We are at war

I wish I had the ability to draw and then the technology to post what I vision. We are at war. Perhaps someone reading this thinks I am talking about current events in the news...and well yes, they are part of it what I am about to go on about. I am currently of the mind that we (colonizers, benefactors of "conquest") never disengaged from war. And I despair that our habits are irreversible. The word "natural" is completely embedded into our psyche and taken as the normal, however it is propaganda. What drives me even further into despair is the long heritage and ongoing creation of literature that outlines how "we" have benefited and continue to benefit from the 'spoils of war'...there was no fucking war to freaking spoil from! But does it matter anymore?
I hear stories about how people are fed up with the "other". Such addages such as "why am I being punished for what happened in the past?" or "what if they had colonized us?" or "It's just a ploy to get more money, besides show me what advantages I have because life hasn't been fair to me and you don't see me blockading roads"...The past isn't over, behaviours and treatments and legalities are still being re-inacted today. Locally you can see how roads are built through reserves, not because of shorter routes but because it doesn't cost as much to build through a reserve as it does to create a more direct route. Just for starters...
What if they had colonized us? Seriously? Nice deflection and as if we were really in threat of that....keeps someone from having to deal with their own complicity of what is happening.
How about that there is only two official languages in Canada and they both happen to be the languages of the colonizers. Okay someone will get pissed and say i have to learn yet another language? Okay, well perhaps I should approach it this way...what if they had colonized us? That means the english language could only be spoken at home but if we want groceries, work, or even to see a t.v. show displaying our culture well forget it, assimilate cause when we got to this piece of land you didn't exist or you were expected to die QUICKLY...oh crap you didn't? Oh well, learn the language like the rest of us. Seriously???
I remember someone saying, they always complain about the drunk indians at bingo, but have you walked into a bar or pub or bingo hall lately? How many Indians do you see? How many white guys do you see? And yet we have a native problem????
It is tough to combat or converse with people who have it set in their mind that there isn't a problem and that people have to get over the past and move on...but the practices of the past are continually being enacted out today...
There is a plethora of academic peer reviewed information to attest to that...but somehow the history written by the white guy and upheld by the white guy through the white system seems to hold up.
And I despair because people, a large proportion people think this is normal??
They think individualism and capitalism is normal...if it is the way we are meant to be why are we so miserable and so alone?
Why are continually medicated and sad?? Is that suppose to be someone's idea of natural? And what is natural? Because so far I haven't seen anything that constitutes natural. Even as I look out my window everything has been cultivated and chosen and selected....
Maybe if I work hard enough I can effect change in my circle...and hopefully that will ripple out?? Well, maybe my way of beginning to give back is to share what I read. An integral beginning would be Peggy McIntosh. I know it makes for a longer read...and isn't that funny people are hurt because we don't want to take the time...

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"

Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."

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Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

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Elusive and fugitive

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.

For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.

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Earned strength, unearned power

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

Four wheels and steering wheel...

I have never in my life actively pursued the idea of being a car owner...until now. My budget is limited, so I know it will be a junker. And I have kept my eye open for those wonderful signs stating the owner of the car wants to sell. Some of the prices look reasonable. Again, know NOTHING about cars. I think I am would be happy with relatively decent gas mileage, and the ability to go forward backward and turn...however I know a car needs to be more than that. I can feel winter starting to bear down on me and the realization that if i don't get a vehicle into the house soon, life could become difficult, really difficult. Of course like most things in my life I would find a way to cope...honestly I am tired of coping.
So, slowly but surely I am perusing car lots. Oh, how i would love a new car...but at 300/mos, well that ain't happening...come on realistically? And I am afraid to walk to the back of the lot where they keep their used cars for probably way less a month. So I keep watching cars with "for sale" signs whizz by me...trying desperately to see what the price tag is and thinking he the faster it goes with the least amount of noise must be a good sign that the car isn't a complete loss?!?!?!?!
I thought working on campus would be a great way to find a car that runs for cheap...however, I did not factor in the summer...and that NO ONE comes to the campus in the summer thus no one advertises selling their junker in the summer.

