The Flying Machine

So, first: can you believe Shaq is currently the oldest player in the NBA?

Secondly, from The Awl:

The most unmistakable of these signs, for me, has been that I’ve finally come to understand, after years of seeing things indignantly from the other side, just how hard it is to take seriously people who are younger than you. A few years ago, when Jay McInerney wrote in the Times Book Review about a friend of his who insists that authors in their twenties have nothing to say, I harumphed. This felt to me, at twenty-three, abuzz with the conviction that I would soon have a home in the literary firmament, like being ushered toward the kids’ table. What transparent jealousy on the part of this unnamed friend! What narrow-minded nonsense!

And yet. I open the Book Review now and see a new novel by a twenty-three-year-old and I think: eh. I read on Pitchfork that a band of twenty-year-olds from New Jersey has made an important debut album and I think: no they haven’t.

Most of the time, in most professional situations, I'm the kid. I'm younger than most of my peers, and because of my job title (Executive Director) folks tend to slap 5 years on me (which works to my professional benefit) - but I'm still clearly younger. Pretty much always.

But lately, I've caught myself raising an eyebrow at the newest contingent of under-25's in the food world - you? how'd you get that plum writing gig at X or X blog? Why are you speaking at X conference? You don't know what a food hub really is!. Except... that was me. Just a few years ago. How am I now the veteran with a jaundiced eye, cynical from talking to so many people with such half-assed business ideas, the grueling pace of grant cycles?

Part of the problem is the new kids never want to acknowledge the work of those who came before. Y'all, this is a big one. You want to be taken seriously by the big kids in the room? Do your homework. Praise the groundwork they laid. Admit your job would be way harder without it. THEN tell me all about your brilliant new idea. I'm stoked to hear about it.

Posted by Sarah at 10:45 AM | Permalink

I learned at a fairly early age that I cannot always control the things that are sent my way or the things that other people do, but I can most certainly control how I think about them and react to them. I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the negative. I believe that having a good, peaceful mind is the basic premise for a good life.

— Wilma Mankiller
from “The Way Home”, Every Day is a Good Day

(via)

Posted by Sarah at 8:32 AM | Permalink

Not an unfamiliar idea in the arts, but intriguing to read about it in the context of neuroscience:

This radical idea — the scientists were suggesting that depressive disorder came with a net mental benefit — has a long intellectual history. Aristotle was there first, stating in the fourth century B.C. “that all men who have attained excellence in philosophy, in poetry, in art and in politics, even Socrates and Plato, had a melancholic habitus; indeed some suffered even from melancholic disease.” This belief was revived during the Renaissance, leading Milton to exclaim, in his poem “Il Penseroso”: “Hail divinest Melancholy/Whose saintly visage is too bright/To hit the sense of human sight.” The Romantic poets took the veneration of sadness to its logical extreme and described suffering as a prerequisite for the literary life. As Keats wrote, “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

But Andrews and Thomson weren’t interested in ancient aphorisms or poetic apologias. Their daunting challenge was to show how rumination might lead to improved outcomes, especially when it comes to solving life’s most difficult dilemmas. Their first speculations focused on the core features of depression, like the inability of depressed subjects to experience pleasure or their lack of interest in food, sex and social interactions. According to Andrews and Thomson, these awful symptoms came with a productive side effect, because they reduced the possibility of becoming distracted from the pressing problem.

(via NYTimes)

Posted by Sarah at 7:55 AM | Permalink

Rock on, Joss Whedon. Takeaway line: "Why aren't you asking a hundred other guys why they DON'T write strong women characters?"

(via Sociological Images)

Posted by Sarah at 9:52 PM | Permalink

I've been bumping head-first into a particular issue seemingly everywhere lately. Call it the distinction between proselytizing and preaching to the choir, though really that's not quite it. I've put off writing because I've had a devil of a time finding the right words. (Would welcome reading suggestions, hint hint)

It all started when my buddy Tom G. moved into the area. He and I worked together on environmental issues back at Dartmouth, and he's always been a real savvy guy. He takes a very policy-oriented approach toward environmental problems: we should fix this system, or change these rules.

