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

Beautiful, simple, honest: Multiplicity.

A practical and much-needed-by-me post by Amy, Making A Gentle Return To Healthy Habits

Image: Delivering a dinosaur to the Boston Museum of Science (Arthur Pollock, 1984) 

Loved this from Tara Brach: A Heart That Is Ready for Anything

What Comes After Hope by Rebecca Solnit

My "currently reading" list has gotten out of hand, and is weighing far too heavily on the "thick and serious" side: Bleak House (my first go at Dickens), Parting The Waters (still, and for a while), Gaudy Night, and The Gifts of Imperfection (by the very popular Brené Brown, who I just read a good interview with in O Magazine. (Yes, I occationally read O.))

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them." - Bill Watterson (thanks m.b)

This is fascinating for so many reasons (I wish my clients had access to the internet!): With few other outlets, inmates review prisons on Yelp

More brilliance from Fit & Feminist: My problem with women-only races is not the ‘women-only’ part. Hell yes to all of this! "Surely there has to be a way to organize women-only races that isn’t based upon lowest-common-denominator stereotypes ripped from the pages of Cosmo."

Wonderful. Griner Says She Is Part of Mission to Help All Live in Truth 

Image: source.

Yes, please. NYTimes: The 46 Places to Go in 2013

Interesting: Why Jason Collins’ Faith is Ignored... And Tebow’s Isn’t

A detailed and shocking article about the reality of immigration detention in the US: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses—We Have Private Prisons to Fill : The profits and losses of criminalizing immigrants.

"You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment." - Annie Dillard

OK. Back to it.

Moving, hopeful story: Principal fires security guards to hire art teachers — and transforms elementary school

Awesome: Kim Gordon's Personal Rap Playlist For "Traumatized Times"

I'll definitely be reading the Beastie Boys memoir.

Recently finished Beautiful Ruins, which was highly recommended by both Murder By The Book and the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.
I'm not sure what to make of this book...but I do have things to say! First, while there are some reveals in the plot, I wouldn't really call it a mystery. I got into it quickly, which was great, and really loved being swept up into the book. However, as the book went on, it became less mysterious and lovely and I felt like I could see the plot and structure machinations, and the distracted me. For me, it became more about just watching it unfold as a plot and less of an engrossing, enjoyable piece of writing. Overall, I'd recommend it, especially as a vacation/weekend read, but I wasn't as blown away as some of the reviews had me hoping I would be. (ps: I heard it's becoming a movie, and that makes perfect sense. It could be a great one!)

100 Amazing Trans Americans You Should Know

Rode my bike last week for the first time in months (my mom and stepdad just very kindly sent it to MA from OR) and it filled some hole I didn't even know I had. Something about riding made me feel more like myself, more at peace - even on the loud, bumpy, chaotic streets of Boston (still getting used to city riding).

“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal." - Cheryl Strayed (thanks, Amy!)

I love you, Boston.

I'm speechless today, or at least any words I have feel pointless. Yesterday was unlike anything I've ever seen or experienced in my life. We were down on Boylston St. watching the marathon all day yesterday, and waiting for a friend to finish (she was 10 min away, thankfully) when the bombs went off. I can still see the debris and smoke and look of fear on peoples faces, and smell the weird, chemically odor, and hear the deep booms and screams. I'm so grateful that everyone I love is safe, and absolutely heartbroken for the victims, for everyone who experienced loss, for everyone who experienced the fear of not knowing where loved ones were, for the children around me who never should have experienced this trauma, for everyone who is scared to walk on our streets today. I can't make sense of this.

New podcast added to the rotation: The Dinner Party

I thought this article was fascinating: "Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?" I don't know anything about organizational psychology, but I thought the author did a great job of painting a portrait of this interesting man, while also mentioning some of the criticism of his work specifically and also organization psychology as a whole. I'd love to read more on the topic.

Happy birthday to Dolores Huerta, labor leader and civil rights activist. Born on April 10, 1930, Huerta, along with César Chávez, co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. Image: source.

Josh Ritter on Daytrotter, beautiful. We are going to see him live in Boston soon, too!

Sam Tanenhaus is stepping down as editor of the New York Times Book Review - I'll miss him on the podcast! It always seemed like he would make the coolest boss.

 Great programs - restorative justice in schools: Opening Up, Students Transform a Vicious Circle

Yay Bard! Rigorous Schools Put College Dreams Into Practice

"What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish into the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard." - Frederick Buechner

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"