Hmm, I remember when i was in A.A. some rich ex-drunk had handed over the keys to his spare vehicle to one of the guys in the group and said, "here you go, no strings and remember to always wear your seatbelt". The man who got the keys had reached two years of sobriety and he had expressed that finally he felt safe to drive again on the streets, but he had no car and a shitty job that would not pay enough to save for a car. I am thinking I should go back to the meetings...(i am such a doof)
Knowing that I can't go do some act at an A.A. meeting I surf the net...okay seriously with this much technology we can't find websites that give a prospective buyer as much information about a car as possible...seriously? Does it need to be this confusing in this day and age?
I wonder if I plant my one my hotwheels in the ground it will grow into a BIG working Hotwheel? If you're looking for I am planting my toy box full of hotwheels out in the back yard!

Public Children...

I will happily admit that children are cute. They even add a certain kind of joy to my life. I get a kick out ankle biters and they provide me with no end of mirth, even when they are going through a crisis I have a good chuckle. Kids are great, and I think those adults who are relatively well adjusted should have LOTS of kids.
Where I draw the line on children is at restaurants, supermarkets, clothing stores and movie theatres (many various public places, except parks and lakes and play land type places). Here is my line...I feel if a child is properly reared they can be brought out into public, however, if their little lungs and touchy feely fingers and free running chubby legs cannot be kept in check, the little buggers should be locked up!! Okay, so I got a little carried away there, although in the end it is the way I feel. I have heard the argument that parents need to be out and about, do errands, enjoy food not cooked at home and see the latest blockbuster...that they shouldn't be punished for having children. I agree 100%, come on out and have some chicken a la king, and see superman returns, and get those bananas. However, if junior is a screamer, a toucher, a runner...junior stays home, or gets heavily sedated before you leave the premises.
I know parents have the capacity to teach their children to use their normal voice, to sit still, to keep the hands to thy self. I have witnessed it numerous times and even applauded it because that has to be a hard task to figure out how to bring the child out into public, maintain respectibility and still have it so the child also will enjoy thee outing.
This I know. Children should be fed...not chips, not chocolate bars...but proper veggies and whole grains and meats...because when kids get hungry or lack proper nutrition, they show it...READILY. In addition, parents should come armed with crayons and mini puzzles or books. Just some things I know.
I recently went to a movie...and inside I died a little when I saw two groups of parents come in with children who were under the age of five. I sunk in my seat and wondered how much of the movie would be wasted on the sounds of screaming, incessant LOUD questioning, running up and down the aisle. And here is what I saw...One family, pulled out carrots and celery and sat with a magazine with their kid until the movie started...they leaned in and whispered talking, long before the movie started!! How wonderful and delightful. The other parents got a high seat for their child and had a book and crayons...OMG I was so delighted. Although, I knew the movie was going to be long and kids are short on patience...rightly so...but to my amazement the kids sat, they whispered and when they needed to get up and walk, they leaned into their parent and both members queitly exited and re-entered. I got to enjoy the movie wholeheartedly and my experience was enhanced knowing that there are still responsible parents in the universe!!
Of course everytime I see a child in public I inwardly think he/she is giving the middle finger to those of us who wish not to hear a tantrum or see snot on our bananas...and once and a while a parent proves me wrong and presents a kid who can still enjoy the world with his/her young senses and not disturb my aging senses.
Okay you can now persecute me for being cantankerous!

clever...bad

Well, I am attempting to get back into my creative spirit. I have always found that when I get back to my writing I am more balanced and I believe in myself more. So, in "White Studies" I became slightly inspired...and scribbled. I really need a notebook on a string...one that goes around my neck...but it needs to be small and manageable, not like some clunky thing that is obvious and obnoxious...maybe that isn't what I need, but I know that I would write more if I had a more effective way of writing then trying to search around in my bag for a book or a paper to write...if my space for writing was accessible the moment inspiratin popped into my head...if there are any suggestions out there let me know.

Okay, words...

"one thing led ot another, small strings attached to another, tied into a web" <--cliche

"Strange mother you found my words/peeled them back/ my lined paper/ and ripped out all of the letters/ I was left with words"

Some people have seen my Strange Mother work before...I actually have an extensive Strange Mother work...I am hoping if enough of what is in me will squeeze out onto pages perhaps the actualization of becoming published will happen.

