Remembering Beth

Today is the one-year anniversary of Beth Westbrook's death from complications of appendicitis at the hands of Seton Central. I still think about Beth a lot. She would be soooo pissed about the anti-gay marriage legislation in Texas right now. I know she would have been up at the Capitol all spring lobbying against the gaggle of anti-gay bills we faced this session. And I wonder if Ladyfest TX 2005 might have happened if she had been around. She's just missed, plain as that.

Her website is still up, just as she left it on June 29, 2004.

Mega-Noodle vs. Basic-Noodle: You Decide

M. and I recently found ourselves on our way to a pool but without our trusted floaties which are sitting in our garage getting moldy. To remedy the situation i suggested we stop in at target and get us a couple of the much-beloved and cheap-in-a-pinch foam noodles. But, of course, it wasn't that simple. Choices abound in the world of foam noodle pool toys. I was instantly drawn to the purple "Mega-Noodle." A little larger in diameter, and with ridges all the way down, it was about $1.50 more than its cousin, the "Basic Noodle." We decided to get one of each and test-drive them.

Essentially, the Mega-Noodle has a little more buoyancy so you can sit on it and not sink down to your neck in the water. However, it is not as flexible as the softer, more malleable Basic Noodle, and after a while it starts to get a bit uncomfortable if you are holding it under your arms. I found that if you have really good balance you can actually straddle the Mega-Noodle and lean back on it with pretty decent support. Works in a pinch if you forgot your pool lounger. In the end, M. prefers the more flexible Basic Noodle and I prefer the Mega for its stronger float capacity. And there you have it.

Paradox of the day

Well, yesterday to be precise:

The driver of a Honda Hybrid vehicle throwing a cigarette butt out the window of the car.

I still can't get used to the sight of people throwing ANYTHING out of their car windows (I never saw someone throw actual garbage out the window until I moved to Texas). But doing it while driving a vehicle designed to have less impact on the environment???

The making of a true hero

Some of you may be following this case, which has received international attention in the last three years. In 2002, Mukhtaran Bibi was publicly gang-raped by four men in her village as punishment for something her brother was accused of doing. In an unprecedented move, Ms. Bibi took her attackers to court where they were tried and convicted under anti-terrorism laws. She was awarded monetary damages, and used the money to open an elementary school in her village, which she started attending. Here's what happened next:

2004:
Two years after the gang rape, two men of the Matsoi tribe were
sentenced to imprisonment for sodomising Shakur, Mukhtaran's 12 yr old brother.

March 2005:
The Multan bench of the Lahore High Court acquitted five of the six convicts, while deciding appeals against the judgement of the anti-terrorism court. The death sentence of the sixth convict was changed into life term. Mukhtaran is invited to speak in the U.S.

June 2005
Rapists freed and Mukhtaran is under House arrest. Mukhtaran is put on Exit control list(ECL). International buzz about the case grows; Pakistani citizens are embarrassed about the negative P.R. Mukhtaran is removed from ECL list, but her passport is seized.

The Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Women, the organization that had invited Mukhtaran Bibi to speak in the U.S., is organizing protests in New York and D.C. this week. At this website you can send a letter to Pakistani President Musharraf (I just did!).

Also see the New York Times columns on the subject written by Nicholas Kristof.

Pop Science Rears Its Ugly Head

For some fantastic commentary on today's exciting new scientific discovery - that women's brains cease to function during orgasm -- check out this post from I Blame the Patriarchy.

Newsflash: Males and females are more biologically similar than they are different.

Even their birth control pill will be better

From www.statesman.com article on new research to develop a birth control pill for men:

"The researchers plan to test about a half-million chemical compounds to find a pill that does not involve hormones that men could take weekly or monthly. They also hope to find something that is close to 100 percent effective and has no risky side effects."

Well, shit. How nice that they are committed to finding a safe and effectve pill for men. The article went on to say that hormone-based (i.e. testosterone) pills for men have been tested but there are concerns about elevated cholesterol and cancer growth. Hello, women have been taking the pill since the 1960s and no one seems to give a shit about the long-term side effects of that!! The largest uncontrolled experiment in history, I once heard it called.

Woman-hating crap to start the week off right

While searching for info on the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), I encountered this lovely blog called "Men's News Daily." (They're against re-authorization of VAWA, by the way). I just HAD to read one entry, alluringly titled: Feminists and Fundamentalists: The Two-Front War on Men." There are so many misogynistic gems in here it's hard to convey.

