When Occupation Is Therapy, Talk Is Not Cheap

I HAVE NEVER been fond of protests. I was inculcated into lefty protest culture at a young age, and it seemed to mean belonging to a marginal subgroup yelling irrelevantly, much like when I had to go to Lakers games and root against the Lakers.

I did not expect, then, that my heart would warm to the Occupy movement as it has. Here in Oakland things have gotten out of hand every possible way, and the local news is often painful. But I also got to watch news chopper footage of the Port with an ant swarm of Oaklanders, publicly agreeing on something quite important. Precisely what that thing is I can't say any more than they can, and I think that is fine. Not everything is articulable, after all.

The agendalessness criticism not only misses but subverts the point. Why must it always be anti-government nuts and right wing media screamers who get to be generally aggrieved, while lefty poindexters are supposed to tiptoe into the halls of power with their briefcases full of bullet-pointed 'demands' in a sensible font?

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker:

Yes, O.W.S. has 'changed the conversation.' But talk, however necessary, is cheap. Ultimately, inevitably, the route to real change has to run through politics.

And for the very first time I disagreed with him. In a world where Congressional Republicans are three hundred-pound brutes in pads who look plumply ineffectual but prove startlingly strong, and are single-minded enough to block our gallant, lean-muscled president from passing even a bill saying please let's at least keep teachers and firefighters...general shouting may be just the thing.

Rather than being based upon an agenda, Occupy is a manifestation of a feeling, one we all sort of have. When we see those protesters out there, we know what they mean. They don't have to spell it out. That they should make particular demands is great--like financial tranfers tax, awesome. But to focus exclusively on such would be a sign not of maturity but of timid self-limitation.

Occupy is a fresh wind blown in. The recent past has seen America awash in wealth worship. The vast cultural force that is Entertainment News scolds against hating on the rich. It's so flippin cool to be rich! cheer the Entertainment Newspeople, out of whose whitened smile mouths come terrible things. But hateration is about envy. The 99% solidarity ethos is about anger. Anger over wrongness.

Wealth can indeed be unethical, I believe. Hard core 1%-er wealth is inevitably built others' backs. The work of armies of immigrant gardeners and nannies and housekeepers hums along in the background. Regular people turn off lights when they leave rooms, while the fabulously wealthy keep a heated pool at a third home. And of course there's the elaborately choreographed fucking-over of other people that led to the 2008 financial meltdown.

There actually are limited resources in this world, and when they are allocated preposterously it's many ways helpful to yell about it. Even as cold and cops blow Occupy adrift, it does something.

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Keyshia vs. Goapele: A Hens' Debate

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that hens love their soul music. And Bay hens take special pride in their rich Bay soul legacy. Visit any local coop at the right time of day and you might hear a flock cackling as they re-enact the backstage opener skit off Funky Divas. (Note to self: future flock members to be named Dawn, Maxine, Terry, Cindy.)

Nothing soothes nervous pullets on their first night out in the coop quite like Bay soul lullabies. There may be peeping without ceasing, but with those first softly-sung strains of "I used to think that I wasn't fine enough" or "As summer was ending, you were walking in" all will be well.


FOR WEEKS NOW Ximena has been losing neck feathers. And I scoured my poultry library for answers, to no avail. Then it hit me. Betsy's been plucking her. They are fighting again about who is queen of Bay soul.

In Betsy's corner, we find Keyshia Cole. Betsy says Keyshia may not have a lot of fancy lyrics or expensive beats, but she's hella fine, and girl knows how to sang. Pure Oakland-grown ghetto fab flavor. Which describes Betsy as well; you don't know the meaning of funky chicken until you hear her belt out "Love." Granted: no one belts it out like Keyshia. Bets and I watched this incredible interview Keyshia did with Sway for an MTV special on Oakland, and they were out in her old neighborhood in like the 60s or 70s in East Oakland and she hit the chorus right there on the street.


IT SHOULD surprise no one that Ximena is all about Goapele. They both have that odd beauty, and foreign pedigrees. One Araucana, one Israeli-South African. But both came up Oaklandish.





