Crucial Minutiae

I’ve decided to continue the trend of baby talk, but with a twist. I’m just about to “give birth” to my own kicking, screaming, possibly overweight baby–a book. With the deadline looming (August 15th), and a month of pure bliss in the form of a writer’s residency in Italy, you’d think that I’d be in a state of real joy and a sense of release. It’s almost done! It’s almost perfect! It’s…wait…oh, yeah, that’s not how it feels at all.

In my limited experience, every time I finish a book, I feel totally unclear about how good said book actually is. Once you live with something for that long, nit pick it and obsess over it, fact check it and get it critiqued, revise it and revise it, it’s hard to have any real perspective on it. I know I chose great people to profile. I know that I have written things before that people liked. I know that there are nearly 200 pages of words in a Word document. And I know I’ll just have to wait and get some distance from it before I have any sense of whether I actually like it.

In this regard, I imagine, real babies are much different. Even if that sucker is all wrinkled and purple and covered in stuff, crying and squirming, having just caused you the most intense pain of your life, you can’t help but think it’s the most perfect creation.

Don’t miss She Writes, Deborah Siegel and Kamy Wicoff’s awesome new social networking site for lady penners. You can start discussion threads, join groups, learn about upcoming classes, and blog about your literary adventures. A great new resource.

I’ve been fantasizing about men a lot lately. No, not that kind of fantasizing you dirty birds…I’ve been fantasizing about them getting involved in activism around family-friendly work policy, subsidized childcare, sexist mainstream media, violence against women, and a range of other fields that have too long been framed as “women’s issues.” An excerpt from a column of mine that ran yesterday sums it up:

The truth is our fates are inextricably tied together, not running on two parallel tracks. When men lose their jobs — and, indeed, they have at a higher rate than women recently — American families all suffer, just as they suffer when women are paid unequal wages or fired for missing work to take care of sick kids or an elderly parent. Newsflash: Men aren’t from Mars and women aren’t from Venus; we’re all struggling to make healthy, meaningful lives on the same damn planet — and it’s time we started acting like it.

At the end of my panel on feminism and men on Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the unstoppable Daniel May asked a question about the language that we use to frame such issues and it got me thinking…maybe feminists do need to let go of a bit of the ownership. But if we step back, dudes, will you step forward?

I just can’t resist Sarah Haskins. She’s feminist. She’s funny. And she’s a vicious critic of stupid advertising.

Do not miss Michael May’s (yes, Daniel May’s brother) amazing This American Life, Turncoat, on Brandon Darby, post-Katrina organizer turned FBI informant. A description:

Brandon Darby was a radical activist and one of the founders of the incredibly effective relief organization Common Ground. Michael May reports on how Darby changed from a revolutionary who wanted the overthrow of the U.S. government into an informant working with the FBI against his former radical allies.

It brings up so many critical issues about activism: the “hero complex,” working inside vs. outside the system, violence vs. nonviolence, approaches to leadership–collaborative (slow, but ethical) vs. authoritarian (effective, but isolating), mentorship in the movement etc. etc.

Building on last week, here are four of the most underrated things in the universe (in my humble opinion).

1. old people
2. chick peas
3. keeping your mouth shut
4. Sunday evenings

What do you think?

Friend of Croosh Manoosh and all around awesome dude, Andrew Marantz, has a new blog called Overrated List. Essentially, he played off of a notorious Christopher Hitchens quote from The New Yorker (in which he named champagne, picnics, lobster, and wait for it…wait for it…anal sex as the four most overrated things), to invite all of his diverse friends to make their own lists. Mine is up now:

1. Revenge
2. Marriage
3. “Sex and the City”
4. Rationality

What’s yours?

I also like the idea of an underrated list, so feel free to add those in comments as well. Oh, and if you want to get yours on the Overrated List blog, email Andrew at overratedlist@gmail.com.

Cross-posted at feministing.

From the Associated Press:

It is the question on everyone’s lips in philanthropy: Who is the mysterious donor giving away millions of dollars to at least a dozen universities nationwide?

A circle of successful businesswomen? A publicity-shy billionaire? Oprah?

What is so unusual is that not even the universities know the answer. But the parlor game is afoot, with only one real clue: So far, all the universities are led by women.

Coincidence? Unlikely. Women lead about 23 percent of U.S. colleges. The odds of a dozen randomly selected institutions all having female leaders are 1 in 50 million.

The article goes on to postulate about the motivation of this woman or group of women donors. Essentially, it seems, someone wants to support female leaders in the academy. After years of a leadership imbalance, women college presidents are slowly moving toward parity and it looks like someone wants to continue to see that happen (college presidents, in part, are judged based on their capacity to bring in money to the school and innovate and develop new programs, all of which requires the benjamins.)

(more…)

Keep smiling, keep shining, knowing you can always count on me, for sure…

I interrupt this sappy song to bring you actual scientific evidence that friends are good for you. From The New York Times:

Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

It’s nice to have your hunches legitimized. Just last week I was talking with some NYU students about how critical it is to find people who can love you unconditionally and give you honest feedback. Our writer’s group is one of the anchors for me in just that way–I know I can show them my writing and expect challenging feedback (such a rarity in this day and age!), and that when the difficult hour is said and done, they will still be invested in my work and my person. Thanks crew!

Seth Rogen’s new brodudeguy movie, Observe and Report, contains a date rape scene that I simply don’t find funny. See me yapping about it here:

Wired and the Nation picked the video up and the haters came out in comments (of the “Courtney is so ugly that…” variety), proving once again, that a girl can’t make an argument without having her own appearance be the center piece of the response. Ugh. (For the record, I know I’m fly.)

