Sunday, March 31, 2013

Tribes

After cramming my brain with a bunch of other thoughts all day, I believe I now have the luxury of finishing the interesting show I began listening to yesterday morning...
Tribes - This American Life
~~~
oh. maybe not yet...

ODF

From Children's Books: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 
"They were having the shivers. It was a good, warm feeling."

an easter bunny


From Gloria Steinem & Kathleen Hanna

AL

Arnold Lobel obituary

then & later

a poem read for the first time by a girl in high school

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

a poem read for the first time by a person in her mid-thirties on easter morning

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

~~~~

happycreepyeastercards

Food

Happyhighschoollunchtime
High school students enjoy lunches by Le Cordon Bleu chef...

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Hellooo...lunch

Frog and Toad books are tremendous. Stories like "Dragons and Giants" and "The Dream" might be the ones that have stuck with me the most. (Not the titles, but certain passages and illustrations.) I've been told that doing this volunteer tutoring thing might not be possible for much longer because of some kind of requirement having to do with just working with adults or possibly tutoring the parent to help the kid instead...what? I don't understand that, but anyways, this kid thanked me for those books as if I were the one giving them to him, and that was sweet. I would like to post an illustration or two, but I didn't check the book out because it was for the kid. I really should own it.

Instead...
http://www.d123.org/covington/kogean/documents/FrogToadTogether.pdf
(A pdf with the stories, but sadly missing the wonderful illustrations)

Also, blog posts:
http://cabinorganic.com/2011/10/19/frog-toad-honoring-my-mentors/
http://addlepated.net/blog/archives/1558

Hah. "I had this book when I was a kid, and I remember that there was something deeply, deeply disturbing about it, to the point that I didn’t like reading it even while I had some unhealthy fascination with it. So I seized the chance to read it today, wondering just what it was that upset me so when I was little." (from "addlepated")

poor jane


nailed down by her dress
poor jane's almanac

Friday, March 29, 2013

Does she count USMA?

Well, I guess it's not the same as the other kinds of schools...

"A study released last week by researchers at Harvard and Stanford quantified what everyone in my hometown already knew: even the most talented rural poor kids don’t go to the nation’s best colleges. The vast majority, the study found, do not even try."

"If top colleges are looking for a more comprehensive tutorial in recruiting the talented rural poor, they might take a cue from one institution doing a truly stellar job: the military."

--The Ivy League Was Another Planet

Animated nun illustration

From here
Inspired by Burdick

The animation

To read

Eslanda
Eleanor & Park
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi


From Whole Earth Provision Co.


DARN

I cannot seem to locate  a clip from The Sisters where it shows how they used Oh My Darlin' Clementine in it.

Consoling self with...



and


~~~~~

hmmmm

From & Co.

By T. Duncan from Clementine & Olive
From fanpop
From Folk Den
From heartandbonebreaker

Clementine Chapel from St. Peter's Basilica
Clementine Candle - chemistry.about
From The Bitten Word
From Shoot To Cook
From thepleasuremonger
From Pooks Pantry
From Recycle Reuse Renew Mother Earth

Oh, little distracting side videos...

singing The Impossible Dream
who or what is the meaning of Gomer Pyle?

Mewseekah 1/2 a decade later

From here
Same car, same CD player, many of the same CDs, different roads...

The pink's no flower at all, it fades away too soon.
The violet is too pale a bloom, I think I'll wait till June


Except for In My Prime and a few others, many Heaven's Dust songs are now online...

Starlight in Daden
Ditama
Sister
Taksim
Venus and One

poetic travail

Cow goddess
Holi colors
Lemonicks

moo





isn't it nostalgic...

... girdles...


From http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davesplace/fitting.htm

~~~~~

"But why should I be bothering with this sausage casing when I weigh a grand total of a hundred and two pounds?

