Mary Oliver "Starlings in Winter"

Chunky and noisy, 
but with stars in their black feathers, 
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly 
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air, 
they swing over buildings, 
dipping and rising; 
they float like one stippled star
that opens, 
becomes for a moment fragmented, 
then closes again; 
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine 
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause, 
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing, 
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again, 
full of gorgeous life. 
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, 
even in the leafless winter, 
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it; 
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground, 
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want 
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, 
as though I had wings.

(Image: source)

Check it out, and contribute if you can

The Joe Donovan Project from Jason Pugatch on Vimeo.

I'm reading two good books right now. The first is, of course, a mystery - "Silent Voices: A Vera Stanhope Mystery" by Ann Cleeves. I remember watching and liking at least one episode of the Vera Stanhope series on BBC, and I'm enjoying the book so far (even though it's not the first in the series - oops, started with number three). Cleeves has a great sense of a humor and a straightforward manner that matches Vera's attitude. I'm also reading a very different book - "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis. It's been on my "to read" list for a while but I admit that I deprioritized it probably because it's an Oprah book. Even though I'm personally a fan of Lady O, I still get embarrassed seeing that emblem on the cover of books. Anyways, I was a fool because "Hattie" is incredible. Sad, and unusually structured, but powerful and readable and just incredibly written. It was hard for me to stop reading it this morning!

Image: source.

The Importance of Sadness: "Sadness isn't necessarily something to be avoided. In fact, Susan Piver says despair can be the consequence of fighting it. Compassion is what happens when you don’t."

Now We Are Five: A poignant essay by David Sedaris.

Fit & Feminist nails it, yet again: What Does Domestic Violence Have To Do With This Blog? Everything: "This is why I fight so hard against the social constructs that say women and girls are weak and inferior, and why I refuse to accept a model of fitness that is adamant that women should want only to be as small as possible. (This is why I cannot abide Tracy Anderson!)...As you can see, the belief fitness is a feminist issue is one that is very personal to me, and not just in the sense that I can critique mainstream fitness until my fingers fall off, but because I know first-hand of the way that the pursuit of fitness can be a force for positive change in one’s life. I’ve seen how it can be used to keep women anxious and weak and vulnerable, but I’ve also seen over and over again how it can accomplish the opposite, how it can help women learn to take up space and to be courageous and to believe wholeheartedly in their own personal power."

"The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Thanks, ELM xo)

I recently finished The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. It was intimate yet expansive, well-constructed and satisfying. Yes, the characters can be a little precious and precocious, but it was a great read, and by the end of the (not short) book, I was entirely trusting of where and how Wolitzer was leading me. Next I read "Me Before You," which I also found very readable. It's not as well constructed or complex as "The Interestings" but it was a great long weekend read.

Really thought-proviking, and I love the interview with her: "Hannah Price’s series, City of Brother Love, features portraits of men in Philadelphia captured just moments after they’d harassed her on the street."

Yes yes yes, a thousand times yes: The Insidious Power of Not-Quite-Harassment.

Image: “I Want Everything to Be Okay chronicles a year in McNinch’s goal to live a sober life. The 98 pages are filled with updates on her life: her interaction with roommates, friends, her cats, and her work. This is no 12-step tract, her life is as imperfect as everyone else’s. I Want Everything to Be Okay is this artist’s diary, with some days filled with dialog and others a landscape or simple sketch. I am not surprised that McNinch is revered as a founder of the autobiographical comic. Her style is impressive and unflinchingly honest, whether she is discussing her yearning for alcohol or her acupuncture treatment for depression.” Can't wait to read this. source.

A powerful, important personal essay: Coming Out Again: The Politics of Shame, Silence and Story: "[A]lthough I had offered a tight narrative arc -- from self-hatred to self-acceptance -- I had left out how often and easily I am rendered powerless and in danger just three blocks from my own home. I had left
out the part about how, when this happens, there remains a small but powerful voice inside me that insists that this is somehow my fault, that it's me and not the bigots who are wrong, that somehow my difference invites danger, that I am a burden to my partner and the people who love me. I had left out the part about how, even today, I still carry with me pieces of the lies that I learned very young. I know that isolation is the thing that keeps these lies in place and grants them power. I know that telling our stories, breaking that isolation, is the only way to transform that dynamic....we must tell our stories to change the minds of strangers who might do us harm, so that one day we'll be safe to walk down our streets, but that we must keep telling our stories, wholly and completely, to those who love us, so that they can hold and support us and sustain us today."

"Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason." - Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (I haven't read this book yet, but I'm really looking forward to it)

From Seinberg Holistic Health Coaching: "What if it wasn’t a problem?" I've used a version of this ("What if everything is already perfect?") myself over the last few years and have been amazed how it can just snap me out of certain moments, give me a little space in between fears and anxieties to be present.

Let the Fire Burn sounds like an incredible documentary. I knew nothing about this piece of American history in Philadelphia. (One of my best friends lives in Philly and I visited her there a few months ago and have been really interested in the city ever since.)

