Submissions, September 11, Setbacks, and the DMV

Submissions, September 11th, and the DMV

Hello friends! I hope your week was productive and full of good moments. I usually love when September arrives, but this week has been challenging, because of a couple of injuries (throwing out a rib and spraining a toe (?) which who even knew you could do that?) I’m covered in medical tape now and been sternly told to rest.

Before the injuries I had a visit to the DMV for one of the updated driver’s licenses, which require more than a normal share of paperwork—I brought a passport, my birth certificate, my wedding certificate (because my legal name is not my birth name, ugh), several other documents, but didn’t have my tax return, a mortgage payment or a bill that proves I live where I live. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Did I have a panic attack and never want to return to the DMV again? That’s right. I updated my driver’s license without the new whatever proving I’m who I say I am, just a regular one, and left thinking about how some of our government’s forcing of security over freedom really impacts each of us in weird ways. Trump wants us to have to bring all those documents for women just to vote, FYI. Another reason to vote Republicans out in the midterms!

One of my injuries I got because I have been hiking around local farms, and I wore skimpy shoes to a big farm full of loose gravel in the rain, and that’s how I got hurt. Watch the loose wet gravel, kids! Otherwise you, like me, will spend four hours in an urgent care getting xrays because you can’t move your toes.

Submissions this September Have Been Frustrating…

If you, like me, have been saving up poems to send out in September when lit mags tend to open, albeit briefly (onto that in a second), you may have noticed a frustrating trend: the day the magazine opens for submissions, it hits its whatever cap on Submittable—and closes the same day. I spent two hours this week trying to submit but finding every place that advertised being open actually closed because of this “cap.” A terrible way to run a lit mag, and an institutionalized way of making writers feel powerless and worthless—and believe me, we already feel that way without lit mags charging $5 to reject us after six months if we are lucky enough to get in the three-hour window (East Coast time, of course). I almost gave up submitting poetry for good. I know I get discouraged with the poetry world, the lack of acclaim, money, respect, etc.—but this new hurdle is so rotten for any working person, caregiver, or West Coast person, honestly, I thought I needed to raise the issue.

The Negative Repercussions of September 11 on Our Country

This is a post that I put up on Facebook.

The morning of 9/11, 2001 dawned here in Seattle as a beautiful bright blue-sky day. We were woken up by a call by my brother-in-law, who asked if we were watching the news. We weren’t. But as the day unfolded, and we worried and waited to hear back from NYC friends, and a former employee who had just taken a job at the Pentagon, I did not foresee the things that were ahead for us as a country. I did not foresee the ripple effect which would negatively impact our daily life, our mindsets, our criteria for right and wrong for years to come. Of course, I mourn the victims – firefighters, police, office workers, plane passengers and flight attendants. But I can’t imagine the following list as a good way to honor the fallen.

The Iraq war, which seemed to be the wrong target to be striking out at since neither the funding nor the actual terrorists came from Iraq.
The ruining of the magic of flight—the political theater of taking off your shoes, taking out your laptop, being unable to travel with essential medicine or an adequate amount of drinkable liquid. And an enormous increase in government workers in the form of the TSA. Yes, I remember before that group existed. It was better before we (and I’m including children, grandmothers and wounded veterans, all of whom I’ve seen pulled aside by TSA) were all treated like potential terrorists.

Things like updated Driver’s licenses that were going to require you to bring proof of marriage, birth, bill-paying, taxes, passports, and whatever ridiculous list of things that are not keeping us safer.

Things like the increase in racism and anti-Muslim sentiment. Can you imagine our current President saying anything like George Bush II’s speech on being tolerant and not blaming the Muslim religion, that the attack was a repudiation of Muslim values? Because I can’t.

The cover-up of the air pollution in midtown Manhattan after the towers came down on 9/11? I guess foreseeable by a government that consistently refuses to protect its own citizens. (See: Supreme Court saying we don’t have the right to clean water. Hmm, I wonder what would happen if we took away their clean water access?)

But that day has hurt America in more than just the obvious ways. It reshaped us as a country that valued security above freedom, prejudice more than kinship, paranoia above logic. It eased towards becoming a country of hate and racism, not America that welcomes the poor and needy but sneers at them. I hate to see what America has become. Maybe it can be better again. Let’s hope so. Maybe the fact that 30 percent of Americans don’t even remember 9/11 (because they were born after it happened) means the poison it left behind – literal and figurative – can be eliminated.

Next Week Will Be Brighter (Probably)

Next week, readers, I promise to be somewhat more uplifting. But this was a tough week. And I can’t be the only one experiencing these thoughts, anxieties, frustrations about our country, our literary system, etc. I’ve been struggling with paying bills, so I will be talking about trying to re-enter the job market, so stay tuned!