Having spent the past two and a half years as a community-based nonprofit worker negotiating a forest of poorly-executed and often downright piss-poor top-down policies and rules, I'm a little (a lot) skeptical of this approach. How can public policy have any utility if it doesn't serve the public? The hoops I jump through to, say, secure food systems grant funding from USDA are built just fine for USDA's administrative needs, but they sure as hell don't serve my organization's needs. Don't even get me started on working with FEMA on natural hazard plans.

So when Mr. G moved into town we immediately started going 'round about the ins and outs of policy-writing and the role of community stakeholders. (I'll note that I respect his views and we listen to one another and have a lot of fun arguing!)

Then I read this Stanley Fish piece. Now, I often disagree with the curmudgeonly Mr. Fish anyway, but this bit really did it, with its waxing on higher education as "distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world."

Now, I like the idea of higher education being a place for the kinds of academic thinking that don't lend themselves to wild commercial enterprise (Comp Lit comes to mind). But the problem is that too much time spent in an environment of "determined inutility" creates very intelligent people who don't actually know how to apply - to utilize - information in the real world.

I was lucky, I had several professors who understood the importance of applying an academic idea to the real world situations upon which it could have an impact. Not everything needs to always be interpreted this way, but, well, context matters.

And OK, there's a big difference between academia and policyland, and there's a lot of ground between "determined inutility" and "trade school", but go with me here while I add another tangentially related article to this mess.

So I read this piece from Seal that comments on a comment of Jonathan Franzen's - here's the Franzen:

As for my own ambitions for the novel nowadays, I make fun of the ambitions I had when I was 22 and thinking, I will write the book that unmasks the terrible world, I will cause the scales to fall from the public’s eyes, and they will see how stupid the local news at 11 is, and they will realize how cliché-riddled the pages of their local newspaper are and how corrupt their elected officials are. And they won’t stand for it any more. Exactly what kind of utopia I thought would ensue was never clear.

[...] I think the difference now is that I recognize that there’s a small but non-zero segment of the population that feels and thinks in all of those literary ways, and that my task is to reach them and to participate in the life of that segment of the population. This is what I’m writing for, for the people who want a literary experience. I’m no longer worried that nobody besides me can have that kind of experience, but I’m also not imagining that, in any conceivable twist of history, everybody will want that kind of experience. So it’s a weird and possibly selfish-seeming form of communitarianism: I’ve ceased to care much, as a writer, about people who don’t care about books.

And here's the Seal -

I find it somehow counter-intuitive that technologies which make instantaneous global publishing possible have encouraged the development of what must be considered a relatively monastic attitude—a twinned belief that a vanguard of scholar-devotees can preserve both knowledge of and passion for literature in a dark time and that this vanguard is its own best and only audience.

I'm not trying to criticize here, merely to consider how this came about, how the possibilities brought about by the internet have led to the development of this attitude in many notable quarters, and how inevitable such a development was. And finally, to ask whether this technologically-facilitated monasticism will increase over time, or whether there will be a sort of humanist reaction, and if so, how long until that comes about.

I'm not exactly a humanist but I find Franzen's take to be as bothersome as Fish's or your standard-issue policy wonk's. Isn't there some better middle ground between the overly idealistic views of age 22 and the thoroughly cynical ones he holds today?

It's like moving to California to become an organic farmer. Go ahead and preach to THAT choir. Haven't you got any more gumption than that? Where's the challenge there?

Maybe I was an evangelist in another life, but I see a deep (and very nearly inviolable) importance in connecting your work - be it a great American novel or agricultural policy or literary criticism - to the real world. The goal is not to lock yourself up into a little bubble of like-minded smart people forever. It's to take those smart people and smart ideas and put them to use for making the world a better place, or at least to try. Yeah, I know that my and your definition of, say "real world" or "better place" may be wildly different. There's no longer any universally recognized ideal world (was there ever?), but I guess I don't see that as an excuse.

