Improvisations on Reality

So as of yesterday, I’ve had to deal with Sallie Mae. If I didn’t say that I detest student loans as a whole, it would be a lie by omission.

Situation is this: I opted for a particular repayment plan, and as part of it, my payments dropped into double figures each month. Awesome! I budgeted around this, and laid out a pretty solid budget for the rest of the year. But then, I check Sallie Mae’s website and…surprise! My payment amount has nearly tripled.

What the F.

Yeah. I had to call and politely, but not so very nicely, tell them that either my loan gets to a manageable payment amount, or they won’t be seeing any money, because guess what: I need to eat too. They mumbled their way through various reasoning that basically boiled down to, “too bad, bitch, pay up or else.” I ended up putting it into forbearance for five months, to the tune of $150.

What the F, redux. Since when is there a fee for forbearances? When I put my US Dept. of Education loan into forbearance, they didn’t even think to charge me a fee. They simply looked at my credit, looked at the loans, saw I paid everything on time so far, and said, “next payment due in November, have a nice day.” Nowhere was there a $150 fee. And really, Sallie Mae, telling me that you’ll credit the forbearance fee after 6 months of on-time payments is crap. Don’t charge me in the FIRST PLACE, how about that little chestnut? Or is that too much to ask for?

Rep. Hansen Clarke’s student loan forgiveness bill cannot be signed fast enough. I mean it. Don’t give me the crap how “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” is the only way. The bootstrap factory is outsourced to China, and the industry – yes, industry – of education is facing the same bubble-burst as homeownership. Student loan debt is up 511% over the last decade, and colleges have little choice but to keep increasing their tuition because the Pell and TAP grant budgets are getting slashed every year, and the qualifications are getting tighter and tighter. NONE of this has any sort of control or regulation, and some colleges would actually have you lie on the FAFSA to get more in student loans.

Yes, lie. Because they’re the ones who profit immediately and very well, to boot, but you, the student, are fucked. Because with the exception of junior colleges and barely accredited schools, you are very hard-pressed to find a college with a four-figure annual tuition, and with all the “education is a must for anything in life!” that is hammered down our throats from an early age, what else, aside from getting into heavy debt, can you do to keep yourself in school?

You may say “Trade school!” but you know what, trade schools need tuition paid too. And if there was any emphasis on trade schools right now, we wouldn’t be having the situation that we have now: metric ton of college grads, none of them able to find a job, because the degree that they had killed thousands of dollars on is suddenly not enough, and because the majority of work has already been outsourced.

Lovely, innit? And by this, I mean absolutely fucking terrible.

Seriously. Jobs don’t rain from the sky. The economy is only now feebly showing signs of recovery. There’s still a competition of a minimum of 30 people for an open position. For every one person who gets the job, there’s 29 more who have no idea how they’re going to pay their bills, or pay for that student loan. About half of the college grads have no choice now but to live with their parents because they’re unable to afford loans and pay for an apartment at the same time. It’s simple math: you can only stretch a $1,000 biweekly check so far when you’re in the hole for a high five-figure sum, if you’re lucky to get that per month.

“Get a better job and stop being lazy!”

“You have an education, you can just get another job!”

“Just pay them, it’s not a big deal.”

“Why can’t you afford it? You have a job, right?”

I’ve heard it all, and you know what, none of it answers the main and very pressing question of why the hell had this predicament been allowed in the first place – not just to me but for every college grad laden with debt in this country. Tuition for a small local private university should not have ever gotten near the 20K/year mark and allowed to double within five years since then, as is the case with Pace University, my alma mater. If I ever wanted to return to it for grad school, I can kiss that dream goodbye. At this point in time, Pace is more expensive than NYU will ever be. Pace’s financial aid had started to slash while I was still in school, and I’ve begged for grants to keep tuition to where covering the gap with loans was a plausible option. And considering my debt load and the average debt load of a Pace graduate, I still got away easy, and I’m still in bad straits. Why? Because I can’t support my living expenses, and the expenses of my business, and pay back $60K at the same time. And mind you, that $60K? Still less than what I had started with.

I’m about to start looking for another job, because even though my salary has been steadily climbing, it’s still not enough. I need to find a job that will pay me significantly more than what I’m receiving now. Why? Because I really don’t want to be in debt for the rest of my life. And with the way that the student loan bubble is going right now, that’s what it’s looking like.

And you know what? It should have all been regulated. There should be caps on tuition, even for private universities. There should be caps on student loan percentages. There should definitely be a massive improvement with job placement programs for schools. There should be a massive improvement in high schools, where guidance counselors offer trade school as a viable option for careers. Instead, what do we have? A loan bubble that’s about to burst hard, because there will be a huge number of college grads who will outright default on their student loans. They will do so knowing that their credit will be shot, and they will do it en masse because they want to actually have some semblance of a life that doesn’t involve constantly thinking about debt. And since bankruptcy laws now do not discharge student loan debt, then what? Wage garnishment? It’s a lose-lose situation one way or another.

This is a very, very preventable situation. One way or the next, I have to come up with 60K to pay everything off. Unless I win the lottery, this won’t be happening.

And yes, I’ve done research on bankruptcy. Because believe me, when you’re looking at your finances and no matter how much of a raise you’re getting, you’re not seeing anything actually become different, you begin to consider drastic measures if only out of panic’s sake.

And that’s no way to live.

K.G.

Yes, such exists, and if you hadn’t seen the news lately, then I suggest you take a look. I’ll wait while you pick up your jaw.

Brilliant article: How the GOP went back to the 1950s in one day.

In short, there’s been a “panel” (and I use quotations because I cannot possibly imagine how this could be anything even resembling legitimacy) to try and roll back Pres. Obama’s stipulation on birth control coverage. In other words, yet another battle about What Women May Or May Not Do With Their Own Bodies, decided by anyone but the women themselves. We’ve seen this with the numerous GOP attempts to criminalize abortions and breach HIPPA in regards to abortion data, but this reached a whole new low.

We’re talking about birth control here. That little pill that a woman takes daily to make sure that she would not need an abortion in the first place. Think about it. If you believe that life begins at conception, wouldn’t it make sense to you that in order to make sure an abortion wouldn’t happen, you’d actually prevent conception first? Logically, yes, but we all know that Republicans aren’t the pinnacles of common sense, or any sense whatsoever for that matter.

The “panel” was comprised of all men. ALL MEN. Image link – click it and weep. A Georgetown law student – female – was invited to speak by the Democrats, and she was barred from entry because, apparently, “she wasn’t qualified to speak on the subject”.

Think about that for a second. No, think. Absorb it. Understand that they barred a woman from speaking about the subject that affects her directly, and that they believe that her being female doesn’t qualify her from speaking about a subject that affects her anatomy. And the Democratic women walked out in disgust, and I cannot blame them one bit.

If the entire idea of all this happening doesn’t horrify you, it damn well should. The Republican Party has finally shown their true colors, in all their misogynistic, disgusting, self-absorbed, discriminatory glory. And these are people who some believe are more qualified to lead this country than the President who has introduced this legislature, in a huge part to ensure that his own two daughters would not have to be imprisoned by their own anatomy.

Oh, and in case you want to see that testimony, being kicked out didn’t keep her mouth shut. You go, Sandra Fluke.

It’s not as though it’s a new phenomenon. The GOP has been against the women’s right to do as she pleases with her own body from the beginning. First guising it as “We care about women so they won’t have to be traumatized by an abortion”, they sought to introduce legislation that requires a trans-vaginal ultrasound before an abortion. First of all, an ultrasound is not going to make a woman change her mind about an abortion, and the feeling that a woman has after an abortion is, most commonly, relief. I won’t get started on the trans-vag ultrasound requirement. Then there’s the parental-consent for minors receiving an abortion. Fabulous, and what if the father of that young woman is the father of her fetus? Congratulations, you just bought that teenager, who’s a lot more traumatized by being raped than by needing to abort, a nightmare of abuse to follow, if not her demise. Then there’s the restrictions on access, where centers are getting closed down left and right for lack of funding. Want an example? Missouri has only one Planned Parenthood center that offers abortions for the entire state.

