Politicised

I hadn't meant to become so politicised, but having a baby sister who is an activist and whose intelligence challenges your own and who make you think forces you to reexamine old arguments you've made, excuses that you've made to yourself in the past that saved you having to consider that the other person might just be right. At least as right as you are, maybe even, that you are wrong or misinformed or just ignorant. (A hard admission when one believes one-self congenitally honest and open-minded.)

Rwanda is the center of my reading at the moment and what happened there in the 90's. Phillip Gourevitch's book of essays/history was assigned for our reading this month by a woman who always gives the impression of a Gen X slacker with nothing more serious on her attractive mind than what boy she'll take to bed next in our little flying community. The book is called "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow we will be killed with our Families." It's a mouthful of a title and so full of questions (and not bottled, prepackaged answers) that I'm reading it straight through, but having to stop frequently to breath and think and question myself and consider. I am fascinated (and maybe the sentence only functions within the context of the book) by his statement, "Power consists in the ablity to make others inhabit your story of their reality, even if you have to kill a lot of them to make that happpen."
"Power consists in the ablity to make others inhabit your story of their reality, even if you have to kill a lot of them to make that happpen."
Putting aside the triviality of what I'm about to say, but that's what advertisers (of cigarettes, etc.) do all the time. They retell our stories of ourselves to us so that we feel we will be truer to ourselves if we smoke Malboros or wear Vickie's Secret underwear or wear clothes that look like what Brad Pitt wears.

It's also about the bigger political stories. Male historians would allow for the occassinal exceptional woman -- Queen Elizabeth I -- but those were deemed rare and, in general, we were not expected to be wise or strong or athletic or stubborn or militant, or sexual, briliant, or inventive, or diplomatic, or skilled, or hilarious, or any of the other things we are learning we are and can be. We (the established culture) pretty up what the mostly white population did to the indigenous peoples of the Americas when we invaded their country and we try to tell African Americans that "it" wasn't so bad. Well, the truth is, "it" was so bad. "It" was so bad that people died rather than live like that. But we don't want to feel shame nowadays for something that happened before we were born, never mind the reverberations it carries for them today, so we tell them their story in our way until they believe it, or we kill enough of them off that they can't argue. Especially we kill off the uppity niggers and the Native Americans who try to tell us their version of events, their concept of what really 'went down' at Wounded Knee. They are too dangerous to Our stor; we can't allow them to speak because it puts us and our vision of our noble culture on shakey ground. We pooh-pooh the attempted revision of what we have come to accept as doctrine because it would feel dangerous, uncertain to question the version of events that we've been raised to believe is true, that is the groundwork of our "great" nation. I'm happy to live here, but then, I'm white.

Which brings me back to the book on Rwanda. It has raised questions about what we should and could do in a genocide. And what the president I thought was "okay" didn't do. He helped the Yugoslavians, after a time, but the Africans (and what is it about Africa that always reduces us to paralyzed shame and impotence?) were left to be slaughtered because it was too difficult and too far off for us culturally, and identity wise to bother to sort out who was shooting whom over what. And what about the Sudan? Too black, too mish-mashed politically to know that bad things are happening to a whole mass of people? Is it just because they are people of color, or is it because they seem so far removed from us and because we carry such guilt as to feel bereft of hope to even try to sort out what it means, what we can do. It doesn't help that the passionate advocates are only heard when things deteriorate to the point of needing outside help. We never hear of the Kashmiris until it is time for a war, we choose to hope it will go away.

I'm not done with this topic. Thank you baby sister.

My sister travels to New Orleans

My sister, a poet and activist, and an all around fine person travelled to New Orleans earlier this month, to see what help she could provide. Like everyone in this family she has opinions, but she backs them up with action. Bless her and her vision and hr strength. She has granted me permission to cite her blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/badsis/

Busy and flying

It seems since the beginning of August I've been on the go, and it doesn't look to stop for several months. August in SD, then work, the trip to Biloxi after Katrina, then work, two trips in the last three weeks, one to Philly to visit a sister and attend a flying friend's wedding, then another to Orlando for a conference. In between I work, tomorrow is a class, and that's why when, yesterday, I had a chance to fly, I took it.

It was worth it, thought the air was not smooth and I spent the entire hour scratching on the ridge with a dozen (or two) others, near-missing each other since no one was high, and the conditions were borderline. Finally, when I felt myself break out in a sweat from low blood sugar (forgot to eat before launching) I decided I was a threat to aviation and went out to land about 7p. People flew until sunset, and, I suspect, after -- a full moon rose just as the sun went down behind the neighboring ridge.