(no subject)

[rm]

The wonder of sleep, even not enough of it, is that it offers perspective. Last night, everything seemed very big and overwhelming. Today, it just seems big.

Although, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't freaked out about this trip. The part where I'm going to Cardiff to see Patty is grand. The part where I'm going to CH for work is expected. The part where Patty's going to visit me in CH is SuperExtraSpecial bonus. The part where all of this adds up to 5 weeks instead of 2 and change? IS FREAKING ME OUT.

I am, at heart, a homebody in certain ways. I love to travel because it's glamorous and interesting and because travel is hard and it makes you know yourself. So a bazillion weekends going on little adventures with Patty? Awesome. A few two week trips here and there? Fabulous. Big epic journeys? Kinda set off my control-freak buttons, but totally have their place. Yet, this trip has no clearly defined category and there's very little of it I'm in control of, and so I'm a bit weirded out.

This is, of course, compounded right now by being really artistically busy/productive (both in actuality and in the related to particular narrative matters of my existence playing in my head on the repeat loop of late) and the fact that fall, even as we're starting to edge into the cold crappy part of it (as opposed to the glorious October part of it), is my favorite season, not just in general, but in New York. I write about New York so much, but I don't always talk about the love. Not enough. This is my home and this is my lottery ticket. It leaves me more powerful than most people I know, and it too leaves me wanting and bereft. I talk a lot about my innate melancholia and romanticism; blame my city of decay.

Mostly, I am just a big bucket of oh, shit! about leaving here for five weeks. Does anyone remember if I did this before I went to Australia? Does anyone think that's remotely comparable in anything but duration? I think, maybe the biggest part of the problem is that I'm lacking a framework. Patty goes. I stay home.

I keep trying to tell myself it will be fine. It will, in fact, be good. A sort of hermitting stage -- I won't really have a social life in CH beyond the days Patty comes to visit, and I won't have a very excessive work schedule but for a handful of other days. That means I can be holed up with my laptop the rest of the time and sending files back and forth with the folks I'm doing collaborations with. I'll also be working on stuff for that screenplay competition, and I've not shortage of solo projects that need me. I'll also be flogging the hell out of the Kickstarter fundraising.

When I get to Cardiff, I can unplug for the Thanksgiving week where no one gets anything done anyway. Plus, Patty's better than any ol' city.

New York will survive without me; and Patty plus random Americans in Cardiff will survive my putting on an apron and attempting a feast. It'll all be great. Too bad I know there's really no talking me down about this. It's just going to be like this until it happens.

While I'm being neurotic, things are happening in the world:

First, the recue of the Chilean miners is underway. As of this writing the 13th man has just been brought up.

Yesterday, a "permanent injunction" was issued against DADT. The justice department can still appeal, and there's significant debate as to whether this should be handled by the courts or the Congress. Don't get me started about the bullshit our current political climate has been heaping on the Judiciary Branch. Anyway. Good-ish news. Strange times. Long-term outlook: crystal. Short-term outlook: motherfucking hazy.

Anti-gay New York politician Paladino's gay nephew speaks out; after Paladino referenced the guy's existence while trying to argue that he's not homophobic.

Women, equality, and France.

Stress, inflammation, disease, oppression and health.

Holy crap: 20-year-old half-Egyptian US-born citizen finds FBI tracking device in his car (yeah, really, the FBI showed up to get it back) and it turns out he's being tracked because his now-deceased father was an Muslim community activist. Not, cool, FBI. Not cool.

Hey, my friend Mirabai has been interviewed about her steno technology and philosophy at the Geek Feminism Blog. Read it. This is how you do an interview: concise storytelling, cadence-aware, enthused, invitational.

reannon links us to a good post and a lot of funny comments about crap people did (some of it really frigging stupid, some of it really normal) in their 1960s and 70s childhoods that would get parents the fuck arrested today, but wasn't _that_ outrageous then.

Many of you have no doubt heard of the guy running for Congress in Ohio who used to dress up like a Nazi soldier in WWII reenactments. I have a lot to say about this, because the topic is both complicated in general, because I'm a reenactor (in other periods), because I'm Jewish, and because, in this case it's actually really clear cut (and it's not always -- there are places and contexts in which I'd argue it can be a relevant, necessary choice if handled correctly) that this was entirely not the fuck appropriate. I've not found myself motivated yet.

Look, I haven't seen The Social Network yet, which means my opinion is sort of crap, but having worked for dot.com start-ups aplenty, let me tell you, there's basically no amount of misogyny that could be present in this film that would surprise me or that would make me blame the writers/producers/directors for its presence. I may be proved wrong, once I've seen it. But that world was/is ugly.

