That seems to be my daughter’s goal with every game she plays. Everything needs to end up right where it belongs: baby cheetah with mama cheetah, dragon husband with dragon wife, all back in bed together where they belong. Barbie needs Ken, and Ken must have his mate, that no four-year-old can deny.
We drove past the ravished corn fields with their crowds of Canada geese, busily taking what they needed from between the rows. I half-turned my head to the back seat, where my little girl was gazing out the window, and I said, “Those are geese. See all their long, black necks? They are eating the corn that is left on the ground, and then they will fly up together and go somewhere warmer to live for the winter.” It was as it should be. The geese knew where to go. She nodded her little corn-golden head, taking the information in and filing it away where it needed to go.
What an immense delight to pour out knowledge into the ear a willing child. It’s one of the few times you can think, “This is exactly what I need to be doing. I did it right. She wanted to know, and I told her.” Key in lock. Fill up the glass. A purely satisfying moment.
It’s not childishness that makes us delight in putting things to rights, in bringing them home where they belong. Even in the midst of turmoil, we find a primal if fleeting satisfaction in finishing a task, turning chaos into order, making a jumble come out even. The most “adult” of activities is terribly, terribly basic in this regard. It’s stunningly simple: This is made to go inside that. Ever ask yourself, “But why does it somehow seem good, true, or beautiful to fit one thing inside another? What does that even mean?”
It means that, for once, things are where they belong. And that’s not nothing. It’s actually everything. It’s what we’re made to long for. It’s what we were made to do.
For many years, I was hung up on the idea that Heaven would be boring. The only interesting things I’d ever encountered were wobbly, wounded, fascinatingly warped. It was hard enough to conceive of any state of being for eternity, but maddening to imagine that it would be a dull state of being. I thought, with my untidy brain, that perfection meant utter tidiness.
It’s the old Ned Flanders heresy: that the Lord God of Hosts took on flesh in a blaze of glory, shook Jerusalem to its foundations with his words, was torn apart by whips and nails and bled dry; that he harrowed the deadlands and then in the morning came shooting out of the grave like a geyser of light, upending the armies of Hell with a flick of His resurrected finger, striding forth to establish the Church and then to ascend with unspeakable joy to the right hand of his Father, and now He calls upon us, His children, saying “BE YE . . .
. . . tidy.” With a tucked-in shirt and a clean part in our hair. You know, perfect.
No. That can’t be it. He wants us to be perfect, but perfect means complete. Perfect means that everything is where it is supposed to be — not with mere tidiness, like a paperclip in a paperclip holder, but back where it was created to belong, like a lost child coming home, like the fulfillment of a lifelong promise, like the flesh of two made one. That kind of completion.
If that sounds boring to you, then you’re doing it wrong.
What we catch now, in rare moments of respite, is a reminder of who we are and for what we were made. A reminder, as we drive by the ravished fields, that we can glean what’s left between the rows of corn, but it’s only a stop along the way. We were made to go home. Find out what you were made to do, and go home.
It’s a task like no other, this task of merely being present at the edge of a fathomless immensity of love. But that is what you were made for: You are a cup, and you are here to be filled.
We have taken down our article about Raiger and Ave Maria for now. We do not think the threat, below, has legal merit, but because it is a Saturday afternoon and we are currently at the beach celebrating our 21st anniversary and do not need this horseshit, we will return to this issue after we have had time to consider our legal options.
Here’s the letter we received today from Ricardo Reyes on behalf of Ave Maria University:
Simcha Fisher and Damien Fisher:
Please be advised that that our law firm represent Ave Maria University, Inc. (“University”). This correspondence is addressed to you as operators of the blog located at www.simchafisher.com and as the authors of the libelous article published on the blog entitled “Ave Maria prof’s pattern of sexual slander exposed”. Demand is hereby made that the entire article be retracted and removed from the internet, and that you cease and desist from publishing any further libelous remarks.
While the article contains the self-serving claim that Michael Raiger did not “cooperate with the story”, it is obvious someone acting on Raiger’s behalf provided his prior statements to you, and the article is intended to disparage the University during the pending litigation. Also, the reference to “sexual slander” is an irresponsible and outrageous attempt to sensationalize Raiger’s false claims. We understand that Mrs. Raiger’s have been in communication with defrocked former priest Mark Gruber (a person known to have made similar assertions when accused of possessing child pornography) as part of their continued confrontation against the University. We intend to investigate Gruber’s involvement in the publication of this libelous article.
In the article, you have republished several defamatory remarks made by Raiger against the University and professor Travis Curtright. Even more troubling is that you have published a number of false claims as fact, beyond the quotes attributed to Raiger. For example, your assertion that the University’s counsel acknowledged the claims against Curtright is false and a complete fabrication on your part. As you are aware, Raiger’s allegations against professor Curtwright were never proven or corroborated (even though, under Florida law, to suggest someone may or may not be homosexual does not constitute slander). By publishing Raiger’s false claims as your own factual statements, you are liable for defamation per se.
