What a life: Lawrence Guyot, Civil Rights Activist Who Bore the Fight’s Scars, Dies at 73

Dorothy Day Takes Another Step Toward Sainthood. One of my favorite prayers is the one Dorothy Day used to say every day before heading to distribute food to those in need, something along the lines of (I can't seem to find the actual prayer): "God, I know you will be in that line today, please don't let me miss you." (Said more eloquently, I'm sure).

Image: truth.

So much good stuff to read in the Believer online archives, check it out.

From ZenHabits: Untrack: Letting Go of the Stress of Measuring.

Oh boy am I a measurer... Susan Sontag’s List of Beliefs at Age 14 vs. Age 24

Listening to: the Singles soundtrack. So f-ing solid! Westerberg, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam ("State of Love and Trust," one of my all time favs) , Chris Cornell....90's forever.

Sounds like a great new program in NY: Plan Would Provide Help to Contest Deportation Cases: "60 percent of detained immigrants in the New York region did not have counsel at the time their cases were completed. In addition, 18 percent of detained immigrants with representation had successful outcomes in their cases, compared with 3 percent of detained immigrants without counsel. Unlike in criminal proceedings, defendants in immigration court have no constitutional right to a court-appointed lawyer. Ignorance, fear, language barriers and poverty also can keep legal counsel out of the reach of immigrants."

"What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend." - Dorothy Day

Check out, and support if possible, a friend of a friend's new project: Life, Told, an oral history and interview start-up helping people record and preserve life stories, memories and important messages.

Random gift recommendation: I got my bff an Oregon cutting board (with a heart located over our hometown) as a gift a few years ago, and it remains one of my favorite things I've given. In fact, I'd love to buy one for myself some day! Check them out here if you're still searching for holiday presents.

Luther is coming back for Season 3! (Really hope that Idris Elba is the next Bond, love that idea...)

Image: Still full from yesterday's bounty? Help someone else feed their family and generate income - be a veggie garden! Love Oxfam's Unwrapped program: "You are what you give, so be all-natural, be food, and be income. Be a vegetable garden! $30 at OxfamGifts.com."

If you're in the Boston area, you should come check out Angela Y. Davis and Noam Chomsky in dialogue for the first time! I'm looking forward to it, I've never seen either of them speak.

From WNYC: "Rebeca Solnit, historian, activist, and author of several books including A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, discusses the history of how disasters create communities in the context of our post-Sandy reality-and what climate change activists should do now."

Loved this: "I've Started Telling My Daughters I'm Beautiful"

I've seen variations on the "run every day" project, but particularly liked this one committing to running every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It can be a stressful time of the year, and a chilly one, so it seems like a good time to push yourself to get moving. Maybe I'll give it a try, as long as I keep it reasonable and only commit to a minimum of a mile every day - doable, right? (Famous last words...)

More from Anne Lamott, I'm looking forward to reading her new book (although I just saw it in the bookstore and it's so short!)

Image: source.

Media intake update: just saw Argo and was really impressed! It didn't look particularly interesting to me beforehand but I heard so many rave reviews that I finally went (with my dad when he was in town this weekend - hi Dad!) and I'm glad I did. It was excellently cast, acted, and paced - and very suspenseful. On the podcast front, I've started listening to Slate's Culture Gabfest (thanks to the insistence of my media-saavy girlfriend), which has quickly joined the ranks of Pop Culture Happy Hour in my "listening to nerds talk about pop culture" line up. Books wise, I'm currently reading The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris, a mystery that was on the "staff recommendations" shelf at my local bookstore. It reminds me of some other first novels by young male mystery writers like Josh Bazell's Beat The Reaper (although The Hollow Man is less gory, so far). It's been pretty immediately engrossing, which is the main thing I ask of a book these days. On tv, we are fully engrossed in Season 2 of Homeland. The SNL spoof wasn't amazing, but if you're even a casual Homeland watcher (is there such a thing??) you'll get a few laughs.

I made (and proceeded to chow down on) this sweet potato and spinach mac and cheese recently, and loved it - recommended if you need an addition to your Thanksgiving line up (or general autumnal comfort food). Also, these double chocolate peppermint cookies that Amy made look amazing....

“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.” - Anne Lamott

"We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget." Joan Didion

REM "You Are The Everything" (skip to 0:55)

A friend introduced me to Jane Hirschfield a few weeks ago and it was just what I needed. I was feeling somewhat unmoored - new job, new city, new routine - and then I read these poems and was immediately and powerful thrown back into myself (for better or worse). Some new favorites by Hirshfield: A Hand, This Was Once A Love Poem.

