Summer of Satisfaction

It's the first day of school in these parts and this means that I am 1) crying as my firstborn trots off to highschool and 2) happy to have use of my computer again. Logging on today, I notice a home page full of new games and a desk cluttered with Coyote's new PlayStation paraphernalia... And then I apparently needed a few weeks before I came back to my computer.

West Thumb Geyser Basin, a super hot spring on Yellowstone Lake

Coyote saved up his money from several years of birthdays and Christmases and ordered the step-up from his Wii. I worried that the only reason he wanted the PS4 was so that he could play the grittier games.  He was no longer was satisfied with Wii's Lego Batman and MarioKart (although who could possibly tire of MarioKart?! Not me! Never!) But Coyote assured me that there were plenty of great, non-first-person-shooter games available, namely Little Big Planet which he mastered in 3 weeks. He inevitably longed for a new challenge, a better game. There weren't any. There was only a horror game called Dying Light and if I didn't let him get it then the whole P$4 endeavor was wasted and he might as well throw the machine out.

So we let him buy Grand Theft Auto 5. Yes. We did that. Turns out the name is the most salacious part of the game. And kids have been playing cops and robbers, prey and predator, chase, whatever you want to call it, for centuries. Video games, like all games of all times and media, can be a way to play and pretend at things we would never want to act on. They can be a way to see an imagined situation through to its end without the risks of real life. And all his friends already have it. Or so I thought. One mom got all up in my face about it. It's okay to forbid the game, different parents, different kids and all that, and that you don't want your kid playing it at our house. Fine. No big deal. But the big deal comes in when I'm not even allowed to say that I do allow it. The "forbid" opinion is not the only right one. And if you get to tell me you forbid it, I get to tell you that I don't. And frankly, it's a really fun game. Silly and hilarious, I enjoy playing it with Coyote, although I hate looking my character in the face because he scares me and when the police show up I always scream and drop the controls. Playing it with Coyote allows for conversations about the things that come up in the game. We had no screens in this house for many many years, but now that the kids are of discussion age, if find it much better to allow and discuss rather than forbid and never speak of such things. The former is more complicated and takes more time, that latter is easier and apparently allows for the adrenaline shot of self-righteousness.

Just a peek at the Grand Teitons

More than vetting the video game itself, the extensive discussions we had before letting him buy it made it clear that we care about him, about what he's doing with his time and about his well-being.  This is the most important message we can ever give him about anything. Also, we do trust that he knows the difference between real life and imaginary. My kids have always been blessedly clear on the differences between real and imaginary things. In addition to being an atheist since she could speak (neither Huck nor I are), I once found Blue, who's always loved babies, bashing her doll against the wall. "Oh no! We don't want to do that to our babies!" At two years old, she looked at me with great concern, put her hand on my arm consolingly, looked deep in my eyes and said, "Mom, it's just a doll. It's not real."

Mammoth Hot Springs

Coyote also used this illuminating article to argue his pro-Grand Theft Auto points. Although, when sass becomes an issue, he knows the game is the first item of confiscation. Research, he's learned, is key to getting what he wants. Last year he wanted a game called Prison Break, where you design prisons and let inmates loose in them and that's how you discover your design flaws. It's actually a smart, problem-solving, auto-cad-teaching game but before I let him download it, he had to give me a well-researched report about the prison-industrial complex and the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects kids of color.

Meanwhile, Blue and I were nursing our addiction to West Wing. It's what we call a "pact show" which means we can't watch it without the other person. So I'm sitting here by myself now, fully aware that 10,000 episodes are available just over there. She'd never know right?

Yellowstone's Grand Canyon

Unfortunately much of our summer was spent inside due to a record-breaking number of days over 100 degrees. 100+ isn't even good beach or pool weather as the second you leave the water, you're screwed. Blue has passed out in heat before and I am also a wilty little pansy. Huck loved the heat as his reconstructed titanium knee feels heavenly in it. I predict we will be retiring in very different places. Although, at this point, I'm unsure what I would retire from.

