Not so Young Adults

Earlier today I was perusing The Atlantic for my daily dose of random inputs and ran across a good article by Meghan Lewit on women dominating popular young adult (YA) fiction. The question posed
by the title was, "Why women in YA?"
and by the author, "What's the draw of YA?"
and by my brain, "Why now?"

I went to write a comment and constructed a treatise. That's my cue to write my words where people who like me want to read them, rather than hijacking someone's article. Also, it's apparently National Book Day, and for someone whose major summer vacation was going to a 500 author booksigning, it would be remiss of me to let it pass unnoticed.

Given that I'll be 40 next friday, I am officially not a young adult anymore. I'm ok with that. I'm getting creaky and my guts are weird and I can afford acupuncture and pretty much whatever I want on iTunes. Anyone between the ages of 16 and 26 who doesn't look 12 looks 25 to me these days. The grey streak is still cool, but it blends a lot more than it used to if I stop dyeing my hair. I'm starting to feel like a grown up.

In these four decades, I've spent a lot of time reading books, discussing books, meeting authors, discussing authors, befriending voracious readers, befriending authors, reading about writing, learning about writing, and getting all excited about writing on my blog only to think so hard about some things that they never get written. I've read two of the three most popular YA series, and gotten an earful on the third. Which is to say I've got some idea of what's going on in the book world and the world at large and I've got something to say about the state of young adult literature.

Starting with the good news:

"[C]ommercially, teen fiction is crushing almost everyone else. Three of the biggest book-to-movie franchises of the last decade (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games) are YA series penned by women."

This is fantastic news. I'm pretty sure she says "*almost* everyone else" because I'm pretty sure Romance is still over 50% of the publishing industry, while it remains a miniscule part of the literature that gets critical attention and acclaim. And the wildly popular YA books made into movies take in a looooot more money than Lifetime movies made from wildly popular romance novels.

Then there's this:

"While teen titles may never reach the upper echelons of critical adulation... the phenomenal popularity makes it increasingly difficult to marginalize the genre."

Young Adult literature is still a lower status genre, despite Harry Potter making Rowling richer than the Queen of England. In the article's comments, even the YA supportive folks tend to qualify their support by acknowledging that some find it "schlocky writing" or "childish plotting" implying that these are valid descriptors of a whole genre. They feel compelled to say that because YA is considered lower status. We feel the need to justify that status by claiming it has less-than qualities whether or not the claim is truthful or fair. Because if we want to be seen as knowledgeable about "real" literature, we can't take YA lit too seriously.

The best books in any genre can be held up to the best books in any other genre. Similarly, so can the worst. SciFi/Fantasy has been battling this problem for decades, they just developed powerful allies and superstars over time. Romance is still fighting it, as the powerhouses of literary/review publications don't seem care what "housewives" think (which is stupid because women control 70% of US household spending), but there are Romance superstars and they're gaining power too. Now there's a new kid to pick on, so YA gets bullied even though it's making people money hand over fist in a down economy. Why do we let that stand? It's ok to give a book a bad review. It's not ok to dismiss entire genres. Let's stop marginalizing genres starting now.

Why women?
My top two reasons:
1) larger pool of female authors
2) status implications

1) There are a LOT of female authors who started writing professionally after they had kids and needed the scheduling flexibility that being an author provides but being a lawyer doesn't. Most authors make a pittance - maybe enough to make it worthwhile - meaning there are likely more women writing professionally for low pay than men because even in this day and age men are more likely to be pulling in the family's primary salary. Comparatively fewer family men are able to write full time (or 3/4 time) for a pittance than family women. Not that all YA authors are moms, but there are a lot of moms out there who need a paid creative outlet.

2) Women are culturally "allowed" to be successful at lower status things. (Oh, isn't she cute!) YA doesn't threaten the status quo of "serious adult literature" so women's success, even phenomenal success, in YA doesn't threaten the status of "real" authors because these women aren't seen as writing "real" books. While I observe this to be true, I find this odd considering how many countries Rowling could buy outright because Harry Potter was the number one top selling book series in the world for ages, but I digress.

Men who are (rightfully) worried about not being taken seriously in publishing would not submit YA novels because once they do, most won't be able to sell "real" novels later if the YA thing doesn't work out, for all that well loved adult fiction authors are happily writing YA novels these days. (I'm looking at you, James Patterson.)

