For the Photography Enthusiasts

A few links:

• Angela shared this NYT Q & A with helpful tips from travel photographer Robert Caplin. (I am trying not to think too hard about the fact that Robert Caplin and I are the same age.) Among other things, he shares some fun suggestions for making the most of your point-and-shoot digital camera’s flash or your iPhone camera.

• And yesterday Flickr announced that they’ve added a “Who’s in this photo?” tag feature. This could = hours of amusement, going through old images to tag my Flickr friends.

• Scott shared today’s Boston.com Big Picture, which features some really disturbing images related to the 2009 UN World Drug report. In particular, he said “WTF?!” to number 16:

Caption: Sarab village resident and opium addict Islam Beg offers his opium pipe to his grandson in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan on July 13, 2009. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Links & Listens: Glenn Beck’s Latest Victim, Hurricane Ike Anniversary, and More

Inspiration:

• NPR aired a high school student-produced story about the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ike and its impact on Galveston, TX.
• Also via NPR: The Journey cover sampled in this story makes me want to drop everything and watch Glee.

Infuriation:

• At RaceWire (the ColorLines blog) and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, thoughts on Glenn Beck’s latest target, Yosi Sergant at the National Endowment for the Arts. Jeff Chang of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop writes:

Beck is not just trying to make progressives who are young and/or of color absolutely dispensable to the establishment. He is trying to take away their platform as well. To Beck, this is a fight not just over the individuals, but to block the ways change is actually made.

It’s Back-to-School Time in New York.

Via Jared, who is awesome himself.

Today is rare in that it’s totally unstructured: I have a pile of literature from a recent Idealist grad school fair to sort through; a to-do list that involves bettering my home and supporting friends; and a whole lot of stuff to read. The dreary weather and the knowledge that everyone around me has had a determined “life goes on” attitude this past week makes me feel very motivated to do good things with my Saturday, September 12.

As I sorted through links and tweets from the past few days, I happened to sign onto WordPress. I expected my stats for this blog to be nonexistent, since my blog motivation in recent months has been…well, you know. But! Surprise – a lot of people came to visit, and it’s all thanks to none other than Your Girlfriend and Mine, Ellen DeGeneres.

Last October I wrote a quick post called Letter to Ellen: Oppose Prop 8! Since then, “Ellen Degeneres” and “Elissa Bassist” have been the two search terms that have most consistently led WordPress browsers to find this blog. I’m happy to report, in case you’ve been living under a rock, that they both seem to be doing very well: Ellen will soon be a co-host on American Idol, and our occasional contributor Elissa is on a crusade to prove women are funny over at The Rumpus.

(Hey. Do you know Ellen? Because I know Elissa. We should arrange for Elissa to go on Ellen’s show and they can make jokes about funny women!)

As my teacher roommate sets off to show her middle school students an excellent year in the classroom, I’m thinking about a back-to-blog commitment to show STT readers an excellent year on WordPress. Even if you are just stumbling here looking for gossip about Ellen.

Back to my morning reading. I was just in the middle of an article called How 9/11 Should Be Remembered and wanted to share this bit:

Not long ago I talked to Roberto Sifuentes, a Chicano performance artist who was then living in New York. Like many New Yorkers, he still marvels at that brief, almost utopian moment of opening in the midst of tragedy, when everyone wanted to talk about meaning, about foreign policy, about history, and did so in public with strangers. It was a moment of passionate engagement with the biggest questions and with one another.

It could all have been different. It’s too late now, but not too late, never too late, to change how we remember and commemorate this event and that other great landmark of the Bush era, Hurricane Katrina, and so prepare for disasters to come.

(Speaking of Hurricane Katrina, I also want to share an article I read recently: Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices. Sheri Fink invested two and a half years in writing this piece for the NYT Magazine, and I invested several subway rides to and from work in reading it because it’s so long and sad.  There were a few moments when I could feel fellow passengers noticing how anguished my face looked, but I just couldn’t slap on the usual unfazed New Yorker mask; the story of Memorial Hospital and the questions it raises about moral and ethical issues faced by doctors during emergencies is heartbreaking.)

