Woman wonders

Mixed feelings about Women’s Equality Day, which is today. As a commemoration of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on this date in 1920, well, hurrah.

(Hello? The Nineteenth granted women the right to vote across the nation. Only 131 years after the implementation of the Constitution itself, and 50 years after certification of the Sixteenth Amendment declaring “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”)

Basically, the Nineteenth Amendment certified that, yes, surprise, surprise: women are full citizens and therefore cannot have their right to vote denied or abridged by the United States or any state. The campaign for female suffrage had its beginnings at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and the push for a Constitutional amendment to sort it out once and for all began in 1878, so as you can imagine, there was considerable discussion of the matter. And you might have thought that with its implementation, we’d be ready to accept that equality in citizenship should imply equality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and move on.

But you’d be wrong.

Ergo the creation of Women’s Equality Day in 1971 by Bella Abzug. And my dismay about it. Because even 45 years after that attempt to keep the issues of equality before our eyes, we still seem to be unclear about the fact that this includes equal opportunity in the workplace, in housing, in access to healthcare and education, and…like all that.

Some very depressing global statistics on these issues here. And I’ll just close my eyes and throw a dart at the myriad posts I’ve written about some of the ludicrous events in the worlds of business and politics. Because this sort of resistance to making room at the table is more ubiquitous than Starbucks, and even more pernicious. It’s as though we were demanding at gunpoint some revolutionary upturning of all that’s held sacred.

Oh, wait…

I get it: if you have a scarcity mindset, you think that the pie that comprises all worldly (and possibly unworldly) things is finite. Money, status, power, space on the bus, love—whatever portion someone else has of any of those things means there’s less for you. And every alteration to the status quo becomes a threat to your existence, to your happiness. That scarcity mindset is what’s been driving marketing and political campaigns for…well, a long time.

But what if you consider a different proposition: by allowing women, non-white folks, people with disabilities or indeterminate gender to join the enterprise on an equal basis, and contribute to their full capabilities—what if that expands the pie, and creates more for everyone? What would that world look like?

Also consider how it would reduce the stress that all that anger, fear and bile puts onto your system.

In a conversation I had with a colleague about the variety of attacks made on female political candidates (Clinton, Fiorini, Palin, Pelosi—all the way back to Geraldine Ferraro, and probably to Margaret Chase Smith), I pointed out that it didn’t matter which side of the political spectrum either the candidates or the attackers were on. Right, left, progressive, conservative—the slime thrown is almost universally tied to one's chromosome configuration. She’s had cosmetic “work” done! Her glasses! Her pantsuits! Her hormones! The same holds true for women having the nerve to take leadership roles in business or the military or other fields.

And said no one ever about a male candidate, commander or CEO. Ever.

I told my colleague I really hope that by the time his daughters (one in high school, one in elementary school) hit the workplace some of this will have diminished. I could see him processing the idea and rejecting it based on what we experience today. That saddened me.

So here’s my fond wish: that we can hold out the ideal of true women’s equality, and that we won’t just think of it one day a year, but that it’ll be so commonplace that we can look back and say, “Hey—so glad we don’t have to deal with this anymore, and can focus all our considerable capabilities on solving sustainable energy and delivering safe drinking water to all homes globally.”

Ah—a girl can dream.

Plated up

As you know, I love sussing out stories from my surroundings. And as a fourth-generation Californian, I look to motor vehicles as extensions of people’s personal narratives. Whether it’s stating practical capabilities, asking the big questions or going Mitty, your vanity plate is more than just an tag. It’s like a DMV equivalent of a hashtag, actually.

In the Old Dominion, of course, people are somewhat less inclined to be, um, freewheeling than on the west coast. Long after Californians had been pushing the envelope for raging against the Man (or whatever), Virginians were spending extra to have their initials on their plates. If they were making long-term bets on their marriages, they’d have his-n-hers initials.

These days they’re opening up some, as I’ve noted before. And you're more likely to find sweetness and light, as in this nature lover:

But here’s someone living on the edge:

And I’m thinking that the guy who let this one get out of the state pen didn’t know anything about Aleister Crowley. Probably thought it was the applicant’s mama's name.