On those hottest of days, I got up at 5 and worked in the garden for an hour. But I quickly tired of being grumpy and sleep deprived. During the hottest days, all of the garden grew at an astonishing rate, especially the weeds. I took a few days off of my 5 am risings and when I returned, the weeds were so large that removing them would have uprooted my plants as well. No matter, I still had tomatoes a month early. My determinant tomato plants actually produced through an entire life-cycle and died a natural, non-frost death. I have never seen it before.  Everything produced well and it was a miracle if I could find the fruits of my labor among the 5 foot tall grasses and weeds.

But even the 5am weedings had to stop when the month of smoke rolled in. Last year's smoke season brought me adult onset asthma. So much of this August was spent inside nursing on my inhaler and staying close to the air purifier.

But the highlight of summer was the un-plugged camping trip to Yellowstone, the first of it's kind since my head injury. Huck planned everything: menu, packing, itinerary. This all used to be my jurisdiction and I was happy to hand it over. I was simply along for the ride. And it was amazing. I forgot how incredibly much I love camping and exploring. My third time at Yellowstone, and I still can't even grok its marvels.The kids were in awe and wondered why anyone would go to Disneyland before Yellowstone. 10,000 thermal features, 2/3 of the world's supply, all in this little corner of Wyoming. Geysers, faithful and muddy. Steam vents named "Dragon's Lair." Rainbow colored hot springs and bacterial mats. The "standing dead" trees that don't decay. A million bison causing hours long traffic jams. Coyote suggested "Grand Theft Auto: Yellowstone." We found a warm-ish swimming hole through steep rocks, a hidden gem with parking and toilets but not featured in guide books. The kids jumped cliffs into a 70 degree river. We hiked and forded a river to get to the remote and gross worm-filled Huckleberry Hot Springs. When it rained, we played poker (butterscotch and Hi-Chew ante) and ate dinner in our tents. The kids had their own tent which was also reserved for anyone who's camp-food farts became unbearable. Yes, the park was crowded. Yes, it was exhausting. But we kept the itinerary at a pace I could handle and even at that, I couldn't handle much. Our first attempt at Old Faithful's crowds had me overwhelmed-sobbing and we had to leave. We returned days later and well-rested for an awesome bike ride through trails of hot springs and marmots. We rented a boat and let the kids cruise us around Yellowstone Lake. That afternoon I was too tired for the Elephant Back trail, circled in my guide book, and instead we headed to the Gatsby-esc Lake hotel for drinks. The next day, as it would happen, a park veteran was half devoured and half cached-for-later by a bear on that same Elephant Back trail.

Returning home, we stopped by Virginia and Nevada Cities, ghost towns that have lovingly haunted me since a family road trip when I was 11. It was as worthwhile as ever. The nickel arcade kept us occupied for hours for only $2. We watched 1905 porn which involved women in large flouncy knee-length nightgowns in a series of photographs that flipped through like a slow film. We visited Butte's Berkeley Pit superfund site because that's what you do when you vacation with an environmental engineer.

Mammoth hot springs

When we returned home, we found our garage freezer had quit and was full of ick and goop created by a week of 100 degree days. And we discovered Captain Jack on the back porch with a filleted and infected leg. He needed emergency surgery that night (which cost as much as our entire vacation) with three layers of stitches to sew the flesh back on to the bone. He's fine now, but it was a frightening moment and exhausting on top of it all.

Every day that was not smokey or 100+, we filled with friends and lakes and short hikes and bike rides and tomatoes and summer squash and I feel full of summer, topped off. The last two summers have left me mourning my inability to properly summer. But this one has been real and right, even with it's unbearable heat or hazardous air quality from this ring of fire in which we appear to now be living. I might finally be ready for the season's change.

The Last Chicken

In the beginning, my chickens were to be free range, but they pooped everywhere which was incompatible with my barefoot prone family. And they ate every little shoot, every seedling, every seed. Nothing good could grow with chickens on the loose. So we clipped their wings and fenced them in.

