Sherry Chandler

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The Last Moonshiner. Any comments?

Shenandoah turns 60 and turns digital.:

Shenandoah will publish in its usual format in fall 2010. In spring 2011, there will be a limited-edition anthology of poems published in Shenandoah over the last 15 years. And then will come the biggest change of all. “For the foreseeable future,” said Smith, “that will be the last print issue of Shenandoah.”

Starting with the fall 2011 issue, it will be entirely online. A paid subscription will be a thing of the past. “It is perhaps inevitable when we look at what has happened to other literary journals,” said Smith. “Literary magazines per se are going to have to change their way of conceiving themselves and of reaching their audiences. And this is all tied up in the deep inquiry going on in our culture about the future of print. There is time to make that transition and be an innovator.”

The way the journal involves students in its work will be innovative as well. “The interns will not just observe and theorize about the actual editorial decisions, from design to contents to policies,” said Smith, “but they will also participate in the decisions, plus do things like screening submissions and blogging.”

See Death of a lit mag, and thanks to Edward Byrne for the news.

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light

. . .

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

I’m not sure why Texas gets to hold our entire education system hostage but there it is.

On the other hand, the most Draconian version of Utah’s anti-abortion bill did not pass:

DENVER — A sweeping anti-abortion statute in Utah that would have allowed up to life in prison for a woman whose fetus died from her intentional or reckless behavior was withdrawn by its sponsor on Thursday and will be revised to be narrower in scope.

. . .

The sponsor, Representative Carl D. Wimmer, a Republican, said he had removed a key clause that would have allowed prosecution under Utah’s criminal homicide laws for a “reckless act of the woman” that resulted in death to a fetus. Language will remain, he said, that makes a woman’s “intentional” actions, if resulting in the death of her fetus in an illegal abortion, a felony.

The bill was prompted by a case last year in which a 17-year-old who was seven months pregnant sought to induce a miscarriage by paying a man to beat her. She was arrested, but released by a judge who said seeking an abortion was not a crime.

Legal abortions, performed by a doctor, would not be affected by the old bill or its replacement. But Utah has statutes on the books intended to discourage abortions, including a parental consent requirement for minors.

My bleeding heart instincts say that any 17-year-old as desperate as all that should be treated with great compassion and not exploited as a poster-child for turning women into criminals.

Meanwhile, there’s this from Amnesty International. I would somehow feel more sympathetic toward the anti-abortion idealogues if I thought there was any real compassion involved. But I see little evidence of it.

Amnesty International’s report Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA, urges action to tackle a crisis that sees between two and three women die every day during pregnancy and childbirth in the USA.

A total of 1.7 million women a year, one-third of all pregnant women in the country, suffer from pregnancy-related complications.

The report also revealed that severe pregnancy-related complications that nearly cause death — known as “near misses” — are rising at an alarming rate, increasing by 25 percent since 1998.

Minorities, those living in poverty, Native American and immigrant women and those who speak little or no English are particularly affected.

“This country’s extraordinary record of medical advancement makes its haphazard approach to maternal care all the more scandalous and disgraceful,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

, , ,

“Mothers die not because the United States can’t provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good care is available to all women,” said Larry Cox.

Amnesty International’s analysis also shows a health care reform proposal before the US Congress does not address the crisis of maternal health care.

And then there’s this, an antidote to Oscar hype (though I’m pleased about Jeff Bridges):

Advocacy

I have been reading in Fooling With Words, a book of interviews Bill Moyers had with poets at the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival over a decade ago.

This moning I was reading his interview with Marge Piercy. Moyers asked her whether her poems about the “grittiness of life” come from her own experiences, her years of working as a clerk, a switchboard operator, a secretary. Piercy answers:

No more so than growing up in the center of Detroit and losing a good friend to heroin when I was fifteen. No more than being in the movement against the Vietnam War and experiencing the violence of the government’s willingness to use force against people who dissent. No more than packing a woman with ice so she wouldn’t bleed to death because a doctor wouldn’t help her when abortions were illegal.

There is more to this passage, and Piercy ends by affirming life, as she does in her poetry, but reading that last sentence reminded me what life used to be like for women and how the radical right wants it to be again.

I have been very discouraged lately about the state of the world and feeling powerless to do anything about it. So I had vowed to stick to my poetry and stay out of the culture wars. That I didn’t need to say anything about this Focus on the Family Tebow ad that’s scheduled for the Super Bowl and that my signing yet another e-mail petition was just another meaningless powerless gesture.

But reading Piercy convinced me that I need to speak out, even though my soapbox is small. Anyway, today is the birthday of Betty Friedan, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, a good day to speak out in support of a woman’s right to choose.

In case you’ve been living in Lower Slobovia, here’s the deal:

Focus on the Family, that paragon of “righteous” bigotry, has landed a coveted 30-second TV spot during the game that is expected to deliver an anti-abortion message, and the Women’s Media Center, with the support of several reproductive rights organizations, has kicked off a campaign for CBS to ban the ad.

Here’s what we know so far about the ad: It features star college quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, sharing “a personal story centered on the theme of ‘Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,’” according to a Focus on the Family press release. It’s safe to assume the spot will tell the story of how Tebow’s mom fell ill during her pregnancy but refused doctors’ advice that she have an abortion for her own safety. Luckily enough, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and future Heisman Trophy-winner. Tebow only confirmed suspicions that the ad takes this tack when the controversy was raised at a recent press conference: “I’ve always been very convicted of it” — presumably his antiabortion view — “because that’s the reason I’m here, because my mom was a very courageous woman.”

