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Shy Person’s Guide to Calling Representatives
In the coming weeks and years you will be seeing a lot of requests to call your representatives about issues facing our country. But maybe, like me, you hate calling people SO MUCH. This is a guide for you.
I’m anxious on the phone. My blood pressure rises when I need to call a customer service line, or even just ask the hours at a restaurant. So calling representatives about political issues is one of my least favorite things to do. I posted on Facebook recently about my experience calling my reps and it got a good response. I think there are a lot of us who want to pitch in but hesitate to pick up the phone. With that in mind, here is my shy person’s guide to calling your representative.
BEFORE YOU START:
* Pick an issue. This week I suggest calling to oppose the incoming administration’s cabinet picks:
White nationalist Steve Bannon for chief strategist
Climate change denier Myron Ebell for EPA Administrator
Jeff Sessions, who has a history of racist comments and voting, for Attorney General
Islamophobic Michael Flynn as NSA advisor* Know that it’s FAST. It takes maybe 2 minutes to call one person, including the time it take to look up their phone number. Think of it like ripping off a bandaid.
* Know that you don’t have to be persuasive. You are really just calling to put yourself on a tally that will be passed along to your representative. You don’t have to convince anyone and no one will try to argue with you. Just say your piece (as awkwardly as you want! they won’t care!) and get off the phone.
* Know that calling is better than emailing. I would much prefer to email, but your message is more likely to get lost in the deluge. When you talk to a staffer you know for sure that your opinion is being recorded.
* Find your reps’ numbers. Go here or here to find out who they are. Call their local lines when possible. Write down the numbers or save them as contacts so you don’t have to look them up every time.
* Take a deep breath.
DURING THE CALL:
* Start with an introduction. I use: Hi my name is _____ and I’m a constituent of Rep./Sen. ____ calling about a concern I have. I see many scripts that omit how to start the call, and it helps me to know for sure how to begin. Be sure to say you are a constituent. They might ask for your zip code, so have that ready.
* Have a script. This is 100% the best way to keep you focused and calm. There are lots of good scripts you can use here or you can write your own. Say what you are comfortable saying. Remember, you are just calling to be counted.
* Expect their response. The thing I see missing from most instructions for calling reps is what to expect in their response. Most of the time they will just tell you they will pass on your concern. Congrats - if they do this then you are done! They might read a prepared statement in response. They might even say that your rep is not going to take action on the issue you brought up. What they WON’T do is argue with you or say, “what a stupid thing to be concerned about.” Don’t let your anxious brain convince you they will do this.
* If necessary, reiterate your request. If they read a statement or say the representative will not take action, don’t get flustered. Just say, Once again, I’m calling on the Rep./Sen. to _____.
* Thank the staffer and hang up.
AFTER THE CALL:
* Take another deep breath.
* Congratulate yourself.
* Do some self-care. Maybe start here. Or here. Do whatever makes you feel happy and rewarded.
* Know that it gets easier. The more you call, the more you know what to expect. You may even get to know some staffers. You might never like calling but I promise it gets less awful.
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David Bowie in the Oval Office of the White House. October 6, 1995.
Bowie visited President Clinton at the White House while in town for the Outside World tour. Bowie and his band performed in Bristow, Virginia later that day.
More photos from the Clinton Library
David Bowie
January 8, 1947 - January 10, 2016
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ST. MELANGELL
Patron Saint of Rabbits and HaresHer feast is celebrated MAY 27
She was the daughter of an Irish monarch, who was determined to marry her to a nobleman of his court. The princess had vowed celibacy and fled from her father’s dominions and took refuge in a place, where she lived fifteen years without seeing the face of a man. One day, Brochwel Yscythrog, Prince of Powys, was hare hunting and pursued his game till he came to a great thicket. He was amazed to find a virgin of surpassing beauty, engaged in deep devotion, with the hunted hare under her robe.
The hare boldly faced the dogs, who retired to a distance howling, notwithstanding all the efforts of the sportsmen to make them seize their prey. Even when the huntsman blew his horn, it stuck to his lips.
