Velvet Verbosity

Don’t worry, I won’t let you forget about the campaign to boycott Goodyear Tire Company starting on Mother’s Day if they don’t make good on what a jury originally awarded Ms. Ledbetter. I’m persistent like that.

But for serious…I still need all your help. I need you to not let your readers forget about it. There’s so much in the world to be concerned about. There’s so little time to do anything about it all. I know. Here’s an opportunity to just sign up to NOT do something. To NOT spend your money with a corporation that allowed unfair pay practices, not just for Ledbetter, but for other women in the company too, and got away with it. Here’s your chance to do something by NOT doing much of anything at all. How often does an offer like that come along?

Well, except for you bloggers. You, YOU I need to do something. To not let this slip away and get forgotten. If you haven’t already, you can add the campaign button to your blog. You can post the campaign link every day at the beginning or ending of your posts. You can gently remind your readers that they too can blog about the campaign and then take but a few seconds to sign up for the boycott. You can stumble and Digg these stories, and the original campaign. You can do what bloggers do best…TALK!

Because bloggers are awesome like that.  If only Dooce would blog about it.

I am not even going to TALK about Josef Fritzl. Nope.

I STILL don’t have time to write the long and thoughtful post I would like on this case, but I thought I could at least provide you with some excellent links on the Ledbetter vs. Goodyear case so that you can decide for yourself if you think Goodyear should be boycotted until they make good on what a jury originally awarded Ledbetter. Yesterday Jeffrey commented on my first post announcing the campaign suggesting that pay discrimination is a myth and that Ledbetter lost her case because she failed to prove discrimination. I’ve read the Supreme Court case, and it is not true that she failed to prove discrimination. If you read the case with an educated eye, as well as refer to the original case that she won, it is clear that she failed to prove discrimination within the bogus time constraint for discrimination cases.

If you visited yesterday, you will remember that I have started a campaign to boycott Goodyear Tire Co by getting 10,000 supporters to boycott starting on Mother’s Day. Of course 10,000 is just a start. After all, the more the merrier. If you haven’t signed up for the campaign, please do!

To understand the case better, I would recommend you start your reading here (Cornell Law School).

For further information:

• Lilly Ledbetter: Peaceful Revolution: Equal Pay for Equal Work- Time for the Senate to Vote - Living on The Huffington Post

  This piece was co-authored by Lily Ledbetter and Joan Blades. I can’t believe I need to write this blog. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made equal pay for equal work the law of the land. For almost 50 years Americans have had the justice system to turn to when they suffer pay discrimination. Last year the Supreme Court upended this law by making it essentially unenforceable.

• The Stagnant Artist: Back to the Stone Ages

  Another blogger who has picked up the campaign.

  tags: Ledbetter

• LEDBETTER v. GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO.

• David Drake: Lilly Ledbetter vs Goodyear:
  The Lefty Blogosphere’s Most Overrated,
  Biggest Non-Story Of The Year (so far!)

  A dissenting view, but Velvet Verbosity thinks you need to hear both sides to accurately decide for yourself which side you fall on. “The ruling by the court is right-on. Look at it this way, she waited 19 years to file suit and then files suit within 180 days of her final paycheck? This woman is none too bright. She forges along in her daily work routine for 19 years, clueless that others may - may - be earning more than her, coupled with the fact of Goodyear saying her performance reviews were substandard. Like I wrote, this woman is none too bright. Some Liberal female bloggers have written that there should be absolutely no statute of time limitations on cases like this. Well, keep on living in your tiny, brainless bubble gals.”

• On the Legal Front: Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire Co.: A Divided Supreme Court Causes Quite a Stir January 2008

• Opinion L.A. : Los Angeles Times : Who’s afraid of Lilly Ledbetter?

  Who’s afraid of Lilly Ledbetter? Not Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both came out in favor of a congressional bill that would make it easier for victims of pay disparity to charge discrimination in court. That’s what Lilly Ledbetter tried to do, but the Supreme Court ruled against her, adhering closely to a law that says discrimination must be reported within 180 days of its occurrence. As the editorial board wrote earlier this week:

• Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. ___ (2007), is an employment discrimination decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Alito held for the five-justice majority that employers are protected from lawsuits over race or gender pay discrimination if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more. This was a case of statutory rather than constitutional interpretation. The plaintiff in this case, Lilly Ledbetter, characterized her situation as one where “disparate pay is received during the statutory limitations period, but is the result of intentionally discriminatory pay decisions that occurred outside the limitations period.” In rejecting Ledbetter’s appeal, the Supreme Court said that “she could have, and should have, sued” when the pay decisions were made, instead of waiting beyond the 180-day statutory charging period.