Women who were already not being taken seriously by "literary" or "hard science" SciFi/Fantasy publishers had nothing to lose by writing YA over Romance or any other genre. The marginal cost for women to submit in a "secondary" genre like YA is much lower for women than men. A woman can write a young adult novel and still sell in romance, where she can possibly make a living at her craft. (I'm looking at you, Jax Abott = Alyssa Day.)

Why this explosion of success now?

They only populated the "Young Adult Bestseller list" to keep the NYT list open to non-Rowling authors whose publishers depended on their authors making the NYT list. They didn't create a new list for "perpetual bestsellers" or "Long Term Best List", they demoted her to "Young Adult" even though millions of adults enjoyed her stories. (To my knowledge, Dan Brown's similarly long lived novels were allowed to stay on the list.) And for all that's insulting to think about, it has done the young readers of this world a fabulous service.

The YA genre was around before Harry Potter, but it was marginalized for decades to the point that there was no "YA bestseller" list because there were so very few new YA novels being published before Rowling. The library was full of Nancy freaking Drews, Madeline L'Engle, ancient Little House books, and Judy Blume novels - which are all well and good, but we read them all and did so 30 to 60 years ago. It was time for an update, and Rowling's success with HP meant that publishers were no longer afraid to publish young adult books for fear they wouldn't sell.

Why are YAs so popular?

First, J.K.Rowling (who, honestly, might not have been as successful if readers knew at the outset she was a lady author) put Harry in the world, and got a generation of kids back into reading. Then, to paraphrase a quote in the article, youths fall in love with their novels more than adults do. They're passionate about what they read when their world is still fairly new. This tidal wave of readers demanding "give me something just like Harry Potter but different" is calling for new material and a 20th reread of Little House, or even HP, isn't going to suffice. There's a need for more.

The genre is seeing fantastic success with new authors in part because it had a decades long dearth of new material. I know some authors who have 20 year old YA novels that only got published in the last 5 years because no one would touch them when they were written. That buildup of material, meant there was a lot of untapped potential, readily available to start filling the gap.

On top of that, Ms. Lewis makes some really good points about the genre and the genres dominant heroines:

YA lit offers heroines to suit every mercurial mood and developmental stage, from spunky, disaster-prone Anne Shirley to dreamy, bookish Francie Nolan and the modern ass-kicking incarnation of Katniss Everdeen.

And perhaps, therein lies the true appeal of young adult literature: The stories and the genre itself represent a world of limitless potential. As a young reader, I didn't comprehend that the opportunity to disappear into the lives and adventures of strong-willed young women represented a kind of feminist victory. The best young-adult books provide a portal to characters and perspectives that simply aren't as readily available on the adult reading lists

This wealth of stories about strong, complicated, empowered girls and women has never before existed in the history of literature. So women who grew up thinking they could do anything and be anybody are writing those stories now. And teens and adults are buying, reading, and loving these stories now.

Ideally, all the young women and men reading these books with strong, complicated girls and women (and boys and men) in them will grow into adults who will change the status quo because they have a new normal they're bringing with them. Hopefully more diverse starring characters will also come to the fore and be normal because women should be supporting all women becoming all they can be, even if they're fictional.

Hamster Roshambo

With my guts being uncooperative of late, I've been reading up on various studies. Oh, who are we kidding, that's something I do for fun anyway. I'm following @DearSarah on twitter because she's a good aggregator of technical and feminist references. One led me down a habitrail of issues in using rodents for medical testing.

Mild Warning: If animal testing is anathema to you, you may not want to proceed on general principle. But I won't be talking about truly icky stuff, rather one point is about how to improve conditions.

The reasons for testing medical treatments on non-humans are compelling: fast turnaround, many samples, controllable conditions, and fair warning, ala the mine canary, of imminent harm. We can all agree that conditions for test animals should be humane above a certain threshold. We can agree that the number of tests should be minimized, especially if there are alternate assessments - aka testing is not done frivolously. Assuming that to be true, I don't have a problem with most of it even though I have a particular fondness for hamsters. /Disclaimer

I have given animal testing some thought. I don't like that they're generally in barren cages, because bored rodents are not healthy rodents, and a lot of medical testing assumes the controls are healthy. So why don't they all have wheels, at a minimum? Ever since I read the hamster blog about the guy who hooked up a rotation meter to his hamster's wheel and recorded wheel spins per day over the life of the hamster, I've wondered why they don't do that with all lab rodents who run in wheels. It would also be a way to check on whether or not your fountain-of-youth medicine really is extending their quality of life - will the hamsters on your supplement run longer as adults than the controls? Will your hamster have off days? Will there be earlier spikes or longer depressions in activity? And you get this just from them being in their cages.

