21

At 12:01 AM on June 4th, I ventured to the local dive bar to get my first legal six pack in the United States of America.

Previously, I had backpacked alone through the Balkans, the Middle East, and other parts of the world. I had shot guns. I received military recruitment mail. I drove across America. I have been attending an Ivy League institution. I drank legally in Muslim countries and five continents. I had driven many motorized vehicles. I voted in a presidential election. I drank legally in Canada.

I had not, however, drank legally in the USA.

So I go in. The place smells like aged beer and the people look like part of the furniture of the place itself. The beer refrigerators were dark. My thought was that they stopped selling beer after 9 PM! Oh No!

I ask, in perfect non-Pittsburghese English, the barmaid with big boobs: "Excuse me, do you sell liquor in this state after 9 PM."

She stares.

"Yea. Go get 'un."

I retrieve the only thing I could find palatable amongst the Buds, IC Lights, Natty Ice, and other brands: Sam Adams.

I go to the cashier of the silicon bra: "How much?"

"You are not from here, are ya?"
"Kind of..."

"Well enjoy. $13."

I pay and she turns around. I'm insulted. After all of these years, I could have just waltzed in here and gotten a six pack, just like that? I say, "Don't you want to see me ID??"

"No. You are old enough."

I pause.

"Well I just want you to know that I have been 21 for 10 minutes!"

She motions me to show her the ID, tries (and fails) to get the bar goers of ancient times to sing Happy Birthday. I leave, with a sense of pride, accomplishment, and perhaps a little bit of sadness.

I am no longer a "kid" but a bonafide woman. When did that happen? Oh wait. 11 minutes ago.

Shekeled and Euroed: A Girl's Guide to coming back from the East

"Modern world don't ask why

cause modern world, build things high

now they house canyons filled with life.

Modern World I'm not pleased to meet you

You just bring me down." --Wolf Parade's "Modern World"

Back in Amurrrrrica from my 2 week hiatus in the Middle East, namely Israel and Jordan, after my brief jaunts in Athens and Belgrade coming from Prishtina. Granted, even though I was sick with a whooping cough, I had an urge to sing "Proud to be an American" when I touched down in New York (same urge I had in Macedonia using the most putrid bathrooms ever smelled 10 meters away). I had a surge of a sort of love and respect for the efficiency, organization, accountability, and other little (and big things) I had missed about this complicated, admirable, and terrifyingly powerful country. I had intended to write about "borders" (something most Americans don't encounter... ever) but something is a little more pressing.

My bank account.

Okay, not really. But coming back from the land of 4 shekel dozens of rugelah (Jewish chocolate pastry), .50 Euro lattes, and cheap 2 hour cab rides that seem expensive at the time, but end up being only $20. I was couch surfing and spending money really only on transportation and the occasional goodie, relying on the kindness of strangers to lend a car ride, a couch, or some chicken at shabbos or iftar. Oh the life of the traveler! Sounds romantic, eh?

Then I come to America. At first, I was most surprised at the lack of automatic weapons. A summer near NATO and the IDF will do that to you. The next thing I was surprised at was how efficient and accountable everything was. (Time near the Kosovo government will make you a little shell shocked coming back to America). Next, I was surprised that people generally obeyed traffic laws and did not drive next to back hoes tearing up the road with no traffic cones warning the public.

However, I am more surprised at how expensive basic living is. All that accountability and responsibility I was talking about before comes with a price. I went shopping today at Wal-Mart for some supplies. Don't judge. I don't have a Whole Foods near my house. I'm moving into a new house at school and really needed supplies like laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, toilet paper, staple foods and tooth paste. Not anything out of the ordinary.

At the check out, the boys in front of me had spent $80 on school supplies and soap for college. The Cashier, a rather plump woman who's tata's hung over the scanner, lamented the costs of underwear with the boys and how expensive it is to live. They said, "College is expensive." I said, "Tell me about it."

My turn. I scan my Tide. My non-organic dish soap. My Charmin toilet Paper. My only indulgence in all of this is a box of "Just Bunches" cereal and some Rembrandt tooth whitening mouth wash ($6.95). After all of this, and then more food and cleaning supplies, my total is $160. WTF.

The lady behind me is talking about how every time she comes to Wal-Mart she ends up spending $100. "You get your soap, your toilet paper, your tooth paste. You spend $100, get home and realize you didn't buy any food." I swipe a credit card and cringe. I can afford it and my economy size Tide is sure to last all semester, but still. That is not a pretty number.

I talk to the ladies and ask, "How do we live in America? How do people even get by if soap is $5.99 and minimum wage is $5.50/hr?" They complain about the cost of food. I say I'll become a vegetarian. Then I say I won't because its too expensive to eat fresh produce when a burrito is only $6.00 and I will spend that much on 6 apples at Gourmet Heaven in New Haven.

New Haven recently lost its sole supermarket, Shaw's, this past year. It leaves a student/poor food stamp neighborhood with no alternative other than a food co-op, minimarts, and an incredibly overpriced gourmet food store. Those ladies think Wal-mart is expensive, try shopping in a town without a supermarket, where a carton of milk will put you back $5.

