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!)

Yes: Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer, from Dean Spade.

Great article from Jessica Valenti, She Who Dies With the Most 'Likes' Wins?: "The truth is that we don’t need everyone to like us, we need a few people to love us. Because what’s better than being roundly liked is being fully known—an impossibility both professionally and personally if you’re so busy being likable that you forget to be yourself."

Image: shot I took today near my office! City life has it's charms....

I'll admit it, I'm behind - tons of articles in the "to read" column right now, among them: What Is a Good Life? by Ronald Dworkin (RIP), everything on this list of 15 essays by female writers that everyone should read; and, the Nation article on Elaine Scarry (who I haven't read since my "Anthro of Political Violence" class in college, but remember liking).

We braved the horrendus weather and went to the ICA about a week ago to see this exhibit (This Will Have Been: Art, Love &  Politics in the 1980s) - good stuff.

I support this! Massachusetts - Radio ON! "Please call your rep now and ask her or him to call Rep. Marty Walsh's office to sign on to co-sponsor HD3506: An Act designating the song “Roadrunner” as the official rock song of the Commonwealth."

We ran the Hyannis Half Marathon yesterday - cold, wet, and full of coughing! But, still, it felt incredible to run 13.1 again, and, of course, sent me signing up for more races as soon as I got home...

"I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity." - Howard Zinn

Watch/listen. Get sad, get angry, get active: The Truth About Angry Feminists: "We're not angry because we're feminists. We're feminists because we are sick and tired and so very frustrated that we have to repeatedly defend our desire for equal rights. Listen to this speech by Jessica Valenti and just try not to get a little bit angry too. At 1:56 find out the annoying question every feminist gets asked, at 7:00 things get emotional in a good way, and at 7:44 you don't want to miss it when she basically "drops the mic" and answers that annoying question with an even better one."

Are you involved in non-profit fundraising? Check out my awesome friend Nikki's new blog, Collaboraisers.

Image: source.

Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community by Kenneth T MacLeish: "Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic. "Making War at Fort Hood" is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America's most recent wars."

Reading: the article The Perverse Logic of Immigration Detention: Unraveling the Rationality of Imprisoning Immigrants Based on Markers of Race and Class Otherness by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Thank goodness I'm getting back into CrossFit just in time to be sucked in by all the awesome Open/Games videos...

Why Are Conservatives Trying to Destroy the Voting Rights Act?

A Reader's War, by Teju Cole: "Assassinations should never have happened in our name. But now we see that they endanger us physically, endanger our democracy, and endanger our Constitution. I believe that when President Obama personally selects the next name to add to his “kill list,” he does it in the belief that he is protecting the country. I trust that he makes the selections with great seriousness, bringing his rich sense of history, literature, and the lives of others to bear on his decisions. And yet we have been drawn into a war without end, and into cruelties that persist in the psychic atmosphere like ritual pollution."

I don't love all the Notes from the Universe emails, but sometimes they hit home: "For every unexpected bump, turn, or squiggle on the path of life . . . you pretty much have two choices: Accept it as if you yourself had meticulously planned it and as if you're being watched by 10,000 cheering angels who love you so much, you're pretty much all they ever sing about. Or, accept it, kicking and screaming, as if it were some freak accident or random mistake that had befallen you by chance. I know which I would choose."

From the NYRB, Wes Anderson’s Worlds by Michael Chabon

Difficult article to read, difficult topic(s) to discuss, but worth considering. The Science of Sex Abuse: Is it right to imprison people for heinous crimes they have not yet committed?

This looks like a powerful documentary about the incredibly violent homophobia rampant in Jamaica. I'm working on an asylum claim for a young gay Jamaican man right now, and I've been shocked by the news and human rights reports. Please support the film-makers efforts if possible.

Image: source.

Delia*s! Is there any thing more 90's?? I can still remember the dog-eared and highlighted pages of the catalogues - and placing orders over the phone or, gasp, by mail!

Recently added to the "to read" list: All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani. I went to a reading from this book (the author is a friend of a friend) and it was just wonderful. I left thinking about the story, and wondering what was going to happen with all the characters. Looking forward to reading it.

I just finished reading If I Never See You Again by Niamh O'Connor, an Irish mystery author. While it was not the most skillfully written book, by the end I was surprised to see that I was actually pretty curious to find out "whodunnit" and also even a bit emotionally involved in the private life of the protagonist. I have the sequel on loan from a friend, and I look forward to hopefully reading it over this upcoming snowy weekend.

From a sermon given by the Rev. Pam Shepherd at my "home church" in Ashland last week: "Fear not. Fear not. I want this sermon to give you courage to live the life God calls you to. It’s because I have come to love you so much, I don’t want you to miss it. You see, I know, from my own life, that when we listen for God’s still, small voice, and at least try to follow God’s strange call, we are given a life so much larger and more alive than the life we would choose on our own.

