Fucking US Criminal Fucking Administration

[maeve66]

Not that I am leaving the Dems off the hook, but this article from CommonDreams about a particular disservice to International Women's Day just makes me so fucking angry. This link is thanks to rootlesscosmo.

Fuck.

An event with these Iraqi women would have been an absolutely classic, and useful, antiwar event for March 8th, International Women's Day.

By the slightly relevant way -- I saw Nine Parts of Desire with a friend last week and it was nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be. A one-woman show made up of interlocking stories of Iraqi women gathered over ten years. The politics were very muddy; the question of the current war was barely addressed -- just by the character who keeps vigil over a bombsite from the first Gulf War, where her family and more than 200 other civilians died in a bomb shelter/bunker which was hit by an experimental bunker-busting bomb. Parts of the play were affecting and/or interesting, but the acting was pretty weak, which is a severe problem for a one-woman show. A shame.

IWD (not to be confused with WMD) is one of those American holidays celebrated far more internationally, I think, like May Day, aka International Workers' Day. International Women's Day was a major holiday for me in my youth -- peñas, panels, parties, potlucks, political plays, fundraisers. More celebrated on the left than May Day, actually, or at least productive of more competing events. I miss that.

One of my students last week (we were learning days of the week, months, numbers, and thus, birthdays) revealed that her birthday was May 1st, and then surprised me by telling me it was an international holiday for workers, but it always made her angry because her father has to WORK that day! Oh, I love the Mexican diaspora.

Comments

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Nine Parts of Desire was way underwhelming.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Oh, shared criticism. Good. I am not a good critic. I often feel mean if I am underwhelmed. But that was underwhelming. Who was the one-woman band in the production you saw? Was she any better, I wonder?

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

It hasn't come here yet. "Guantanamo: Honor Bound To Defend Freedom" is here, but I have no desire to see it. I KNOW Gitmo is fucked up and wrong. Not sure what else there is to say about it.

Which doesn't mean I don't like documentary theater. I love "The Laramie Project," and if you have never read Emily Mann's "Greensboro: A Requiem," it's well worth hunting down (John Warren, the director of "Boxcar Bertha" and a real aficionado of the form, staged "Greensboro" several years ago and it was great).

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, if it comes to Chicago and you see it.

By the way, speaking of Chicago, it's that time again, to say when I will be in town and try to hang out. I'll be there for a weekend late this month, but it's unlikely I'll have any time because of meetings. But I'll be there for an extended-ish period in mid to late July. I'll supply more specific details as and when available. Maybe, if I can wriggle out of the almost obligatory NC social the Saturday night, we could go to Schuba's for a beer March 25th? I've sucked at scheduling before, so I won't fully commit. God, maybe this is all just too annoying.

Don't you think that mistersmearcase should coincide with us in Chicago sometime?

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Hey no worries -- I totally understand what it's like to be in town when time commitments are at a premium. Just let me know. July should be okay.

And yes, I think mistersmearcase should join us sometime!

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Just come see obolova's play in NYC! That said, it's not completely out of the question I'll go to Chicago this summer.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

She was the author, I guess. It's been almost a year and I can't remember what rubbed me wrong about it. I do remember it felt like shtick or something, a little facile. Hey, I'm nine different women, and we all think Iraq is a complicated, fucked up place!

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Also, ten years to accumulate the material? I don't know. Maybe a written oral history would have been a better medium. It lacks a little focus, for a play.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Apparently, in the Slavic republics of the ex-USSR, IWD has degenerated into a secular Valentine's Day. Better or worse than being ignored?

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Worse. Better to be pure in principle and unregarded, isn't that the Trotskyist way? To which I can sometimes succumb, even now. If they want a Valentines Day, they can import it from Hallmark along with the rest of their new, shabby capitalism -- they don't have to link it to the different date system of Eastern Orthodoxy or whatever. Bah, humbug.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Better to be pure in principle and unregarded, isn't that the Trotskyist way?

No, that's the Oehlerite way.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Ha!