresh at the CSA in Savannah, but it would take a regular commitment to take how many hours out of my life, how many gallons of gas? It’s a trade-off I’m not willing to make, but I still miss having the choice.

People. I miss the diversity of people. The people in my neighborhood are, by and large, gracious, friendly, intelligent people—I just want more of them. I find the crush of humanity (within limits) to be reassuring, comforting. Sirens in the night are not something to be feared, they’re something to be grateful for (that we have rescue personnel who make it their life’s business to rescue those of us unfortunate enough to need them). Yes, more people means more crime and more “bad” people—but it also means more energy, more of a sense of being alive. Kind of like living through the Titanic disaster (the actual event, not the movie)—a bonding with those you have something in common with. And in a city, you can always find people with whom you have things in common. If today I want to wear frog pajamas in public, I can Google “frog pajamas” and find a support group  of like-minded people all ready to be my new, albeit temporary, friends. (Maybe not literally—I don’t own any frog pajamas—but I hope you get my drift. And if you don’t, well, I could find a group who does. If I were in a city, which I’m not.)

Bugs, spiders and snakes. Okay, I know there are bugs in cities—roaches and the like. But most of them don’t bite. I’m tired of bugs that bite, the smell of bug spray in the morning, itching all summer long, checking for ticks in my increasing number of nooks and crannies. I’m tired of looking out for spiders and snakes when I head outside to garden. I’m tired of paying an exterminator to come and poison all the critters than wander inside, and worrying about what those poisons do to me (but not worrying so much that I want to live with those same critters in my house). This does have a good side—the raccoon who has taken to visiting our back deck at about 6:30 every evening. I find he’s cute and adorable; Elliott sees a monster who chews nails, spits out roofing tiles, and is capable of creating a site of nuclear destruction in our attic. Balanced, we keep our distance and hope he keeps his.

And don’t even think about extolling the presumed  wonderfulness of Spanish moss. This is what it might look like to you, all romantic and wafty breezes:

And this is what it looks like to me, all smothery and scary,  killing the grass underneath when it falls. And where does it all come from, anyway?

Coffee bars and gyms. I miss going and sitting in a café where I don’t know anybody, just sipping my coffee and watching people, an anonymous woman of mystery (or so I like to pretend). I miss going to the gym to work out (and yeah, yeah, I know it’s gorgeous to run in my neighborhood). I just talked myself out of a triathlon because I have no place to train for a 1.5 mile swim, and I’m not young enough or stupid enough to think I can do that without training. Whine, whine, whine, I know. If these are the worst problems I can come up with, I’m pretty darn lucky. Which I am, and I know it. Privileged, one might even say.

Mostly trivial and superficial stuff, I accept that. But there’s that undefinable sense that some place is “home.” It’s been four years plus, and I haven’t found it here yet. I’m trying to make it home, but like a bulb forced to flower out of season, it’s a continual effort.

Whine, whine. See that half-constructed bridge over there? Rather than seeing it as a bridge to nowhere, maybe it’s a magical door to someplace called home. Maybe. I’m creeping my way towards it.

Here are two photos of my quilting room. One wall is a pair of double doors to the outside; another wall is open to Elliott’s computer room. The remaining two walls (each with a door) are my quilting spaces.

Beneath the card table are my bins full of fabric. Organized? Not hardly. I periodically go through and try to sort by color, but invariably come across stripes that are both blue and green–so which pile do I put in in? And florals? I’m lost.

The bookshelf on top of the card table is closed in this photo (to keep the cats out), but nine times out of ten, I leave it open and soon find a cat in the basket.

Shelves above my machine are on my dream list, as is something to keep all the fabrics sorted and organized. I have been known to buy fabric that’s perfect for a quilt border only to find the same fabric already in my bin. A memory would also help.

Oh, and a cutting table. It’s the kitchen counter. If nothing else, it makes me clean the counter every so often really, really well.