Following Tania

campaignsick: I really had to reblog this after some absolutely...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:05:16 -0400

I really had to reblog this after some absolutely disgusting tweets I saw today.

"I was just thinking about how many ways the Scottish could describe the weather we’re having right..."

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:41:49 -0400

“I was just thinking about how many ways the Scottish could describe the weather we’re having right now.”

- FIona Wilson, in greeting to a student entering her office on a particularly gloomy day. (via slcteacherisms)
My personal favorite, from Margaret at the Institute of Government: “oh, I’m so glad it’s started raining. The streets were getting dirty.”

A Boston Silversmith

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:00:03 -0400

The first I heard of today’s bombs in Boston was a rather cryptic text from my mother: “You at work? Obama just spoke. Not much known. Love you. M.”

Not much to go on.

To be fair, I’m usually attached to Twitter and know things long before she does, so she wasn’t out of line in assuming I knew. But I work as a nanny in the afternoons, and I’d been busy with chicken nuggets and wiggly elementary schoolers.

Elementary schoolers with whom I spent the evening discussing Boston, patriotism and war, incidentally.

The kids I nanny, you see, like poetry (of the rhyming sort) and the longest poem I know off by heart is Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.” They’re currently enchanted with it, and want me to say it over and over (“as fast as you can!” “as slow as you can!” “in Pig Latin!”). I probably recited most of the thirteen stanzas (I leave out the bits about the graveyard and being pierced by British musket balls) at least six times this evening.

It’s a wonderful, if a bit inaccurate, poem about the Boston silversmith, his horse and his unnamed friend on the night of April 18th, 1775, and I memorized it late in elementary school, so as to be sure or have the longest poem of anyone in the class. Then, the part about “how the British Regulars fired and fled” was my favorite. But a year later, on 9/11, another stanza stuck out to me, and it sticks out again tonight:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Longfellow was probably a bit wrong. In that hour of darkness and peril and need, Americans may not literally listen for the horse. But as a country (not blue states and red states, but United States..) we have an amazing capacity to come together, and to listen, at least for a moment, to each other.

The resources are springing up, as they always have, made even easier by new technology. By the time I got to Twitter, at about 7:30 tonight, it was abuzz with this document (and others like it.) As usual, the Red Cross’s Safe and Well database is up and running (and doesn’t seem to be slowing down as it sometimes does): http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-family/register-safe-listing No doubt there are other resources I haven’t found yet.

We are blessed that here, unlike many other parts of the world, this is an incredibly rare tragedy. But neither rarity nor frequency makes the loss of human life any less tragic. And it makes it no less important to keep looking forward, and keep listening for the voices in the darkness, be they Anderson Cooper, President Obama, or that Boston silversmith on his exhausted horse.

"‎”Think government isn’t about you? How many of you have student loans to pay? How many of you have..."

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:34:36 -0500

“‎”Think government isn’t about you? How many of you have student loans to pay? How many of you have credit card debt? How many of you want clean air and clean water and civil liberties? How many want jobs? How many want kids? How many want those kids to go to good schools and walk on safe streets? Decisions are made by those who show up.””

- CJ CREGG IS TELLING YOU TO ROCK THE VOTE

(via thefinestmuffinsandbagels)

Celestial Navigation (1.15)

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:26:19 -0400

Toby: Why didn't you take a breathalyzer?
Judge Mendoza: Because I was driving within the speed limit, I was driving on the right side of the road, I had valid tags and registration, and as far as I know, I don't have any warrants for my arrest in Connecticut.
Toby: Judge -
Mendoza: Absent just cause, Toby. The breathalyzer is an illegal search. It's a civil rights violation.
Toby: So you give Barney Fife a hard time to make a point.
Mendoza: A point worth making.
Toby: Not now.
Mendoza: Yes, now. Right now.
Toby: One phone call, Judge! "Toby, this has happened. Tell 'em my name's Roberto Mendoza and the President's named me to the bench!"
Mendoza: They pulled me over because I look like "my name is Roberto Mendoza and I'm coming to rob your house."

Armageddon in the Garden of the Gods

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:21:37 -0400

As you may have heard, the Garden of the Gods now looks more like Hell.

Back of Kissing Camels, June 2009:

Source: Mine

Kissing Camels, June 2012:
Source

Beginning Saturday afternoon, the Waldo Canyon Fire has been burning near where I grew up, first outside Colorado Springs, and now inside the city limits. 32,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. Thankfully, incredibly, as of 7:00 Mountain Time on the 27th, no one, including firefighters, has been injured.

And it’s not the biggest fire in the state right now.

That honor goes to the High Park Fire outside of Ft. Collins, which officials believe began with a lighting strike on June 6th which smoldered until it ignited June 9th. The fire, at 87,284 acres, is fast approaching becoming the largest in recent Colorado history, and has already cost more ($33.1 million) than any fire ever recorded in Colorado.

