last year, on international women’s day, andy asked what happened to “international white guy day”. to which i pointed out *every day* was international white guy day.

this year, i was on my lunch hour walk with my friend bernie. and we went past the statue of emmeline pankhurst, in front of the houses of parliament. there were wreaths of flowers lain in front, and i asked bernie who she was (history was never my strong suit). turns out, she was the leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the u.k., the british equivalent of our susan b. anthony. she chained herself to the gates of parliament, bombed westminster abbey, went on hunger strikes, suffered imprisonment to achieve her goal. i found it touching that her statue was in such a prominent position, and that there were floral tributes in homage from all the major political parties.

flickr photo courtesy of tomroyal

the problem is that it remains tokenism. if you bother to check out the statistics, you soon find that women remain dramatically underrepresented in parliament. that the u.k., in fact, lags far behind not only many of the most progressive european countries (the scandanavian contingent are all in the top ten), but also more surprising countries such as rwanda, cuba, and mozambique.

With 19.5%, the UK is ranked 52nd out of 189 countries listed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in terms of the percentage of women holding office in the lower or single House of the national Parliamentary body.

for a westernised country that aspires to achieve real equality,that’s just not good enough. every day in modern history has been “international white guy” day. i’m lucky enough to live in one of the few countries in the world that has the opportunity to change that.

once a year flowers and a statue, not matter how well intentioned, are just not good enough.

ms. pankhurst would say the same.

song of the day: no doubt – just a girl

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emmeline pankhurst, women's suffrage, women's rights, international women's day

the metropolitan police’s newest counter-terrorism idea? turn neighbours into informants. the slogan: “You don’t have to be sure. If you suspect it, report it.”

If you think that you may have seen something suspicious or you are unsure about somebody’s activities or behaviour, however insignificant it may seem at the time, call the Anti-Terrorist hotline on xxxx xxx xxx. Calls are taken in confidence by specialist officers who will analyse your information. They’ll decide if and how to follow it up. Your call could be vital to us however unsure you may be.

-snip-

The terrorist threat remains real and there is no room for complacency. The public should remain alert and aware of their surrounding at all times. If something strikes you as suspicious and out of place then trust your instincts and call the police.

because apparently50% of all “terror” related arrests being completely and wholly unfounded, isn’t enough. 40 convictions in 1166 arrests is a record to be proud of, for sure.

song of the day: the shins – caring is creepy

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i find it disturbing, not that a raving lunatic like ann coulter called presidential candidate john edwards a “faggot” in front of a room full of press and cameras – but that out of all the vile slurs she could have possibly chosen to denigrate him, out of all the low blows she could have struck, she somehow judged that *that* would be simultaneously the most insulting and publicly palatable.

and for what it’s worth, it looks like she was on the money on that last count. four days later, and most news organisations are *just now* covering this. what does that tell you?

song of the day:Cake – Satan is my Motor

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ann coulter

i’ve been mulling poetry lately. returning to an old love, which at various times in my life has sustained me in ways i could not, would not, begin to circumscribe with the fences that words create. i have read poetry which got me through the darkness of a never-ending night and shadows too big to fight. and i have read poetry that filled my heart with such pure, oxygenated, exquisite beauty, i thought it might pop in a last breath of exuberance. and i’ve written both good and bad poetry, fingers flying with the intense immediacy of the need to purge or perish. i’ve wandered away from poetry in happier, busier times… but once you’ve had poetry stir your soul to light, carry you on its wave from hope to despair and back to hope again – after that, you will never truly leave it.

and, not coincidentally, i’ve recently found myself returning to the faithful old lyrics of bobby zimmerman. i’ve written before about the threads of folk music that run through my life, and the colour he plays in that skein. the refrain of guitar and plaintive voice that keen in perfect pitch with the pain of generations – the timeless anguish and shattered hope that each age feels as sharply, as poignantly as the first ever did. and over the years, the academics have debated whether bob dylan is more poet than musician, more lyricist than artist, more bard than guitarist. they’ve written books and treatises, propounding criteria both for and against classification – trying to circumscribe with fences of words the ineffable themes and deep harmonies bound together with the perfect turn of phrase or chord that make a bob dylan song more than just a poem set to music. and they invariably say things like:

The problem many critics have with calling song lyrics poetry is that songs are only fully realized in performance. It takes the lyrics, music, and voice working in tandem to unpack the power of a song, whereas a poem ideally stands up by itself, on the page, controlling its own timing and internal music. Dylan’s lyrics, and most especially his creative rhyme-making, may only work, as critic Ian Hamilton has written, with “Bob’s barbed-wire tonsils in support.”

and in that sort of analysis, i cannot help but feel they miss the forest for the trees. that bob dylan’s poems are set to music, that they cannot be dissected, parsed without the context of voice and instrument and rhythm makes them, to my mind some of the most complex poems written. the words, rather than being laid bare and sacrified to the elements, are nestled in layer upon layer of lovingly spun emotion. the lyrics are inextricably intertwined with elements of a melodic pulse far older and more evocative than any written alphabet. and that makes them *more* than poetry, not less.

it’s impossible to listen and not believe that bob dylan is one of the great poets of our time. so in returning to poetry, i am also returning to dylan – and in returning to dylan, i find once again the kind of poetry that lifts me, fills me, bears me along when it’s too much to bear. the love of a life, for a lifetime.

it’s good to be back.