Of course Ximena in her Goapele sophistication finds "First Love" played out. Her top jams are "Closer," "Love Me Right" and "Crushed Out." She loves the intelligent sensitivity and tender voice that are Goapele's signatures, but clucks disdainfully about the poor production value on both her old albums. We haven't dug into the new album yet, but aren't crazy about the first single; only Michelle Bachmann should be Auto-Tuned.

When I saw Goapele live a couple months back, she announced she'd do one song that wasn't her own--and broke out "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I sang along and sounded terrible and tingled to my toes. I rushed home to tell Ximena, and she laid a fucking egg right there on the roost we were both so excited. (Chickens never get to go to shows.) Now I just need to hear Aretha do "Heavy Cross" and I'll be straight. Rock & soul => emergent property.

I also once saw Goapele strolling at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, because it is so goddamn great. (Sorry, Temescallions.)


FORTUNATELY, I HAVE an odd-numbered flock, so it was on Marianne to break the tie. She's at the bottom of the pecking order (read: was gonna get her ass beat either way). Ever the squawking contrarian, she says, no, actually the reigning soul queen doesn't come from the Bay at all. (This ruffles some feathers.) She contends the throne-holder is an LA chick, one whose version of "Don't Speak" Gwen should be embarrassed to know is out there. The other two hens are stumped, but I smile, because I know she means Leela James:

Sip me up like lemonade
From a mason jar
Make it good like [some chicken]*
Fried in a pan of lard
I'm gettin spoiled like old beans
And I can't lose my head
Cause when you're not around
I'm crumblin like cornbread

*This part is mumbled.


And once you hear Leela slay "A Change Is Gonna Come," you'll surely agree.

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Farewell, Best Little Garden Crew

I taught garden class for two years before this one, and I'll teach it again. But there was something about the group of gardeners I had this year. I know I'm gonna miss them.



This one, especially. Graduating. It's funny: last year, garden class was basically black girls plus Dylan. This year, it was basically Mexican boys plus Dylan.

Holding it down every Monday was the fabulous brother team of Uriel and Jose. Uriel is one of those eleven year-olds who seem thirty-five. There are a lot of them at the school. I had seen him on the bus once, before he joined garden class. For reasons unknown he had somewhere to go, alone, on a school day afternoon, and he sat crumpled in his seat looking weighted by the world. Only his feet swinging well above the bus floor gave away the fact that he was a kid.

Jose is lighter of heart, as younger brothers will be. Here he is being Bugs Bunny, with Uri's support. Ever the comedian, his favorite joke was to sneak up on me when I was inspecting cabbage leaves or checking seedbeds before class. I caught him every time, but he could never be deterred from trying again. One day he did this hilarious bit he called watering "like a model". He made his eyes all smoldering and did suave hose maneuvers with one hand while rubbing his head mock-sensuously with the other. And he loved weeding competitions, because he ended up with the biggest weed pile and won the prize every time.




There was Oscar: quiet, eager to please, and best known for his starring role in the game "Who's Taller: Oscar or the Pea Plant?" (which successively became "Who's Taller: Uriel or the Pea Plant?" and then "Who's Taller: Miss Emma or the Pea Plant?" and finally "Who's Taller: Kobe or the Pea Plant?")



And there was Shauntenai, who was surly and difficult ninety percent of the time. But that other ten percent--oh man, how sweet it was. You had to toil for it. She only ever showed up for half an hour at a time, but she planted the most successful tomato seedling, and took a lot of pride in that fact.



We dug potatoes on the last day, and pulled our garlic. And watered, as always. And as always, the kids wanted to put the hose head on the cherished "mist" setting, which creates a beautiful, cooling cloud of water, almost none of which reaches the soil. (Probably my most frequently-yelled admonition this year was "Put it back on 'shower'!") One very hot afternoon this spring, I announced that there would be a special treat. At the end of class, I gathered all the kids in front of me, held the hose over their heads, and put it on "mist."