Even so, the award for taking the piss goes to this person back in my home state:

That’s what I call making a statement.

Paper tiger

Well, alrighty then: my long personal nightmare is…

Following an extended project involving the unwilling being led by the blind (or possibly mushrooms being cultivated in a guano-rich environment), my fellow “tiger cub team” (and no, I’m not making that up. Tiger teams were bad enough; calling the breakout groups “cubs” was just a business bullshit bingo square too far. I suppose I should be grateful they didn't call us "tiger moms") leads and I gave our after-action report to the executive sponsors.

And since, as you know, over the months the project in question had descended from the surreal to the celluloid-real, I think it’s appropriate to mark the occasion with a clip.

I really hope this signifies the light at the end of the tunnel. And not of a train.

Legal notice

Periodically the Chief Legal/Financial Officer of my employer runs training on, well, legal and financial stuff. They send emails to all staff, you reply that you’ll go, mark your calendar, and Bob’s your uncle.

Because we have a publishing division, and a lot of people run public-facing social media accounts, there’s a big push to make sure we don’t violate copyright and other intellectual property protections. They also give an overview of what constitutes slander and libel, which I really wish the staffs of political candidates and serving congressmorons would bring to their attention.

And, you know, financial reporting and other governance things; they’re important, too.

But evidently they haven’t had a lot of people respond to the email that went out a couple of weeks ago, because flyers started appearing in the kitchen:

And on the mirror in the ladies’ room:

Also, I’m reliably informed that one’s posted in the men’s room, but I didn’t go in there to get photographic evidence.

I’m not entirely sure about the flyers-in-the-loos as a marketing strategy. But I still don’t have a handle on this crowd, so maybe it works.

Gratitude Monday: Davey's gift

Last month the son of a colleague of mine was killed in an auto accident; he was 24. I didn’t know Davey, and only learned of his death through Facebook. To honor his life, his family asked people to perform an act of kindness as Davey’s Gift.

Well, as I say, I didn’t know the young man, but I have been consciously trying over the past few years to step out of my tight, defensive stance in life, to not take everything personally, and (in the words of a friend) to “come down easy when you could come down hard.” To let the little (and even some of the large) irritations slide off me and consider that the perpetrator might be having a worse day, week or month than I am.

But I’ve learned that I’m often caught off-balance when opportunities to display that kind of grace present themselves. It takes me a while to recognize and process what I’m seeing or hearing. That person who’s weaving through the crowd on the Metro platform trying to get to the place where the last car will stop and paying no attention to anything else? Me. The driver disinclined to reward you for gunning along the exit lane and then trying to cut in front? Me. That anxious, impatient person in the checkout line glaring as you wait until all your items have been rung up to fumble for coupons? Me.

So I’ve armed myself with the wherewithal to step out of that mindset. One of my weapons of personal kindness: a bunch of McDonald’s gift cards.

They’re easy to carry around in your pockets so you can disperse as the spirit takes you. Yeah, I worry about the nutrition, etc., but in the kind of weather we’re having, you can at least get something cold to drink and have a legitimate reason for sitting in the air conditioning for a while if you really need it.

I gave the first one to a guy I see regularly at the Metro Center exit at 12^th and G Streets. You never hear him saying anything, or even see him approaching anyone. He just stands or sits on a ledge (the tables and chairs outside are reserved for Cosi customers). In the winter he’s covered with what looks like an old Army-issue grey wool blanket. These days he’s got a towel draped over his head.

One recent morning I noticed him as I got off the escalator around 0630. It was one of those days that was going to have a heat index of 110. I turned as usual toward work, then stopped, dug into my bag and pulled out one of the gift cards. I didn’t say anything, just stood in front of where he was sitting. He pulled back his towel, saw the card I was holding out, took it and thanked me. I told him the value of the card and wished him well.

And I went on to start my day feeling better.