Bob Dylan – Shelter from the storm

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Bob Dylan – Most Of The Time

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Bob Dylan – I Shall be Released

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Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

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Bob Dylan – Masters of War

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Bob Dylan – Farewell Angelina

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so i’ve spent the day filling out my “indefinite leave to remain” application. this is the last interaction with immigration i am legally required to have unless i elect to apply for citizenship (which i will, but not for another month or so yet).

as most of you know, i’ve had a few bad experiences with immigration in the past, which have left me traumatised. i no longer breeze through the queue at the airport with the confident assurance of someone with the right to enter the country. for the past 4 years, i have been but a visitor here, by the kind leave of the british government – a message which was driven home in the most direct way possible when i was physically escorted onto a plane home. yet even with those mental scars, i’ve always believed that a country has the right (and the duty) to impose whatever immigration restrictions they feel are necessary for the nation’s safety and well-being. they may not make *my* life any easier, but that doesn’t mean i don’t fully appreciate the need for them. and by any standard, the u.k.’s procedures are extremely reasonable and straightforward. even after my debacle, i was still allowed to come back and work and live – even if i did piss my pants every time i re-entered.

when i last visited the kind and lovely people at the immigration and nationality directorate in croydon, it was to apply for my spousal visa just after our wedding (i was here on a work permit prior to that, but a spousal visa gave me more job flexibility). i took jonno along for moral support, and lugged along a giant file full of documentation arranged and cross-indexed by any category they could possibly wish to see. and to be honest, i think the lady at the counter wanted to weep with joy for a customer who a) spoke english as a native language and b) came prepared to make her job easier. she took all of 4 minutes to photocopy and stamp her approval, sent us away to wait for the 2 hours to have the visa issued, and we were done by lunchtime. whew!

but “indefinite leave to remain” is a different kettle of fish altogether. where it is the last stop on the immigration train before becoming a permanent resident (with most of the same rights as a citizen except voting and passport), they tend to be a little more persnickety. when i last left the i.n.d. office, the woman reminded me that i should keep any and all documentation and post for the next two years. and so i have – that same file is about 3x bigger now. i have every bank statement, every phone bill, every pap smear reminder the doctor has ever sent… all in preparation for this day.

which is why i’ve spent the past 4 hours sitting crosslegged on the lounge floor, surrounded by a vast-yet-tidy sea of papers, trying to come up with the perfect combination of documents to satisfy the following criteria:

Evidence that you have the funds to maintain and accommodate yourself and any dependants
without recourse to public funds. The evidence must be formal documents such as bank
statements, a building society passbook, or wage slips for you and/or your partner (but please
don’t send us travellers cheques or credit cards). If a relative or friend is supporting you, the
evidence should be a letter from him/her confirming this together with formal documents
showing their financial situation (see Note 3).

Note 3: The documents showing the funds available to you should cover at least the last 3 months. We do not accept internet or
cashpoint statements as evidence of funds.

We need documentary evidence indicating that you and your partner are still living together as a couple and have done so during the past two years. Ideally, this evidence should indicate joint commitments in your finances, other responsibilities and social activities spread across the past 2 years/ 24 months.

Items of correspondence or other documentary evidence from sources of the kind listed below would be acceptable. These should be divided fairly equally between each of the two years, and be addressed jointly in both your names wherever possible. If you do not have any or enough in your joint names, items addressed to each of you individually may be acceptable, provided they show the same address and you provide roughly the same number of items in each of your names. The items of evidence should be from at least 5 different official sources. Ideally, a total of 20 items of evidence should be provided.

• telephone bills or statements
• gas bills or statements
• electricity bills or statements
• water rates bills or statements
• council tax bills or statements
• mortgage statements or agreement
• bank or building society statements/passbooks
• tenancy agreement
• insurance policies/certificates or other correspondence
• loan agreements
• AA, RAC or similar membership
• membership of sports or social clubs
• membership of a religious organisation
• correspondence from government departments or agencies (eg HM Revenue and Customs, Inland Revenue, Department for
Work and Pensions) including evidence that you have declared your relationship to the appropriate government bodies.
• correspondence from GP or local health authority