I bother because being thin has nothing to do with it. A girdle is a symbolic garment, and unless I want to be regarded as a child or a slut I have to put it on. When I go out with girlfriends in the daytime, I may choose to be more comfortable in only a garter belt, a device with four long, wiggly elastics that dangle down my thighs like hungry snakes lunging at my stockings. When I'm with a boy, however, it would be unthinkable--it would be downright indecent-to let him see my rear end jiggle or let him notice that it has two halves. (All males are called "boys," no matter what their age, so long as they're single.) My backside is supposed to be molded in a rigid piece that divides into two legs, like a walking clothespin.

Besides, if don't wear a girdle every day, the older girls warn me, I'm going to "spread." Spreading is somehow related to letting my flesh hang loose, which is in turn related to the idea of the "loose" woman, and none of us wants to be considered loose. A man doesn't buy a cow if he can get milk for free, our mothers tell us in dire tones."


-- Joan Gould, "Binding Decisions"

http://www.wvup.edu/rphillips/Binding%20Decisions.pdf

tissus roses

In crowds of young people lately, have been noticing a diffusion of Love Pink t-shirts.

From Daily Mail online

Choices of some, choices of some...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

attentionsuck...

These are oddly fascinating...it's like these people were all just doing this stuff yesterday...must go to bed...
Bette Davis Bloopers (I want to see The Sisters)
Breakdowns of 1941, Part 2
Breakdowns of 1936
Time. Marches on.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

A place

A Fairy Tale ~ Ivan Kap
Found at SarahMcCoy.com

What awaited

in the inboxes of some:

Vancouver Woman Complains...

Willa Cather's Ghost...

Man Engaged To My Little Pony...

~~~~~
Jezebel reminds me that my first impression of Bette Davis was always from Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. I can barely remember anything about it.

Some adults: "Girls! You must watch this classic movie on TV!"

Therefore, I cannot quite visualize the young temptress in lieu of....
~~~~~

Spoiled, strong-willed New Orleans belle Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) is engaged to banker Preston 'Pres' Dillard (Henry Fonda). In retaliation for Pres refusing to drop his work and accompany her while she shops for a dress, she orders a brazen red one for the most important ball of the year, one where white dresses for unmarried women are expected. All of Julie's friends are shocked, but no one can convince her to give up her whim.

At the Olympus ball, every woman on the floor is dressed in white. Pres and Julie's entrance is met with shock and disdain by all present. She finally realizes the magnitude of her social blunder and begs Pres to take her away, but by this time, he is implacable. He forces her to dance with him. All the other dancers leave the floor, finally leaving them alone. When the orchestra stops playing at the instruction of one of the ball's sponsors, Pres orders the conductor to continue. Pres and Julie finish the dance alone, with the assemblage looking on.

Afterwards, Pres takes his leave of Julie, implicitly breaking their engagement.
From Wikipedia

How dare you wear red.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

hee hee

a: so my friend was telling me about blah blah really nice trip to the forest and everything covered in snow blah blah she started shivering blah blah blah really nice friend who started sniffling and blah blah blah eyes wet blah blah blah said "i can't believe i didn't realize how cold u were!" blah blah blah so when was the last time u cried were u like four or something?
b: i cry in secret about the amount of money u make

f-l-o-a-t-i-n-g h-e-a-d i-n s-n-o-w

dear internet youtube video I have only watched 'til second 8, will you pleeease stop distracting me from my important homework, which is fantasizing that I am swimming in a heated swimming pool in a Precious Moments themed hotel in the midwest that has been decorated for Christmas while fantasizing about the big Victorian family I might have had in a past life after fantasizing about a fairy man or woman who will make all of my debt evaporate...

Friday, March 22, 2013

Educational background noise

Open course on financial markets
Something to listen to while cleaning

Breaking news

Upstairs neighbor locks herself out, and I discover that the English literature curriculum for high school freshman has not changed very much in the past 20 years. Romeo & Juliet, Of Mice and Men, and (of course) Lord of the Flies!

Current mood: pensive and thinking about how very young high school people are.

Before & after...

The comparison enticed me to check out the book.


