Thank god for love like this, for people like this: A Natural History of My Marriage by Jill McDonough

Just watched the wonderful documentary, We Were Here: "We Were Here documents the coming of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed. It offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through, and responded to, the onset of AIDS. It opens a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notions of what transpired in those years. It provides insight into what society could, and should, offer its citizens in the way of medical care, social services, and community support."

Image: source. The power of prayer...

On point: Why I Support Same Sex Marriage as a Civil Right, But Not as a Strategy to Achieve Structural Change

Terrible. A woman incarcerated for a crime she committed at 17, dies in prison, 44 years later: "Sharon Wiggins didn't want much: A walk down a city street, to sit in a car and listen to the rain, to have coffee with her sister, to wake up without someone observing her. These and other experiences that most people take for granted were out of Sharon's reach for the last 44 years. She had been a prisoner at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy since age 17. She always thought she would die in prison. And she did, Sunday, of a heart attack at age 62."

"Progressivism is a spectrum; it’s not an ideology following one leader saying one thing. It’s many people who have very wildly diverging opinions about many things. But, as progressives, if we could commit to a general frame of reference that we are about improving the quality of life for a lot more people, we’re about helping working and middle-class people, and we’re about taking care of poor people, we could really make some inroads in political power in this country. But, if we choose to be purists, if we choose to be arguing for a consensus we will never reach, for agreement on every point, it’s never going to happen." - Urvashi Vaid

It's rare that I say this about a New Yorker profile, but I thought Toobin's profile of Ruth Bader Ginsburg could've been twice as long. What a fascinating, inspiring person and career. (The article also made me think about feminism in a way I haven't in a while...but my thoughts are far from fully formed...)

A handy overview of the marriage equality cases coming up this month.

Image: Crater Lake, OR

Yo La Tengo covers The Supremes "Come See About Me." Not amazing, but I'll take any excuse to listen to this song.

The most recent "random band that I've never liked and now like all of a sudden" is R.E.M. I did get "Monster" for Christmas one year, and loved it, but I never got into the older stuff (despite the strident urgings of Sassy). Anyways, loving it: "Half A World Away,""You Are The Everything."

Currently reading: Against Equality's "Prisons Will Not Protect You." An excellent overview/primer of queer critiques of hate crimes legislation and the prison/immigration detention industry. (Since all the essays are brief and on the same topic, it gets a little repetitive and doesn't have the chance to get super in depth, but I still think it's a great resource and intro to these issues.) I'm also reading Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade.

Why is this song SO good?! I don't even mind that it's been stuck in my head for almost a week. (I've been throwing in the Matthew Sweet and Lemonheads covers as well, just to mix it up): The Stone Poneys (feat Linda Ronstadt) "Different Drum (1967)"

Feel like this could've been funnier but, still, pretty spot on: from The Onion: Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game Of ‘Big City’

Listening to: "Always Alright" Alabama Shakes, "I Knew You Were Trouble" (starts at min 2) Taylor Swift (and yes, I laughed too hard at the goat version), "Halah (live, 1994)" Mazzy Star.

(Image: shared via multiple people on Facebook, I'm not sure of the original source.) Happy International Women's Day!

I went to yoga this week for the first time in....I don't know, almost a year. It was amazing. Difficult and awkward and humbling and uncomfortable...and amazing.

On my "to read" this weekend: ACLU's report Prisoners of Profit: Immigrants and Detention in Georgia, Prof. Libby Adler's (got NUSL!) article Sex As A Team Sport: A Reaction to Hanna Rosins The End of Men," Prisoners' Legal Services of MA's white paper The Current State of Parole in Massachusetts. So much awesome work being done out there.

"I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least." - Dorothy Day (I think about this quote a lot - Dorothy Day, you set the bar so high!)

So proud of all the work my honey has done to help launch Oxfam's most recent campaign. Be an informed consumer - learn where your food is coming from, and where your money is going: "Behind the Brands is part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign to help create a world where everyone has enough to eat. Right now, nearly one in eight people on earth go to bed hungry . . . The Behind the Brands Scorecard assesses the agricultural sourcing policies of the world's 10 largest food and beverage companies [and] aims to provide people who buy and enjoy these products with the information they need to hold the Big 10 to account for what happens in their supply chains." (And I LOVE the website! Just gorgeous.)

Amazing work done by the NAACP LDF and other orgs at the Supreme Court last week, defending voters rights. Love you, NK! 

Image: source.

I signed up last week for the Siskiyou Outback 15K in August - that's right, I'll be back running the trails of Mt. Ashland this summer! I can't wait to visit home...Only wish I was badass enough to bust out 50K...

(Trigger warning for domestic violence, child abuse) A photojournalist working on a project about the stigma associated with being an ex-convict captures startling photos of domestic violence. The whole series is powerful, managing to portray some of the isolation and tension leading up to abuse, and the aftermath suffered by the family.

Loved this post by my girl Amy. And one of the many things we share is a love of Anne Lamott: "But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home." - Anne Lamott

"The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research 'childhood.' There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises 'adolescence.' The feeling haunts people all their lives.

Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again..." - from Michael Chabon's NYRB article about Wes Anderson (thanks to mdr for the heads up!)