Here's the thing about Dylan. Yeah, he's bright. Yeah, he's sweet (often enough to cancel out when he isn't). Yeah, he's got gardening in his blood. But the quality that won me over most completely was his weirdness. Witness the photo above. Oh, it's cute, sure. Sweet kid, sweet smile. But look a little closer. Those green things aren't part of his "Water Strider" shirt, which looked like a brand-new freebie. No: he picked Scarlet Runner beans (from the vine just to the right of his head in the picture) and discovered what he called their "velcro" capacity and stuck them to his shirt. See what I mean? He also ate a carrot and turned the tops into a lash--even had the audacity to give me lashings with it, and I had the audacity to let him get away with it, on the Last Day principle.

After all the kids had been picked up, I finished watering the vegetable beds and found myself getting teary. When I got in the car that Keri Hilson "Knock You Down" song burst on the radio, way too loud. You know: Sometimes love comes around/And it knocks you down...I had denounced the song as cheesy. But as I drove homeward dewy-eyed, tender images of Dylan digging potatoes still playing in my mind, it sounded pretty right.

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The Best Little Gardener in Deep East Oakland

In the far southeast corner of Oakland, where white people aren't, an eleven year-old boy is wondering whether the bulbs are off to a good start, inspecting the cabbage for camouflaged worms and nervously urging the peas up their trellis. Worry is a hallmark of great gardening, and this kid's got it.

Three years ago I needed to scrap together more income, and Dylan, although he didn't know it yet, very much needed a garden at his school. (Laugh now at my supposition that starting an after-school gardening program at a public elementary would be a lucrative lark.)

It didn't take him long to become a gardener. The transition was well underway when we planted crocuses that first fall. He was inspecting the packaging--intense, as usual, while the other kids were wilding out, also as usual. Printed on the crocus package was a flower icon that read "MAR-APR," and he asked me to interpret this.

"March through April. That's when they'll bloom."

Dylan's eyes went wide. His fingers curled like talons grasping prey. His skinny limbs trembled. And he squealed as little ghetto boys are not supposed to squeal: "THAT'S WHEN THEY'LL BLOOM??" Affirmative. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

We had discussed the bulb concept as a class beforehand, but imagining these brown lumps creating fat purple flowers in a mere (he had a gardener's patience already) five months was just too much.

He quickly learned to identify seedlings. Pale gray-green V sprout? California poppy! And why is it special? Because...Because! Oh! Oh! (Talon hands.) BecauseitsthestateflowerofCalifornia!! He attacked stands of oxalis with rage, ignoring the little girls' pleas that the yellow flowers were pretty. It's a weed, he answered with unveiled disdain. Miss Emma, tell them.

I knew from the start that Dylan was not, for lack of a more circumspect phrase, regular black. His pants were a little too tight and his hair was a little too long. When he came back for a second year of garden class, my only repeat recruit, he was mooning about orchids, which he said reminded him of Belize.

"Are you from Belize?"

He nodded, excited to tell me, and said he had been back over the summer. His fourth grade iteration included new big jeans and a fresh-clipped fade, but he was still kind of a loner and a bit weird. Certainly no other kid would play along when I wanted to talk in British accents. He developed an obsession with tomatillos (planted as a nod to the Mexican half of the class) even though he never quite understood what or why they were.

With Dylan as its stalwart, the garden program gained popularity. During one class I overheard a group of girls talking about how much they loved gardening. Dylan swished past them, busy with his trowel, and said, "I just come for the flowers."

That spring we planted tomatoes from seed. Each kid got to plant a four-inch pot with three seeds to take home. Ten kids in the class, plus the drop-ins who suckered the teacher into letting them plant their own pots too--probably sixty potential tomato plants were in those hopeful pots. Many were banished by parents who hated having their kids touch dirt. Some fell victim to kids' inevitable neglect. But one lucky seed was coddled and sprouted and fawned over and transplanted and in late summer it bore fruit to feed a large Belizian family.