Huck and I clipped their wings at night. Without light, chickens sleep, a stupor-y, paralyzed sleep. This is why they need latched coops. They are defenseless in the night. Plus, in the dark, I could half-heartedly lunge at them and no one, not even I, could see my chicken-shit farmeress-ness. I hated handling chickens.

Coyote was our go-to chicken-rustler. His preferred, if unconventional, method was a leaf blower we’ve never needed as we have no leaves out here. But Coyote found a use for it. He’d bluster the chickens back to their barn. At first it seemed cruel. But it was so darn effective that the chickens would run to the barn as soon as they saw Coyote with his uzi of air.

Sometimes they ran towards me, goddess of kitchen scraps that I am. They’d squat down, a submissive posture which means “fuck me, oh great rooster!” But I’d just scratch their backs instead. They never did that when it was time for clipping wings. Their empty little heads were full of instinct.

In six years we’d never had a predator. Early on, we found a mink winding around their coop. And once, after one died, an owl ate its head. We moved the coop in to the barn, out of the weather and further removed from claws, beaks and teeth. We secured the entrances to the barn. I don’t know when we stopped shutting the coop altogether.  

Six years in, their rickety little coop was falling to pieces. If you jostled the chicken-filled coop like a maraca for long enough, you could get the door closed but the locks wouldn’t line up. And what good would locks do when the chicken wire was coming off? Staple and nail. Staple and nail and still, corners popped up here and there, now and again. So we’d just shut the barn door instead of the coop. Only a few still slept in the coop anyway.

Ninja (or Dragon, we had two indistinguishable black chickens) sleeps on a high high shelf. No one knows how she gets up there, but the dismount is a bitch. Every morning, she throws herself off the ledge, bounces on her chest across the barn floor, rests for a disturbing moment, and then resumes her day. 

Meanwhile her twin was constantly brooding in the hay. After four years she was still convinced that an egg would hatch, some day. As she grew older, she grew broodier and broodier and I gave up trying to convince her to leave her faux clutch for the coop.

At six and four years old, their best egg laying days were behind them. There were only a few eggs a week, and that was during prime laying times. Yet we continued to feed them, not quite sure when to call it quits, or how. 

When we bought this place, I was thrilled to live out my farmish fantasies. Cows and chickens and a 5000 square foot garden!! My dreams were big and I had the energy and enthusiasm to match. After over two years of head injury, it doesn’t fit any more. Even if we had somehow known all that wasn’t coming back, all that I had to let go of, that this whole enterprise was actually over two years ago, who had the energy, the wherewithal to close up shop? We just kept doing what we could to keep what we had going. 

Slowly now, we are bringing the property to a state the matches what our lives look like now. Fences are being pulled out, large swaths of overly needy plants are in hospice care, their final days a looming certainty.  I don’t have the energy and desire for doing this dismantling work either, but it’s too depressing to look out the windows at Falling Apart Farm, Not Quite Able to Keep Up Enterprises, and The Garden of Dead Dreams. So each day, a little bit of farm gets folded up and put away. No one knew how to dis-assemble the chicken-husbandry.

That morning, I slid the broad, white, barn door aside and there, at my flip-flops, lay Sri Racha, a black and white speckled beauty, headless, her neck bleeding into the water jug, feathers everywhere. 

That was all I wanted to see. I did not want to step around her, deal with her, with this.  I didn’t like touching the chickens when they were alive, certainly dead would be no better. I dashed back to the house and asked Huck to bury the beautiful bird before he left for work.  By the time I realized he’d forgotten, the day was on its way to record-breaking heat.

And then, it slowly occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the other chickens emerge from the barn yet either. In retrospect, I seem like a dimwitted ninny, but it’s the slowness of the unsuspecting, I hope.

I sent my chicken rustler, my gross-chore go-to guy out to the barn for a reconnaissance mission. He returned with wild tales of blood and feathers and severed heads. If it wasn’t the work of Ozzie Osbourne, it was a mink or a new-to-the-hood raccoon. Coyote reported that the white one still had her head. Half of it. And she needed to be killed. 

