My Dissident Take on 4th of July: I like it!

Whereas most people I know who espouse similar beliefs to mine hate Independence Day, I think bloody revolutions of yore are exciting celebration fodder. For the same reason I love Bastille Day, I love the 4th of July! Dahlia and I adore fireworks and basically any explosion fathomable. We sit in awe, slackjawed, squealing YAY! and other ridiculousness. But we love that crazy stuff. Jack Kerouac's oft-overquoted sentiment sums it up:

So, it's obvious we love fireworks. And revolutions. But people who disagree offer the following: "well it established the State," "but this fucking country is so Imperialist," and "All this flag-waving patriotism bullshit sucks!"

True, it established the modern incarnation of the State (ish), but not /technically/ until the Articles of Confederation were ratified, in 1781, so there was a window there where there was no formal established federal government (and we didn't explode, anarchy *is* possible) - which is amazing.




Yeah the country's Imperialist, that's a result of having a State. It didn't HAVE to happen, but it did. <sarcasm> There wasn't Twitter back then, guys! </sarcasm> Wait, that’s only half-sarcastic. If we would have had technological infrastructure, we probably could have built a free society. The fact that a community of people who owned private property could still relay information about safety, dangers in products or neighborhoods, education, and other things would have been all the trappings of a capitalist-friendly society, or maybe even a communal one, and the Constitution wouldn’t have been written to “protect” us from the State. My relationship with the Constitution is a strange one, on the one hand I’m glad there’s a vague manual for What the Government Can’t Do (Other Than When We Shit on That) – and on the other hand it gives this illusion of freedom, under which pretense Americans don’t question the nature of the Authority they’re subject to.



Which brings me to my next point, the flag-waving patriotism and nationalism of "God Bless Our Divinely Mandated Country" is ridiculous. Throw away your flags, burn them, do whatever you need to do. In fact, my sentiment is summed up beautifully by none other than Howard Zinn: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/02-11. But there's no accounting for taste, it’s not the bloody revolution’s fault that the majority of mouthy Murican patriots are flag-waving idiots who couldn’t identify political theory if it bit them in their (m)asses. Who support mass murder, imperialism, oppression, violence, and all kinds of nonsense. Patriotism?


The actual act of revolution, how beautiful a concept, to overthrow an established order. ♥
And it’s always fun to blow shit up. Practice your Molotov cocktails. Prepare for another revolution!
You never know when you’ll be faced with freedom. 

Birthing a Radical: Anarchy and Parenting.

Occasionally, I feel the word "different" was invented to describe me. Even within typical outsider circles, I don't feel like I belong. Despite the fact that I've never really fit in neatly anywhere, I never bothered to be bothered by this fact.

Until my daughter was born. Then all the weirdness and unorthodoxy and eccentricity seemed to pile up and crush me under their combined weight.

I've been a vegetarian since I was a teenager. This never caused me any grief, but when it came time to start raising my daughter, I was bombarded with alarmist reactivity regarding the idea that I would DEPRIVE my DARLING DAUGHTER of the infinite meat-eating possibilities of life. Because of me, she would only grow to half-size, her IQ would be so low you couldn't register it on a chart, and she'd immediately vomit upon her first taste of rebelliously-procured meat products (in puberty). And how dare I do that to her? Easily. I sleep well at night knowing I'm such an awful person that I'd opt out of the factory farmed, antibiotic-laden, hormone-infested, carcinogenic junk-trap that is omnivorous food consumption. Not to mention the many animals whose demand for death was not made by my family. I'm pretty cool with that.

I've been an anarchist for most of my life. Now, possible misconceptions of anarchism aside, I've been through a very real schism from the rest of this community. Most anarchists identify as libertarian socialists or anarcho-communists. Ideologically, these kinds of anarchists intentionally separate themselves from anarcho-capitalists, whom they say are not "really" anarchists because they support the power structure dynamics of a hierarchical system. How dare they! Well, guess who thinks currency and jobs and companies and the free market and civil liberties and autonomy are awesome? Me. That makes me an anarcho-capitalist. Even in the subset to which I belong, I still disagree with many of the proponents. For example, I would probably enjoy bitchslapping Ron Paul. I think "can't stand" and Ayn Rand rhyme for valid reasons. Beyond this disagreement, many anarchists hate the fact that I've procreated. As if perpetuating the species with a child that has a higher-than-average chance of being an anarchist, I've somehow betrayed the most integral tenet of anarchism. I believe that parenting my daughter in such a way that teaches her the responsibility of autonomy and self-efficacy will be the thing that defines her life as she makes her way toward adulthood. She's only six now, but it's never too early to start.

Which brings me to my next problem. Er, point. Yeah, my next point. So, I teach my daughter autonomy and making responsible decisions. This means that I enable her to do things that would give most parents of similar-aged kids a heart attack. She uses the stove, cuts with santoku knives, plays barefoot outside if she wants, snacks if she's hungry, and she is a huge player in her own educational decisions. How do I manage these? Easily. I taught her how to use the stove responsibly, and I supervise when she uses it (for now). I taught her how to use a santoku knife (and scissors and lighters) so that she doesn't have to wonder about it, and I don't stress about her being barefoot or eating between meals. She's average height, on the thin side, and is so energetic I constantly joke with strangers that she's "powered by vegetables." I homeschool her, and she weighs in on how her lesson plans go.