The tomato experience planted a seed in Dylan as well. This year, our third, he began asking me for extra seeds and seedlings to take home and in my harried state I would pour a few seeds into his hand and move on to the next crying catastrophe. Only recently did I come to understand that he had created a vast menagerie of potted plants at home. I try to picture it, the mad scientist amid his many experiments. His mother explained that he had somehow obtained a cob of ornamental corn, painstakingly removed the kernels, and grown some cornstalks.



This fall the veteran fifth-grade Dylan showed the new crop of kids how to plant bulbs. (Two leftover bulbs were destined to join his menagerie.) He ripped open the package of paperwhites with glee, but was disturbed to find the roots already sprouting.

"Miss Emma, they think they're in the soil!" And that's when I knew the transition was complete. He knew what the bulbs were thinking.

Driving away from the school one cold night, jean cuffs dripping, I saw Dylan riding home on the handlebars of his big brother's bike. Seeing him perched so precariously, my little horticultural genius, heading off into the dark of a neighborhood where the murder rate is high and the optimism rate is low, I decided to drop the hardened teacher thing. I thought, I'm just gonna love this kid. /

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Brooklyn (Grow Chard)

This week, and perhaps only this week, we're having our minor Bay winter. Hoofing down Broadway in a shiver, listening to this song (hit play 6 for the recommended soundtrack to this post), I could be back in Brooklyn.




You're supposed to love New York, but I never could, even though I spent formative years 1-3 and 22-24 there. The cold concrete is enough to blast and wilt a sunny California girl, like frost does basil. With more money and brashness I might have enjoyed it, but instead I was a tad disabled--and, as a result, only marginally employable--and the towers fell as soon as I arrived.

But I didn't live in The City. I lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn I liked. It shares a lot of good qualities with Oakland: The Town vs The City, the teeming diversity, the "land" name. (Of course Oakland is softer--and in all the right places, I would argue. Less harassment, better weather, more vegetarian food.)

I had always liked the idea of Brooklyn, the "No Sleep 'Til..." and the "Tims for my hooligans in..." It was the original habitat of my white-bearded college Yiddish professor, and the place where John Travolta wolfed down two slices of pizza folded lengthwise in Saturday Night Fever.

We lived on a cool row house block in Boerum Hill, which was not yet the glamorous neighborhood it has become, although the clashes of gentrification were already thick in the air. The brownstone whose upstairs we occupied was classic East Coast historic/grimy. We shared it with a sad family and there was no door to shut between their part of the house and ours.

We joined the Park Slope Food Coop, where shopping for fine cheese at low prices was a joy, and working the cash register once a month ranged from tolerable to sort of fun. There were ATMs nearby that operated in Yiddish and I was fascinated by the young Hasid mothers with their wigs and babies on their hips, pushing overloaded shopping carts.

The late, great record store Beat Street was on Fulton. It was mecca for Crim. He entered his first dj battles there, and made pals with the staff, Scoob and Finesse and Pebbles. Somehow Beat Street was just a few blocks from our place, as were the new Smith Street restaurants that taunted our brokeness, and the miracle bodega that could produce any grocery item at any hour, and, my own mecca, the community garden.

I learned to garden in Brooklyn, which makes no sense, unless considered from the "Rose in Spanish Harlem" sort of angle, of yearning to grow something in the cracks of the concrete. It wasn't a garden to which anyone was particularly devoted, but that was fine with me, because it meant I could expand my empire of chard and Brandywines one abandoned plot at a time. I nurtured my raised beds with obsessive care; I got the soil so friable it became legend among the neighborhood cats. But the hard truth is that community gardening often sucks, at least in Brooklyn. The Brandywines all got smashed in the night. Gardening made me appreciate private property.

The downstairs teenage neighbor and his friend Jerrell were a Dean Street pair straight out of a Lethem novel: the Jewish kid from the row house, the black kid from Gowanus Projects. The dirty yellow walls of the brownstone were preferable to Gowanus; when a visitor was at the door and no one had ordered pizza, it had to be Jerrell. And he wasn't shy about buzzing that bell for a looong time if his chum didn't appear. We would see the top of his head from our window four floors up and sing our jingle:

It's Jerrell!
It's Jerrell!
Who's ringin the bell?
Well, it's Jerrell!