Now who's the idealist, eh?

Like I said before, this is something I'd be interested in discussing further (or, uh, reading up on before I expound at length again).

Posted by Sarah at 8:31 PM | Permalink

I was disappointed to learn today that both the Obama and Biden children attend(ed) private schools.

My thoughts, almost exactly:

So it is with huge grief-filled disappointment that I discovered that the Obamas send their children to the University of Chicago Laboratory School (by 5th grade, tuition equals $20,286 a year). The school’s Web site quotes all that ridiculous John Dewey nonsense about developing character while, of course, isolating your children from the poor. A pox on them and, while we’re at it, a pox on John Dewey! I’m sick to death of those inspirational Dewey quotes littering the Web sites of $20,000-plus-a-year private schools, all those gentle duo-tone-photographed murmurings about “building critical thinking and fostering democratic citizenship” in their cherished students, living large on their $20,000-a-year island.

What the hell, people. This one pisses me off every time. There's not a damn thing wrong with sending your child to public school.

(full story here)

Posted by Sarah at 8:35 AM | Permalink

Yup:

The researchers conclude: "People have a limited amount of self-control, and tasks requiring controlled, willful action quickly deplete this central resource. Exerting self-control on one task impairs performance on subsequent tasks requiring the same resource."

So, basically, all that self-control I exert staying on task during my work day (in the face of chatty office neighbors, friendly office dogs, mad tons of junk food, no direct supervision, teh INTERNETZ, etc) impairs my ability to say no to the salty salty potato chips at my desk.

There was an article on this in the NYTimes recently too, no? Where they were all, "you can train your self-control just like training a muscle!"

If that's true, I should have SELF-CONTROL OF STEEL by the end of this year. That or 15 lbs of potato chip-induced weight gain.

(via 43folders)

Posted by Sarah at 6:13 PM | Permalink

Gah. You saw the eye-poppingly terrible women are stupid WaPo piece, right?

Looks like they're now running some letters in reply. All I have to say is thank you Katha Pollitt:

Fortunately, Charlotte Allen boils it all down for the fickle, Obama-crushing, Manolo-coveting, ignorant, conflict-averse, push-aroundable female voter: "Women Aren't Very Bright." Thanks for clearing that up!

I'm looking forward to further installments, like "Female Suffrage: A Big Mistake" and "Why Education is Wasted on Women." Followed by yet another round of, "Why Don't Women Read The Washington Post?"

(via feministing)

Posted by Sarah at 9:39 AM | Permalink

The worst mass shooting in US history happened this morning at Virginia Tech. My thoughts are with the victims and their families in what is an immense tragedy.

Though details are still uncertain, it seems that the shooter was looking for his ex-girlfriend - and that she may have been the first one shot. (UPDATE: turns out that was a false lead.

Posted by Sarah at 5:40 PM | Permalink

It's all about the chemicals, y'all. WaPo has a hilarious piece up for Valentine's Day today and you should really read the whole thing.

Bill Shakespeare had it down cold, when he had Friar Laurence warn young Romeo of the perils of passion: "These violent delights have violent ends."

And did Romeo listen?

Shucks, no! Wise counsel, patience, foresight, prune juice -- who wants that ? Is there one among us who, at least once in this life, does not want to throw everything out the door and sprint to the Disco Ball of the Brain, where there are big white piles of dopamine, where a hot and sweaty Barry White is always on stage, thumping out "You're My First! My Last! My Everything!" And there's that new girl in class! Scantily clad! She's on the floor, beckoning you! Yes, Bubba, you! Out you go, and she's saying your name and her hand slips to the small of your back, and this is going to last FOREVER AND EVER!