Fear Not. Keep listening. And ask for God’s help. Not for God to further your plans, but that you might enter God’s plans. And then trust you will be given the life God calls you to. Here’s the simplest way I know to live God’s hope for you. Just ask for it. Just say your prayers, and then get dressed and show up for your life, just as it is now. And assume that whatever happens next is God’s good will for you."

Maureen Corrigan celebrates Jane Austen's 'Pride And Prejudice' At 200

Two good articles on "rape culture," gender, masculinity, and empathy - from Ms: Thinking About the Steubenville Rape and Raising a Son, from Feministing: Gender and empathy: Men shouldn’t need to “imagine if it were your wife/ daughter/mother”

Image: “Standing Tall Amid the Glares” by Paul Schutzer: "Lewis Cousins, age 15, the only African American student in the newly desegregated Maury High School, standing alone. 1959, Norfolk, VA."

Stream the new Frightened Rabbit "Pedestrian Verse" here (thanks, honey!)

Forty Years Of Prison Work Detail, Through The Lens Of Paul Kwilecki

I thought this was really interesting - the chance to get away from the feeling that if you're feeling anxiety or sadness it means something is "wrong," or the idea that the ideal life is one free from discomfort: Stop Chasing Happiness (and a Better Moment) and Discover Lasting Contentment Right Now

After more than 3 months off, I started CrossFit again this week. It was hard to go back, because I knew I was going to face being a lot weaker than I had been last time I stepped into a box, but it feels amazing to be back lifting heavy and pushing myself. Only two classes in and I feel more "me." Stronger, more energetic, and more proud of myself. It's super expensive here in Boston compared with back in Oregon, and I miss my home gym (RVCF!) so much, but I'm realizing this is what I need to do to get back where I want to be, physically and mentally.

"I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick.' It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm." - James Thurber

I'm going through some kind of 70's thing, musically. First it was Neil Young, now it's Fleetwood Mac...

Listening to: Red Hot Chili Peppers "By the Way & Scar Tissue (Live at Slane Castle)." What can I say, I love Anthony Kiedis. (Um, also listening to: "Drunk On You" Luke Bryan. Country love forever.)

Image: source.

Beautiful: You Are Going to Die. (Thanks, Amy, for the link!)

Interesting upcoming two-day conference, for those in the Boston area: "Recognizing, Addressing, and Assessing: GLBT Communities and Domestic Violence"

I'm just back from a really lovely weekend in DC with my girlfriend, seeing her old stomping grounds. I was surprised by how exciting it was to see all the famous memorials and monuments - I didn't know I had that patriotic/history dork part of me, but it was great! One of the spots we hit up was the National Museum of American History, where we saw a great exhibit: Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 and the March on Washington, 1963.

While we were in DC, we also went to Kramer Books, which was such a dreamy bookstore. Basically, everything there seemed to be something from my "to read" list. I picked up Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement 1954-63 by Taylor Branch, which is volume 1 of a trilogy I've been wanting to read for a while. It will likely be a multi-year undertaking, but I'm looking forward to it. Of course I have to have a mystery going too - luckily, my girlfriend's mom is a fellow mystery buff, and lent me If I Never See You Again by Niamh O'Connor, the first I've read from this author.

NYMag: Why You Truly Never Leave High School

From the BBC: Johnny Cash and his prison reform campaign

Photo Essay: Meet New York’s Loyal Public Library Patrons

"Refugee Hotel is a collection of photography and interviews that documents the arrival of refugees in the United States. Stabile’s images are coupled with testimonies from people describing their first days in the U.S., the lives they’ve left behind, and the new communities they’ve since created."

Image: beautiful new years resolutions from emilja frances.

From Oxfam: 7 photos that reveal what families eat in one week: "In a new series of photos, families worldwide pose with one week’s food supply."

This book looks interesting: Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (reviewed in the LARB) 

Listening to: having a Neil Young moment recently, and listening to "Harvest" at work a lot.

True heroes: Inside Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic: "Mississippi used to have 14 abortion clinics. Now there is one. If you visit it, here are some of the people you might meet."

RIP Jayne Cortez: "And if we don’t fight / if we don’t resist / if we don’t organize and unify and / get the power to control our own lives / Then we will wear / the exaggerated look of captivity / the stylized look of submission / the bizarre look of suicide / the dehumanized look of fear / and the decomposed look of repression / forever and ever and ever / And there it is" - "There It Is"

I just started reading "The Sisters Brothers." It had appeared on so many lists from reliable book-recommending sources, but just didn't appeal to me (Westerns aren't really my thing). However, I borrowed a friends copy and was immediately engrossed. The chapters are super short (one or two pages) so I kept thinking, "OK, just one more...." It's always nice to be excited about a book.