It is evident that you seek to assist Raiger in tortuously interfering with the University’s affairs. Raiger’s false claims against Curtwright are part of a continuing effort to injure the University’s reputation because of Raiger’s long standing opposition to the University’s administration, in particular, President Jim Towey. If you had actually undertaken any investigation, you would have discovered not only that Raiger’s self-serving claims against Curtright were never substantiated, but also that the professor who Raiger was supposedly protecting admitted to having inaccurate information on his CV, and had allowed a male student who stayed at his home to grade his exams. Also, you would have learned that Raiger engaged in a series of overt acts of insubordination designed to undermine the administration before his employment ended with the University. Moreover, the debt secured by the mortgage on Raiger’s home matured upon the termination of his employment and is properly due to the University. There was no retaliation against him. By omitting these facts from the article, and juxtaposing facts to create false impressions, you are also liable for defamation by implication.
Accordingly, if you fail to retract the libelous article or refuse to cease and desist from further conduct, will proceed to bring legal action against you for libel and tortious interference. If such an action is brought, you may be liable for compensatory and punitive damages as well as injunctive relief.
Welcome, again, to new readers! And also old readers, you old bats. Most Fridays, I write a food post, wherein I describe the meals I cooked over the past week. I have ten kids and not a giant budget, so if you’re here to find recipe ideas or just to gawk, please pull up a chair. That sounded rude. I didn’t mean it to be rude. I gawk at myself all the time.
Anyway, I haven’t written up the recipe cards for this week yet; will add them when I get back.
And my big kitchen revelation this week: I have needed a paella pan all my life. I got one on sale last week. I still haven’t made or ever eaten paella or fully understand what it is, but boy, is that a useful pan. It has a lot of hot surface area and high, sloped sides, which makes it ideal for cooking or heating large quantities of sloppy food for large quantities of sloppy people. Get you one!
Birthday! The birthday girl — or technically birthday adult. We now have three technically adults children. Gevalt — requested Damien’s world-stopping chicken cutlets with fresh basil and provolone with homemade red sauce. If there were no heaven but only food, this is what the saints would be served. He made it with panko crumbs, too, cranking the scrumptious fluffiness up to eleven, and the sauce was bright and sweet and a little spicy.
You pound the chicken, bread it, and fry it, then lay a basil leaf on top, cover that with provolone, and ladle the sauce over all to make the cheese melt.
It only takes about eleven hours to prepare, and the rest of us who don’t spend eleven hours preparing it think we should eat it every day! So freaking good, especially since he cooked it in the wonderful, dark olive oil he found for cheap in this weird, off-brand store that carries such things for cheap.
The Birthday One requested chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting for dessert, but I had just been diagnosed with bronchitis that morning and knew that my already feeble and pathetic baking skills would dialed down to be nil; so I got boxed mix and canned frosting, and concentrated my efforts on the garnish.
Speaking of garnish, in German, gar nicht means “not at all.” This doesn’t mean anything; I just can’t stop thinking about it, and maybe now that I’ve told you, I can move along.
So I — well, I didn’t look up a recipe for some reason, but texted my husband to pick up a bar of Baker’s chocolate and some confectioner’s sugar. These I melted in a double boiler until it was more or less smooth. Then we put the melted chocolate in a sandwich bag (we had a pastry bag once, but do we have one now? Gar nicht.), lined a pan with waxed paper, and piped the chocolate into different shapes. Here she is, doing her magic:
She just piped out whatever popped into her head.
I was afraid it wouldn’t set, so we put the finished designs in the freezer for a few hours. They came out great! They peeled right off the wax paper and held their shapes perfectly when we stuck them in the frosting. Here are a few. A chocolate fishie:
a chocolate pumpkin:
a chocolate rose:
and of course a chocolate duck:
Changes I will make next time: I will use bittersweet or semisweet chocolate. The sugar I added barely made a dent in the baker’s chocolate taste! I will maybe add a little shortening, to make the chocolate smoother and a little more viscous. Or do I mean less viscous? I mean squeezy. And I will let it cool a bit in the bag before squeezing it (ow). Other than that, this turned out great. It was quite easy, and I’m sure we’ll be using this technique in the future. One friend said she doesn’t have much artistic talent, so she prints out designs and puts them under the wax paper to trace in chocolate. Brilliant!
SUNDAY
Basil chicken on spaghetti
There was so much food left over, we ate it again. Damien cut up the chicken and heated it up in the sauce, then served it all over spaghetti. Scrumptious.