Photos courtesy Blue Palmer: this was her favorite

I traded my flipflops for my barn shoes and went to witness the grizzly scene myself. I stepped over the corpse of Sri Racha and found the brooder’s body still on the nest, a testament to motherly instinct. The walls around it were covered in blood and her head lay nearby. Priscilla cowered just behind the door, her lower beak missing along with half her neck. I hoped she was dead, but she waddled a few steps. Ninja wandered through, dazed and silent, yet whole. The floor seemed to move and breathe with a layer of feathers. 

Priscilla was the original chicken. I picked her specifically to help me with my fear of chickens. She was the white one, the look alike to the headless chicken that attacked me in my youth. I did not want to kill a chicken; I did not want to kill Priscilla. I didn't want it to be final; could she pull through? Alternately, she seemed so close to death anyway, why bother with the final severance? But Coyote insisted. 

Despite my discomfort in asking for help, in the implication that I was in over my head farming-wise, I called the Russian neighbor, Sergei, the one who botched the killing of Beignet. They’d just lost nine chickens under similar circumstances. He quickly entered the barn, assessed the damage, and took Priscilla into his arms. He told me that I should run back to the house and prepare a large vat of just boiled water. I would dip the chicken (although his English is not great so he called it a dog) in to the vat, the feathers would fall off easily and then this incision and that and soon I’d be on my way to a wonderful cauldron of chicken soup, presumably to sooth my no-kill farmer-ette soul. 

I returned to the house and began filling a large pot with water, but then remembered his wife telling me to never ever eat laying hens because they are gross. A six year old laying hen would be even grosser. Chickens, like cows, were genetically separated long ago for their specific uses. A milk cow will give no meat and a meat cow will give little milk. A laying hen in her prime will lay daily but her muscles are jute twine and taste like chicken shit. A meat chicken will live 6 months and never lay an egg.

I wasn’t going to eat this ancient hen. I abandoned my cauldron and returned to the barn, realizing it’d just been a ruse anyway. While I’d remembered the shot between Beignet’s eyes not being immediately successful, Sergei likely remembered me passing out in his field and probably hoped to avoid an encore performance. Sergei’s “look over there!” ploy got me out of the barn long enough for him to slit Priscilla’s throat the rest of the way. When I returned, she was flopping and hopping about the barn, blood silently squirting from her neck. It was the same scene from when I was 7. The white bird. The red pulsing arc of life. She flung her large body against the hay, the walls, the coop. Meanwhile, Sergei tried to make small talk. I responded to his questions, one eye on the old bird, the one white bird, the memory, the dream, not gently dying, but raging, raging. It seemed she could go on forever that way. Here we are old girl. It’s over now. 

Priscilla was a great chicken, really, as chickens go. I’m not just saying that because she’s dead. If I loved any chicken, it was her. She never let me touch her. She was the first to try any new food, any dinner scraps I tossed over the fence. The others would wave their beaks over it and wait until she tried it first. I thought that would be the death of her, that she’d adventuresomely try a poisonous plant someday. But her instincts were right, always, and the others were smart (if that’s even a word that belongs to a chicken) to trust her lead.  She was the explorer, the adventurer. She was never the bottom of the pecking order, but seemed outside of it: sometimes not worth pecking, and other times their non-pecking leader. She seemed bothered by none of it, oblivious to the ever shifting chicken politics.

I didn’t really love my chickens, not in the emotional way, not the way I loved my cows. They were an experiment, a challenge, a desire to know where my food comes from and a way to face a childhood fear. If I never quite loved them, I did learn to care for their well-being, to not wish them ill, to not be terrified of them as I was when I was a child, or rather not as much. Priscilla was the closest I came to an emotional bond with these little dinosaurs. She was my childhood fear. And I made friends with her and in that way she was transformed from fear to friend. The poppy-red blood on white wings, once a macabre emblem of childhood drama, now felt like just another turn on our wheel of fortune, the end of another era.

Sergei piled the chickens like wood and I thanked him with a deep gratitude. I stood over Priscilla, my emotions held at bay for now with the practical issues of a hot day and a barn full of dead bodies.