Mostly I see this as an issue of context. (more…)

Spurred by a column I wrote about the revolving door of activism going on in New Orleans, The American Prospect’s Brentin Mock rounded up a group of activists to comment on the pros and cons of so much altruistic attention on the big easy. An excerpt from Shercole King, an independent consultant and volunteer for Unified Nonprofits, a coalition of 501(3)(c) status organizations along the Gulf Coast, native of New Orleans:

[Outside volunteers] have been helpful with the small things, like painting and gardening. But for major projects where volunteers work at nonprofits, people just keep coming in, and we have to teach and reteach them. We could be using a lot of our local individuals to work on these projects. I know locals who would like to volunteer, but they can’t because we have to accommodate the outside volunteers who are coming in.

Thanks to Mock for taking the initiative to create this space for activists’ voices. It’s what a columnist lives for–to spark further investigation into the issues that matter.

All this talk of ye ole twitter has me thinking a lot about technology’s role in our lives. We no longer live in a time when information is a scare resource. Instead we have so much access to information–through communication technologies, 24/7 news, and the internet, in general, that our attention has become the new scarcity. It feels more important than ever to be clear about our values, the way we use our time, and have some self-control and mindfulness around our communication and news-gathering behaviors (especially as a self-employed writer).

I recently decided to come up with my own list of technological memes–rules for myself that would keep me focused, happy, and feeling empowered (not oppressed) by my interaction with technology:

1. No email until 11am unless absolutely necessary.
2. No email after 9pm.
3. Disable from wireless whenever possible.
4. Check Blackberry only while stationary and when necessary.
5. Check Facebook no more than twice a day.

Thus far I’m not completely successful obeying my own rules, but I feel better having an intention. Does anyone else have such a list? What are your rules?

I’ve been in LA this week reporting for my new book and encountering all kinds of honorable human beings. I spent all day yesterday at Homeboy Industries–an organization that has been helping young men and women from low income neighborhoods (especially Boyle Heights) in LA find jobs and get mental health and spiritual counseling for two decades now. It is such an incredible model of how communities can confront violence and racist, dysfunctional systems (the prison system being the most horrific) with cohesion, counseling, and purpose. The organization’s latest intervention is helping ex-prisoners and former gang members learn how to make solar panels so they can become part of the booming green economy. An excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal article:

On a recent morning, some 30 tattoo-coated students sat at desks in a basement classroom, taking notes as their instructor scrawled algebra equations and geometry problems on a chalkboard. Then they figured out such things as the area of a house’s roof and the angle at which solar panels should be mounted on it.

Manuel Delgado, 42, who dropped out of high school, said he struggled at first. But, four weeks into the class, he’s doing “real good,” he says. “I got 76% on my last math test.”

Another student, Jessica Espinoza, 23, says she couldn’t find a job after being locked up for two years because she helped a felon escape from a courthouse. “The minute they saw I went to jail, employers didn’t give me the time of day,” she says. “Hopefully I can take what this school gave me and make a career in this new industry.”

We wandered through the park on a spontaneous Sunday whim–talking about movies, bagels, how much we longed for spring–and before long we stumbled on the Brooklyn St. Patrick’s Day parade. Girls in elaborate green dresses with the tightest curls in the universe marched along. Antique police cars and old men playing bag pipe followed. Everyone drank copious amounts of beer. I ate a sugary sweet green and white cookie (a St. Patty’s take on the ol’ black and white). In any case, the whole thing got me thinking about culture–particularly white culture–and the ways in which it manifests.

A lot of white folks don’t even feel like they have a “culture,” and thus develop an obsession with sampling others: yoga, henna, hip hop, salsa dancing, dreadlocks etc. I don’t have a problem with trying other traditions on for size (though it can make me cringe…see white people with dreads). In an age of cosmopolitanism and globalization the lines between cultures are getting blurrier and blurrier. But I do wonder if white folks’ sampling is sometimes a big, fat distraction from actually reflecting on what constitutes white culture and confronting, revisioning, healing it. It seems like Stuff White People Like is the closest we’ve gotten to tackling the issue, and of course, that’s treated with a veneer of humor (as if it’s absurd to claim that white people have a culture to begin with). There was an article in The Atlantic an issue ago on the topic (without any mention of women whatsoever), but otherwise you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone tackling this issue with any rigor outside of academia.

So I’ll put it to you, white and non-white…
What is white culture?

Our very own Kate T., and friend Hannah Seligson, are featured in an article in this month’s Poets & Writers Magazine titled “Revenge of the Nerds: Where Are the Badly Behaved Writers?” In it, Amy Shearn explores the biography of the contemporary writer, many of whom are less like Hunter S. Thompson and more like Alice P. Keaton. An excerpt:

It’s possible–nay, probable–that we’re no wiser or more responsible than our ancestors, the Joyces and Faulkners (and that we have no fewer demons than our sexier second cousins, the actors and the rock stars). And it’s not even necessarily that we’ve abandoned the unhelpful but pervasive ideal of the suffering, unstable genius. It’s simply that we don’t have the time. As Noria Jablonski, who wrote the story collection Human Oddities and teaches at the University of California-Santa Cruz, put it, ‘I think that the shrinking opportunities for publishing–print publishing, I mean–have something to do with the new, super fit, goody-goodness of writers. Unless we are the especially attractive author of ‘Special Topics in a Heartbreaking Work of White Teeth,’ we need to become adept at marketing and self-promotion.

I think she’s on to something. (more…)