MONDAY
Aunt Rosie’s Thai steak salad
Steak was on sale and my husband’s sister texted him about a salad that sounded good, so I took a stab at it. We had mixed greens, chopped red, yellow, and orange peppers, chili lime cashews, chopped cilantro, and mandarin oranges
and sliced steak, which I cooked under the broiler with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then sliced thin. Okay, it was actually a roast, not steak. I realize there is a difference between different cuts of meat, but deep in the cheapness of my heart, I refuse to acknowledge that it really matters, especially if it’s the difference between pretending roast is steak and just buying pork again.
It was good. It was tasty and fun.
But here is where I went wrong: I made a dressing which would have been excellent as a marinade for the steak. But as a dressing, it was savage. I mean, I had seconds, but it was savage. The dressing was rice vinegar, sesame oil, fish sauce, minced garlic, and cilantro. I know, fish sauce. The children reminded me once again that it smells like cat frow-up, and once again, they were right.
Anyway, this meal is definitely going on the list, but next time I’ll marinate the meat in the sauce, and then we’ll just have a little vinaigrette to dress the salad. And I won’t open the cans of mandarin oranges until dinner is ready; or else I’ll buy five cans just for Corrie. Conversation we had about the mandarin oranges:
Me: No more, now. We have to save some for the others.
Corrie: Awwwwww!
Me: Okay, two more, but that’s all.
Corrie: Siddy Mama. [helps herself to six more]
And I let her get away with it, too, because I’m just so old. So old.
TUESDAY
Honey garlic chicken thighs with broccoli, potato, and squash
Sheet pan meals! They’re the best. This one is really easy, and susceptible to many adaptions, depending on what vegetables you have hanging around. I’ve somehow turned into the kind of person that gasps in delight to see squash on sale at the supermarket, so I snapped up a nice big one.
Butternut squash is about as easy to peel as a cinder block, but I know a trick! Cut both ends up and chuck it in the microwave for three minutes. Then you can peel it. It’s also helpful to have one of those horizontal peelers, rather than a vertical one.
So you put the vegetables on the pan, put the chicken on the pan, make the sauce and slop that over the chicken, and cook it most of the way. Then add broccoli and finish cooking, then lay on table next to decorative gourds.
Easy squeazy broccolisi, and if someone doesn’t like some part of it (squash), it’s easy to pick it out.
I like squash, though, and I love this meal. The honey sauce makes the chicken skin crisp and tasty, and the sweetness of it seeps into the vegetables in a lovely way. You don’t have to season the broccoli, even though it sits on top, gar nicht! It draws up the juice like a sponge.
WEDNESDAY
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas
Oh, the hosannas. I don’t know how many times I could produce this meal and still be considered a hero by my kids, but I haven’t hit that number yet. Behold the splendor of this meal above all other meals:
My meatloaf is nothing special. I used five pounds of ground beef and two pounds of ground turkey, seven eggs, four cups of bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, minced garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano. I form the loaves on a broiler pan with drainage, so it doesn’t get all soggy as it cooks.
Where I really shine, though, is in my mashed potatoes. I make them with potatoes, butter, and milk, and also salt and pepper, if you can believe it. For the peas, I used my special technique of grasping a bag between my fingers and then opening it. I also use a pot and some water, but I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll tell you about that next week.
THURSDAY
Bacon, eggs, and Brussels sprouts in balsamic honey sauce
Another excellent sheet pan meal, very tasty and satisfying. We got home so freaking late because of a cross country meet, so I was glad I had halved four pounds of Brussels sprouts and chopped up three pounds of bacon earlier in the day. Then you just make up a quick sauce, mix it with the sprouts and the bacon, and spread it in a pan and cook. Once the Brussels sprouts are tender and the bacon is just about done, you crack a bunch of eggs over the food, sprinkle with parmesan and red pepper flakes, and let the eggs cook up. That’s it! It would be great with a crusty bread or maybe pita or even cinnamon buns.
It’s a shame the daylight was gone by the time we ate, because this doesn’t look nearly as good as it tasted (even though I did undercook the bacon and overcook the eggs).
FRIDAY
Pizza
And not a moment too soon.
Well nuts, I still haven’t put together those recipe cards. I’m not on trial here! This week, I’ve been to urgent care, my old therapist, my new therapist, adoration, and my new spiritual director. So this is basically me now:
However, I will get those recipe cards to you soon.
In a large, greased sheet pan, spread the potatoes and squash. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Lay the chicken thighs on top of the potatoes and squash. Brush the sauce over the chicken skins.
Roast the chicken for thirty minutes or more until they are almost cooked.
Add the broccoli, arranging it on top of the potatoes and in between the chicken. Return the pan to the oven and let it finish cooking another 10 -20 minutes so you don't die. The skins should be golden and the broccoli should be a little charred.