At first, I tried digging a plot in the dry ground, hard as granite this time of year. I tried commandeering a gopher hole, but realized 25 pounds of chicken would not go easily or deeply into it. 

I donned my yellow kitchen gloves and haltingly reached towards Priscilla. My gloves matched her yellow claws. She was heavier than I imagined, her old body resting deeply into the dirt of the barn floor. I plopped her body into the black plastic bag. I plopped her head in to it. I plopped the brooder’s body in, her head too, and Sri Racha’s body, head still unaccounted for. The yard waste bag sagged and threatened to split open. I could barely lift it up into the garbage can. Luckily, pick-up was the next day and my girls would soon be cremated at the Waste-to-Energy plant. I placed my yellow kitchen gloves, like a rose, atop of the black bag inside the garbage can turned coffin. 

It turns out that Ninja was our sole layer as the trickle of eggs has not slowed since that Monday. She is truly free-range now as one chicken’s shits are easily avoided. She hasn’t quite figure out what to eat, except the grasshoppers. She dodges wildly back and forth, aiming for one specific victim in a sea of what seems like thousands around here this year. One can’t walk in flipflops across the lawn without making a little grasshopper pesto in one’s flipflops. (Even as I type, a grasshopper just flung itself at my computer screen...I think I left a window open)

Crunch all ya want! We'll make more!

Ninja, a dark shadow of my farmy dreams, is utterly alone now. Chickens are nothing if not social, despite their vicious pecking order. They are like middle school girls that way. One lonely chicken is so horrible that even the factory chick farms won’t sell them as singles. They need to know where they stand in order to survive. Even if it’s at the bottom. Even if they’re hen-pecked to death. They would prefer a death by peers to no peers at all. Ninja Dragon faces such a fate, poor dear. It might be more merciful to bring Sergei in, to finish off this farm once and for all.

The Art and Craft of Passing out of Slavery

I'd like to highlight a different story of racial passing and this story includes gender bending too! Dolezal seems to be enjoying her spotlight a little much and I thought we could give a little attention now to a more noble passing.

My now defunct one-woman show featured the true story (and real quotes) of a legally black female slave who dressed as a white man to escape slavery in the South. These are the sorts of conditions that make deception something I can sympathize with. This segment of my show did not feel right in first person as I worried (silly me!) I could be insulting, appropriating, and presumptuous if I donned a fake accent and pretended to be a technically "black" slave, so it alone was written in 3^rd person. Since the show is never now likely to see the light of day, I present to you: 1/6^th of the moth-balled Sisterhood of Kings: True Stories of Women in Power and Pants. In it, I portrayed six women who dressed up as men to achieve their dreams, or just survive.  Please note that this is written as a script, not an essay.

----

Ellen Craft grew up in her father's house in the deep South, Georgia. It was the 1840's and her father had slaves. One of her father's slaves was Ellen's mother. And although Ellen appeared white, not black, she was still legally black and a slave. When she was 11, she was given to her older half sister as a wedding gift and that is how she came to live in Macon, Georgia and to eventually meet William, also a slave.

Her half sister was thrilled with their marriage because any children that Ellen and William had would automatically be her property, to sell or use as she wished.

And you thought you had problems with your sister.

Being actual people, with actual dreams of their own, and actual feelings, Ellen and William decided that as long as they were slaves they would never have children. They would never bring in to that world a child, a person, whose fate would be to be treated as property. Never. But … they did want children. And so they decided to figure out a way to escape to the North.

Ellen had already dismissed several of Williams unlikely plans when he finally suggested that Ellen could pretend to be a man, a white man, and William would be her slave.

No – no –Ellen could not imagine how she could pull that off, could not imagine wanting to, could not imagine living as a man, not just a man, but a slave owner. There were too many complications, too many possible pit falls, and the risk, should she be caught, would be too great.

But, William prodded, hadn't people always assumed she was the legitimate child of two white people?

And hadn't she gotten extra beatings just for that?