Image: source.

There might be hope for me yet! After moving to Boston about four months ago and throwing myself into a new (and very difficult) job and sort-of-newish city and life, my once super active and healthy lifestyle took a hit. No more 2-hour lunch time workouts or beautiful bike commutes to work. No more leisurely Sundays cooking lunches for the week (or afternoons to spend blogging). It's been a huge a change. Anyways, I'm fighting back against the winter doldrums and the new routine, and this weekend was, I hope, a turning point - after not running more than 4 miles at a time in over 4 months, I pushed out 9! That's almost double digits, folks. It was painful and I wouldn't have made it without my two running buddies, but it got done. It was part of our training for the Hyannis Half Marathon (at the end of February - brrrr), and now I've decided to start loading up the race calendar a bit so I don't lose momentum. I signed up for a trail half in April, and the BAA half in October. The healthy me is still in there somewhere...

I'll admit that I totally choked up at this lovely article - go Jesse!: The Jesse Mermell Story : Small Town Girl Makes Good In Brookline.

Even though this article was about one woman's divorce, an experience I've never had, I still found her thoughts on coping with loneliness really beautiful, practical, and helpful: How To Cope With Loneliness: A New Version of My Lonesome Self

"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." - James Thurber

The full script for Moonrise Kingdom is online, incorporating lovely stills and behind-the-scenes photos.

"None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine." - Pema Chödrön

Listening to: Wilco "I Must Be High" (live)

Relatable: Depression and Money, Some Real Talk.

Image: The Möbius structure of relationships, one of David Byrne’s hand-drawn pencil diagrams of the human condition.

Truth. From WNYC: Job Seekers With Criminal Record Face Higher Hurdles.

Reading, on the recommendation of Slate Culture Gabfest, at NYMag: The Self in Self-Help: "Try something. Better still, try everything—throw all the options at the occluding wall of the self and see what sticks. Meditation, marathon training, fasting, freewriting, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, speed dating, volunteering, moving to Auckland, redecorating the living room: As long as you steer clear of self-harm and felony, you might as well do anything you can to your inner and outer ecosystems that might induce a beneficial mutation."

"A woman’s beauty is supposed to be her grand project and constant insecurity. We’re meant to shellac our lips with five different glosses, but always think we’re fat. Beauty is Zeno’s paradox. We should endlessly strive for it, but it’s not socially acceptable to admit we’re there. We can’t perceive it in ourselves. It belongs to the guy screaming “nice tits”. . . Women's looks are supposed to be our salvations . . . But looks are an escape hatch to other places where they're no longer as important. Beauty is powerful because it is pleasing. Real power means not having to please." - from "The World Of A Professional Naked Girl"

From NPR: 'Black America's Law Firm' Looks To Big Cases With New Leadership. Go go NAACP Legal Defense Fund!

Image: yoko ono's 1996 cleaning piece.

Did you know that today is the anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood? Did you even know that was a thing?

Tegan & Sara cover The Rolling Stones' “Fool to Cry." (Also from Cover Me, the best cover songs of 2012.)  And, again, I'll say it: I need a Thermals show to thrash around at, ASAP: "I Let It Go" (or an acoustic version: "I Let It Go").  Bonus archival video from Daytrotter: Van Morrison "Don't Look Back Belfast (Belfast, Ireland) Feb 1, 1979"

"15 year old Noah St. John recounts a defining car ride with his two moms, and in the process earns the title of 'NPR Snap Judgment Performance of the Year.'" Incredible performance.

A nice interview with EB White (in spite of the fact he admits to not being a big reader). I thought this was interesting: "I was deeply impressed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It may well be the book by which the human race will stand or fall." True enough. (Also, the opening paragraph reminiscing about a visit to his farm is sweet.)

"The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most." - Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

Great read: Cold Turkey by Kurt Vonnegut (thanks, nk!)

Recently added to the "to read" list: A Life in Letters by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Night of the Gun by David Carr, Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders, Emma by Howard Zinn, A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed by David Barber, Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory by James Oliver Horton, Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974, and Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell.

Image: source.

KEXP: Shovels And Rope

Listening to: Wait, why is Taylor Swift so good at what she does? "I Knew You Were Trouble." OK, sure: Mike Doughty covers "Take Me Home, Country Roads." Beautiful: Phosphorescent, "Song for Zula." Ugh, damn: Ryan Adams, "Do I Wait (Live on KCRW)." Incredible, hopeful: Josh Ritter "Joy to You Baby" (I can already tell "In It's Tracks" is gonna be one of my 2013 albums).