One winter vacation when I was in college, I went with my mother to a charismatic healing Mass. You could say that I had been “struggling” with depression, but that’s not really the word. I lived there. I was being swallowed whole by it, day after day, and I could not get out. Wherever people led me, I would go, whether they liked or loved me, hated me, or just found me useful. So I went with her to ask for healing, not with hope, but just because it couldn’t hurt.
The service was emotional—tacky, to be honest— and while the priest was fervid, the scattered congregation sounded sheepish and forced as they softly hooted and called “Amen!” into the chilly air of the church.
We lined up and the priest recited some words of healing—I forget them utterly—over each of us. Then he gave every forehead a firm shove, to put us off balance in case the Holy Spirit wanted to overcome anyone. A few people crumpled and passed out, snow melting quietly off their boots onto the tiled floor. Most of us just staggered a bit under the pressure, recovered, stepped around the fallen, and went back to our seats.
Well, I thought, another dead encounter with dead people in a dead world. I slid into my pew. Nothing had changed because nothing could change. I was dead, and everyone else was allowed to be alive. Why? Who knows? Someone had been sent for help, but help would not come. Help was not for me.
And then I heard these words in my head, “You made Me wait. Now you can wait for a while.” They were not my words. The tone was warm, a little sad, with a small vein of humor. I think I was being teased, chided for taking so long to send for help. You like games, talitha? All right, I will play. Now, wait.
Then I went home. Nothing happened, that I could see.
Years later, I thought of that day as I read Tomie dePaola’s The Miracles of Jesus with my four-year-old daughter. She listened attentively, but I could see that most of the wonders didn’t impress her much. In these short narratives, some kind of grown-up problem is introduced—and then poof, God solves it, The End.
I think she saw Jesus acting more or less like all adults act: making good things appear arbitrarily, making sick people feel better, occasionally being cranky and strange, and wishing people would say “thank you” more often. It was cool, but it didn’t mean much to her. They were miracles, not the kind of thing that happen in real life.
Jairus’ daughter, however, really got her attention—probably because it was about a child, and also because it was a full story, with suspense, despair, and a happy ending, plus the hint of a full life to come.
Jesus hears the news that the girl was sick, but He isn’t teleported to her bed. He walks, one foot in front of the other, on His way to her. And when He gets there, it’s too late. Her family is weeping; the girl, the poor little thing who wanted to be healed, is already dead.
My daughter got very quiet at this point. We read on:
“But Jesus said, ‘Do not weep. She is not dead. She is asleep.’
And the people only laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.
She looked at me with big eyes. They laughed at Jesus!
Jesus took her by the hand and said, ‘Child, arise.’
And her spirit returned and she got up at once. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.”
At this point, my daughter hurled herself at me and gave me a big, squeezing hug. She got that part! She knows about being sad, needing help, waiting far too long, being rescued, and then having something to eat, because all these ups and downs make you hungry. And then life goes on, once you have been saved. Here was a miracle she could appreciate—the kind that’s part of a story.
I got it, too, because I knew that story. I had been that girl. And I had heard that voice. It was a long time, and a lot of steps, before my slow rescue from the dead came up to the speed where it was recognizably healing, recognizably a wonder. But I never forgot the words I heard, telling me that help was on the way. That I wasn’t really dead; I was waiting.
If you have ever lived inside a black hole; if you have moved about the world enclosed in a dome of sound proof glass, with no voices but your own voice, which you hate above all other sounds in the world; if you have felt so bad for so long that you don’t even want life to get better, you just want it to be over—then you will understand that it was very, very good to hear this voice that simply said, “You are not dead. You are only sleeping. And I am on my way.”
I was not merely sitting in that cold pew, it told me. I was sitting and waiting. Someone was with me; or at least, someone was on the way. I was happy to wait. I was happy! This was new.
That was how I began to be healed, more than twenty years ago. It was a long road of waiting, after I began to be healed. It is a long road. I’ve been in therapy for over three years, and now I’ve started spiritual direction. I don’t know what is next. The road keeps getting longer, to be honest, and every time I think I am finally healed, I see that I am not, not yet. But I can see Christ better and better as He approaches, step by step. My healing started when I asked Him, without hope, for healing.
That is what our breath is for: To call out for help. As long as we still have breath in us, we are not dead, we are only sleeping. We are not alone; we are waiting for Christ to arrive.
Can you wait a little longer? You are not dead. You are waiting.
I predict The embattled Cardinal Wuerl, after meeting with the Pope forty-six more times just to talk stuff over, will make a dramatic and tearful farewell, saying he will retreat to a life of poverty and penance because of regrettable mistakes that may or may not have been made by nonspecific episcopal entities such as those other guys over there. Six weeks later, a heavily made-up newcomer, Cardinal Doubtfire, will be appointed in his stead and will have many pastoral things to say in a high, squeaky voice. Phew! So that’s all fixed.
