Promises I'm Trying to Keep

Since I posted last Thursday, I have been away from you all. This Blog. My peeps. Where was I? In a drug-addled, tissue-swaddled misery. I have been really, really sick--I swear, a flu + whooping cough type thing. My few hours of lucidity I've used up taking care of the kids (and sneaking peeks at other news/blog sources but not feeling up to writing one of my own). I wish that sickness relieved me of the duties of picking up/feeding/bathing the kids. It didn't. We had them Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today. That's a lot of time to spend with kids who got you sick in the first place when you move your limbs only a few hours a day. I usually don't take naps while the kids do, preferring to just add a thimbleful of rum to their milk, drug them, and get on with some work. But I've been taking 2 hour naps in addition to the delightfully short naps I take at night. Nyquil the "coughing/aching/sneezing/so you can rest better" my blessed Star Trek fixation--the antihistamine wears off and you're suddenly awake and coughing/aching/sneezing all over again. Monday was my day of respite, and what did I do? I looked up stuff on Liberal College Town Law School (I need to find a faculty advisor to beg to advise me!), watched 4 hours of Star Trek, and read Agatha Christie. Sorry about that.

So the kids left a few hours ago, and after eating some toast (the only thing I've been eating lately) and watching Law and Order, my sinus headache abated and I decided to look up some stuff as I had promised on the Duke Lacrosse Gang Rape tragedy, hate crimes, and gender-motivated violence.

It being the case that it's been a year or so since I've read U.S. v. Morrison (and it's petitioner's brief) and had to look up the fact that North Carolina has hate crimes statutes (but does not have one covering gender-motivated violence) and that I should also take another look at Crenshaw's work on intersectionality, I'm not prepared to write a post on it that would include a few quotes and references for your futher edification and for my enhanced credibility. I could write one on the fly tonight, just some general thoughts and impressions--but I think you deserve better. I think the subject matter--these poor women, the abominable culture of privilege, the problematic racial history of North Carolina--deserves better. So hopefully after a good deal of reading/reviewing tonight and tomorrow morning, I'll have a better, more substantial post for you by tomorrow night. One that runs the gamut from personal outrage to legal analysis to a consideration of race/gender identity politics and race-relations. Wait, now I'm making promises again. A lot of puffery--don't rely to your detriment on it. (a law joke! ha, we are funny!)

Again, many apologies for not blogging sooner, and thanks for reading/checking in even when I'm not here. So far, I haven't gone farther than 3-4 days without blogging, and I imagine that will be the case even when I start school again. Somehow, in my drug-addled, cursing the kids who got me sick (not really, I love my kids, I curse their pre-schoolmates) state, I think that it'll be easier to blog when there's only work and school to deal with and not some poopy diaper that is really fun to take care of when you're nauseous.

In the interim, may I direct you to the following Salon article on Durham, NC's problematic racial history and relationship with the Duke University.