We sat behind a family at the Billy Joel concert. Mom, dad, older sister, her husband, younger sister, her bestie, son, girlfriend. The girls, at least, had clearly grown up listening to their parents' Billy Joel albums, because they kept getting each other's attention and doing dance moves choreographed sometime between size 6x and the juniors section.

I loved watching them. Also, they were almost the youngest people there. Beloved and I, at 41, were bringing down the average age of the crowd in our section all by ourselves, and these glorious children young adults were probably fifteen years younger than we are.

I sat (because you sit when you're old and surrounded by other old people terrified to have another beer lest they have to once again roust the entire row to use the restroom) and thought how nice it must be to be Billy Joel and see your music unite so many generations. Or just to be someone capable of filling stadiums for decades. For DECADES. Props, Billy Joel.

Then he sang a song I'd heard he said he wouldn't ever sing again because he kept forgetting the lyrics: "We Didn't Start the Fire." These are those lyrics:

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, Homicide, Children of Thalidomide...

Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia
Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician Sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on...

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

I watched the younger sister dance in front of me, and I remembered memorizing the lyrics to that song as a teenager. But now, it's us in Afghanistan instead of the Russians. And we still have homeless vets. And boy, terror on the airline went bigger than ever since this song was written. Race relations, um, yeah.

But now it's not me and my generation singing that song. It's my generation doing the stuff.

That twirling twentysomething in front of me is who should be singing the song.

I looked around at the Baby Boomers on either side of me and tried to decide whether to be depressed or hopeful. We didn't light it, but the kids didn't, either.

Will it ever go out?

Idaho Representative Vito Barbieri asks if a camera women can swallow to show the state of their colons after colonoscopy could be used to prevent abortion.

Apparently, he does not understand the differences between the digestive system and the reproductive system.

YOU'RE FIRED, VITO.

All weekend I've been torn over Syria. 

The little angel caught some headlines as we were out and about and asked a bunch of questions. They were hard ones to answer. 

I don't know why people would hurt children.

I don't know whether we'll do anything about it.

I don't know know if we should do anything about it.

I agree, the whole situation is just terrible.

When it comes to policing the world, I'm ambivalent. Of course I'd love for a strong country like America to be able to help the world's wronged, but what if there are too many wrongs in the world for one military that's already so spread out? What if we have children who are hurting here? Is it our responsibility to attack if we were not attacked? Is this really about our fear they will use those weapons on us and not really about the children at all? And if so, is that a game-changer?

I started to educate myself better on the subject, then I realized that no one was going to come to me and ask me what to do. I am not in any way in charge of how the United States responds to Syria.

Sometimes the Internet brings the rest of the world too close to the window and demands I pay attention when I know in truth that to pay attention to something I can do so little about will only make me miserable, as it did every time I thought about it over the weekend.

I really don't want us to attack anybody else. I really wish we could bring all our troops home from everywhere and focus domestically. I wish we could fix healthcare and subsidize childcare and change funding so we don't have to buy our schools' copy paper anymore and improve care for mental health and beef up our infrastructure and and and ... do a million things with our energy that don't involve starting wars.

And so I close the window, on my laptop and in my mind's eye, and I stop thinking about Syria.

Kelly said she's leaning in, waiting to hear. She might not have been talking straight to me, but since Kelly is my race red pill, I heard her, anyway. I didn't want to. It's a week from BlogHer '13 and I had trouble with my daughter today and I have a million other excuses for why I don't want to talk about Trayvon Martin, but I hear you, Kelly, sometimes you have to talk about things that just piss you off because they are important.

I had just left a soccer match on Saturday night and was standing in line for the shuttle when I heard about the Trayvon Martin verdict. The older couple behind me were clearly trial junkies, as the woman started in on everyone from O.J. to Casey Anthony, and apparently she'd been following Trayvon, too. "Not enough evidence," she said. "I knew they wouldn't convict him."

I felt my color rising. I wished I'd watched the trial so I could speak intelligently, but I've felt this entire time like I didn't have to watch the trial to be pissed off. Trayvon Martin was walking home unarmed with candy and a nonalcoholic drink. George Zimmerman was packing heat and disregarded 911 telling him to stay away. The fact that he called 911 on a kid carrying candy is troubling enough. That he followed Trayvon with a gun? Where did this all go so badly off the rails?

With the law. 

I've thought and thought about this since it all went down, and the problem is with the culture that writes the laws. The laws are too vague. The laws may ignore common sense and ethics. And the laws and the court of public opinion have always been against the black man. (I am aware that George Zimmerman isn't white. Don't care.)

Think I'm wrong? Watch the local news in any city for five nights and tell me how many times an assailant or thief was described as a black man, then tell me how many black men actually live in that city. I don't watch the Kansas City news that often, but every damn time I SWEAR that I watch the news, a black man has gotten away with something! How many black PEOPLE are there in Kansas City?