Know thine enemy, yes?

Nicole, I totally understand now.

I can't stop reading Defamer for all the latest on the Cruise-Holmes saga. Radar Online had this to report on Cruise's auditioning of Scarlett Johansson mere weeks before he snared Holmes:

"After striking out with Johansson, Cruise reportedly turned his attentions to 24-year-old Jessica Alba, 22-year-old Kate Bosworth, and 18-year-old Lindsay Lohan, before settling on the 26-year-old Holmes. As far we know, Cruise’s War of the Worlds co-star, Dakota Fanning, was never under consideration."


Also, just so ya know, most of my politically-oriented postings and links are in the politics section of Girlstown Productions.

The Epoxies come to town!

The Epoxies play this Saturday June 18th at The Backroom. Come get microwaved and radiated with fuzzed-out heart-pounding synth-driven and irresistable dance-punk songs that will remind you of that cool girl from high school in the 80s who wore duct-tape mini-skirts, had killer robot dance moves, and didn't give a shit what anyone thought.

Say it!

I just found the most awesomest blog, I Blame the Patriarchy. It is so smartly written and she has a penchant for photographing insects and what she has for dinner. Plus, she lives in Austin.

It seems that over the last 20 years it has almost become "quaint" to mention patriarchy as a cause of anything...even in sociology! I mentioned the term "sexism" in a research proposal last year as a legitimate concept that had bearing on a theory I wanted to test and the professor was questioning its usefulness. I admit it is difficult to operationalize but why are sociologists so afraid to talk about it? It's like sexism is so 70's or something. So anyway I love this woman's blog because she unapologetically points out the concrete ways male supremacy operates in day to day life to fuck us over. Plus the insect identification thing reminds me of an entymologist I knew long ago, and miss.

Must...have...this...purse

are we socialized to be 'clinging-vine wives'?

"My own observations suggest that the changing status of (and expectations for) women plays a role [in the increase in anorexia nervosa]. Girls whose early upbringing has prepared them to become 'clinging-vine' wives suddenly are expected at adolescence to prove themselves as women of achievement. This seems to create a servere personal self-doubt and basic uncertainty. In their submissive way, they 'choose' the fashionable dictum to be slim as a way of proving themselves as deserving of respect."
--Hilde Bruch, 'Four decades of eating disorders'

A sort of identity conflict it would seem. What do you think of this explanation of eating disorders in girls?

I should be working right now...

The digital camera arrived today (yay!) so there will be exciting pictures dotting my blog from now on. i can't wait to illustrate entries - for instance, wouldn't my anecdote about finding the roach on the catfood container have been TONS better with a photo??

Moving update: We're moving to "lower Travis Heights" which is that area by Jo's Coffee but on the east side of S. Congress, off of Academy. It sounds snooty-patooty, but our place isn't. It does have a dishwasher though, so that's kind of chi-chi for us.

Unrelated aside: (Warning! Trite "I saw them before they were famous" comment ahead!) It weirds me out to see Modest Mouse on the freaking O.C.- they re-aired that episode tonight. I DID used to see their shows pre-fame when I was living in Seattle in the late 90s, and used to hear them on college radio in Pullman in '95. There was a DJ there at the time who LOVED them and when I'd call in requests he referred to me as "Secret Mouse." Even then folks knew they were going to be big. Car-commercial big? We didn't predict that.

at least jar-jar didn't have a speaking role

So is the new star wars movie some sort of commentary on the rise and fall of the united states? here's one commentator that seems to think so: Everyone Loves Vader

I saw the movie yesterday, and here's what seemed fairly straightforward to me - Anakin-soon-to-become-Darth Vader sounding a lot like Bush:

Anakin: "If you are not with me, you are my enemy."
Obi-wan: "Only Sith Lords deal in absolutes."

let the over-analyzing begin.

overall the movie was ok if you like lots of light sabre fighting (why does that still impress everybody? it's only fun for me when yoda does it, cuz i like to see muppets kick ass)- the shameless pandering for cheap laughs (lucas usually has multiple instances of these) was the wookie scene where they made "tarzan" sounds. Ugh.

Reality blogging?

And tech culture keeps chugging along...now bloggers have a reality-show type competition ("Ultimate Blogger")in which they are given different "challenges" and get judged on who has the best blog entry in response to the challenge. O. my. god.

