Random Acts of Observation

Perceptive viewers may note that this doodle began with essentially the same kind of structure as the last doodle, but it ended up rather differently, and to my mind, rather better.

Well, it's more than a doodle, actually. More of a mandala. I like mandalas.

A bit of whimsy.

Something else completely different. I think there may have been a hint of Rivendell or some such place in my mind.

And now for something completely different.

So today LiveJournal suggests that we identify our 10 favourite albums.

To which I can only say, Ha!

It's not possible. I've struggled to cut it down to 30, but to do even that, I've had to resort to compilation releases by some of my favourite musicians. And I've reached the point where I can't cut anything out without immediately putting it back in and trying to find something else to cut. And I'm sure that the minute I post it, I'll start thinking "but how could I have left out X?"

Joan Armatrading, Show Some Emotion
Joan Baez, From Every Stage
The Band, The Last Waltz
Bruce Cockburn, Humans
Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms
Dire Straits, Dire Straits
The Doors, Weird Scenes inside the Gold Mine
Anton Dvorak - New World Symphony (No. 9)
Bob Dylan - Desire
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Works, Vol 1
The Eurythmics, Greatest Hits
Richard and Mimi Farina, The Best of Richard and Mimi Farina
Janis Joplin, Joplin in Concert
Janis Joplin, Pearl
Juluka, Scatterlings
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin IV
Bob Marley, Exodus
Loreena McKennitt, The Visit
Joni Mitchell, Don Juan’s Restless Daughter
Micheal Oldfield, Ommadawn
The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack
The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks 1964-1971
The Rolling Stones, Goat’s Head Soup
Rough Trade, For Those Who Think Young
Rush, Chronicles
Janne Sibelius – Concerto in D Minor; Karelia; Symphony No 2; Finlandia (all in one album)
Alain Stivell, Renaissance of the Celtic Harp
Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Symphony Pathetique (No. 6)

Not to be confused with love potion #9.

Seriously, I don't know where this one came from, it's another of those "I just picked up these pencils, and see where they took me" drawings.

However, the observant reader will have noticed by now that I have a marked preference for drawings that occupy a small section of the colour wheel - it doesn't matter what section, but I like to use colours that are next to each other, rather than pick from all around the wheel. Maybe I should explore using complementary colours for a while. Eek. Red and Green, living together... mass hysteria.

Nothing makes the folks at the top happier than to see two groups on the bottom fighting each other rather than working together to challenge the whole notion of there being a top and a bottom. It's a technique that has been used for millennia as a means of social control. Foster mistrust, hate, competition for the scarce resource of attention from the people at the top, any kind of discord, any way of keeping natural allies apart, and it's a lot easier to stay in power, to maintain the status quo.

This means that the primarily white, primarily straight elite in the US right now - who almost lost Proposition 8 in California - are rubbing their hands in glee as supporters of equal marriage rights - who almost won Proposition 8 - start lining up to blame black voters for the loss. Because throwing blame around is going to make coalition work between the two groups so much more difficult, and that serves no one but the people who want to "give away" as little of their power as possible to either group.

It benefits the people in power - who have been using people on the religious right as shock troops - to stir up homophobia among racial minorities. It benefits those same people to encourage queer people to direct their frustration and righteous anger against racial minorities. It's divide and conquer, divide and rule - for the people in control.

And if you play that game as a member of a marginalised group, it means you lose.

I was still feeling frisky, doodle-wise, when I finished my rockpile, so I thought I'd just do some free-form abstract doodling, and explore my new blue-purple palette options at the same time.

... there's not a lot of good news among the various local ballot measures that I was able to easily find information on. I don't know if these are just the high-profile measures, or how many others there might have been.

In Arizona, a ban on same-sex marriage passed.

In Arkansas, a ban on adoption by same-sex couples passed.

In California, Proposition 8 passed, taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry, a right declared constitutional by the state supreme court.

In California, a law requiring a physician to inform the parents or guardian of a minor 48 hours before performing an abortion also passed.

In Colorado, a law defining human life as beginning at conception (thus effectively banning abortion) passed.

In Florida, a ban on same-sex marriage passed.

In Nebraska, affirmative action was declared unconstitutional.

In South Dakota, serious limits were enacted on the right to a medical abortion (it will now be legal only if the patient's life or health is at risk, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and then only in the first 20 weeks.