Comments

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

About the reenactment... maybe I'm anticipating your argument by going out on a limb and say yes, it is OK to dress up like a Nazi for some reenactment situations.

I thought about that in relation to a big reenactment issue here in Georgia: The Moore's Ford Lynching Reenactment. Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GCQi2jhre4. It's been done for several years, organized by African-American activists, to try and raise awareness of a lynching that many people have a vested interest in forgetting. A lot of (white) people HATE this reenactment and throw all sorts of arguments against it, even though they don't seem to muster up the same vitriol against Civil War reenactments...

But anyway, the first year of the lynching reenactment, the organizers couldn't get any white people to play the KKK lynchers. So the KKK roles had to be played by black people, which must have been pretty psychologically disturbing for the reenactors. The next year, the organizers sent out appeals into the social justice/peace activist community and found some white people (I think they're from the Quakers) to play the roles. One of them is shown in the video.

So I had that reenactment issue sort of in mind as I read up on the Nazi "Wiking" dude. And then I read the details, and oh man, they actually ADMIRED those Nazis and that's why they were doing it in the first place. There was no reason, no understanding of context, that some people would have a problem with this... it just seemed all-around disgusting, offensive, entitled, racist and anti-Semitic. The defenses are just pathetic.

So I wouldn't actually blanket condemn anyone for dressing up/reenacting if it seemed like they had a good reason for it. Like the KKK reenactors... that actually took a lot of courage and was done out of the best intentions and for a good goal. But those Wiking fuckers are just undefendable.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's super-interesting, thanks for the link. I didn't know about that.

And yeah. I've known a few people who have played Nazis in WWII reenactments that were about educating people about the horror of that war, and not about running around playing dress up. And it was serious, uncomfortable, solemn business for the folks, who were willing to take on filling the necessary Nazi roles.

But man, every year when it's "oh, look, Nazis" time at Dragon*Con in the bar, I am pretty unhappy (largely, because there is a fairly responsible core group of WWII reenactors who go to D*C, but when people show up in the bar in Nazi uniforms, no one comes out of that happy. Or shouldn't anyway).

This dude in Ohio, as you say, looks like it was even worse than "oh, pretty uniforms!" which is the usual level of assholery, you see. This was just... I still can't even quite get my head around this existence of that one.

[andrewducker]

Chatting to a friend of mine about this, and apparently there is a high level of uncomfortableness between the "Well, someone has to play the bad guys." Nazi reenactors and the "Woohoo! I'm an Ubergruppenfuhrer!" ones.

[rm.livejournal.com]

As there should be. But my argument is also that there's more than two groupings, but three:

1. This is hard and awful and important educationally, so I do as a historian an activist (i.e., like what azn_jack_fiend describes above).

2. "Someone has to play the bad guys," where the people involved are not overly bigoted and are trying to justify their fascination, but are not always as sensitive as they should be to people who are affected by this (i.e., wearing their fucking Nazi uniforms to the bar at a con).

3. The dirtbag from Ohio and his buddies.

[andrewducker]

Sounds about right to me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Er, also my originally comment should read "overtly" as opposed to "overly" -- all bigotry is too much.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

"...then I read the details, and oh man, they actually ADMIRED those Nazis and that's why they were doing it..."

I was afraid of that.

I mean, FFS, I'm German, and you'd have to do some pretty hard convincing about your motives to get me to participate in a reenactment that included Nazi officers (then again, my being German is probably part of the reason why). That's on top of all the skeevyness issues I already have with most historical "re-enactments", especially the ones that gloss over the not-pretty aspects of the period being re-enacted (RenFaires, I'm looking at you, never mind the historically wrong bits).

Then again, my Oma lived through the period in question, so I know from second-hand some of the psychological trauma that comes with being complicit in that shit.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Then again, my Oma lived through the period in question, so I know from second-hand some of the psychological trauma that comes with being complicit in that shit.

That trauma seems to get passed down. I didn't truly understand the concept of "Germany's National Shame" until I moved there in the late 80s. It was really hammered home by my schoolmates apologizing for WWII.

They ranged from 15 to 18. Not complicit, but they still felt responsible.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have a large number of German colleagues at my desk job, and it's, very strange. I never know how to engage it (I get both apologies and "What's it like to be Jewish?")

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

My family came here from Germany in 1908, I was brought up with very German sensibilities, and even lived in Germany for a year and a half, and I don't really know how to engage it, either.