Marisa Meltzer (formerly of Bitch Magazine) has a funny piece on this perhaps inevitable incarnation of blogging - here's an excerpt that made me laugh:

"The finalists' blog entries in response to each challenge force both the judges and the audience to address the larger question of what constitutes good internet content. Is the rather dadaist video Ritchey posted of a snail crawling juxtaposed with her eating cereal better than Lyova's Nabokovesque paean to lost love?"

"Voted Off the Internet"

My new personal library of dusty old books

So one thing that I really cherished about my grandmother and visiting her was her book collection. I've always been a bookworm, so as far back as I can remember my visits would include long afternoons alone in the the sitting room looking at beautiful old books - poetry, history, novels, and vintage books on etiquette, speech, and interior decorating!

When I was up there in May, I got to pick out some of her books to take home with me, to become part of my own library. Among the gems: Emerson's Essays, signed by my great-grandfather in 1894 in New York City; Tennyson's Poems (1925), leather-bound and signed by my grandmother's high school friend Alice who gave the book to her as a graduation present in 1928 in Jamaica, NY. Alice went on to become an M.D. at the Presbyterian hospital in NYC (cool!); an illustrated edition of Longfellow's Evangeline, with a suede cover - appears to be a first edition (no date); a 1926 edition of Moby Dick; a copy of Hard Times by Dickens; Thoughts for Every-Day Living by Dr. Maltbie Babcock (1901); Mark Twain's Roughing It and Mark Twain in Eruption. There is also a huge book of collected British and American poems, and 'Popular Home Decorating' circa 1940s which I rescued from the attic bedroom. I am so fortunate to have these treasures...when I leaf through them the smell of the dusty yellowed pages takes me back to her house on the ranch and the memories of those long quiet afternoons.

Catching up...

So quite a bit has happened already since I got back into town. Ms. Led came on Sunday May 29, and we hung out on the sofa at Lovejoy's before the show and got caught up while it poured outside. Marshall wowed Peg with his detailed knowledge of Journey's discography down to the cover art, which Matt also appeared highly amused by. Lesli filled me in on the travails of being a third-year law student, and Steph and I talked about our pets. Later, they played to a sparse Emo's crowd. It made me sad! It was Sunday of memorial day weekend, plus it had rained pretty hard that night so all those things combined to make it The Night All of Austin Flaked. The opening bands didn't stick around, and even the people that had arranged for the band to crash at their place after the show didn't show up!! That's so lame.

So at 2am the decision was made that Lesli and crew would follow us back to our place where they could get some z's for a couple hours. I was equal parts horrified (at the prospect of my heroes seeing the apartment we hadn't cleaned in days) and honored. I was kinda drunk so before I knew it I was ferociously digging in our bathroom shelves for a couple of clean pillow cases. I swear I did that for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile Marshall is calmly lounging in the living room with Lesli and Steph. They got to sleep on the old futon which is akin to sleeping on a pile of hard sand. Poor girls. I have a Ms. Led poster hanging in the bathroom (along with the Butchies and Sleater-Kinney) so hopefully they felt welcomed! They played a new song ('Jump, Dammit') and closed with a cover of Le Tigre's 'Deceptacon' - kickass! Thanks G$ and Laura for coming to the show!
......
This morning my first move was to reach down and open the lid on the cat food container which we keep in the bedroom. My hand actually touched a big tree roach that was hanging out on the lid! Aaagh! Marshall heard the word 'roach' groggily in his sleep and sprang into action (he is the official bug wrangler, if Pepe fails us, which he obviously did). We've decided to move out of our lovely vintage duplex - unrelated to the roaches, I swear - it's a little too vintage for the amount they were raising our rent to, so we gave notice today. I will most miss the huge & plentiful windows looking out into the oak trees, and the mint green tiled bathroom. We're most likely moving to a cute duplex (again) off of Academy St. in Travis Heights. 5 minute walk to Jo's Coffee. The other contender is a whole house (painted mint green!) further south off S. Congress and St. Elmo (just past Ben White). We're looking at the house tomorrow to see if it's worth being further south. But, in any case, it looks like we're heading to South Austin for sure!! It's not just a zip code, ya know.

