Flying

Do you know about this? This Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman? I just caught a minute of it on Sundance (which I will be bummed to not have once my cable deal expires- I guess that’s the point of cable companies extending temporary but fabulous deals to people who call them and ask to completely stop service). I was intrigued. A woman was cautioning another about a town she was about to enter being the type of place where honor killings were the norm, but Bean was tripping so hard over their sad faces I didn’t get to watch it. The questions being asked on the site look interesting. I wonder if this is something of substance or just one more person capitalizing on the dilemmas of being a modern woman (any show/article/website/book that uses the word “confessions” makes me wary of its true intent). Here’s the project description from the site:

“What does the modern woman want? Where does she fit in today’s world?”

Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such autonomy to construct a life of their own creation. Yet, the terrain is still rocky and ‘choice’ does not necessarily bring happiness, let alone freedom. Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women everywhere.

In this six-hour tour de force, FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, master storyteller Jennifer Fox lays bare her own turbulent life to penetrate what it means to be a free woman today. As her drama of work and relationships unfolds over four years, our protagonist travels to over seventeen countries to understand how diverse women define their lives when there is no map. Employing an ingenious new camera technique, called “passing the camera”, Fox creates a documentary language that mirrors the special way women communicate. Over intimate conversations around kitchen tables from South Africa to Russia, India and Pakistan, she initiates a groundbreaking dialogue among women, illuminating universal concerns across race, class and nationality. Part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and narrative experiments, FLYING sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure chronicled with sincerity, innovation and elegance.

—Caroline Libresco, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL catalogue

Sounds excellent. I’ll blog more when I learn more…if you know anything about the project do clue me in. Danke, darlings.

I love the spirit of this exercise

Here’s a short article about sharing yoga through chainlink fencing.

You just can’t knock some people down, or keep them there, anyway. They simply come up with stuff like this. I want to follow the example in all things.

Thank you, Hillary

You are an amazing politician, a true party leader and clearly a genius to boot. I’ve been an Obama supporter all along, but that never meant I stopped rooting for you, even when I questioned or disagreed with your decisions. You are essential fiber in the cloth of our nation and I admire the hell out of you. You’ve truly taken us to new places these past 16 months, you made this race mean even more than it already would have and I am grateful for it. Some criticized your speech this past Tuesday but I was impressed. Not just by the content, but by you and your supporters.

Now let’s hug it out and do this thing, all together. That’s the way it’s got to happen. We will be better people and a better country for it.

Love,

B.

P.S. This person says it all much better than me. I concur.

Happy stuff I am doing for myself

Growing an indoor herb garden - hullo, Yum, so good to meet you. The dried stuff is an expensive insult to my tongue in comparison.

tmi: Making sex dates with Huz. No, not regularly scheduled “it’s business time” stuff; we have to ask ahead and plan just as if we would if we had never been together and were trying to seduce each other, albeit quickly, for the first time. It’s the hotness.

Decorating, decorating, decorating, (does that sound too Martha? should I say beautifying? art-ifying? whatevs, you get me) with both found and self-created objects. A living environment is an evolving organism as far as I am concerned. I adjust it accordingly, in small ways, as needed depending on my mood.

Daily dance parties with Bean. The kid is a nut for “party favorites” on our cable music thingermawhatsit. His moves absolutely KILL me.

Doing the T-Tapp Basic Workout (the production is cheesy, but dammit, it works) and using About.com’s Calorie Counter (it’s free and way better than WW) so I can get a handle on my recent post-weaning weight gain. Now listen, skinny is not the goal. Skinny is NEVER the goal. I eat, baby. I am married to a classically trained chef. Fat is flavor, salt is life!!! Voluptuousness, sway, and zaftig-iosity are what I am all about. Besides, serious curves throw the very best shadows on the walls in candlelight. Sure, my boobs fell down a bit with pregnancy and my stomach pooches out more than ever, but to a good man like Huz, that just means I housed and fed his beautiful baby. I do like to look and feel healthy, though (which to me is roughly 20-30 lbs heavier than what a typical magazine tells me I should be) and I haven’t since Bean weaned 6 weeks ago. T-Tapp and CC are just helping me keep me looking like ME.