Edit: Looks like the news was better than it appeared when I wrote this last night: the anti-choice initiatives in California, Colorado and South Dakota failed when all the votes were in. Thanks to lawlesslawyer and lavendertook for clueing me in on the good news on the pro-choice fronts.

Alas, as lawlesslawyer points out below, it appears that a majority of voters in the U.S. still don't get it that queer people are people like other people who deserve rights because they are people.




The good news:

Michigan will legalise medical marijuana and allow stem cell research.

Washington will allow limited physician-assisted suicide.

Last night, I actually had an idea of what I wanted to draw before I started. I decided to wait until an image came into my head before putting pen to paper, rather than the usual process, which is to put pen to paper and see where it takes me.

And then, once I had a few lines drawn, I decided I wanted this to have a vaguely comic-book/storytale feel to it.

This doodle was done without any conscious thinking about form - and when I start out in that way, my doodles tend to be organic and full of curving lines. I did decide on a basic colour palette before hand, of browns and dark reds, but as the doodle evolved, it demanded some highlights of pink, orange and purple. I think it may be relevant that I recently re-read John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids.

I've seen variations on this meme mocking Sarah Palin's lack of knowledge about key U.S. Supreme Court decisions in a few places. This one I swiped from xochiquetzl:

Sarah Palin managed to get Roe v. Wade, but was stumped when asked to name any other Supreme Court decisions. In the spirit of remembering that there is more to law than that one case, I am participating in this meme.

The Rules: Post info about ONE Supreme Court decision, modern or historic to your lj. (Any decision, as long as it's not Roe v. Wade.) For those who see this on your f-list, take the meme to your OWN lj to spread the fun.


I'll pick Griswold v. Connecticut. This 1965 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned a law that made the distribution of contraceptive devices to married couples illegal, and by arguing that privacy is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, established the concept of right to privacy.

Griswold v. Connecticut was later used as a precedent in such cases as Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which extended the right to possess contraception to unmarried couples, Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision that decriminalised sodomy between consenting adults in private.

Del Martin has died.

She and her wife Phyllis Lyon were heroes to me, from the moment I found their book, Lesbian/woman and started reading it.

I can still remember how incredibly exciting and empowering it was for the teenager I was in the early 70s to read Lesbian/Woman. My memory of the contents is rather vague after all these years, but I will never forget how I felt when I read it, how it felt to realise that there were other women - lots of other women - who loved women, that there were women working for the rights of women who loved women to be treated just like anyone else. That women who loved women had a history, and could organise.

I was already a budding young activist, just beginning to get involved with political and feminist groups. And I was in the process of coming out - though I wasn't exactly sure just what I was coming out as, at the time it seemed that lesbian was the closest thing to what I was.

Del and Phyllis' story - about themselves, about the history of lesbians, about the formation of the Daughters of Bilitis - was part of what helped me make me a stronger and more committed activist for social justice, part of what helped me to understand who I was as a woman who loved women (later I'd discover that the identity that suited me best was that of a bisexual, but there are some things that lesbians and bisexual women share, and Del and Phyllis spoke to those things in me) and part of what helped me understand that being out was in itself a vital political act.

Sometimes, in this day and age, when there's a section devoted to queer studies in every self-respecting bookstore, it's hard to remember what it was like when there were just a few people - lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered people - brave enough to tell their stories to the world so that other people like them, people who challenged gender roles deep in the core of sexual and gender identity, would know that we were not alone, that there wasn't anything wrong with us.

Del Martin was one of the people who gave me that incalculably precious gift when I was young and uncertain enough about myself to really need it.

I am grateful to her, grateful for the legacy she leaves us, grateful for her years of fighting for all of our right to be who we are and love who we will and have that acknowledged by the society we live in. The world is a better place because of her.

I'm pretty sure everyone on my friendslist must already know about the auction community livelongnmarry, but just in case...



livelongnmarry is hosting a fandom auction to raise donations to help organisations working to defeat the California initiative which would ban same-sex marriages and retroactively annul existing same-sex marriages.

There's all sorts of wonderful things on auction: books, art, jewellery, offers to write fanfic or create fanart, offers of professional critiques, cookies, and other neat stuff.