Our exchange group had exactly one Jewish girl in it, and at quarterly gatherings, she would tell us about how weird everyone was towards her, as if it was a bad thing to even acknowledge that she was Jewish. She got so frustrated with her schoolmates at one point that she...didn't quite yell, but got pretty intense...that they didn't do it, they weren't responsible, they didn't owe her any apologies, and for the love of Pete, could they please stop dancing around her Jewishness, please ask her any question they wanted, and just treat her like every other student in the school, thank you very much?

She finished her exchange year with a lot less stress and awkwardness after that.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's... yeah.

And I'm hardly religious, but it is a key part of my cultural reality. And I also know from my travels elsewhere that the idea of secular Jews doesn't make sense everywhere (I met, for example, many conservative Jews in Australia, but no secular ones that I can recall), so people often ask me things I have no feelings or answers for. And while it's hideously uncomfortable to be addressed by Germans about Jewishness as a racial identity, since it's an ethnic identity for me more than a spiritual one... what am I gonna do? It's just WEIRD.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

"They ranged from 15 to 18. Not complicit, but they still felt responsible."

Some of that is that it's really hard to claim "we could never do such horrible things" when it's your own grandparents telling you the horrible things they did or experienced.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

I can see where it would be really difficult to get your head around the idea of your Opa being involved in that. It's just not how we think about our grandparents.

My Politics teacher engaged in a very interesting experiment to show us how easy it was for people to get swept up. (It's a long story, but I'll tell it if you want me to.) It shocked the hell out of me for its effectiveness, but my classmates...I think it broke their hearts. The difference in their reactions vs. my reaction was astonishing to me.

(Geez, I've been back home for 22 years, and I STILL learn things from my exchange.)

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Both of my grandmothers were off full German ancestry. Their grandparents were the immigrants and came over in the late 19th/early 20th c. By the time WWII rolled around they'd been here 30+ years.

But, one of the reasons I've not done any research into those sides of the family is that I know we still have distant German relatives and I really don't want to find out I've got relatives who were Nazis.

Our German ancestry was mentioned more as a footnote and not made much of. We're more likely to attend Celtic gatherings (our Scottish boat people on both sides arrived before the Rev War) than Oktoberfests and Polka Parties, even though my German ancestry is much more recent.

I think it is directly linked to the horrors of both the World Wars. (I seem to remember a lot of midwestern German newspapers going out of business during WWI because of the anti-German sentiment.) And even though I'm far removed I still feel a little bit guilty because I've got German ancestry.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

But, one of the reasons I've not done any research into those sides of the family is that I know we still have distant German relatives and I really don't want to find out I've got relatives who were Nazis.

Heh. It was an open family secret that we had people on both sides of the firing lines. I met a couple of my distant cousins while I lived in Germany. They had both fought in the war (infantrymen), and had both held NSDAP membership, and they had both explained that you were either a member, or you were dead. They were pretty matter-of-fact about their experiences. Things were Just That Way, they said.

It was very hard to confront this part of my family history, very upsetting, but I don't regret it. I needed to know. And now I do.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone from Austria, the thing is that the discussion is still ongoing. Here especially things were conveniently swept under the carpet after the war, repressed, forgotten, Austria was also a victim after all; parents didn't talk to their children, children on the whole didn't ask. In Austria the discussion only really started in the 80ies and 90ies with the generation of the grandchildren, and it was only in 1991 that our chancellor apologised for the part Austria and Austrians played in the holocaust.

As I understand it, things were a bit different in Germany, but even there there still was a huge controversy over the exhibitions about the crimes of the Wehrmacht in the 90ies.

The situation is changing, though. Since the end of the 90ies there's an increasing amount of defensiveness or even anger, and people essentially saying that everyone should already get over it already, which is all kinds of problematic in entirely different ways.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Germany (in '87 and '88), the discussion was only just then getting serious and being brought into schools. And I never did figure out if it was harder for my teachers or harder for my classmates. It definitely wreaked havoc on my first host family's nerves. They were deeply ashamed of their own HJ memberships.

I'm sure my presence in the classroom - and the knowledge of my family history - did not make things any easier for either of them. Certainly my teachers were...I don't want to say antagonistic, because that isn't quite right, but my Politics teacher especially had the attitude of "Say something. I double dog dare you." My classmates were deeply, deeply uncomfortable with all of it, and were terribly scandalized that I took it upon myself to visit KZs. (Even knowing why I was visiting.)

Since the end of the 90ies there's an increasing amount of defensiveness or even anger, and people essentially saying that everyone should already get over it already, which is all kinds of problematic in entirely different ways.

There was some of this sentiment amongst many of my classmates. I'm sure most of it stemmed from their deep discomfort regarding the subject. We did talk at the time about the difference between letting go of guilt that they did not earn themselves and pretending that it just didn't matter any more. Those were hard, hard discussions.