Mind you, this is not exactly *hard* – particularly since i paid attention, and therefore was warned well in advance (as opposed to other expats i know who were unpleasantly surprised!) but it is laboriously time consuming. boiling 2 years of marriage down to 20 documents is a depressingly robotic exercise. as far as the home office is concerned, my marriage is not the sum of the dreams and tears we’ve faithfully invested in making our relationship work, day in, day out. to them, it is nothing more than the sum of what can be proven through institutionalised behaviour – putting money in the bank, paying taxes, registering births. more depressing is trying to decide if i should go the cheap route (£335 by post – but entrusting the Royal Mail with my passports and application and original documents) or the in-person route (£500 and a day off work). I’m spoilt for choice, i tell ya.

still, after 3 work permit applications, one forced removal, one spousal visa, and several dreadful knotted stomachs at heathrow – after 4 years of stringing visa upon visa toegther, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel. after this, i will no longer be a temporary tolerated guest, but an acknowledged permanent resident. after the years of mixed feelings, difficult adjustments, and nerve-wracking experiences, i will have earned through my persistence, my stubbornness, my sacrifice, the *right* to live here indefinitely.

should ease a few butterflies in the immigration queue at the airport.

song of the day: wilco – box full of letters

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british immigration

my final list of names for the cat:

paco
pickle
fido
yoda
kermit
zoinks

j’s final list of names:

sebastian
alexander
several native american names i couldn’t pronounce

you see where i am going with this?

and after protracted negotiations on the scale of the marshall plan, we finally christened the cat…

zeke!

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new york city has voted to “symbolically” ban the use of the n-word.

i’m not black. i don’t pretend to understand for even one moment what it is like to live with black skin in america, and it would be sheer arrogance to imagine that i have any say-so in this. but something about this gesture deeply disturbs me, however well-intentioned it might be.

as i said, i’m not black. but i was married to a black man and we were together for nine years and we lived in new york city. so i’ve had some second-hand exposure to contemporary racism and the multitude of forms it can take in a city where minorities are the majority, yet viciously offensive speech is protected by the first amendment. and i currently live in a country where using the n-word (or any other racial slur) is considered a prosecutable hate crime – where lawmakers try to legislate civility, yet recent history demonstrates that bigotry still runs just below the surface.

and in my experience of both environments, i’ve found i’d rather let the bigots self-identify through their own ignorant admission, than have to try to guess at who harbours prejudice behind their public facade.

by all accounts, this act by the city council is simply a feel-good motion, with no legal teeth. it’s a chiding call to everyone to be on their best verbal behaviour, even those african-americans who legitimately argue they’re entitled to reclaim the n-word and it’s sole usage as an empowering act. once again, elected officials think they know what’s best.

but as the u.k. has proven, outlawing the words doesn’t work. you can make certain speech punishable by law, but that doesn’t force people more sensitive or tolerant. you can make calling someone a “paki” illegal, but that doesn’t cure the antipathy which exists towards the large southeast asian community. you can make “hate speech” illegal, but that doesn’t keep people from committing racially motivated murders. you can make it illegal to spout religious hatred, but you can’t ignore the strong anti-muslim sentiment which has penetrated much of the country since the tube bombings. in spite of all the strictest rules and regulations, hate crime, race riots and racially motivated killings continue to occur. the hot ember of latent hostility remains burning in the ashes, just waiting for oxygen to burst into violent flame.

new york officials should learn by british example. banning painful words doesn’t eliminate the painful reality of racism – it merely sends it underground. and to my mind, that’s much more dangerous.

song of the day: the delgados – all you need is hate

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new york city, hate speech

so a little more about “bob” (paco? taco? bingo?)

we got him through an ad we’d answered – some family in a council estate in Tulse Hill. The guy called J on his way home from work, so we hiked over there around 7pm. He’s 1 and a half, and used to being an indoor cat. I was a little worried when we picked him up – he didn’t want to meet us, was running all over the house, running away from us. Right now he’s really skittish – spending the night under the dresser, cowering behind the curtains and seeking shelter under the bedsheets. But slowly he’s getting braver – and he really likes affection. He vacillates between hiding in the tangle of cords behind the television, and brazenly strutting around the house, head-butting you for a stroke or tickle. J is already calling him ugly and smelly… which means he likes him. I took a half day at work and came home early to be with him and found him wet and shivering in the tub. but he didn’t utter even a peep of protest when i took him in my arms with a towel and held him until he warmed.

he’s getting more comfortable. i’m sure it’s a huge adjustment. But just when I think he’s getting used to things, some sudden noise will send him fleeing into the corner. and i have to sigh.

I’m trying to be patient. coaxing and cajoling are really not my style, and after diving under the dresser for the third time this morning, dressed in office clothes, only to emerge with a fistful of dustbunnies, i was getting a wee bit frustrated. but the thing about cats is that, unlike dogs, they don’t seek to please. you accept them on *their* terms, or not at all.

i have a feeling “bob” never really got that kind of acceptance from his previous family. maybe i can learn to be that for him.

dumb guy still won’t let me take a decent photo though!

song of the day: the weakerthans – plea from a cat named virtue (and yes, i really did have all these cat related songs in my library!)

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