fresh air

A week or so ago I went hiking with my wonderful friend The Geologist. I took some pictures with my cameraphone that luckily came out good enough to share. Because I want you to know that a) I went hiking! For the first of hopefully many many many times! And b) I live in a really beautiful place. Have I mentioned how much I love living here?

Here is a view from the top of the (short) mountain we climbed up, looking out over the Connecticut River valley and the river itself. Up the river to the right (north) is Brattleboro. We would have had to hike further to actually be able to look down at the town and we were ready to turn around, so that's for another hike, another day. Geography lesson: this river is the line between VT and NH here, so from this viewpoint we were actually in NH looking at VT (and Massachusetts, to the south).


There isn't great definition in this photo, but if you can pick out the snow-capped peak off in the distance there, you're looking at Mt. Monadnock, one of this higher peaks in southern New Hampshire (nothing compared to the White Mountains further north in NH, I'm told... and can't wait to see for myself... but definitely a cool little mountain and supposedly one of the most-climbed mountains in New England).


Here is another view of the river. You're looking at three states here! Cool, huh?



And it's interesting, on the way back down we passed a bunch of local teenagers hiking in flip-flops, carrying beer and goodness knows what else up to the top. I wonder if they look at these views and have a totally different (not better, not worse, just different) kind of appreciation for them than I do . Probably. It would be interesting to talk about it with them. Because if places like this are going to continue to be accessible and livable and hikable, it's going to take some serious effort from all of us. But, as you can see, it's worth it.

the moment you've all been waiting for

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

THE DOG:

(Note: he actually does have two whole eyes, neither of which is electric blue)

Here he is again!


Here's a good one. He's making his "how can you do this to me?" face, clearly communicating to his humans that the only way to regain his trust and confidence would be an immediate walk or treat.


Luckily he has dog ADD, so we can also just wait a couple minutes and he'll forget the torture and trauma that he's obviously being put through in front of the camera here, and other times like when we don't let him eat out of the bathroom wastebasket. (Mind you, he's not interested in other wastebaskets. Just the one with used kleenex and tampon wrappers. Yum.)

His other major lovable quirk is that he demonstrates excitement by picking up shoes and carrying them in his mouth to other parts of the house, as if to say "I'm so excited you're here! Let's take this shoe and visit the dining room!" He doesn't chew on them. He's not even slobbery.

I LOVE THIS DOG.

just say no

Cool, all you have to do when you're subpoenaed to testify before Congress is say "no, thank you"?

And I woulda thunk that amounted to obstruction of justice or something. Silly me.

day of good reads

Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect

Why? Because he put a box (of old papers) out for recycling. Oh, and he's dark-skinned. Oh, and an ROTC guy saw him and called the police.

But don't worry, everyone (the police, the media, the professor's employer) agreed it was a mistake. Not a mistake by the guy who called the cops, of course. A mistake by the professor. That of leaving a box (of perfectly legitimate trash in a perfectly legitimate place) and being dark-skinned (gasp!) AT THE SAME TIME.

Obviously, what was he thinking?

mind-blowing

"Evidence shows that many mass murderers begin and end their rampages with violence against women. With over 30 dead in Virginia, can we finally begin to take the issue seriously?"

View the rest of the article here:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/04/virginia_tech_women.html

because i cannot know what is best for anyone but me (and even that's tough sometimes)

Last week the Supreme Court made a historic decision to uphold a ban on "partial-birth abortions" (a purposefully scary and inaccurate name). This decision received relatively little attention but make no mistake: THIS IS HUGE.

Taking away the right to choice (as has already been done in many states) is not just sexist, but racist and classist as well. This is not a simple issue by any means. But if you wouldn't want total strangers forcing you on how to make the most important decisions in your life, you can understand the need for this right.

This commentary on the Supreme Court decision and what we can do about it (from the National Organization for Women) is helpful. And scary.

The fact that there is no exception allowed for the health of the mother is the key. That issue is what has turned previous cases the other way - the courts have said there must be a provision for maternal health as there are (often!) cases in which this procedure is medically necessary to protect a woman's health or life. This time around, the court (and it's new hand-picked anti-abortion justices) decided that the health of the mother doesn't matter. No matter what the situation, even if the woman might die without this procedure, it is no longer available to her.