Eight more major fires are burning in Colorado this week, and even more across the southwest and the rest of the country. Google has created a good crisis map to track them. As of this morning (June 27, 2012) half of the wildfire fighting resources in the country were on active duty in Colorado.

It’s not like I’ve never seen fires before. For several weeks at summer camp when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I watched this bluff glow all night as fires burned on the other side. A few years later, at the same camp, a fire burned at one end of Glenwood canyon, preventing parents from making it to Parents’ Night on the last day of camp.

Sleeping Indian, August 2007

Photo credit: Me

One of my most vivid- and favorite- memories is kayaking down Desolation Canyon in Utah and watching a lightning strike on the river right bank. We watched a tree hundreds of feet above us go up in flames, and spent the next few nights watching as the fire spread across the landscape at the top of the canyon. The consolers told us the land was inside a reservation, where they let fires burn to clear the underbrush (one of the best ways to prevent the kind of fires we’re seeing right now.) I don’t remember being scared; the cliffs and the river felt like they protected us, even if they didn’t. I do remember how beautiful the glowing cliffs were.

The last fire season like this in Colorado was the summer of 2002; the year that a forest ranger burning love letters sparked the largest and, until this year, the most expensive fire in Colorado history, the Hayman Fire.

Hayman Fire, 2002
Source

That summer, my father and I were traveling in the UK. It was my first time outside the country; we spent two weeks in the highlands of Scotland, more or less out of contact with the rest of the world. I had an email address, (my mother had helped me set it up a few weeks before to keep in touch with friends over the summer after sixth grade) but I hardly used it, and we only called home a few times. This was long before news was readily available online. My father’s biggest worries were breaking his camera (he did it) and letting me eat a hamburger (he did that, too, and I may have Mad Cow disease. You never know.)

Isle of Harris, May 2011

Photo credit: me

Then we arrived in London, and dad found a copy of (I think) the International Herald Tribune.

There were wildfires, the paper said, in the US state Colorado. Apparently they were big enough to make international news. Again, I don’t remember being afraid. I do remember walking a long way, searching for a working phone booth where we could use an international calling card to call home to see what was going on. It wasn’t one of those famous red phone booths. It was a black bank of them, and we had to wait to call behind someone who didn’t speak English. I had a copy of The Jacobite Trilogy, and I wasn’t very interested in dad’s conversation, or in talking to my seven-year-old sister.

This time I’m scared.

Partially because this fire is much closer to home, partially because I’m older, and partially because of the internet. I’m sitting in Washington DC, halfway across the country from my family, and the fire, which I should on some level be grateful for. On another level- and perhaps this makes me a spoiled brat- I am jealous of people who are with their families, even though they’re closer to the danger. I hate sitting alone, watching KKTV’s live stream and reading Twitter, trying not to call my parents every time I see another photo of a burning building.

I abused my power at work a little:
This map shows the geographic distribution of the #WaldoCanyonFire hash tag

We’ve been very lucky. My sister flew east this morning for a summer job, and we’re both safe and out of harm’s way. Our family’s home is outside of the evacuation zone, with an interstate and a river between us and the fire. Like most people in the area, my family is thinking about evacuation; I woke up in the middle of the night to text my mother a request to save my stuffed animal rabbit and a favorite childhood book, Parsifal Rides the Time Wave.

The Colorado Springs Gazette’s Map of the Waldo Canyon Fire

Red: Fire, Blue: Mandatory Evacuation, Yellow: Voluntary Evacuation Yellow Arrow: Parents’ House
Source

Many of my friends and classmates are not as lucky. I went to school with Jeff Lucas and many others from that area. Sunday, my Facebook feed was a study in contrasts; the Colorado friends, posting photos of flames and maps, and the New York friends pictures of Pride.

The news right now is talking about firefighters running for their lives yesterday evening as the fire swept a mile forward into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in a matter of 5 minutes. Running for their lives. Have you ever seen a firefighter turn tail and run? They don’t do it. This fire is, they tell us over and over again, like nothing anyone has ever seen, and it’s inside the city limits of my home.

Mountain Shadows (?), June 26, 2012
Source

I don’t know if there’s any value to talking about this. So many people are so much more impacted by it than I; people are losing their homes and risking their lives while I sit in safety. But I’ve been getting questions about it, and perhaps it helps, emotionally, just to write.

A few people asked how they can help. News agencies are sending people to www.helpcoloradonow.com. From what I’ve heard and seen, the Red Cross, United Way, Care and Share and the Humane Society are doing the most for the community. Some Colorado small business owners have also joined together to create Wild Fire Tees, which is selling beautiful t-shirts and donating 100% of the proceeds to the Red Cross and Care and Share. They let you ear tag your money to a specific region. If you feel the urge to donate, or pray, or do a rain dance, please do. We need everything we can get.