• Ledbetter, Lilly v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. - Medill - On the Docket

• LEDBETTER v. GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO.

  To show how far the Court has strayed from interpretation of Title VII with fidelity to the Act’s core purpose, I return to the evidence Ledbetter presented at trial. Ledbetter proved to the jury the following: She was a member of a protected class; she performed work substantially equal to work of the dominant class (men); she was compensated less for that work; and the disparity was attributable to gender-based discrimination. See supra, at 1–2. Specifically, Ledbetter’s evidence demonstrated that her current pay was discriminatorily low due to a long series of decisions reflecting Goodyear’s pervasive discrimination against women managers in general and Ledbetter in particular. Ledbetter’s former supervisor, for example, admitted to the jury that Ledbetter’s pay, during a particular one-year period, fell below Goodyear’s minimum threshold for her position. App. 93–97.Although Goodyear claimed the pay disparity was due to poor performance, the supervisor acknowledged that Ledbetter received a “Top Performance Award” in 1996. Id., at 90–93. The jury also heard testimony that another supervisor—who evaluated Ledbetter in 1997 and whose evaluation led to her most recent raise denial—was openly biased against women. Id., at 46, 77–82. And two women who had previously worked as managers at the plant told the jury they had been subject to pervasive discrimination and were paid less than their male counterparts. One was paid less than the men she supervised. Id., at 51–68. Ledbetter herself testified about the discriminatory animus conveyed to her by plant officials. Toward the end of her career, for instance, the plant manager told Ledbetter that the “plant did not need women, that [women] didn’t help it, [and] caused problems.” Id., at 36.10 After weighing all the evidence, the jury found for Ledbetter, concluding that the pay disparity was due to intentional discrimination. Yet, under the Court’s decision, the discrimination Ledbetter proved is not redressable under Title VII. Each and every pay decision she did not immediately challenge wiped the slate clean. Consideration may not be given to the cumulative effect of a series of decisions that, together, set her pay well below that of every male area manager. Knowingly carrying past pay discrimination forward must be treated as lawful conduct. Ledbetter may not be compensated for the lower pay she was in fact receiving when she complained to the EEOC. Nor, were she still employed by Goodyear, could she gain, on the proof she presented at trial, injunctive relief requiring, prospectively, her receipt of the same compensation men receive for substantially similar work. The Court’s approbation of these consequences is totally at odds with the robust protection against workplace discrimination Congress intended Title VII to secure. See, e.g., Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S., at 348 (“The primary purpose of Title VII was to assure equality of employment opportunities and to eliminate … discriminatory practices and devices … .” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 418 (1975) (“It is … the purpose of Title VII to make persons whole for injuries suffered on account of unlawful employment discrimination.”).

• The Overlooked Explosive News Story « Just Above Sunset

• TESTIMONY OF LILLY LEDBETTER BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

  Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member for inviting me. My name is Lilly Ledbetter. It is an honor to be here today to talk about my experience trying to enforce my right to equal pay for equal work. I wish my story had a happy ending. But it doesn’t. I hope that this Committee can do whatever is necessary to make sure that in the future, what happened to me does not happen to other people who suffer discrimination like I did.

Let’s show the business world that with Social Media behind us, citizens do not need to wait in frustration for fair policies to be passed. We can send powerful messages quickly and efficiently by sharing and organizing on the internet, and then with solidarity choosing to not spend our money with companies that we feel are getting away with unfair practices. We can, as a combined force, effect change.

Join these other bloggers in sharing the Goodyear Boycott Campaign.

• Two Women Blogging
• Telecommuting Journal
• The Stagnant Artist
• LouCeel
• The Junkys Wife
• Green Girl Today
• You should be here! C’mon bloggers, let’s show corporate America where it’s at! (If I’ve missed you, please email or comment and I’ll add you.)

Good morning fair readers.  The day is grim outside and I’ve caught myself a virus of some kind, so I write from a cocoon of blankets as I peer out from puffy eyes.  It’s a sucky Tuesday in my neighborhood.   Last night I saw Eddie Izzard at the Orpheum, and that was fantastic fun even though I started to feel the tiredness from impending illness towards the end of the show, and certainly on the long ride home.  I’ll write more about that later.  Eddie Izzard that is, not my sickness.  Why make you suffer too?

Last week’s 100 Word challenge was “Hooked”.  Let me take a moment to direct new readers (and hopefully new playas) to the 100 Word Challenge Rules, such as they are.  The first 100 words is a reflection of one of the things that comes to my mind when I hear the word hooked.