September is National Preparedness Month. I’m not always one for “months” and “weeks” and “days,” but I think in this case it’s a helpful reminder, because “sitting down with my roommates to talk about what happens in a disaster situation” seems to be one of those items that is perpetually moved to the bottom of the Life List. Eight years after September 11, 2001 and four years after Hurricane Katrina, maybe one way to “remember and commemorate” is to start at home by planning for emergencies. Ready.gov is one place to start. NACCHO is another.

Vegetable Highs, Vegetable Lows. Looking Forward to Vegetable Friends!

It’s been a crazy, vegetableful week. My girlfriend and I joined the Sunnyside CSA—just one of about a hundred neighborhood-based community-supported agriculture distribution centers around New York City. This week’s box (our first!) held strawberries, arugula, green-leaf lettuce, red-leaf lettuce, baby bok choy, radishes, turnips, beets, and rhubarb.

It has been a week of highs and lows. Mostly highs, topped by rhubarb cobbler. I barely knew what rhubarb was a week ago, and now I’m a rhubarb enthusiast—evangelist, even. And all the organic, local, oh-so-fresh beets, turnips, bok choy, and strawberries from the box of surprises made me jump with healthy joy!

But today we hit the low: those “southern style” turnip greens I cooked up today will be sitting in a tupperware in the fridge (along with way too much unused lettuce) until one of us reluctantly chews them or tosses them.

While I’m simultaneously nervous and excited for our next batch of veggies, I’m definitely looking forward to meeting our neighbor who we met through the listserv and agreed to split the share with. Sharing these surprise boxes of vegetables does seem like it would forge some kind of unbreakable bond.

If You Stand for Trusting Women: In Memory of Dr. Tiller

Viva7 just sent me the link to a new blog called Hope for Choice, which includes “a message to those that believe that murder is a way of enforcing a political agenda”:

WE’RE NOT SCARED OF YOU.
WE WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT FOR CHOICE AND HELP WOMEN WHO FIND THEMSELVES IN THE POSITION TO CHOOSE.
WE WILL EAT UP YOUR HATE LIKE IT IS LOVE, AND USE IT TO FORTIFY OUR STRENGTH.
WE WILL NEVER CONDONE OR USE VIOLENCE AS A MEANS OF ENFORCING A POLITICAL AGENDA.
WE STAND FOR EQUALITY. WE STAND FOR TRUSTING WOMEN.

HOWEVER, WE WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS BULLSHIT.

If you’re reeling from the news about Dr. Tiller’s murder:

• Visit Hope for Choice to make a donation to Dr. Tiller’s clinic.
• Check Feministing’s list of vigils and other suggestions.
• If you’re on Twitter, use the #Tiller hashtag and please leave suggestions in the comments box for who to follow. Right now I’m learning from @veronicaeye, @nerdette, and @JillMZ, among others.

Thank You, Mr. Pope. (Or, My Condom-Loving Wallet.)

Mr. Pope,

Seriously, was this really necessary? Going to Cameroon and saying condoms are not the answer to the fight against HIV and AIDS?

You know what that does? It takes me back to my days in South Africa, where I got to volunteer with Treatment Action Campaign. (TAC has been called “the world’s most effective AIDS group” by the New York Times. At TAC, they are all about condoms.) I even marched in a parade wearing one of the trademark “HIV Positive” shirts.

Like this! (World Bank Photo Collection)

And THAT just makes me nostalgic, so I go to the TAC website. Oh! And look! They are so with it. Anyone on Facebook can make a donation through Causes. So I just did that.

And since we’ve all heard by now that 3% of the residents of our nation’s capital (yup, that nation’s capital, the one where residents are disenfranchised) are infected, I just made a donation to the Whitman-Walker Clinic, too.

Thank you sincerely for kicking my (condom-loving) self into gear. I’m busting out the t-shirt this weekend.