"That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met." - Noam Chomsky

"As I walked I looked at the dark basalt hills, and at the cactus and shrubs and trees; all of them were in harmony with one another, and I felt within that beauty. In an instant I saw that even man-made things—the roll of old fence wire, the old rail ties withered by sixty years of the heat and sun—were in the light of that beauty. In that beauty we all will sink slowly back into the lap of the earth." - Leslie Marmon Silko

Recently finished 1222. The minor/side plot took a turn towards the completely ridicuous in the end, but overall I enjoyed the book. Now, in the midst of sickness, I turn to my ultimate comfort food: P.D. James, specifically The Lighthouse, an Adam Dalgliesh book. She's just so good.

I've been listening to BEST OF 2012 by Sasha Frere-Jones on Spotify. Clearly, however, I took a break and went back to 90's R&B for the weekly apartment cleaning. And then also some Montgomery Gentry, because, yeah.

Finally watched the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times (available on Netflix streaming) last night. I enjoyed it, although I'm definitely biased since I was raised to think that reading the Times was the only way to spend Sunday morning.

Left: Wow. The Sound of Heaven: Isolated Vocals Tracks from The Ronette's "Baby I Love You."   image source

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” -Frederick Buechner

"Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another; rather, it teaches us to abide with the fact that, in their own way, all things are true, and helps us, in the face of this terrifying knowledge, continually push ourselves in the direction of Open the Hell Up." - George Saunders

Amazing stuff in the NYTimes magazine this weekend, including: Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?, an incredibly powerful portrait of two families suffering trauma and the potential of restorative justice; and this profile of George Saunders. Also, this fascinating portrait: After Years in Solitary, an Austere Life as Uruguay’s President.

By the partner of a friend, in The Believer: But Never A Lovely So Real: "Despite his literary brilliance and humanist resolve, Nelson Algren was the type of loser this country just can't stomach."

Image: Bikini Kill.

Being sick in bed for a few days has given me the opportunity (I'm really looking on the bright side here) to catch up on tv shows I didn't even know I wanted to watch. Namely, my new obsession The Next Iron Chef, and the entire first season of Scandal, both of which are surprisingly (to me) addictive. Good times.

Really interesting: Femme Privilege Does Not Exist

What Queerness Means To Me: "Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down . . . I have also learned that human relationships are deeper, wider, more mysterious, more diverse, more perverse, more intense, more free, less definable and infinitely more beautiful than I was ever taught that they could be. The word queer sums up that hope for me, the hope that there is more than one kind of sex, more than one kind of meaning to romance, and far more than two genders."

I finished "Help, Thanks, Wow" on the train home last night. To be honest, it really could've been a long article instead. If you're new to Anne Lamott, I wouldn't start here. Instead, I'd start with Operating Instructions (if you're a parent or a kid or a best friend or a human), or Bird by Bird (if you're a writer or a reader or a lover of words), or Traveling Mercies or Plan B (if you're a recovering church goer or new church attendee). "Help, Thanks, Wow" is mainly for those of us who just can't get enough of Annie, or be reminded regularly enough to go easy on the neurosis (and go easy on the going hard on ourselves for the neurosis).

Of course "H, T, W" still has lots of classic Annie gems like:

"God keeps giving, forgiving, and inviting us back. My friend Tom says this is a scandal, and that God has no common sense." 

"The movement of grace from hard to soft, distracted to awake, mean to gentle again, is mysterious but essential. As a tiny little control freak, I want to understand the power of Wow, so I can organize and control it, and up its rate and frequency. But I can't. I can only feel it, and acknowledge that it is here once again. Wow."

"Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makde you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you , in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back."

"We can be freed from a damaging insistence on forward thrust, from a commitment to running wildly down a convenient path that might actually be taking us deeper into the dark forest. Praying 'Help' means that we ask that Something give us the courage to stop in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from th Gordian knot of our problems. We stop the toxic peering and instead turn our eyes to the middle distance, to the hills, whence our help comes - someplace else, anything else. Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but it can be a miracle. It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost. But in sureder you have won. And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, Thanks."

Beautiful prayer/poem: Hymn to the Nameless One by Dorothy Walters

Listening to: Josh Ritter “New Lover,” P!nk - Perfect (Live In-Studio) (ps: Can it really be true that this year is the 20th anniversary of both "Janet" and "August and Everything After"??)

Image: source.

From the NYTimes' always-moving The Lives They Lived, a letter written to David Rakoff about friendship and lessons learned.

“‘Sometimes,’ said Julia, ‘I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.’” - Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

“What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . . ” - Frederick Buechner