Oh, and again, it’s still under the guise of, “We care about women.”

Sure you do, sure. So why are you infringing on their autonomy again? Right now, I wish WordPress had a sarcasm font and a contempt font.

So then this gem comes out from a Santorum backer. He says, “Hey, back then gals put aspirin between their knees, and it wasn’t that expensive!” (video in the link). I’ll let you absorb that for a second. Joke or not, there are some people who believe this crap. And now here’s a hearty dose of two bits of reality, which you might know already:

1. Aspirin between the knees doesn’t work as birth control. Aspirin is not birth control. Neither is douching with soda, or using plastic/Saran wrap as a condom. Jumping up and down wouldn’t prevent conception and implantation.

2. Knees don’t have to be open for sex, unless you’re of the school of thought that intercourse should only occur through a hole in a sheet. And it won’t surprise me if the GOP is of that precise school of thought.

Oh, it gets better. They care about women, you see? This is why they ask whether or not the conservative women who came to the CPAC wore their skirts too short. Never mind that they’re stripping them of their rights to their own bodies, never mind that they’re devaluing them to the role of chattel for breeding, but they have the utter temerity to shift the focus on their wardrobe.

In the name of all holy, I only wish I were joking. This is what’s really happening in our country.

There are no words in the entirety of the English language to properly express the extent of my horror and disgust at what these…I can’t even call them people…are doing, the message that they’re sending, or the impact that they’re having on this country. There are just no words to properly express how utterly ignorant the GOP is of the climate in this country, or of what women actually want. And in their ignorance, in their hypocrisy (in case anyone forgot, Karen Santorum had an abortion, and it’s thanks to that abortion that she’s alive today), they are wrecking lives of 51% of the country’s population.

Case in point: in the midst of all of this Iowa introduces a draconian anti-abortion bill. Barring absolutely everything, even in case of rape. I don’t think you need me to explain why this is horrendous.

If you’re going to come here and say that a woman can’t blame the baby that is a product of rape, then you’re oblivious and ignorant. She can, and she will, and she often does. The baby isn’t asking to be born. The baby is sure as hell not asking to be a constant reminder of its mother’s single worst experience. But if there is a constant reminder of that single worst experience, it can, will, and does result in resentment. Also, there are plenty of women who resent their children for being alive, and those children are not necessarily products of rape. They didn’t ask to be born either.

Already, some people on the Internet got their britches in a bunch about why should someone’s taxes pay for birth control, and how dare those women not pay through the nose for gyno exams and actually want to not have babies until they’re damn well and ready to? Know what – if my tax money is paying for someone to get it up – because ED medication is considered a vital and necessary medical product, I kid you not, and is covered by most state insurances – then you damn better believe that a woman’s right to not conceive should be covered too. Yes, you read right: a man has the “right” to get it up on the taxpayer’s dime, but a woman can’t remain baby-free at her discretion.

I’m sick of the double standard that dictates women’s right to enjoy sex as they see fit, and I’m also sick of the fact that some white Christian old-timer feels that he has the right to dictate how women govern their sex lives. You don’t see women ordering a prostate exam with a colonoscopy before Viagra is prescribed, do you? No? Well, that should happen. Let’s see how fast the GOP would shut its mouth if that were to be enacted.

I will now proceed to state the obvious. It may be obvious to a lot of people, but you know, not everyone is as astute as we would like them to believe. Ready?

The Republicans don’t give a shit about women, gays, Native Americans, or anyone who is not themselves; that is to say old, white, male, and rich. 

If they did, they wouldn’t be stalwart on a piece of legislation that, until this year, was reauthorized unanimously, even under Bush. Why are they against reauthorization now? Because it’s been slightly amended to protect LGBT, immigrants, and Natives from domestic violence. Yes, they’re refusing to reauthorize a protective legislature because it has become more inclusive.

If they gave a shit about women, they would not have kicked out a woman from a conference summoned to speak on a subject that affects only women.

If they gave a shit about anyone but themselves – and if I may remind you, their healthcare is paid for by the taxpayers, they wouldn’t “vote to repeal ObamaCare once a month”. First of all, you don’t need to vote to repeal it once a month, once suffices. Second, if you actually look at some documents, and maybe a college-level history book, you will see that the idea of health insurance was introduced by Edgar Kaiser and Richard Nixon. Watergate tapes exist to prove it. before that, healthcare was universal, and no one died because they couldn’t afford the doctor.

And most certainly, if the GOP gave a shit about anyone but themselves, they would stay out of what non-straight people can do with one another. See: Rick Santorum says he’d overturn the Supreme Court. Rick Santorum needs to either repeat elementary school, watch the Schoolhouse Rock episode on the government, or take some meds for schizophrenia. Or all of the above, in a padded room at Bellevue.

That’s the other thing: since when does any government party have candidates who have absolutely no concept of how the government works? I shouldn’t have to be more intelligent than my government, and my IQ is up there. Go ahead, call me an elitist. It will give me the right to laugh at you until the end of days.

But it gets better. There’s the Fox commentary about women in the military. The equally draconian bills in Virginia.  The “rights of conscience” amendment in regards to Obama’s mandate on birth control.

All of these things have one very disgusting thing in common: the mentality that women should not be having sex on their terms. That women should not be able to enjoy sex on their terms.

That is the true core to this, and that is the core to this war on women: them having sex, and the enjoyment and aftermath thereof. They hate that they don’t have the monopoly on sex, its aftermath, and its enjoyment, and seek to claim that monopoly by any means necessary.

Because all of this, from the abortion restrictions, to the patronizing aspirin remark, to the absolutely non-sequitur and irrelevant commentary on how short the conservative women wear their skirts, all of this totals up to a government-commissioned shame campaign on women. According to those “people”, women cannot possibly have sex and enjoy it, women should not have sex and enjoy it, women should not have sex without getting pregnant (let’s not forget Rick Santorum’s idea on sex lives), and in the event that they do want to have sex, they should be shamed and shamed relentlessly. Want birth control? Can’t have it, you hussy! Got pregnant? You better have that baby, you sex-having slut, and to hell if you can’t afford a baby or you may die trying, those are just excuses. How dare you wear your skirt so short, even if it covers your knees? That is their mentality. That is what they think. That is what they want for women in this country. Barefoot, pregnant, deferring to men, and not daring to open their mouth to complain, because they should just be grateful they’re not dead, anyway.

Just FYI, about that last? The number one cause of death for pregnant women is homicide. Sometimes, I loathe having a crim-justice degree.

And about the whole “Nowhere in the Constitution is the right to birth control and abortion guaranteed”? Actually READ the damn paper, for one, and then note that the rights to autonomy and privacy have been set both by the Amendments and legal precedent.

Link here.

Summary:

- 4th Amendment prevents unlawful search and seizure of personal property. No property is more personal than one’s own body.

- 9th Amendment is obscure and often unexplored, but it basically states that no one person’s or group’s rights disparage others. Text: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Guess what this means? Your rights stop where other people’s rights begin. In other words, you’re legally prohibited from restricting other people’s rights. This was the basis for the ruling that sealed Roe v. Wade. So that bullshit “conscience” argument doesn’t stand up to legal muster. You can have all the conscience you want, and if your conscience interferes with you not getting your way, tough shit. Legal protection trumps religion any time of day, and separation of church and state, which has been flouted far too many times in recent years, upholds it.

- 14th Amendment guarantees that no individual will be deprived of their life, liberty, and property without due process of law. Again, no property more personal than one’s own body.