Image: source. Swoon.

Are We Fabulous Yet? "The tyranny of queer beauty."

Incredible article: Lampedusa's Migrant Tragedy, And Ours

Ugh. Is This the Grossest Advertising Strategy of All Time? "A new study claims to identify the times of the week that women are feeling the most insecure about their bodies, and recommends that brands 'concentrate media during prime vulnerability moments.'"

I recently finished watching Season 1 of the BBC series "Broadchurch," a mystery about the death of a boy in small town England. It was wonderful. Just great acting, great charecture development, kept me guessing. Definitely grey (sort of like "The Killing") but pleasantly not gory or too exploitative, in the way that so many current TV mysteries can be. Just sad and smart and effecting. Definitely recommended.

Fit & Feminist does it again. Great thoughts and tips and reflections: Five Thoughts On Body Confidence On My 34th Birthday

Really made me think: You Are Not Defined Exclusively By Your Relationships With Other People

This food blog is gorgeous, I look forward to trying out some of recipes: The First Mess.

What a woman, what a life: Once Alienated, and Now a Force in Her Husband’s Bid for Mayor, a profile of Chirlane McCray.

Image: frost at Walden Pond. Source.

Wonderful, there's so much to here love - office supplies, a 70 year long marriage, the wonderful routine of dining out: 103 year old man dines out alone, every night. I remember some of the first times I ever went out to eat on my own, as a teenager, and how incredible it felt to just read, watch people, and feel like I was treating myself. It always felt like a little bit of a challenge - to not feel awkward or uncomfortable - and also like a wonderful indulgence.

I just finished "Dear Life" by Alice Munro. Well, I can't lie - I didn't actually finish it. I'm not sure quite what to say about the book. The stories in this collection (the first I've read of the much-lauded Munro) are timeless in a way I don't know that I've experienced before. Timeless not in the sense of enduring classics that will outlast the ages (although perhaps they are) but timeless in the sense of seeming to exist outside of specific locations or eras (with few exceptions). It's a bit disconcerting - as I occasionally realized I had no idea what decade, country, etc I was in - but ultimately, in it's best moments, forces you to trust the author and simply be present in whatever moment you're dropped into, trusting the universe of the story to flesh itself out. In the end, however, I just couldn't seem to get my bearings. Maybe I just wasn't in the right place for this book. There was at least one story that I think will stick with me for a long time, but many of these others I just couldn't get my baring, they felt SO internal that they seemed unrooted. I will definitely try other Munro, and maybe even return to "Dear Life." As much as I am a fan of dropping books when they aren't quite working for you, I think there are some worth trying again.

“Nobody can save you but / Yourself / And you’re worth saving. / It’s a war not easily won / But if anything is worth winning then / This is it.” - Charles Bukowski, “Nobody But You”

The NYTimes on the mental cost of dieting. Thanks to (the always awesome) Fit & Feminist for posting it with this on-point quote from Naomi Wolf: "A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one."

Incredible commitment to love and peace in the face of violence: Harlem hate crime victim Prabhjot Singh: I’m feeling gratitude

Image: source. Hey, it's true.

This is one of the books I'm reading right now: Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. It's a fascinating historical portrait of the time immediately before and surrounding the birth of Jesus. It's aims are primarily historical, not religious (although the author openly discusses his own religious experiences in the Introduction), and it's fascinating to learn more about Roman rule, the history of Judaism, and the birth of Christianity. The reviews have been mixed (see the link above to the NYT Book Review), but I'm enjoying it.

I really liked, and related to, this post about running by someone I went to college with. Despite the fact that the upcoming half marathons continue to be plenty challenging, I'm finding myself itching to train for a marathon next year, not really sure why (except, I guess, what a great experience I had with one in 2010....) Thoughts On Running

A powerful personal essay: When I Couldn't Feed My Family. "I’m here to testify that, for most of us, financial disaster is one or two paychecks away. Even today, if I were to lose my job, I would be in dire circumstances within four weeks. I wish that the Republicans who are waging war on the poor in this country could experience what it is like to find themselves in the position that so many of us face. That we’re all a small financial disaster away from not being able to feed our children. That punishing the poor for lacking money is bullying those who have found themselves weakened in an economy that is taking no prisoners. But I’m also here to testify that there is no shame in being poor."

A sad, wonderful personal essay. "Beauty Trap" by Harmony Nealon via The Toast.

This is amazing. So on point re: street harassment, rape culture, and just...selfishness. Amazing Missed Connection Takes Down Street Harassing Dickwads (And, as bonus, a great cartoon from the comments section: Street Harassment)

Really interesting: Who's Really Left Out Of The CrossFit Circle, by Gene Denby.

Image: source. DGU.

I went to a talk by Susan Piver last night, a Buddhist teacher who talks a lot about relationships. She was great, and I definitely look forward to reading more of her work. Here's one article that gives you a good sense of her down to earth, open way of writing: Vows, Shambhala Sun.