This article, I think from Discover, was talking about problems with mouse models of disease and how things can improve. What I hadn't known/realized/retained was that medical research used to be dominated by rats. They're pretty intelligent and can entertain themselves pushing levers and running mazes. But all the research these days seems to be on mice, so what gives?

The "knockout mice" revolution happened. Scientists figured out a way to drop genes out of mice then breed them true. They're excellent to find out what a particular gene does/doesn't do and whether or not your drug will fix it. Rats resisted the knockout technique until very recently. So for the last 10 or so years, mice dominated the research. But it's emerging that all the tests that had been so painstakingly developed for testing rats... might not be so great for testing mice who don't much like pushing levers or bright lights in white mazes. Reasons for not changing techniques, I assume,include: some people - even scientists - assume rats and mice are much the same being long tailed rodents. Established testing has support in the way of developed instructions and supplies. Uniformity of testing methods makes findings replicable, and interpretation less sketchy. However, if you're testing for, say, stress, your mouse is already above baseline doing these non-preferred things, so you might not realize as much of a distinction between control and experiment as you should. And your tests kinda show that mice are dumb, but maybe they're just balky, or you're not playing to their strengths.

Enter some scientists who've thought about these things. It's actually pretty fascinating. One lady from the breeding facility can talk all day about interpreting their emotions from their interaction with their bedding - Supplied a compressed cotton pad, happy, healthy mice will shred it and make a nest. Some of their knockouts didn't get that memo and sleep on it like a tatami mat, or hide under it in some fashion. And they haven't even gotten to the testing yet! Yet another in-the-cage passive test.

One researcher gave some thought to what mice prefer to do that is different than rats. They're not big on visuals, but they like smelling things. So he buried treats in sand that had been mixed with various spices. Turns out that mice can learn that treats are in cardamom but not cinnamon, or cinnamon but not pepper (for instance). So cdm>cnn>pp right? So cdm>pp, right? Wrong... Like rock-paper-scissors, this tricky scientist made pepper beat cardamom. And mice can learn this! (I do wonder how well they'd do with rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock...) It's tricky enough that the test can be used to see if they get confused or not, without unduly stressing them out. I'm just really entertained by the fact that somewhere out there, knockout mice are playing roshambo. For science.

Did not see that coming

A semiconductor manufacturing facility, called a fab, takes teams of people to run. The operators move the product from place to place and make the machines go. But before they do that, the process engineers like me have to create a process that runs and devise some way of knowing at any given moment whether or not it should be run. Before that, the equipment engineer makes sure it's safe to turn the tool on and set up according to spec for general use. Before that, the facilities group makes sure there's power and water, gas, and a floor that will support the the tool. Before that... get the picture? There are more people involved, but primarily it's production, process and equipment once things get going. Any problem gets kicked back to process and equipment and when it's a challenging problem, the process and equipment engineer usually work together to solve the problem. Or when we need it to do something new, we work together to make it do what we need it to do.

Our fab has a dozen process engineers, of which I am one, each responsible for a subset of process steps. We also have about 10 equipment engineers. We work together all the time. Just yesterday, my equipment engineer and I met to hash out some action items for one of my toolsets, established some priorities, and from that devise a plan of action to beat my balky tool into submission. There's just one hitch.

My equipment engineer died suddenly this morning.

This was very unexpected and has hit the office pretty hard. He died before coming into work and I have no details. I feel a little outside of it all emotionally because while he's my direct counterpart, we've been struggling to build relationship since we both got reassigned to work with each other. He's a nice guy but we didn't really connect...yet. That meeting yesterday was also an attempt to build rapport. And now we won't. My boss, however, has worked with him for years and years, and has a friendly relationship that includes regular lunches and the like. He's pretty devastated. I'm a little worried that my lack of overt grieving will be seen as callous disregard. I really hope not. But this isn't a death that makes me rethink the direction of my life or think I'm next on the list, and I actually got a large amount of work done today. I like to think it's partly because I was motivated to make sure his toolsets don't go to hell. Because he surely won't.

Progress and Pools

[Time flies! I wrote this on May 25th on my iPhone, but the "publish" button doesn't work in that app, so it languished until I felt like checking in from my computer.]

This week was really good. I felt good. I had energy to burn off. I mostly woke up pretty well (a couple sleep interruptions but not crazy bad). I'm starting to think I could do things outside work regularly again.