Add to that the ruling of Griswold v. Connecticut, which guarantees the right to contraception and is the first mandate for the government to keep its nose out of other people’s sex lives, and you have the totality of circumstances: different bits of legislature combine to create the right to privacy, which is something that people seek to ignore. This same right to privacy was reaffirmed by Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which protects, again, the mandate for the government to stay the fuck out of people’s bedrooms and the right for gay people to do as they please with each other.

So those Republicans are, on top of everything, breaking the law with their rhetoric. If they would actually be bothered to read the Constitution that they’re claiming to protect, their entire platform would collapse in shambles. Then there’s the case law, which is a lot more difficult to prosecute the breach thereof, but it’s still the law of the land, since – and Rick Santorum forgets that – the only body of government that can overturn the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court itself. My opinion of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia notwithstanding – and in my opinion, the IRS should audit the ever-loving hell out of those three – I will be shocked to see the Supreme Court overturn precedent. It is rare enough as it is for the Court to reverse precedent. Also, consider that the three women on the Supreme Court – Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg – will not stand for women’s rights being infringed upon like this.

Oh, and just as a food for thought. Considering that childbirth is multiple times over more traumatic than an abortion, carries a higher risk of death than a safe, medical abortion, wreaks havoc on a woman’s body, and is a hell of a lot more physically violent than an abortion, forcing women to undergo that against their own will construes a violation of Amendment #8: cruel and unusual punishment.

So go ahead. Try and tell me that my right to an unoccupied uterus is somehow less important than the right of some fool to get Medicaid-sponsored Viagra, when my right to an unoccupied uterus has been long protected by a legislation over 225 years of age. Try it. See what happens.

K.G.

Article in the NY Times: The Republicans retreated on a domestic violence prevention bill, without one of them voting in favor of it. 

Now, DV is a topic that I spent a LOT of time studying. Not just because I was a criminal justice major, but because I’ve seen what effects of domestic abuse – a much clearer technical term, because emotional abuse is so very often overlooked – can do to people.

And this is the Violence Against Women Act we’re talking about. It’s the piece of legislation that the states had each based their individual statutes against DV on. If this isn’t re-authorized, then abuse victims around the country are screwed.

So of course, this cheesed me off a good bit. Not one Republican voted in favor. I’m not surprised, don’t get me wrong. For a party that would rather have a woman carry her rapist’s baby to term and “be grateful” for it than have a clean, safe, legal abortion via a pill at 6 weeks along, this sort of a thing is completely par for the course. I’m just astounded that not one of these people has a shred of thought about what those victims go through. That or they’re so hung up on the anti-Obama recalcitration that they completely disregard that all past re-authorizations were unanimous.

So why this change? What is so different now that the Republican Party doesn’t think that victims of DV need protection?

Warning: although I know that DV isn’t limited to hetero relationships, I will use the framework of hetero relationships to explain the dynamics and jurisprudence of domestic violence in the US legal system. In part, I’m doing so because there are very prevalent common threads in all DV situations and it is easier to illustrate with that sort of framework, and in another part because a solid 85% of all intimate partner violence victims are women (Domestic Violence Resource Center).

Double warning for triggers. Putting this behind a Read More link out of consideration for my readers.

Read more…

It took me a while to gather all the information, and actually get a picture of what happened. I’ve signed the petitions, yes, because Planned Parenthood had faced enough assault in the past four years alone. But when I found out a couple of things, I got irate.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, and it’s something that I refuse to repeat, so listen carefully: women are people. This implies that they have autonomy. This also implies that if they have a specific bouquet of conditions that they can fall victim to, they should have access to rectify these conditions in a manner that they can afford.

Let’s take abortion off the table here; that’s not the point of this discussion. The right of a woman to decide what, if anything, should occupy her body is another strongly-worded post for another time. But Planned Parenthood plays a lot into the equation of women’s access to care. Note, I’m using the word care. As in healthcare. As in, that thing you do if you have autonomy and the right to make decisions about your health as you see fit.

Apart from contraception and various services centered on reproductive health, Planned Parenthood’s hallmark is…cancer screenings at little to no cost. To state the obvious, most people right now, especially if they are poor, struggling to make ends meet, or otherwise stone-cold-broke, cannot afford a doctor’s fee. The one time I got caught without health insurance, I had to pay $250 for a check-up. And a blood test costs $1200. First-hand experience. But had I gone to Planned Parenthood for a routine thyroid screening, they would have done it at a fraction of the cost. In retrospect, I should’ve done exactly that.

But I’m in NYC. If, say, a person lives in a rural area, and something feels Very Not Right, and that person is very nicely told by the regular doctor and the hospital that if you can’t afford the fee, get the hell out the front door and don’t let it hit you in the behind on your way out, then Planned Parenthood becomes that person’s only recourse to get a doctor to have a look at no cost. If all you can shell out is $50, because the other $200 is for food, rent, and gas in the car, then Planned Parenthood will take your $50 and say, “The doctor will be in shortly, please put on the paper gown.”

And that goes a very, very long way. Because, again, most people whose income is below a certain threshold really cannot afford health insurance or proper care. Planned Parenthood becomes, literally, a life-saver.

Of course, most people focus on the repro-health spectrum of services, get their britches in a bunch over the fact that abortion is an offered service at some centers (key word is some), and automatically think that the entire organization is evil and must be shut down – never mind the other, life-saving, preventative services that are offered by the organization, and never mind that all the procedures that take place there, whether an abortion or a blood test, are done so by the patient’s own choice.

But I digress.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that Komen has GOP ties: CEO and ex-husband of said CEO both gave donations.

Imagine my further surprise when I read the news articles carefully and saw that they will keep funding on existing grants. And if they caved on PP funding without renewing it, then PP is screwed next year.

Way to go, Komen foundation. Way to fucking go. You have completely shot your credibility in the foot, never mind infuriated half of this country’s population. You’re effectively playing political football with women’s lives, and the women in this equation are not keen on having their – sometimes only – access to healthcare be cut off just because someone in a board meeting decided that politics are more important than access to care. Planned Parenthood has been chipped at and decimated systematically over the past twelve years; the recent four are only obvious because they’re public, and because the GOP has absolutely no qualms baring their agenda to the public. This is not acceptable, and this is not even remotely appropriate behavior for a nonprofit that, supposedly, focuses on women’s healthcare.

I wonder, did those CEOs of Komen ever go to a Revlon walk? The first people in line to walk for Revlon are usually cancer survivors. How many of them had gotten an early diagnosis from Planned Parenthood? How many of their lives did Planned Parenthood save?

I’ve never donated to Komen, but I’m a supporter of Planned Parenthood, and whenever I have a little extra to give to them, I always do. After the near-fiasco where the federal funding was on the line, I can’t emphasize how important it is for this country to support this organization. Unless, of course, the GOP actually wants an epidemic of cancer deaths because it wasn’t discovered in time. They obviously don’t mind involving a nonprofit in political football.

I have insurance right now, and a great doctor, but as it is, I’m counting myself lucky, and twice lucky that I have yet to hear a cancer diagnosis. That aside, I never forgot having to pay through the nose for a blood test and an appointment. I hope to not find myself there again, which is why I pay it forward so that someone else wouldn’t have to do that, either. The last thing a woman should know is what it’s like to know that she’s dying because she couldn’t afford to get a doctor to take a look at her.

Oh. And if you’re planning on telling me that Planned Parenthood gets enough in private donations to survive – give me a break. How many PP centers had closed down in the past twelve years? How many are so painfully understaffed that they have a waiting list for appointments for pretty much any service?  This is an organization under assault, every day, and most of it right now is because of politics and people who don’t understand the concept of women being people too.

Donate to Planned Parenthood directly. It’ll be used for good, trust me.

K.G.

Is not what it appears.