Keep squeezing sugar.

Allergic

I think I am allergic to cloudy days.
Now, vaguely I am serious and yet not really. However, today is cloudy and my eyes are weepy and my nose is slightly runny and I feel bloated (the bloated feeling is attributed to my sex though...not allergies).
I wish there was such a thing as being allefic to cloudy days. Wait there is...S.A.D. Seasonal Affect Disorder or something like that.
I often speculate that somehow I am one of the many who, if for prolonged peroids left out of the sun become sad. Of course two days of cloudiness does not make a sad She. I am just currently being goofy. More than likely I had a rough night last night and my body is attempting to repair.
However, in the winter the valley becomes a place of doom and gloom. Constantly the skies are overcast and when we get snow it quickly goes from white to grey. The valley traps the clouds and refuses to let go of them all winter long...probably because the valley is recovering from the pain of an excrutiatingly bright summer, the land is completely scorched by the time September ends and desires the long sleeved cloud cover of winter.
Enevitably, I begin to feel the effects of no sun during the winter. Depression comes more readily and I find myself seeking sources of reported happiness...Vitamin D, St. John's Wort and a visit to a tanning booth to stave off any gloom and doom. Invariably finals show up and essays which I am not prepared for and all my happy feelings get squished out of me like a pimple gets squished of the face of a thirteen year hold hopelessly fighting off the effects of puberty. I go splat on the bathroom mirror of desperation and despair and land into depression.
The saving grace is summer. Ah glorious summer and all it's sunshine! All that sunshine that lends itself to complaints and longing for winter where everyone expresses the sentiment that at least in winter you can dress up in layers and turn on the heat in order to regulate comfort levels...whereas in the summer naked in a tub of ice is about as close to comfort as one can get...and that normally never works out.
So back to my allergy and clouds..my eyes won't stop weeping and my nose won't stop dripping and I wonder if I have late onset allergies? or if this is what it feels like for a person with allergies?
There is nothing wrong with me...

I am so ashamed...

Okay, the pussycat dolls...really? Like what fat old white rich male's fantasy just came true? Holy crap...and only one of them can sing...and yet...gawd...and I hate myself so much for this...but I actually like the "buttons" song. WHY??!?!

Anything I have been lately...

The sky is cut today. A great swath of a storm cloud has decidely come right up the valley...do better than nestling between the mountains, in fact stream ling through. In a great show there seems to be something ominous. Although, isn't anything that changes the landscape seem ominous? For over two weeks it has been nothing but clear skies and incredible heat and warmth. And for one abrupt day a dark cloud moves in.
I find myself currently with little to do, which means I could be reading..I'm not.
I'm tired.
And I am remembering...the past.
So many different faces are coming up at me...I actually found myself missing an old roomate. There was something about her personality that really enchanted me. I remember that even though she hated herself so completely that people still followed her and wanted her "coolness". I don't think anyone ever wanted to be her...however, her personality, her easy laugh, her sense of human character, all very amazing qualities. And when she would push any of us away, we would be completely confused and yet she thought that we wanted release from her.
Of course, her and I haven't spoken for years. And I am not sure how I would feel about coming to face with her now. The event that broke our friendship is completely long and buried now...not even something that can be resurrected...I learned my lesson, so it isn't something she could do to me again, because I know better.
Friendship is a wierd thing for me.
I was walking home yesterday and I thought about how I changed from a fully social person to a recluse. How now I find joy in not mingling...the thought of large groups scares me now, makes me nauseous. The thought of people I don't know and people who do me...upsetting.
Somehow when Jaidan died, I became uncertain and unwilling.
Of course Belva, I do desire a good Ya-Ya shaking...and yet...
So, the prospect of the requirments of my M.A. isn't too entirely enticing. I have to liason with the community. Means people...lots of people...and no comfort of familiar places...ie home.
Surely I will do it. Of course I will.
Since I was concieved I have been going forth and forward...slips, trips and uphill climbs as a wise friend puts it.
I am thankful for the friends who are with me now. They are few, but they are solid...and they love me even when I am not present. And truly they all have been so incredibly patient with me. And because of them I find myself more easily able to let go and to give unconditionally.
Of course in the end, I miss my brother so much...I am continually amazed that I am here and he is not. I am amazed how his death changed my life, forced me to say to my mother that she is no longer allowed to be part of my life and I no longer desire to be part of hers. Amazed at how his death freed me to say to my sisters that God won't save me anytime soon, so we best go our own way....
Amazed at how the cloud can cut the sky, darkly.