Wevther: Weather forecast with relevant sartorial suggestions, I like it.

Image: source.

Exactly what it sounds like: The Scribble Project.

Listening to: The Lumineers "Stubborn Love" (a live recording from Oregon...sigh).

And speaking of the best state in the U.S.... Portland Street Food: 10 Carts We Really Love

The always awesome Stephen Thompson (of the vital-to-me Pop Culture Happy Hour) gives advice on mixtapes.

From the New Yorker: Love On The March: Reflections on the gay community’s political progress—and its future. Hardly a comprehensive history, but a moving and powerful personal remembrance.

"This could be our revolution: / to love what is plentiful / as much as / what’s scarce." - Alice Walker, "We Alone"

Umberto Eco on Lists and Making Infinity Comprehensible

Just finished reading the highly-recommended "Gone Girl." It pulled me in quickly and was definitely a compelling read, but I can't say it was entirely enjoyable...I look forward to discussing it with other friends who've read it.

Would love to see this: beautiful 100-foot long blue whale kite.

Heartbreaking. I don't know how anyone could consider his execution as an act of justice. Executing a victim of abuse: "Nation journalist Liliana Segura reports on Pennsylvania's drive to execute Terrance Williams, who was convicted as a juvenile for killing men who abused him."

Image: source.

"Kaiim Viera was born 18 years ago today. He grew into a six-foot-two teen who had a knack for getting folks to laugh even when they didn’t want to. A week and a half ago, he was shot 10 times and killed. WNYC is profiling the life of every child in the city killed by gunfire. This is Kaiim’s story."

“If you asked me to draw a picture of myself I’d draw two. One would be a portrait of a happy, self-confident, regular-looking woman and the other would be a close-up of a giant gaping mouth that’s ravenous for love. Many days I have to silently say to myself: It’s okay. You are loved. You are loved even if some people don’t love you.” - Dear Sugar

“Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.” - Flannery O’Connor

"A Colorlines.com investigation that found there is an estimated 5,100 children in foster care who face barriers to family reunification because their mother or father is in detention or has been deported."

From Bard professor Daniel Mendelson, Gay TV and Me: "How my life would be different if boys were kissing boys onscreen 40 years ago -- like they are today."

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Elton John on the price paid by HIV-positive prisoners

NPR: In Calif., Some Ex-Inmates Get Help In New Ways: "Under California's criminal justice realignment program, counties are taking over responsibility from the state for low-level felons. And that has affected how inmates with histories of mental illness move through the system even after they're released."

Boing Boing: Hand lettering the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" 

Interesting: "The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place. I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn't think I would get to work in television again."- Actor Mandy Patinkin, on why he "abruptly left" the CBS procedural after only two seasons. I've definitly been a long time fan of shows like Criminal Minds, Law & Order: SVU, etc, and have really conflicted feelings about their focus on crimes against women. Great to hear his impressions, via Shakesville.

“My deepest impulses are optimistic, an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.” - Ellen Willis

Detropia is getting tons of great press, and all of it deserved. One interview: Talking to Detropia Director Heidi Ewing

"For The Children" by Gary Snyder (thanks to my PIP for the recommendation!)

For my fellow mystery lovers: Agatha Christie essay published for the first time: "Long-lost piece, commissioned by the Ministry of Information to promote British crime fiction, finally available to UK readers"

Charles Bukowski, Arthur C. Clarke, Annie Dillard, John Cage, and Others on the Meaning of Life. From Annie Dillard: “We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house. According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By creating things, by thinking up new combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.”

From n+1, It Was Written: Books by Rappers

Image: source.

Yum! Fall comfort food (which I'm, truthfully, in the mood for every season): Baked Sweet Potato Fries with Parmesan & Cilantro, Stuffed Shells With Butternut Squash, Spinach & Ricotta, Baked Kale Mac-and-Cheese.

From Mental Floss, the history behind a song I love: Music History #7: “Hurricane”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” ― David Foster Wallace, This is Water

Food, faith, pain, and communion. From the Paris Review Small, Good Things: Poetry and still life as one.

From the Hon. Nancy Gertner, The Media's Reporting On Justice Is Criminal

Image: from Tugboat Press.

From Guernica: Hipstamatic Revolution: "Avoiding the simplistic narratives of Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism, photographers use photo-apps to represent everyday Africa."

“War/Photography”: A New Look at the World in Conflict Looking forward to reading Junot Diaz's new book.

Grantland is killing it with their (mostly snarky, sometimes earnest) monthly recaps of the NYTimes Vows (including the most Vows-y Vows ever)

From the AV Club: TV Roundtable: Law & Order: Slave to formula, or crackling entertainment?

“Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them — all the way through.” - Richard Rohr

SFGate: The crime of punishment at Pelican Bay State Prison: "Three strikes law sent man who robbed an empty house to prison for 25 yrs. He's spent 16 years in solitary confinement."

Ha: Anthropology is the worst college major for being a corporate tool, best major to change your life

The AV Club's year by year history of hip hop continues: Hip-Hop And You Do Stop. This week, 1992 and Arrested Development.

Image: source.

If you're even a casual enjoyer of poetry, I'd encourage you to subscribe to Poetry 180, a "poem a day" project aimed at high schoolers. I love getting a new poem in my inbox every morning (they are on Day 6 today).

From Jacobin: Designing Culture: Design plays a central role in cultural reproduction. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, for anyone.: "This is a big deal because one of the main ways that people are socialized is through using, observing and contemplating material objects. The idea that people learn their places in society by engaging with the physical stuff around them has a long history in anthropology..."

From Nat Geo: Criminal Defense: And Justice For All.

"To live in this world / you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go." - Mary Oliver

WaPo: Communal gardening helps refugees sink roots in a new land

Listening to: The Milk Carton Kids On Mountain Stage. Prepare to get your heart broken by "Michigan" and "New York."

Image: source.

The Path of Freedom is a short film (available online) that “enters the harsh environment of a Rhode Island men’s prison where a group of fifty inmates are transforming their lives through the practice of meditation."

Reporting Poverty: Emily Brennan interviews Katherine Boo: "Following three years of research in an Indian slum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist discusses what language can’t express, her view that nobody is representative, and the ethical dilemmas of writing about the poor."

Locked Up Without a Key in New Orleans: the first of a three article series on the public defender shortage, and the failed promise of Gideon v. Wainwright.

We Shall Overcome: The Problem With the Body-Love Therapeutic Narrative: "Problematizing something essentially human—cognizance of our own bodies—and framing it as something that we must overcome leaves little room for a woman’s relationship with her body or appearance that doesn’t fit into this construct. That is, at the same time that the therapeutic narrative of the body gives us language we can use to relate to others, it also defines the language we’re expected to use."

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.” - Raymond Carver

Love letters by Iris Murdoch

Listening to: Avett Bros' new album The Carpenter, streaming on NPR. (Review by the always awesome Stephen Thompson of PCHH - "The Avetts' music aims for something bigger than itself, and damned if it doesn't find it.")

Also listening to: The Head and The Heart "Rivers & Roads" (The Doe Bay Sessions), and "Down in the Valley" (Live on KEXP)

Image: source.

Apparently this is the year that my favorite novels get made into movies; first, Cloud Atlas, now, Midnights Children. Not sure that I'll see either.

From Human Rights Watch, the effects of a failed drug policy, here and abroad. "Blacks, whites commit drug offenses at similar rates, but black men 10 times as likely to be jailed"

Finally got around to reading this, glad I did: Queer, Interrupted by Tegan Eanelli "Redemption is not to be found in the unfolding of capitalist time, but instead in its forceful interruption. Against the dogma that it gets better, we have to understand that queerness was not built on a linear progression through adversity, but was fought for against a progression which would have eliminated it."

“There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.” ― David Foster Wallace

I really appreciated this article, and it's got some good links: Going Public With Depression.

As I Lay Frying: donuts & literary quotes, so, sure.

Like these: NY in 50 Objects, and BBC's The History of the World in 100 Objects.

Sort of a silly title, but a good article about our consumption of cheap clothing and cotton: Are Your Skinny Jeans Starving the World? "The cotton that feeds our appetite for fast fashion is taking up room that could be used for food crops."

On Friday, I went  to see the Barr Bros and Brandi Carlisle at Britt. I didn't know much about Brandi Carlisle when I saw her last year at Britt as an opener for Ray LaMontagne, but she blew me away (and blew Ray out of the water as a performer). Both acts were incredible this time. I'm sorry to say that the Barr Bros album does not do them justice - I'll have to look for some live recordings. Random assortment: Brandi covering "Creep," playing "That Wasn't Me" (one of the most amazing songs about addiction I've ever heard), and "Keep Your Heart Young." For some reason, none of the videos I found showed what an awesome, rock n roll performer she is, but she was non stop energy, and did a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that had even my mom pumping her fist.

Check out Immigrant Nation, the new project from filmmaker Theo Rigby: "An interactive project where you can watch powerful short documentaries, then create and share your own immigration story." I had the luck to see him screen his film Sin Pais (Without Country) at the ashland independent film fest in 2011, and have used it ever since for outreach & educational purposes. It's a great short film, and I'm always interested to see what he will do next.

