dispatches from comps, part 4.

“Of course I’m not supposed to admit that there is triannual torrential sobbing in my office. ... But I have friends who stay home with their kids and they also have a triannual sob, so I think we should call it even.”

-Tina Fey

I am so reading Bossypants when I'm done with comps.


Also:

are we here for a reason?

When my school friends here in Philly met me last year, they got the impression that I was something of a patriot. We were in a class discussing an article that critiqued the Korean War Memorial and I, new blonde person from Utah, seemingly out of the blue gave a forceful defense of the monument based on my grandfather's love of the monument as a veteran of that conflict. It was an awkward moment in a conversation amongst the ivory tower bourgeois. As they got to know me, they got to know me as a member of my family-- a military family. From birth, it seems, I have been reared to see the primacy of sacrifice for country. That trip to see the travelling Vietnam Veteran's Memorial come through Tulsa, the POW-MIA sticker on the Jeep, the flagpole dominating our front yard, home, and street-- it's in my cells.


So I got teary over this article about the lady Marines serving with combat units in Afghanistan. Their sacrifice requires them to take extra steps so that they avoid official combat designation. Their sacrifice requires them to do something that isn't acknowledged by their employer- something our country pretends not to practice is their daily reality.  Congress and DoD's continued denial of the sacrifices these women are making as combat troops is an effort to pretend that out-moded traditional gender norms surrounding war are still in place. Pretending that these women, now full protectors of our country, are doing something less is shameful.  Their sacrifice is real, and policy cannot diminish it.

I am proud of these women, and I am proud of the leaders that trust them and train them as Marines, not women, to be so close to the action. Of the official line, I think the sentence that concludes the article is especially poignant: 

"In the end, she said, “They’re going to remember what we did.” 

a little wednesday girl power rock for you.

I don't know why, but this song makes me feel like kicking ass and taking names.

I think it's this lyric:

She's an old-time ambassador
Of sweet talking, night walking games
And she's known in the darkest clubs
For pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it
Then she can do it,
she don't make false claims
But she's a Queen,
and such are queens.

Maybe it's too much Gossip Girl, but I'm into the Queen Bitch motif today... Wait, what?

Which reminds me, Gossip Girl is very much into music that involves spelling.

the deco woman.

Today I discovered the artist Tamara de Lempicka. I am such a huge fan of art deco- it has so much character to it, and really, how could you not drool over the world depicted in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day? I love too what the Deco woman represents- an ideal of liberated, athletic beauty, beauty that was so controversial that the flapperismas in Mexico were even physically attacked for transgressing traditional gender norms. I instantly fell in love with the dark, sultry, intriguing, clean-lined allure of Tamara de Lempicka's art. I think it's divine.

and now she sews people up too.

heroic women, part one.

Seeing this picture today inspired me to do a post about how awesome Michelle Obama is-- and then I realized that International Women's Day is on Sunday and really, that requires a commemorative series of blog posts because I don't think we can ever do enough to build each other up and honor each other for what we do. So the first woman I'm saluting in my "heroic women" series is Michelle Obama because she is First Lady.

WASHINGTON - MARCH 05: U.S. first lady Michelle Obama serves lunch at Miriam's Kitchen which provides meals, case management services and housing support to nearly 250 homeless men and women March 5, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The visit was a part of the first lady's effort to connect with the Washington, D.C. community and also highlight the city's best practices. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Michelle Obama is a woman who commands respect. Sure she is gracious and lovely and fit-- but I love that when I see her I am reminded that she is a successful, educated woman who, in front of the whole country, juggles being a wife and mother alongside her job as First Lady. If we couldn't get a female president this time around, I feel like Michelle Obama is everything one could ask for when it comes to promoting powerful womanhood in the Executive branch. I love how Oprah described her in Vogue, "Michelle Obama is a full-blown, grown-up woman. An authentically empowered real woman who looks and feels like a modern woman in the twenty-first century, allowing us to see the best of ourselves in her." Amen Oprah!

cuteness sandwich.

I was looking for something that would give me a pass for passing all this other saddie stuff that showed up on the internet. Here it goes:


Cuteness.

Now:
You may remember a while back I linked to some NPR reports on transgender kids. The Atlantic did an article too. It's interesting to me when theory meets science and people's real lives.

Jezebel linked to this article by a woman who went through what might be politically identified as a "partial birth abortion." It's really sad but after John McCain was so dismissive of women's health issues last night, I think it's important to emphasize that choice has a lot of faces. I'm sorry, but fuck you McCain, women's health does not belong in quotation marks. Excuse me while I get on my soapbox folks, but don't forget to vote. I'll leave it at that.

Yah, see, heavy stuff. Here's a unicorn.

this is an outrage.

The following article can also be found here. I have posted it in full because I find the proposed rule so upsetting and despicable.

"September 19, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Blocking Care for Women

By HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON and CECILE RICHARDS

LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic senator from New York. Cecile Richards is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America."

JOIN WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD TO TELL THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THAT YOU--AND THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE-- DESERVE ACCESS TO THE HEALTH CARE THEY NEED.

so basically my answer is "no."