The next one went to whoever it is who cleans our offices, empties the rubbish bins and attends to the rest rooms. For most white-collar workers, clean environments and empty trash cans are just…there. It’s easy to never think about the people who do the actual work of scrubbing toilets, vacuuming carpets and all the rest of it. But because I like to work early, I’ve often run into the cleaning crews, especially the out-sourced contractors who keep companies like Cisco and Microsoft humming no matter how many layers of vendor management skim off their percentages.

And I well recall how, earlier this year, my employer’s cleaners were on the job during the snow storms that kept the office workers home.

So I wanted to show my appreciation to the person who does that for me every working day. I taped one of the cards to the inside of my recycling bin, along with a note saying thank you. Next morning it was gone.

In addition, these days I’m more likely to be the person holding the door for someone whose arms are loaded, or to make way for families on the Metro or to listen with attention to a story I’ve heard a few times before.  

I didn’t know Davey, and I don’t know the people I’m to whom I'm giving in my small way. But it doesn’t matter. I’m just passing on the kindness, and finding that in doing so, I feel better, even on the very bad days. 

You might consider doing so, too. You can do it for Davey, or for someone else in your life, or just for your own self. See if it doesn't make you feel the same gratitude I do.

No comment necessary

Well, boo: NPR has announced that they’re discontinuing comments on stories published on their website as of 23 August. Instead, if you have a burning need to add your insight to stories, you’ll have to go to Facebook or Twitter, or Snapchat, Instagram or Tumblr.

Partly, it seems, the move is due to the increasingly lowered civility we’ve seen pretty much everywhere, no doubt exacerbated by the current election campaigns. It’s certainly been my observation that even the most seemingly innocuous stories (about, say, ice cream, or gravitational waves, or The Sopranos) get splattered with “Benghazi!”, “TrumpU” or variants on “only a moron with tertiary syphilis would espouse that opinion” within the first three hours of posting.

Then there’s the cost of moderating the comments, which even though out-sourced, has been running much higher than budgeted.

NPR extrapolated some insights from running their comments data: Last month their site logged nearly 33 million unique visitors and almost 500,000 comments. But those comments came from fewer than 20,000 users. In May, June and July, more than half of all comments came from just 2,600 users.

As a regular reader, I could probably name at least 100 of them, because you come to recognize not only the names but also the content and style of the comments. Some people get blocked for repeated abuse, then return under new user names. Other regulars suss them out pretty quickly.

Another interesting statistic is that this small number of commenters preponderantly arrives at the site via the desktop, which skews older (younger users favor mobile), and they appear to be more than 80 percent male, while overall NPR.org users are 52 percent male. (This may account for the number of attempted thread hijackings by men’s rights advocates trolls.)

Moving to social media will no doubt engage those younger users. It will probably also mean that the language will be more colorful, at least on the platforms that favor anonymity in registration. And when I say “more colorful”, I mean more profane, vicious and badly-spelt. That’s the nature of the beast.

One more interesting thing about the announcement: in response to both the announcement of the changing of the guard, and the NPR Ombudsman explanation of the rationale, long-time commenters who have engaged in extended “no, you’re a poopy-head” exchanges over the years, have been bidding each other farewell and Godspeed.

It’s like the last day of school after graduation.

Body politic

I’ve known Rodolfo, the guy who cuts my hair, for about 20 years now. Our conversations generally run to his latest trip somewhere, or where to find various foodstuffs, or—you know—hair stuff. In all the time I’ve known him, I don’t think we’ve ever talked politics. You don’t with clients, and even if you discover someone’s views agree with yours, in a salon you don’t know whether other clients agree with you, and everything's public in a salon.

But this time we very carefully worked our way to the elections—because, seriously, who’s not going to talk about the Groundhog Day of train wrecks? Plus, as a naturalized citizen, Rodolfo is fully cognizant of how the Founding Fathers built the framework of our government’s intended checks and balances; he knows how things were supposed to work so we can get to the realities.