Forget "right to choose." How about "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Tomorrow - Wednesday, April 25 - is National Call-In Day for the Freedom of Choice Act, which has been proposed in response to this historic shift in the Supreme Court. Three years ago on this date over a million people (including yours truly) marched on Washington to declare our passionate support for the rights and health of women. Now we need to tell Washington again, even louder, that we demand those rights, and that if President Bush insists on undermining them through the (supposedly independent) judiciary (as he explicitly promised supporters in exchange for their votes), we will insist on preserving them through other means.

The Freedom of Choice Act bill number (all bills in Congress have a number code) is H.R. 1964 in the House and S. 1173 in the Senate.

Please call your senators and representatives tomorrow. The number is:

202-224-3121

Tell them "I want the Senator/Representative to know that I strongly support the Freedom of Choice Act and I hope s/he will support its passage."

That's all you have to say! See how easy it is to change the world?

run baby run

This will be me, about an hour from now:

Gotta get in some more outdoors time before this sudden summer pauses and it's just spring for a while.

UPS is confused

My new laptop is supposed to arrive today (yay! more blog posts! less doing what I'm not really supposed to be doing at work!). But I think UPS might be confused about where exactly Vermont is, given the following travels of my package thus far:

Track your package

Date----------------Time---------Location----------Event Details
April 23, 2007---05:04:00 AM----PORTLAND OR US---Departure Scan
April 21, 2007---11:47:00 PM----PORTLAND OR US---Arrival Scan
April 21, 2007---10:00:00 PM----ROCKFORD IL US----Departure Scan
April 21, 2007---11:45:00 AM----ROCKFORD IL US----Arrival Scan
April 21, 2007---06:01:00 AM----OAKLAND CA US----Departure Scan
April 21, 2007---12:30:00 AM----OAKLAND CA US----Arrival Scan
April 20, 2007---10:00:00 PM----SPARKS NV US------Departure Scan
April 20, 2007---09:30:00 PM----SPARKS NV US------Shipment picked up from seller's facility

This also supports the argument for buying locally as much as possible if you care about things like, um, the environment and the future of humanity. I don't know that it would have been possible in this particular case, but it's a little alarming that my computer has to criss-cross the county at least four times in order to arrive at my door. Nevada to California to Vermont I might understand. Nevada-California-Illinois-Oregon-Vermont? (And that's assuming it comes straight here from Portland today, which it better because they promised, and I'm impatient!)

i don't know why i think this is so cool

But I do.

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

balance

I think I might have found the perfect spot. I have a job that I can feel really invested in but not so much so that programmatic decisions I disagree with feel personally eviscerative. I feel like people will come out of the programs I send them on having had a transformative experience, but not potentially at the expense of local communities and NGOs (not that they don't benefit in many ways, too... this is a MUCH longer conversation...). And at 5:00 I take my 10-minute drive home and cook dinner and read books all evening, or walk downtown and go to the co-op and browse the independent CD shop and bookstores. The work is interesting, and then I put it down and leave it behind to live my life. AND I have health insurance. Um, wow.

There you have it: the 1.5-full-weeks-of-life-in-VT update. Summary: HAPPY.

This is really all a ploy to mask the fact that I forgot to take a picture of the dog.

domestic bliss

This is my house.

This is what it looked like BEFORE we got a few inches of snow yesterday, and that was before the snow (thank goodness) turned to rain, which happened sometime while I was at the contra dance yesterday afternoon or at the great Slaid Cleaves concert last night. And it's been raining ever since. And it's going to be raining until Thursday. Can I blame Vermont for this? New England in general? Global warming? Anyway, it's a good thing I really like my house, because I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time inside it for the next few days.

Tomorrow: the dog.

go figure

The two people who know exactly who I'm talking about will find this more amusing than anyone else, but to share a quick story:

A Jamaican guy who works at the resort I went to last week asked for my phone number (because I possess the irresistible qualities of being both female AND single, a combination that's rare at a family-oriented vacation place), and, because I have too much of a penchant for doing things just to see what will happen, I gave it to him. And guess what... he's been calling me every day.

I have two good excuses for why I haven't actually spoken to him yet (besides the fact that I told him very honestly that I hate to talk on the phone) - he calls while I'm at work, AND he doesn't leave his number. Would I call it if he did? Probably not, but you're missing the point. What is the point? Umm... maybe it's that it's just a little bit satisfying to know that despite the leprosy, I apparently didn't look completely hideous.

