I Am Photosynthetic

I shrink and languish when the days are short. Unfurl before the sun's rays like a large-leafed plant extra open on a hot day. I thrive in the desert. When I lived under dim Northeastern light I was miserable. I figured it out: I'm photosynthetic.

Think about it. You might be too.

I totally fall for the notion of a healthy tan. I don't want to be a leathery old broad, but I find it hard to fear the *sun's damaging rays* of the Coppertone propaganda. Maybe the stereotypes linking darker skin to the possession of more soul predate James Brown. Maybe the soul is photosynthetic.

Good then that the longest days are here and I'm set for a beach week some four hundred miles closer to the equator. Photovoltaic cells ready. Chik-chik-chik-aaah.

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Born-Again Baduizt

IF only this post could fade in with sparkly sounds like "Back in the Day." Writing is just not cool like that.

I had always heard her, but only recently have I come to accept Erykah Badu as my personal savior. As for many born-agains, my Baduizt epiphany came when she performed on Chappelle's Show. She swayed her small hips, she rocked her big afro wig. I fell into a trance.



For Chappelle she performed "I Want You," which proceeded to become my favorite song. It's Badu at her extended-jam finest; the album version runs to ten minutes and fifty-three seconds. The song is so simple and she's just chanting I I I I I I I want you you you you you you you half the time, but it totally works. The lyrics suggest the following archetypically Baduizt prescriptions for the ailment of being sprung on some dude:

1) pray til early May
2) fast for thirty days
3) get a good book and get all in it
4) try a little yoga for a minute
5) turn the sauna up to hotter
and 6) drink a whole jar of holy water (an entire jar!)

I can start the "Back in the Day" glitter intro when I hop on the bus downtown and jam through the city of Oakland on a Badu ride, wrapping up the flight-of-fancy riff at the end of "I Want You" just in time to walk through the gate to my backyard and let the chickens out of the coop. If life gets better, I don't know about it yet.

And I have learned to let Erykah go on her flights of fancy. She has won my trust; I'm willing to take the ride. These days I earnestly and willfully choose to march through all the dense "Bump It" yodeling in order to earn the clear awakening "Back in the Day" intro (about which I won't shut up).


WHEN New Amerykah Part One came out last year I was naturally keen with anticipation. But that album is like *advanced* and, not being a music nerd, it took me a while to break into it. Because the rest is not like "Honey." The rest is some bombastic blaxploitation soundtrack that this whitegirl was not initially prepared to get with. Plus, the vibe struck me at first as ickily political and I don't like music trying to be political (although I have to give it to Erykah that she can pull off even that without much departure into lameness).

But I found a road in, eventually, with the song "Me," which falls on the tender, self-reflective side of the bombastic blaxploitation spectrum. My only problem with it is the part when she says "my ass and legs have gotten thick." If you have seen any recent pictures of stick figure Badu, you'll understand why this is offensive to those of us in the thick community.

My next single was to be "That Hump," a song which promotes my theory that there is an Erykah Badu song for any mood that might befall one. "That Hump" works on feelings of depression or discouragement: If I could get over that hump/Then maybe I wiiiiill feel be-etter. But my latest fave off New Amerykah Part One is "Soldier," which is actually a gentle groove track despite the name. It includes classic Baduing around à la: Break it down say mhm whooooaho hey hey (repeat). Turns out "Twinkle" is the dark, disturbing song. (Oh, Erykah, how you love to thwart my easy expectations!) It has the hoped-for sparkle sounds, but they come off spooky somehow.


WOULD that this post could blast out on a Hendrixy riff like "I Want You." But writing is just not cool like that.

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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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Sonia from the Block

This morning President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her acceptance speech follows.


Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

Projects to Princeton
So yeah I do it well
No wonder Barack loves me
I'm like brown Michelle
Second circuit New York City
Court of Appeals
And saved baseball for my public
Cause I keep it on the reals

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

I'll be up in the Senate
Judiciary hearings
Pink tracksuit, low bun
And the fat hoop earrings
Singing tracks from West Side Story
Every stereotype
Boricua from the Bronx
That's what Supreme looks like

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

President Obama's verse:
You want to block her confirmation, Jon Kyl from Arizona?
All the Mexicans in your Senate district
Think they'll still be votin for ya? (Na-ah)
Picked the first Latino, yeah you didn't think of that
Whip is playin checkers
Ha-haa! I'm playin chess

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La Crise Plogxistentielle

The plog asks, Why do I exist? And I don't quite have an answer, although I suspect there is one out there somewhere. It's nothing new. Plogicide ideation is a weekly Clebilicious routine when not a daily one. The Statcounter numbers come in, enthusiasm flags, the "Delete This Blog" button beckons. I have to give it to the ploggie blunt: the world may not care, but the plog must go on! Why? I don't know! I just make unexplained demands like some banana republic dictator. Occasionally I am encouraging, too. There, there. Carry on, little plog. Carry on.