Hot damn I love the Disco Ball of the Brain. Inevitably, though, the high burns out and by the end of the night you find yourself here:

What it feels like: A one-way ticket to the Tex-Mex Border Bar of the Mind. It's always dark in here, stinks of old cigars. The clock on the wall always reads Beer:30. Your caudate nucleus is now slouched over a bar stool in the dark. Sitting next to it is Freddy Fender.

Suddenly your brain bellows, off-key:

WASTED DAYS AND WASTED NIGHTS!

Happy V-day, everybody!

Confidential to LS: I hope things work out like you hoped today!

Posted by Sarah at 11:17 AM | Permalink

Remember all the fuss over a NYT article about how more and more women are remaining unmarried? See, this guy's being funny, but he's being serious too:

Look, ladies, deciding not to marry for your own well-being is one thing, but it is we you’re not marrying in the process. Your decision is killing single men — literally.

Single men partake in more risky behavior than married men. We eat badly, smoke more, and avoid doctors’ offices. We die younger. And we’re far more likely to wake up in a pile of crumpled newspapers still clutching the tequila bottle we began sipping from two days before.

Sheezlebub's great response at Pandagon:

What a catch! Where do I sign up for that? Who needs a baby when you can be some random entitled nitwit’s mommy? If you could throw in horrific personal hygiene and a predilection for punching walls, I’m in baby!

Hey, I could even pass on the name of a certain Ivy League wall-puncher, if you're so inclined...

Here's another real winner:

Personally, I have given up on women – for reasons based on aesthetic, economic, and karmic criteria.

* Aesthetically — I no longer pursue relationships with women because by-and-large, modern American females are no longer particularly desirable. Feminism has largely extinguished femininity, replacing it with the modern, aggressive, masculinized Go-Grrrrlz careerist prototype. In pursuing masculine forms of power, women have remade themselves into poor imitations of men. As a heterosexual man, I am not erotically attracted to my own gender. So, why should I be attracted to faux-men in skirts? (And no, I do not wish to see women sequestered at home barefoot and pregnant.) But please don’t ask me to find ball-busting, affirmative-action professional diversity princesses with toxic feminist entitlement attitudes and the requisite uncritical certainty in their moral, intellectual, and emotional superiority (over lowly, subhuman men) — DESIRABLE as potential relationship partners.

The best part of it is the opening line - that's right, this tool has gone and done the best thing any woman could ask him to do - remove himself from the dating pool.

Posted by Sarah at 2:55 PM | Permalink

I found this Slate piece a few days ago. It's a big STFU to Hitchens' recent claim in Vanity Fair that women aren't funny (though after reading the piece I have zero desire to read the book it reviews. Hmm).

If there's humor to be milked from the (tragically, all too common) situation of loving someone who doesn't love you back, or from the variety of self-abnegating female behavior on display here, let's call it the humor of painful recognition. The comedy hinges on a willingness to recognize the element of truth in the parody. But the humor of painful recognition is also an inherently conservative social form, especially when it comes to conventional gender behaviors, because it just further hardens such behaviors into "the way things are." The laughter depends not only on our recognizing the world as it supposedly is, but on our leaving it that way; it questions nothing. Consider, by contrast, someone like Sarah Silverman, whose scabrous humor, delivered in that faux-naive girly voice, leaves exactly nothing the same. When Silverman takes on female abjection—most famously, "I was raped by a doctor. Which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl"—the clichés are demolished, not upheld; the world as it was is turned on its ear. The laughter isn't from painful recognition, it's the shock and pleasure of smashing conventions instead of toadying to them.

Posted by Sarah at 9:44 AM | Permalink

Via Pandagon, there's a new study out linking breast cancer to red meat consumption.

The study of more than 90,000 women found that the more red meat the women consumed in their 20s, 30s and 40s, the greater their risk for developing breast cancer fueled by hormones in the next 12 years. Those who consumed the most red meat had nearly twice the risk of those who ate red meat infrequently.

The researchers note that the cause of this link is unknown - but that one possibility is the growth hormones that are pumped into industrially-raised cattle. I'd agree that it's highly likely.

