Archive for October, 2008
Friday, October 31st, 2008
a particular middle-aged woman in my family voted early and voted Democrat. Though she does not believe in many of the Democratic party’s core belief systems, she couldn’t bring herself to choose a tired man and a tired party. Her long-time friend, a lawyer who has always voted Democrat, voted early and voted Republican, because she couldn’t bring herself to choose a man who’s proposed tax structure would slaughter small business. Two nights ago, they talked on the phone in total humorous disbelief.
“I can’t believe I voted Democrat,” one said.
“I can’t believe I voted Republican,” followed the other.
And me, the registered Independent, hearing about it later, responded, “That sounds healthy.”
What a twister this election has been. I’ve known where my vote is going for a long time. Though I am desperate for one outcome, I still appreciate the push and pull and raking against a partisan system that often blows clouds in front of its citizens.
Posted in In The News, Orienting, Politics | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
McCain is losing it, folks. From the New York Times today:
[Referring to Joe the Plumber]
“Joe’s with us today!” Mr. McCain shouted at a cold outdoor rally at Defiance Junior High School. “Joe, where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe here with us today?”
Nothing.
“Joe, I thought you were here today,” Mr. McCain continued, with dimmed enthusiasm.
Still nothing. The crowd murmured.
“All right,” Mr. McCain said, realizing that Joe was nowhere to be found. “Well, you’re all the Joe the Plumbers!”
Tags: McCain, Obama, Politics
Posted in In The News, Politics | Comments Off
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
For any Jews out there who are worried that Obama won’t be good for Israel, please watch this:
Choose love over fear. Our humanity is on the line here. We can be good again. YES WE CAN!
P.S. And if you’re extra motivated, in typical cheese ball Kimmi fashion, do this…
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Tags: change, hope, Israel, love, Obama, vote
Posted in General, Politics | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
This guy’s rhymes and adorable parody made me smile and laugh so hard it brought tears to my eyes. He throws in a few stereotypes, but on the whole, he nails it. Especially the pho verse — so damn good!
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Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
Posted in Beauty in a Wicked World, Music, Pop Culture, Race, Relationships | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Halloween costumes are a lot of pressure. I’ve never been a fan of the cheesy one-size-fits-all costumes that come in see-thru bags with plastic handles, and am a firm believer that you should be able to make a great costume from the stuff you have in your closet. So, since I didn’t have much work to do this afternoon, I am currently sitting in a pile of clothes trying to figure out what costume I can make with a blonde wig, alien antennae, ladybug wings, a witch hat, a fuzzy leopard print skirt, a pink ball gown, and a hideous silver-and-lime-green faux Pucci get-up. Do I go as an alien princess? Or maybe a washed up movie star? Pebbles? Other ideas, please?
So I decided to look up what costumes other people are leaning towards. According to Yahoo, most peeps this year, go figure, have politics on the mind. The most popular political costumes, and I think this speaks volumes about our society:
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Posted in General | Comments Off
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
We’ve got one week folks. One week until those of us who didn’t do early voting march ourselves to our local polling location, step behind those sacred curtains, and pull the lever for the candidate of choice (Barack Obama…ahem…Barack Obama).
I, for one, am giddy with anticipation and totally freaked out by the possibility of actually waking up on November 5th with a smile on my face. There’s not much that could make me happier than referring to “President Obama,” but perhaps one thing that would make me almost as joyful is if young people really turn out to vote in record numbers. This is an opportunity for us to prove to all the pundits and columnists (Tom Friedman…ahem…Tom Friedman) who claim we’re apathetic, that we’re actually highly involved–just seeking out the right kinds of opportunities to engage.
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Posted in General, Generation Overwhelmed | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Courtney E. Martin
- On October 28, Courtney will speak with the DOVE Self Esteem Fund Tour in San Diego, CA.
