Ghosts of Joe Slovo

Wow. Four months since my last post. A personal record. Not the way to build the devoted readership that every blog author craves.

It's been an interesting little while, I have to say, my faithful readers. Why just in those four months my brother got married on the beach in North Carolina, my wife spent seven weeks visiting ancient churches in Jordan and Syria and working on an archeological dig in Syria, the IRS lost our stimulus check and I lost many hours of my life to the IRS bureaucracy, my weekly futbol blogging gig got axed but I got a new futbol blogging gig, I traveled all over the East Coast (NC to NYC to DC for vacation. DC twice more for work. Austin for work/Netroots Nation. Boston for work/American Political Science Association - okay, Austin is not the East Coast), and the flagship organization of the family of organizations for which I work replaced its top management team due to a financial scandal from 8 years ago that just became public in late May.

So things have been busy.

I strongly suggest that if your organization that is putting together a 1.2 million voter registration drive, a 1.6 million voter Get Out The Vote effort, playing a leading role in Health Care For American Now (HCAN), the We Are America Alliance (WAAA), Half In Ten, plus running its own campaigns on fighting the forclosure crisis and other economic justice issues that it try to avoid a financial misappropriation scandal. Speaking here from personal experience.

What is interesting to experience from a sociological point of view is the manner in which funders decide what they have the right to see from a funded organization. Instead of this "we're investing in your solid track record of success and respect the organizing model and its accomplishments", it becomes much more "we have the money and you don't so you better be asking How High when we say Jump" relationship. I'm not saying funders shouldn't have confidence in the financial controls of their grantees, but I am saying that if you believed in the work enough in the past to invest in it, then it makes sense to take pains to work with the grantee as its goes through a very difficult period. It feels very paternalistic from my point of view.

Of course, that's just a small piece of what has happened with that scandal over the three months or so its been in the open, but you'll have to wait for more. Not to mention I'll probalby be regaling you with details from other aspects of my life.

Now that I'm ending my four month sabbatical.

Kick ass and take names.

1) Politics. This bores a lot of people so I try not to talk much about it here.

2) Soccer - specifically MLS soccer. This defines me as a complete soccer nerd, but I swear I am an ametuer at this because while I love the game, I find I'm foggier than I should be about tactics. Maybe completely foggy actually. Somehow this doesn't stop me from trying to make predictions, however.

3) Being married. It's the next step. How I feel about steps changes as I change. And it blends into the next change pretty seamlessly most of the time. But one day you are all about the braeburn apple and then you check in again on fruit and you are all about navel oranges. Sometimes for me a cultural atrifact with significance in a previous decade of my life puts me in check-in phase. The best artifact for me has been the movie, Dazed and Confused. No linking. Google is your friend.

I have seen that moive about 30 times in my life, but it could be more. It's deep enough in my brain that its hanging out with lizards. Certain sequences can trigger specific emotions, but I find the emotions change timbre and shade, and give me a mirror to look at myself. How I feel about a scene tells me a lot about how I'm doing right now. 

I don't know what Dazed and Confused would tell me lately and not because it can't still teach and I can't still learn; but because some tools get worn with use. And I'm wondering if I used it down, wore it down, dullened it, and it needs to sharpen with ageing. Then I'll check in with it again.

In the meantime I'm going to use this married thing to see if there aren't some new things that I can build with Tyche I can use to check-in on later. We got lots of wedding photos...


I wonder wonder if that if, during the ageing process, Ben Affleck's acting continues as it has since he stopped improving after Chasing Amy, I will still think his best performance ever was in Dazed and Confused? Because it's the one role where he is totally consumed with the emotion he's trying to act out.

Ben Affleck does "Anger Man", Ben Affleck is Anger Man.

And now, to dinner.



Mmmmm. Dinner.

So.

After a long hiatus I'm back in the blogolivejournalosphere.

And I'm hitched.

Tyche and I did the deed earlier this month out at a Los Angeles city part in the west SF Valley. Record setting heat, a good 22 degrees above normal for that time of year. But it was a dry heat (thank you Santa Ana).

All reports are that it was a fab event: good food, open bar, clear skies and a memorable and touching ceremony. In fact we got non-stop positive comments on how well done and engaging the ceremony was. Lots of people said things like, "Best wedding ceremony I've ever seen", "Best non-church wedding I've ever seen", and "My favorite wedding to have attended ever." Which is great, because I sure don't remember it!

But some people who might include bexrousse, who had the job of officiating, which she did masterfully. We got lots of comments about how well she handled the flow of the ceremony and how well she integrated each piece into the overall presentation, not to mention the occassional humor comments to keep things from getting too solemn.