I myself am offering several pieces of Celtic-inspired jewellery that I recently decided need good homes with people who will wear them in places where they can be seen and admired as they deserve to be.

Plus, it's an opportunity to fight the good fight.

Auction begins July first - you still have time to put something up for bidding, and of course, to go find something you want to bid on.

Not that it's a surprise or anything, but I would have been a dismal failure as a 1930s wife, at least according to this test that is supposedly from a real "marital checklist" of good and bad traits for wives. (Thanks to evil_macaroni for the link.)

16 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

However, I would have made a good 1930s husband. ;-)

86 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Found on goodlookinout's journal:

Empire Magazine has revealed its list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows" ever. Below is the list and here be the rules.

1. Bold the shows you've watched every episode of
2. Italicize the shows you've seen at least one episode of
3. Post your answers

Perusing the list, I would think that this was drawn up by people who have only seen the last 20-odd years of mostly American television. Even if we exclude all news, talk, sketch comedy and variety shows (The Ed Sullivan Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Laugh-In, That Was the Week That Was? - were these not great?) where is All in the Family? M*A*S*H? The Honeymooners? I Love Lucy? The Dick Van Dyke Show? The Twilight Zone? The Prisoner? The Fugitive? Have Gun Will Travel? Perry Mason? Hill Street Blues? Cheers? The Avengers? The Waltons? St. Elsewhere? Prime Suspect?

Anyway, here are my responses to this particular, and particularly flawed, list.


50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City

45. Farscape
44. Cracker (This is, I assume, the British series)
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers

40. Life on Mars
39. Monty Python's Flying Circus
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted

35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI: Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood

30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf

25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office UK
22. The Shield
21. Angel

20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who (Ok, I might have missed a couple of Patrick Troughton episodes on original airing that are now lost forever, but otherwise, yes I've seen them all)

15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica (same goes for both series)
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld

10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24

05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons

Canadian residents: Please take a moment to sign this online petition sponsored by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada to oppose "The Unborn Victims of Crime Act" (Bill C-484). The following information is taken from ARCC material.

The History of the Bill:

A private member's bill called The "Unborn Victims of Crime Act" (C-484) has been introduced by Conservative MP Ken Epp (Edmonton Sherwood Park). It had its first hour of debate in Parliament on December 13, and is projected to come up for its second hour of debate on February 29, with a vote on March 5. The text of the bill is here. The bill would amend the Criminal Code to allow separate homicide charges to be laid in the death of a fetus when a pregnant woman is attacked.

The bill poses a real danger to abortion rights, to the rights of all pregnant women, and to women's equality rights in general.

Please sign the following petition to call upon Parliament to oppose this bill. To review Talking Points against the bill preapred by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, visit: http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/action/unborn-victims-act.htm


------------------------------------
Text of the Petition:

PETITION TO THE MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT OF CANADA:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RESIDENTS OF CANADA, draw the attention of the House to the following:

THAT the proposed “Unborn Victims of Crime Act” conflicts with the Criminal Code, because it grants a type of legal personhood to fetuses, fetuses being non-persons under the law.

THAT giving any legal recognition to fetuses would necessarily compromise women’s established rights.

THAT pregnant women being assaulted or killed is largely a domestic violence issue and “fetal homicide” laws elsewhere have done nothing to reduce domestic violence against pregnant women or their fetuses.

THAT the proposed “Unborn Victims of Crime Act” is a dangerous step towards re-criminalizing abortion and it could also criminalize pregnant women for behaviours perceived to harm their fetuses.

THAT the proposed bill’s exemptions for pregnant women may not work since, in the U.S., arrests of pregnant women have occurred even under state fetal homicide laws that make exemptions for the pregnant woman.

THAT the best way to protect fetuses is to provide pregnant women the supports and resources they need for a good pregnancy outcome, including protection from domestic violence.

THEREFORE your petitioners call upon Members of Parliament to oppose “The Unborn Victims of Crime Act” (Bill C-484).