Why wait to report rape? All you have to do is report it, and then the bad guy will be punished, the good girl will be protected, and justice will be served. Here’s one American expressing a typical point of view on the topic this morning:
And here’s a short essay from the loving parent of a teenage girl who was raped — not thirty-five years ago, but last December. They did report it as soon as they possibly could, and now they are living through the very typical aftermath of what very often happens next.
Spoiler: Justice was not served. The author is my friend of twenty years.
***
I spent the weekend sitting in the emergency room with my teenage daughter. I do mean the whole weekend, 48 hours of it. She was inching towards suicidal plans again, Googling ways to overdose.
She’s been an inpatient before, twice, after a previous suicide attempt. Her father and I confronted her about her plans and asked her if she needed to go back into a psychiatric hospital to be safe and get help. She asked if she could think about it. Two hours later she told us, yes, she felt like she needed to go back. So we went to the emergency room to wait for a bed on a unit somewhere. After the emergency room, she spent the next five days in an inpatient mental health facility.
Here is what led up to this day:
In December she was at an event with friends and started to feel sick. A male acquaintance of hers offered to take her home. But before he brought her home, he turned off into a dark parking lot and raped her.
She told him no. She did her best to physically resist. There was no confusion about consent there.
Then he brought her home where she began the dark spiral of self-blame. She had flirted with him in the past, they had texted. There may have even been some talk of “getting together.” So she did her best to just push it away and move on.
Trauma doesn’t work like that, though. Her body responded violently. Over the next two months, she would vomit multiple times a day, often going days at a time without holding down any substantial food. We sought every medical solution we could find to help her, but with only limited success. Because we were just putting a band-aid on a broken leg.
In June, we started observing her even more closely and discovered some concerning information about how she’d been spending her time. Together, her dad and I talked to her about it. She told us that on top of all we found, she had been raped back in December. There was a whirlwind of trying to get her every kind of help we could at this point, but that is not what this is about. My own self-doubt and distress having to think of my child going through this or memories of my own traumatic experiences are not what this is about either, but those were extreme too.
It took two more months before she felt like she was ready to make a police report. In August, she made the report. It took two more weeks for the detective to finally make an appointment for her to come in and make a statement.
I knew that would be hard for her. She would have to talk through the whole story, which she had only done with her therapist to this point. But it was much worse than I imagined. It shattered her all over again.
The detective was a friendly, young guy. He talked to me first and asked me all about what I knew. He asked why we had waited so long to report this. I told him that we found out well after it had happened, and since there wasn’t any physical proof, our first priority was to get her some help and try to get her a little bit stabilized.
Then he talked to her. It took a very long time. He called me back in when she was trying to pull herself back together in the bathroom. He asked me if I knew about her other experiences with boys. I did. He asked me if I knew what kind of pictures and texts she had, at one point, had on her phone. I did. When she came back into the room he told us that he would interview the boy she was accusing, but if he asked for a lawyer, they would drop the case. Because it was her word against his.
The detective talked to him the next day. He asked for a lawyer. The police dropped the case.
So while this boy carried on with his senior year, playing football, hanging out with friends, my daughter ended up sitting in a locked room feeling violated all over again when she was told that for her own safety, she couldn’t have her bra. Or her sweatshirt. Or her journal or any writing utensil but crayons. For her safety.
While this family goes on with life as usual, we are buried under medical bills. His father gets to go watch his son’s games. I pick my daughter up from school after another major panic attack.
While he stayed at school with his friends, she switched schools so that she wouldn’t have to face the trauma of seeing him every day. While he gets by without having to say a word, she is questioned extensively and in graphic detail about what really happened and about her mental health and sexual history.
Last week, I criticized Pope Francis and got a passel of new ultra traditionalist followers. This week, I wrote about rape culture and have garnered a ton of new follows from, like, women’s studies academics. Next week: sad surprises all around!
But seriously, hello to all my new readers. I’m very glad you’re here, and I’m grateful for the shares. But if you’re going to stick around, you should know that I am a deeply silly person. And so I have elected to tell the story of how my speeding ticket was dismissed this week. But I’m going to tell it the stupid way.
This past summer, I was driving home from a concert in Worcester with my two oldest kids and their friend. At first we were all
But I powered through. We’re halfway home and one kid really has to pee, so we stop at the only gas station on that lonely, lonely strip of road. I pull up, she hops out. Nope, it’s closed. She hops in, away we go.
except with a badge and a gun. So he decides I was speeding, and also had a headlight out, and also a license plate light out. Real reason he stopped me: I was driving a black SUV around midnight with out-of-state plates, and had popped in and out of a deserted gas station for no apparent reason. He obviously figures:
Which, okay, fine, a reasonable guess. But after we chat and he runs my plates and all, and finds out I have a clean record just like I said I did, and we showed him the ticket stubs from the goony concert we were at, he still comes back with a big ol’ ticket for $105, and lectures me about how it could have been much higher, but he was giving me a break.