Oh, I homeschool her! I must be religious, right?! Nope. All atheist, all the time. Which brings me to another issue: even within the minority homeschool community, I am still a black sheep. Foregoing the Bible in favor of Cosmos is seen as a Hellfire and brimstone transgression to many of the homeschoolers in my country. But, here's the thing... I don't homeschool my daughter to shelter her, I homeschool her to help her learn to think for herself. I don't want her to go through school with a blindly-patriotic, pro-'MURICAN slant. I want her to learn "just the facts, ma'am" and she can come to her own conclusions about them. P.S. If you think this isn't a problem, think of the way you learned about Thanksgiving in elementary school. Was there a table of brotherhood? A nicey-nice sit down meal where they all thanked the same Christian god? Cough. Many of the things we learn as children, we have to re-learn REALISTICALLY when we hit college (or HS if we're lucky).

So, that's a portion of me in a nutshell. And what I've told you isn't even the "worst" of it. But instead of these things making me feel angry or divided from humanity, I use it as an object lesson to teach my daughter all about the beauty, diversity, and infinite wonder of the world. I am allowed to have these differences and they won't be the death of me, as they may be in some other places. I can speak out against perceived injustice and I won't be immediately executed. She can live comfortably as a vegetarian without starving to death. My husband can pursue his medical school studies without being denied entrance due to caste issues. Because of our differences, she can experience an amazing variety of things, in life. The majority of her dinners are borrowed from another culture. I have major wanderlust so we travel across the country fairly regularly. She gets to see how all kinds of people live, and she is always a part of their festivals and events. We watch strange independent films about clowns and fairies, funky documentaries about spirituality, listen to oud and gamelan music, read stories from greco-roman mythology and amazing old classics, she has frequent exposure to all kinds of international art history. She's diversity-sensitive because she grew up with a throng of drag queens, queer artists, transsexual activists, performers, and strange birds. She's always curious, and I'm always willing to teach her more or help her find information. I named her after Salvador Dali and Roald Dahl. Her name is Dahlia. She's going to end up a name in your household someday. She is love.

Seven Even BETTER Ways to Beat Summer Blahs!

http://www.babble.com/babble-voices/at-large-meagan-francis/2013/05/23/3-ways-to-prevent-the-summer-break-blahs/

So, I read the above article, expecting to encounter some wonderful ideas for filling up summer time (for families kids who don't homeschool year-round, as I do). Instead, I was met with three ideas that don't really contribute anything fun to family life. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand that the woman has five children to my ONE, but still... life with a small army can be even more exciting than a solitary kidventure.

That said, here are MY (seven) ways to beat summer blahs:

1. Stalk EVERY museum. Look into a few things to keep costs down: reciprocal memberships (http://astc.org/sciencecenters/find.php & http://www.astc.org/members/passlist.htm), local library museum passes, free days and chunks of time (Thursdays, 6pm - 8pm). Find a very large library in your nearest huge metro area and GO there!

2. Go to festivals! http://www.festivals.com/ - this is particularly helpful if you have a certain ideology or lifestyle - for example, the Gay Pride parade, here in Chicago we have the Veggie Pride parade in May (we're vegetarians), and Veggie Fest in August. Taste of Chicago, Jazz Fest, Peace Fest (if you're cool with the pot smell), and all kinds of fun events are around the area. Pack food, pack light, don't forget sunscreen and a change of clothes!

3. Do some unschooling. Now, if you think unschooling is something that has to be decided in advance, structured into a day, and then the results have to be carefully measured for empirical proof of effectiveness, you're barking up the wrong tree. Take a nature walk, go on a hike, try to identify flowers/herbs/plants, learn a few processes (photosynthesis, color-changing in leaves, life cycles of plants and bugs vis-a-vis soil, etc) - go to a large body of water, find a scavenger hunt for the forest, and if you live in a metropolitan area - go to a "nature preserve." If your kid is allergic to the outdoors, hang out at the library. Infinite resources and goodness! LEARN SOME STUFF. Learning is almost never a waste of time.

4. Buy a cheapie science instrument and use it. Look at the stars in a telescope or use your smartphone to show your kids Google Sky. Get a microscope and collect bugs from windowsills to check out. The usual cheap microscopes have premade slides of bug abdomens, snake scales, and a few other interesting items, so just look for other things to populate empty slides with, like pieces of your sweater fibers, eyelashes, dandruff, dust, salt, sugar, and flower petals.

5. Have a bonfire and tell scary stories. If you don't have a fire pit, there are lots of ways to make one on the cheap: http://pinterest.com/liaf1049/outdoor-firepit-ideas/ - building a fire pit is a great family project. Go on craiglist/freecycle for bricks/stones, that's the cheapest (and maybe even free) route. If you live in an apartment, you can build this one that can be used safely indoors: http://www.theartofdoingstuff.com/how-to-make-a-personal-fire-pit-for-cheap/

6. Have a theme day: board game day, makeup and theatrical costuming day, Netflix documentary marathon day, printed coloring pages from the internet day, cleaning and dance party day, reading aloud from weird poetry books day, going park-hopping day. Do something, any one thing, all day. It'll be varying shades of weird, fun, boring, silly, and enlightening.

7. Browse instructables and make something! I do this quite a bit. Enough to buy the book (which I did). In fact, in browsing instructables for this post, 27 minutes have inexplicably disappeared from my life. Craaaazy. Currently, we're trying our hand at making soaps. Rick learned to make jewelry, I already had been making jewelry, and Dahlia is starting to make little necklaces with beads and string. It's all good! And if you're not too into making things, per se: http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~jimg/reading/bored.html - 474 things to do when you're bored!

I hope in reading this you've come up with some great ideas. Don't make excuses, see things through, and teach your children well. Remember you're the model for their behavior (even more than Miley Cyrus or the Backyardigans). But most importantly, live your life while you still can. One day you won't have more days ahead.