Brochwel heard her story, and granted her a parcel of land to be a sanctuary to all that fled there. This legend is perpetuated by wooden carvings of the Saint, with numbers of hares scuttling to her for protection. She properly became their Patroness. They were called ‘Oen Melangell’ (St. Monacella’s Lambs.)“
– As found on http://www.catholic.org/*Artwork based on the works of Mucha
* Model attribution to photographer: http://faestock.deviantart.com -
Solid advice
(via secularhumanist2)
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Progressive
Let’s start, this time, with a story. This is about Hillary Clinton – everything I write seems to be about her these days – but it’s about me, too. It’s about what it means, to be a feminist, or a woman on the left, and whether it matters. So before I get to her, let’s give you a good look at me.
I’m at a job interview. It seems like I actually have a shot at this one. Someone who likes me knows the boss here, and has talked me up to him in person. I can show him my most recent performance review, in which I’m described as “a joy to work with,” that “my editors fight over who gets to edit my pieces,” and where the “places for improvement” section mentions they actually have to “wrack their brains for something I could do better.” I’ve come prepared to talk about my strong, built-in reader base, which I built from the ground up; the fact that I’ve led several social media campaigns that received national or international press attention and raised substantial funds, one of which was enthusiastically endorsed by several pro-choice members of Congress; my award for social media activism, from a prestigious women’s media organization, which I won by popular vote; the fact that I wind up at or near the top of my magazine’s “most-read” traffic list every time I publish a new piece.
I can mention other things, basic work-ethic things. I can mention that I have not voluntarily taken a vacation day or a sick day for the past 18 months, and that the last sick day I took was only because I was hospitalized. (I do have to take the day off on federal holidays, but on those days, I usually write for fun.) I can mention that I have never been late filing a piece. I can mention that the copy comes in clean, doesn’t require much editing, and gets turned around quickly, with maximum co-operation. I can talk about all that, at my job interview. Those are the questions I’m prepared to answer.
I’m not prepared for the question they ask.
“We’re a progressive site,” the man across the table begins, “And our readership, as with most progressive sites, is mostly men. You’ve focused a lot on women’s issues. Would you be comfortable writing something that men would be able to read?”
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It’s a game to them…
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Milton Bradley Mystery Date 1960’s TV Commercial
Who else remembers this?
(via klappersacks)
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THE STAY-AT-HOME BOWIE
God, I’d forgotten how angry “The Next Day” is. The album of the same name, David Bowie’s first new recorded material in a decade, goes through a multitude of feelings, themes and narratives as it unfolds. When I’m writing this, it’s just been announced that a follow up to The Next Day, titled Blackstar and reportedly his “oddest work yet”, is set for release in 2016. Specifically, January 8th, Bowie’s 69th birthday. If Blackstar truly is the oddest thing he’s done, I’m excited. But the timing of the release, and the single track he’s so far released between the two most recent albums, have me thinking it’s oddness will have more in common with The Next Day.
So: that eponymous, opening song. In the time Bowie has been away, his myth has both evolved and also crumbled somewhat. He’s not so much the immortal sex-alien that was a prevalent thread through the many characters he’s played over the years; instead he’s a recluse, a figure we know mainly for his absence, and for the frailty that absence has suggested. The tabloids told of multiple surgeries, of heart murmurs and health scares which all but ensured he would never make music again. Certainly, he would not be performing live, either. “The Next Day” is simultaneously a refutation and tacit acknowledgement of that new Bowie, the persona which, for once, was not a creation of David Robert Jones himself. Instead of being one step ahead of popular culture, he was subsumed by it.
“Here I am
Not quite dying
My body left to rot in a hollow tree
Its branches throwing shadows
On the gallows for me
And the next day
And the next
And another day”Always I will defer to the superior knowledge, critical reading skills and general fanaticism (in a good way) of Chris “Bowiesongs” O’Leary, who dilligently - and somewhat skeptially - investigated Tony Visconti’s claim that the lyrics have something to do with an untraceable, fanatical medieval tyrant. The Catholic-baiting music video for the track certainly backs up that reading. But c’mon, Tony: it’s Bowie straight-up addressing the fact that he’s been left for the dead by the world at large, and he’s not all that happy about it. The anti-epitaph, as Chris so pithily puts it. But despite the growl in his voice, the energy and vigour that as much refutes the greatly exaggerated reports of the singer’s supposed near-death, there’s still a degree of hesitation, hedging his bets. Not quite dying. But potentially not far off.