Other people who might recall what happened are dahled and supernaz who came down to LA from the Bay (members of a decent sized troupe from NorCal) and surprised themselves by only missing about 5 minutes of the whole ceremony. It was great to see them and I'm sorry I didn't get to spend more time with them (which I could say about pretty much everyone who came).

ekabhumi also made the trip south and was induced to become a last-minute addition to the festivities when we asked him to do a slam piece for the assembled hordes. He wipped out "Snuggalicious" and wowed everyone. My family from the Twin Cities now wants the contact info for the local Mpls slam so they can see more of that stuff. It's a virus I tell you, a virus!

Also my vassels, who include lillitu_shahar, made the trip, in the midst of a very busy weekend for them. Julia gave a presentation to a conference based on both her research for her upcoming book and her own personal experience as a transwoman in Oakland, then they drove down to the wedding and then drove back the same day. Whoa. Thanks for being a part of the day, though and putting that kind of time and effort into it!

Last, but not least, chiefj stopped in to give his respects, which was greatly appreciated, though he had to leave before I was even in the receiving line.

Sadly missed, but completely excused for so doing were jezebelly, josh_zero, and thelizquiz.

Turns out, as married folk might already know, you don't really remember much of details of the wedding. Or more precisely all you remember are the details, but none of them are attached to any specific contexts or flow. I remember aspects of the ceremony, like the cry of the hawk that passed over us in the middle (commerated by the fab shot the photographer got as it flew by). I remember teh unity candle burning feamsomely enough for me to worry vaugely about either the bride catching fire or setting the surrounding orange orchard to the torch. I remember being very very very hot in my wool suit that would have been fine for 71 degrees but was the height of imperial folly at 93 degrees (mad dogs and Englishmen and all that). I remember a stunningly beautiful woman with me in front of all those people, dressed in a gorgeous poofy and sparkly white dress.

I remember embarrassing stories told about my early forays into fighting tyranny and the tragically-learned lessons of never trusting what's on a piece of paper unless you can verify it and never trusting anyone over 30 (which has now been thoughtfully revised to never trust anyone over 55, which I suspect I may have to once again apply some judicious review to in a few years). I remember embarrassing stories about my 13th birthday party involving a combustible overload of testosterone.

It was great, actually. And now I get to spend the rest of my life with Ms. Tyche. Which pretty much was the whole point in the first place.

Kick ass and change names.

Yep. I'm getting hitched. Been a part of our lives for about a year now, this "getting hitched" meme and it is about to transmogrify into "actually hitched" with a blow-out party the weekend of March 11th, 2007.

In the meantime, however, we still have to plan the damn thing. Paperwork. Contracts. Legal documents. Schedules. Logistics. Etc.

One thing that's fairly interesting aobut the whole deal, though, is the name change. The subject of a bit of debate in the household it has been as both parties feel that their names are both signifcant enough and interesting enough to keep. And frankly we don't understand why the other person isn't all gung ho about adopting ours.

Now, gentle readers, we could hyphenate. Which has already been done on my side. Which leaves us with an unappatizing choice of multiple dashes in the last name. Now, I suggested the Spanish solution of just a bunch of names all strung together and then capped off with an "y". Kind of a Joe Slovo y Tyche kind of thing. Tyche just looked at me with the "you are being really stupid" look.

So that was out. Extra hyphens were out. I suggested the rarest name should win on the theory that there are only so many and we want as many as possible to live on. THERE IS NO TRUTH TO THE VICIOUS RUMOR THAT I SUGGESTED THIS BECAUSE THERE ARE ONLY 4 PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES WITH MY LAST NAME WHILE THERE ARE AT LEAST 300 WITH THYCHE'S.

Again with the shooting down of a perfectly good idea.

So we finally decided that we would take my last initials and make them both of our middle initials and then take her last name for both of our last names. In the end this makes a lot of sense. I use my last initials a lot in various personas and the names they stand for are depressingly common Anglo-Saxon monikers. Further the whole name was only created a generation ago and is, in a sense, just a knock-off to begin with, so it should be up for a bit more manipulation and evolution. And while Tyche's name is fairly rare, it comes from a rich tradition and has a lot of immigrant romance attached to it.

I can just imagine, though, the headaches this is going to cause to people researching this family tree.

Kick ass and change names.

So today Tyche and I meet for the first time with our wedding planner.

That's right. A wedding planner. Is this a sign of the apocalypse? I always pictured fire and brimstone and locuts and horsemen. But I think the apocalypse arrives kind of like tyranny: one small slip at a time until you realize you really are living in Hell.

But wait, there is an explanation. And that explanation is that I am lazy. No, wait. While true, that is not the reason. The real reason is that one of Tyche's good friends form college just started her own event planning business and she offered to do our wedding for us as she gets on her feet. So we agreed, especially since we both have experience planning large events and know what is going to go into this nightmare, er, umm, I mean, the happiest day of our life. And so we're both very happy to have a wedding planner to do a nice chunk of the logisitical crapola for us.

Wish us luck.

Kick ass and take names.