Fine. Whatever. I just want to get home. I actually got stopped a second time on the way home but whatever! I’m not on trial here! Not today, anyway.
So we finally made it home, and the next day, I started getting mad. What do I have to pay a stupid fine for? I’m respectable. I pay taxes. I mow my lawn, not like some slob. Plus I didn’t have $105. So I contested the ticket, and got a court date.
Fast forward a month, and now, well, I am on trial. I show up at the court house forty minutes away looking fresh and fine and alert
I go through security and hand over the dangerous arsenal secreted in my purse, including a Schick razor, a pair of tweezers for my goaty goaty face, and a fork
And also a woman who, with her daughter, had lost her job as a waitress in the diner, was exceedingly proud of having wiped her ass with her unemployment check, and then apparently wiled away the lonely hours going back to said diner and giving her former employers the unemployment check treatment, on three different occasions, and also virtually on social media, which led them to take out a restraining order on her because THEY’RE ALL CORRUPT.
And the whole time, she had a bunch of theories about the judicial system which she voices loudly and repeatedly and they can be summed up thusly:
At this point I stop being nervous, because I have heard enough to realize that the worst possible thing that could happen to me that day was that I would have to pay $105; and compared to the prospects of everyone else in that room, that was actually
So what happened was, finally they called my name, I go in, they read the terrible report that Office Dipshit has written up using his left elbow. My speed was estimated, not clocked; the officer didn’t even write his name down, and he certainly didn’t show up.
Did Brett Kavanaugh try to rape a 15-year-old girl when he was seventeen? Did he drag her into a bedroom, hold her down on a bed, grind on her, try to tear off her clothes, and hold his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream? I don’t know. I sure hope we find out. We should delay the vote on his appointment while we investigate, because the stakes are pretty high, and we all agree we don’t want an attempted rapist on the Supreme Court. Right?
Ah, we don’t agree. Well, dammit.
A large contingent of Americans on social media are openly saying they don’t care if he’s guilty. They are saying things like:
At seventeen, his brain was still developing, so his culpability is reduced.
Hey, he was drunk when he did it. We all do stupid things when we’re drunk.
This is normal hetero hijinx. Boys will be boys. It’s not admirable, but it sure is common — shows the guy is normal, in fact. Heck, high five, Brett. Studly guys like us all have some notches on our belts, wink wink.
And most of all:
But it happened so long ago. There’s no indication he’s still like that. We’re really going to hold him responsible for something that happened so long ago?
There is no sober, cautious examination of the facts, here, from his supporters. All of these arguments rush to the conclusion that he did do exactly what Christine Blasey Ford accuses him of doing. And they are okay with that. They’re willing to wave away the violent attempted rape of a 15-year-old girls as inconsequential. Why?
Because . . . she was just a girl, and that’s what girls are for.
That’s the only answer I keep coming back to. Part of me wants to say that the GOP is so bristling with misogyny and the desperate need to appear macho that they’re always willing to throw women under the bus when power is at stake. Look how readily they nominated and elected a confessed abuser, and (to pick one example at random) look how quickly they toggled from “Stormy Daniels is a dirty liar” to “Hey, now, bribing a hooker isn’t an impeachable offense.”
But if that answered it, then the dems would be different, and they’re not. Handsy Uncle Joe Biden, anyone? You know he’s going to run next election. Bill Clinton, anyone? You know that man is a rapist. And yet he’s never once stopped being the progressives’ darling, because he’s also their sugar daddy and he gets them what they want. And if you have to wink at a few rapes, well, they’re just women. That’s what women are for.
Right now, it happens to be the GOP who wants to give a lifetime supreme court appointment to someone credibly accused of a serious sexual crime. Next time, or the time after that, it will be a progressive again, because some people — Al Franken springs to mind — are just too useful to be shucked away for a little thing like sexually abusing a little thing like a woman.
They’re just girls, and girls are here for men to use. Just like it was just a girl that Brock Turner violently raped behind a dumpster while she was unconscious. It was just a girl when those guys from Steubenville gang raped her and posted the video online. And they got a slap on the wrist and were allowed to get on with their lives, while their young victim is still used as shorthand, in Steubenville circles, for “lying whore.” Because she’s just a girl.
When a young man gets drunk and tries to rape a girl, there will always be someone to say he shouldn’t be punished too severely — shouldn’t lose his place on the team, shouldn’t be kicked out of school, certainly shouldn’t serve any jail time — because don’t you see, he has so much promise? This might damage his future!