"After" ~ Front Yard Gardens: Growing More Than Grass
"Before" ~ Front Yard Gardens

Oh hey

There's a commercial with Fallin' by Connie Francis featuring people just fallin' into their clothes.



This has been true sometimes

How great a sugary, carbonated beverage can taste, in certain situations.

Pop Legends say "Things Go Better with Coke"
~~~~~
Thirst asks nothing more ~ 1938

Superweird...

The people in the picture for this article almost have my stove! Except my stove burners have flames. But I think it might be electric, but it has flames? If that's possible? Maybe my stove is better, i.e. will work if there is a power outage? Or no? I think I should know this.

"The number of suburban residents living in poverty rose by nearly 64 percent between 2000 and 2011, to about 16.4 million people, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of 95 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. That’s more than double the rate of growth for urban poverty in those areas."

"The rate of poverty among single mothers actually improved dramatically through the 1990s, thanks to a strong economy, more favorable tax breaks and the success of so-called welfare-to-work programs. But two recessions and years of high unemployment erased many of those gains."

--Sprawling and struggling

X to Y to Z

"The insane amounts of money in so-called amateur athletics and the greasy desire of adults in charge of cash-strapped universities to get their share also must bear responsibility for rape culture in the locker room. They have created a system where teenage NCAA athletes can’t be paid for what they produce, so they receive a different kind of wage: worship. Adults treat them like heroes, students treat them like rock stars, and amidst classes, club meetings and exams, there exists a gutter economy where women become a form of currency. You’re a teenager being told that you are responsible for the economic viability of your university and everything is yours for the taking. This very set-up is a Steubenville waiting to happen.

If people think that this doesn’t translate to high school, they’re wrong. I spoke with Jon Greenberg, an ESPN journalist and also a graduate of Steubenville High. He describes a school “with a pretty high poverty rate” that was still able to get state funds to build “a swimming pool, a new on-campus gym, cafeteria and more.” The dynastic “Big Red” football program drove those changes. As Greenberg says, “The football players themselves, at least in my experience, weren’t treated as heroes or above the law, but the team itself was put on a pedestal, especially when they were good…. There are some very good people who played Big Red football and coached football. But there needs to be some changes, most importantly a very serious seminar, for all male students, on the definition of rape and similar curriculum.”

 
In thinking about Steubenville, thinking about my own experiences playing sports, thinking about athletes I’ve interviewed and know, I believe that a locker room left to its own devices will drift toward becoming a breeding ground for rape culture. You don’t need a Coach Reno or a Bob Knight to make that happen. You just need good people to say or do nothing. As such, a coach or a player willing to stand up, risk ridicule and actually teach young men not to rape, can make all the difference in the world. We need interventionist, transformative coaches in men’s sports that talk openly about these issues. We need an economic setup in amateur sports that does away with their gutter economy. But most of all, we need people who recognize the existence of rape culture, both on and off teams, to no longer be silent."

--Dave Zirin "The Verdict"

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Recently read parts of

a short story called Sea Oak (I love that title) and maybe will read the whole thing...
~~~~
"FOR DINNER JADE MICROWAVES some Stars-n-Flags. They're addictive. They put sugar in the sauce and sugar in the meat nuggets. I think also caffeine. Someone told me the brown streaks in the Flags are caffeine. We have like five bowls each."

Yes, I am.

FB player

People like this guy make me think that I might try and see why my sister and some others are such great fans of football: Donald McPherson

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

A literary Henrietta

"Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out her hand and grasped his arm. ‘Look here, Mr. Goodwood,’ she said; ‘just you wait!’

On which he looked up at her — but only to guess, from her face, with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience."

~Henry James

Fuller passage found at Berezina, or The Unibrow

Tired is as tired does or thinks or something...

