Book completed

Thick, and other essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom. I think I'll write down the topics of all eight essays (these are just notes off the top of my head; her actual topics are more subtle and complex).
1. Thick - some notes on why she (prolifically) writes essays, using "thick" description (she's a sociologist) and from the perspective of someone who describes her body as "thick."
2. In the Name of Beauty - on how beauty is a commodity within a capitalist world, used to create difference between a (white) ideal and others.
3. Dying to be Competent - as a black woman, there have been key points in her life where her competence (which normally one would infer from her vocabulary and other indicators of her highly educated, middle class status) is inferred from her lowest status indicator, her skin color - if she's black and in medical distress, she's incompetent.
4. Know Your Whites - comparing Obama's white followers with Trump's and how the same society produced them both.
5. Black is Over (Or, Special Black) - when in grad school, her first mostly white educational environment, she found that "ethnic blacks" had a higher status than ordinary "black-blacks," and the other black people she met assumed that she must have some more desirable ethnicity, such as coming from Africa directly.
6. The Price of Fabulousness - on the importance of status symbols to the poor; she remembers a job interview where the other interviewer disparaged some applicant for having a cotton tank top under her blouse instead of a silk shell. (That interviewer would not be impressed by how we dress in Oregon.)
7. Black Girlhood, Interrupted - on how teenage girls are assumed by men to be "hos" as soon as they reach puberty, when they start to look "ready" for sex.
8. Girl 6 - on how it would be great if a major publication like the New York Times would have a black woman columnist who was as free to write such fluff as David Brooks sometimes does (as in a specific column where he had a lot to say about the sandwich meat at some upscale deli).

Day 177: Red Flag Warning

(Rats! My tab just closed and I lost what I'd written.)

The afternoon today was nice enough - I wrote for a while then went to visit T. She was reading outside, and we chatted for more than an hour and had not run out of topics when her neighbor K from across the street returned home. K had just been in a traffic accident! She was driving at 30mph or so when all at once she was rear-ended by a car that had been rear-ended by some vehicle going much faster. The poor man in the middle car had to be taken to the hospital. K is fine and her car is in pretty good condition. I let K have my chair so she could chat more with T, and I came home and made dinner for me and D.

Then I wanted to read outside. The air had become smokier but smelled okay so I put on an N-95 mask and started to read in J's yard. He came rushing outside to tell me that he'd gotten a phone alert about a major windstorm, and the streamer he was watching in Portland said it looked apocalyptic outside, with the heavy smoke and major wind in the trees. It then got much smokier here, quite acrid, so I gathered up more things, told D. about the expected storm, and came inside J's house.

There have been brief gusts of wind, but nothing dramatic yet, and the sun has set, so I won't be doing any "apocalyptic" photography. The weather website says "Red Flag Warning," which means extreme fire hazard. My big concern is power outages, since the forecast is for 93 tomorrow and 100 on Wednesday, and since Spokane had a few hours of lost power from the windstorm up there. If a lot of trees fall, it can take time to restore the power. And of course if there are any sparks from downed power lines, we could have a big fire!

I'm hoping it will just be a big adventure, and that we'll come out safe on the other side...

Update. Now it's 2 a.m.; the winds died down and we kept our power, for which I am thankful. Upon leaving J's house at 1 a.m., I was startled by how bright orange the moon is, and the air was quite acrid outside. Our air quality index as of 1 am was 217, "very unhealthy." (Normally it's like 35, which is perfectly fine.)