The song grew lots of verses and variations that I've since forgotten. For hardass Brooklyn kids, both guys were sweethearts. When I brought them to the community garden, they tasted some mint and politely considered it as a gum alternative.

At the end of our stint, Crim worked at Book Court, on Court Street, where Jonathan authors were known to show up and browse, all writerly and unshaven. Court had a great bagel place too. And the pizza. Oh, the Brooklyn pizza: giving so much and asking so little. We survived two sticky summers (one without AC) and one blizzard, which made the streets quiet and magical. I had expected a more chaotic effect from a word like that.

The thing is, you can picture a place as a whole, with a line connecting the Yiddish ATMs to Beat Street (presumably with the Beastie Boys as midpoint). But when you're actually there, the divisions are hardened. I couldn't have lived in Brooklyn for keeps. Still, on a winter's day like this one, I could go for a plain slice.

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I Will Do Anything to Be Part of the Blogoaksphere

I never meant to be a holdout. College Grads in Urban Areas Without Cellphones is a sorry club. I imagine a bunch of tweedy middle-aged men with Objections. What's a perky twentysomething (fifty-nine days left on that claim) doing with those old sods?

It was an accident, I assure you, not some statement of principle. It wasn't that I didn't want a cellphone. I just never wanted one. Like, not paying-money-every-month want. I'm a part-time receptionist. I can't buy things just because.

Now when it comes out that I'm not carrying, I have to go all explainy, and hear expressions of astonishment, and perhaps even get congratulated on my contrarian pluck. All of which is possibly worse than shelling out monthly and being all *reachable*. And I'm wide open to accusations of dinosaurism. You're not on Facebook. And you don't have a cell. Oh my God: and you have CHICKENS. They start building a Theory. They think I have Objections.

So let me be clear: I'm totally going to get a cellphone one day. I daydream about it, even. My phone will do every damn thing those Japanese phones do now--for less! Print cash, perform voodoo hexes, all that. See, because I'm going to leapfrog. That's how sophisticated I am.

However, technology for its own sake does irritate me. I don't want a bunch of neato shit that's only going to drain and distract. Yes, I have a plog. That does not mean I want to Twitter. I plog because I like to write (do I vainly hope this is apparent?), not because I'm a connectivity whore. So leave me and my hens alone.

Was what I was saying. But then Crim became part of the Blogoaksphere. His wunderkind, Oakland Streets, won the warm embrace of linkage from every other cool Oakland blog. That had the incidental effect of creating readership--a whizbang concept I hadn't considered. Here was a connectivity I could get behind! I realized that I would do anything to be part of the Blogoaksphere.

At an Oscar ceremony a few years back, Steve Martin introduced Gael García Bernal (you know, the muchacho guapo from Y tu mamá también) by saying: "I would do anything to look like this guy. Except, of course, eat right and exercise."

So Clebilicious will do anything to be part of the Blogoaksphere. Except, of course, be more accessible and stick to a topic.

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Fogies Exchange Pound

Gold's Gym, Grand Avenue
9:36pm Tuesday 7/15
Two white men over sixty-five approach one another in the cardio area. Hands outstretch, some fumbling ensues and then--a pound! "Heh, fist bump?" says one, and the other nods. They go their separate ways.

I love Oakland. And thank you, Michelle.

Peculiar follow-up: In the ten-minute window between starting this post and publishing it, another unlikely pound took place right in front of my desk! Are you there, God? It's me, Clebbie.

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Smallest Boss That You Seen Thus Far

They say a rapper is 90% voice. And I mean voice literally, not in some wussified writer way. Think of Biggie. All he has to say is "uh"; it's imbued with Notorious magic. Or Snoop. Who hasn't been lulled into submission when he uses those caramel-coated vocal chords to say he don't love you, ho and he's out the do'.

In the case of the bearded Rick Ross, make that 100%. Mr. Ross is not a talented rapper. (I say so because I'm pretty sure that's what Crim thinks and I flagrantly steal his opinions.) He seems to exist only because of the subwoofers in his diaphragm.