Good thing 1: Exercise I've found a hiking buddy.
Three weeks in a row we've gone out to a local trail after work and meandered around. The first day she overdid it a bit and got stiff, so we're doing 45 min jaunts but might try an hour or more tomorrow morning since it won't get dark on us.

I went swimming! Before I get in the water, unless it's clearly a beach day, I almost always resent getting chilly and wet and the amount of time it will take me to clean up after (never less than 20 min in my whole life.) but I get in the water and love it 99 times in a hundred. I love being in water; I don't much care for getting into water. Bearing in mind the fallout my hiking buddy had from her first trek in ages, I set my sights in a 20 minute swim. I actually made it 25, but the last 5 pretty well knocked me out. I was so still in the hot tub afterward that bubbles gathered behind my knees. Long after the agitation ceased, I moved my legs and there went bubbles! It was like I had been carbonated.

Good thing 2: Getting stuff done
I had volunteered to rent a house for some book club friends coming to LA area in July for a conference. I'd looked at one house that was workable but mediocre. I tried to rent it but it fell thru - the owner was kind of a flake. My friend thinks it's because they had no intention of doing the upgrades I'd inquired about. Maybe, but it left me with no house. Then I had a conference myself in Boston, and pushed that visit as long as I could, taking both weekends. Then I had another off weekend and a weekend where I was just lazy. I went to find another house - there had been 60 options when I started looking - and ALL of them were unavailable the dates we need. Oops!

Thankfully my planner friend came thru with alternate websites. I found 3 likely properties, and was able to pick one. I'm going to go see it this weekend to see how reality compares to pictures. Only signing up for 4 nights instead of 7 saves us about $50 each - more if we get the security deposit back. Hopefully this will go well.

Good thing 3: Keyboard design update
My patent attorney contact (college pal's wife) remembered me fondly enough to give me some advice over the phone, then recommend a couple of local attorneys. I'd caught her after my conference but just before hers, so I had a week of impatiently waiting! Then I got the names early this week and got all squirrely about how to approach them. Finally at lunch today, I went with the "you can fix a bad page but not a blank one" mentality and cranked out what I thought was a good query letter. Both offices responded to my email. One of them should work out or get me a referral, and I am making appointments for next week. Things are moving.

I have one friend sending me keyboard newsfeed articles which is awesome, but I'm not going to read any more of them until I file so I don't accidentally copy an idea. I'm keeping the list, though, to read after filing.

Bonus Good thing 4: Kickstarter
Out in Boston, friend J showed me a game he got from sponsoring the makers on Kickstarter. I hadn't realized you'd be able to *get stuff* for the money beyond a warm fuzzy (like mullein) feeling. Suffice it to say, I went shopping for Christmas presents on Kickstarter this week. And a couple things for me. I think candleholders with feet will go well with my vases with arms. My favorite that got me to sign up in the first place is "Roominate". A build it yourself modular dollhouse - with electric circuits. You build the house, add in lights, fans, and sounds by wiring it up yourself. Girls' engineering toys! That don't pander! That aren't an adapted "boy" centric toy. Love it. And it funded, so if it ships by Christmas, I'll have good gifts for at least two friends.

What have you been up to?

Raincheck, cashed

Well, mom will be here in an hour or so. She made it onto a later flight than intended, so I'll be headed out imminently. The weather tomorrow will not be much better than it was a few weeks ago, but it will at least not be worse than weather in Minnesota! The weekend should actually be reasonably nice.

Other good stuff today, aside from mom making a flight:

Lunch at Brent's.
They make a wicked good pastrami, and they customize it for me. I don't like the stuff they usually put on it. They've got some really good potato salad (and I don't much like potato salad) and they put it on the sandwich for me. It's awesome. It's also quite large, so I'm having pastrami sandwich for dinner as well.

Tire Man
My new tires, from the dealer, have never quite been properly balanced. The dealer would charge me another $50 to balance them, so when I had my brakes done, I got them balanced by that shop. And the balance got better, but it was not fixed. Preparatory to mom's arrival, I stopped at the Tire Man and had them rebalanced. The manager gave me two options - cheap and $20 per tire. I went with cheap. When I went to pay, he gave me the keys back and said, "Drive it for a while. If it's fixed, come back and pay. If not, come back and get the expensive balance." So right now, I'm driving on improved balance tires that I have not yet paid for. What a sweetie. I figure I'll ask my mom. If she thinks they're still funky, I still have options.

PHB On Owning Things

I have a handwritten "post" on hoarding that is apolitical. But this post was sparked because I was too lazy to change the channel when NPR started talking about a nuclear Iran, so there will be some politics, but hopefully not much. This is really more about money.