I guess this:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/petition-demands-cnn-apologize-for-disgusting-steubenville-r
might be referencing this:
http://open.salon.com/blog/tellingtosca/2013/01/30/ryan_romo_is_off_the_hook_in_dallas_rape_case
~~~~~
How the internet revolutionized campus anti-rape activism
So you're tired of hearing about rape culture?
More tired of it happening...

It's a curious fact of life

That this

College Basketball Star Heroically Overcomes...

found because of this

Petition Demands CNN Apologize...

made me wonder (again) about how some political figures and athletes come to make the choices and decisions that they make.

Big Topic.

~~~~~

Found a poem: Guante - "Action"

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

music&film

Last night, this song was like, play me!
Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel

As I watched the video, I thought, well. This is simply scandalous.
SCAAANDAAAL.

I looked at SCAAANDAAAL in my head, and that made me think of
Nude Nuns With Big Guns
which I have not seen.

"Nude Nuns with Big Guns is a 2010 nunsploitation thriller film. The film was the subject of one of the largest copyright lawsuits in California.[2] The two lawsuits are the first time that two different companies claiming the intellectual-property rights of the same movie are each suing the same alleged 5,865 BitTorrent downloaders."
--Wikipedia

A world without sumac...

would be a sad world indeed!  The tabouli (was it just a coincidence that the Tabbouleh Song got stuck in my head a couple of hours before I went shopping? "First you take parsley from your sister / chop it up like hand of shoplifter...") tasted nice, but the balela positively enslaved my tastebuds. It seems that others also like it, and there's even been an attempt at recreating a recipe, which probably turned out pretty good, but I bet it could also use some sumac...

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Maquila Monologues

Montréal, February 22, 2011 – What don’t we know about the making of a pair of jeans?
Designed as a metaphor of a sewing assembly line, The Maquila Monologues is a play that tells the stories of four women workers in a denim jean maquila who struggle to survive, and of four other women obsessed to fit into a pair of pants size Extra Small. Combining physical performance, theater and poetry, the Mexican playwright and director Inti Barrios created the play based on testimonies from women that work in Mexico’s jeans and electronics export-led industries.

--Les monologues de la maquila

In the future, Inti would love to develop a global version of the play that includes workers' stories from Central America, India, and maybe China, given that the themes are so universally applicable.

--Inti Barrios profile, Maquila Solidarity Network

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Friday, March 08, 2013

Beautiful photography

While visiting a library this week, I noticed a lot of beautiful photography in last year's December edition of National Geographic. Not limited to, but including:

by Paolo Pellegrin in Gaza's Tunnels
by Robert Clark in North Sea Secrets
by Robert Clark in North Sea Secrets
by Carolyn Drake in Shamanist Revival

by Mike Nichols in Giants of the Forest

Also: Sequoia in a Snowstorm video

Sewing, and...

From Sewing Daisies
This is an online documentary I just started watching from an organization called STITCH:

Pushing Back: Women Workers Speak Out on Trade

Cool church picture(s)

From Sacred buildings' afterlives

Something for International Women's Day

From Cartoons By Women Around The World...

(Speaking of female cartoonists, I think I need to read this: Fat Cat Sat On The Mat. Those short vowels brought back a 1980s Watervliet memory surge. My teacher, Mrs. M (last name rhymes with "mean") got all the kids to laugh at my accent when I read the sentence, "Pat sat on the wall." Then, I tried to correct it with something that probably sounded like a British accent, and they only laughed harder. To be fair, I don't think the teacher actually liked the other kids all that much either. Apparently, I kept much of this treatment a secret from my mother at the time. She thinks the teacher didn't like me not only because of the slight southern accent, but also because I had better clothes than a lot of the other kids. (I didn't notice. I don't think they did either. They weren't the ones who picked on me, unless prodded and goaded by the teacher.) Thanks, educated, single, working, child support paying parents! Also, me and two bad boys were the only unCatholic kids who didn't go to special religion class after school during Lent. So if it weren't for us, I guess she could have had a room full of peace and quiet, all to herself. Auuugh! And also, hungry field trip to the fire station memory! Did we ever get lunch? Anyways, I think I will try to find that book one of these days.)