Heroine hooked him with promises of bliss.  She became his lover, his friend, his steady companion, his home, and his escape.  She needled her way deep and deeper into his flesh, his brain, his soul, then she methodically took him down until he didn’t know how he ever lived without her, or ever would.  She turned on him, turned him inside out and he loved every minute of it, even when the bliss was punctuated through with searing longing, even when the lies stacked upon lies; those she told him, those he told others, and worse, those he told himself.

None of us are entirely sure about what happened to Secret Agent Mama this week when her 100 words turned out to be about Hidden, yet at the same time about Hooked.  Truth is, doesn’t matter.  SAM always delights me with whatever she writes, and with her photography.  Did I mention she has a new website just for her fantastic photos?   Damn I miss my camera!

I can’t
I won’t
It’s sad
It hurts
The pain
The lies
The cost
The loss
My heart
It broke
The past
Long gone
And still
I sit
I wonder
I balk
I question
How come
And why
Just some
Too much
Or maybe
Just maybe
The pain
Is deep
And maybe
Just maybe
Evil creeps
Sadness looms
Happiness doomed
Squinted eye
Furrowed brow
Underneath it
Somewhere somehow
Truth sprouts
Good grown
Paths chosen
Evil dethroned
I can
I will
I’m happy
You know
My slate
Is clean
My heart
Is well
You’ll see
You will
What’s hidden
Must stay

LouCeel, in addition to coming back again and again with clever and thoughtful 100 Word submissions, also always has a unique descriptive word to describe me.  This week I was “diabolical”, which of course means incredibly evil.  Of course he meant it playfully.  I mean, I’m not really evil.  Hehe.  I digress.  LouCeel uses 100 words to describe his love and passion for art and being an emerging artist.

The names come to me in my sleep. Unbidden. Relentless. Remorseless. And the visions the names conjur up are all the things the names imply - romantic, intimidating, eloquent, frightening, terrible, bloody, angelic, pastoral and religious. To give a name to but a few of the things they imply. The names are old. So very dead. But they have a life of their own. Something that I would wish for myself if I had but one wish to claim. The talent to live among the names. For their names are ART. And I have found their Art. And I am hooked.

I was thrilled to see Sassy Mama Bear back for this week.  Her poem evokes peaceful and gentle energy.  I feel like I could know this man.

Sitting upon the park bench,
the wind whistling through the trees
He sat and watched the water flowing past.

With fingers gnarled by years gone by,
He gently wound the line
A twist a turn, a knot deftly tied.

A flick of the wrist, and a tip of his hat
He sat, watched and waited.
The sun warming his weathered skin.

A gentle tug, just a simple sign
Slowly, with skill learned over time
He wound the strand around his hand.

Dangling at the very end flopping fiercely
Hung his dinner, trying hard to break free
a beautiful perch, hooked.
~ Penelope Anne Bartotto
April 25, 2008

So that wraps up the Hidden 100 Word challenge.  I’ve got a book laying here that I’m not actually currently reading.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  An old fraying paperback with an orange cover that I picked up at a tag sale because it looked interesting.  From its yellowed and aged pages, I give you:

Fringe

“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe” ~Theodore Roosevelt

I have NO time to write as I have a busy work day and a busy play night ahead, but I want to alert you all to a campaign I’ve started on www.thepoint.com.   There is a lot to this story, but let me get to the pith.  Goodyear screwed over a woman, Lilly Ledbetter, then got out of it on a legal loophole (she’s not the only one, but she has become the poster child).  I’m looking for 10,000 + supporters to boycott Goodyear by Mother’s Day until Goodyear makes good on the disparity.

I’ll post a full story with links tomorrow morning.  For now,

• you can read about the campaign here.
• you can join the campaign here
• you can digg the campaign here

And of course, you can really really help by passionately spreading the word via any and all social tools you use.  Telephone, word of mouth, social bookmarking, Facebook, Myspace, and your blogs!!  Of course, your blogs!  Please help me out in making a difference, in letting corporations know they can buy out policy makers, they can hide behind lawyers and legal loopholes, but they can never hide from consumers.

If you know nothing else about this, know that Ledbetter asked only for $60,000 in the beginning.  She was trying to be fair.  More than Goodyear did.

