Interesting portrait, impressively presented without judgment: Marriage Fraud: An Intimate Portrait of a Green Card Marriage 

Difficult and important: Why Queers Should Care About Sex Offenders

NYTimes: A Conservative Case for Prison Reform

Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges. Interesting article about motivation and the difference between "self-compassion" and indulgence.

Image: Petrova Giberson, (as yet untitled), 2009.

I'm overdue for a visit to Portland, and missing it: Where to Take a Date for Cocktails in Portland, OR.

"Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!" - Henri-Frédéric Amiel (One version of the benediction at my home church. Missing the Ashland UCC a lot.)

“For me, queer theory is the emblematic example of how we say the value of what queer politics brings is a challenge to what is the normal. And it’s of course what that whole angst is about 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' and marriage equality. On the one hand, those are basic citizenship rights, right? You always know that there’s some second-class citizenship going on in military policy and marriage policy, right? If you’re looking for second-class citizenship, look in those things and you’ll often find it. So it’s a very reasonable set of political strategies, but the problem is also a very normative set of political strategies, right? It’s not about, 'We have a right to be queer and create different kinds of communities and different definitions of family.' It’s about, 'Look how much just like you we can be; look how respectable we can be, see; we can have our families look just like your families, and we can serve in the military just like you; and so look how straight we can be!' Rather than, 'Look how queer we can be and look at how valuable it is to take queerness and open up the very definition of what constitutes respectable and normal.'” - Melissa Harris-Perry

I finally finished reading "Gaudy Night" (originally published in 1935). While I liked the head-strong and marriage-wary protagonist a lot, I could never really get into the "mystery" and had a hard time keeping all the secondary characters straight. I'm glad to have read it, since Sayers is a classic, but I'm not sure I'll read another of her books. Now, a biography of her, that's an other story...

I'm now reading the novel "All This Talk Of Love," written by a friend of a friend. I went to a reading by the author last month and left wanting to know more about the family. So far the book does not disappoint - I started last night, kept reading this morning on my (now too short feeling!) commute, and am already on page 114.

Image: awesome comics artist whose work I love, Ramsey Beyer, donated custom drawings to anyone who donated money to her National Abortion Access Bowl-A-Thon. Since she is a fellow CrossFitter, I requested that mine be of a woman lifting...and this is the awesome drawing I just got in the mail! Money for a good cause, and a sweet drawing to boot, pretty good deal!

A Few Thoughts On The Youtube Trolls And Why It Really Is Okay To Be Fat And Visible. Great article about how trolling and harassment silence people, and why visibility matters.

The Importance of Sadness. "Despair is what happens when you fight sadness. Compassion is what happens when you don’t. It will not feel “good,” it will feel alive and this aliveness is the path to bliss."

Powerful power and story. Hard to believe it's been less than two months since that day: Fateful Boston Marathon Photo: Mass. General’s ER At 4:15 On 4/15