- “The Weight of Coauthorshop” in Publishers Weekly
- “The Samaritan’s Dilemma”, an interview with Deborah Stone, at Alternet
Kate Torgovnick
Posted in Brag Round-Up | Comments Off
Friday, October 24th, 2008
Someone once said that boys like motorcycles and girls like horses. Clearly, we can shuffle the nouns; I know many horse-riding men and motorcycle-obsessed women. My last horse memory: 11 yr old me galloping around an indoor ring in Mexico City. It seemed effortless then. Two days ago I rediscovered my vision of forever riding a horse across the open prairie. It was my good fortune to find myself in Devon, England on a gray and white spotted Cob horse. After some trotting practice on the squishy yellow grasses of the moors, we took off galloping across the open fields. Ten horses striding forward in a horizontal line, racing each other over hills and onto the flats.
To be moving so fast, to be so bouncy shocked me at first. But soon I settled into the horse’s stride, his heavy puffs of breath, my own labored breathing, and the gripping of my thighs against the saddle. And, if even for a brief moment, I felt a flow in the movement. In the end, I managed two huge bruises on my calves. Guess I’m not used to rhythm yet. All this reminds me of the exhilaration in having an extension of your body–horse, bicycle, stilts, long bell sleeves at a dance party, a sea kayak. (more…)
Posted in Environment, Orienting | Comments Off
Friday, October 24th, 2008
Check out more of Jason Berlin’s jocularity on his Blogscht.
Tags: jason berlin, McCain, Politics
Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »
Friday, October 24th, 2008
For my first Crucial Minutiae post, I looked at the lack of young women in public office across the United States, and the reasons women tend to wait until later in life to enter the political arena. For my final (better late than never?) post, I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper into all of this and ask young women for their opinions. I tried to cast as wide a net as possible, and got a lot of great feedback. The responses definitely bear out what the experts say: Young women often need a push from a mentor or a personal connection to an issue to motivate them to run. And they are frequently hesitant to run in their twenties or early thirties because of family responsibilities, or simply because they feel unprepared.
Two additional points: A lot of the women I talked to were really turned off by the nastiness of elections. Likewise, they weren’t into the need for capitulation that so often goes hand-in-hand with governing, but instead felt that their goals could be better accomplished through more direct action. (Is this unwillingness to compromise specific to women or just young idealistic people in general?) Here’s a sampling of quotes from the respondents to my little survey:
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Posted in Gender, General, Politics | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
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Kimmi
Therapy Thursdays
Tags: connection, eckhart tolle, good listener, healer, holding space, job, love, teacher
Posted in Career/Life, Education, Relationships, Therapy Thursdays | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
She’s a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique
– Bob Dylan, “She Belongs to Me”
I had the great fortune to watch “Who Does She Think She Is?” several weeks ago, just before it premiered in New York City at the Angelika Film Center. The movie, directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll (who co-executive produced the 2004 critically acclaimed “Born into Brothels”), opens the lives of five women who refuse to choose between being mothers and being artists.
The movie unfurls some crazy statistics: 80 percent of all art school students are female, but a tiny number of artists whose works are in major museums are female. In an awkward and telling moment, the filmmakers interview people on the street and ask them to name several female artists. Even a couple who have just emerged from the Metropolitan Museum of Art can name no female artists.
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Posted in Art, Beauty in a Wicked World, Career/Life, Gender, Movies | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 20th, 2008
Nate Silver over at the wonderfully geeky FiveThirtyEight.com related this story from his travels around the US to understand the ground games of the respective campaigns and the electorate:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
It’s like a Chapelle’s Show skit come to life. Besides laughter, I didn’t know how to react at first. Finally I decided that it was a measure of where we stand in this country on race: there may be racists out there, but maybe the force of racism isn’t what it once was.
Tags: election, Obama, Politics
Posted in In The News, Politics | Comments Off
Monday, October 20th, 2008
Jennifer Gandin Le
Courtney E. Martin
- Tomorrow, October 21, Courtney will speak about “Superwomen’s Daughters: The Legacy of Perfectionism and Exhaustion in Female Leadership” at GenAustin in Austin, TX, from 5:30pm-7pm. Click on this link and scroll down for more information.
- Thursday, October 23, Courtney will be the keynote speaker at the University of Texas-Austin’s National Young Women’s Day of Action, from 5pm-7pm. Click here to download a PDF with more information.
- Friday, October 24, Courtney will present The Op-ed Project seminar at St. Edwards University in Austin, TX. Call 512-448-8400 for more information.