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Beyoncé and the Impersonal Pronoun

No one can self-objectify quite like Beyoncé. (And when I use her name, please hear the Stephen Colbert pronunciation, fully engaging that accent aigu on the terminal "e": Bay-on-SAY.)

Let's begin, shall we, by attempting to unpack the nut graf of "Single Ladies":

Don't be mad when you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Wuh-ho-ho, &tc

Begin at the beginning. What is "it"? In its latter use, we might might expect the referent to be "finger." As, That poor girl. He should have put a ring on her finger. But this theory crumbles the moment we consider the pronoun's other roles, standing for the thing wanted (by another), and conditionally liked (by the narrator's former flame).
Is the finger metonymous, then, for the body? In such case, the full meaning becomes, If you liked this body, you should have put a ring on this finger, which stands for this body. The logic holds, but the implications are troubling. Is appreciation of a woman's physical assets adequate basis for marriage? Surely not. And yet, how much more dismaying if we suppose the word "it" in fact stands for the woman in her entirety--body, soul, mind, spirit.

For, what woman thinks of herself as "it"? Aha! you say, glimpsing the path down which I appear to intend to lead you, Perhaps a man could think of a woman as "it"!
The "it" in question.

And indeed, "Single Ladies" was created not by some jilted woman, but by R&B mastermind The Dream. (Perhaps tellingly, he co-wrote Mariah's "Touch My Body" as well). Like most Beyoncé lyrics, these were written by a stable of male songwriters, Beyoncé credited among them.

Men writing objectification tracks for women leads to strange distortions. For example, in Beyoncé's "Check On It," written, per usual, by a stable, the word "it," used as described above, appears 49 times. Here is the construction I find most bizarre:

You can look at it
Long as you don't grab it
If you don't go braggin
I'ma let you have it

Does any woman think of her body as a removed Other like that? Wares to consciously ply? Here the direct referent appears to be the badonkadonk, metonymous again for the body whole.

While the lyrics evoke the body as a removed Other, they simultaneously conflate the body with the total woman. In one instance in the earwormish "Check On It," the word "me" is substituted for "it" (i.e. having said "check on it" eighteen thousand times, she throws in a "check on me"). Confirmation then, if any were needed, that Beyoncé herself--one supposes, body and soul--is "it".

When a man writes a song and a woman sings it, there is a certain synergistic fucked-up-edness. He can slip in offensive notions (woman="it") without voicing them himself. She voices these notions without giving the implied ownership thereof much thought. (See the related "ho cosigner" phenomenon.)

Beyoncé always strikes me as a childlike star, a sexpot never quite in possession of her sexuality. Hence she vixens it up throughout the "Single Ladies" video, but gigglingly disowns the whole bit at the end.

Feminist carping to the contrary, there is one way I don't mind: at least her work promotes the stubby-legged, long-waisted, back-stacked body type in which I share a stake. And hell yeah I can do the "Single Ladies" dance.

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Paul Krugman Is Driving Me Insane

We get it, Krugman. You, with all your pre-recession Chicken Littling, were right. Must feel pre-tty fri-ckin sweet.

Oh, and thanks a lot, Nobel Committee. You've created a monster. Now everything he says, he says with the arrogance and the imprimatur of a *Nobel-prize winning* economist.

Ever since his ultimate vindication--the sky, and the Dow, have indeed fallen--Krug feels justified, if not downright giddy, shitting all over everything for all time. He has particular contempt for Bernanke's 'green shoots' comment, on which he rained disdain in two columns plus a blog post.

Green shoots? The phrase itself sickens Scroogeman, with its overtones of fresh hope and delicate vernal regrowth. Blech! Don't you just want to rip those shoots right out?

He has become the world's most cantankerous groundhog, scrambling back into his underground lair with joyous contempt. Winter will be here forEVAH HAhahaHA!

"Even in the Great Depression," he taunts in another post, "things didn't [Montgomery Burns fingers-tapping gesture] head down [moohoohahaha] all the time." Naturally this was on a week when things were looking up, and any buzz needed to be promptly smited.

If we do have Depression II, imagine what it will do for Krugman. On the one hand, the devastation of 25% unemployment. But on the other, he called it!

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