Either way, for those of you ladies who do eat red meat - maybe keep it to a minimum? The women at the highest risk (double the risk for cancer) had 1 1/2 servings a day of beef, pork, or lamb - but women who ate 3 servings or fewer a week had no increased risk.

Posted by Sarah at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Sometimes I forget that people like this exist, and my life is the better for it. Then I read articles about these kinds of people, the ones who have brilliant delicate flowers for children who are too good for the best public schools in the country and instead must be transferred immediately to private schools. This kind of thing makes me irrationally angry - not because there aren't problems with public schools, there are, but just the way these people ooze entitlement and a short-sighted approach to education (and the way I met their kids in college and found most of them almost entirely intolerable):

Other parents found the teaching in their public schools unimaginative. Susan Drews, 49, who lives in Yorktown Heights, in Westchester, said that art in the first grade at her son’s public school, for instance, involved “half-baked projects” like gold-sprayed macaroni glued to paper plates. “People went through the motions, they could claim there was an art program, but I didn’t feel it was very rich,” she said.

I glued a lot of fucking macaroni to a lot of fucking paper objects as a kid and I'd like to think I came out with my creativity still intact, bitch.

Posted by Sarah at 8:02 PM | Permalink

Funny how sometimes when you meet someone you just know she's a kindred spirit. I spent this morning at a pandemic flu workshop (more interesting than you'd think!), talking with some firefighters about tanning hides and hog hunting and fishing and the like. Then I drove way out down to Adrian, which is a little blip of a town down south of Nyssa, to meet the coordinator of one of the local watershed councils. We met at The Mirage, which is Adrian's restaurant/bar/water cooler. The kind of place so local that the waitress didn't even write us a check - we just went up to the register on the way out and told them what we'd gotten.

But anyway. Had a great conversation with this lady about the watershed council and life in rural Oregon and, oddly enough, Dartmouth, as she had a friend who went there years ago (she's married, probably late 20's in age). I couldn't really tell you the details but it was just really nice to talk to someone with whom I felt I could communicate easily and honestly. I love most of the folks I've met out here, but for the most part I'm putting on my Southern charm and wearing my lacers and dredging up various humorous redneck stories to, uh, keep it real out here.

(My lacers are kinda less fancy than these. But I looooove em.)

Same goes for Z. Talking to him after a day in the office makes me realize just what I miss out here in Ontario. More on this later, but hey - it's 5 o'clock and we don't stay late 'round here!

Posted by Sarah at 4:39 PM | Permalink

The Times is full of good things this morning, and not all of them are political. If you're as addicted as I am, you might've already seen these, but if not:

1) Bread! A whole feature on the virtues of no-knead breadmaking. I'm definitely down with the no-knead camp.

2) Fascinating: what happens to your brain when you speak in tongues. It correlates rather eerily with what people like my grandma say about it.

2) On relationships, marriage, and modern social life:

As Americans lose the wider face-to-face ties that build social trust, they become more dependent on romantic relationships for intimacy and deep communication, and more vulnerable to isolation if a relationship breaks down. In some cases we even cause the breakdown by loading the relationship with too many expectations. Marriage is generally based on more equality and deeper friendship than in the past, but even so, it is hard for it to compensate for the way that work has devoured time once spent cultivating friendships.

I couldn't agree more with this. The whole piece is really interesting and, I think, a damning indictment of this idea that a marriage has to be the social and emotional centerpiece of one's life. But it's easy to understand why people place so much emphasis on marriage: we just don't have the kinds of close social networks that people used to have. Even when we do have great social networks, it's all too easy to slip into major dependence on your significant other, especially when everything else in life might seem uncertain. I know. And if you don't have a significant other, well, that pasture sure looks all the greener for it.