Because if you’re online AT ALL, you can’t avoid it.  It’s one thing if there’s a product out there, and sure I don’t mind if they spend some money on advertising because even if I don’t want their product, someone else might, or I might change my mind later, and it’s good to know what’s out there.  But when you come on to MY turf and bombard me with your product again and again, it’s ANNOYING.  Here I am, changing my blog real estate, paying for my own nice digs, and now that I’m just settling in, ready to do some decorating, feeling good, what do I get?  Up to 5 long-a** spam porn comments a day.   It’s annoying.  It’s more than annoying, it’s disturbing.  And to be quite honest, it’s reminiscent of how the tobacco industry behaved for a very long time.  Peddling their product while sending us the message that everyone was doing it, that all the cool cats were smoking, and no harm was being done.  They never mentioned the addiction.  They never mentioned the disease.  The tobacco industry single-handedly changed our culture, and if anyone objected, cautioned, or even tried to tell the truth, they were considered to be uptight.  The top players in the tobacco industry knew long before we did that what they were selling was harmful, but that didn’t matter to the bottom line.  They infiltrated our psyche in magazines, newspapers, television and movies.  It wasn’t just the advertisements either.  They knew full well if they got actors to smoke, they would not only hook the actors, they would hook the masses.

The porn industry already has more money than God.  Why do they need to try to break into my comments on MY blog?  Why bother with my humble little blip in the universe?  They’ve already secured magazines, books, television, and Hollywood in general.  They already own more internet real estate than most industries combined.  They’ve got people talking and acting like porn is just a normal everyday part of life.  They’ve managed to drive labiaplasty to be the largest growing form of plastic surgery.  What more?   Sexual stimulation rewards the dopamine pathway.  The addiction highway.  The internet delivered by computer is as close to a Skinner Box environment as you could create outside a lab.  Directly reward the dopamine pathway with a click, increase the stimulus with each click, and you’ve got yourself some pretty slick conditioning right there.  So when they send out millions of spam comments, emails, popups, whatever, they know that for every X number of people that ignore or delete, Y number won’t be able to resist having just one look.  “Just one look” at porn is like trying to eat one french fry.  Practically impossible.  The porn industry knows it, and just like the tobacco industry got the majority of an entire culture to get hooked on its product, so too will the porn industry continue to spam my blog and everyone else until they’ve hooked as many people as they can.

Someday the studies will come out and the porn industry will be saying, “whoops, my bad”.

This is my brain on Yoga:

Ok, it’s hot in here, but I can take it.  I’m naturally flexible, this will be a piece of cake.  So what that that woman can fold her body in half?  So what?

10 minutes in:

Ok, yes, yes, breathe in, fingers locked, reach up, stretch from the waist, lean to the right, ow that hurts, oops…arm flat to my ears, right, ouch, no I’m not bending any further, she can’t tell, how can she tell how far I can really lean if I’m willing to feel PAIN??  Nope, I’m staying right here and I’ll just make a face like I’m pushing it.

30 minutes in:

Dammit, lock the leg, LOCK the leg.  I fecking hate yoga!  I’m just gonna walk out of here, who CARES if everyone will think I’m wimping out.  FECK them.  I  fecking hate yoga!

45 minutes in:

Ok, floor poses.  I can do this.  What?  Touch my forehead to my knees and pull my heels off the floor?  No.  I don’t think so. FECK you.

While laying on the floor in resting pose, “shananana” (or something like that):

My t-shirt is too tight.  It’s clinging to my skin.  I need to take it off.  NOW!  Oh my god, I just want to grab it in my sweaty fists and tear it right down the middle.

Wow.

What if I went stark raving mad in this over 90 degree heat?  What if that one little circuit that keeps us from going completely batty just shorts out right here, right now?  What if I didn’t just THINK that I wanted to tear my shirt off, but actually DID it because I had gone insane, and that part of the brain that keeps people from doing all the crazy sh*t they think had just sparked and fizzled for the last time?  What would people do if I just let out a primal scream and tore my clothes off and then walked around the room looking lost and vacant while mumbling incoherently about random things?

Now that would make class interesting.

One hour in:

Are we done yet?

During the crazy breathing exercise:

What?  What?  What?  Ack!

And then I fell over dead.

Na na na nanana naaaaaaa.  People, it’s Friday.  Time to smile.

I miss libraries. There are few times in my life that I miss, probably because there have been many hard times, but I loved when my children were young and I stayed home with them. I love the term, “stay at home mom”, as though “mom” needs any sort of qualifier. During those years that I “stayed at home”, I and my two children did little staying home. We did a lot of biking, walking, park visiting, people visiting, exploration of the world, and lots and lots of library visits. We were library junkies. Or rather, I was a library junkie and I dragged my kids along to get my fix.

Even though I was a young mother, and quite adamant before having children that I would NEVER have children, I found motherhood almost entirely blissful. Particularly all those hours when it was just the three of us, wandering around our life in a seemingly close to perfect symbiosis. Each day stretched out before us with infinite potential. I don’t judge it, but I’ve never understood parents who put their children in front of the television and walk away for hours at a time. I suppose it’s so they can keep the house clean. But for what? In the end, what real purpose will that have served? You bet our dishes were going to wait when there were probably caterpillars turning into butterflies right outside our door and right that very second. Life was all around us, and I didn’t want to miss a second of living through the eyes of my children as they discovered it. I was so in love with them.