The last best place

Another day, another pile of cat barf to clean up. Actually, Stella hasn't been ralfing as much lately because we've been giving her fresh cat grass more regularly. She mows that stuff down, I'm tellin' ya. She does have the "scarf 'n barf" syndrome as one vet so eloquently put it. When she gets nervous or excited she heads for the food bowl and gulps down some kibble, barely chewing it, tail twitching, purring...it's a whole thing she does. Anyway.

So I promised some tall tales from Montana, "The Last Best Place" as their tourism department likes to say. Curiously, Alaska is "The Last Frontier," so I seem to end up in these ends-of-the-earth type places chock full of leave-us-alone libertarians. But these regions also attract people who love mountains, alpine forests, native plants and wildflowers, rushing rivers (i.e. not the dammed-up ones seen here in Texas), undisturbed wildlife like moose, bear, and all sorts of birds. They bike, run, ski, and hike as if their lives depend on it, and I believe it does. My mom is one. But I digress.

The occasion for my trip was my grandmother's passing. This is a big deal around these parts, as she had lived in the Missoula/Arlee area for over 70 years and just about everyone knew her. The days leading up to the memorial were kind of a blur, filled with comparison shopping for geraniums and picking my brother up from the airport and eating out and napping. The memorial took place on my grandmother's ranch, with rows of folding chairs set up in front of the pond and the barn, with the house in the background. I'd say about 200 people were there. It was the one beautiful & sunny day complete with puffy white clouds in a string of grey/rainy days, and everyone commented on how meaningful this was, as if Cornelia perhaps had something to do with it. My brother provided some of the music during the program, playing trumpet with a piano accompanist: a tune by Handel, the hymns Rock of Ages & Nearer My God to Thee, and, inexplicably, America the Beautiful. That one seemed more appropriate for a baseball game, but that was what my dad wanted. The trumpet sounded great outside - that instrument can sound so sad!

I got up and spoke at the podium after my dad and aunt, and talked about how Cornelia's independence, activism, and love of animals influenced me as a little girl. She was essentially the only grandparent I had, as my grandfather died before I was born and my mom's side of the family resided (and still does) in South America during my youth. The community had banded together and cooked up a ton of food - assorted casseroles, lasagnas, pasta salads, and an entire table of desserts - quite impressive. I met a zillion people who knew my grandmother better than I ever did, too. The most poignant were the alumni of the bunkhouse, most of whom had traveled to be there (one came from Wisconsin). Two of them got up and spoke about how much Cornelia had meant to them - sometimes they only stayed in the bunkhouse for a few months, but kept visiting and writing over 30 years. She housed artists, musicians, and all sorts of eccentric creative people over the years, rent-free in exchange for chores (there was no running water in the bunkhouse, but no matter).

The occasion was also a family reunion of sorts, which we've never had. My five first cousins were there, and I met second cousins and once-removed cousins (I can never remember the difference). None of us really "knows" one another, since we all grew up far apart plus we're all decades apart in age, which makes for a weird vibe. What the heck do you talk about? After all the guests and extended family left a few of us built a fire in the outdoor fireplace and broke out some beers. Now that was more my speed! My dad, uncle, and dad's old friend Bart decided to use some explosives they had lying around to blow up a stump that was out in the field next to the yard, so that was definitely exciting. I think Cornelia would have loved that, while feigning disapproval.

I did have a small personal triumph: one of my cousins, in his 50s, had bet me 13 years ago that the next time he saw me I would be married. At the time, in 1992, I was a junior in college, and insisted that marriage was just not in the cards for me as I saw no point in it. He gave me that "oh it's just a phase and you'll see, it happens to us all." Heh! The first thing he says when he sees me is "I guess I owe you $5." Damn right! It's funny though, because he doesn't seem to get that there's a middle ground between being "single" and being "married." I got the distinct feeling that he missed the entire point of my rebellion. I'm like, "I'm not anti-relationship, it's just that I have no need to be married." He's like, "yeah I can see the benefits of being single." Huh?? Oh well. I let him keep the $5.

MonkeyWrench Cafe Grand Opening!

This just in from Brea:

Saturday June 4th
Noon to 8 pm
Come by the Grand Opening of the MonkeyWrench Books Cafe. Same politics but add coffee!
We'll be serving coffee, tea, Good Flow juice, Blue Sky, and Celeste's vegan treats. Plus, a tent sale all day!

110 E. North Loop (as always)