Every single friend of mine who's recently graduated from college tells me the same thing - it's really hard to meet people. Especially the kind of people with whom you want to develop close friendships. We are all quietly struggling with this in our respective locales - Oregon, New York, New Hampshire, Georgia, Texas, California - and the folks who feel the most comfortable in a new place are, predictably, the ones in a relationship. I mean, look at me: what happened with the first nice guy I met in Boise? We certainly aren't just friends anymore, and I'm loving having someone to go do stuff and meet people with. But the problem with this, and again I make a good example, is that one close relationship can't replace a deep network of friends and peers whom you respect. And should things go sour with Z, I lose that connection, in addition to his friends, who I also like. That would put me back at square one.

But how the devil do you build a social network from scratch? I know the answers: putting yourself out there and talking to co-workers, seeking out volunteer or activist organizations, simply initiating conversation when you find the opportunity, going to bars, etc. But that takes time - and a whole lot of social moxie that's doubly daunting if you're at all introverted or less-than-socially-adept.

I'm getting off topic. As for marriage - the writer has some excellent advice:

Paradoxically, we can strengthen our marriages the most by not expecting them to be our sole refuge from the pressures of the modern work force. Instead we need to restructure both work and social life so we can reach out and build ties with others, including people who are single or divorced.

True that. When/If I ever marry, I want it to be on those terms.

Posted by Sarah at 1:04 PM | Permalink

Some food for thought, mostly for my own purposes, given the status of current events. Perhaps not the most articulate source to quote, but it's workin' for me tonight.

Back in the day, the need to feel wanted was easily met: with marriage. But it has been decades since college, or post-college, satisfaction meant finding a spouse, and years since intimate relationships necessarily preceded sexual ones. The latter especially complicates our love and sex lives. We never know what a relationship-sexual or otherwise-means unless it is explicitly discussed. Even when it is explicitly discussed ("We can use words like boyfriend and girlfriend now, right?" or "We are not monogamous, but we are hooking up-at least until further notice"), intimacy levels are subject to difference and change. One person in a relationship may wish to spend every waking moment together while the other may thrive on some time spent alone. And while both partners may go into a relationship with mutual intentions, there is a good chance one will develop stronger feelings than the other.

A recent study found that individuals with high instances of dependency have more positive feelings about intimacy, but stronger feelings about wanting control. On the one hand, the need to feel wanted makes us gravitate toward intimacy; hence the abundance of twentysomethings who get into relationships simply for the sake of being in one. But on the other hand, needing to feel wanted means needing to feel in control. So we keep multiple lovers on hand and let some, if not all, wonder endlessly about what the hell is actually going on in our heads. We avoid intimate relationships in favor of remaining in control, do whatever it takes to feel wanted.

Note to self: don't do this, 'kay?

Posted by Sarah at 9:43 PM | Permalink

This is especially funny because I would SO be that person who ate the quart of soup:

Dr. Wansink is particularly proud of his bottomless soup bowl, which he and some undergraduates devised with insulated tubing, plastic dinnerware and a pot of hot tomato soup rigged to keep the bowl about half full. The idea was to test which would make people stop eating: visual cues, or a feeling of fullness.

People using normal soup bowls ate about nine ounces. The typical bottomless soup bowl diner ate 15 ounces. Some of those ate more than a quart, and didn’t stop until the 20-minute experiment was over. When asked to estimate how many calories they had consumed, both groups thought they had eaten about the same amount, and 113 fewer calories on average than they actually had.

Also, it's a good (and pretty funny) article. I read once (in one of those great "life advice for girls who are growing up" type books - man, I internalized everything that book said.) that you only really taste the first three Oreos that you eat - after that, you're really just snacking on autopilot and ought to switch to something healthier. I remember this every so often... but usually only after I've been shoveling long past necessary. Like tonight. So did not need that last piece of pizza. So cannot button pants.

Posted by Sarah at 11:48 PM | Permalink

Nice closing paragraph from Michael Bérubé's piece in today's NYT.

