Filed under: Uncategorized
Photo by my friend Zeb Millett
Going to the Adirondaks this weekend with Boyfriend and some of his friends. Feeling the urge to get back behind my camera & also the need to employ a scanner. Anyway, hope to do some hiking.
1. October is national Walk or Bike to school month.
2. Flickr toys! Make calendars, collages, and mosiacs. Play, play, play.
We are only particles of change, I know, I know.
-Joni Mitchell
I just started a new job this week and it has me playing the game, “What would the Whitney-from-10-years-ago think about this most recent venture?” I like this game, in part because I try to imagine what version I’ll be playing ten years from now.
In the year or so since I graduated from college, I’ve done things my younger self would probably find surprising, maybe even unappealing. They include working on a dairy farm, teaching English in South Korea, and managing a political campaign.
Sometimes I feel the panic I imagine most people feel: Shit! Am I really doing this? We tend to psych ourselves out by believing that once we sign up for a job or a change or an apartment lease, we’ll be there forever. This is another reason why I like playing the game: it reminds me of how unlikely those fears actually are.
Even if we do stay in a job or a city for a long period of time, I take comfort in knowing that our areas of focus change, our friends move on and move closer, our families split and heal and split again.
I’d love to hear about other people’s surprises—what have you done or what are you doing now that a younger version of yourself would find hard to believe or understand?
Filed under: Uncategorized
My friend Brendan lives and performs in New York with his long-form improv team Kid Dervin. He told me that the improv scene is pretty white and pretty male, and we got to talking about why that is.
Actually, we theorized.
My own take is that the less a comedienne is dedicated to looking cute, the more likely she’ll receive crossover appeal. Take, for instance, Amy Sedaris. Sedaris’ most well-known role is as Jerri Blank, a 40-something former hooker who has generous eye-bags and a wicked overbite. She’s so unattractive, it’s excrutiating. It’s funny. What’s more, Sedaris often opts for a themed photo shoot: Amy has a battered woman, Amy as an armless pin-up girl. I think she’s funny–and I think a lot of men find her funny–because her first priority is not looking good, it’s being funny.
Anyway, what do you think?
While I was in New York, I got a chance to visit the Museum on Natural History–a lifelong desire, to be perfectly honest. My dear friend Brendan accompanied me on this adventure and even got me to screech a little upon seeing the infamous blue whale. I closed my eyes as he led me down a short set of stairs, allowed him to position me just right, and then looked up on his cue into the face of the whale. Screeched.
I also saw all sorts of rats in the “Mammals of New York State” exhibit and the following presentation of the evolution of the uterus:
According to this display, the uterus has become simpler. Amen, or something.
Filed under: Blogging, Feminism, Gender, Reproductive Rights, conservative craziness
Biting Beaver has a detailed report up of her recent attempt to get emergency contraception. Not only was she asked questions about her marital status, fidelity, and number of children, she was made to answer personal questions about the sexual act causing her to need EC.
Was it rape? They wanted to know. Did she experience “trauma?”
“No. I have not been raped. The condom broke”. I state, becoming very frustrated at this point and wondering what the hell is going on.
“Ok, well ummm….Are you married?” he mumbles the words so low I can barely hear them.
Suddenly I get this image of the poor nurse standing at the hospital reading from a cue card that was given to him by a doctor.
“No.” I state plainly. “I am not married. I’ve been in a relationship for several years and I have three children, I don’t want a fourth.” I respond tersely.
“Oh, I see.” He says and then he hurries on, “Well, see. *I* understand. I want you to know that I understand what you’re saying. But see, the problem is that we have 4 doctors here right now but only one of them ever writes EC prescriptions. But see, the thing is that he’ll interview you and see if you meet his criteria. Now, I called the pharmacy but I also talked to him and well….*clears throat*….you can come down and try to get it. You know, if you meet his criteria he’ll give you a prescription, I mean, there’s really no harm in trying.” the nurse trails off, his voice falters as I realize what I’m being told.
The whole piece is up at Biting Beaver’s blog. It’s worth the read.
Via Feministing.
“One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary, has ever happended to anyone before.”
Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That”
I flew into New York last Thursday morning, early enough to almost fall asleep on the subway. I made a friend though, an Argentinian woman who wanted to go to “Can-nan-nal” Street during her layover, and our small talk kept me half-alert until I could reach my friend’s apartment and promptly fall asleep in his bed.
The city was filled with rain and strangers who shared with me umbrellas and other sweetness.
Flung back into the life of a vagabond–where am I staying tonight?–both fun and excruiating. Now that travel has become a short thing of the Getting Away nature, and not my lifestyle as it was when I hopped from plane to plane, country to country, I am feeling its affects differently. As expected, I appreciate it more immediately for what it is: luxurious, an escape.
But there’s this other piece too, and I’m afraid I’ve got little choice but to be vague as I work through the feeling: I’m learning how a simple vacation–especially when you visit a place where you spent a few nights asking yourself hard questions or a few mornings waking up in bed with a lover or a few evenings walking with a blank slate of obligations–can shake the whole foundation of the place from where you departed.
I don’t know how to let something devour me slightly.
Filed under: funny fun fun
While I recover from both last week’s Democratic primary and my much-needed vacation in New York, you can enjoy this photograph of tonight’s dinner:
I work in politics so the past week has been anything but quiet. The Primary is tomorrow and I dreamt somewhere in there of posting about the industry of Election Products and Services (everything from bumper stickers to nail files to GOTV paid canvassers). No time though now, no time.
I do want to comment on the Ralph Phillips fever that has shook Western New York. For those of you fortunate enough to not know about the case, here’s a little background: Ralph “Bucky” Phillips escaped from jail in April, has been hiding out on the loose, shot a few state troopers throughout his run (one ended up dying), and was finally surrounded and caught last Friday night. Here in Buffalo, all of three of the local networks cut in to their regularly scheduled programs for over four hours
so that breaking news and press conferences could be aired on a moment’s notice.
Fine, it was a big story. Even made front page of the New York Times. What I’d like to comment on though are the countless number of white, rural folks interviewed by the news cameras who, through tears, told us all how happy they are to return to a normal, safe life. One man, during last night’s 11 o’clock news, said he was glad that he and his neighbors could go back to, “not locking our doors when we run out to the store.”
I’m glad for them, sincerely, but I cannot help but wonder why the press isn’t staking out the East Side of Buffalo. This is the area of the city where most of the year’s 54 or more homicides have taken place. This is the area of the city where innocent residents are most at danger, where children literally can’t play outside without fearing stray bullets. Where’s the uproar here? Is this not a story?
Update: While writing this post, I read a couple pieces over at the Buffalo News on the Phillips case. Ever willing to say something ridiculous, columnist Mary Kunz Goldman has suggested punishing people who “even associate” with a gang as a means to combat crime. Although I appreciate that she made the same connections between the Hunt for Phillips and the wave of violence in the city, I don’t think that turning our city into a police state is going to create the kind of peace we desire.
“I want guys with camo and guns in front of my house. I want roadblocks and helicopters,” she says. Yikes.
Filed under: Uncategorized
So I wasn’t going to post about this because I didn’t want to engage in any more shameless self-promotion than is already inherent in keeping a blog but I’ve received some great response about it.
Without further delay, my first foray into the Opinion pages!