So tonight, when I walked into a public library for the first time in three years, I was washed over with that melancholy nostalgia we feel when life hasn’t gone as we thought it would and we are suddenly reminded of a time that was full of blind hope. Back then, I was so sure that by sharing the world with my children that it was all going to turn out well for them, if not downright perfect. I would feel confident and satisfied as I tucked them each under one arm and read story after story out loud, complete with animated character voices. Everything, back then, was going to be alright. All those days at the library, curled in corners and chairs and beanbags and nooks reading was all the evidence I needed that life was kind and good.

As I walked through the children’s section of the library looking for my, now teenaged, son who was supposed to be there somewhere for community service to make amends for some trouble he got tangled up in, I couldn’t escape those waves of bittersweet sadness and longing. How did everything go wrong? How could it have? Why wasn’t I strong enough for my children, to keep them forever safe, forever in my lap with a book, forever ok?

When I found him finally, I wanted to be happy and carefree and beam that mother-love smile onto his face, but instead my face crumpled into haggard worry and I berated him for being late, for taking chances he shouldn’t, for making me worry, and for not being responsible. Who is this other mother that keeps eclipsing the mother I was and still want to be? How could I know then to let the dishes go, but now I lecture and nag and obsess and worry? How could I know then to not interfere with the unfolding of these two little sentient beings, but now I’ve let the hammer of cultural pressure knock me into senselessness as I hear that other mother tell them what they’ve got to be? How could I have so much grace, patience, strength and compassion back then, and now be reduced to tears, or yelling, or pleading, at the drop of a hat or a forgotten chore?

I’m going back to the library tomorrow, and every day after that until I find her again. The mother I was and still want to be. I know she’s there somewhere.

What? I give you “lips” and not one tawdry entry? Readers, you disappoint.

No. I’m just kidding. Truth is, I think that this was my favorite challenge for submissions so far and it once again inspired me to write my own 100 Words this week.

The Compliment

“I just noticed you have the most amazing lips”. She said this to me across the desk I was leaning over and she was sitting at. Compliments always take me off guard. I get trapped up there, somewhere in my head among the dendrites and neurons and synaptic clefts. Such an intimate compliment brings me back to the Now in all its juicy and mundane detail. Here now is the brown carpet, the calligraphy hanging behind her head, the movement of people in the hallways, the wild red halo of curls framing her face, her own pink-red cherub lips.

Secret Agent Mama’s, while on the “hot” side, was most definitely a tribute to love. A delicious one. Any man whose wife writes about him this way should count himself a lucky lucky man.

There are ways that your touch makes me wild with desire.
There are ways that your hands travel the curves of
my soft body that reduce me to a puddle.
There are ways that your eyes can look into mine that makes me crumble.
There are ways that you can hold me that reminds me that I am safe.
There are ways that your lips meet mine that enchants me.
There are ways that your tongue dances across my skin that captivates my senses.
There are ways that you can enter me like no one else ever can or will.

I love this gently sweet entry by Lceel.

Lips smile, and let the world know we are well and happy.
Lips pout when we don’t get our way, or when the world intrudes itself in an unhappy fashion.
Lips pucker in anticipation of a baby kiss or when they have been attacked by a strong dose of lemon.
Lips soothe when the world has bounced itself off our noggin or scraped some skin off our knee.
Lips give form and shape to our speech, wherein we express love, kindness and understanding.
Lips nuzzle and nibble and tease our tingly senses. Oh, the things we do with our lips.

Warm welcome to calicobebop. I haven’t had a chance to explore the rest of her blog, but this was a charming 100 Word tribute to a daughter.

Sweet little rosebud that looks nothing like mine, you must have inherited a rouge gypsy gene to make such a perfect bow. Either puckered in frustration or pulled wide in happiness, I never tire of your expressions. I remember the first sounds that crossed them. I remember the first words they formed. I remember all the laughs and cries in-between but what I’ll remember most fondly is their best friend - Thumb. Between you and Thumb many sorrows could be cured. A tired little girl is comforted, a reassured soul drifts to sleep and a gratified mother is forever grateful.

So that wraps up the Lips challenge. Let’s see, I’m not sure I can pull an interesting word out from the book I’m currently reading, but let’s just see….

Hey! Not bad. This week’s challenge?

Hooked

Speaking of hooked, if you’re new to the 100 Word Challenge and wondering what it is and how you too can play, go here.