Taking care of a crazy ass fish named Fred who is only a “simple, great first fish” in opposite world. He is a loony mofo. He’s my kind of feesh.

Reading/watching art, craft and travel books/shows at every single opportunity. World and your wonky, curious inhabitants, I love you lots.

Staying informed of rampant injustice. It hurts to do so, and yep I am merely a drop in the bucket but together, baby, we can create a downpour. Signing petitions, writing letters, marching and yelling is what I was born to do. I used to feel pressure to shush, to be less angry, less loud. I don’t acknowledge that pressure anymore.

Re-reading my acoa stuff and joining a virtual support group for it because dammit, you just cannot run away from that shit, no matter how far you go or how many fathers you stop having contact with. 

Actively declining offers of high-paid work that takes place in an office cubicle. I know from experience that it sucks my soul dry and I am now just saying no, no matter what the pay. I will find work elsewhere (elsehow?). I realize this choice is a major luxury even with the discomfort it causes us financially. I am grateful daily.

Going to the park with Bean and talking to strangers even when I don’t feel like it, which I usually don’t. I have met some truly kind and funny people. I love the humbling, unifying moments of parenthood they help me stumble upon. They are gorgeous: the moments and the people.

Enjoying the hell out of the view from my windows.

And finally…oversharing about my life with you all. Ha!

I hope you are doing many good things for yourselves, peeps.

 

An important public service announcement

from the WNBR:

We are just two and a half weeks away from the beginning of the World Naked Bike Ride. The time has come to dust off your wings, wigs, feathers and crazy flying dangly things. The dress code of the event is bare as you dare. Nudity is not enforced.

A common question that we are getting is “Will the police throw my naked ass in prison” The answer is “they might”. It is indeed very rare that the police interfere with this event but it has happened a few times in the past.

If you are worried about the police, here are a few tips that might help:
1) You do not really need all that much strategically placed fabric to technically not be naked.
2) Even though the media can be somewhat annoying they are really good at getting the police to behave. The last thing the police want to be seen doing is arresting happy, peaceful naked people on the six o-clock news. It makes them look incredibly silly. So invite the media; they are just a press release away.

A last word of colourful wisdom:

WNBR is about having fun and unleashing a streak of creativity upon our cities. Music, songs, colourful bikes and silly things are all part of this great flood of creative merry-making. WNBR belongs to its participants so feel free to allow your creativity to take ownership.

For more info, please visit
http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org

I wonder what the shelf-life of my liquid latex is?

Speechless

God/dess bless the people of Pakistan and women in government everywhere. Bhutto was incredibly brave and this fatal sabotage of her efforts leaves me speechless.

The American Islamic Congress, a national civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C., condemned the assassination with an additional appeal to Muslim women.

“Young Muslim women around the world should not let this murder dissuade them from speaking out and claiming their rightful place as equals in society,” a statement said.

Well it sure as hell isn’t going to encourage them. Was she murdered for her politics or her womanhood? I don’t know the answer and even if I did its wrongness wouldn’t be any less shocking.

Barack Obama powers, activate!

Form of: a president that may actually want to help us become a better nation!

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
Our Moment Is Now
Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Des Moines, Iowa

Ten months ago, I stood on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, and began an unlikely journey to change America.

I did not run for the presidency to fulfill some long-held ambition or because I believed it was somehow owed to me. I chose to run in this election – at this moment – because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Because we are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war. Our planet is in peril. Our health care system is broken, our economy is out of balance, our education system fails too many of our children, and our retirement system is in tatters.

At this defining moment, we cannot wait any longer for universal health care. We cannot wait to fix our schools. We cannot wait for good jobs, and living wages, and pensions we can count on. We cannot wait to halt global warming, and we cannot wait to end this war in Iraq.

I chose to run because I believed that the size of these challenges had outgrown the capacity of our broken and divided politics to solve them; because I believed that Americans of every political stripe were hungry for a new kind of politics, a politics that focused not just on how to win but why we should, a politics that focused on those values and ideals that we held in common as Americans; a politics that favored common sense over ideology, straight talk over spin.