Once again, I have to touch back onto Gayle’s piece on this. And as it turns out, there had been a good bit of brouhaha from self-published authors about this.

And I think this will be the first time I have a quibble with the people of Writers Beware, who ask “Why the hate?” and point out that the distinction between self-publication and vanity press is so blurred that there is little difference, at the core of it.

I disagree.

The “minimum fee” from Book Country is $99 up front just for the e-book and they take 30% off the royalty. While that, in and of itself, is normal (Amazon takes the same cut off their e-sales), bear in mind that this is on top of the up front fee, and is on top of the royalties made from non-Book Country sales.

Let’s get started.

What does Book Country offer?

Check out the laundry list at this link. And those, by the by, are up front fees for the services. They give you the kit and the template, and after this point, the author is on his/her own.

What are the distribution options? All e-readers are covered, yes. The print copies, however, are curious: they’re offered, but I don’t see distribution channels apart from Amazon. Do they offer bookstores as a channel, because Book Country is Penguin-owned? I don’t see it. Do they list through B&N? I can’t tell you, although I think that the wide-distribution option includes it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a vanity press, and contrary to the Writers Beware post (and this is by no means a dig against Writers Beware; it’s a blog with excellent resources that safeguard authors; if there’s something amiss, they know about it), it is not comparable to self-publication.

Just from experience, let me contrast the experience I’ve had with self-publication.

What most people don’t know is that I’ve considered iUniverse as a publishing option before I had decided to go with CreateSpace. The last thing that I would deny is that this too is a vanity press, but again, this was in early 2007, when I was only beginning to do the research on what publishing is like. But look at the services that are bundled in. Individually, you can get a hit-or-miss price on any of these services, and few publishers out there offer one-on-one support. iUniverse actually develops your knowledge about the industry, works out book signings, and basically takes over the legwork for you, including (for the advanced package) social media. The huge drawback of all of this is an absence of e-publication; otherwise, this would be the sort of a vanity press that people would consider. That and, of course, the costs are astronomical.

I ended up going with CreateSpace, which is an Amazon-owned company. This is not a vanity press, but this is a print-on-demand press. What does this mean? It basically means that your book is printed only when it’s bought; there are no copies sitting around in a warehouse anywhere. The thing about CreateSpace is that, for the most part, it is no cost.

“But wait!” you may say. “You need to buy proofs!”

Or you can publish without the proof, which cuts out the proofing cost altogether.

CreateSpace offers services at an additional charge, but the most important thing about that is that they are not required. You can get a professional editorial review, but if you have your own reviewer, you don’t have to get it. You can go Pro plan for expanded distribution channels, but Amazon is included by default, and if you don’t want to go Pro plan, you don’t have to. The proofing process (which I recommend, personally) is clear-cut; you’re given clear guidelines, and a cover creator, and templates if you want to do it on your own. They routinely offer free proof codes, which are a fantastic resource, and because a hard copy print is a wonderful thing for a new author to have. But, again, you can skip it. Total cost, if you’re a DIY self-pub author going through CreateSpace is…zero.

Ain’t that something.

Here’s something else: e-publication is free as well. If you go through Kindle, which is right now the industry leader, then it’s free. PubIt.com is the e-publisher for Nook. Smashwords is a distributor for e-books that makes them available to the Everything Else crowd: Kobo, Sony, Apple as well as formats friendly to the Kindle and Nook.

I respect that not all authors are do-it-yourselfers. I understand that. However, when something bills itself as self-publication that isn’t, by all definition, that’s when I get my hackles up. A common term for this is bait and switch. Moreover, it’s the simple fact that the company offering this, Penguin Publishing, has a vested interest in this sort of activity. Consider this: self-publication started up as a way for the author to cut out the middleman of agent and publishing house and do the legwork on their own. This is a publishing house basically inserting itself into the process to make the money off the author as opposed to the reader, and the tradeoff is not worthwhile. Nowhere on the site and in the publishing guidelines did I see Book Country saying that they will basically take your things and work them out for you, with the sole exception being the highest-end option, worth $549. You’re still doing the legwork on your own for the other options, for the most part. That‘s the problem here, and that’s what makes it clearly a vanity press as opposed to a legitimate self-pub.

And, not for nothing, but I offer document formatting and cover design services as part of KG Creative Enterprises. For $550, I’d not only do both of those but do a read-through of the book and toss up a formal review on the blog and give a signed one for the author to use as part of their press release. Heck, I’d help with the press release. And as part of my business, I make sure, egregiously, that it’s done the way my client likes it.

Back to topic, though. Again, what got me about the whole vanity-press-masking-as-self-publisher bit is that Penguin was banking on – and rightly, as it turned out – on writers not knowing the difference between the two. A little bit of research would tell you everything you need to know. The old law of money flows to the author had never been rescinded in the world of publishing, in any medium.

Now, kindly also explain to me why Book Country is taking an additional 30% off the royalty made through Amazon, and other distribution channels. Amazon already takes its cut. So Book Country takes 30% on top of that? What the hell, since when? And what, precisely, is that for, since the bulk of Book Country’s services are still self-formatted and uploaded, on top of the exorbitant fees?

Nice.

There is one interesting, kind of vaguely positive thing about it:  one of the biggest players in traditional publishing had acknowledged, publicly, that self-publication is a viable avenue for aspiring authors. It’s something that self-published authors had known for a while. However, the truly disgusting bit about it is that it’s a show of contempt for the self-published author trying to make it. Penguin hadn’t kept up with its audience, and once it became clear that self-pubs have something going, Penguin moved to try and make money off the authors as opposed to the readers. Last time I checked, that’s not the way it works.

Truth is, self-publication is as lucrative as its marketing. To repeat a known truth: publishing houses have a marketing team on hand. A self-pub author is on his/her own, plus anyone he or she may hire. And now that self-publishing is gathering steam and becoming both a lucrative and a working proposition for prospective authors, the traditional publishing houses are looking for a new way to get revenue that they are otherwise losing to those who are making a lucrative cut off Amazon.

Also, the whole changing prices only once every 60 days on Amazon? No offense, but that’s bull. Amazon only takes 3-4 days to publish the new price. What’s with the 60-day holdup? I can think of no good excuse to delay a royalty that long, excepting perhaps that it didn’t meet the minimum threshold for repayment.

Again I say: vanity press. It is deeply different from self-publication. Self-publication is either free or at no cost, and the author has full control over royalty distributions. And, if marketed tirelessly, it can and will be a profitable endeavor. Penguin is effectively making money on the possibility that a writer wouldn’t research the market and methodic of self-publication before going for it. And the truth is, some writers want to see their name in print so much that they don’t research the market. And that’s where the trouble begins.

Aspiring authors reading this blog: steer clear of Book Country. It is NOT what it appears to be. Do your market research and ask other self-pubs about other options.

K.G.

ETA:

Post by David Gaughran on this topic

Post by best-selling self-published author J.A. Konrath on the same.

Brilliant writing on both; check them out.

This is another post that’s not quite easy to write. I have to bring a taboo topic into the picture, and discuss it.

Depression.

You may wonder why it’s taboo to discuss, and the reason for that is thus: it’s still not viewed as an actual condition. Addiction had come a long way to be viewed as an illness, but depression has a way to go before it’s recognized socially as what it is. Far too many people have a pervasive view that it’s something that people can “just get over”, or “snap out of”. It’s never that simple. Depression does not work that way.

Depression isn’t just a day of the blues or a bad week. It’s a condition. Chemical imbalance, if you want to call it, but it is a condition nonetheless.

