Where are you from? Part 4
Previously: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Where are you now? Is it home? Is it a place you can’t see your way to it being a home? Sometimes identifying a place as where you’re from isn’t just about your personal history there, your associations, and memories, and how well you know it, and [...]
...read moreWhere are you from? Part 3
Previously: Part 1 and Part 2. Who gets asked where they’re from? My mother is asked this all the time by strangers in the street. And she’ll answer, hesitatingly, with the country in which she lived prior to coming here, because that’s what people want to hear, satisfied they’ve correctly deduced her accent. (Or they’ll [...]
...read moreAbortion Provider Appreciation Day: Dr. Doug Laube of Wisconsin
Did you know that today is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day? Now you do. In honor of the occasion, I interviewed Dr. Doug Laube, an outspoken abortion provider from Wisconsin. Dr. Laube first started providing abortions in 1974 — one year after it became legal. I asked Dr. Laube what brought him to this perspective — [...]
...read moreWhere are you from? Part 2
Previously: Part 1. Just asking some questions by way of bringing the thinking behind where one might be from to light… How do you figure “fromness”? If you’re ever asked where you’re from, how do you answer? Is it a matter of… where you are? where you’re a citizen? where you identity as someone who [...]
...read moreWhere are you from? Part 1
I want to begin a project about, for lack of a term, what I’m calling “fromness”. That is, the sense that you belong somewhere, there is a beacon calling out to you, a sense of home. Perhaps you don’t have that sense, perhaps you crave it, perhaps you miss it, perhaps it doesn’t really figure [...]
...read moreReconsider Columbus Day
In the U.S., today is the National Observance of Columbus Day. While perhaps the least celebrated of all U.S. public holidays, its continued existence and observance is incredibly disturbing, as the video above by Reconsider Columbus Day notes. Transcript: The black and white video features a number of alternating unidentified individuals facing the camera and [...]
...read moreRaising the dead
originally published at What Tami Said I’ve been trying to raise the dead. With faded photographs, copied records, old death certificates, family hearsay and e-mails from long-lost cousins. I am an amateur family historian. And this is what I do. Here is one rule of resurrection. It is easier to bring a dead man to [...]
...read more
Tuesday True Blood Roundtable, “Everything is Broken”
Greetings, fangbangers. As per usual, Sally, Thomas, and I weigh in on Sunday’s episode below the cut, where there are spoilers, recriminations, and much discussion of eye candy. And now for the weather. Tiffany? TRIGGER WARNING: This recap includes discussion of rape and violence against women.
...read moreWe’ve come a long way, baby?
The other day, I woke up and threw on running shorts and a sports bra and went for a jog. I’m in Boston for the summer, so I headed towards the Common which takes me by Copley Square. There’s a big marble circle in the ground with all the names of the Boston Marathon winners [...]
...read moreSupporting Abortion from the Shadows
Over at The New York Times’ Magazine, Emily Bazelon has a must-read article on the future of abortion providers in America. There’s a lot to digest and think about in the piece, but for those of those familiar with the dismal statistics on abortion providers (a 1992 survey of OB/GYNs found that 59% of those [...]
...read moreGoogle Says the World Was Made, Made Pretty By Men
Like Frau Sally Benz, I was excited to see Frida Kahlo in all her beautiful, feminist glory on the Google homepage today – I love her! Then I had to ask the question I always ask: “How many women versus men has Google honored this way?” As often happens, the answer made me want to [...]
...read moreOscar Grant, Audre Lorde, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the question of loving our enemies.
[Trigger Warning: discussions of sexual assault and deadly State force.] Love your enemies. For feminists, is there any phrase more terrifyingly reactionary? Love your enemies. Even the one who assaults you in private and reaps accolades as a brilliant community organizer in public. (One of my mom’s former boyfriends.) Love your enemies. Even the ones [...]
...read more
Recent Comments