==========================================

To sign this important petition go to - http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/oppose-bill-c-484.html

As Canadians consider whether we want to extend our involvement in the NATO military mission in Afghanistan for another two years, and possibly longer, it may be instructive for us to consider the words of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on just what's happening with the mission so many of us think is all about restoring peace, security and democracy to Afghanistan. In a communique entitled "The US and Her Fundamentalist Stooges are the Main Human Rights Violators in Afghanistan," issued December 10, 2007 (Universal Human Rights Day), RAWA states, among other things, that:

After about seven years, there is no peace, human rights, democracy and reconstruction in Afghanistan. On the contrary, the destitution and suffering of our people has doubled everyday. Our people, and even our unfortunate children, fall victim to the Jehadis’ infighting (Baghlan incident), the Taliban’s untargeted blasts and the US/NATO’s non-stop bombardments. The Northern Alliance blood-suckers, who are part of Karzai’s team and have key government posts, continue to be the main and the most serious obstacle towards the establishment of peace and democracy in Afghanistan. The existence of tens of illegal private security companies run by these mafia bands are enough to realize their sinister intentions and the danger they pose.

Human rights violations, crime, and corruption have reached their peak, so much so that Mr. Karzai is forced to make friendly pleas to the ministers and members of the parliament, asking them to “keep some limits”! Accusations about women being raped in prisons were so numerous that even a pro-warlord woman in the parliament had no choice but to acknowledge them.

Of course, RAWA spent years trying to get the world to pay attention to what the Taliban was doing to the Afghan people, particularly the women, and no one really thought anything about it until Americans were attacked by some people, primarily Saudi Arabians, who had some tenuous connections with the Taliban. At which time the West responded by bombing the Afghan people, who couldn't even be "bombed into the stone age" because decades of invasions and civil collapse had already done that for them - and claiming that it wasn't just revenge, it was for women's rights. Remember all those pretty speeches about schools for girls and getting rid of burqas?

So I'm thinking that no one's going to pay much attention now when RAWA tries to tell us that we're doing exactly the same thing that the Taliban, and the warlords, and the Russians, were doing before. Because it's never really about the people, especially the women, and what they think, need or want.

I used to watch a lot of modern police procedurals - the CSIs, the L&Os, a few others - but I've really been falling away from them in the past year. I suspect that, once the writers' strike is over and new episodes of shows are flowing (that is to say, next season, one presumes), very few of them will be left on my weekly watching list.

But oddly enough, I've just started watching, and enjoying, two historical police procedurals:

The Murdoch Mysteries is set in Toronto in the 1890s and features police detective cum amateur natural scientist William Murdoch, who bring the use of unorthodx investigative tools such as fingerprints and primitive forensic science to his crime-solving. I'm not going to claim it's great television, but it's fun in its own modest way. The made for TV movie I saw, which starred Peter Outerbridge rather than the recast series lead Yannick Bisson, was rather better in many respects, but it's still amusing.

City of Vice, a new British series that I've been ::aheming:: for the past two weeks, is rather of a different quality. Set in London in 1755, it's a fictionalised account of the Bow Street Runners, and has so far been much less anachronistic as well as featuring better writing and acting. I'm quite intrigued so far.

Other than that, my viewing list of current TV shows, setting aside the standard news, documentary and political satire shows that are the things I always watch if I happen to be around a TV set when they're on, consists of:

The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Torchwood
Criminal Minds

The only things I see myself adding to this list at the moment are Doctor Who and ReGenesis when the next seasons of each are available, and Blood Ties if it survives.

In non-current shows, I've recently ::ahemed:: the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures which, despite being very much for a younger audience, were rather fun. At least enough that if they really do make a second series, I'll ::ahem:: that too.

And, a special announcement just for hawkeye7:

I've watched the first four episodes of Blake's 7 and I am hooked. It's exactly the kind of dismal dystopian future universe with a band of misfits struggling to raise some kind of resistance against the evil totalitarian overlords kind of thing I love. And so far it's smart, and the character dynamics are interesting to watch. It's got story arc, it's got ethical questions and quagmires, appears not to have a reset button, and I'm not sure why I failed to investigate it and appreciate its greatness before.

Today we wrote a cheque to our draftsperson and made the first of a series of scheduled payments to the contractor.

We are several thousand dollars poorer.

Gulp.

On the upside, the contractor dropped by to sign the contract and pick up his cheque, and he said his crew appreciated the goodie basket we left for them: coffee maker, fair trade ground coffee, cream and sugar, chocolate cookies. I wonder if we should add a tea kettle and a selection of black and herb teas? We should probably vary the baked goodies from time to time as well. What else would go nicely at break time while you're renovating a house? Doughnuts?