I think he must secretly know it, too, because he doesn't bother much with lyrics. He'll just say like one or two words and be sure his bass is turned up to eleven.


When Lil Wayne was busy penning his champion verse for "We Takin Over" (I am the beast/Feed me rappers or feed me beats/I'm untamed I need a leash/I ain't been sane I need a shrink), Rick Ross was just dawdling around. When it came time to record the track, he seems to have muttered whatever came to mind. Boss! Sort of free-associative. Moooove.

There is one genuine Rick Ross fan in the household: little Winona. Despite being vastly outgrown by Ximena, my scrappy Wyandotte chick remains atop the brooder pecking order. She wants to get "I'm the smallest boss that you seen thus far" tatted on her shank. I told her she has to at least wait til she feathers out.

And speaking of rapper voices, my favorite belongs to Keak da Sneak, king of the supa dupa hyphy hyphy hyphy. If Keak did books on tape, I could get through Ulysses. But he's so raspy already, I would just feel bad making him talk that much. He gets bonus points for being from the Funktown neighborhood (Hunnid Block) where I do my school garden program.

Keak da Sneak, "That Go"

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The Harassment Chronicles

I WAS driving past Lake Merritt and heard a nearby carful of guys shouting. I followed their gazes to the prey: a woman of hearty build (like myself) walking around the lake in workout clothes.

GUY: Woo! Woo!
GUY: Nice booty! [Etc.]

We pull up to a red light and I shake my head at them in emphatic disgust.


GUY, to me: Did you see her? Right there!

More shouting from them. More attempted shaming from me. The light changes, we move along. But just before we pull up at the next light, one guy spits out the window. Just to eliminate any doubts about his cretinity.

GUY: Sorry.

For the loogie or the harassment is not clear.

ME: You guys are assholes.

GUY: We were talking to that girl...

ME: I hate when that happens to me.

GUYS, protesting: Wah? No! That's the best! We just made her day!

ME: Why don't you fuckin ask her if she felt that way.

GUY behind wheel: Okay, I'll go turn around...
Inches car forward like he's gonna turn around, to hilarious effect.

GUY, amid much pissed-off muttering: Mind your own business.


AND WERE I quicker witted, I'd have snapped back that they should mind theirs.

The silver lining? They were white! (You may have guessed from the, "Woo! Woo!" and "Nice booty!" Black guy harassment generally opens with, "DAmn girl.") I've never been harassed by a white guy. Novel idea! No weird racial component.

Those kinds of confrontations do shake me up. It ain't fun. But it seemed right. Another woman did that for me once ("Leave her alone!") and I appreciated it. So, points for sisterhood?

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On Passing Black Men in the Street

DURING The Speech, Barack Obama talked about the shades of racism he saw in his beloved white grandma when she admitted sometimes fearing black men who passed her on the street. He also described this in Dreams from My Father; it was a troubling moment for young Obama. Revisiting the matter in a radio interview last week, Obama gaffically referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person." (But I'm sure we're gonna let that go, seeing as Obama is himself white, if atypically. No? We're offended? Okay. Wow, and we act like black people are touchy.)

I've been pondering this issue, as a white woman avec bootay. Maybe white women sans bootay have a different relationship to black men on the street, maybe they don't; unless I get a sudden case of Amy Winehouse, I'll never know.

I've remarked previously on the abundance of street harassment my bootay has garnered, almost always from black men, and on the racial disquiet I've felt as a result. After Obama's comments, I've been full of shame. Because, have I feared black men on the street?


BACK IN Brooklyn, I lived in a neighborhood called Boerum Hill, which is now "cool" but was then awkward. The projects were two blocks one way, becoming-bougie Smith Street was two blocks another way. (My community garden was in a third direction, so I mostly walked there.) In retrospect, racial tensions were quietly boiling. New York is like that.

It was never a case of looking good and getting hit on. In fact, I tried to remedy the situation by looking bad. But the more busted and miserable I looked, the rattier my sweatpants, the more I seemed to get it. These guys weren't talking to me. They were talking about me, often amongst themselves, like I was an involuntary stripper on an invisible stage. The things they said were caustic and obscene, and I started to respond in kind.