“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” ― Flannery O'Connor

Book covers that appear in The Royal Tennenbaums.

From The Awl: The Rise And Fall Of Grunge Typography

Love it - what could be more American? Dream Act Activists Push Into Mainstream With American Protest Movement Tactics 

Image: source.

Video: The Invisible Bike Helmet

Soup recipes make me excited for fall. And that's good, because in less than a month, I'm moving back to Boston; few places do fall better than New England. Yep, after 2+ years back in my small-town, rural Oregonian home, east coast city life is calling. I'll be arriving out there Sept 18th and starting my new gig on Oct 1st. Thanks for all the encouragement and support, friends and fam - you all are the best.

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.” - Jack Kerouac

Top 5 Motown Singles: 1965 and the AV Club's Guide to the Musicof Motown

Maira Kalman on thinking, feeling, walking

Image: source.

The Believer interview with Richard Rorty (old, but new to me)

Photos of San Francisco's independent bookstores, new and used. Mmmm.

He Hit Send: On the Awkward but Necessary Role of Technology in Fiction

RIP David Rakoff: On Already Missing The Angry, Passionate Writing Of David Rakoff (by the wonderful Linda Holmes), and excerpts from his Fresh Air interviews.

This week is the week, y'all: Young Immigrants, in America Illegally, Line Up for Reprieve 

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.” ― Rebecca Solnit

TruthOut: Michelle Alexander on the Irrational Race Bias of the Criminal Justice and Prison Systems

Gut-wrenching, heartbreaking.... From WBEZ: The weight of the city's violence, on one school principal, A principal reflects on the last 13 months: 27 current or former students shot, 8 dead.

Image: source.

"Reporter Julia Scott spent time with three people who ended up living on the streets of San Francisco after losing their homes. Scott brings their stories to this episode of American Public Media’s Marketplace, exploring the correlation between losing a job and the “downward spiral” into homelessness."

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” - James Baldwin

Worth a repeat appearance: “If you are a woman. If you are a Person of Colour. If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you’re a person of size, if you’re a person of intelligence, if you’re a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it’s gonna be really hard to find messages of self-love, and support anywhere, especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror, and you think, ‘Ugh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly,’ don’t you know that’s not your authentic self, but that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard-earned money and spend it on some turnaround cream that doesn’t turnaround shit. When you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote. You will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution. And our revolution is long-overdue.” - Margaret Cho

Get it, girl. "Last week, after the BCC aired a documentary about British Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith and her teammates, dudes on Twitter responded with some highly original quips about the athletes not being feminine enough. (Yep, people actually still say things like, “Now piss off back to the kitchen and make your boyfriend a sandwich he’s hungry.”) The 18-year-old Smith gave them the “verbal kicking they deserved” on her blog:

As Hannah pointed out earlier, we don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence. 


Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble."

source: Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith speaks for us all when she tells sexist trolls we don’t care if you don’t find us attractive

From Mother Jones: Plant Tomatoes. Harvest Lower Crime Rates. "Looking at Schiffer's photos and talking with people involved in urban farming, I've come to realize that their efforts have less to do with providing healthy food than they do with a reclamation of sorts, taking ownership of their community and their daily lives...  There's been a growing body of research that suggests that urban farming and greening not only strengthen community bonds but also reduce violence." [photos & text]

Image: source.

Dying of laughter. Also, maybe in love with this man: Dramatic Readings of Yelp Reviews: 1-Star Review of Stratford Diner by Dan B

From The Atlantic: What My Son's Disabilities Taught Me About 'Having It All': "Because of her child's problems, the author will never have a tidy, peaceful life. But none of this keeps her from being happy -- as long as she asks herself the right questions." (I feel like the title and summary aren't perfect fit for the article but...it's not super long, and it's definitely worth the read.)

From Salon: Not Here: ‎"Were we serious—truly serious—about making the civil massacre disappear, having it become, like the amok, nothing more than an antiquated curiosity, the history of the amok tells us precisely what to do: divest evil of its grandiosity or mythic resonance by completely banalizing it." (The article also includes some interesting notes on superheroes and their role in American culture.)

Oakland Leads Way as Restorative Justice Techniques Enter Education Mainstream: "Restorative justice attempts to break the cycle of violence by addressing the underlying cause — often, a traumatic experience, such as physical or verbal abuse or witnessing a violent crime — and acknowledging the emotional impact of such trauma on young people. Through active communication, young people in restorative justice programs have been able to overcome their violent impulses." (I'm going to a restorative justice training later this month, really excited about it!)