Michaele asked in the comments section what I thought about the selection of Sarah Palin for McCain's veep. My little fingers are exhausted from typing about caribou and I am a little-- no, make that very--cranky as all the bureaucratic mess of last week appears to finally be reconciling itself but I am tired from working so hard this weekend and I was tired when I got the news about Sarah Palin-- where am I going with this... oh yah, I was really caught off guard, and the news of the selection had to make it through all that mess in my head AND then I wanted to come up with an actual cogent answer for Michaele. So it took me a while.

Ok, so she's a woman. I'm glad that the Republicans finally decided to be so progressive, you know, pushing 40 years after the womens movement and ~30 years since they last had a female chair of the RNC and 20 years after the Democrats had a female veep nominee. So yah, first glance it's kinda cool, girl power and women having it all and what not. I was even a teensy bit excited that Catherine Rymph might have to reevaluate her stand on the death of Republican feminism.

But then I look again and it's like, wait a minute. McCain and the conservative media machine has been waaaaay aggressive in trying to court the jilted Clinton-ites and it was like, oh, duh, isn't that strategically obvious! Thanks for not picking Dan Quayle all over again, but for goodness sakes John, do you really think that I will vote for you just because your VP would be a woman? Do you really think I'm that stupid?

Because frankly, despite the lack of womanity on the Democratic ticket, they actually represent my interests. Palin is anti-choice, has more experience on the city council than as governor, and is in bed (literally?) with Big Oil. She was selected clearly to appeal to women and evangelicals, and with her lack of experience (which totally kills McCain's ability to tout his own) I really don't see her as being selected for any reason other than that she's a woman. And being as she's a woman who differs from my stand on something like abortion (which is I wish was a non-issue but hey, it effects things like sex education and birth control that I do really, really care about) I really don't feel like she would be all that helpful for my agenda. I'm a little peeved that she's calling herself a feminist. While I think there can be a lot of kinds of feminists, I think Joe Biden is more my type. And anyways she should be careful calling herself one because Schlafly and her Eagles will come after her ass for that shit. Whew, this is getting ranty!

So basically I think McCain shouldn't have taken the risk with someone who is only superficially useful. The reality is, I would've never voted for him anyways, but to me this just confirms that McCain is not concerned about solving America's problems at all because if he was, he would've picked someone who actually had the ability to help him. Particularly when McCain's health is so precarious, I am really, really concerned that he was so cavalier in his choice. Who knows, maybe she could surprise me, but really being attached to McCain negates any possible appeal.

So that was kind of a wreckless analysis that definitely merits a rewrite, and wasn't really all that cogent after all.

i thought about it.

So interesting: Tiny Voices Defy Fate of Yemen’s Girls

it was so good that i even cried a little.

So I was having this sort of lonely day. I spent most of it at Liberty Park reading The Golden Compass (which I am so enjoying) and bike-watching, and as I was leaving I realized that I was practically the only person there alone, and yah, that made me sad, which is sometimes the cost of living far away from one's family and pursuing one's dreams. So I got back to the apartment and ate some soup and was like, WHAT DO I DO FOR THE REST OF THE DAY? because I had designated today to be sabbath-like and free of work (at my job and on my thesis) because I know that keeps me in a good state of mental health so I can come out swinging on Monday. Pretty soon I had tossed on a sundress and filled my Nalgene and went running off to the Trax.

Admittedly, I had never been to the movies by myself alone before, but sometimes you have to do things to connect to people you miss. Like sometimes I plod around the apartment with really heavy steps because it reminds me of my Gram-E, and sometimes I watch The Royal Tenenbaums because it takes me back to the many times I've watched that movie with my bro & sis and it like, you know, some how, momentarily, fills in the gap between the miles. So I was missing my friends today so the only real natural thing for me to do was to go see the Sex and the City movie. Say what you will about that show and how it conflicts with my feminism-- fuck you, women's lives are too messy for ideology to really work _all_ the time-- I loved it. It was less about sex than any episode of the show ever was, I thought, and more about the journeys women take through adulthood and how everything works out in the end and somehow through everything, there are always the people who made you who you are to come back to. So suck it. I liked it! Kim Cattrall was quoted as saying that the four women are really just the different parts that make up one woman, and I totally concur.

Speaking of Kim Cattrall, I especially liked Samantha in this movie. I have never connected particularly much to that character (I don't want an STD) but I thought she had the best lines and ultimately emerged as the character who was most true to herself and she did it in the most elegant, least whiny manner of all the characters. I thought the Carrie parts of the movie were kind of annoying but Sarah Jessica Parker's acting was generally much better than it ever was on the show.

The part about the movie I loved the most (other than the fashion... OMG it was like another character) was that as I came out of the film, I called one of my BFFs who lives in another time zone (as they all do, duh) AND SHE HAD BEEN AT THE MOVIE AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. We had talked about doing that but never really got around to solidifying it, so I consider it truly serendipitous that that happened-- karma, on the same wave length, whatevs-- I totally take it AS A SIGN. I am clearly more connected than I realized. And then I ate Ranch Pringles at the Trax stop. It was awesome.

p.s. As I was riding home the u-bombers totally got on the same train as me. I didn't join them because I lack a tiny bike and was a little too much on the gintastic side of things (what else do you think I put in that Nalgene???).