White alone, percent, 2010 (a)	59.2%	82.8%
	Black or African American alone, percent, 2010 (a)	29.9%	11.6%
	American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.5%	0.5%
	Asian alone, percent, 2010 (a)	2.5%	1.6%
	Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.2%	0.1%
	Two or More Races, percent, 2010	3.2%	2.1%
	Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010 (b)	10.0%	3.5%
	White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010	54.9%	81.0%

I'm guessing about half of those black people are female. Those black people sure are busy!

Or are we just more worried about what they are doing than what all the other people are doing when it comes to crime? Other people commit crimes -- they just don't get covered as often on the news. 

Now, on the flip side, how often do we hear about white people who have been kidnapped versus black people? 

In all my reading, the person who has summed up my malcontent best is Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:

We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, and red shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction of Rosewoodand the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d'etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson's love of freedom, but none of his affection for white supremacy.

You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen. 

And, so, Kelly, that's where this white lady stands. Am I pissed at George Zimmerman? Yeah, I am. But I'm more pissed that anyone could feel comfortable stalking an unarmed minor because he was black and wearing a hoodie.  (Emphasis mine)

Zimmerman

He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.

Dispatcher

How old would you say he looks?

Zimmerman

He's got button on his shirt, late teens.

Dispatcher

Late teens. Ok.

Zimmerman

Somethings wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is.

Dispatcher

Just let me know if he does anything, ok?

Zimmerman

(unclear) See if you can get an officer over here.

Dispatcher

Yeah we've got someone on the way, just let me know if this guy does anything else.

Zimmerman

Okay. These (expletive) they always get away. Yep. When you come to the clubhouse you come straight in and make a left. Actually you would go past the clubhouse.

To me that "and he's a black male" sounds a lot like Paula Deen's "of course" when asked if she'd ever used the n-word before. "And he's a black male" -- as though that's all it takes to be a criminal. "Of course" -- as though using a racial epithet is a normal and acceptable thing to do. "It doesn't violate the law" -- once covered slavery. Listen, the law is just what's written down at the time. People write the laws, and society dictates whether those laws are left to stand or rewritten. 

Clearly there's a huge gap between the law and right/wrong in the Trayvon Martin case, and that really sucks. It's a problem so huge I don't know where to start. Unlike women's health rights, there's no concrete one law to point to, to say "change this and we'll be safe." The overarching climate that made it defensible somehow in a Florida court of law to clearly single out a kid because he's a black male who's staring is the thing that needs to change, and it's so nebulous it's hard to know where to start. 

So I start in my neighborhood. I start with my daughter. I start with the people I know. I started with the older couple in line behind me at the soccer match. I told them I thought the law and what was right were two completely different things. The older couple didn't see the forest for the trees, or maybe it wasn't a Saturday-night conversation. But I'll keep trying. I don't know how much influence I have on my blog or my social media, but I'll keep trying. I'm not ignoring it. I'm trying to figure out where the fuck to start.

But I'm leaning in. And you know what? I think the fact the Trayvon Martin case got as covered as it did in the media is maybe a good thing. How many trials do we see on the national news for black kids getting shot? Let's keep the conversation going.

I've got a bit of gallows humor when it comes to sudden and unexpected unemployment these days (my husband lost his job last week). I talked to Big Bird this morning to see how he was doing with Mitt Romney's threat to defund PBS, especially after he brought up Big Bird by name.

Me: How are you doing, buddy?

Big Bird: It's like it was personal! (sounds of sobbing, beak blowing and nest gnashing)

The Yellow One was too distraught to talk via phone, but he did email me this pictorial later this afternoon.

BIG BIRD'S

FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF

---

STAGE ONE: DENIAL AND ISOLATION

This can't happen! I've been to the White House! A REPUBLICAN WHITE HOUSE.

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

STAGE TWO: ANGER

But I was on the Walk of Fame, bitches!

By Benmckune at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

STAGE THREE: BARGAINING

I could totally make a fresh start in publishing. What a thriving industry!

Creative Commons License by Pop Culture Geek on Flickr

STAGE FOUR: DEPRESSION

Fuck. It just hasn't been the same since the late Seventies.

Creative Commons License by Evelyn Giggles on Flickr

STAGE FIVE: ACCEPTANCE

I'd better go vote for Barack Obama.

Creative Commons License from Poster Boy NYC on Flickr

Rock the vote, America.

---

Do you have insomnia? Does your kid? Check out my review of the NightWave Sleep Assistant on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

Hi everyone!

I've been immersed in politics for the past two weeks because of my job. And yes! I am very, very excited the conventions are ending tonight! For even though I'm very passionate about my politics (I apologize if you read my Twitter feed or its flowthrough to Facebook), I grow weary, too. It's all so big and so hard and what the hell, those numbers have more zeroes than my daughter has toes.

Part of what I've been doing this week is sitting on Twitter to see what people are saying about this or that. And so, this afternoon/evening, I found out two of my bloggy friends are doing some very cool stuff.