Winning the Heisman Trophy, by the way, doesn’t strike me as a guarantee of moral probity. A man who is an amazing football player is not necessarily the same man I’d pick as a spiritual leader. Seems to me like O.J. Simpson won that prize once upon a time. Star athletes in general have a recent record of behaving badly. And if the ad argues as predicted, it strikes me as the worst kind of rhetorical trickery, emotional and manipulative.

I should also disclose here that I have never watched a Super Bowl and don’t intend to start this year. So the Focus on the Family ad is not targeted at me or folk like me.

This campaign is not about saving babies. It’s about controlling women. If it were about saving babies, these same people would be working hard to see that poor women get good sex education* and good prenatal care and that the babies of poor women get good healthcare and a good education. I don’t see that happening.

As for CBS, now that they’ve broken their self-imposed ban on advocacy ads during the Super Bowl, looks like they’ll have to take them from all sides. Like, for example, this one from Planned Parenthood

Women’s Media Center protest letter is here.

Gloria Allred Threatens CBS For Allowing Tim Tebow Anti-Abortion Super Bowl Ad

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*A new study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that abstinence-only can work with younger adolescents for a short period of time if coupled with intensive sex education.

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Added: From William Saletan via Jeff Hess:

Pam’s story certainly is moving. But as a guide to making abortion decisions, it’s misleading. Doctors are right to worry about continuing pregnancies like hers. Placental abruption has killed thousands of women and fetuses. No doubt some of these women trusted in God and said no to abortion, as she did. But they didn’t end up with Heisman-winning sons. They ended up dead.

Being dead is just the first problem with dying in pregnancy. Another problem is that the fetus you were trying to save dies with you. A third problem is that your existing kids lose their mother. A fourth problem is that if you had aborted the pregnancy, you might have gotten pregnant again and brought a new baby into the world, but now you can’t. And now the Tebows have exposed a fifth problem: You can’t make a TV ad.

On Sunday, we won’t see all the women who chose life and found death. We’ll just see the Tebows, because they’re alive and happy to talk about it. In the business world, this is known as survivor bias:
Failed mutual funds disappear, leaving behind the successful ones, which creates the illusion that mutual funds tend to beat market averages. In the Tebows’ case, the survivor bias is literal. If you’re diagnosed with placental abruption, you have the right to choose life. But don’t be so sure that life is what you’ll get.

A rant

I am so very, very tired of the politics of abortion.

The Right’s determination to exploit this issue so as to gain and hold power has turned the selection of Supreme Court Justices into a travesty — as this week’s hearings amply demonstrated.

And now there’s this, in the Washington Post: Surgeon General Pick’s Stance on Abortion May Clash With Church’s

Regina Benjamin is a sterling choice for the position of Surgeon General. From all I can tell, she has performed Herculean efforts to bring healthcare to the rural poor on the Gulf Coast, a area ill-served enough by the Federal government. Hers is the kind of success story we should all celebrate.

Would this question even arise if Barack Obama had chosen a man to be Surgeon General?

I agree with David Satcher:

“We all have our religions, but when you speak as the surgeon general to the American people, it’s not about your religion,” said David Satcher, a former surgeon general under President Bill Clinton. Satcher taught community health to Benjamin at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. “I don’t see why the surgeon general has to get involved in a discussion about abortion.”

I won’t even start on the degree of domestic terrorism that’s been practiced by the extreme right on this issue, terrorism that has been aided and abetted by certain right-wing polliticians for the sake of votes.

The right to have a safe, legal abortion was a great breakthrough for women in this country, but to me it’s beginning to look more and more like a Pyrrhic victory.

This looks good …

Obama ad slams McCain on abortion rights:

ST. PAUL, Minn. � Barack Obama has launched a broadside against John McCain�s opposition to abortion rights and moved one of the most divisive issues in modern American politics to the airwaves on a large scale for the first time in this presidential campaign.

Obama�s new radio ad, airing widely in at least seven swing states, tells voters McCain �will make abortion illegal.� It�s airing as McCain courts female voters with the addition of the staunchly anti-abortion governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, to his ticket.

Democrats had, until now, sought to appeal to women primarily on economic issues such as health care and workplace discrimination; abortion rights were hardly mentioned at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week.

I found this through Digby, who says:

This is it. The Obama campaign is going on the offensive with a flat out liberal appeal on a culture war issue. No more mushy post partisan nonsense.

I found Digby’s comment through Jane Hamsher, who says:

Say what you will, the angry broads who refused to vote for anyone until they were appeased managed to do what the blogosphere couldn’t — they brought their issues front and center in this campaign, and to the victor go the spoils. Those who signed themselves over early can look forward to being Sistah Souljah’d as the campaign goes forward, but with the female vote in play the Republicans coughed up Palin as a VP candidate and the Obama campaign is now taking a stronger pro-choice stance in swing states than we’ve ever heard a Democratic presidential candidate dare before.

Which gets to my issue—you should get something for your vote.

All this via Avedon, plus the bra of the week.

And by the way, I thought Obama did okay on the O’Reilly Factor, considering that O’Reilly won’t take any answer but the one he gives to his own questions. Video here.