Something out of a nightmare:
Source

When my classmates and I talk about our Theatre History professor

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 18:22:30 -0400

theatremajors:

fuckyeahwestwing: Mrs. Landingham: I miss my boys.Charlie: I...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 21:29:15 -0400

fuckyeahwestwing:

Mrs. Landingham: I miss my boys.
Charlie: I never knew you had kids.
Mrs. Landingham: Twins. Andrew and Simon. I tried not to- you know, I dressed them differently, but they still did everything together. They went off to medical school together, and then they finished their second year, and of course their lottery number came up at the same time.
Charlie: For the draft?
Mrs. Landingham: Yeah.
Charlie: Well, I would have thought they could get a deferment to finish med school.
Mrs. Landingham: They didn’t want one. Their father and I begged them, but they wanted to go where people needed doctors. Their father and I begged them, but you can’t tell kids anything. So they joined up as medics, and four months later they were pinned down during a fight in Da Nang and were killed by enemy fire. That was Christmas Eve, 1970. You know, they were so young, Charlie. They were your age. It’s hard when that happens so far away, you know, because with the noises and the shooting, they had to be so scared. It’s hard not to think that right then, they needed their mother. Anyway, I miss my boys.

God speed, Delores.

doctorswithoutborders: A young Afghan man is transferred to...

Tue, 29 May 2012 00:48:08 -0400

doctorswithoutborders:

A young Afghan man is transferred to another bed before undergoing an emergency operation in the surgical ward. The man had suffered a gunshot wound to the lower chest.

Before the opening of the MSF surgical hospital in Kunduz Province, northern Afghanistan, people in the region suffering from severe injuries had two options. They made the long and dangerous journey to Kabul or Pakistan, or they visited an expensive private clinic. As a result, few patients received the trauma care they needed.

In less than a year, the MSF trauma center, equipped with an emergency room, two operating theaters, and an intensive care unit, has seen more than 3,700 patients. The majority are victims of so-called “general trauma”—road traffic accidents, domestic violence, or civilian gunshot wounds.

More photos: Trauma Care Where There Was None in Northern Afghanistan

*All patients’ names have been changed.

Photos: Afghanistan 2012 © Michael Goldfarb/MSF

Done

Sun, 27 May 2012 13:35:04 -0400

therevolvingteapot:

makepastanotwar:

we’re going to meet in dc and storm the white house. once there we’ve decided to move in and live with the obamas. she’ll take care of bo and I’ll babysit sasha and malia. in the evenings we plan on toking up with barack and michelle, and then going out and partying/drowning our sorrows in men we bring back to the white house.

good plan, right?

I’ve solved my summer problems.

"I am a professor at the University of North Carolina. I am a Westerner by birth and temperament, but..."

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:28:14 -0400

“

I am a professor at the University of North Carolina. I am a Westerner by birth and temperament, but after nearly two decades in this gentle, Southern state, I was until recently proud to call it home.

Today, it looks likely to be the case that my beloved home will pass an amendment to its Constitution that will make me a permanent second-class citizen. Last night, I talked with my husband of 12 years what we should do. Should I look for a job elsewhere? I love UNC. I love its students. But it is clear that a majority of its voters will carve in large, bloody letters hatred into the Constitution.

Should I uproot myself? I plan on writing the Chancellor of the University on Wednesday to let him know that I will start the years-long process of finding a new job. I am heartbroken. American Theocracy is a real thing - and the machinery of a pluralist, democratic state has been hijacked.

Truly, my heart breaks.

”

- from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan by Andrew Sullivan

This is heartbreaking.

politicalprof: At Kent State University, May 4, 1970. This was...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:59:27 -0400

politicalprof:

At Kent State University, May 4, 1970.

This was also the date of the only major Vietnam War confrontation at my university: in response to the shootings and deaths and Kent State, students at Illinois State went to the flag pole on the quad and lowered the flag to half mast. Workers building what is now the library and the student union left their work site and raised it back up—among other things, symbolizing the class divide regarding the Vietnam War, in which college students who were exempt from the draft protested the war, while working class people vulnerable to the draft supported it.

America in a nutshell.

Politicalprof: A Brief Comment on the European Elections

Sun, 06 May 2012 21:18:13 -0400

Politicalprof: A Brief Comment on the European Elections:

politicalprof:

I realize that most of the people who follow this blog are more interested in American politics than politics elsewhere, but let me take a brief moment to suggest you all pay a lot of attention to today’s elections in France and Greece. They are, in large measure, referenda on austerity, one…

On a much smaller scale, take a look at the local elections in the UK last week and the major Labour wins on the ground level. I’d hazard a guess that those wins weren’t because Ed Milliband is a great leader (he isn’t) but were rather a referendum on the coalition government (and probably on the SNP and the independence referendum in Scotland as well.)

lindseyburrows: The true size of Africa by Kai Krause. (via...