And what about her future? What about her? Who is thinking about the actual human girl in Blasey’s account, who wept and screamed and fought back, while those normal, healthy, hetero boys turned up the music and pushed her back onto the bed?
It was so long ago. Well, If Blasey had gone to someone with her story that very night, what do you suppose they would have told her?
Now, Christine. Brett is a very bright young man with a promising future. Why, I bet he could be on the Supreme Court someday.
This is what you are saying, when you want to give men a pass for something they did long ago. This is what you are conveying to millions of women who have been raped and abused, when you allow yourself to say “yes, yes, sure, sure, of course rape is bad, but this is the supreme court we’re talking about, here! This isn’t just the rape of a girl we’re talking about, this is serious!”
I know how hard it is to see this clearly, to keep this firmly in mind when there’s a political storm swirling around. I know you want to talk about how awful Dianne Feinstein is, and how biased the media is, and how suspicious the timing of it all is. Hell, I fell for that with Anita Hill. I let them convince me that Clarence Thomas was the savior we needed to put this country to rights, and that this trashy, unhinged woman was just sniffing around him looking for glory, probably paid off by some secret politics operatives to make up a story that didn’t even sound true.
But believe it or not, politics isn’t the most important thing. A supreme court nomination isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing, when stories like this are in the news, is the victim, and how we treat them, how we speak about them. The most important thing is that we don’t lose ourselves in the ideological storm, and allow ourselves to say anything that even sounds like “but it was just attempted rape” or “but he was just a teenager when he did it.” When you say that, you are telling victims that it doesn’t matter what happened to them, because they are just girls. Boys need their bright futures, but rape is what girls are for.
If we want to argue that the poor boy’s brain is still developing and we need to take that into account, then what about her developing brain? What about her sense of self worth that’s being so violently malformed, first by her assailant, and then by the crowds of people saying he’s normal and she’s a lying, scheming, whore?
Or the argument that boys are hormonal volcanoes just boiling over with sex, and this is how they learn, you see. They learn from their mistakes, and they get to move on, don’t you see. So I wonder how many girls they get to learn on. Do they get one rape freebie, and then after that, they’re responsible for knowing that rape is bad? Or do they get one attempted rape per year, as long as they learn a little bit more each time? I have eight daughters. How many of my daughters is it okay for a seventeen-year-old boy to try to rape, as long as it’s part of their learning process, and they have a bright future?
Girls . . . are human. Girls are not there for the benefit of helping boys to turn into men. They are not there to be soiled and then tossed on the heap while boys go out and buy themselves a whole new look, a whole new life.
If you don’t want men to be dragged down by decades-old accusations of rape, then you need to crack down on minutes-old accusations of rape as they happen. But that’s not how it goes. Still, even now, that’s not how it goes.
When a woman says, “This man raped me a long time ago,” we say, “But that was in the past. He can’t change the past.” When a girl says, “This boy raped me last night,” we say, “But his future! We can’t wreck his future.” And there she stands, suspended between his past and his future, with no value of her own except for how much she’s worth to whichever political party is feeling desperate today.
There are some acts which are so abhorrent, they cannot simply be forgotten. I have sons, as well as daughters. They’re not yet seventeen, and yet they know you’re not supposed to get drunk, and if you do get drunk, you’re still not supposed to rape anybody, not even a little bit. They know this. Seventeen is not a child. If, at that age, you have a son who’s still unclear on the whole “Don’t get drunk and sexually savage girls,” thing, then he should be involuntarily committed. There’s no grey area where he gets to sacrifice a few girls while he figgers it out. Because that’s not what girls are for. Girls are human.
But when grown men tell teenage boys that a smattering of attempted rape is normal, expected, excusable behavior; that all boys do something like this because they’re still developing; and that it’s not worth worrying about because it was so long ago, then this is what they’re doing: they’re educating a whole new generation in the uses and abuses of the bodies and psyches of girls and women, for the sake of men, who alone are real.
Think. Think about what you’re implying when you are willing to wave away accusations of attempted rape. Think about what you’re telling girls about what they’re for. Think about what you’re telling boys about what they’re for. Think about what you’re telling victims about what they’re worth. Think about how you’re talking about these things. Think about who is listening.
He says he didn’t do it. I hope his party has the integrity to at least try to find out, because if they say “it’s important” but then appoint him without an investigation, they don’t really think it’s important.
But that’s out of my hands. What I’m talking about here is how we talk about boys, and how we talk about girls, and how we talk about rape. What’s in our control is to guard ourselves, to change how we respond to stories of rape. To be consistent and humane whether it’s our guy on the witness stand or not. Because if it’s not our guy this time, it will be next time, depend on it.
Hell yes, an attempted rape accusation matters. Even a very old one. Even though it was just a girl.
