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10.30.00, 7:31 p.m.

I bought two pumpkins at the flooded lot by the off-ramp, passing over a few bills to the lanky, black-clad and appropriately sullen teenager huddled in the wooden shed. "Here's a five-dollar coupon for our Christmas trees, have a nice day," he muttered, pulling his knit cap firmly over his ears.

I spent the day with Arwen, slapping stickers on bundles of magazines, loading the truck with bulk mail and discussing the question of "how to be a girl." (Neither of us being particularly accomplished at being a "proper" girl, and happy that way, thanks.) After some legitimate fear that the brakes might fail at any minute (how many different sounds can a vehicle make before the noises from under the hood and the tank indicate near destruction?), we muscled the canvas bags onto the loading dock of the post office as a man in a minivan yelled, "More mail, more mail!"

I made mental notes meanwhile for a paper I'm desperately trying to finish about memory as a politics, and commemoration as an overdetermined ideological act.

The last week's been hectic. Mark is back in Indiana after his grandmother died over the weekend. I've had to catch up with my work -- I have two papers due not only according to my internal schedule but a group of editors as well. I want to spend more time writing but not necessarily here (i.e., this site). I have to drop off flats of the first Race Riot zine and assemble the next one. I put up the column for the most recent Punk Planet (40) about riot grrrl and the failure of love as a political strategy, which is weirdly italicized in the actual (paper) issue. I spoke to an artist/activist from Minneapolis about his book (a collection of interviews and analyses of independent spaces and publications) and I have a questionnaire to fill out about the "Asian zine scene in the Bay Area" for a local reporter. I put together a bibliography on gender and technology for Soapbox Girls, a new and impressive feminist e-zine. It occurs to me that I need to learn "time management" skills, because as of now I have none.

On an election note, I found this out today in the new issue of The Nation :

There are nearly four million persons currently or permanently disenfranchised as a result of laws that take away the voting rights of felons and ex-felons.
No other democracy besides the U.S. disenfranchises convicted offenders for life.
Nearly three-quarters of the disenfranchised are not in prison but are on probation, parole, or have completed their sentences.
1.4 million African American men--13 percent of the adult African American male population-- have lost the right to vote, a rate of disenfranchisement that is seven times the national average. By comparison, in the 1996 general election 4.6 million African American men voted.
In Florida one in three African American men has permanently lost the right to vote. In five states --Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming-- one in four black men have permanently lost the right to vote.

These statistics are from: Jamie Fellner and Marc Mauer, "Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States," published by the Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project, 1998. Also from Marx Mauer and Patricia Allard, "Regaining the Vote: An Assessment of Activity Relating to Felon Disenfranchisement Laws," published by the Sentencing Project, January 2000, from the web at http://www.sentencingproject.org/news/regainvote.htm.