Progress!

At least, I think so.

glaurung just called me from the appropriate municipal office to tell me that our building permits have been approved in principle - our draftsperson made one small error that has to be redone on the plans, and once that is done, we will have the building permit.

Which is A Good Thing, because our contractor is ready to begin tearing down walls and things early next week.

We still have to apply for the plumbing permit, which is a different creature altogether (we are compeltely redoing one bathroom plus moving the location of the laundry room in the basement), but there are no weird things to try to fudge over in that permit, so it should be simple.

See, there is this whole annoying on-going business about whether the city is going to let us renovate in such a way that I will actually be able to get into my own house.

There are two existing entrances:
1. At the front (east side), where the house is highest above grade (it's on a slight downslope), there are some very nice but also very steep concrete steps.
2. At the south side, there is an entrance that's almost at grade, but of course, once inside it's a half-flight up to the main floor and a half-flight down to the basement.

Neither entrance, therefore, is one that I can use because with each of them there are lots of stairs with a rise that's standard or higher.

The back wall (west side) has a garage built right onto it, facing to the side street (our house is on a north-west corner lot). The other side (north side) is about two feet away from the neightbour's wall.

So the only place I can put an accessible entrance is at the back. Which means tearing down the garage (not a problem, neither of us drives or ever will as long as we live in this city), but it's illegal to remove an onsite parking place.

So our solution is to build this strange sort of L-shaped deck/stairs arrangement at the back. We put in a new door at the back on the farthest side of the house from the street, and build a long narrow deck running perpendicular to the back wall that's about six feet wide and 13-14 feet long, and at the end of that, we build a set of shallow-rise stairs running parallel to the back wall, toward the street. There is a 10-foot space between the stairs and the back wall, where the part of the garage floor that hasn't had a narrow deck built over it will serve as a somewhat shortened parking pad.

The trick is that this space is no longer long enough to be a full legal parking space that is wholly on our lot - when a car parks there, the back 4-5 feet of the car (dpending on the car, of course) will actually be parked on the city easement - so we were worried that the permit might be rejected for that reason. But either they didn't notice or they didn't care. Whew!

Eventually, we intend to fill most of that space in to create a full-size deck, and put in a new parking space (which by law must be paved, alas, which means a great deal of unendurable stink in our backyard for probably at week sometime in the future)) further toward the back of the yard. But we don't have enough money for that right now. So we do it in stages.

Of course, there is still the problem that the kind of stairs I need built are illegal, but we're handling that in a roundabout manner, on the advice of both our draftsperson and our contractor. The problem there is that for me, ramps are actually more difficult to deal with than very shallow steps. But the city building code requires steps to have at least a 5-inch rise. What I need is steps with a 3-inch rise. What we have done is submit plans specifying a 5-inch rise, and once the contractor knows who the building inspector on our project will be, he will set up a meeting to explain to the building inspector why we are not building stairs according to code. In a case such as mine, the contractor is confident that an understanding can be reached such that the inspector will approve the variance from the permit and the code - apparently, such understandings are negotiated every day.

And we've just about put in all our orders for bathroom fixtures and tiles and paint and other stuff that we have to pick out for ourselves. So it's all ready to go. If nothing falls apart, that it.

This whole process so far has been fraught with things falling apart and centres not holding. I've had enough nervous breakdowns to last me the rest of my life.

Onward, licensed carpenters, hasten to your craft,
Wiring folk and plumbers, see, our plans aren't daft -
With the city's blessing, the starting hour is nigh
Forward into renovation, wave our permits high!

I am aware that this was developed for use in a university setting, but it seems to me that the list is very questionable as more than a very blunt instriment indeed, and does not do very well at anything other than, perhaps, differentiating the traditional American middle class nuclear family from anything that is not that.

I illustrate by doing... there's hardly a single question I can respond to without questions and qualifications. The instructions are to bold that which is true, but it doesn't tell me which part of my childhood or youth I'm to consider. Since I went through several changes of class before hitting 18 and/or finishing college, both of which events are mentioned in this list, I'm going to have to discuss what was true for me when.


INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. (If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)



1. Father went to college. (That is, my most likely biological father, whom I have never met and who hasn't had any effect on my life experience, and who did not at any time, to my knowledge, contribute to my financial support. My mother's husband, who had a profound effect on my class status for the first few years of my life, did not attend university, but did, I think, attend some community or vocational college. In Canada, in the 1950s, this is a huge difference in class.)

2. Father finished college. (See above. My putative biological father not only finished university, he taught university, which is what he was doing when he got his student, my mother, pregnant. She had to leave school, of course. This was the 50s.)

3. Mother went to college. (See above.)

4. Mother finished college. (Much later, when I was around nine or ten, she completed her BA and her MA. She got her PhD when I was about 16, and got her law degree when I was in my early 20s.)

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor. (See above. On the part of my biological father, this would have had zero effect on my own class or access to professional class privileges or values while growing up. My mother taught constitutional law later in life after retiring from a long career in the civil service which started when I was 10, after she finished her MA - but that had no effect on my class or access to professional class privileges either, as it happened after we'd pretty much stopped speaking altogether. I have other relatives, but I had little to no contact with most of them, ever, and most of them, I have no idea what their profession or occupation might have been. I was raised for a time by my maternal grandmother, who was completely estranged from her own family. My biological maternal grandfather was an engineer - definitely professional class in the 1920s and 30s, but since my grandparents divorced when my mother was two, he's not a class influence. My grandmother ran a whorehouse during the war - what class would that make her - do you know? I certainly don't. The only one of her husbands I even knew was her last, a farmer who did not complete grade 6. He helped raise me at some points in my life.)

All of these questions assume a stable nuclear family, or at least a family in which one's relatives are ongoing influences. It assumes that you know who your parents are and stayed with them throughout your childhood, that changes in family structure such as divorce or death of a parent did not affect your family's circumstances.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers. (By the time I was 11 or 12 and my mother was fully established in the professional class and out from under the debts her husband had dumped on her, yes, I was the same economic class as my teachers.)

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home. (Yes, even if many of them were second-hand or my mother's textbooks when I was very young. Having a very strong aspiration to complete her own education and move up in class, my mother went to some lengths to provide me with access to the cultural advantages of the class she wanted us to become accustomed to. She did without so that I could have books, when we were poor. She gave me as much money as I wanted to acquire books once we were middle class.)

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home. (See above. By the time I left home, the walls were covered with books, hers and mine.)

9. Were read children’s books by a parent. (My mother read a lot to me when I was very young, but as I began reading spontaneously when I was about three, she didn't continue this once I could read on my own. She did, however, encourage me to write.)

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18. (Yes. But (there's always a but)... I had free gym lessons for a while when my mother worked for the YMHC in Montreal. Later, I had more free sports and gym lessons for a while when my mother's husband worked for the YMCA in Saskatoon. I had some free piano lessons courtesy of a friend of mt mother's who was paying for a Conservatory student to come and teach her two daughters - she let me sit in and use their piano for practice. I had some free art lessons when I was young becasue many of my mother's friends were struggling artists and she'd let them come to dinner sometimes. I had free swimming lessons through a community pool. And later, in high school, I had a whole year's worth of private art lessons that I arranged for myself by doing housework and shopping for an artist I'd met through some school program.)

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18. (See above.)

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like you are portrayed positively. Often people who talk like me are (but more often than not their voices are baritone or tenor or even bass rather than contralto or soprano), but never people who dress and look like me.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18. (This really didn't happen in the 60s, unless you were really upper class.)

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.([Edit] I neglected to discuss the whole issue of paying for university. I first went to university when I was 16. When I started university, I was still living with my mother, who paid my tuition. The universtiy I attended was located in the city I lived in, so I lived at home and my mother continued to pay all my living costs. However, I dropped out at mid-term, left home and hitchhiked around the continent for a while, having many adventures on little to no money at all before deciding to go live with my grandmother and go back to school. Still estranged from my mother, with my grandmother unable to help me financially, I managed to win a scholarship that covered tuition and room and board (in residence). I got a job working nights in a pizza joint to cover all my other expenses.)

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs. (See above)

16. Went to a private high school. (For one year. On partial scholarship. My mother's husband lost the money that was supposed to cover the rest of it gambling, so I wasn't welcome back the next year, and they withheld my prize for best student in Form I becasue the bill wasn't paid. I should be glad that they didn't kick me out at half-term.)