There are words to describe its effect, of course. It’s a constant, pervasive state of this isn’t worth it. It’s a frame of mind of nothing works for me, and it’s useless to even think of it. It’s a way of thinking of why even bother getting up? It’s not just the loss of interest; it’s when the interest has been lost for so long that you can’t remember what it feels like. It’s not just the sadness; it’s a sadness that is always there. It’s a lack of motivation for things as basic as getting up in the morning. And, regardless of whether or not that depression is sourced by bad memories, a pre-conditioned state of mind, prior abuse, or genetics, the worst thing about it is the knowledge that it’s there, and that it’s stopping you from functioning. And it goes on for months, or years at a time.

Can you imagine a stretch of years where you’re just not capable of functioning because of simply how you wake up feeling every day?

I’m pretty sure you can’t. And know this: millions of people live like that, every day. You’d never know it, because of the herculean effort that it costs them to get up, get dressed, go to work, pretend to be happy – you simply do not know what is going on inside their heads. And I will tell you point blank: depressed people are really great actors. They get good at it real fast. Even close friends. They’ll look happy, seem happy. And you would still never even guess.

If you never experienced depression – I don’t mean a day, or a week of the blues, I mean lasting, pervasive depression that lasts months or years at a stretch – then I really, really hope you never do. It’s the kind of a condition that ages you, whether you want to or not, and it warps your perception of life permanently, even if you recover or receive treatment. You just don’t forget what it feels like once you experience it.

There are many stigmas associated with depression, and one of the worst ones is that it’s considered to be a sign of weakness. Society has finally recognized addiction as an illness, and began treating it as such. Depression is an illness too, and definitely not an easy one. Considering that the key biochemical factors in depression are the absorption of dopamine and serotonin, it is a physiological condition as well as a psychological one. And a shrink isn’t always the answer. Psychologists can only get so far to the root of the problem, and all a psychologist does, just FYI, is listen and analyze. And it does help, if and only if the depression has a cause. But sometimes, there is no answer as to what is causing the depression. Sometimes, it’s just there. And contrary to whatever anyone would say, it’s not something that you just “snap out” of. That condition has a vise grip on a mind that not even Jaws of Life can rival.

Depression stops people in their tracks. You may have seen the Cymbalta commercials, where someone is just sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the television. Or just around the house, not really focusing on anything or anyone.  Or isolating themselves, even with family in the room. While I’m not particularly a fan of the last portrayal, considering that I’m among the people who love their personal space and will pay a pretty penny to have it, but if you are starting to notice a shift in someone’s behavior that’s completely not jiving with what you know their personality to be, then that might be an indicator that something isn’t right. The reason I say might is because people are vastly different. What’s one person’s sign of depression is someone else’s personality quirk. And the last thing you ever want to do is make assumptions.

That’s the other thing: assumptions. Don’t make them. Just do not. Not where depression is concerned. You aren’t in that person’s head, and even if you’ve been through the same ordeal that they’re having right now, it is not your place to assume anything about their feelings, or intervene. There is nothing more offensive and counterproductive to a person who either has a past history of depression or is struggling with it than to hear someone they think of as a friend offering them solutions. That is not what the person wants to hear, that is not what will work. No matter how much you care and want to help, the best help you can give is listening.

Even if what the person will say doesn’t jive with what you think or feel, you’re there to listen. Listen and listen in confidence. What the person is feeling is real, and even if you may disagree with it, that person needs to be heard and have someone outside acknowledge those feelings as real. That thing you’re doing by listening is validating, and that alone goes a long way.

And now I will say something that, to some people, may come as obvious: a person with depression is likely one of the strongest ones that you will ever know. Because fighting depression takes strength of character like you wouldn’t believe, and few fights are more grueling than the fight to regain control of one’s own mind and mindset.

This is why I take pleasure in doing things like reading a book on the train to work, writing, getting a late cup of coffee for the train home, the reading in the park, walks through Queens, and little tiny other things that make me happy. I know what this condition entails, from both sides. And this is also why I take extra care to watch over my friends.

Listen to the people around you, and I mean listen. I don’t mean speak. I mean listen, without responding, just listen. Validate someone’s emotions by actually listening and accepting them as real. You may not like them, you may not agree with them, but to that person who is spilling their guts to you, their feelings are real. Listen. You never know what you will learn, both about the other people and about yourself as well. And even though you may not know this, but just being there to listen may help someone feel their way to that door out of the quagmire.

Always,

K.G.

The man behind the latest, most sophisticated gadgets, and the whole Apple Computers empire, passed away yesterday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Wow. I don’t even know where to start on Steve Jobs. The man was a technical legend. Where the name Bill Gates will be inseparable from the image of Windows, Steve Jobs’s name is impossible to separate from the symbol of an apple with a bite out of its side, and all the products that said symbol graces. The Macintosh machinery that ranges from the boxy iMac of the olden days to the now-sleek Macbook Pro, the Dock user menu, the first iPod with the click-wheel and monochrome backlit screen…the list goes on. He truly had the Midas touch: whatever he turned out was golden.

Think about it. He came out with a concept, some time ago, about paying per mp3 download. This was after the brouhaha with the Napster lawsuit, and right about in the middle of the RIAA piracy lawsuits (you may want to correct me on time, cannot be certain). And people laughed at it. What did Steve Jobs do? Shrugged and did it anyway.

You may know this concept as iTunes. And it has revolutionized the music world as we know it.

The list goes on. Touch-screen tech, adapted to a miniature  - iPhone, iPod touch. And, of course, who can forget the iPad? Still fairly recent, but it definitely redefines how you see mobile devices. And the Mac OS had continued to improve through time, into what is (arguably) one of the most user-friendly interfaces you can think of.

Mac OS… Damn. What a way this has come. I remember, when I was still in high school, I once worked on the Macs in the media arts room. They were old as dirt. They crashed about twice on a day. Buggy, boxy, old machines, which I grew to loathe…for a while, anyway, until I caved and got a Powerbook for my design. And I thought at the time, eh, it won’t hold a candle to my Dell in Photoshop. And wouldn’t you know it… It outstripped my Dell in that aspect. Same specs, different ball game altogether.

And to think: people thought Jobs was nuts. They scoff at his ideas and say, “He’s crazy. It’ll never work!” And it more than worked; it continued to turn the tech field into something incredible.

Steve Jobs was the round peg in a square hole, the odd guy out, and over the past twenty years, he changed the world. He didn’t give a whit and a half for anyone’s opinion of him, not did he care for naysayers. He went out into the world and said, “This is what I can do, take it or leave it!” And the world took his innovations with open arms.

He said many inspiring things, and the one that stands out to me the most is, “Because people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are ones who do.”

He changed it for all of us. And there are footsteps to follow for the next crazy kid with a great idea who needs little more than a chance.

…and it feels so strange to say “Steve Jobs was” as opposed to “Steve Jobs is“. It’s still a disconnect.

Gone, but never forgotten.

K.G.

minor edit: Jobs had passed from pancreatic cancer, not liver. Thanks to Hannah for referring me to new source. Apologies.

In Memoriam: Troy Davis.

This is definitely not an easy post to write. Considering the current climate in politics, and the disturbing trend of these politics where life and death are concerned (a trend that can only be described as an experiment in eliminating basic human compassion and common sense), this is something that may likely be controversial, but things being what they are, it needs to be said.

Back story is thusly: Troy Davis was on Death Row for killing Officer MacPhail in an altercation. The problem? He didn’t own a gun at the time. The other problem? Evidence against him was primarily eyewitness, which (as a rule of thumb in the crim-j world) is ranked as least reliable. Another problem yet? The victim was a policeman.

Now, you don’t need to be a police officer, or someone working within the system, or a crim-justice grad, to know that the police always protect their own. Though they’re obligated to protect and serve the public, when it comes to their own, gloves come off. Because of their position as protectors, this can and does give root to abuses of power. The police departments across this country, from NYPD to the small-town deputy squad, each and every one, have one thing in common: they will always guard their own. 

