
I always get asked. “Where do you get your confidence?” I think people are well meaning but it is kind of insulting. Because what it means to me is, “You, Mindy Kaling, have all the trappings of a very marginalized person, you’re not skinny, you’re not white, you’re a woman. Why on earth would you feel you’re worth anything?” Mindy Kaling (duh).
This is a strange time. Just as the world was opening, it bogged down, seemingly frozen in aspic*, our plans to go out into the world hanging in limbo. Michele and I were just getting into the habit of seeing people again when the Delta variant raised its ugly head, reinvigorating the waning pandemic and reigniting our fears. We are starting to rethink everything, paralyzed into non-action.
I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time, have more energy, even feeling antsy, but I still don’t know why I am massively anemic. The good news is that the problem doesn’t seem to be with my bone marrow as I do start making red blood cells when I have iron in my system. I’m taking iron pills now but, it seems to me, that is just treating the symptoms. I’m getting another blood test in September and we’ll see what that shows. For now, we are hanging, waiting.
Meanwhile, in our area, the summer weather is spectacular; 80° with soft breezes and blue skies. But, to the north and west of us, summer is a nightmare of fires burning down forests and houses, creating smoke that is making the air toxic as far east as New York. In the morning, I go outside and breathe in the soft air thinking, Well, we lucked out, no fires this year. then I remember this is only the beginning of the fire season.
Rather than travel to National Parks that are filled with unvaccinated people not wearing masks, we are sitting inside watching the Olympics. Watching sports we know little about and will not be able to even remember the winners’ names in a week. Before the Olympics, however, we saw several TV programs that were memorable and even more memorable in the aggregate.
Ugly Delicious is a food program, and to a lesser degree, a travel show, hosted by David Chang. He is a delightful guy and the show is broken down by food category – for lack of a better word – like pizza, tacos, or fried rice. Ugly Delicious, according to Mike Hale in the New York Times, is an extended television essay, in the form of free-associative, globe-trotting conversations about food and culture. If you are interested in food, I would suggest it. Then we saw, Gentrified which follows the Morales’, an extended Mexican family, travails in trying to deal with the gentrification of their neighborhood, Boyle Heights in LA. Finally, late one night, very late, after watching the season finale of Hacks, a generational conflict comedy about a young woman helping revitalize an older woman’s career, we watched the same plot, in Late Night, with Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson.
What I walked away with was a new realization that – to use a gross collective, minorities, that is not even technically correct here, in Silicon Valley, where Europeans are only about a third of the total population – minorities spend a lot of time thinking about White People. Way more time than we – or I, at least – think of them. And they have to because this is a White Culture with White Rules, and White Standards. It seems to me that the difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that Conservatives don’t want minorities to be full members of our National Club and Liberals do want those same minorities to be full members, as long as they play by the existing rules, which are our White rules. In reflection, the Olympics enforces that impression. I’m not sure if that is good or bad, but it does seem to be.
* a use of the word which I want to credit the great Denise McCluggage
You will know that I never wish to offend you but more and more I find that you write, understandably perhaps, from a niche that is neither majority nor minority, i.e. Californian. It doesn’t matter that your references (tv personalities, I assume) are lost on me or that your phrasing is sometimes odd to me (how can lucked out not mean out of luck?). I enjoy your blog yet realise that, while I share your humane world view in general, I feel I must be, as a non-American, in a minority among your followers.
I’m kind of unclear on what’s so endemically “Californian” about all this though maybe as, like you, a born Californian who generally agrees or sympathizes with most of what you say, I can’t see it [“we don’t know who first discovered water but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a fish”]. On the other hand most of the people I know around the West [and East] seem largely aligned with these views so it might bespeak more an educational/class alliance than strictly regional bias. Here in southern Colorado we associate within a fairly insulated bubble of artists, Buddhists, self described hippie anarchists [not my favorites], Jews, lesbians…surrounded in turn by Trumplican ranchers and retirees. Mostly white [or native or Hispanic] people although our veterinarian maintains that growing up on Long Island she never identified as such and as a Jew always felt “other”. We nonetheless share similar humanitarian views [I too often fail to get all those cultural references of course, but still enjoy them]. So, I dunno; what’s so “California” about it all?
Hi Marion,
Michele here. I think you may be the only non-American among Steve’s followers, or at least the only non-American living outside of the US (and outside an English speaking country to boot) so I am not surprised American idioms like “lucked out” are lost on you. You’re right, that does seem backwards. While that is common on “this side of the pond” I find there are so many new idioms that young people use these days that I totally sympathize. Some of the things people say don’t make any sense to me at all, they are just backwards. I am thankful for all the on-line dictionaries or I would be lost right here in California. And common references are becoming more rare in general. We all have our own set of media, not just across regional lines, but just by what people choose to follow. So many choices. Hollywood used to make California been sort of a common denominator here in the US. I fear we are losing that.
I am assuming you are referring to Steve’s reference to Mindy Kaling. She is an amazing woman who has quickly gone from writer to actor on a sit-com, to A-List actor, director and producer of some very insightful and entertaining films and TV programs. She is of Indian decent and does not fit the blonde, skinny mold that used to define women in Hollywood. She uses her platform to use humor to bring attention to how women that look like her (not white, not traditionally beautiful (by western standards) are undervalued and overlooked, especially in the workplace. Humor, it turns out, is a great way to get people to engage with difficult material, and she uses it brilliantly. Check her out.