- Saturday, October 25, Courtney will present a keynote at the Girls Now! Conference at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin, TX, from 1pm-2:15pm. At 2:30, Courtney and Jennifer will present a break-out session titled “Letter to My Body: A Creative Workshop.”
- “The Power of the Coffee Klatch” at The American Prospect Online
- “View From the Finish Line: An Historic $3 Billion Campaign Positions NYU For a Bright Future,” “Unfinished Business: A Lack of Student Aid May Keep Many Promising Minds Out of Washington Square,” and “Race-ing for Office: Are We Closer to Judging a Candidate by the Content of His, or Her, Character?” in the NYU Magazine, Fall 2008
Cristina Pippa
Kate Torgovnick
- On October 27, Kate will read from CHEER! along with GQ editor Mickey Rapkin at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in NYC at 7pm, featuring a CHEER! slideshow and a special a cappella performance.
Posted in Brag Round-Up | Comments Off
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
Originally, this column was meant to examine dialogue and overheard conversations on Thursdays. This week, I steeped myself in new sounds and imagined dialogue for a new play. So here I am, writing about Music on a Sunday. I had the privilege of seeing Joe Pug for the first time this Tuesday (he opened for blues powerhouse Susan Tedeschi) and of seeing Babik last night at their new album release party.
So you can take my word for it and click on the links above to learn more about these musicians. Seek out Pug’s “Hymn 101″ and Babik’s “Chipotle.” Or, continue reading. I’ll try to channel Florian a bit here and say why I’m on a mission to share this music. There’s no connection whatsoever between the heartbreaking lyrics of Joe Pug and the mystifying rhythms of Babik. I just happened to hear them in the same week. Then again, both musical experiences took me somewhere distinct. Pug took me on a journey through America, a tour of his heart. Babik took me back in time to WWII Europe, to a smoky jazz club, to a swing dance floor, and to a fiery flamenco stage.
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Tags: Babik, Joe Pug, Stuart Fuchs
Posted in All The World, Music | Comments Off
Friday, October 17th, 2008
Admissions season is in full swing so I thought I’d post the second installment of a series of blog entries that I wrote for the Kaplan Co. website last spring. In this second piece, I share some thoughts about the potential impact of social networking sites on college admissions applications. To those of you who are gearing up for Early Admissions–GOOD LUCK! Hope some of these posts are helpful.
With the massive growth of social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace, many students today have grown comfortable posting personal information about themselves on the web. You know you’ve seen pictures of underage drinking, inappropriate public displays of affection, or rude gestures on your classmates’ pages. Maybe you even have some of these shots up on your own Facebook or MySpace page. If so, take them down.
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Posted in General | Comments Off
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
I, like so many of you, watched the debates last night and couldn’t stop thinking, “Who’s this Joe the Plumber guy?” My first instinct was to look up the Toledo white pages and try to find him, but I was sure some other reporter was already on it. And, oh yes, they were. Check out the story here.
Also, there are already Joe the Plumber t-shirts available in multiple designs here.
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Posted in General | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
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Kimmi
Therapy Thursdays
Tags: adventure, anxiety, fun, future, gps, joe the plumber, like, lost, love, McCain, Obama, unknown
Posted in Career/Life, Politics, Random, Therapy Thursdays | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 13th, 2008
I came across this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that reminded me of the excellence of higher ed in this country. Whatever your personal opinions of college ranking systems, students do need a way to compare schools across the globe. The article explored some of the challenges of coming up with a singular higher education ranking process when so many parties are already producing their own lists.
As of now, the two most popular international ranking approaches come from China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Times Higher Education-Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings.
Each system uses different rankings methodologies but, as you’ll see after the jump, U.S. universities dominate the top of the list. I’ve also attached an explanation of the rankings from the Chronicle.
Check it out.
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Posted in Education | Comments Off
Monday, October 13th, 2008
Courtney E. Martin
- Tomorrow, October 14, Courtney will speak with the DOVE Self Esteem Fund Tour in Seattle, WA.
- Saturday, October 18, Courtney will be the keynote speaker at “Mother-Daughter Makeovers from the Inside Out”, held by the Eating Disorder Association of New Jersey in Berkeley Heights, NJ. Click here to download the PDF brochure.
Posted in Brag Round-Up | Comments Off