Same thing goes for closing a case. There is enormous pressure on the district attorneys as well as the police departments to close the case. Keywords: close the case. It’s not about whether or not the case is closed properly, that is to say, the evidence is checked and rechecked to make sure that an innocent person doesn’t get imprisoned for something they had not done. It’s about closing the case. Because it’s all about the statistics, and it doesn’t look good if there’s too many open or cold cases on record. So there is pressure to close a case very fast.

And quite usually, it’s at the cost of someone innocent.

This is not a presumption, it’s fact. Project Innocence is an organization that survives by re-examining cold and closed cases, for which men and women sit on Death Row in various states across the country, where there’s even a smidget of possibility that the person whose life effectively came to a standstill behind bars, had never been guilty to begin with. It had saved lives, and exposed a quagmire of shoddy policework and even shoddier prosecution that had led to those incarcerations.

Project Innocence had been overloaded with cases almost since inception. Why? Because of the abundance of wrongful convictions that had accumulated over the years.

Troy Davis’s guilt had been under question for years. There was enough of a hoopla stirred up about it both by high-powered supporters and the Georgia legal circuit that, if only for the sake of benefit of the doubt, the appellate court should’ve granted the motion to review. I’m confident that there were plenty filed since 1989.

He didn’t get a review. However, a Texas man, a white supremacist who had killed and got convicted for it, had plenty of time for appeals.

So, okay. Let me get this straight. A black man whose conviction was under fire from the beginning doesn’t get so much as a case revision, but a white supremacist in Texas, whose guilt was never actually denied, was able to appeal because of a technicality? While Troy Davis’s witnesses had all recanted, citing police duress? Without there being any credible DNA evidence? And yes, it’s possible to have DNA evidence surface on a case this old; case reviews involve retesting the evidence with modern technology. Which, of course, was not done. In fact, it got denied.

I know I’m not the only one who sees a huge, glaring problem with this picture.

I think it’s time I shine a spotlight on some very ugly aspects of the justice system. It may seem like I’m deviating from topic, but bear with me here.

1. Justice isn’t blind. In fact, it’s not colorblind either.

How many times have the rich and powerful gotten away with their crimes because of their wealth? How many times would the defense rather blame the victim than face the fact that their client is guilty? More than enough. And, most crucially, how many times are two individuals who commit the same crime get convicted differently because of their skin color?

Yes, I’m going there. It has to be said: not only is justice not blind, but it’s not colorblind either. Nearly 80% of prisoners incarcerated today are non-white. Black, Hispanic, Filipino, and Asian prisoners are the majority. I really don’t want to hear it about evidence; somehow, evidence always finds a few snags in getting to where it needs to be, depending on who’s in the defendant’s seat. For all the lip service that the legal body will do, statistics and conviction/recidivism trends speak much louder than PR.

That and the convictions for the crimes are disproportional, which I’ll get to in a bit.

2. Private ownership of prisons.

Most people may not have been aware of this, but quite a bit of correctional facilities are privately owned. Think about it: someone develops land into a correction center, and a body of government (state, city, federal) contracts its use. This means, effectively, that whoever had ownership of that plot of land is now generating income – tax dollar income, mind you – per prisoner housed there. Per prisoner. Because the food supply, security, etc. is budgeted on a per-capita basis, and because US prisons are notoriously crowded and overcrowded, this nearly invariably means that there is more money coming in to house the inmates. Whether or not there’s room for them is another story.

In other words, and in very short: someone benefits from full prisons. Hint: not the inmates, and not the society at large. So all the men and women, regardless of race, who end up in prison are indirectly lining someone’s pockets with government-contract money, at risk to their lives.

Look, there’s no illusion about this: the inside is a brutal environment, private or otherwise. Prisoner abuse happens. A lot. And whatever your opinions on someone receiving prison justice for their crimes is, if the guards answer to an individual, rather than to a jury, what recourse would the inmate have if he or she was being abused by the guards?

Only recently have some states actually gone against the private prison as a concept. But it solves nothing for the overcrowding.

That, and the jail sentences are utterly disproportionate. Which brings me to…

3. The punishments do not fit the crimes, and hadn’t for years.

Want an example? Two words: Rockefeller Laws.

Really, 5-15 years for smoking a joint? And mind you, I’m only talking about marijuana, the common effects of which are relaxation and the munchies. Still, up to 15 years for a joint and mandatory double-digits for possession?

I have to ask if the individuals who comprise the government on the state and federal levels have passed junior-high-school history when it focused on the Prohibition. Let’s reiterate the lesson that the US Government learned from 1929 through 1931: prohibiting an illicit substance does not work. Legislating morality and behavior does not work. It increases crime, and claims lives as a side dish.  I don’t know offhand how much money had been poured into the Prohibition, but I’m sure that whatever got poured into the War on Drugs over the past 40 years would make the Prohibition spending look like a trip to the grocery store on sale day.

As a result, what do we have? A booming prison population that, honestly, could be pared down big time on case review, and more still on actually asking oneself if the punishment really fits the crime.  5-15 years for a joint? No. Just no. If a teenager is experimenting with pot, what is he/she doing? Being a teenager. I cannot think that an 18-year-old should be tried and thrown into the slammer for however many years simply because he or she wanted to smoke a joint in college. It’s inhumane. The teenager does eventually grow out of the experimenting stage, but if you throw them into jail, then they are mixed in with, are influenced and often abused by hardened criminals. Which wrecks them for life.

4. It’s no longer about justice. 

Keeping the prior statements about the corrections system in mind, let’s touch back onto the Troy Davis case.

When it comes to murder, the victims cannot speak for themselves, so – theoretically – the justice system is supposed to speak for them. It is not doing a good job, obviously. The family of  Officer Mark MacPhail who was killed on that night in 1989 wanted only what every family would want when they lose one of their own to murder: closure. Note, I don’t use the term justice – I specifically chose closure. The family wants to see punishment for the crime that took one of their blood,  grieve, close that chapter of their lives, and move on.

Now pay attention to something about the above sentence: I never said who would receive the punishment.

And that’s the problem right there. The person who should be punished is the person who had perpetrated the crime. These words are important, because especially in the case of Troy Davis, this was not about the person who had perpetuated the crime, but about closing the case quickly. You have witnesses recanting confessions citing police coercion. You don’t have the gun DNA-tested; epithelials do survive in an airtight evidence bag. Troy Davis had, until the end, maintained that he had not owned a gun.

So, can someone please explain to me how a man who doesn’t own a gun get convicted and consequently executed for shooting a cop?

You know, I have no idea. But I do know this: Troy Davis paid the ultimate price just so someone else could have closure. He was the price for the MacPhail family’s pain. And that price is hollow, because frankly, the guilty verdict was in question.

And that’s just it. This is the “justice” system of today: people only want someone to pay for their pain, but no regard as to whether or not that person actually had caused said pain. I’m all for retribution, I’m all for justice, but that’s just it: justice. What happened was not justice. What happened was a finger-point gone too far. Justice – real justice - punishes the criminal, not the fall guy.

Perhaps Troy Davis was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he got arrested. Perhaps he resembled the actual perp. We will likely never know the answer, but we do know this: people have found out about the crime and said “HE did it!”

And that’s when it all starts. It wouldn’t matter whether or not the evidence hadn’t been processed, especially back in 1989, because enough people have said those three little words. The balance of justice will begin to shift against whoever is in the hot seat of the interrogation room, with the first finger that goes flying, points at someone, and claims, “HE did it!” Never mind that the evidence might be lacking, poorly interpreted, poorly presented, or not analyzed because the science just wasn’t around yet. “HE did it!” is the yell and the battle cry. So the police will go after that person, and pressure them into “confessing” to the crime. Yes, I’m using quotations, because police interrogation techniques still (if only in my opinion) leave plenty to be desired. Over time, there had been plenty of coerced confessions. And railroaded witnesses who get a “helpful hint” from the prosecution? Please.