The other point is that this may be my first post to make me really think hard about the fact that my mom reads my blog.

thank you, NPR

One thing has really been bugging me about the coverage of this whole Don Imus thing - everyone keeps talking about how racist a comment it was, but almost no one has mentioned that it was also very sexist. Now, I haven't been following the coverage very closely, because, frankly, there are far more important things happening in the world. But to a certain extent it's unavoidable if you listen to the radio or watch TV at all (I do far more of the former than the latter), and I've only heard one source - and I'm happy to say it's National Public Radio - note that the phrase "nappy-headed ho" is disparaging not only to African-Americans but also to women.

This is not splitting hairs, and it's certainly not to minimize the obvious racism in the statement. But too many people ignore sexism or insist that it no longer exists, and when one of the the most popular radio personalities in America uses the word "ho" people seem to care only about the phrase that preceded it.

If he'd just called them ho's*, would there be this outcry? I don't doubt that the Rutgers women, who have handled this whole thing incredibly well, would have still been angry and expressed their frustration. But would there be this same outcry from so many others? I really wonder.

*There is just no way to write that word so that it's grammatically correct. I tried.

too good to be true, and it was

All last month I had one dream, a vision of the one beautiful moment that would mark the end to the Month of Insanity. It was a vision of my butt hitting that airplane seat to fly back to Illinois for Passover, but really it was more about the airplane seat that would take me from Illinois to Montego Bay, Jamaica for six days of friends and sun and incredible blue Caribbean waters (shh, don’t tell my mom).

Well, that moment (both of them) finally came, and Illinois was great (though brief), and Jamaica was… a comedy of errors? It was a fitting end to a month of such mixed feelings that even my vacation couldn’t just be simple. (Maybe the truth is that I make things complicated, rather than complications being thrust upon me.) On one level, it was wonderful – beautiful place, wonderful friends, great food, very relaxed.

On another level, it was so bizarre. Gated community where some of the wealthiest people in Jamaica own homes… private villa with our own housekeeper and swimming pool… what? Is this my life? Where are the real Jamaicans? But who am I to say that people on one side of the gate are any more real than those on the other side?

We did leave the community a couple times, once for a drive up around the hills, and another time for some grocery shopping in Duncans, the nearby town. (It’s not that we were barricading ourselves, just that the point of this vacation was really to sit in the sun by the water, so why do anything else? But more on that in a moment…) I think it’s a very healthy thing for White people to be the visible minority, to feel, if just for a few minutes, what it’s like to completely stick out because of your skin color. But it’s also uncomfortable as hell (at least for me) to stick out like that, especially in a country where Whiteness generally means wealth and many people who are not White are also nowhere near wealthy. It makes me think a lot about the contradictions and tensions inherent in tourism being a huge industry in economically struggling countries. What does it mean to be economically dependent on the completely unnecessary expenditures of people whose privilege derives at least in part from the extreme unbalance of the world economy?

Many people would say that I’m overreacting, taking this way too seriously, etc. What can I say? Blame it on too many Women’s and Gender Studies courses in college. Being a rich tourist in a poor place makes me uncomfortable.

And speaking of discomfort, then there was the slightly pathetic part of the vacation.

I got to Jamaica on Tuesday, and by the end of the day Wednesday I had gotten a bit sunburnt. No big deal, lost track of time and didn’t re-apply sunscreen often enough, whatever. But then I had a massive allergic reaction to the sunburn and got prickly heat (aka heat rash), which proceeded to spread and spread. Prickly heat, in a word, SUCKS. It is what it sounds like – your skin feels very hot and often feels like a thousand tiny stingers are sticking you at once. And, at least in my case, it covers you in tiny purple blistery bumps that all merge together and make you want to get “Not A Leper” tattooed on your forehead. And it itches. Oh, how it itches.

My usual self-treatment method, known generally as “ignore it and it will go away” didn’t seem to do any good, and nothing made it better - not aloe gel, or Claritin, or cortisone cream, or lotion (the latter, in fact, makes it worse). There were moments when it was a good thing I didn’t have any sharp implements, because I could have happily torn off every inch of my skin. There was, yes, a fair amount of self-pity, which I tried to hide (though my friends read this blog, so if they didn’t know before, now they do). Ultimately, I just spent the last couple days of the trip mostly indoors, because that was the only thing that seemed to decrease the incidence of prickly-ness.

If I wanted to read into this far too much, I’d say that it’s karmic feedback that I was overly ambitious with this week of vacation and should have stuck with the original plan to stay a few days with my parents and then come back to Vermont for a few days of R&R instead of rushing off to another country. So let’s not read into it that much. Let’s just say, wear more sunscreen.

Or come to Vermont, where we have a 100% chance of sleet and snow tomorrow.’

Happy Spring!