There’s a reason why Valentine’s Day is such a huge thing in schools–kids love to be loved and appreciated. Little kids give their love pretty freely. They expect to be loved back. As they get older, they start to realize that not everyone is going to return those feelings and they start to doubt themselves. It’s hard to watch, but it’s part of growing up. While watching that process is hard, it’s even harder to live through, as anyone who has gone through adolescence can tell you. How can you blunt that pain even just a little bit? By knowing how to love yourself and showing the kids in your life that loving yourself is just as important (maybe even more) as being loved by others.

It’s kind of like the thing that flight attendants tell you on the plane: put on your oxygen mask first, then concentrate on the people around you. They tell you that because you’re not going to help anyone if you can’t breath–you’re going to make things worse if you’re panicked and breathless. If you aren’t at a place in your life where you can say that you actually love yourself, where you can do good things for yourself, how can you expect your relationships to fare any better?

So how do you show yourself a little love? Nothing sexual here–just how do you take some time out for yourself to really affirm that you’re the best person you can be at the moment. For me, it’s taking time to be creative and it’s taking time to take care of myself. I spent so many years ignoring my problems and pushing them down, I don’t need to do that anymore. I work out, not because I’m obsessed with the numbers on the scale or on the tags on my clothes, but because it’s a damn good outlet for stress. I make time for myself to unwind by boxing or dancing in order to recharge and to show myself that I’m worth at least a few minutes every day.

Is it selfish? Some might say so, but I like to think of it as taking care of myself so that I can do a better job of being a mom, a wife, a friend and a person. I think that too many people forget about that. So today, on this commercialized saccharine piece of greeting card holiday, give yourself a valentine. Show yourself a little love.

For 40-year-old Kelly Williams-Bolar, she’s found that answer the hard way, as her sacrifice may be her livelihood. I’m sure by now you’ve heard her story: Williams-Bolar is a black woman living in Northeast Ohio, on public assistance, working to finish a teaching degree. She works as a teacher’s aide for a special education classroom in Akron, Ohio. She lives in a low-income housing neighborhood where she’s been repeatedly robbed; a place where gunshots are a more familiar sound than lawnmowers and neighborly chatter. She’s raising two adolescent daughters there.

Williams-Bolar wants to get her daughters out of that life. She wants it bad enough to take her daughters out of the school district they were in, in inner city Akron, and put them in a better, safer district—one that is predominantly white with better test scores and a better chance of getting into college. To do this, she registered her daughters in the Copley, Ohio school district. Her daughters were recorded as living with her father, a Copley resident.

For whatever reason, the Copley school district doubted Williams-Bolar’s residency claim, possibly due to a tip (worth $100) from someone in the district. They investigated, hiring an off-duty policeman to tail Williams-Bolar and her daughters. They supposedly sent Williams-Bolar and her father bills, claiming that since the Copley public schools were not an open-enrollment district they were owed tuition.

The latest development in this case is that Williams-Bolar has been tried and found guilty of felony fraud. This isn’t the first time the Copley-Fairlawn district has brought fraud charges against parents, but it’s been the highest profile case, and the first I know of that’s led to a conviction. Even though the judge commuted all but 10 days of the sentence, this ruins Williams-Bolar’s chance of becoming a teacher in Ohio. It also may cost her her current job. All because she sent her daughters to a better school. The whole situation reekss of “sending a message” to poor parents: be happy with what you’ve got, or pay the price.

I’ve seen a lot of comments on the internet regarding the court case and the situation, many of them are negative. Many people have reckoned themselves both judge and jury, maintaining that Williams-Bolar broke the law, committed fraud and must therefore pay the price. The price being that she will never be able to teach in Ohio (and possibly anywhere else), that her life has been opened up to public scrutiny, and that she now has a criminal record that will follow her for the rest of her life.

Some people think that if Williams-Bolar wanted to improve her daughters’ education, she should have just moved to Copley. She should have just moved into a district with an average house price of $198,588. Others think she should have just paid the out-of-district tuition, which is around $800 a month per child on her public school teachers assistant salary.

For some perspective, here’s some background on the girls’ schools in both districts, courtesy of greatschools.org.

• Copley-Fairlawn Middle School, where Williams-Bolar’s oldest daughter attended.
• Perkins Middle School, where Williams-Bolar’s oldest daughter would have gone in the Akron school district.
• Arrowhead Primary Elementary School, in Copley-Fairlawn, where Williams-Bolar’s younger daughter went to school.
• Schumacher Academy Elementary, in Akron, where the younger daughter would have attended, had she not been going to Arrowhead.

Read the ratings and take a look at the demographics provided. They paint a very clear picture of racial and economic disparity between the two school districts. If this case isn’t about race, as many insist it isn’t, it’s certainly about class differences. Read, then tell me: would you have tried everything you could to get your child into the better school? Not the school with less minority students, but the school with better test scores. Would you have moved your kids in with a parent to do so? If your only way of getting your kids into a better district was to lie (which I’m not convinced Williams-Bolar actually did), would you? While I’m not sure either way that Williams-Bolar is guilty, her treatment and sentencing doesn’t feel much like justice.

Further Reading:

• Ohio Case: The ‘Rosa Parks Moment’ For Education? (transcript) by Jeff St. Clair, from NPR
• The case of Kelley Williams-Bolar from Ohio.com
• How Ohio’s Copley-Fairlawn School District Keeps Their Lily-White Reputation from odd time signatures
• Kelley Williams-Bolar and the Chalkboard Wall from K2TWELVE
• The Kelley Williams-Bolar mess: A school board members take by George Cook, from African American Reports
• Copley-Fairlawn schools hire private eyes, lobby state lawmakers to root out illegal students by Joe Tone, from Cleveland Scene Magazine
• Kelley Williams-Bolar: Mom jailed for wanting to give kids a better life by Elon James White, from Salon.com

Due to the overly serious nature of this post, a puppy picture will accompany it to balance things out.

When I lost faith, it wasn’t overnight. It took a long time–lots of bumps along the way and lots of sad realizations. While I didn’t lose my faith in Christianity, I lost faith in its followers.

I was raised Christian. Lutheran, to be more precise. I had a child’s certainty that the church was infallible: God was up there with a direct line to the church leaders and all was as it was supposed to be. As I got older, that sureness wavered.

Between the ongoing “culture wars” being heralded by the highly politicized religious right to the slick marketing techniques some churches employ to try and hook the Generation Xers and Gen Ys. It seemed churches weren’t so much in the business of saving souls and providing guidance as they were in the business of… well, politics and business.

I began to see the Bible less as a holy and infallible scripture dictated by the big guy upstairs and more as a book that had been translated over and over again in a game of telephone that spanned centuries. This view, to many people, is heresy. To me, it’s just logical. There are many differences between the languages used in the Bible and our modern English, just as there are so many different political motivations behind the world leaders that drove those translations.

I was also exposed to the tribulation and rapture mentality. That mindset that Jesus will come back in our lifetime to whisk the believers away in a heavenly whirlwind and leave the non-believers here to languish on earth until the final battle has been waged and won and Christ comes down a second time to pick up the believers who were late to the party. Tribulations aplenty and unbelievable tortures await for those who don’t say their prayers every night, donate the right amount of money to the church of your choice and attend service every Sunday.

It’s kind of a “They’ll see… someday they’ll all see!” sort of mentality. C’mon, who wouldn’t love an all-powerful hall pass when the going gets tough? It usually rides tandem with the belief that anyone who doesn’t follow the prescribed lifestyle will be skinny dipping in a lake of fire. Gay? Straight to hell. Like to have sex? Sorry, your membership card has been revoked. Had an abortion? Do not pass go, do not collect $20. No forgiveness for you, no matter what Jesus would have actually done.

While I still believe in God and in Jesus, I don’t believe in their followers. I’ve seen too many hurtful things done in their name to have a good opinion of all Christians and I don’t put much stock in the idea of Christianity being a prerequisite for being a good person. In fact, if you call yourself a Christian, you’ll probably have to work harder to prove to me that you do more than talk the talk.

Don’t get me wrong– I screw up and I screw up a lot. I’m not always the living example I should be. I’m often initially oblivious to how my words and actions affect others. In fact, I can be brazen, a bit of a bitch and my language can be saltier than most church-going people prefer. I can also be a bit of a hypocrite at times. What I’m not is ignorant of my faults and actions. I know these things about myself and fight them tooth and nail to overcome them.

I’m harsh with people, but if I do something wrong, I own up to it. I tend to be my own worst critic in that aspect and will obsess over my interactions with others after the fact. I’m not always the happiest little Christian on the block, but I work hard to keep myself from being the most ignorant one. I read and study Christianity along with other faiths in order to learn and grow. That makes me impatient with people who don’t do the same. Doubt can destroy faith but it can also make it much, much stronger. It’s like body-building for the mind: too much weight can tear something, but it can also allow you to lift more than you ever thought possible.

Humble Pie. I’m eating it.

Sometimes you say things you shouldn’t. I know I did, between last night and this morning. This is my apology.

See, a flamewar started in the comment section. A flamewar involving me, and a commenter. I wrote some things that were extremely passive agressive, and it took someone else with some objectivity to clue me in. My friend, a man whose opinion I value highly, pointed out that I was shutting the conversation down before it even started. That was wrong and I feel horrible about it, because I’m responsible for not being a good host.

I’m a sarcastic person and it doesn’t always translate well in my writing, especially when it’s a rebuttal to something someone else has said. Sarcasm has always been my first defense and it’s never really been a good one.

I wrote flame bait and the commenter, Craig, took it and ran. Things escalated until it became a total shut-down of actual discussion and morphed into an ad hoc argument being perpetuated on both sides.

For all I know, Craig may be someone who has been very hurt by someone with extremely bad intentions. Thing is, I may never know, because I shut him down by being defensive instead of engaging him to find out where his anger with feminism has stemmed from.

So Craig, I apologize. If you’d like to have a discussion about why you feel the way you do, please, feel free. I’ll listen. I’m not here to be a bitch, first impressions aside. I’m here to learn.

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute…”
Rebecca West, The Clarion

I always love it when I hear a woman say that she’s not a feminist, because feminism is an outdated idea that has morphed into a behemoth powered by impossible goals and downright man-hatin’. And by “love”, I mean I’d rather be hearing a sweet symphony of colicky babies crying nonstop while drag queens rake long artificial nails down even longer lengths of blackboard and Electric Light Orchestra plays “Afternoon Delight” in a loop. The only thing that tugs my heartstrings harder is hearing someone proclaim that they are (cue ominous chord) ANTI FEMINIST!

Take the artist behind a recent internet meme, “Bad Barbie”. Mariel Clayton claims to be anti-feminist, saying in a recent interview that “I don’t believe in it, because I think the message that ‘feminism’ is trying to convey has escalated to a ridiculous and unfair demonization of men.” Take a moment to read and digest that. Bask in its awesome glow. We demonize men. Our assertions that equal rights (not privileged status) and bodily autonomy should be enjoyed by everyone is ridiculous. This from someone that skewers Ken dolls to walls with broken dildos in her artwork.

I’ll admit, I enjoy some of Clayton’s work. I think that it’s kitschy, campy, perverse and ultimately pretty cool. Having this impossiblly blonde, perky and perfect joke of a role model with a murderous streak subverts the whole idea of what Barbie is supposed to be. I kind of love that. The concept of Barbie having a darkness inside her in these tableaus is interesting. Her take on feminism isn’t.

I’m aware that many of the quotes in that interview are probably mostly for controversy and shock value. Earlier in the piece she says “I never dream of kittens and rainbows and flowers. There’s probably a medication for that sort of thing”. While it’s a funny quote, it’s also telegraphing how “edgy” and “different” she wants to be. Even so, I’ve got to point out how off the wall and wrong her remarks on feminism are. Clayton isn’t describing the feminist movement, she’s laying out an idea of feminism that isn’t just wrong, it’s harmful.

Take a look at the comments at Clayton’s interview and you’ll see a lot of people agreeing with her ideas. It’s more than a little bit disturbing, even for an emasculating shrew like me.

Perhaps there’s a sort of Bizarro Feminism, where everyone talks backwards and shares the views that Clayton’s talking about. Dear god I hope not, but maybe there is. I’d kind of like to think that it’s purely about tearing down inequality.

The feminism I’m familiar with doesn’t call for everything to be “gynocentric” and it doesn’t involve blaming men for the world’s problems. It sure as hell doesn’t encourage “shirking personal responsibility”. It’s about standing up, speaking out when you see something wrong, being accountable for your actions and holding others accountable for theirs. It’s about achieving equality, not privilege. I have this funny feeling that fighting inequality, privilege and social pressures improves life for everyone. Except maybe Ken.

There are so many stereotypes of mental illness out there–the murderous sociopath, the dangerous schizophrenic, the manic pixie girl or the tragically disturbed and immensely creative artist. From Girl Interrupted to Silence of the Lambs, cinema loves crazy people.

These stereotypes make a great story, but they pigeonhole mental illness into neat little categories. They make mental illness into a trope that, depending on the diagnosis, illicit fear and misunderstanding. I believe that these stereotypes and the cultural misconceptions they cause make it more difficult for people to seek treatment and learn to live with their condition. I know it was for me.

I have one of the more socially acceptable types of crazy, but that hasn’t made it any easier for me. I wasn’t your stereotype — at least not in the strictest sense. Yes, I went through a bit of a “goth” phase (though it was really for the music and fashion than any true belief that I was some special dark little snowflake in a doomed world). I wasn’t a cutter, wasn’t overtly suicidal, wasn’t always a weepy mess… at least not in public. I was creative, outspoken and brazen. In public I was (and still am, to a degree) sarcastic, cynical, witty and slightly scary. I saved the weepiness, the self-doubt, the maudlin moods and constant fatigue for the homefront.

I would go through periods of darkness, punctuated by rage fueled by feelings of helplessness. I’d lash out at small things, seeing slights where there were none. I had zero self-confidence and while I wasn’t actively suicidal, I truly believed that the world would be a better place without me.

It took a lot for me to finally admit that I had a problem. After I had my daughter I struggled — my depression worsened and became unbearable. It feels weird to call it postpartum depression, since I had this before I had children, but it got markedly worse after my daughter was born. When I realized that my depression was tearing my marriage and family apart, when my husband gave me the ultimatum, I made the call and began treatment.

Treatment, for me, was a combination of talk therapy and medication. I’m not doing talk therapy right now, but I may be on meds for the rest of my life. I don’t think that’s a bad thing — lots of conditions require medication and if it helps me, I’m more than willing to live with that requirement. I know there are many people out there that don’t think that meds are beneficial, but I’m not listening.

I’m tired of pretending this part of my life doesn’t exist. I know that so many people out there don’t talk about mental illness even after diagnosis and treatment, because of the stigma attached to being “crazy”. Thing is, if no one talks about it, people don’t understand how normal this is. If no one speaks up, that stigma lives on, making it more difficult to get diagnosis and treatment. Silence, in this case, isn’t golden. It’s poisonous.

“There will always be people for whom hate is easier when it’s not backed up by anything but fear. And I will always do my best to hoist them by their own petards.”

from Feed (Newsflesh, Book 1), by Mira Grant

Hate motivates us. Born from fear, it drives us to do some truly awful things. Nothing in the world is more dangerous. They’re the sparks that start forest fires. Hate spreads lies and starts wars. It twists faith and makes it into an awful creature that kills millions. It inspires individuals to pick up a gun and murder innocent people. Not for the love of a country or an idea, but because they fear and that fear festers into hate.

What happened in Arizona on Saturday was not an act of revolution. It was murder and we are all responsible. As citizens of the United States, we’re responsible because we don’t understand that our words have weight and meaning. We don’t insist on using our right to free speech responsibly and we don’t hold others accountable for their responsibility. We sit passively aside and say nothing until something horrible happens, then we all argue about the blame. Trust me, there’s enough to go around.

You want to know who’s to blame? The incendiary talking heads who use vile words to get ratings while insisting their viewers know that it’s only rhetoric. The networks that put that vitriol on the airwaves every day. The politicians who encourage their constituents by using hyperbole and lies to make their opponents seem like monsters. Us. Because we let them get away with it.

People have been saying that the incident in Arizona is being trivialized and politicized; that it’s the work of one horribly deranged individual in need of professional help, nothing more. I disagree.

It’s been said many times over the past four days, and it will be said many more times before this incident fades from the public eye: this does not happen in a void. We live in a world of 24 hour “news” cycles, where information is distributed, be it the truth or a lie. We have opinion masquerading as news and frauds disguised as journalists. If anyone calls for moderation or for more rigorous fact checking, it’s decried as censorship and a request to violate our rights to free speech.

Censorship, sure. Violation of First Amendment rights… not so much. See, the government can’t violate your individual freedom of speech. A network or publisher can tell its employees to tone down their rhetoric, to stop publishing private addresses and personal information of citizens in public forums as an intimidation method. Constituents can demand that their politicians not use bullseyes surveyor marks and gun imagery in their promotional material. You can change the channel, turn the tv or radio off, ask that ranting relative to back up their latest New Republic or Fox News regurgitation with actual fact. You can be informed, ask questions and engage in critical thinking. You can be responsible.

In other news, I’m sore as all hell. I’ve started a new workout regimen that includes boxing. While I’ve been working out at least three to four days a week for the past year, this new program is kicking my ass–hopefully in a good way. The payoff has been remarkable. Within the year I’ve been working out and eating better, I’ve lost around 65 pounds, about eight inches off my waist, and dropped 4 dress sizes.

Now I’m starting to work out at least six nights a week. Boxing is part of it, along with some other activities, but after 50 minutes of boxing tonight, I’m hurting. That’s a post for another day.

Mr. Ward: “Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.”

New year, new blog. Applying a bit of a scorched earth policy to old posts: they’re gone from here, but archived at a legacy site. You know, so my stupidity can live on.