No, it’s not a bad Law & Order episode. This does happen. And, if I may add, frequently.

I will wax political here for a moment. It has a certain relevance, so bear with me here.

The highlights of the recent news in the world of US politics include the fact that Rick Perry, governor of Texas, is proud of the fact that he had presided over more than 200 executions, which also included more than one innocent man. He had rolled back environmental protection funding, and as a result, when Texas got ravaged by fires, there weren’t enough resources to go around. When he claimed that Texas has the best healthcare in the country, it turned out that the opposite is true. But, and this had given me the creeps, when someone asked him about the execution of an innocent man, not only did he not shy away from it, but his audience cheered.

The Republican rhetoric had already been proven time and again to be a showcase of violence, and we have always known that innocent people would end up dying as a result of that rhetoric. But to have people cheer the fact that innocent people are put to death? To have someone be on stage and be proud to have done that? To have the audience see nothing wrong with the execution of an innocent man?

How is that any different from killing someone in the middle of the street? Because I, quite personally, don’t see the difference between refusing to review a case where the person can be exonerated and putting a gun to someone’s head in broad daylight.

Thing is, executing the innocent was all the rage in the 50s. It was called lynching.

The conservatives in the political world so far have shown it very clearly: they all want to revive the glory days of the 50s, when things were simple, the white Christian male was king of house and home, the women made babies and apple pie, and where unpleasant complexities like post-WWII PTSD, abuse, unemployment, poverty, and economic trouble just didn’t exist in their perfect world. And they forget that in the 50s, people were lynched for no more than their skin tones, rape or abuse within the family home was an unprosecutable crime because the victims were cowed and bullied into silence since “no one would believe you anyway” and a woman can’t deny a man his rights, women died in back-alley abortions because no doctor would perform them in a safe environment, and non-white men and women struggled to even get accepted into colleges because of segregation and rampant racism, and lived in terror of the Klan knocking on their door. But so pretty is the picture of white Christian suburbia of the 50s that people are willing to forget that the 50s were an era of tacitly tolerated violence, and there were some forms of murder that were not only tolerated, but encouraged.

That is what’s becoming recreated in the modern platform. Except right now, the encouraged form of murder is to deny a stay of execution for evidence review because hey, they caught him, right? And he killed a cop, so he had it coming, right?

The unfortunate part to all of this is, the criminal justice system has been heavily influenced by this shift in mentality and politics at nearly every turn, from the victim-blaming and “look the other way” cops, to the appellate courts that would deny a motion to save face in election season. It’s all about the pretty picture. It’s all about conviction rates. Closed cases. Prosecution doing their job to put those bad, bad people behind bars. Never mind that somewhere in all of this, the right to a fair trial is falling by the wayside due to the fact that the political party wants to use good, supportable statistics  in their campaign. And it’s usually at the cost of someone who’s wasting away in a 50-square-foot cell for a crime that he or she didn’t commit, a crime going back to before the forensic tech had developed enough to possibly exonerate them, if only the evidence could get reviewed today.

I don’t know when or how we have become so tolerant that we began to tolerate the same injustices that this society had fought to overcome time and again in its history. And especially at the cost of the wrongfully accused and wrongfully imprisoned.

Maybe it’s me being hopeful, but I do hope that Project Innocence will manage to fight for a posthumous review of the Davis case. Posthumous exoneration is the least that the state of Georgia can do to atone for this gross miscarriage of justice.

Troy Davis, requiescat in pace.

K.G.

PS: Anyone remember the Wickersham Commission? Time that it got brought back, and revamped to analyze crim-justice practices. It’s been long enough, and since people don’t learn from history, a remedial lesson is needed.

I usually focus on an array of things that 9/11 brings up, and lately, especially in the last few years, it feels like it’s been a case of time passing a little too quickly. On one hand – great; there’s been a lot of progress in getting the memorial site up, but on another hand, it’s dismaying that it took too long, and how some people had taken the date and used it for their own agenda.

It became one of those “Where were you when” dates. 9/11/01, I was in school. Typical day, typical classes, typical feeling of not enough coffee. And then suddenly the entire school went still. And my high school was about four thousand people, maybe more. You know how you walk into a room and within a few minutes, the tension could be cut with a knife? When this happens in a building with four thousand plus people in it, it’s not an impression you forget, and that morning was like that. One of the girls in my class pulled out her CD player/radio and tuned in, and kept us posted with the news. Then everyone was evacuated, and I ran for home. And one of the details I remember very clearly was this…smell. Acrid. Like something burning. Even in the middle of Brooklyn, you could smell it, and there was some ash falling from the sky. Public transit was at a standstill; normally, I’d take the bus home from school, but that day, I speedwalked. And I remember dusting the ash off my shoulder, smelling the burning something in the air, and then seeing my grandfather’s TV set.

Everything made sense, and after that, the memories blur. My phone was blowing off the hook that day, home and cell. I don’t remember who was calling me, but what stands out was that there was a barrage of phone calls from everywhere. I don’t remember when or how I went to sleep, but I remember waking up constantly in the middle of the night, just thinking and asking, “now what?”

I still think it. “Now what?”

I’ll be honest, my readers and friends, sometimes I have no idea how the entire country could have gone from a pretty damn hopeful place to live in to what it is right now.  Jobs were outsourced left and right. People are frankly broke. The price hike and inflation is making survival anywhere a challenge. The young college grads have next to no way to start out in the world, save for whatever menial jobs they can grasp onto until the mythical “something better will come along”. And I can’t even think about the economy; in a decade, the country has not only blown through Bill Clinton’s surplus, but earned a deficit that could render it insolvent.

Of course, in retrospect, I see the why, the how, and it’s still as disheartening as ever. What infuriates me is that it took ten years. Only ten years. It’s entirely, entirely too short a time.

Today is still a day where certain things go revisited. Even though some wounds had at least knit over, there are still plenty of sore spots about what this day symbolizes. Most notably, Bloomberg did not invite the first responders to the memorial because of space constraints. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an outright slap in the face. Let’s be blunt for a second: if the first responders didn’t show up, whether they were firefighters, NYPD, Port Authority Police, NJ PD, whatever, there would be a hell of a lot less space in the graveyards. This may be harsh of me to say, but this time, I have to put it like it is: had they not showed up, there would be many more bodies than survivors. It’s fact. To not invite them to the tenth anniversary commemoration is an insult. How many people are going to be there whom they had saved? And how do those survivors feel about the people who had saved them not being there? And why is it that only now is there a 9/11 health-related treatment center – and, considering healthcare being what it is, I have to ask myself just how much red tape people have to go through before they get treatment?

The building of the memorial I mentioned in a prior post, and I honestly think that it’s a wonderful thing. The tower is too starting to take shape, and I can only wonder what it will be when it’s finally completed. It’s definitely not the same site that I had passed when I was in college, and it’s definitely not going to be the same site that I had gone to once as a kid when I cut school and played the tourist.

Cortlandt Street station had also been fully restored and recently recommissioned into service. The R no longer ambles by the boarded-up space that looks to have been stuck in 2001. Whatever was left of the original tiling had been cleaned up and left as part of the station artwork, but the new walls and updated turnstiles are perhaps the only reminder that not so long ago, there was only blue-painted plywood there, guarding what was left of the station in a time capsule of debris.

But despite all the positive physical changes at the site, what I noticed the most as an after-effect is that over the past 10 years, the people’s attitudes have changed. Discourse is slowly dying; the more I see of politics and the news in general, the more knee-jerk reactions I see as opposed to an actual questioning and cross-examination. Fear is everywhere, and while I will not deny there being a cause, it’s gotten out of hand. Look at the news, look at the headlines, and look at the sudden spike of extremism in every culture. Everything that’s at the forefront is ramping up fear. Everyone’s scared, even if they don’t quite know of what. And after the announcement of credible threats for today, I can’t help but think, “Not again.” Not just because of there being a possible credible threat, but because there will be a metric ton of media influence telling everyone to be even more afraid. I saw how, after the tragedy of 9/11, everything slowly changed from “let’s get through and past this” to what could be best described as a nationally brewing case of hysteria.

