Category: Quickies

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wholeness

I haven’t done a post on the whole Roman Polanski thing, and I probably won’t be doing any sort of in-depth post on the subject, namely because so many other great writers have already said it better, and because, if you follow me on Twitter, then you already know how I feel on the subject, which is basically that: 13 year olds can’t legally consent to sex with adults, ever.  People who are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs cannot consent to sex.  If you tell someone NO and beg them to stop, you are not consenting to sex.  And whether the victim had been 13 or 30, she was under the influence, and she begged him to stop.  He PLED GUILTY.  And then he committed the additional crime of fleeing the country.  He got what’s coming to him and I hope he receives a just sentence, and I am disgusted by his defenders.

ANYWAY.  The entire jist of this is to highlight Kate Harding’s latest post on the subject, in which she ties in another rape controversy involving an adolescent girl: the filming of the movie “Hound Dog” starring then 13 year old Dakota Fanning, who appeared (fully clothed) in a rape scene.  Harding interviewed the film’s director, who ended the interview with this:

“When you rape a girl, the problem is not that you’re taking away her purity — which is what gets religious right up in arms — it’s that you’re taking away her wholeness. And trying to keep her ‘pure,’ repressing her sexuality, silencing her voice, also takes away wholeness. It’s two sides of the same coin.

“I don’t want my daughter to grow up pure,” she said. “I want her to grow up whole.”

I’ve always been rather uncomfortable with the way “we” in a societal sense talk to kids about sex, particularly those of “us” (societally speaking) who support “just say no” abstinence-only messages.  Kampmeier’s quote sums up how I feel about most experiences, sexual or otherwise.  Does it make you feel more whole? More power to ya, I will cheer you on.  Does it make you or others involved in the experience feel less whole?  That’s not something I support.

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case of the mondays

This is just a quick update to say there probably won’t be an update until after Wednesday.  I have my first big bad grad school assignment due Wednesday, and I have to work, and we have family in town until tomorrow.  Catch ya on Thursday!

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guess she hadn’t heard of ceiling cat

Since I have many cat-loving friends and readers, I thought I’d share this poem I read for today’s 18th Century Women Writers class.

Anne Francis, “An Elegy on a Favourite Cat” (1790)

When cats like him submit to fate,
And seek the Stygian strand,
In silent woe and mimic state
Should mourn the feline band.

For me–full oft at eventide,
Enrapt in thought profound,
I hear his solemn footsteps glide,
And startle at the sound!

Oft as the murmuring gale draws near
(To fancy’s rule consigned),
His tuneful purr salutes my ear,
Soft-floating on the wind.

Among the aerial train, perchance,
My Bully now resides,
Or with the nymphs leads up the dance–
Or skims the argent tides.

Ye rapid Muses, haste away,
His wandering shade attend,
Hunt him through bush and fallow grey,
And up the hill ascend;

O’er russet heath extend your view,
And through th’ embrowning wood;
On the brisk gale his form pursue,
Or trace him o’er the flood:

If he a lucid Sylph should fly,
With various hues bedight,
The Muse’s keen pervading eye
Shall catch the streaming light…

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this cricket is headed to Times Square

Image via Googles LIFE photo archive.
Image via Google's LIFE photo archive.

In mere hours I’ll be hopping a plane and headed to New York City.  I’ve never been, though I have been advised in How Not To Be An Annoying Tourist, and am hoping that I can navigate NYC at least close to as well as I managed in London, a city I absolutely loved.  For this Southern girl, New York is mostly a construct of film and literature, so I’m trying to keep my mind open so I can experience a new place without expectations.  We’re traveling with our two best friends, and a major purpose of the trip is to do my husband’s 30th birthday up right.  We don’t really have a concrete plan, but I’m sure we’ll have a great time.  Have a great weekend, folks!

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programming note

I work at a university and classes start back this week, which means I’ll be spending most of my work time actually working– helping new adjuncts figure out their email, overriding students into full classes, assigning lockers, and generally telling everyone in the department to please take a deep breath and calm down. I’m also taking a class this fall and will be starting back to school myself for the first time in three years. Then we’re going to NYC this weekend for my husband’s birthday.  And then I have jury duty next week, so who knows what that will be like.  Basically posting will be lighter than usual for the next two weeks.

In the mean time, if YOU need to take a deep breath and calm down, I recommend looking at this picture of the Angel Oak. It’s a 1500 year old tree, the oldest living thing East of the Rocky Mountains, and I finally got to see it last week. I should perhaps be ashamed, but it sort of reminded me of the Whomping Willow, though it did not whomp us. DSC05304

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a quick bite

As an update to my recent post on making changes to the way I eat now that I can no longer plead ignorance, I thought I’d share that today my husband signed us up for a CSA through Pinckney’s Produce.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  From Pinkney’s website, here’s the rundown:

How a CSA works: based on a seasonal commitment, community members pre-pay for shares of the seasons’ harvest. Members then receive weekly, a box of fresh vegetables. This method assures a variety of products picked at the peak of ripeness and flavor and delivered to a convenient location in your neighborhood.

Conveniently for us, our pickup point will be at one of our favorite restaurants right around the corner from our house, where we like to buy our local eggs.