I’ll say it again: I don’t know if Kavanaugh is guilty or not. I don’t know if Blasey is telling the truth or not. I’m saying it’s a big fucking deal when 17-year-old boys try to rape 15-year-old girls, whether their names are Brett and Christine or not.
Ah, September, the time of year when you could easily replace me with a robot that does two things: Driving people places, and complaining about driving people places. The deluxe version of Simchabot also stares wistfully at the silvery, dry grasses at the side of the road and feels bad about everything dying. We did have food, but mainly the food of sadness, rabbit, mainly the food of sadness.
SATURDAY
BLTs
It seems like we would have had a special reason for making BLTs, which are generally classified as party or treat food, but hell if I can remember what was going on Saturday. The only bit of information I can offer is that we have sworn off Aldi bacon, which barely has a taste at all.
SUNDAY
Chicken quesadillas with lime crema; tortilla chips
Do you know, it’s hard to take interesting pictures of quesadillas? They are so flat.
All the pictures this week are pretty sub-par, as supper kept getting pushed back until after the sun was down, and I haven’t figure out how to take pretty food pics with artificial light. The quesadillas were tasty, though, if not photogenic.
I put the chicken breasts in the Instant Pot with some water on high pressure for eight minutes, then I shredded it and mixed in some chili lime powder. We had our quesadillas with your choice of cheddar cheese, chicken, chopped scallions, and jalapeno slices from a jar.
We also had lime crema, which is fine crema.
It’s just sour cream with some lime zest and juice, plus salt and garlic, but it elevates meals like you wouldn’t believe. (recipe card below) And yes, I reserved some lime zest for garnish, because I am a golden god.
MONDAY
Butter chicken, mashed potatoes, salad
This week’s installment from Kyra’s Bag o’ Peculiar Foods. I had three packets of butter chicken curry paste
and was determined to try butter chicken, which I’ve heard described as an Indian food entry meal. (Of course I like naan, but you can’t be human and not like naan, so that doesn’t count.)
So. I tried butter chicken. To be fair, I did mess up the recipe. I cooked the chicken in oil, and then added the butter later, after asking myself, “Well, if it’s called ‘butter chicken,’ then when does the butter –oh.” I threw it all together and then put it in the slow cooker all day, rather than simmering it. And it turned out we were out of rice, so I made some last-minute mashed potatoes for a side, instead.
Buttttt, despite all these deviations, I didn’t like it for completely other reasons — specifically, curry reasons. The seasoning came from the pouch, so whatever else I screwed up, the taste is the taste, and I guess I just don’t like curry? It tastes like a dessert taste to me, and I just can’t get it to make sense with meat dishes. I feel guilty about this just in case an hour of the day should pass without me feeling guilty about something.
Oh, also, I was sure most of the kids wouldn’t like the curry, so I made up a batch of pan-fried chicken. I dredged it in flour and everything. I put it in the fridge and then, half an hour before dinner, I put it back in the oven to warm up. But, rabbit, I did not turn that oven on. Also, I hadn’t cooked the chicken all the way through, and Irene took a big bite of raw meat and promptly threw up. Can’t blame the Indians for that, I suppose.
TUESDAY
Fish tacos
Tortillas with sour cream (sadly, the lime crema had all been lapped up), finely shredded cabbage, avocado slices, fresh lime, cilantro, and of course fish sticks. I also got some lime chipotle salsa from Aldi, and it was pretty good, although a little mushier than I like.
Some day I will make this meal with fresh, pan fried fish, but not today, rabbit. Not today.
WEDNESDAY
Kielbasa, red potatoes, sweet peppers, and onions with mustard sauce
This meal was easy and attractive, but a little low on flavor, because I put all my effort into hacking things up and none into sprinkling things on. It was a bunch of kielbasa, red potatoes, onions, and sweet peppers, chunked them on a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper and whatnot. Then I put it under the broiler and forgot about it until it was almost too late.
At the last minute, I put together a dressing that saved it (or would have, if I had made enough). Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, and minced garlic. It looked like tarry sludge, but had a good, zippy flavor.
THURSDAY
Chicken nuggets and that is seriously it.
One of the kids asked me why I didn’t make anything else, and I didn’t even know. I remember thinking, “. . . .eggs? . . . . ” at some point mid-morning, but that’s as far as it got. I assume they all eat vegetables at school or something, so that’s fine.
FRIDAY
Pasta primavera and fresh bread
I bought some frozen bread dough which is defrosting right now, because I told myself ninety-three times during the week that I was probably going to forget to defrost it. I have made pasta primavera before, but can’t seem to find the recipe. Basically you just want pasta with a light cream sauce, plenty of parmesan and garlic, and an assortment of fresh vegetables. I have no intention of blanching things and then putting them in and out of ice water. Remember, yesterday it was too hard to bring hard boiled eggs from potentiality to actuality. We keeps the expectations low, precious.