Every responsible teacher should think of the classroom as a relatively safe space, free of intimidation or coercion. But in return, every responsible student should realize that the classroom is only relatively safe, because arguing about ideas isn’t risk-free. Of course, students sometimes have qualms about taking classes with overtly partisan professors. “As conservatives,” Julie Aud, a student at the University of Indiana and press secretary for her chapter of the College Republicans, told CBS News, “we should never have to feel uncomfortable in the classroom because of our beliefs.” Perhaps so, but as students, you should expect to feel uncomfortable about your beliefs as a matter of course — that is, if your professors are doing their job properly, and keeping the floor open for every reasonable form of debate and disagreement.

I totally agree. The professors from whom I learned the most were those who, regardless of ideology, caused me to challenge my beliefs. It seems kind of obvious, really, but I swear I read about this kind of thing just about every other week.

Posted by Sarah at 1:29 PM | Permalink

If you keep pissing on the fire, so to speak, don't be surprised if when it goes out.

And you wonder why 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Posted by Sarah at 12:44 PM | Permalink

Links of the day: Or, Some Articles About S E X That I Thought Y'all Might Find Interesting.

1) Feministe and Pandagon respond to this half-interesting half-disturbing Salon article about women in their late 20's and early 30's who are still virgins. From Feministe:

Early experience, particularly dating in the teenage years, is crucial for forming adult romantic relationships. If you’ve missed out on those (like I have), you often have trouble forming relationships (like I do). And if you’ve managed to both miss out on dating and losing your virginity as you go into adulthood, it gets to be doubly difficult [...]

2) I'll admit that I've been following JANE magazine's publicity stunt novel attempts to hook their own 29-year old virgin up in New York City. For the most part, her blog posts read like this: [Guy] was awesome, funny, cute, etc, had lots of fun, great conversation, but didn't necessarily feel a romantic spark. Hmm. Funny how that whole spark thing works.

3) Found out from Girl about this new movie, Shortbus, which looks, um, intense. Not too sure what to say about it, except that I'll be curious to see what kind of critical reception it gets.

4) The faked O: everybody's been there once, but what's a feminist doing advocating for it? To spare the fragile male ego? Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Posted by Sarah at 7:33 PM | Permalink

This quote from a NYTimes piece that I read today really stuck with me:

I had the feeling that even if he tried to explain I would not understand. James Baldwin said being black in America is like walking around with a pebble in your shoe. Sometimes it scarcely registers and sometimes it shifts and becomes uncomfortable and sometimes it can even serve as a kind of Buddhist mindfulness bell, keeping you present, making you pay attention.

(Race Wasn’t an Issue to Him, Which Was an Issue to Me)

For one, it's a brilliant, apt metaphor for race.

I think it works also as a metaphor for any kind of consciousness that goes against the mainstream cultural grain - I've felt this way (without having words to express it) about being an environmentalist a lot of times. Not to take away from its original intent here, obviously there's a difference, but man, once you take on a certain worldview and identity that doesn't always jive with what's going on around you, you just. can't. stop. seeing. the. problems. It's always there, that mindfulness, the pebble in your shoe, and you can never get it out again.

Posted by Sarah at 10:46 AM | Permalink

I happened randomly across this Feministe post, an open thread, really -

Do you have a very rigid physical type to which you are attracted?

Highly recommended - I mean, Feministe readers are typically some pretty cool, progressive ladies and gents (and trans folks and gender neutral folks and...), so they're a good group to query about this touchy subject. As whole, everyone tagged personality over appearance, especially in how a great personality can make anyone gorgeous.

BTW, lots of the women nailed my type - tall, lanky, pale, dark-haired - maybe it's some kind of cultural thing for half-hippie half-hipster girls? (I mean, I'm not nearly absurd enough to be a hipster, but you know, you get the idea) Lots of people tagged nerds and guys with glasses, too. Heh.

Of course, when you look at the range of people whom I've dated, almost none fit all of those characteristics - I've been all over the place, and I like it that way.

Posted by Sarah at 9:45 PM | Permalink