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:07:32 -0400

lindseyburrows:

The true size of Africa by Kai Krause. (via Geekosystem)

"No. The American people don’t want to vote for a loser. They don’t want to vote for someone that..."

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:51:00 -0400

“No. The American people don’t want to vote for a loser. They don’t want to vote for someone that hasn’t been successful. I think Mitt Romney has an opportunity to show the American people that they, too, can succeed.”

- John Boehner on Mitt Romney.

Politicalprof: Because if there is one thing one can say definitively about Barack Obama, it’s that as the son of a single mother who worked unspeakably hard to get her son the opportunity to get an education that then got him the chance to win scholarships to Columbia and Harvard, where he excelled:

he’s a loser.

(via stfuconservatives)

My thesis abstract, as written by Microsoft Word.

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:09:42 -0400

My thesis abstract, as written by Microsoft Word.

"Why should women be paid equal to men? Men have been in the working world a lot longer and deserve..."

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:04:25 -0400

““Why should women be paid equal to men? Men have been in the working world a lot longer and deserve to be paid at a higher rate. Heck, I’m a working mom and I’m not paid a dime. I depend on my husband to provide for me and my family, as should most women… and if a woman does work, she should be happy just to be out there in the working world and quit complaining that she’s not making as much as her male counterparts. I mean really, all this wanting to be equal nonsense is going to be detrimental to the future of women everywhere. Who’s going to want to hire a woman, or for that matter, even marry a woman who thinks she is the same, if not better than a man at any job. It’s almost laughable. C’mon now ladies, are you with me on this?””

- Ann Romney, wife of likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, on equal pay for women. What is this. I can’t even. More. (via gaywrites)
Funny as this is, it’s satire, not a real quote. See the disclaimer from the original source.

Politicalprof: Paul Revere's Ride

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:06:12 -0400

Politicalprof: Paul Revere's Ride:

politicalprof:

Sometime slightly before midnight today, April 18, Paul Revere began his 1775 ride to warn the Americans that the British were coming the next day to try to seize the Americans’ arsenals at Lexington and Concord. The events set in motion the combat phase of the American Revolution.

Although, if…

Paul Mccartney sent Ringo Starr a postcard on January 31st 1969...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:28:58 -0400

Paul Mccartney sent Ringo Starr a postcard on January 31st 1969 (the day after the band’s performance on the roof of Apple Studios) saying: “You are the greatest drummer in the world. Really.”

pantslessprogressive: The war on women is not exclusive to...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:02:29 -0400

pantslessprogressive:

The war on women is not exclusive to liberal women. Just because a woman won’t vote for Obama doesn’t mean the restrictive measures sweeping state legislatures across the country - and attempts at the federal level - can’t affect her.

The “war on women” - referencing legislation that restricts access to abortion, contraceptives, family planning and other reproductive health services - is applicable to all women. It does not apply only to the most liberal of us. Take note:

“Virtually all women (more than 99%) aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method. […] Among the 43 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are practicing contraception.” [Guttmacher]

“In the United States, publicly financed family planning prevented 1.94 million unwanted pregnancies in 2006, according to the Guttmacher Institute… The result of those averted pregnancies was 810,000 fewer abortions, the institute said. Publicly financed contraception pays for itself, by reducing money spent through Medicaid on childbirth and child care. Guttmacher found that every $1 invested in family planning saved taxpayers $3.74.” [Nick Kristof]

With the Rosen vs. Romney debate stewing, I’m reminded that the war on women is about gender, not the political ideology of various women. Hillary Rosen deserves the heat she’s receiving, but this condescending comment is not exclusive. Women still ride the bittersweet line of being scolded for working too much while not spending enough time at home and being labeled as a weak and ineffective member of society for staying home to raise their children. (It’s also in extremely poor taste to criticize the work ethic of a woman who is battling multiple sclerosis.)

Even for women who do not face life-altering medical conditions, raising kids is not an easy job. I think Michele Bachmann is a wretched lawmaker, but I bet she’s worked her ass off to raise her five children and 23 foster children.

Let’s clear the air on one thing right now: Rosen’s comment does not negate the existence of the GOP’s “war on women.” Additionally, one asinine remark does not signify a war here, unless a slew of Democrats come out of the woodwork slamming stay-at-home mothers.

However, passing countless laws restricting access to contraceptives, attempting to criminalize abortions at a detectable heartbeat, and repealing a law that helps women fight wage discrimination does signify a “war on women.” And Romney is still not a good choice for women who care about reproductive health for all. As President, I don’t think he’d ever be proactive on social issues like reproductive rights, accessible contraception or well-financed family planning… no condescending Democratic strategist can change my mind on that belief. [Photo credit: ABC/Getty Images]