And didn't she know how to talk like the whites, working in the house?

Maybe – maybe, Ellen said.

William took on extra work, earned extra money, and piece by piece purchased the tools she would need.

Ellen and William got four days off for Christmas.

And early on the morning of December 21, before anyone else was awake, Ellen began to transform: 

First William cut off her hair.

To hide her smooth cheeks, Ellen tied on a toothache bandage.

William wrapped her right arm in a sling filled with medicine faking arthritis because she had never learned to write - so when she had to sign for her tickets, she could reasonably say she was unable to do so.

She pulled on her pants.

William slipped a suit coat over her shoulders.

And with the top hat and green gentleman's glasses of the time, this woman, considered her

father's prettiest daughter, became a man, a frail bespectacled deaf man with a toothache and a very, very attentive slave.

William got Ellen, now going by the name of Mr. Johnson, settled in her car, then took his place in the "Negro" car. They were careful to not look out the windows, to not, in their curiosity, reveal their own faces, and be recognized. For here, in their home town, the danger was greatest.

First, the worst possible thing happened. William's boss came to the station, suspicious. William could hear him urging the ticket agent to search the train.William slouched further and pulled his hat over his eyes and just when the cabinet maker looked through his window, the whistle blew and the train chugged forward.

Then the other worst possible thing happened. The man who sat next to Ellen was the neighbor, Mr. Cray. And he turned to her and said, "It is a fine morning, sir."

She did not know what to say.

Why was he talking to her?

Did he already know?

Had he been sent to find her?

This was just the first step of their plan, would it be foiled so soon?

Ellen did not respond, she didn't know how, she simply stared out the window.

Her heart pounded hard and loud and her hands sweat and she could barely breath.

Mr. Cray spoke louder "It is a very fine morning, sir. It is a very fine morning sir. It is a very fine morning!!!" Until Ellen felt she had to respond, to stop this scene "Yes."

"Sir, I think the gentleman is deaf," a passenger who'd overheard the exchange, intervened.

"Yes, and I shall not trouble him anymore." And Mr. Cray disembarked at the next stop. And with that Ellen knew, with a disorienting sense of irony, that she could pass as a Southern gentle man and she could manage a curve ball.

Ellen had many more close calls. The entire trip, she'd had to listen to the craziest stuff.

A rich woman carrying on about how her stupid slaves wanted to be free and were always running off,and how her stupid husband had given them their freedom on his stupid death bed,but she'd altered the final will:

"I knew he was too good a man to do such an unkind thing, had he been in his right mind, and therefore I had the will altered." she said.

And Ellen who'd stayed out of numerous similar conversations could not refrain,

"Do you mean, madam, that willing the slaves free was unkind to them or costly to you?"

"To the slaves! It seems cruel to turn [epithet for them] loose to shift for themselves, when there are so many good masters to take care of them."

Very carefully, Mr. Ellen Johnson shut her mouth tight, because if the words that were on the tip of her tongue were to actually make it out, all would be lost.

Ellen also had to endure being lectured for treating her slave too kindly.

One Army general demonstrated the way she should really talk to her slave.

No “please.” No “thank you.” But a string of expletives -- here let me show you-- that would keep him in line.

And she was tortured by several young women who found Mr. Johnson to be adorable, no matter how sickly, and wanted to marry him. Mr. Johnson's only response was the refuge of many a non-talkative traveler: pretend to be asleep.

At Charleston, a major slave market, the couple found that Mr. Johnson would have to sign a form to leave the town with her slave.

"I'm afraid I can't sign." Ellen pointed at her bandaged arm. "You'll have to do it for me."

The official eyed the two suspiciously, "I shan't do it!" he said.

And here was a stand off. Each of them eying the other. The crowd gathering, craning their necks to see what and who was holding up this line. And into the middle of this all stumbled a tipsy Army officer, the very one who'd schooled Ellen on how to speak to her slave. [Slurring] "Oh Mr. Johnson, oh I know this family like the book!"  And he signed for them.