Which was why I became a racial profiler: I tried to know when harassers were on the approach so I'd be steeled to "snap back and have the last laugh." (Would that it were as fun as it sounds.) On one occasion, three twentysomething black guys, all with gold fronts, started saying shit to me while I was walking home on Dean Street, my street. They kept staring as I walked by, and I tossed off a "fuck you." Which made them very unhappy. I suddenly realized that I was on a deserted street and had just pissed off three of the most thugged-out dudes I'd ever seen. I was scared.


OBAMA actually recounts a similar story in Dreams:

That night, well past midnight, a car pulls up in front of my apartment building carrying a troop of teenage boys and a set of stereo speakers so loud that the floor of my apartment begins to shake. [Normally, he'd let it go, easygoing guy that he is, but, thinking of his sleepover guest (?!) and his neighbors' newborn, he goes out and asks the guys to move along.]

The wind wipes away my drowsiness and I feel suddenly exposed...I can't see the faces inside the car; it's too dark to know how old they are, whether they're sober or drunk, good boys or bad...I start picturing myself through the eyes of these boys, a figure of random authority, and know the calculations they might now be making, that if one of them can't take me out, the four of them certainly can."

[Finally,] the engine starts, and the car screeches away. I turn back toward my apartment, knowing that I've been both stupid and lucky, knowing that I am afraid after all.

I mention this not to suggest that my own fears or prejudices are mitigated by Obama's, but because the story--especially his complete telling of it (pp. 269-271)--shows how complex and vexing these questions are.


MY harassment experiences seriously affected my quality of life in New York. They cast me in a uncomfortable relationship with my body, and with black men as well. It was a sad state of affairs. What with the ugly, old stereotype of black man as sexual threat to white womanhood, nothing could have made me feel more racist than my harassment-anticipation game. And I can't help but wonder whether some of those guys sensed my anticipatory dread, felt angry that I seemed afraid of them, and on some subconscious level chose to make my apparent fear self-fulfilling.

At least I can say I don't play that anymore. I now live in Oakland, where there's a little more, you know, integration. I do get harassed sometimes, but it occurs to me that something else often happens instead: compliments. I get flirted on rather than accosted with obscenities. Several gentlemen of African American descent have specifically liked my boots with the fur. Thank you kindly, sirs.

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This One's Going Stupid and That One's Going Dumb

Perhaps you're wondering, is Emma a good person? This post should clear up that little matter. For only a person of pristine virtue would teach an afterschool gardening program in deep East Oakland.

What's that you say? Am I getting paid for this supposed selfless act? What difference does it make? Christ, I'm not Ghandi over here.





Since I am not only virtuous, but also charming, I will relate to you a story. If you are familiar with Oakland's own hyphy movement, with its relentless cries of "Go stupid" and "Go dumb," you will appreciate this.










Klarissa, seen up front and proud in the group photo below, is my sassiest gardener. She likes to call me Miss E. She also likes to collect worms. One day, when we were doing a lot of digging, she found two worms and placed them on a board to keep an eye on them. (She would soon be obliged to put them in the compost bin.) The worms began to writhe in frustration at their exposure, flailing their bodies with abandon. Klarissa screeched "Miss E!" until she got my attention, then said, "Look! This one's going stupid and that one's going dumb."



Bonus story: When Klarissa met me last September, she asked what I was. I in turn asked her to clarify. "Like what are you, like Mexican, Puerto Rican..."
I replied that I was Jewish, but she hadn't heard of that.


ABOVE: From left, Jawan, Jose, Antoinette, Aziah, Miss E, Klarissa, [probably the top of Jakhari's head], Nikia, Osiassi (he's Tongan).
WAY ABOVE: Miss E planting tomatoes with top gardeners Jawan and Dylan (he's Belizian).
WAY, WAY ABOVE: On-again, off-again best friends Amber and Nikia do a little pruning.


By the way, do I look pale? Oh right, I'm white.

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