One of the great frustrations of me and many Americans is the size of our defense budget. It's G.I.G.A.N.T.I.C. The frustration is from the sense that this budget is out of line with our needs, and our ability to afford it. Whether our truly gigantic budget - literally multiples of the sum of the defense budgets of the rest of the world - is out of line is something that should be discussed. Why do we have all our bases abroad? What do we get out of it?

I happen to think that we as a society are better off if we, who are able, take some care of our least able members, allowing them to live a life of dignity and worth which they could not afford or get to on their own. I think this is reason enough for a welfare program and international aid. I do not think it is reason enough, necessarily, for OUR welfare program our our current international aid so we don't need to fight on those details here. That doesn't mean that I don't also seek out reasons why we give other countries money. Some of the money we give out just seems insane.

But some of the insanity may have come clear to me tonight. I've never been all that great with current events and politics. Some of it is from my inherent lack of respect for positions given by bureaucracies - I just plain don't see some connections. Some was because my first exposure to it in elementary school was so confusing and over my head that I just had to put it in a "don't know"/"not good at it" category and it has only been in recent years of reading blogs that I feel I've gotten a bit of a handle on things. Which is what makes me think I should blog about this.

As the commentators (really, some of the most knowlegeable and least divisive I've heard in a while) explained some back history of nuclear weaponry, they discussed the difficulties of what to do now. We'd bombed Japan with nukes and it was gruesome. The scale of nuclear weapons give us the potential to do damage on a previously unknown scale. We the people can wipe out countries in moments. This is a tough thing to face. Who gets this power?

Apparently there was "the Irish Resolution", which is pretty simple on its face, and which was considered unlikely. Essentially, my understanding of it from the show is that those countries with nuclear weapons can keep their technology but must not sell it or gift it to others. Those without must not seek to gain nuclear weapon technology, and all must be subject to inspections. Who would go for that? Well, in exchange for promises of protection the world went two decades without any non-nuclear countries becoming nuclear. Hunh. Who knew that would work so well?

But that key piece in there is that those with nuclear vowed to protect those without. Retaining ownership of the bomb means that our defense budget and personnel aren't just for us, they are for our neighbors too. Because the cost of NOT providing that protection is having more nuclear weapons in the world. Containing and negotiating with the governments who do have them is tricky enough. Every new player adds significant complexity to the fragile balance. And that might be worth spending some defense budget money that seems on the surface, rather gratuitous.

File this under "things that make me go hrmmmm."

Political Hot Buttons (PHB)

Maybe because some of the bloggers I like are heavily political in their updates, I find myself needing to express opinions about politics, including politicized current events. It's not really why I started the blog, especially since politics I want to talk are inherently not about happiness in the now. But to not talk about these things makes me feel dishonest. I guess I want to talk about politics because I have hope that things can improve in the future. At any rate, if politics ain't yer bag, baby, I'll try to remember to start all my political rants with PHB, so you'll be forewarned.

I first learned about the concept of Running While Black (RWB) from a white lady romance author who figured that since the was writing about Navy SEALs, she may as well write a black Navy SEAL because while she's not a SEAL nor a man nor a black man, she wants to write about all of us. I think she does an excellent job at this. Suzanne Brockmann's "Harvard's Education" included as part of the character's motivation the trouble black men have just going about their business in our society. (Ironically, it was the one Team 10 book of hers I was unable to get from the local library - local at the time meant the library was literally a block from Harvard Yard.)

While women face challenges from men in power, we tend not to get disproportionately arrested, handcuffed, or otherwise harassed by the police or others who are in authority, or who consider themselves to be in authority. Black men and teens do. It's a frustrating thing to be concerned about because as far as I can tell, the only influence I have here is to personally make an effort to treat everyone fairly, which is something I try to do anyway. But you see where this is going, right?

A teenaged boy, Trayvon Martin, was staying at his dad's place (or his dad's girlfriend's place) in a gated community. He went out to get his kid brother some Skittles. On his way home, a neighbor who considered himself the neighborhood watch considered Trayvon a threat, called 911, was told not to engage Martin, but left his car, started an altercation, and shot Trayvon Martin dead.



That's terrible enough on its own. Imagine your kid goes to the store on the corner, and on the way home is shot by the neighborhood watch. (Frankly, this guy sounds like one of "those guys" who you just let do his thing because it's not worth the effort of talking him out of it. Besides, he's harmless, and who can he hurt, right?) His excuse was that Trayvon looked scary, and was wearing a hoodie. The reality was that Trayvon was Walking While Black in a gated community.