Peace,

Julia

St. Louis to Sri Lanka: Starving for Peace

This is a picture of my friend Sadena and me from Inauguration Day. In the past year-and-a-half since law school began, we have spent inordinate amounts of time together (not always but usually in the library or various coffee shops where we study). Sadena is someone who makes me happy to be in law school, who always knows how to talk me down when I get overly stressed about life; I have been known to refer to her as “my person,” akin to Christina and Meredith on Grey’s.

So you can imagine how upsetting it is to know that she hasn’t eaten in seven days.

Sadena, along with seven other Americans, began fasting last Monday in order to draw attention to the Sri Lankan government’s genocidal campaign against Tamil civilians. More than 300,000 Tamil civilians are currently trapped in a war zone , and the government has ordered all international aid organizations out of the region. Humanitarian groups are reporting that the entire trapped population is facing a food crisis.

Lilly Ledbetter: The Fight Ain’t Over

Goodyear, You Can Spare $360K for Lilly Ledbetter, wrote PunditMom yesterday:

It’s really been bothering me that a corporation like Goodyear that reported profits of $602 million in 2007 (its most current annual SEC filing) most likely spent much more on attorneys’ fees than the $360K it could have paid Lilly, trying to convince us it didn’t practice gender discrimination. According to its 2007 annual report, Goodyear did, however, pay millions to settle other types of lawsuits. So I thought, wouldn’t it be refreshing if Goodyear would do the right thing and pay Lilly Ledbetter the back wages it should have paid her in the first place?

Why not take a couple of minutes this weekend to get the scoop from Punditmom and then take her suggestion and send a note to Goodyear via their online form? She even includes a template you can crib if you’re short on time/not feeling creative.

You can also join the Demand Justice for Lilly Ledbetter Facebook group.

talk it out

by viva7

so for about, i don’t know, maybe 3 months now? i have been meaning to blog. i have even started a few posts. but every time i write something down, i get busy and distracted and the timeliness and all of my intentions are lost.

what i really want to get at here is – there is no excuse for my neglect of this blog. if the only goal is to initiate dialogue, the only necessary action is to say something. i need to stop editing and put some thoughts down.

so. this is a list of things i want to talk about.

1. the inauguration and the fact that the leader of this country is someone who agrees with me more than 75% of the time. how did that happen? how exciting that policy might soon support the important work that needs to be done? what doors are going to be opened for all of us? and what am i going to do with my anger if i can no longer direct it at the head of state?

2. between the individual amazingness of the election and the inauguration was the run-off. i was so disappointed by the results here in ga. more than that, i was surprised by the lack of mobilization. it was like everyone stopped caring after the general election. we were exhausted, i know, but we took such a step backwards from where we were just one month earlier. it was the kind of loss that makes one feel personally responsible, you know? i voted, but i did not do more.

3. happy anniversary roe v. wade. my celebration was most excellent and i heard jennifer baumgardner speak for a few minutes. she told a story about growing up in a home where she was taught to be pro-choice and pro-gay rights in a very detached, remote way. as in, abortion and homosexuality should be supported, but they won’t happen here. what i took away was the importance of reconciling our beliefs with our actual lives. i believe in that – in being open and honest and real and non-judgmental, even when we look at our own lives.

done (for now)

DC Teacher’s Clique

by philosophunk

Recently, it was reported on DCist that DC Teacher Chic, an area teacher and edu-blogger, finally had enough bureaucracy/disorganization/absurdity from DCPS and quit her full time teaching position at a southeast DC middle school. It is unknown how frequently this situation occurs, and to what extent it goes unnoticed and how much it may contribute to the dearth of experienced teachers in the city. These questions and uncertainties got me thinking about DC Teacher Chic’s situation.

Although I had never read DC Teacher Chic’s blog prior to her resignation from DCPS, it seems like an illuminating record for for the rest of the public that does not have have a sense of how absurdly disruptive a public school classroom can get. I won’t lie; when I read the first paragraph of her farewell post, my initial reaction to her resigning from her position was somewhere between distaste and resentment. When confronted with situations like this, it is easy to have a knee-jerk reaction of what one is supposed to think.