Our first box of goodies will arrive next week, and I’m pretty excited.  This will mean that I can’t just eat whatever I want, but will have to plan my meals based on what is seasonal.  In many ways, this will be familiar to me, as I grew up eating fresh, home-grown produce from my family’s garden, helping my mom can the extras, and enjoying what each season had to offer.  I expect that I’ll be sharing further about our new little eating experiment as we go along, and I encourage you to check out CSAs wherever you are.

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outburst

Image via Flickr user ribena_wrath.
Image via Flickr user ribena_wrath.

Ah, Monday morning.  It always comes too soon.  Begrudgingly I forced myself out of bed, showered, dressed, and, a cup of coffee down my throat, made it out the the bus stop where I stood in the oppressive humidity wondering why I bothered to fix my hair today when the thick Southern air was just going to undo all my efforts within five minutes outside.  Soon enough the bus arrived and I found an open seat in the back, near a mom with three adorable toddlers.  I sat there, wondering what the sugar rush would look like when the three toddlers’ sugar rush hit them, delivered by the bottles of root beer each was clutching.  I wondered why anyone would give toddlers root beer at 8 a.m.  I wondered why anyone would give a toddler a root beer at all, but what do I know about parenting?

Anyway, the bus rolled along, and, sitting in the back, I heard little but the roar of the engine and the occasional DING! signalling to the driver that someone had requested a stop.  Until I suddenly heard something else.

OF COURSE I CAN’T HEAR YOU, I’M ON THE F***ING BUS!

This was shouted by a man with a ponytail, wearing a baseball cap, a neon green earbud protruding from his left ear, a cell phone held up to his right.  He was wearing jorts.  Of course he was.  One of my favorite bus ladies glared at him.  I gave the back of his head my best dirty look.  Didn’t he know there were root beer-drinking toddlers on this bus?  Won’t someone please think of the children?

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You go, Claire McCaskill!

So the town hall “let’s go get yelled at by crazies” gauntlet continues for members of congress.  Sen. Claire McCaskill had one yesterday, and this is her take: Picture 1 Really, Sen. McCaskill?  Because I think you sounded juuuuussst right:

When a crowd is acting like a bunch of unruly elementary schoolers, the correct approach is to talk to them like they’re one count-to-three away from losing recess.  I remember in elementary school, they had a system for dealing with us when we got too loud in the cafeteria.  They had the letters R-A-M-S (our mascot) hanging on the wall.  If we got too loud, one of the monitors would go remove a letter.  If we lost all the letters in one lunch period, we weren’t allowed to talk the rest of the lunch period.  This happened VERY rarely.  But then again, maybe we elementary schoolers were better behaved than the teabagging health care reform opponents who only want to shut down debate, because they have no actual ideas to contribute to the discussion.

Anyway, don’t feel bad, Sen. McCaskill.   You struck exactly the right tone.  You go on with your bad self.

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amen sista!

Via my friend PPG, I read the following, and it is just so, so, so awesome that I am posting it here because I think as many people who can read this should read it.  ESPECIALLY in the wake of the gym shooting in Pennsylvania, which in my mind was absolutely a hate crime against women.  And the following doesn’t just go for men.  I’d say it absolutely goes for women too, and I’ll expound on that after you read THIS, by Kate Harding, whose blog I found recently and have fallen in love with (I censored the profanity because I know some of my readers have issues with it, not because I’m personally opposed to profanity):

You, dear male reader, are totally not one of those men. I know this, and I appreciate it. I really do. But here’s where all this victimy girl s**t concerns you:

  • every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
  • every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;
  • every time you call Ann Coulter a tranny c*** instead of a halfwit demagogue;
  • every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
  • every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
  • every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
  • every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
  • every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…

You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.

You’re missing an opportunity to stop the real misogynists, the f*****g sickos, the ones who really, truly hate women just for being women. The ones whose ranks you do not belong to and never would. The ones who might hurt women you love in the future, or might have already.

‘Cause the thing is, you and the guys you hang out with may not really mean anything by it when you talk about crazy b*****s and dumb sluts and heh-heh-I’d-hit-that and you just can’t reason with them and you can’t live with ‘em can’t shoot ‘em and she’s obviously only dressed like that because she wants to get laid and if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen and if they can’t play by the rules they don’t belong here and if they can’t take a little teasing they should quit and heh heh they’re only good for f*****g and cleaning and they’re not fit to be leaders and they’re too emotional to run a business and they just want to get their hands on our money and if they’d just stop overreacting and telling themselves they’re victims they’d realize they actually have all the power in this society and white men aren’t even allowed to do anything anymore and and and…

I get that you don’t really mean that s**t. I get that you’re just talking out your ass.

But please listen, and please trust me on this one: you have probably, at some point in your life, engaged in that kind of talk with a man who really, truly hates women–to the extent of having beaten and/or raped at least one. And you probably didn’t know which one he was.

And that guy? Thought you were on his side.

Anyway, I really hope you read all that. ALL of it. Even if you’re a woman. Because we all have guy friends, and we’ve all heard them say things like what’s described above, and we’ve probably even giggled along because we want to save face, or look cool, or seem cute.  But when we let stuff like that slide, we’re saying it’s OK.  And it’s NOT OK.  And we have more power than we know over the people in our circles to help them see how even they, charming, wonderful, sensitive they, are contributing to a culture in which a guy might get the idea that it’s OK to walk into a gym and shoot a bunch of women, because he believes it’s women’s fault he hasn’t had a relationship or sex in over a decade, as if that is every man’s right, even if he’s despicable scum.