Read the rest here

I know, I know, a speech is just a speech, but I’m telling you, peeps, I believe this Obama-osity can become a very good thing.

One to watch

Charity Navigator is has listed the Women’s Learning Partnership as one of their top 10 charities to watch, for all the right reasons (I’d hate to be on one of their shit lists). They have a 4 star rating on CN and their mission is as follows:

Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) is dedicated to women’s leadership and empowerment. At its essence, WLP is a builder of networks, working with 18 autonomous and independent partner organizations in the Global South, particularly in Muslim-majority societies, to empower women to transform their families, communities, and societies. We strongly believe that women, working in partnership, will learn the skills and implement the strategies needed to secure human rights, contribute to the development of their communities, and ultimately create a more peaceful world. Our primary objectives are to increase the number of women taking on leadership and decision-making roles at family, community, and national levels.

Here is their main site if you want to check out the work they are doing to gain basic civil rights for women in Arab countries. The testimonies are riveting. Makes the media-created mommy wars over here look like pure idiocy (which you already knew, you big ol’ smartypants).

Give a gift of Plumpynut

Nooooo, I’m not being racy for once.

Excerpt from a Congressperson’s e-newsletter:

Several weeks ago I watched a 60 Minutes segment by Anderson Cooper. He showed us children of Africa…he explained their likely fate of death in their mother’s arms. He told us of all the failed effort to save them. And then he told us about Plumpynut. This sweetened mixture of peanuts, essential vitamins, minerals and milk served in foil pouches has become a high-nutrient, high-energy weapon in fighting malnutrition. Mothers see their babies restored and smiling and growing and discharged after an average of six weeks.

Developed by researchers in 1999, Plumpynut is one of several new “Ready-to-Use Foods” or RUFs that can save lives. Right now five million children under five years of age die each year due to malnutrition-related illnesses. The increased use of RUFs in food aid and nutrition programs could have an enormous impact on these tragic deaths.

The cost for a two week supply of Plumpynut to treat a severely malnourished child?

Twenty dollars.

Twenty dollars: A night at the movies for two. A bad tie. More socks. A gift certificate for three lattes. A book you will never read. A CD you already own.

This program will provide Plumpynut and other RUFs to malnourished children in Africa, and will call on others to expand their use and save more children from malnutrition.

Have a Plumpynut Christmas. A Plumpynut Kwanzaa. A Plumpynut Hannukah. And a great Plumpynut New Year.

Plumpynut is officially my new favorite word and my new favorite thing, too. If you’ve got a twenty or two to spare, please consider spending it here at Doctors Without Borders. They are a 4-star charity on Charity Navigator, which mean that the money you donate will go almost entirely to field services for people in need rather than getting all tied up in red tape.

Plumpynut.

Plumpynut.

Plumpynut!

16 DAYS

 

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Did you know that? I didn’t. I am glad I do now. Please be sure to visit the website below and somehow get involved in the campaign for

16 Days of activism against gender violence , Nov 25-Dec 10.

Since 1991, the 16 Days Campaign has helped to raise awareness about gender violence and has highlighted its effects on women globally. Each year, thousands of activists from all over the world utilize the campaign to further their work to end violence against women. The campaign has celebrated victories gained by women’s rights movements, it has challenged policies and practices that allow women to be targeted for acts of violence, it has called for the protection of people who defend women’s human rights and it has demanded accountability from states, including a commitment to recognize and act upon all forms of violence against women as human rights abuses.

A list of orgs in the U.S. taking part in the campaign can be found here starting on page 11 (it’s a .pdf). It doesn’t link directly so you’ll have to do a bit of searching online to find specific info on activities near you. Just going to an event and listening is an important act.

Hey chaos, look who is hosting the activities near me: http://women-churchconvergence.org/home.htm Ever hear of them? I like, I like.

Thanks go to blue milk for making me aware of the campaign via this wrenching but graceful post.