Transit...Why?

I am all for environmentally, public funded types of transportation. Taking the bus doesn't really bother me. In fact, I support it 100%. And when I get to go to the large urban centres, I can fully appreciate how the public transit system operates and services the needs of large quantities of ungreatful, grumbly, pisswads, in the hopes there will be at one smiley person a day who says "thankyou".
However, I am in my mid-sized urban centre, where the bus runs more frequently than busses run in my previous city I lived in. Although, it isn't much of a consolation, when one doesn't know if they will be early, on-time, or late...without much of an apology...or the possible chance of a grumble, because everyone knows it is the passengers fault.
Okay, so the job of bus-driver...not glamorous...although well-paid, and at regular hours. Why is it that the city always manages to hire more unfriendly people to drive their busses then the friendly compassionate drivers??
I don't know how many times I have seen elderly rushed onto or off the bus, stops missed and the poor elderly person with their walker or wheel chair forced to hoof it further than their hip replacement was ever meant to go...no apology.
I don't know how many times I have seen a troupe of disabled and mentally dysfunctional people suffer abuse from bus drivers who don't have the patience for buckling in those with wheelchairs or helping the aids assist the handicapped into a safe passenger position.
How many times I have seen a bus pull away from a main stop three minutes before it is scheduled to leave and the driver won't stop for those people who are RUNNING to catch the bus that is leaving EARLY!
Okay, so there are the occasional gems who warm my heart and assure me that not all is lost...the dark side hasn't completely consumed the public service.
Although, the U-Pass may or may not assist in some very important changes. For one, it will save me 77 dollars...that I spent this month on a mother flipping bus pass.
Hmm, so student union office isn't open everyday...only select days, and it is more of a guessing games as to when it is open or not...and well students are suppose to get their passes from there. So I missed the day it is open and I figured I would toddle off to Shopper's Drug Mart to get my beloved month pass. I said I was a student showed my "graduate" UBC student ID. And the teller sold me a student bus pass. Yes it looked different than the ones I usually sport, however, I figured the teller would know better than me and sold me the appropriate pass considering my identification and all. So, July 1st rolls around, and I want to have a leisurely day down at the farmers market checking out fresh produce...I get my spanky new bus pass and hop the bus. I got lucky, I got the asshole driver, he is a consumate jerk, who drives erractically and the only rush he is concerned about is the one that gets him closer to a Tim Horton's, for which he makes no apology if the lines up are long and his passengers miss connections because of his need for Timmys! Oh I sink when I see him. And I sunk when I saw him July 1st, but wow did he come to life with the prospect of kicking me off the bus, when he saw my student bus pass. Turns out my student bus pass is only if you are in highschool...not university. Slowly but surely I talked my way through it and he let me stay on. I went straight to Shoppers to exchange the pass and pay the difference.
Well...ya...no you can't do that....Shoppers can't do that, I have to go to City Hall and do that...Shoppers doesn't do refunds or exchanges. I complained full heartedly and ended up needing a regular pass since well the bus is my life line currently in this urban sprawl HELL...OH MY GOD, did I end up hating my mid sized urban centre July 1st? YES!!!
So, I tried in my best imitation of calm and collected to point out to the manager that if an establishment is selling an item to a consumer they need to be clear on what they are selling and policy around the item sold. They need to relay that to ALL their staff, so the staff can relay that too the consumer. That way 77dollars can be saved in trying to find fucking transportation!
However, the reply was, that I should have known...that it isn't there fault and it is my responsibility...grrr...
Lesson learned? On many levels yes. So, saving up for a car now!