Later, the official apologized to Mr. Johnson saying "They make it a rule to be very strict at Charleston. If they were not very careful, any damned abolitionist might take off a lot of valuable … property."

But in the final stretch, from Baltimore to Philadelphia, William went missing.

Mr. Johnson's bags were unloaded and there she stood, a man, alone at the train station.

And William had not made it.

But by now, Mr. Johnson knew just what to do: Mr. Johnson panicked about his missing, possibly escaped, recalcitrant slave and the crew panicked with him. For if a slave escaped from Baltimore, Baltimore had to pay his owner the going rate.

William was finally found in the baggage area where all the slaves were put during the journey. After four long treacherous days, poor William had fallen asleep and no amount of unloading could have woken him.

One final train ride and then, there they were on Christmas morning, William and Mr. Johnson had finally arrive in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly love.

And in order to be free, Ellen had to dress as a man. As unnatural as it seemed to her, as horrifying the thought, this was what it took. Greater prices have been paid for the freedom to be human, to be as precious as any of god's children, but this was the price for Ellen, to spend four hungry, sleepless, terrifying days as some one else, as her exact opposite, a white slave-owning man. 

Imagination and Integrity

I typically don’t step in to the fray of current events here. There’s too much unknown, the landscape is too fluid and I hate to pitch my tent and then have the sands of what we know, what we can know, and how well we can know it shift and bury me. But this whole Rachel Dolezal thing is huge news here in Spokane. I watched it break quietly, reading the first reports on my Facebook feed Thursday night. I watched as it blossomed floridly all day until it became too tempting to not write about. 

Even with the shifting sands of the day’s news, I think I can solidly say that integrity is important to me. More important than any skin color. Honesty is hard and often requires vigilance and courage in the face of what we want and what people want from us.  I know we all fudge a little here and there. We try to keep a long story short, or we want to tell one part of the story but keep the other parts private.  And we all deceive ourselves. Maybe we accidentally twisted the story because we need the other person to be a villain or we really wanted what we wanted and only if we told ourselves that story in that way could we justify it. We are all currently deceiving ourselves in some way, even now, even as I type, trying so hard to keep the truth carved as close to the bone as possible. I fear this truth: that we lie to ourselves. I hate it. It’s a natural part of being human. But to say that we all lie to ourselves and therefore lying is okay, that’s where I disagree. And I have a really big problem with it when it all turns in to a colossal lie and intentional deception. At that point, I don’t feel the same softness for our human-ness as I do when it’s accidental. Perhaps I should, but I don’t. I have no idea where Rachel falls in this continuum of truth, but I do know that I have no time or energy for overt lies and the people who tell them. 

Here's my confession: I once passed as a Christian to take a room in a house very near the University. I didn’t lie. They knew my dad was a pastor and offered me the room based on my father’s occupation alone. I was new to town and I really needed a place to live so I did not correct them.

Here's where I stand up: When I had long dark hair, I often wore it in two braids. I thought it was cute and conveniently kept my hair from blowing in my face. When my hair was worn like this, and only when my hair was worn like this, people, always white people, (but obviously not ALL white people, Ha! That’d be just under 1 billion people. I imagine they would all stand in line and I would go from cradle to grave handling just that one question), would often ask me if I was Native American.

I grew up in the parsonages of Marietta Community Church, a stone’s throw from the town-ette of Marietta, on the lip of the Lummi Reservation. I had Lummi friends. I occasionally attended Lummi functions. But I’ve always found the wherewithal within me to chuckle and say to the inquiring minds, “Nope. I’m actually of Dutch heritage. It’s just the braids; they trick people every time.” I feel now I should specify that I am Dutch, except for 1/32 German, by about 10 feet across the border. But I’ve often said I was all Dutch. I’m sorry. It’s just seemed shorter than saying I was 31/32 Dutch and 1/32 German. And nobody seemed to care anyway.

I can see the temptation of saying I was Native American. I could easily get away with it and get all that exotic credit without the bother of being constantly hassled by stereotypes and racism, both overt cruelty and well-meaning pity.

