Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.
~ Pete Seeger

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Passing the Torch

Today Hillary Clinton conceded to Barack Obama, and threw her complete support behind his candidacy. (Rock on, Barack!) As I read about it, a curious thing happened. I had this sense of Teddy Kennedy passing a torch – the torch of the Grand Ol' Man (soon Woman?) of the Democratic Party, of one who will stay close to the presidency while stalking the halls of the Senate, who may try many times and will always have great support yet never make it past the primary. I'm not sure how to articulate it. The feeling I had about this was more visual/emotional than logical/verbal.

This feeling, or vision, if you will, does have a certain coherence and rightness about it, though. It is a sense of good, very good, but never great. Of almost touching the stars, but falling short. Of a long, long time making a difference, while never achieving the dream. One of success, marred by a sense of failure that hangs like a cloud of "if only" over a sea of inevitability.

I don't know. I could be wrong. But I have a feeling Hillary's going to be around for a long, long time – in the Senate. Unless she ends up in the VP mansion, mucking out the massive dunghill Cheney's made of the place.

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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
~Helen Keller

Reading List for Information about Transpeople

  • Becoming a Visible Man, by Jamison Green
  • Conundrum, by Jan Morris
  • Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein
  • My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
  • Right Side Out, by Annah Moore
  • She's Not There, by Jennifer Boylan
  • The Riddle of Gender, by Deborah Rudacille
  • Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transgender Emergence, by Arlene Istar Lev
  • Transgender Warriors, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transition and Beyond, by Reid Vanderburgh
  • True Selves, by Mildred Brown
  • What Becomes You, by Aaron Link Raz and Hilda Raz
  • Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His - the Christ's, our
Beloved's.
~Hafiz