If you're sick of politics, why not go fight cancer with Charlie at How to Be a Dad or fight hunger with Mr Lady at Whiskey in My Sippy Cup?

Why not, indeed?

DJ Nibbles Celebates Helping People

It's here. The lead-up to Election 2012. As part of my job, I need to look at it, to look at it with as open a mind as I can muster. I can't hide my head and turn off Twitter and the television, like I'd really, really like to do. It's good, in a way, as it's forcing me to confront the issues of the day and solidify how I feel about them and make sure I get myself to the voting booth on time. 

But wow, I'm really struggling with it. Last night the little angel brought me my bear when I was reduced to tears of frustration and anger at an article I saw on Twitter.

I thanked her and took her to curriculum night at her school and immersed myself for forty-five minutes in all the things that third-graders learn, what sort of help they need and how we can best prepare them for fourth grade by what they learn this year (note: addition and subtraction rote memorization). 

Then we drove home into the darkening sky with the top down. Returned a movie. Got a shake. Walked back into a house strewn with two-hour-old milk and the remnants of dinner scattered across the table because we were so late when we left. 

It is perhaps the collision of such big ideas and issues with the mundane that paralyzes me. Needing to take out the garbage and scoop the cat litter and wash the dishes in the face of such important political movement, knowing I have no time to volunteer nor any money to give -- things are tight all around. I have my voice, and I donate it as freely as I can, but it pains me to tell Planned Parenthood not this time, I understand you've lost your funding again, but I just can't right now. Call back in a few months, maybe things will be different. 

I'm tapped out. That's what I felt when I surveyed the kitchen last night, my laptop still open next to the half-full soup bowl, Twitter updating and updating and updating, the headlines falling off the screen as quickly as they appeared.

Tweet.

Tweet.

Tweet.

---

In less depressing news, I reviewed some prescription sunglasses on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

By now everyone with media access knows the Komen Foundation defunded Planned Parenthood this week. I wish I could say it leaves me shaking with anger at Komen, but what it does more is underscore my belief that the private sector cannot be depended upon to be fair to people across income levels -- and therefore healthcare should not be run by the private sector.

We need universal healthcare, defined as:  a term referring to organized health care systems built around the principle of universal coverage for all members of society, combining mechanisms for health financing and service provision.

If we don't have universal healthcare, organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide services -- of which abortion is only 3% -- depend on private donations. So private donations by wealthy people determine whether or not a woman like I was immediately post-college gets to have a pap smear or a STD test that year. Private donations determine whether someone like your mother gets her mammogram if she doesn't have health insurance. Private. Donations. Other people's generosity. 

People are fickle.

Private donors can be influenced by politics or emotion. They can decide no one's taking care of them, why should they take care of other people? They can get swayed by religious beliefs about when women want to have children -- and don't get me started on why women's health can be influenced by religion but not men's -- and decide because they don't agree with what's happening with 3% of an organization's legal health care services that they'll defund 97% of the cancer screenings and women's health services provided to women who can't afford to go anywhere else and will otherwise go without health care in the richest country in the world.

And the only one -- unless things go as intended in 2014 -- without universal  health care: 

Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception [1]. 

People got so upset about "Obamacare." I got upset with the people who are upset, because it's completely clear to me when one women's health organization can defund another's so easily that all health -- but especially women's health, the only health tied to religious issues -- hangs completely in the balance unless it's universal. Women are held captive by their reproductive organs, which like any organs can get cancer and you know, kill you. Women can be held back from medical care for those organs if they're too poor to afford to go anywhere but Planned Parenthood and then Planned Parenthood doesn't have the money to help them because the private sector got honked off about something and refused to fund them. 

This whole Komen/PP issue reinforces for me so clearly all the problems I have with pure capitalism: People can be selfish fools who only care about themselves. I believe when we live in a First World country, we don't get to behave like prigs. When we hold ourselves up to a higher standard and pass judgment on other countries and step in to "help" them see the error of their ways, we have to be a shining example of democracy and capitalism and freedom ourselves, or why the fuck are we telling anyone else how to behave?

AND WE ARE NOT.

We don't take care of our own very well. We argue over "the food stamp president." We deny our women healthcare because their reproductive organs got tangled up in religion, whether we or they follow those religions or not.

We have to change!

We can't depend on the generosity of the private sector for something as important as our health care. It is clear, and I hope the events of this week make it crystal clear for anyone questioning why we need universal health care.

What if it was your cancer screening, your mother's, your daughter's -- because it could be, anyone's, any time. Everyone under this current system is one health nightmare away from poverty. And that's ridiculous and scary and this is America and it has to change. Part of the luxury of living in this country with all its shining highways and FDA regulations should be contributing to the health and safety of every single citizen. We neglect each other, we neglect America, we neglect our future.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8YhED4IgQA]