Where it gets worse? The perpetrator, who absolutely shot this young man to death, claimed it was self defense and WAS NOT ARRESTED. In any situation where that boy was not black and the shooter was, the shooter would have been arrested and then hamstrung in the media. It turns out you can't even die while black without someone doing something horrible. Some popular media outlets and commenters are spewing out all sorts of the usual tripe about how Trayvon somehow "deserved" to be shot.

Way to many of the media outlets are talking about "stand your ground laws" (which, prior to previous convention, do not require you to attempt to leave the scene of an altercation before using deadly force in a public place) as if they apply primarily to the shooter ("Z") in this case. To the cops and the media, Z has the unmitigated gall to claim that after Z stalked Trayvon from his car, called 911, then left the car to confront Trayvon about his right to walk to his part-time home that they fought, Z feared for his life, and shot Trayvon. I'm sorry, but the Stand your Ground law in this case applies to the guy who was rightly concerned about deadly force being inapproprately used against him, Trayvon. Sorry Z, but if you picked a fight with a gun and started losing? Trayvon had a right to stand his own ground against you. Except, you know, he's black.

Because Z was not arrested. Not really even held. He absolutely killed that boy. The only question is whether or not it was legal for him to do so (from my perspective, that's a clear "hells to the no") and if not, how to sentence him. I'd say Z is out free, although he's apparently in hiding. Good. I don't advocate for vigilante justice here; I advocate for justice. [Hey! I just found a Justice League comic in my Lucky Charms.] Only it took bloggers and month of diligence to even get the police of that town to consider that just maybe, they'd handled the aftermath of Trayvon's death the wrong way.

There are cases of shooting someone in self defense.
This is not one of them.
This is not a case where the victim was armed with a traditional weapon; Trayvon had iced tea and a rainbow of flavor.
This is not a case where there's a question about who shot whom.
This is not a case without evidence - there's a 911 recording before the event with a dispatcher telling the shooter that the police don't need his physical help [aka, stay in the car and don't confront the victim]. If the shooter had not gotten out of his car and confronted him, Trayvon would be alive.
This is not a case where the shooter was at a clear disadvantage; not only did Z have a car, he had a gun, and about 100 pounds on the victim.

"But he was wearing a hoodie!", "He looked like a thug!", "He hit me![unconfirmed at this time]". He was a black kid, defending himself from some crazy stalker dude with a gun, who accosted him on his trip to get Skittles for his little brother, in the rain.

No cop, no civilized person, should consider those accusations as acceptable precursors to the use of deadly force.
- No matter what hoodie I wear, I will never be shot for wearing it.
- No matter what hoodie I wear, I will never be called a thug.
- No matter who I hit, no one will ever say that lethal force was justifiably used against me in return*.
If, god forbid, someone does shoot me to death, my family has high confidence that the police will
- Arrest my shooter.
- Identify my body by asking around the neighborhood to see if I lived there.
- Prosecute the shooter to determine in court whether or not the shooting was legal.
But then, I'm a white woman. If you're a black man or boy, good luck with that. Apparently that stuff doesn't apply to you.

[*With the exception of me somehow turning into a domestic abuser. I still have the option of being accused of inviting rape by wearing a short skirt, a low cut top, or drinking too much, but chances are near certain I will never face Trayvon's fate.]

Given that 'a free society is one in which it's safe to be unpopular', this doesn't speak well of our supposedly free society. Like judging people by how they treat the staff, we need to judge ourselves by how we treat those who are at our mercy. There has been too little mercy for Trayvon Martin and his grieving family, and entirely too much for the shooter. There are places that are sticking up for Trayvon; I don't mean to imply they aren't. But the ugliness isn't confined to dark corners and private chats. It's out there in volume. It has powerful legitimizers. The hate gets an airing by people trying to be "fair". We don't need to be fair to lies or echo the slander. We fought a civil war to free black slaves 151 years ago, and then we harsh on other countries for not embracing our example democracy in one generation when hand them examples of justice like this?

For further reading, my go to source on this is Ta-Nehisi Coates. Much of his late March postings cover this case. If you need to have a conversation on safety in the face of public power and force with your black son, check out his book, The Beautiful Struggle.

Thanks to everyone who has spoken up for Trayvon Martin and his family.
So what else can I do? Wearing my lemon yellow hoodie doesn't seem like a sufficient statement of support.
What can we do? How can I be an advocate? How do we make our country a safe place for average black men to do average things without fear of arrest or death?