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It’s not that Bowie hasn’t considered his mortality during his career. Station To Station Bowie was particularly morbid. But the fragility of the man behind the image has rarely been explored so publicly and, to a degree, by his public; before The Next Day, the most relevant example was on the Reality tour in 2004, when Bowie was struck in the eye by a lollipop thrown on stage. Not long after, the reports of his near-fatal heart attack started up, and the slow retreat from public life for one of the most public performers in musical history began. The lollipop was a specific part of the Bowie image being damaged, too: his mismatched corneas the result of a childhood playground incident, which became the one consistent part of Bowie’s ever-shifting image.
Before “The Next Day”, before The Next Day, and after the lollipop incident, “Where Are We Now?” appeared from nowhere. The surprise album drop has since become a “thing”, with Beyonce and Drake having since released new music without the usual rigmarole of hype and PR preparing audiences to spend their dosh. A new Bowie single appearing out of nowhere, after a ten-year absence and assumptions there would never be any more music from the singer, is somewhat different from those other examples, however. Thankfully lost to the constant churn of Tumblr blogs, I wrote at the time about whether it was possible to actually have a critical reaction to the song, other than “OMG NEW DAVID BOWIE SONG”.
Still, I stand by that thought to a degree. I’m not sure how smart it is, and I certainly articulated it poorly at the time (whileas now I am at the peak of eloquence, or whatever). But looking back, part of what made “Where Are We Now?” difficult to assess is because it introduced a new Bowie to the world: Stay-At-Home Bowie. Not a new character - again Bowiesongs points out The Next Day is amongst the minute minority of Bowie album covers which don’t feature an image of his current persona - but a role he was somewhat been forced into, and is playing with a degree of reluctance.
The lyrics and video of “Where Are We Now?” have Bowie assessing the period often regarded as the peak of his creative powers: the Berlin years, the Iggy Pop/Brian Eno/krautrock era, which yielded Low, “Heroes” (whose cover is corrupted for The Next Day’s sleeve) and to a lesser extent Lodger (I love Lodger, but nobody ever really talks about it, do they?). The video I find a bit cringey still - the Harry Hill version doesn’t help in that regard - but it’s of the same stripe as the lyrics of “The Next Day”. Bowie is alive! He’s recorded a new song! Long live Bowie! But at the same time, this is a Bowie looking back at his life as an old man. In the video he’s a small, forgotten trinket.
That particular conceit is there in the video for “Love Is Lost”, too, where puppets - old props intended for use in the clip for 1999 single “The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell” - are used to stage iconic images from Bowie’s career, with the projected image of present-day Bowie’s face from “Where Are We Now?” looks on, tired and resigned. It’s Bowie letting go.
As How Upsetting, another blogger much smarter and Bowie-adept than me, wrote about the narrative of our performer and the devolution of his myth across The Next Day and its videos:
“Where Are We Now? – Bowie the mythic figure, dying in the shadows, more ethereal than corporeal.
TS(AOT) – The big reveal. Bowie is alive and well yet haunted, tormented even, by his past. stalked by his legend.
[The Next Day video] – the normalisation. Bowie performs. He hams it up. The curtain is pulled back. The deity figure is snuffed out at the end.”
Snuffing out the myth of Bowie leaves us with what?
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Stay-At-Home Bowie makes his visual debut in the video for “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)”, as a buttoned-down suburban gentleman married to Tilda Swinton. Because of course he is. An exchange between the two at the start of the video - before they start being stalked by models imitating Thin White Duke-era Bowie - after Bowie casts an eye over the crazy escapades of celebrities in a glossy gossip mag? “We have a nice life”, Tilda reminds he. “We have a nice life,” David agrees, and he means it, and they do their shopping and pop home to sit in front of the TV in their cardigans.
I’m not suggesting Bowie has settled into cuddly elder statesman status; far from it, in fact, as the anger of “The Next Day” and many other songs on the record will attest to. He’s a man assessing his legacy in a typically idiosyncratic manner. Nothing has changed., the most recent Bowie greatest hits collection, is arranged in reverse chronological order, just in case Stay-At-Home Bowie’s POV wasn’t clear. That compilation also happens to include the most recent example of this new persona.
“Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” is a song that’s been stuck in my head all week. Which is weird, because it’s over seven minutes long and its musical backing is provided by the big-band Maria Schneider Orchestra and Bowie is crooning all over it. It’s also the full Stay-At-Home Bowie. We’ve seen him adopt many personas over the years: the name Bowie, for starters, but then Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, Nikola Tesla, Jareth the Goblin King, Major Tom, Screamin’ Lord Byron. All of them have been fantastical or exaggerated or supernatural or in some way “other”, from the differing gender identities, sexual preferences, and whether or not these personas were of this Earth.
Meanwhile, the character that was being wrestled with an “played” in The Next Day comes to complete fruition with “Sue”, a song about a middle-aged affair and its end. Clinics call about x-rays, coming full circle with the health preoccupations of the tabloids’ fragile Bowie of “The Next Day” (remember, now, that the opening line of the second verse there is “Ignoring the pain of their particular diseases”). A lover’s tryst is, the narrator is at pains to remind his partner, not affected by the fact she has a son. But they’re about to make a break for it, get their own house, start a new life…until Sue chooses the other man. She tells her lover in a note. It’s all a bit Raymond Carver, a bit Richard Yates; the crooning is a bit Scott Walker.
That’s not the sort of narrative you expect from Bowie. Not the literary allusions you expect from a man whose former preoccupations ranged from pulp sci-fi to Nietzschean philosophy. It’s also so suburban, normal, familiar. The jazz backing is a genre Bowie has rarely strayed into, also, and that almost appears to be an acceptance of the Stay-At-Home Bowie role, too. Rather than flirting with the latest thing to come along - being at the beginning of glam-rock in the beginning to trying out drum-and-bass and industrial in the nineties - he’s settled into, well, jazz. My dad likes jazz a lot.
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Stay-At-Home Bowie isn’t boring, however. That’s not been the point at all; I just want to make sure that’s clear. In fact, it’s one of the most interesting evolutions of Bowie’s public persona. He’s taken a conception of himself forced upon him by popular culture, an idea created in his absence from the public eye. It’s also a character that is forced upon him by the passage of time: he simply is older now. And he’s playing up to that, to a degree. He’s also raging against it, subverting it, adding to it, and generally not doing the sort of things you’d expect David Bowie to do. Plus, Bowie getting old and revelling in it: that has the same sort of rebellious spirit as modern-day Bob Dylan, his protest song period long behind him, putting out a record of Christmas standards.
And an apology to my dad. Because jazz isn’t actually boring, at all. Far from it. But the comparison was apt, for Bowie, because it’s a genre that can often be associated with intellectuals of a certain age who have a lot of time to look for notes that aren’t being played, and who wish to harken back to a nostalgic age when jazz was the popular music. In fact, despite appearing that way on the surface and to the world at large, it’s a far more strange, diverse and complex form of music than many give credit for. Stay-At-Home Bowie has the trappings of the not quite dying man, left to rot in a hollow tree, in his cardigan and his happy marriage and his x-rays. But there’s more to it than that.
AN ADDENDUM
I’m writing this on the 11th January 2016, the day David Bowie died. Like so many, I am a little shellshocked. It’s a real, profound loss. Something I’ve been seeing a lot of, amongst the grieving and the upset, is discussion of his final album Blackstar as a sort of intentional goodbye, the magician making sure he got one last good trick in before he prematurely left the stage.
As with those discussions, I wondered about maybe making some changes to this analysis of Bowie’s return and latter-day career, and worried that might be supremely gauche. But the thing is, I don’t think there’s much to discuss. Liver cancer, the illness which claimed Bowie, isn’t something that sneaks up on you; indeed, reports suggest he was receiving treatment for the illness over the past eighteen months. And it was in that climate that the man oversaw both a musical based around his own songs and an original composition named bloody Lazarus, for god’s sake.
As it does when any artist dies, a new light is thrown onto the art they produced in their last days. Just as it was (mistakenly) with Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows”, or - a comparison comic artist Doc Shaner noted - Charles Schulz’s penultimate Peanuts strip. With Bowie, it looks now like a man who was alternately coming to terms with his mortality and life on The Next Day, as detailed above; it was the most he let the mask ever slip (or was it?). And then reminding us he was a fearless freak with the otherwordly Blackstar. Those were more words than I thought I might manage on this subject. RIP David Bowie. We were all of us lucky that, rather than being snuffed out, his light was brightest at the end, before burning down to the wick.
Lovely read. Still missing this guy. #davidbowie
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