I worked and attended college with my friend Denise, a black woman who grew up in Anchorage. We worked at the Farmer’s markets around Seattle, manning the Italian, rustic-bread booth together. Our liberal, open-minded customers often chatted her up while ignoring me. The farmer’s market demographic adored her, flirted with her, gave her gifts and invitations, loved her. I suspected it's because my white skin was so cliche, but I didn't say anything until she did. Then when they would leave, we would burst out laughing at them. “I’m so exotic!” She would tease and flaunt her exciting looking hair, maybe in braids or an afro.

She was a math major, a declared math major. She hated math, she told me, but as long as she kept one such class on her schedule, she could go to college as long as she wanted on fat scholarships. “Oh yeah. Black woman math major? Cha-ching! Donors go crazy for that shit.”

She wasn't the only one I knew doing it that way. An Asian friend always claimed to want to be a doctor on her scholarship applications. What kind of doctor? "Oh God no. I don't want to be a doctor at all. I just want my college paid for!"

Meanwhile, I choked along, putting myself through community college, working up to 40 hours a week while taking a full load. I transferred to a state university. I rode a city bus to school 1 ½ hours one way. I had no financial help from my family. I looked for scholarships for white girls studying liberal arts. I could not find any. I understand I have white privilege, just at times I wished it came with money.

I've read that Rachel attended a black college on full scholarships, the assumption being that she was black.

One black man I once had a crush on wouldn’t give me a second glance. I got to know his white friend and we had babies and got married. We hung out with this black man and his new girlfriend and after dinner one night, discussions commenced regarding my time living in Mexico, working as a sales clerk. “Wait! What?! You lived in Mexico? Where else have you been?” After more discussion, and a longish list, he said, “Oh man! I thought you’d just rolled out of the suburbs when I met you! Oh man!”

His white, wispy little girlfriend smiled knowingly at me, “I bet you get that all the time. I bet you’re sick of it!”

“You get that too?”

“Oh yeah.”

My roommate in that Christian house had a Native friend. My roommate coveted invitations to Native events and often talked of Native ideals. Her friend found it necessary to break the news that no matter how hard she tried, my roommate would never ever be Native American and to try to keep that in perspective. Another friend is part Native American and has struggled for acceptance by her tribe, a place where she feels more at home than any other. Racial identity is a tricky thing and deception does it no service.

I can see how passing as black or Native would be attractive. We white girls, a sprawling demographic, want in on a tighter community in America, a sisterhood, a clearer identity. And the farmer’s market clientele would have fawned over me. Scholarships might have materialized. If I wanted to do non-profit work, I wouldn’t just be another do-gooder white girl coming in to tell those flailing POC’s how to pick themselves up (a branding I’d heard another white girl get when she tried to get a teaching position at a Native school). In full disclosure, I’m certain I've said some well-meaning but totally stupid bullshit about race and I've heard other freckled white-girls say some pretty strange things too. Some of the stereotypes are based on some real issues. 

If I could pass as black in my liberal circles, I could imagine that my struggles would be respected, made real by my race. It wouldn’t be assumed that I had had an easy, simple, well-funded life. People would look at me and know I’d been through some shit, and that part of the assumption would be true. It would almost be closer to truth to than what they get when they judge me on my skin color and my hair. It’s silly to complain: #whitegirlproblems. I’m not denying my white privilege, but I want to talk about my experiences. Stereotypes cut both ways. 

We could say, hate the game, not the player. But it’s my job to be honest, and your job to not jump to conclusions, to not stereo-type me, dismiss me, or anyone else. I certainly don’t imagine we fresh-faced and enthusiastic white girls are oppressed enough to justify the sort of deception all available evidence points to being perpetrated by Rachel Dolezal. This whole thing is mind blowing, strange, and yet understandable, pitiable. It’s hard to get traction as just another flacid-haired white girl, especially in liberal circles already awash in such mundane complexions in this region. But I’m not 100% sure that her act is even that well-reasoned. I’m also aware of the possibility that her parents have an ax to grind, yet that doesn't mean she's telling the truth.