Ten years of living in a near-constant state of fear is unhealthy (at best), and not just on an individual basis. It’s time to step back and reassess what’s really happening, and remember the old strategy: it’s easier to take a stronghold by stealth than by force. While the country as a whole is scared and not paying attention, things can and do happen right at home, under everyone’s noses, only to later elicit a chorus of, “How did I miss this?!”

It’s been ten years now. Let’s honor everyone lost, the victims, the survivors, first responders, and the unsung heroes, and most importantly, let’s look around at things closer to home. There’s a lot that’s been happening in the country while our eyes were collectively turned first to Afghanistan, then to Iraq, and most of it had passed under the radar so far. Taking care of home is essential, and it’s high time that America took care of its home.

In Memoriam: the victims, the first responders, and those who lost their lives on that day in PA, DC, and NY.

K.G.

Wow. Again, not often I categorize a post in “the pissed-off file” and “jazz” at the same time. Twice in a year, it’s a damned record.

I just got word, via my friend D., that there is a class action suit happening right now over the fact that 28% of categories in the GRAMMY awards are eliminated.

Among the eliminated categories are Best Latin Jazz Album, and Best Contemporary Jazz Album.  Old article link, but it outlines the cuts pretty nicely.

I’ll be frank, and call me an idealist if you will, but until I got wind of the class action suit, I just really did not think that they were going to go through with it. But they did. And I’m enraged, especially considering that contemporary jazz is out of the Grammy scene altogether with this cut.

First of all, let me bring up a point that has been a thorn in the side of pretty much every contemporary jazz lover, booking agent, and artist in the industry: contemporary jazz, or smooth jazz as the radio stations of yesteryear called it, is still a dirty word. It’s still a misnomer. It’s a misnomer that had bred plenty of stereotypes, and both the misnomer and the resulting stereotypes had already hurt the jazz world plenty.

Look around. Smooth jazz stations, which should by now have been featuring the new crop of artists, such as Jessy J (Latin-themed jazz, as it were, actually), Matt Marshak, or Elan Trotman, have been sold and have flipped their formats, and have done so at an alarming pace. Why? “There are no listeners!”. The venues that used to routinely book contemp artists either stop doing so, or completely stop advertising, and let the promo fall to the artist. Why? “Well, it’s smooth jazz, who of our regulars will come for it?” And give a contemporary album to a jazz aficionado, and you’re bound to hear, “Smooth jazz isn’t real jazz!” (My teeth were set on edge just typing that) The artist ends up working like a dog on their own marketing, and sometimes on their own booking, and rather than have it be the advertising gamut that it has originally been, the marketing of today’s new contemp jazz artist has shifted to become a quest to be taken seriously as a musician. And a Grammy award, in pretty much every genre across the musical spectrum, is seen as the holy grail of being taken seriously.

About 90% of the time, I get pissed when I tell people outside the music world that I write and do design for smooth jazz artists. Why? Because invariably, I get a reaction along the lines of, “Smooth jazz? You mean that music in the elevators? Ew, why would you do that?”

Because if people actually listened to smooth jazz, and by this I mean Road Warriors or South Beach Mambo by the Rippingtons, or Brooklyn Heights by Down to the Bone, the next sound after the last note cuts off will invariably be that of shattered preconceptions. I know it. The artists know it. But the people believe the stereotype of elevator music, and call it as such without even bothering to listen to it, and there’s nothing short of forcibly jamming the headphones on that would break it.

Let’s state another very obvious fact here. The audience is there. It’s loyal to the genre; every person who starts liking contemp and Latin jazz will stay with it, even despite the dead air on smooth jazz terrestrial radio. The artists are there, and new ones are willing to enter the genre, fully aware of the climate that they’re entering. And, as long as there are artists like Pat Metheny, Bob James, Larry Carlton, and the music and memories of the late, great, and amazing Grover, or groups like Spyro Gyra, the Rippingtons, and Fourplay to aspire to, the youngins will keep right on with their own music, working and perfecting it. And that’s why we have the current crop of musicians coming into play, most barely into their thirties, and bursting at the seams with talent and ideas, hoping that theirs will be unique enough, and acknowledged as such – key word here is acknowledged - to someday be considered as good as the artists that they themselves admire.

So really, the elimination of the contemp jazz and Latin jazz categories in the Grammy awards – ironically, two subgenres of jazz that allow for the most creative cross-genre mixing – the Grammy committee effectively sent a very clear slap in the artists’ faces, new and established, and affirmed the enduring and infuriating stereotype that a contemp jazz isn’t considered “real”. Bad enough that every corporate radio exec thinks that, bad enough that the listening public thinks that, but now the Grammy committee? That’s outright insulting. Tell me, then, what has Spyro Gyra been doing for 34 years? And Bob Baldwin, who had continuously pushed the creative envelope? And really, two words: Carlos Santana. Another two: Chick Corea. And another two: Lee Ritenour. They all have a slew of records, number-one hits, and enduring careers behind their belts. But the acclaim, acknowledgment, and respect for all those accomplishments? Just eliminated.

For a genre that’s been fighting an uphill battle to be taken seriously, this has suddenly turned into a Sisyphean task. And last time I checked, the real world, while definitely harsh and difficult, was not the Greek mythical realm known as Hades.

Stop the madness.

Really. I know it’s all about the dollars, but these dollars have completely gone in the wrong direction. Considering that terrestrial radio has been losing listeners left and right, and not just in the smooth jazz genre, it’s pretty damn obvious that corporate radio had shot itself in the foot colossally. Instead of continuously fueling interest by having jazz artists – of all ages – give shows and seminars at colleges, which would have attracted a younger audience into the genre and kept the revenue sustained by the influx of the fresh blood, they decided to go for the easy way and sell the stations. And in the long run no one wins: the artists lose exposure and revenue, the quick-fix of money doesn’t last forever, and the younger audience is never even hinted to approach this genre.

And now, atop all of that, and atop the battle to be taken seriously, which right now even the established artists have to sometimes engage in, there’s an elimination of the Grammy categories. What gets me is that it’s been done under the guise of the Grammy becoming a “balanced and viable award.” (source: link above)

I can’t even give a snappy comeback to this. The Grammys have been steadily devolving into a glorified and televised popularity contest, if the uproar over Esperanza Spalding’s victory in the Best New Artist category this year is any indication. And it takes me everything I have not to point out that, honestly, the only thing Justin Bieber had going for him was the massive appeal to adolescent estrogen, and the reason I didn’t point that out at the time was that there was an actual uproar over the fact that an artist won based on pure talent, and part of the uproar was that the artist played jazz.

Look, we know. All of us: journalists, photographers, promoters, graphic designers, booking agents, musicians, venues, the remaining radio stations, online stations, even roadies – we all know that money’s what’s been talking, and the simple fact of people chasing money over doing what’s actually best for the music is what’s really been behind the decline in climate. But believe me when I say that some greedy bastages at the top deciding that they weren’t getting paid enough is not a good enough reason to shoot an entire genre of music in the foot. After all, hasn’t the sellout pattern at Seabreeze and Newport Beach proved in spades, year after year, that the genre is alive and kicking? I would think, just maybe, that if these many people are willing to flock across the country to see this music, that it’s a very viable market. If new artists, some of them fresh out of college, are entering this genre willingly, wouldn’t it be a sign to keep putting this genre into the spotlight?

The Grammy Award was the holy grail of musical acclaim for decades, and despite its obvious devolution, it still is considered as such.

Way to shoot two subgenres in the foot. Way to go.

K.G.