He said two things that I think are good to pass on:

First, he described how, when he first came here in the 80s, US government seemed like a shining city upon a hill (not his actual words, but his intent)—so different from the corruption all up and down the spectrum in Mexico. But now, it’s pretty much the same; the transactions are just done in English.

Well, I certainly can’t argue with that. Sadly.

The other thing cracked me up. Evidently a lot of clients are bringing up the current candidates, and one of his long-timers, a Republican, asked Rodolfo whom he’s voting for. He replied, “I’m a Mexican. Who do you think?”

Stormy weather

Here’s something you don’t see in the Valley They Call Silicon: an un-freaking-believable light show of a summer storm:

And yes—that was me out on my balcony shooting video like an idiot. Because: lightning.

Well played, gentlemen

Even though I love track and field, I lost a lot of my interest in Olympic sport when NBC got the contract to broadcast the Games in the 1980s. Over the decades their coverage has descended further into crapdom at every Olympiad, and the merger with Comcast has only meant that if you want to see some actual sporting events in real time where the US isn’t a lock to medal, you have to VPN out of the country. (They have such a lock that you can't even see video unless you're on one of their properties.)

Not for nothing do #ShutUpMattLauer and #NBCfail trend every two years.

When you factor in the general corporatization of the Games and the commercial hype of a few select athletes, it produces in me a full-throated meh. The world, in my opinion, really does not need more drama queens, particularly in a presidential election year.

So this summer I’m pleasantly surprised to hear of actual graciousness and sportsmanship, coming out of—of all places—the tennis court, which ever since John McEnroe has been the home of toddler-grade toy-tossing tantrums.

First, we have the American Jack Sock, who competed despite a diagnosis of walking pneumonia just before the opening ceremony. He lost early in the singles event, but still pulled a bronze in men’s doubles (with Steve Johnson) and a gold in mixed doubles (with Bethanie Mattek-Sands).

Now, that’s an achievement in anyone’s books, but you get a measure of the young man’s sense of sportsmanship from a competition earlier this year. He was playing Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt in the Hopman Cup match in January when the umpire ruled one of Hewitt’s serves out. Sock told Hewitt that it was in, actually, and he should challenge the call.

The disbelief on Hewitt’s face is evident. But Sock was right, and the point went to Hewitt, who went on to win the match.

But the audience went wild.

My other example of an Olympic champion whose ego does not require constant feeding is Andy Murray. The Scotsman was the first athlete to win back-to-back gold medals in men’s singles. Naturally one of the approximately 12,342 BBC sport reporters sent to Rio interviewed him and fed him a line you’d expect many competitors to lap up, a fulsome “you’re so amazing, two golds in tennis, a first ever.”

Murray never hesitated, pointing out that the Williams sisters “have about four each”.

Boom.

Gratitude Monday: Dog days

You know you’re in Northern Virginia when you get out of your air conditioned car any time during daylight hours and your glasses fog up. It’s that combination of temperatures above 90 degrees and humidity that rivals the Amazon. (This means that about a month ago I reconciled myself to the fact that I was going to have a bad hair day that lasts through mid-September.)

Saturday I returned a book to the library around 0800, and from the moment I got out of the car, walked ten yards to dump it in the book return slot and then got back into the car, I was functionally blind.

There’s also that sense that every time you leave an air conditioned building you feel like you’ve walked into a blast furnace, and it’s sucking the air right out of your lungs. On days like these I wonder at the fortitude of men who met in battle within an hour’s drive of here in July, August and September. Their uniforms were wool, their rifles and packs were heavy and the only water they had was what they carried in their canteens.

Every time I’ve walked the fields of Manassas and Sharpsburg I’ve thought about them, wondering how they managed to form ranks, much less fight for hours, in that heat and humidity. It reminds me that what we enjoy today has been paid for over and over across the years.

It makes me grateful for clean water coming from the taps; for air conditioning in offices, residences and transportation; for peace in my neighborhood; for opticians; for cotton clothing; for construction workers, first responders, crossing guards, and everyone who does their job out in this God-awful heat. And for the prospect of fall.