I'm thrilled to report that I'm back online after a few months of dealing with everything-but-the-Internet: death, taxes, broken pool motors, aborted forays in real estate. Fuck it all, I now (finally) have a new office and will be writing, writing, writing. I'm also thrilled to report that favorite political blogger is back online. For progressive political opinion with a suburban punk rock mom edge, there's no better place on the web than Bly Space. I'm proud to say that my anonymous-lest-she-become-the-victim-of-a-vast-right-wing-conspiracy (does anybody really deny that they exist?) has inspired me to blog again, and I hope vice versa.

Look for a new post on LA Food Crazy soon, too.

Speaking of politics, I might as well link here to an op-ed piece I wrote in the LA Times a few years ago. It was actually written to run on Shakespeare's Birthday (April 23), the day after the Pennsylvania primary, but the Times wanted to run it right away. It'll make more sense when you know that.

I received this story, which went out on the AP wire, from several of my friends. I'm opposed to censorship in all forms, and think the district made an egregious error in shutting down the play during a performance rather than reviewing the material beforehand. That said, the district certainly has the right to determine what entertainment and education is appropriate for their students, and Complete Works, unedited, is probably too racy for 11 year-olds. When Rap Othello refers to "Desi and Cass playin' hide the salami," I would be uncomfortable watching the show with my niece of that age. The greatest irony here is that there is no such objectionable material in Act Two. If they had read the play beforehand, they would have known that, and the kids could have seen the rest of the play and learned a thing or two about Hamlet and Freudian psychological theory.

I'm trying to keep myself in Back To School mode. I tidied up my office, filed my files, paid my bills, and now I'm diving into the last round of revisions on MY NAME IS WILL. This is the highly un-glamourous portion of the process. People are shocked when they hear my book won't be out for a year. Why does it take so long, they wonder. Getting an editor to acquire the book for a publishing house is just the first step. Said editor then has to convince publishing house it's worth promoting, excite the sales force, make it a priority. Copies of the book go out to opinion makers for jacket cover blurbs. (I've already got a great one from a somewhat surprising source, given our respective politics... Christopher Buckley, editor of Forbes, author of Thank You For Smoking and former George HW Bush speechwriter, has called WILL "witty, hilarious, and brilliant"). I have a passel of letters to write requesting permission for use of various song lyrics and the like that are used in the book. I've been updating websites, writing bios, etc. And then there are the revisions to the book itself. Suddenly, July 2008 is looking all too soon!

On another front... my friend Michelle sent me to a website this morning which left me a little shocked. Did you know that the No Child Left Behind Act has a provision that gives the military access to records of teen and pre-teen students, including mental health history and home telephone numbers, for recruitment purposes? Yeah, why "leave 'em behind" in our schools? Instead, we can draft 'em while they're down about breaking up with that last girlfriend, send 'em to Iraq and leave 'em there. Michelle supports an organization called "CAMS" -- Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools. This is the way to truly leave no child behind.

My novelist friend Alex Sokoloff forwarded me a plea to help the Jena Six this morning. In case you aren't familiar with the story (I wasn't), six black youths age 16-18 are on trial in Louisiana for attempted murder. The story begins when black students at a Jena high school sit under the "white tree" on campus. Later, white students hang nooses from the tree in warning. Black students protest; there are several incidents of white violence against black students in the town, none of which are prosecuted. But when black students eventually retaliate against a white student in an on-campus scuffle from which the white student walked away relatively unscathed, the black students are charged with, incredibly, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. An all-white jury has already convicted one of the boys of a somewhat lesser charge of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit battery, the others are still awaiting trial. I joined colorofchange.org and contributed to the defense fund. You can read the full story and add your own voice here.

It truly sounds like an incident from 1961. But we've become used to watching our social and cultural clock move backward. This morning's L.A. Times details the Democratic congress' fight to overturn the Bush Administration ban on supporting overseas family planning clinics that counsel on abortion. I couldn't help noticing that on the next page, the Times notes that suicide among teenage girls is on the rise for the first time since the last Republican adminstration. Apparently, not happy with ruining the lives of young people in our country with false 1950s moralism, our President wishes to ruin the lives of those overseas as well. Kudos to Senator Barbara Boxer for leading the fight to rescind the "global gag rule."

Tags: politics, race, abortion