I've read a lot of books since I was last on here. The second in Denise Mina's Alex Morrow series - The End of the Wasp Season - was wonderful, however, the next in the series - Gods and Beasts - didn't stack up. I, like everyone else it seems, was completely entertained by Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette." Despite liking some of her other books, "The Magician's Assistant" by Ann Patchett never really worked for me, and I was underwhelmed by the much-celebrated "The Middlesteins" by Jami Attenberg. I'm now reading Alice Munro's most recent collection of short stories, "Dear Life" which has definitely gotten under my skin, although I'm still not sure what exactly to make of it....

Oh, and I've also been reading a Daily Devotional I got from the UCC national website, but not loving it. If any of you progressive Christians out there (or anyone else, really) has a daily devotional you like, I'd love suggestions.

“Spirituality without a prayer life is no spirituality at all, and it will not last beyond the first defeats. Prayer is an opening of the self so that the Word of God can break in and make us new. Prayer unmasks. Prayer converts. Prayer impels. Prayer sustains us on the way. Pray for the grace it will take to continue what you would like to quit.” - Joan D. Chittister

Devastating: Last Words of the Condemned: "Texas has executed 500 inmates since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982. Selected excerpts of inmates’ last words reveal a glimpse of the humanity behind those anonymous numbers, with everything from apologies to claims of innocence and expressions of anger to prayers." 

'Things Have Changed' - an op-ed by the amazing Natasha M. Korgaonkar, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended the Voting Rights Act before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Why self-improvement makes you neurotic (h/t Amy!)

Image: by artist Torie Leigh

Love this...and relate! Sara Seinberg: How to Succeed at Failure. "I am a reluctant and deeply untalented runner. This beautiful fact is the main way I have found to practice being bad at something and just doing it anyhow. For five years I have remained stunned at the gifts I have limped away with, not matter how graceless my path becomes. I stumble, I quit, I trudge, I walk and I lapse altogether in this endeavor, but there is some kind of gem that brings me back again and again. And that gem is failure."

We Are All Subversives: Femme Strength and Queer Solidarity

I recently read two books - the much-lauded novel "The Middlesteins," which I was fairly "eh" about, and also a novel/not novel called "How Should A Person Be?" With the latter, I had the all-to-rare of late experience of reading a whole book in a day this past weekend. While it isn't a perfect book, it was a great reading experience, and I was anxious to see what others had written about Heti's "sort of" novel. Well, sometimes nothing cements your appreciation for a book more than a crappy review of the book. In this case, Katie Roiphe's "Not Quite How a Person Should Be: Grow up, Sheila Heti!" I'll give Roiphe the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn't pick the title, but it still does a pretty decent job of conveying Roiphe's condescending and dismissive attitude towards the book. Roiphe's critiques of the book echo critiques of "Girls" and both annoy me for the same reason - reviewers seem to underestimate Heti and Dunham's own self awareness, accusing them of being self absorbed and too concerned with the view of others, without understanding that this concern, this awareness, is a core subject of both Heti and Dunham's work. Neither "How Should..." or "Girls" is 100% autobiographical but neither are they 100% satire. This seems to baffle reviewers. Could it possibly be that both Heti and Dunham want to earnestly discuss something incredibly intimate and revealing - the way that we live our lives aware of the observation of others, and in the shadow of our own self-conscious critique - while at the same time mocking and doubting these same impulses? Gasp! It's almost like they are....artists!

Roiphe's review is so incredibly condescending (starting right off the bat with an opening line labeling Heti's book "fashionable") that its almost breathtaking. She really takes it over the edge with her conclusion:

"At one point Sheila and Margaux go swimming in a pool in Miami. Sheila says: 'I’m so happy with how we were making everyone jealous with how happy we were in the pool!' For me, this vignette captures what’s irritating and fundamentally false feeling about the book. The elaborate, perpetual performance in front of the imagined jealous audience is exhausting and ultimately drains this book of its potentially more interesting life force or examination. The reader can’t help thinking to herself at that point: Just swim, Sheila Heti! Just swim!"

UGH! Seriously, Roiphe? Heti doesn't offer this up as an, "Aw shucks, I just can't live in the moment, wish I could dance like no one is watching" or "Hey, everyone, look at me!" vignette. It's part of the entire book-long conversation about performance, art, piecing together a personality and life. In fact, the previously mentioned Margaux responds to Sheila's comment with a considerable amount of eye-rolling, but leave it to Roiphe to omit this for the purposes of her own lame conclusion. One final note: critics of both Heti and Dunham always seem anxious to lapse into a "young women these days are so self absorbed" rant. And I will be the 1,000,000th person to point out what sexist bs this is. The questions Heti is examining in this book are questions that have been considered by many - even respectable grown men! - for centuries. Questions about art, self, relationships, and intelligence. I'm sorry for any reviewers who can't see past the fact they are being asked by a woman in her 30s, in 2013.

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!)