I am just struck at how expensive basic living is in America (and Switzerland, where a small latte at the airport put me back about $6.50). I sometimes think, "How can we consume more when its so much more expensive??" And then I remember, "CREDIT." On my student side, I surely don't use that much toilet paper and a meager amount of laundry detergent (and I rarely do laundry...). I think I live pretty simply and do without a 32 oz. $7 Seventh Generation Laundry detergent (Tide is $6 for 50 oz.). I don't bother with dryer sheets and don't get caught up in gimic buys. Mostly because I drink coffee religiously and have a special budget for that....

In the mean time, I will reminisce about my .50 Euro lattes as I go back to paying $3.00 a latte and drinking about 3 of them a day because I am a sleepless ambitious college student, wanting to make it in this world. Doesn't that sound like a funny coincidence?

Good thing I bought a coffee maker.

Baby Lucy Born?

"If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine." --Michael Jay Tucker.

So "Baby Lucy Week 12" has another poster above it with the quote I posted above. I am sitting in LC Hall procrasturbating over Arabic and this caught my attention .

The defense that a lot of Pro-Life advocates make is that, despite the adversities a zygote may face if born, once it develops into a child and then is born, this child can be a "Mozart" or something like that. Yet, how many Mozarts do I see in the ghetto in Natrona Heights? Not quite sure. There are a lot of hungry kids, kids without healthcare, kids with fetal alcohol syndrome....

I'm not going to go into this, but it did get me thinking.... who is looking out for those kids who are born? If someone reads this and can educate me, what do anti-abortion groups do for these kids they are saving?

So "Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale" (RALY) or "Choose Life at Yale," what are you actively doing to prevent zygotes from becoming miserable children or what are you doing to help these saved children become less underprivileged.

Dear Enron

Dear Enron

cc: Activists who hate capitalism, mass media

bcc: Douglas Rae

How do you think Off-Balance sheet partnerships are in any way ethical? Just because they are legal does not make it ethical. Is not one of the first rules to successful capitalism (according to Adam Smith) transparency and freedom of information? Oh, when the days of business were noble and honorable! (At least in my nostalgia for days I've not seen).

But even more so, thank you for making capitalism look more evil than a vengeful demon mask in Japanese No drama. Thanks to you, mass media can make big business (and therefore, most business) look evil to the eyes of the world. Not only does your complexity make you unethical, your complexity makes mass media simplify you to make business seem evil. Oh if only we could reform!

Thanks to instances like this, America has no clue what's going on and they protest things they do not understand. No wonder there. But just the sound of "off-balance" sheet partnerships makes me nauseous too. Yet I am not prone to protest.

Yes, I understand you collapsed in 2001 and this story seems like old news, but why do I feel like you are still haunting me? Perhaps because I have to write a paper on you due Monday.

Sincerely,

Danielle

Today in my "Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform" class with Douglas Rae gave a great lecture on the utter importance of Freedom as a means of driving cooperation, success, innovation, and reform. Freedom to enter a market. Freedom to do. Freedom to choose what we so pleased.

As I was leaving, I noticed what looked like a black and white photo of a round planet on a sheet of paper tacked to a message board in LC. Upon further investigation, I found that it was actually titled:

"BABY LUCY, 0 weeks."

"Baby Lucy has just been conceived. She is a zygote, a single cell invisible to the unaided eye, but she is already a whole and distinct organism, possessing all the genetic characteristics necessary to direct her own development from within. We invite you to join us as we watch Baby Lucy grow over the next nine months. Sponsored by Choose Life at Yale."

Feeling that I should be incensed, that some inner feminist rage should overtake me, I came up with a bunch of rash arguments and ranting in my head:

WHAT? MAYBE THOSE MEN SHOULD THINK OF ALL THE DATE RAPES ON CAMPUS. THEY CAN'T CHOOSE TO PREVENT. MAYBE THEY SHOULD TALK TO THOSE BOYS FIRST. HUH? HUH? HUHHHH?

Hold up. This is not how I think. After a moment, I realized, "Danielle, you can't be that crass. You can't be like the anarchist Living Theater people you saw last night. You need to be tactful towards yourself." It's very difficult for a woman not to sound like a raging feminist and get a bad rap when she sees things like this.

You see, it is very difficult for a woman to think about abortion, about choice. Its not as simple as choosing life. Its about preventing life. Its about choosing to DEVELOP life when you want to.

Its about freedom. Freedom of expression of both parties. Yes. However, if there is something that I learned in life, its not what you say, its how you say it.

Look boys. Its about FREEDOM. I want the freedom to choose life. I want the freedom to choose life when its ready, and when I'm ready. I want the freedom to prevent it up until that point. I want the freedom to regulate when my eggs will become human beings (they too are potential life, like a zygote). I also want the freedom to stop the development of a zygote into a human being. You care about life obviously, so lets work together to maybe get some of the date rape off campus we see, to ease/end the inequality between the sexes we see at Yale, even today. Lets create a dialogue with less accusation. Please stop incensing most women on this campus with biting and cruel posters that do nothing to promote life, only anger it.

Forty years, women have been at Yale. About 40 years, women have been able to get an abortion or birth control. 40 years. 40 years. 40 years and you want to take my freedom?

Look. I don't want an abortion... ever. But do you understand the circumstances and consequences of what it means to be in that situation? Perhaps, as a male, you really wouldn't. You've been at Yale for hundreds of years. My sex has only been around for forty. We don't have time to loose with an unwanted RAPE.

I don't want to sound emotional, but LIFE is emotional. Choice is serious. Choice is about freedom. Freedom is life.