Thursday, March 07, 2013

O, snowy places

Cascade Mountains in a 50 States of Winter Slideshow
Lake Michigan in a 50 States of Winter Slideshow

Tea cups

People having fun in tea cups.
From Jony54 on Wikimedia Commons

Optimism and Legislation

O Signs VAWA...

New requirements for colleges and universities...

Kind of weird

When you're sitting in a roomful of people and suddenly, the topic of discussion is fashion design blogs, and then the Triangle Shirtwaist Company disaster.
During a grammar lesson.
On fragments.
Because of a book.

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Blood orange before midnight

So here I am, not able to sleep, eating a blood orange at about a quarter to midnight.
The package says the blood orange was grown in California.
I wonder who picked it?
~~~~
A nighttime kind of song:
The Sky Is Broken

Found art (found online)

Coffee spilled on notebook becomes art

Saturday, March 02, 2013

Saturday Nite, March 2nd

Some songs that played on the way to the grocery store and other exciting things...

High School Lover
Push The Sky Away
Dead Golden West

"I'm sorry for these details
But that's how it was:"

-- "Fons Belli" by G. Gudding

medicine and income

Three random thoughts on medicine and income floating in my brain:

1) I read somewhere today that the most equality-minded, least sexist, well-paying job for both sexes is that of a pharmacist...

2) I was recently told about a situation in which juicing (not smoking/getting high off of) marijuana was very cost-effective and did wonders to help someone suffering from lymphoma...

3) A few months back, I watched a woman at a city planning meeting give a passionate speech about new regulations for massage parlours, which included her describing situations in which she's able to help sick people with certain conditions who can't afford to regularly go to a doctor, and bursting into tears because she feels she's had to constantly defend herself for many years against insinuations that she was doing some kind of prostitution-related work...

This song I'm gonna sing today

is for my favorite black sweater:
China
Why yes, that's where it was made, via the company of Ralph Lauren.
~~~~~
(That's a very interesting anecdote about his last name...
With my last name, a little comedian put the word "rape" in it.)
~~~~~
Omigosh...
RL & Downton Abbey

Funny Friday moments

While some of this made me laugh when I read parts of it aloud to someone else...

The Thrill...

I think it's this that literally made me screech when I first read it silently to myself...

“After all these years, the Huffington Man is finally a reality,” continued Baumgartner. “And he has a fairly harsh critique of this season of Downton Abbey.”

-- A.H. Unveils...

Friday, March 01, 2013

Caaats

The pope couldn't have a cat, but now he canNo wonder he resigned.

Part of a chart about a fire

Part of a chart from thinkreliability.com ~ 112 Killed In Garment Factory Fire

Auuugh

Maybe I should watch clips from these old black and white TV programs more often:

Father Knows Best -- Lesson In Citizenship

So, for today

I wonder who

--made the clothes that we're wearing
--picked the food that we're eating
--cleaned the bathrooms that we're using

And I also wonder, how come we don't seem to know the answers to these questions more often than we do?

Great Gatsby quote

Great quote from The Great Gatsby:

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

--The Great Gatsby on Wikiquote

It would be a kind of a bummer, though, to have this quote repeating itself over and over again in your head, in a tiresome loop.

Salad for breakfast

I'm encouraged when I read that there's this national movement that shows that people care about improving their health (eating right, exercising) and getting a good education:

“As I told these kids, I am them,” said the first lady. “So it is a very passionate thing for me because I think all of these kids are special. Every single one of them has the potential of being president or first lady but they’ve got to own their own power and start understanding that they’ve got to have control over the things they can control. And getting an education is one of those things.”

True, getting an education is important. But, in order to achieve that "education" part, might it not be better to drive down these kinds of statistics?

"In 2010, the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women "will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period," and that schools with more than 6,000 students 'average one rape per day during the school year.'"

I think that doing more to eliminate this sickness in our culture could do as much to help the brilliant woman who wishes to achieve the status of "First Lady" as it could to benefit the exceptional man who aspires to become the nation's first "First Gentlemen."