Saturday, February 28, 2009

A Texas Travesty

I subscribe to Salon.com's newsletter. An article titled, "Texas: The State of (Mis) education" caught my eye. I read it and was absolutely appalled. Apparently, the big message provided by the abstinence only sex ed literature given to students there is that if they have premarital sex, they will die. They will get an STD, commit suicide out of shame or die outright from a disease. No info on how to prevent that (condoms can fail, you know) or realistic advice about what really happens when you choose to have sex. No, just attempt to scare 'em to death. The article goes on to say that Texas has the third highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation. Imagine that. 

One can only hope that with this new, enlightened administration coming in, we will see sex education improved for teens, all education really. One thing President Obama said in his speech Tuesday night that gave me real hope for our children was that he wanted to see parents more involved in their children's education. Let's hope they have the good sense to realize that abstinence only misinformation does a disservice to their children. A frank talk with teenagers about their options goes a lot farther in preventing teen pregnancy than any threat or scare tactic ever could. 

Monday, February 9, 2009

Spook Stories and Poetry

I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago for one of our local  writer's organizations. I had precise notes, samples of my writing, and samples of other people's work. It was all nice and organized and should have been easy to present. As usual, I got out of sync with my notes, read a few of my poems (not the best ones), read a short short story (more about that later), and completely forgot to read the works of others that I like. Try as I might, if one thing throws me off the least little bit, I cannot find my way back. 

I was initially put into a bit of a panic because I forgot my reading glasses and had to go to the car and get my bifocal sunglasses. This would have been okay but for the fact that a transformer had blown in the area and plunged the venue where I was speaking into utter darkness save for an emergency light near the door. A standing podium was found so that I could read under the light. Fortunately, the lights came back on just as I was getting ready to read at the podium. I moved back to the lectern  at the table where I could spread out and began reading my short story, a fictionalized piece about the ghost we had at our house in Fountain City. The actual word, "ghost," comes a few paragraphs into the story. Just as the word left my mouth, the lights went out again. We had a good laugh, and I moved back to the podium near the door. The story ends with the words, "And then the lights went out." That's when the lights came back on. More laughter. The lights finally stayed on, and I muddled through the rest of the presentation. The folks were gracious and warm, but I felt totally bumfuzzled and off my stride. I wanted to end with a wonderful poem in honor of John Updike, who died recently, but I forgot. 

All this angst is really about the fact that I am terrified when speaking in front of my peers. I was a college English professor for many years and had no trouble at all teaching in front of a bunch of students. Even the first day of class was no biggie. I even managed to impress them by memorizing their names the first day. It's an easy trick really. My secret. At any rate, all my confidence and organization goes out the window in front of an audience of other writers and readers. I seem to go to "anutha zone" as Dr. John says. I think the problem is that I forget to actually follow my notes. I look up and see those expectant faces and just start to get flustered. I think the trick will be to do more speaking. Of course, I have to do more writing first. 

Sigh. 

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Make-Up as a Lie

A friend of mine commented recently that women who put on make-up are liars. It was in response to a photo I had sent with a warning that I didn't have even blush on. I didn't say anything in response at the time, but it started to work on me later. I'd never thought of cosmetics in that way. To me, make-up is just like jewelry. It's ornamentation. It's the oldest form, perhaps, of human art. When aboriginal people put on colored daubs of clay, or tattooed their faces, or even ritually scarred them (something that has always given me the heebee jeebies), they are exhibiting a most personal form of art. I would imagine that personal art preceded even the cave paintings of France or Australia. 

My favorite example of this art comes from the Wodaabe people of Niger. Interestingly, it is the men who wear the elaborate make-up in order to impress the women. They take great care in applying it and smile as widely as they can to show their teeth. Healthy teeth, healthy man. They also jump into the air as high as they can. They remind me of beautiful male birds trying to impress their mates. Good call. These guys probably imitated the behavior they saw thousands of years ago. If it works for birds....

If you look at a woman's magazine these days, a great number of the ads are for cosmetics and perfume. The models wearing the make-up, unless they are of a certain age (I hate that term. What does it mean really?), are wildly colored, but the colors are artfully done, for the most part. I can hear one friend of mine howling at this now. She mostly likely thinks they look like clowns, but I like the face as canvas (someone else's, not mine. I'm of that certain age). 

Cosmetics serve a dual purpose, of course. It's also meant as a seduction tool, just like the Wodaabe men. All good students of anthropology know that primates are attracted to the color red. Red lips. Red butts in the case of some species. Which is where I draw the line when it comes to human lips. It seems these days that women think that the plumper the lips, the better. Men love plump lips. Or is it that they have that primitive response to something big and red, like butts. Just a thought. 

I'll continue to add the small bit of rouge, eye make-up and lipstick occasionally, mostly because I love a bit of color on my now pale (no sun for me!) canvas.