17. Went to summer camp. (For one summer. When my mother's husband had a job with a summer camp and staff kids were allowed to attend free.)

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18. (When I was going to high school, Greek was still taught in some schools. I loved Greek. But after my first year, it was phased out at my school. The Greek teacher, out of the goodness of his heart and for no pay, allowed those of us who wanted to continue to drop in on him to ask questions, run drills with him, do assignments and have them marked, on our own schedules. Does that count?)

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. (After my mother joined the professional class, all the time. Before then, in summer, we camped. In winter, we stayed in cheap motels.)

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18. (The older I was, the more likely this was to be true, but as an only child without any relatives living nearby, during the entire childhood, most of my clothes were either bought new or, more likely, made by my mother.)

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them. (When I was around 25, my mother gave me her older car when she got a new one. I've never owned a new car in my life. Note how this assumes that one's parents were able to maintain a car.)

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child. (As I mmentioned, many of my mother's friends were struggling artists. Plus, both my mother and I painted. After mother pulled us up into the middle class, she sometimes bought original art from unknown artists whose work she liked.)

23. You and your family lived in a single family house. (Once, for a couple of years, we rented a small house in Saskatoon. Also, my grandmother and her husband lived in a farmhouse in rural Nova Scotia during the times I lived with them. The rest was apartments and flats.)

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home. (My grandmother's husband owned that farmhouse. My mother has never owned any houses to the best of my knowledge, except for the farmhouse which she inherited and sold when my grandmother died. At 52, I've just bought my first house.)

25. You had your own room as a child. (I was an only child, so this was mostly true. But even so, for a while, I shared a bedroom with my mother, after she divorced but before she paid off the debts. And for a time, when I was quite young, we all lived in a bedsit, my mother, her husband, and me.)

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18. (Once my mother was well estabvlished as a professional, yes.)

27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course. (This was, again, something only for the very upper crust when I was young.)

28. Had your own TV in your room in High School (Yes. A very small, portable, black and white TV.)

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College. (Hah! I have only just this year, at the age of 52, been able to begin an RRSP, which is the Canadian version of an IRA.)

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (My mother used to fly me home to my grandmother's whenever, for whatever reason, it wasn't possible for her to have me with her. Once I was into my teens and we were middle class, we flew often when vacationing.)

31. Went on a cruise with your family.

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. (When I was young, yes, on free admittance days. When I was older, often, particularly when we travelled.)

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. (Since we usually rented, there were for the most part no heating bills, it was included in the rent. I did have a basic idea of how much rent my mother paid and how it compared to rents in other kinds of housing. And of course I knew how much it took to buy a cord of wood for the wood stove at my grandmother's farmhouse.)

One of the assumptions in this list that hits me the hardest when I try to answer, aside from the whole issue of assumptions about family structures, is the assumption that one either gets access to intellectual experience (books, classes, private schools, art, museums, etc.) as a privilege or not at all. What about all the people who managed access, but it wasn't through privilege but through a combination of luck and planning and getting in through the side or even the back door, or even just looking very intently through a window, for some. I wasn't privileged to have access to cultural knowlege, my mother, during my childhood, fought hard and found unconventional ways to get me access. But I always knew I didn't always arrive through the front door, and so, while I have the knowledge, and I now have many of the privileges that knowlege has enabled me to access, I feel differently about it than someone who got those initial experiences as entitlements. I imagine there are a lot of people that got their intellectual privilege the same way.

For more discussion of the unexamined assumptions in this list, check out Elizabeth Bear's journal (matociquala)

Of course, I'm in the last paragraph, which hardly anyone will read, but I'm one of two residents of the area quoted, and the article does report a bit of my argument.

The bit about me:

Some area residents say "hounding" those who are trying to rehabilitate themselves causes stress, and that may increase the chances of them re-offending.

"(Goodwin) being here doesn't bother me," said Morgan. "It's the guy we don't know about who I worry about." Goodwin is getting help for his deviant behaviour, she added.

There's my five minutes of not-quite fame for the year - defending a convicted paedophile to serve the supervised time he was given without facing a medieval witchhunt that's almost certain to make it impossible for him to change his behaviour.

By the way, for anyone who is interested in precisely this issue, I highly recommend watching the movie The Woodsman, with Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick.