Women Who Will Never Die

Yes, literature has a gift: making people and feelings immortal. Over the years, I have stumbled upon many women characters portrayed by writers who were obsessed by their beauty and being. I’ve always felt like I wanted to know everything about these women. What was so special about them? What inspired poets and writers to grab their pens and start writing? Were they worth so much attention? I admire the power of these women, those very peculiar qualities that made them live through the ages in fiction and poetry. Many of them fascinate me, and make me feel a bit envious, too. I think I actually have a number of favorites, and in this list I will only mention three of them (casual order):

 

1. Alice in wonderland. Who was the real Alice in Wonderland immortalized by Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Dodgson? I have always felt some kind of attachment to Alice’s story. When I was little, my mother used to feed me with tales. My favorites were the ones that became Walt Disney’s classics, Alice in Wonderland above all. I watched the cartoon so many times I actually still know the words by heart. Alice Liddell Hargreaves was an unrestrained child, naive and innocent at times, but also incredibly aware of the world around her. Alice’s father was the Dean of Westminster School and was soon appointed to the deanery of Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson/Carroll met the Liddell family in 1855. The relationship between the girl and Dodgson has been the source of much controversy. Dodgson entertained Alice and her sisters by telling them stories, and used them as subjects for his hobby, photography. There is no record of why the relationship between him and the Liddells broke so suddenly, but what remains are some very beautiful pictures of the little Alice (and a WONDERful book!).

“Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.”

2. How not to wonder about Beatrice’s life? We have no pictures, of course! (Yes, paintings!) What we have is Dante’s description of her, which appears in La Vita Nova. When he first saw her, she was dressed in soft crimson and wore a girdle around her waist. Dante fell in love with Beatrice at first sight, and he describes her with divine and angelic qualities. One afternoon, while Beatrice was walking the streets of Florence, she turned and greeted him. On the very same day, Dante had a dream about Beatrice, who became the subject of his first sonnet of La Vita Nova.

To every captive soul and gentle heart

into whose sight this present speech may come,

so that they might write its meaning for me,

greetings, in their lord’s name, who is Love.

Already a third of the hours were almost past

of the time when all the stars were shining,

when Amor suddenly appeared to me

whose memory fills me with terror.

Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold

my heart in his hand, and held in his arms

my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.

Then he woke her, and that burning heart

he fed to her reverently, she fearing,

afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

                            from La Vita Nova - A ciascun´alma presa e gentil core

3. Traveling back in time, there’s another woman who got my full attention. Her name is Lesbia, and Catullus was the poet who fell deeply in love with her (her real name was probably Clodia Metelli). I still remember how much passion my Latin professor put during that class in high school, commenting each and every word from this beautiful poem below. I seriously think this and other ancient poems were what motivated me to classical studies.

To every captive soul and gentle heart

into whose sight this present speech may come,

so that they might write its meaning for me,

greetings, in their lord’s name, who is Love.

Already a third of the hours were almost past

of the time when all the stars were shining,

when Amor suddenly appeared to me

whose memory fills me with terror.

Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold

my heart in his hand, and held in his arms

my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.

Then he woke her, and that burning heart

he fed to her reverently, she fearing,

afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

                                         from How Many Kisses

Who are your favorite women in literature?

Like Water

By Judith NewtonHer book, Tasting Home, is available for pre-order on Amazon.

“How do you peel a walnut?” my daughter asked as she looked, not too happily, at the mound of nuts on the kitchen table.  We’d spent three days in the kitchen laboring over the twelve dishes we’d planned for a large buffet, and chiles en nogada, or chiles in walnut sauce, were the final stage of our cooking marathon.  That very evening some forty faculty and students from all over campus would be arriving to celebrate our new multicultural graduate program, and if any dish could instill a sense of community it would be chiles en nogada.

Making simple recipes like tacos de crema, macaroni with serrano chiles, and refried beans had been easy and even pleasurable, but the chiles in walnut sauce were posing a challenge. I’d combined Frida Kahlo’s recipe with one I’d taken from the Internet, and the latter called on us to peel the walnuts before pulverizing them for the sauce. “Mom,” said Hannah, rubbing at one of the walnuts, “this brown stuff isn’t coming off.” “This is a window into the lives of generations of women,” I said, ineffectually scrubbing another walnut with my fingers. “Can you imagine how much time they spent working in kitchens?” “I love cooking with you like this,” Hannah had said when we first began. “I love it too,” I’d said. Our years of cooking together and of struggling through difficult recipes had created a strong sense of solidarity.

We decided not to peel the walnuts, since Frida’s recipe didn’t call for it, but we did roast the two dozen poblano chiles and then pulled off their skins. Then we chopped a picadillo out of shredded meat, fruits, nuts and cinnamon, and, cradling the chiles in our hands, began to stuff them with the sweet and savory mix. We were treating those chiles as if they’d just been born, but, despite our labor, they were developing some ugly splits. We decided not to flour them, coat them in egg mix, and then fry them in hot oil as Frida’s recipe required.

“It’s too risky,” I said, entertaining grim visions of the chiles bursting their sides and spilling their colorful innards into a smoky pool of oil. Did Frida fry her own chiles, I wondered. Then came the sauce---easy, sweet, and cool. Four cups of (unpeeled) walnuts pureed with cream cheese, Mexican crema, cinnamon, and a fragrant half cup of sherry. Finally, seeds from six pomegranates and sprigs of parsley to go on top.  Red, white, and green---the colors of the Mexican flag.

I had been thinking about a Mexican novel for the entire three days, Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. I’d been imagining Hannah and me as Tita and Chenca, two characters who spend much of their lives in the kitchen. A takeoff on nineteenth-century Mexican romance, Like Water is a novel about love and also a novel about politics, the latter being represented by the Mexican Revolution and the ongoing struggle of Tita and her sister Gertrude against patriarchal culture.

Each chapter of the novel is organized around a recipe, and the process involved in making the chapter’s dish---the grinding, the toasting, the chopping, the boiling, the frying, the cracking of eggs–is so thoroughly woven throughout the pages that cooking, an often invisible form of labor, becomes as central to the story as romance and revolution. Cooking, indeed, becomes an emblem of the domestic work that makes romance and revolution possible. It is the force that keeps women and men alive not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, and politically as well.

Cooking is like that, always there, and if it is as it should be, it not only nourishes our bodies but gives us the comfort of feeling loved, cared for, and secure. Eating what is cooked and served in a caring way evokes one of our first experiences of feeling at home in the world, the experience of being fed by another being. That is one reason that cooking and eating with others can heal the adult self, one reason that it can so easily make us feel connected to another person, a family, a culture, a political community.

Like Tita and Chenca, Hannah and I were laboring in the service of politics and love. The new graduate program was meant to be revolutionary---cross racial, multi-cultural, and oriented toward political activism not just inside, but outside the classroom as well. And I had done enough organizing by then to know how cooking for others, not just from duty, but with generosity and lightness of heart, can develop and sustain those ties of feeling that are, at bottom, what make political community possible.

In Like Water for Chocolate, food is given magical force.  Quail in Rose Petal Sauce invites Tita and Pedro to enter each other’s bodies both spiritually and sensuously as they sit at the dining table. It prompts Gertrude to run away with a revolutionary, sitting behind him, naked on his horse. The Chiles in Walnut Sauce provoke the guests at Tita and Pedro’s wedding to make passionate love. Magical realism like this suggests the power of emotion, of the unconscious, and of cooking as emotion work in the day-to-day activities of our lives.

Like life, the novel is full of mothers, those who nourish and those who do not. The bad mother, Elena, controls Tita, insists that Tita serve her until she dies, and forbids Tita to marry Pedro, the man she loves. Cruel, repressing, she is the mother who denies. Even after death, she reappears, forbidding Tita to be happy. Like a force of nature, she returns again and again, suggesting the lasting influence of how we are mothered.

But Tita finds good mothers to take Elena’s place---Chenca, the cook who tends to Tita in the kitchen, and Dr. John and his Indian mother, Morning Light, who feed Tita healing foods after Elena brutally entombs her daughter in the Dove Cot. Tita herself becomes a nurturing mother to Esperanza, her sister’s daughter. Like Tita I, too, had found alternative mothers---in Dick, my gay ex-husband, in my women friends, in colleagues I had come to love. But most of all I had found mothering in being motherly---to Hannah and to my political community. Cooking for, and eating with, others had all but eclipsed those days in my mother’s house---the shame, the lost identity, the spilled water on the floor. Like Chenca, I wanted to pass on, to Hannah and to others, the recipes, the utopian practices, the ways of being and of labor that make history more than a tale of struggle; that make it also a love story, a story of caring for others.

* * *

CHILES EN NOGADA (Adapted with permission of Marilyn Tausend from adaptation by StarChefs.com from Cocina de la Familia: More Than 200 Authentic Recipes from Mexican-American Home Kitchens by Marilyn Tausend with Miguel Ravago. Fireside, Simon & Schuster, Inc: New York, 1999.)

Marilyn Tausend kindly informs me that the secret to peeling the walnuts is to use fresh walnuts, right from the tree if possible. Meat: 2 lb beef brisket or 1 lb beef and 1 lb pork 1 small white onion cut into quarters 2 cloves garlic 1 T sea salt Picadillo: 4 T. safflower or canola oil 1/3 c. chopped white onion ½ tsp cinnamon ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper 1/8 tsp ground cloves 3 heaping T. raisins 2 T chopped walnuts 2 T. candied pineapple 1 fresh pear, peeled and chopped 1 apple, peeled and chopped 3 large, ripe tomatoes, roasted, peeled and chopped Kosher salt to taste Chiles: 6 fresh poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, and seeded with stem intact Walnut Sauce: 1 c. fresh walnuts 6 oz cream cheese (not fat free) at room temperature 1 ½ c Mexican Crema ½ tsp sea salt 1 T sugar 1/8 tsp cinnamon ¼ c. dry sherry Garnish: 1 T. chopped flat-leaf parsley ½ c. pomegranate seeds 1.      Cut meat into large chunks; remove excess fat. Place meat in large Dutch oven with onion, garlic and salt. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil.  Skim off foam if it collects on the surface. Lower heat and simmer for 45 minutes until the meat is just tender. 2.      Remove from heat and allow meat to cool in the broth. Then remove meat and finely shred it. 3.       Warm the oil in a heavy skillet and sauté the onion and garlic over medium heat until pale gold.  Stir in shredded meat and cook for 5 minutes. Add cinnamon, pepper, cloves.  Stir in raisins, 2 T walnuts, and candied pineapple.  Add chopped pear and apple and mix well. Add tomatoes and salt to taste.  Continue cooking over medium high heat until most of the moisture has evaporated.  Stir now and then.  Let cool, cover, and set aside.  The picadillo may be made one day ahead. 4.      Slit the chilies down the side just long enough to remove seeds and veins, keeping the stem end intact. Drain chilies on absorbent paper until completely dry. Set aside. Chiles may be made a day in advance 5.      At least 3 hours in advance, place 1 c walnuts in small pan of boiling water.  Remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Drain the nuts and, when cool, rub off as much of the dark skin as possible.  Chop into small pieces. 6.      Place nuts, cream cheese, crema, and salt in a blender and puree thoroughly.  Stir in the sugar, cinnamon and sherry.  Chill for several hours. 7.      Preheat oven to 350 F.  When ready to serve reheat the meat filling and stuff the chilies. Place chilies, covered in warm oven.  After they are heated, place chilies on serving platter, cover with chilled walnut sauce and sprinkle with parsley and pomegranate seeds.

Republished with permission from Tasting Home

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

One of the best parts of my job is that each spring trimester, I teach a special topic English course to eleventh and twelfth graders. I have been able to choose my topics and build a course from the ground up. My proudest achievement and favorite course to teach is one called Dystopian Literature. This spring I will be offering it for the fourth time, and in the winter I always revisit my curriculum and the texts I will be using. I am pleased to be able to share these books with you, as they are near and dear to my heart.

First is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It serves as our template for what a dystopian novel is and it exhibits the key characteristics of the genre that my students and I work with all trimester. Huxley’s novel is a sort of dystopian ur-novel; it presents a society that seems to be a utopia to almost everyone except our protagonist. But then Huxley flips the script and introduces a second protagonist midway through the book to advance his themes even further. And, the book has some very funny moments. His vision of the future is remarkably prescient, particularly in the realms of media and entertainment (the “feelies,” movies that you can touch, are starting to feel like something that may exist in my lifetime).

Next, we tackle Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid Tale, which may be my favorite book of all time by one of my favorite, if not my favorite, authors. As we read this book, I have the priceless opportunity of putting the novel in context for the students, including introducing them to personages they do not know at all, like Phyllis Schlafly and, much to their wide-eyed entertainment, Tammy Faye Bakker. Atwood’s novel is so chilling, so unsettling, that it rarely fails to captivate the students.  When Atwood writes “We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories,” we are able to discuss the varied levels of autonomy and agency women have had through the years, and the way many women still exist in negative space in certain contexts. I also take great glee in exposing so many young men to Margaret Atwood. I hope some day these young men will grow into men who might one day list the book as a favorite, as Meg dreams of in this piece elsewhere on this site.

Finally, we read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. I will not say much about the plot, as if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, I want you to approach the novel with as clean a mind as possible. The book is full of the restrained longing Ishiguro is famous for (more often known from The Remains of the Day), and presents a dystopian society that most closely resembles our own (and much of it takes place at a boarding school, not unlike where I teach, adding certain moments of “oh!” for the students). It lacks the overt futurism of Brave New World, and more than makes up for it with gorgeous language and emphasis on character.

Two books I use to supplement our work are Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick and Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin. Both present vivid pictures of modern day totalitarian societies with vivid prose. Some of the passages from Nothing to Envy, in particular, parallel eerily with The Handmaid’s Tale, in spite of one being fact and the other fiction and the thirty years that separate the narratives.

Lessons from a creative summit...

  Dearest Clara,

Every once in awhile, I like to get outside of my own box. It seems strange that as a management consultant that I would bother to spend time with photographers or writers or other creatives.  But while I enjoy what I do for a living, my true passions are outside of that.  I indulge them by spending time with others who can and do choose them for a living.  I admire that group of people so much---and sometimes there's nothing like getting out of your usual cadence to really gain perspective.  This weekend I attended a conference with hundreds of other people much more creative than I.  Sometimes I certainly wish that passions could be more for me, but at least for the immediate future, events like these will be as close as I can get.

Here are a few thoughts from some of the most creative people I have met, who also happen to be some of the best advisors for life as it turns out:

• "The only risk is not taking any risk": A reminder from one of the most risk-taking designers out in our time that if you don't have the courage to put your ideas and thoughts and frameworks out there to push the boundaries and make something happen, then ultimately the biggest thing at stake is that nothing at all will happen.  And life is about making things happen.  You get to choose the path that will be best for you, but have the courage to choose something.  Don't live your life by default.
• "You might as well spend time learning how to hustle since that is what you'll be doing from here until eternity":  I think some might look at this statement and find it demotivating.  After all, there's something about looking at a life of hustle that is akin to looking at a treadmill with no end of the road in sight.  But I see this differently.  Ultimately, life is about hard work, and that never really goes away.  If you learn to do the work---be thorough, pace yourself, know how to prioritize, know when to say no, know how to go after opportunities, know that no return comes without investment---then the work doesn't seem so daunting.  Learn how to do the work right.
• "You  might be judging me but that's not any of my business---you do what you like and I'll do the same": You'll find soon enough that the world is full of judgement---I'm always ashamed when I find myself on the giving end. I know from being on the receiving end, that often that judgement stings.  I found this young artist's perspective so touching when she openly acknowledged her awareness of people's judgement and her gracious, character building way of disregarding it---she regards judgement as the problem of the person giving it, not the person receiving it.  Have faith in who you are as a person---don't be defined by the judgement of others.
• "It's better to be disliked for who you are, than to be liked for someone people only think you are": It is so easy to get caught up in who we think we should be based on what others think we should be.  You'll know when you're doing it because you don't quite feel yourself, because you always have this nagging feeling of being left behind, and because you only feel that you're moving ahead when others give you permission to. . . look for those signs.  You won't want to admit them but trying to be someone else will eventually wear you out and wear you down---it's better to be known for who you really are, even if it comes at the cost of admitting who you are not.
• "I stopped comparing myself to others when I realized I was comparing my insides to other people's outsides": It's tempting to compare.  And if we're insecure, it can even be addictive.  But when we do, we know our full gifts and limitations but we don't necessarily see the full picture with others.  We don't know what's going on behind the scenes and we only see part of the picture (which incidentally is what we want to see).  It can only make you feel bad about yourself since a comparison is, in that sense, ultimately unfair.
• "Your success is built on incremental growth, and sometimes, every once in a while, magic might happen": I thought this was a tremendous insight and can be applied to nearly any project.  With information coming at us quicker and quicker, we might see the success of others and think it came to them overnight.  Every once  in a while that might be the case, but I assure you that it is extremely rare.  Most people have been working at their dreams and talents for years if not a lifetime, and for most people, success comes in small increments at a time.  Every so often, we're gifted a bit of magic - perhaps a collaboration, or flattering press, or some other injection that gives us some accelerated growth.  But that wouldn't happen without our foundational increments to support us.  When it seems like your due will never come, just keep working---the more solid your foundation, the longer your success will ultimately hold.

I know your successes will be many in this world, and I, for one, can't wait to see you achieve them.

All my love,

Mom

Whitney Cummings and the Maligned Female Showrunner

Lately I’ve been catching Whitney Cummings’ new late-night talk show “Love You, Mean It” because it airs on E! right after “The Soup” starring my alternate-universe husband Joel McHale. I’ve long been hesitant to embrace Whitney’s brand of comedy, which feels---particularly with the premise and set of her new talk show---derivative of Chelsea Handler’s blasé, sexually liberated cynicism, which, while fun, doesn’t need to be duplicated. Plus her NBC sitcom “Whitney”? Not great.

But the more I watch Whitney at her most comfortable, doing stand-up comedy and riffing on talk show round tables, the more I like her in spite of myself. She’s funny, self-deprecating, and even touches occasionally on social consciousness. In the first episode of “Love You, Mean It,” she hammered the trend amongst young females to ironically address each other as “hooker,” “whore,” or “slut.” And in last week’s episode, she called out Esquire magazine journalist Stephen Marche for his ridiculous assertion, in a cover story on Megan Fox, that women like Amy Adams and Lady Gaga and Adele are “perfectly plain.”

Of course, there are still moments---just like with Chelsea’s show---that are cringeworthy. Whitney herself doesn’t approach Chelsea’s flagrant disdain for PC-ism, but her round table guests certainly do. And both shows are on the E! network, so they’re not exactly “60 Minutes.” Or “The Daily Show.” They talk about celebrities and silly videos and Instagram.

It’s also worth noting that Whitney is, as guy friends of mine have phrased it, “really hot.” Every episode she comes out with a new blow-dry hairstyle and a cute outfit. Her promos feature her mugging in a bunch of self-conscious poses, poses that showcase her attractiveness, yet also wink at the camera---for instance when she leans all the way back in her chair with her legs apart like a dude and flashes a peace sign.

It’s that mix of self-awareness and self-deprecation on the one hand, insecurity and vapidity on the other, that seems to characterize not just Whitney but a whole neo movement of young modern feminists. Whitney’s simultaneous embrace of fluff, femininity, and super-competence calls to mind Zooey, Mindy, Chelsea, women showrunners who are out there, you know, running the show.

In spite or, more likely, because of this, there seems to be more than your average TV hate for Whitney, and to a lesser extent Mindy and Zooey. Why is this? What is it about Whitney, in particular, that makes her a lightning rod for criticism? It's true that "Whitney," "The Mindy Project" fall short of shows like "30 Rock" and "Parks & Recreation" and "Girls" (though these female showrunners, even universal favorite Tina Fey, can face their own gender-based criticisms---Lena Dunham was another target of that nonsensical Megan Fox article). But would there be such an onslaught if the shows were run by men? Why don't comedians like Jeff Ross and his schlubby, lowbrow, mean-spirited Comedy Central show "The Burn" get as torn apart? I say, more power to the women who take charge of TV. You can find fault with their comedy, but you might also recognize that, even in this day and age, being a female showrunner is still a pretty pioneering thing.

You should sell that

I’ve been reading Etsy’s “Quit Your Day Job” series since my senior year of college. Although I didn’t have a full-time job, something about the mystery of the “alternative” career path held my attention. I graduated in 2009 with the inaugural class of recession babies, and like many in my cohort, I went to grad school with the hope of staying out of the tanking job market for just a few more years. I wasn’t exactly sure where my studies would take me, or how I’d make a living after another round of coursework, but I was fascinated, albeit terrified, by the upheaval that seemed to be taking place in the hierarchy of professions. While many were devastated by layoffs and cutbacks, it seemed that every corner of the internet was highlighting another creative entrepreneur who had left her “safe” day job to make a living through her art.

As jobs that had once been considered stable became obsolete, creative professions and other more “risky” pursuits were being thrust into the spotlight. What once seemed risky came to be viewed as self-sufficient, as less traditional paths began to redefine success and professional freedom.

Part of why I’m obsessed with reading all of those quit-your-day-job stories and interviews with full-time bloggers and creative professionals, is not that I want to do what they do, necessarily, but rather that their trailblazing inspires a bit of confidence in my own choices as I find my way in a new professional landscape.

One of the downsides of the greater visibility of creative professions, however, is the “You should sell that” mentality, otherwise known as the death of the hobby. It’s the idea that every handmade gift or creative passion is the seed for a money-making venture. It’s the sense that your art is not legitimate if you’re not selling it, or that you’re not a real writer if you don’t make a living through your writing.

For my own part, I admire those who make a living through their art, as well as those who are creating beyond business hours. There are as many ways to practice creativity as there are creators, and I think it’s so important to honor them all. As I juggle multiple roles, all under the umbrella of words-on-paper and words-on-screen, I am especially inspired by those whose creative integrity infuses all of their work, whether it takes place in an office or a studio, whether for love, leisure, or livelihood.

For all the tables we danced on

These words sound better to the tune of this.

"we've lived in bars and danced on the tables hotels trains and ships that sail we sim with sharks and fly with aeroplanes in the air"

- Cat Power, Lived in Bars

"It is always important to dance."

This phrase recurs in my friend Jonathon's book, as a life philosophy that merits reiteration.

I had never thought of dancing as something that invites the adjective "important" until I moved to Guatemala, where Jonathon and my friendship was born. My Guatemala was steeped in importance and imperatives, in trauma and injustice. It was an outsized kind of importance, the kind that shows you the limits of your knowledge and highlights the boundaries of what you can do to understand mass atrocities and serve their survivors. At no point did I feel qualified for the tasks required of me in Guatemala; and even if in some universe, I were qualified to perform the tasks themselves, no part of me was prepared for the emotional weight, vicarious trauma, and ceaseless heartbreak.

It seems curious, then, that Guatemala was where we danced. We danced with vigor and with no shame, with no reservation and with gusto---every single time, with gusto. We danced on beaches and atop volcanoes, in living rooms and on coffee tables. Perhaps that was the place that inspired Jonathon to posit that "it is always important to dance."

In my homeland Greece, dance is barely a contact sport. Fingers may graze each other, but for the rest of it, you are on your own. You are fully responsible for wiggling your own shoulders, moving your own knees, swaying your hips, without the help of hips glued onto your own. Much of what I love about dancing in Latin America calls back to my original conception of dancing. While salsa and merengue inspire more affection than my native Syrtaki, they evoke jubilation and look like hugs in motion. It is perhaps these preconceived notions of mine about dancing that made "grinding" an enigma when I arrived at an American college campus at the age of 17. My idea of dancing involved synchronized skipping around, jubilant bopping, wiggling and nodding along and smiling, endless smiling---and maybe doing all that atop a table or two, yelling Opa! for good measure.

Rediscovering that obscure genre of dancing in Guatemala felt like a homecoming---a realization that when the workday came to an end, others would wish to join me for a round of salsa or a wiggle on top of a table. Others felt, like Jonathon did, that "it is always important to dance." The Guatemalan table-dancing marked me in ways that became impossible to forget, delivering another imperative: to continue dancing, with gusto, everywhere.

And so there was the summer of 2012, on a Halkidiki beach in Greece, with some of my best friends, sweat dripping down our faces, sand on our feet. There were hoarse voices and tsipouro and broken glass and stomping around and knowing every word. There is a beauty to dancing in your own language.

There was the first Los Fletcheros concert, put on by the illustrious band of my beloved graduate school. This, too, came with ample stomping and hugging---so much hugging. Every dancing experience comes with its own soundtrack. If there were a soundtrack to my Los Fletcheros this year, it would be that of nostalgia: The Killers, Mumford & Sons, MGMT. It would be the soundtrack of youth.

This past weekend, Los Fletcheros performed on my graduate school's annual ski trip, a tradition imbued with wine, flurries, and more kissing than a library typically inspires. Graduate school dancing reminds me of all I have loved about Greece, Guatemala, and everywhere in between: it is affectionate, but not intrusive; jubilant, but (ehm, usually) not sloppy. It is undeniably alive. This is what has motivated me and Taryn---jokingly, I hope---to want to open a club called The Graduate Student.

True to our graduate student selves, Katherine and I danced on a windowsill. Friends kissed in the background. Yet other friends nearly spilled drinks on the band. Thirteen of us left our cards at the bar. Who-knows-how-many actually collected them the next morning. We went home with the wrong jackets, each other's scarves, or no jackets and scarves at all.

We all need hugs in motion, sweaty faces, hoarse voices. All hearts need to move, and be moved. And, courtesy of Los Fletcheros, I am starting my life this week with an extra dose of whimsy. This column is called Eternally Nostalgic and, in some senses, I feel that this reflection is doing its namesake an injustice. Can you be nostalgic about an experience that you just had---an experience which you are, in effect, still having?  Los Fletcheros inspire a different, sweeter sort of nostalgia: a nostalgia for the moments in which you felt truly alive. An ode to whimsy, if you will.

Sacagawea: Guide. Interpreter. American Symbol.

 

She adorns our dollar coins and she makes a cameo in almost every fifth-grade textbook, but how much do you really know about Sacagawea?

If you’re like me, not that much. It’s all very gratifying to imagine the stalwart Native American guide for the Lewis & Clark expedition leading her white hosts over mountains and across rivers, all while carting a small baby on her back in a leather baby-sack; but the real story is both less romantic and potentially more impressive.

Sacagawea was born to a Shoshone tribe in present-day Idaho around 1788, just a few years after a certain British colony had gained independence on the other side of the continent. When she was 11 or 12, a battle with the Hidatsa Indians resulted in Sacagawea’s capture and transport to what is now North Dakota.

It was here that young Sacagawea met the man who would be her husband—one Toussaint Charbonneau, a Quebecois fur trapper who was living amongst the Hidatsa tribe. I can just picture the bearded man’s man, covered in mangy fox fur, courting the thirteen-year-old (yuck) Shoshone transplant in the snowy wastelands of North Dakota. Let’s be honest. No one will ever make a love story out of it.

A few years later, two dudes named Lewis and Clark were on their way to chart the newly-purchased Louisiana Territory, of Louisiana Purchase fame, and they enlisted Charbonneau to help guide and interpret. Sacagawea was an added bonus: since they would largely be passing through Shoshone territory (oops---I mean America), her expertise in that language was an asset.

The romantic images of Sacagawea summiting mountain crests, arm outstretched to beckon a weary but bright-eyed Lewis and Clark into the next gleaming American valley, are kind of, well, idealized. Surprising, I know. In reality, Sacagawea served as more of an interpreter than an actual guide, and Lewis and Clark frequently make reference to her as “the squar [squaw],” “the wife of Charbonneau,” and, inexplicably, “Janey.” Ever so occasionally, by her actual name (or more, their best approximation of it).

At one point, the expedition nearly lost a boatload of letters and other important crap that Lewis and Clark were toting around. Sacagawea speedily retrieved the items before they sank or were swept away; and in gratitude, the pair named the waterway the Sacagawea River.

Which kinda seems like a really typical Lewis/Clark move to pull, if you know what I mean. “Oh geez, thanks, Sacagawea! . . . You know what I’m gonna do? This river? I’m gonna name it after you. There. It’s been named. I’ve decreed it. From now on, everyone will call this the Sacagawea River. Okay, let’s keep moving. Keep up.”

Which she did, even with a baby on her back. The baby, Jean Baptiste, was a big hit with the guys. Clark liked the little guy so much that, it seems, years later, after Sacagawea’s death, he adopted him. (Toussaint was still alive, but probably kind of a deadbeat, anyway.)

While Sacagawea’s role in the Lewis and Clark expedition can be overstated, it doesn’t diminish the significance of what she did. Her knowledge opened up new frontiers to the American explorers, and she was hence able to practice an autonomy and freedom of movement unknown to most other American or native women of her time. It’s been speculated that another of her important roles in the expedition was to serve as a symbol of peace—most native groups understood that the presence of a woman in a party meant there were no intentions of war. (Which in and of itself is an interesting kind of powerful not-power. For more on this, read Juliana Barr’s excellent Peace Came in the Form of a Woman.)

In the end we all know very little about Sacagawea, the person. The images that adorn our statues and our numismatics are based on the faces of more contemporary Shoshone women, as no likenesses of S herself have survived the centuries. We don’t even know when she died---while most believe she died in 1812, just a few years after the expedition, some think she actually lived to a ripe old age and eventually returned to her people in Idaho.

But who needs an accurate likeness or a detailed minutiae of her life? What we can say, is. . . the fact that she’s remembered so well when almost all we have to go off of are some scant, fairly dismissive mentions in the journals of two important men, means she’s a pretty damn important woman. That’s only logical.

More or Less Like Family, Part III

By Molly Bradley Read parts I and II

“Mama! Mama? Mamaaaa!”

Already Khady’s wake-up call felt routine. She’d done the same the first morning, calling urgently through my door. I’d thought something was wrong until I saw it was just that she wanted me awake. If she wasn’t sleeping there was no reason her tubaab should be. With my braids, now, I was pretty much just another Khady.

I rose and stuffed my grimy contacts in as fast as I could and came out to assuage my anxious alarm. We had breakfast, and only got a half hour or so of the morning soaps before my father came in. He stood and watched with us for five minutes or so, impassive to a disconcerting degree. There were more physical shenanigans happening on a show this morning, ones I could understand. There was dancing and falling and laughing and more dancing.

Finally I looked to Khady. “Are we going?” I asked her, glancing at Dad.

She looked up from where she sat by his ankles, tugged his pant leg, and said something swift in Wolof. He bowed his head and muttered something in reply.

“Yes, he’s waiting for you,” Khady said.

“I’ve been ready,” I said in my defense. As soon as I stood he led the way out of the room and out of our sandy yard.

We took a path out of town that I’d never noticed before---not that I’d spent a lot of time outside the house. Still sand, sand, sand---then suddenly sand with growth on either side of the road. Somehow growing out of the sand. First just dry, unhappy grass, and then shrubs, bushes, trees. Growing.

Somehow we managed a little conversation while we walked. We’d never really spoken before, only nodded our hellos in passing. He was rarely around the house.

He spoke slowly enough, and I had just enough Wolof, to answer some basic questions: Was I alright? Did I need anything? Was Khady being good? Was I hungry? Had I brought water? (No---I should have, but I was, for no reason, playing stoic. Maybe I thought I needed to challenge myself some way or another, if I wasn’t doing anything else.)

The road seemed endless. Finally at one point we cut through the bushes to the right, up a gentle rise to an area sparsely studded with trees and, as it turned out, other homes. I wasn’t sure if these belonged to Mouit. Were the people who lived here part of the community? Did they commute, so to speak, to town to get things they needed? Or did they just survive out here on their own?

I wished I had more words to ask my father.

Despite the nothing substantial that we said, the walk was companionable. My father greeted the few people we saw as we passed. He seemed to know everyone.

Finally we came through a more densely wooded area into. . . green. Bright green. Rows upon rows and fields upon fields and hills upon hills of green. I had no idea this was out here, in the middle of this sandy, desert-like land. I had no idea how it could exist out here at all. Even when I’d gone with my sisters to gather wood the previous day, the “woods” had turned out to be very, very short shrubs with sturdy branches. Nothing like this. It was idyllic enough that I almost didn’t believe it: almost too green, too perfect. Endless bursts of green all in neat rows. The Jolly Green Giant was growing children in the ground, and all you could see were the tops of their curly green heads of hair.

We walked awhile through the fields. My father greeted every man working there---there was at least one person tilling every field. I trailed behind, so lulled by the color I almost forgot why we were there.

Finally we found Mamadou. I’d spotted him before we got there. He was wearing only a pair of loose linen pants and a hefty bandana on his head, to soak up the sweat. It was beyond hot.

Mamadou raised a hand in greeting and I raised mine back. My father gestured for me to sit on the ground at the edge of the field. He walked slowly toward Mamadou, keeping between the rows of onions, placing one foot carefully before the other, watching them as he walked.

He and Mamadou talked for a long time. There was a good deal of gesturing back and forth between the two halves of the field. Once my father left, Mamadou told me why.

“He thinks I am not taking good care of this side as that side,” he said. He sat beside me and got out the bowl he’d brought his lunch in. “You see that side is more green. This side, not so green.” He was working on this side today.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“You can take the weeds.”

I scrambled to my feet. There were weeds everywhere. I started by bending over each row, but quickly I got down on my knees and got efficient about it, crawling down the rows. Mamadou laughed.

“You really want to do a lot,” he said.

“I just want to help.” I was hardly doing anything. There were so many weeds. And there was Mamadou, doing the real work (that he explained to me as he did a first round): pumping the water up from the well, filling two buckets, running with them back to the row he was working on, and dousing the soil. The running kept things quick and efficient, because he had to cover the whole field four times, really drowning the onions at each pass. The running was also necessary because one of the buckets had a leak. The more water he lost, the less there was to cover the onions, and if it didn’t do the trick he’d have to do the same patch twice in a row. If he had to do that every time, that would make eight times watering the field in its entirety.

He kept at it and barely paused. It was hot, and the prickles on the weeds started to sting my fingers, but all I had to do was glance at him to feel embarrassed and start tugging again, reinvigorated.

The water started to sound really good coming up from that well. I wished I were working on the same row as Mamadou, at the same time, so I might catch some drops from the leaky bucket on my hands or feet or head. The four remaining water bottles on the floor of my bedroom back in the village kept materializing before my eyes.

Finally he finished his round on the less-green half.

“We go back now,” he said. “You can’t be in the sun for so long.”

My indignation was smothered by relief before it had really even arisen.

 ***

At the house that afternoon, Binta found me helping Khady wash clothes. Really Khady was washing them. I was trying to imitate her motions: soggy cloth grasped in both fists, enveloping the knuckles, and the knuckles of one hand scrubbed vigorously over those of the other. When she did it somehow the cloth, or probably her hands and the water, made a sharp and satisfying squelching sound like a brazen bird.

I couldn’t do it. Khady laughed at first but then became impatient.

“Just let me,” she said finally, and I resigned myself to brushing the suds around the rim of the plastic tub of water.

Binta sauntered over with a lilt in her step that could fit only her.

“Viens,” she said. Come.

I ought to have curbed it long before, but my immediate reaction to commands like this was to ask, “Why?”

Whether she took it as the curiosity it was or the insolence I didn’t intend, Binta didn’t let on.

“Viens boire attaaya.” Come drink attaaya.

Attaaya was a strong, sweet black tea boiled so many times over it almost caramelized. It smelled like it, anyway; the little cobalt blue or easy green teapot on the stove would start to shiver, and warm amber bubbles would begin to peek over the surface. Then whoever was tending it would come turn the fire off, take the teapot by its hot handle with a rag, and pour some into the stubby fluted glasses on the tea tray. The method was then to pour the steaming liquid back and forth from glass to glass, keeping one firm on the tray and lifting the other as high as possible, sending the liquid down in a perfect graceful arc. The height gave the surface of the tea a thick foam of those caramel-colored bubbles that tasted as good and sweet as it looked.

I’d never tried the technique myself. I wanted to learn but knew the first time would be a catastrophe of hot liquid streaming across the floor. This rural village with its limited stock of tea would not be the place to learn.

Binta led me to the bedroom she’d moved into with a sibling, or maybe Hangout Girl, or maybe a sibling and Hangout Girl. I was still pretty sure Hangout Girl didn’t belong to this family and did, in fact, have a home of her own, but I believed this on blind faith. She hadn’t missed a family gathering here yet, be it mealtime or TV time or watching-the-tubaab-struggle-to-cut-the-fins-off-the-fish time.

In the room were my oldest brother, the baby Mama, and, naturally, Hangout Girl. The room wasn’t tiny, but small enough that once I was inside, Binta could take me by the shoulders and sit me down on the bed in only a few steps. She sat down beside me, plucked the baby up from where she was rolling on the bedspread, and put her in my lap.

Hangout Girl was sitting in a chair next to my brother. She started snickering. “Mama mak ak Mama bundaw.” Big Mama and Little Mama. She pointed first to the baby and then to me as she said it. Fair enough. The other Mama was here first.

My brother was brewing the attaaya on a makeshift portable stovetop, something like a Bunsen burner. He took the teapot off the flame. The tray with the glasses was on the ground. He lifted the teapot to the level of his eyes and began to pour. Once the head of the stream made it safely into a glass he lifted it high above his head, meeting my eye and grinning as he did so. Sort of showing off, sort of showing me.

“I’m sorry, I never learned your name,” I said in French.

“Malik.” He finished pouring from the teapot and began to pour the liquid back and forth between the glasses. I smiled. Two brothers named Malik. This Malik was older, but he asked the same questions my Malik at home had asked me when I’d first arrived in Dakar, when I’d first become part of the family.

We ran through the topics and drank our tea. With four of us---not including Mama---we each only got two rounds of about half a glass, rather than three ample servings.

Different families do it differently, but typically attaaya is served three times a day, with three rounds each time. Guests tend to complicate the system and leave everyone with a little less tea.

I didn’t mind so much---but then, it was a bonus for me, an extra cultural treat in my day whenever I was offered attaaya. For them, it was the norm. They had to give up a little of their lives to give me this brand new one with all its experiences.

I’d gotten used to thinking of these temporary homes as home, and these fleeting people as family. There were so many of them there to take care of me there was nothing else to call them. What was I to them?

When they had no more questions for me we sat in silence. Companionably enough, but it still seemed strange. Then I realized why. I’d thought I was slipping into their world as it was, simply a new addition to what existed. Really they were simulating it for me.

Whole worlds

Two volumes, four books, 2724 pages, hundreds of high-quality illustrations. These are the stats for The History of Cartography, an encyclopedic tome published by The University of Chicago Press between 1987 and 1998. The volumes are still available for purchase, but they are now also available for download as a series of PDFs, because, as the publisher’s site explains, much has changed since this work began:

“In 1987 the worldwide web did not exist, and since 1998 book publishing has gone through a revolution in the production and dissemination of work. Although the large format and high quality image reproduction of the printed books are still well-suited to the requirements for the publishing of maps, the online availability of material is a boon to scholars and map enthusiasts.”

Things like this rarely happen these days, as we have generally given up on trying to contain the whole world between two covers. And this is certainly for the best, since a conversation about the history of anything can only benefit from more voices than one book, or one series of books, can contain.

But what struck me most when I came upon this work, which was published between the time I was born and the time I went to middle school, is the sort of sustained attention it must have required. Although it includes the work of multiple contributors and editors, it’s hard for me to imagine the kind of commitment and hard work that brings such a project to life over the course of more than a decade.

Since offering up my New Year’s resolution to finish what I’ve started, several friends have asked me why and wondered what I really meant. Does it mean I have to finish every book I start, even if it turns out I really don’t like it? Does it mean I have to finish a faltering project, even if it seems doomed? Of course not.

What I really meant is that I’d like to move beyond the wonder of beginnings. I love beginnings. I love the excitement of brainstorming ideas and the hope and optimism that comes with getting started. But after the thrill of beginning wears off, the middle is much less glamorous. It requires simply showing up and doing the work, or “being boring,” as Austin Kleon says in Steal Like an Artist.

Endings, too, can be a challenge. Whether it’s finishing Moby Dick or sending a long-term project out into the world, endings require a sort of reckoning between what you’d hoped for and what really came to be. Sometimes things turn out better than expected, sometimes worse, but an ending is almost always different from what you imagined when you began.

As I set out to finish what I’ve started, in small and perhaps increasingly bigger ways, my intention is simply to embrace all of the middles and ends that are required, just like beginnings, to make things happen.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

By Sibyl Perhaps you read my column the other week about diving in to the creative life and were intrigued, but need an extra push of inspiration.  Or maybe you are already engaged in art-making pursuits of some kind, and could use some encouragement for your efforts.  Either way, read on for Sibyl’s picks for what to read offline to spark your creativity until you positively surge with it.

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger For an entire decade, I read this book yearly, usually in a single sitting on a rainy evening, pacing around my apartment saying the words aloud to myself in a very low voice, or curled up in an ancient armchair with all the stuffing showing.

This book sees all your neuroses and lets you keep them.  The story and the characters wind their way around your fears about the selfishness of the creative life versus the selflessness of the religious life, and sews a protective cloak around them.  It reminds you that if nothing else, you need to do it for the Fat Lady.

Letters To a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke This slender missive was first given to me at the tender age of 19 by my favorite older cousin, who had just quit her life on one side of the country and travelled to the other on a wing and a prayer, following her creative whims.  It sometimes gets flack for being exclusionary (he makes the argument at one point that you are only an artist if you NEED to be, can do nothing else, which is obviously a bit dangerously black-and-white), but what I love about this book most is that it upholds difficulty.  Rilke asserts, again and again, that if you are finding adversity, you are doing it right.  He instructs the young art-maker to trust his sadnesses, seek out the important, serious struggles and try not to judge the outcomes.  Great advice for those days when you inevitably feel like if it’s too hard, you should just pack it in.

Wild Mind: Living The Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg Technically, this book is geared towards writers, and there are excellent writing prompts at the end of every chapter. However, there is tons of advice that is good for any artist seeking to find practical ways to loosen up and find the freedom to create.  Goldberg advocates for creating from instinct, and writes about all the ways we clog up our first impulses, with suggestions for how to remove those barriers to vibrant creation.  She also argues for committing to a specific arts practice rather than allowing yourself to get preoccupied with fifty different things.  Since I am a firm believer that commitment, even if you fail fully at it, always leads to depth, I love her application of this to the creative life.

The books that I have suggested in this column have one thing in common: they are all short.  The last thing you need is a huge engrossing tome that allows you to avoid creating.  Read, get inspired, then put the book down and make something! The more of yourself you put into it, the more uniquely powerful it will be.

Sometimes, visual imagery inspires like nothing else.  Therefore, here are three companion documentaries to go with this reading list:

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time (2001) When I had a newborn, I watched endless documentaries about artists, yearning for the time when I would have a baby off my boob and be able to go back out into the world to create.  It was actually a lovely time of incubation and learning, and I discovered Rivers and Tides in that period.  I think I watched it over and over for an entire week, whenever my baby was feeding.

The pace of it is enchanting, as Goldsworthy is followed over a year of his work, which takes him all over the world creating ephemeral sculptures out of natural materials.  The most evocative piece for me was that the way Goldsworthy works makes him face failure on a daily basis.  This is something that is absolutely imperative for an artist: to become so familiar with failure that while it is devastating every time it happens, you learn to trust it, to use those mistakes for even greater works of artistry.

Who Does She Think She Is? (2008) Watching this documentary, which follows several female artists as they struggle to create in the midst of mothering, is an inspiring experience.  The personal stories are interspersed with astonishing facts about the lack of representation of women, and particularly mothers, in the art world.  Seeing these women have the courage to create when everyone said they were selfish, unrealistic, and irrelevant was incredibly empowering to me.  My favorite was a ridiculously talented sculptor who has FIVE children, and does her art-making during naps and after bedtime.  This documentary would really be interesting to anyone, not just mothers, because you'll find yourself saying, "If she can do it, with a baby on her hip, and one pulling on her leg, so can I!"

1991: The Year Punk Broke  (1992) In the summer of 1991 the seminal noise-rock band Sonic Youth invited filmmaker David Markey along on a two week summer festival tour of Europe, with their little-known opening band, Nirvana.  The result, a documentary that will rock your face off, was playing on repeat in my buddy Ben's basement for most of our teenage years.  To be fair, I have not re-watched this since about 1997, so I'm going on hormone-fueled memory here.

I'm a little afraid to re-visit it, actually, since doing so sent artist Andrew Kuo into such a tailspin that he was forced to ask, in graphic form, "Wait, did punk ruin my life?"  If it did, I don't want to know.  Maybe you weren't a baby punk in the 90's who swore she saw God when Sonic Youth's guitars sustained a single note of noise, creating a wall of discordant sounds around you for minutes at a time, but if you fancy my Sibyl columns I think that baby punk might live within you, without you even knowing it.  Watch this doc and let the manic expression and vibrant fury of these bands stir in you the desire to smash the world with your art.

Non-negotiables

We watched a couple of documentaries last weekend that are still tugging away at me as the week floats by. The first was Happy, and the second was Bill Cunningham New York. In the first, intimate portraits of happy people in surprising situations—from a rickshaw driver in India to an American woman who has recovered from a severe accident—were interspersed with researchers discussing what they had found to be the building blocks of happiness: novelty, close relationships, and acts of kindness.

In the second, shots of the revered street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham biking all over Manhattan with his camera contrasted with glimpses of his tiny apartment, where he sleeps on a board among file cabinets. For him, sleeping and eating seem to be afterthoughts. And the idea of a work/life balance? Well, he’d probably just laugh and say that work is life.

In a surprising moment, he responds to the invisible interviewer that, yes, of course, he goes to church on Sunday. It seemed that while everything else came second to his work behind the camera, church was a given. The otherwise opinionated and articulate subject paused for a long stretch and struggled to explain why.

More than anything else, these two films challenged my assumptions about non-negotiables. Each of us is constantly making tiny choices, arranging and rearranging priorities, which eventually add up to the more public aspects of our lives. Sometimes it’s impossible to really explain the whys and hows of our own lives and the lives of others. We can only grasp at threads among the complex bundle of will, experience, nature, and circumstances. I suppose all of this is obvious, but perhaps I needed a reminder.

Grief: Mapping Your Online Community

I learned the phrase “Community mapping” at age sixteen while volunteering in a small community in rural Paraguay. At the time, the notion of mapping the resources in a community seemed clear. Quickly drawn on a piece of paper---the community school, church, homes, the dirt roads connecting the dots, and the fields that spread in the spaces between houses. The stick-figure buildings my host family drew to mark the previously listed sites represented the physical locations of where community manifests. They leapt off the page as a visible sign of the strength and resources held within this community.  At sixteen, I transferred this model to my life in Colorado---my school, my home, my family’s cabin, and the places where I spent time with my friends.  My map made sense, I didn’t question my places of support and where my community came together. The intervening twelve years of moving and creating new communities---including online---threw a wrench in my map. It no longer fits on one page or within a single community. I access much of the pieces of different communities in online spaces, including gchats from friends who still inhabit past homes on other continents, Facebook messages from childhood friends, and following twitter feeds of friends-I-haven’t-actually-met, who share a common journey.

Grief and loss often throw the individual into an unknown emotional space, where the “community map” becomes increasingly important. It creates a sense of one’s resources and places of support; showing the individual the strength of their community(ies). For many, the communities of support blend between in-person, phone, and online communication.

Admittedly, the online space trends towards the more positive aspects of life, as Jenna Wortham notes in her article, Talking about Death Online, “This is more than trying to decide how carefully polished you want your online image to be. . . . It’s about the way social software is slyly engineered to get us to participate---we are encouraged to brag about our lives, and present ourselves as living our best lives each day and year.” Between updates about babies, engagements, jobs, and school---loss becomes just another post that slides by not really resonating.

Engaging with more difficult, heart-wrenching topics, such as grief and loss via social media opens the individual up to vulnerability. For many, loss creates moments of intense need to reach out to one’s community. The online platform is not necessarily designed for in depth sharing or support, as posts and tweets have character limits. The feeds stream by, not allowing the adequate time or ability to respond to a friend’s post. As Jena Wortham writes, “However, when it comes to talking about death and grief in a non-abstract way---that is, when dealing with the loss of a family member, a partner or close friend---it gets much, much trickier. It doesn’t have an appropriate reaction face, a photo that you can reblog, a hashtag.” I often wonder as I see friends hesitantly posting memories of their lost parent how our ability to comfort each other spills into this medium?  How much of our ability to empathize in person actively translates with each “like” we give to their posts?

As a firm believer in allowing each individual to chart their own path for grieving and healing, online spaces may become mechanisms for both. In my own process, I try to push the boundaries of what feels comfortable to share on Facebook, twitter, etc. I don’t shy away from posting pictures of my father, marking what would-have-been his sixtieth birthday, the sixth year since his death, or my travels to places he would have loved. However, the accompanying text is often positive, such as “missing your adventures” rather than engaging with the harder, empty feelings of loss. While I can’t express my “full self” in this online space, I trend towards sharing what I can with this online world. As my community is spread throughout many places, online becomes the place that I receive (and provide) support from so many communities at once. Online, I am reminded of the people beyond the Facebook photos who love and care about me---through likes, comments, and quick emails after they see the post.

Beyond our individual experiences with grief and healing---Facebook has become a community in itself, creating a way to memorialize those who have died. Two of my “current” Facebook friends are people who have passed away. Their profiles remain places where friends and family leave notes---sharing life updates, memories, or simply typing “I miss you.” In a world where visiting gravesites may not be practical, the online memorial space may bring us closer together.  In her blog post, Online Mourning and The Unexpected Refuge of Facebook, Cheri Lucas (another Equals Record writer) discusses her experience with a friend’s death;

“A few hours after receiving the news, I wrote something and shared it as a Facebook note. I posted scanned photos from college—precious moments of youth, debauchery, and experiences I had never shared publicly—from nearly 15 years ago: onto his profile, our friends’ profiles, and my timeline. I sat in front of my computer, clicking on photos people tagged of him: images that conjured memories, that stunned and confused me, that made me feel grateful for knowing him, that devastated me because I realized I didn’t know the man he had become.

Alone, I sobbed. Yet I sobbed with Facebook open—his life revealed and exposed in bits on my screen, his friends spilling tears on his profile. I sobbed at home, by myself, but also with everyone else. I had never given in to the community of Facebook until that moment. For the first time, its communal space had comforted me.”

The possibilities of online spaces to bring us together are endless, we can share memories of those who have died, sharing our own healing processes, and of course, share our joys. Yet, as Wortham also notes, we don’t yet know the outcomes of creating online communities that don’t support the whole breadth of human emotions. However, we should trend towards sharing our authentic selves, our whole journeys---and in return, we should support others who do just that---comment on posts people share about those they have lost, about their difficult moments---engaging with the full spectrum of emotions, will only make the blissful moments stronger.

Much of my community is online, thus my grieving and healing cannot be completely separate. However, as with all pieces of grieving, this is personal---and we will each have to carve out how we interact with our online spaces. Yet, striving to make these spaces open to deeper human interaction, will only bring us closer to each other, and as a community---closer to healing.

Spending Time with C.J. Cregg, or the Great West Wing Re-watch of 2013.

If you're anything like me, you've spent an unholy amount of time in the last couple of weeks watching episodes of The West Wing, recently made available to junkies like us via Netflix streaming. (For those of you who were unaware of this development: You're welcome. We'll see you in a few weeks.) I was a junior in college when The West Wing debuted on NBC back in the halcyon days of must-see TV. My roommates and I were immediately addicted; we gathered faithfully for an hour each week to catch up on the latest adventures of Toby, C.J., Josh, and the rest of the Bartlet gang. We rooted for Sam's call girl friend Lori, despised Mandy along with the rest of America, and, this being Bryn Mawr, idolized C.J. Cregg to no end for her willingness to stand up for women in the face of the boys' club.

Since then, though, I've grown up a bit. I've lived more than thirteen years of real life since The West Wing debuted in the fall of 1999, and I've learned a thing or two in that time. Here's a few of the things that hit me during my re-watch: some good, some bad, some truly ugly.

Embarrass, then pwn It's no secret that Aaron Sorkin's shows espouse a sort of lazy, benevolent liberalism---the kind that makes well-off white people feel good without making us think too hard. And, hey---there are days when we all want to stop thinking and just bask in the fantasy, right? One notable, repeated expression of this liberalism is the embarrass/pwn move employed to take down the mean conservatives (as opposed to the nice conservatives) on the show. A conservative character (usually a one-timer, sometimes a repeat visitor) makes a statement of what they believe to be fact; a central, liberal character corrects the statement, then uses the upper hand to smash the moral conclusion the mistaken fact implied. It happens right in the pilot, when one of the mean conservatives misidentifies "honor thy father and mother" as the first commandment, then, perhaps most famously, when President Bartlet takes down Jenna Jacobs (a stand-in for Dr. Laura) over the biblical condemnation of homosexuality. It's satisfying, to be sure, but it's also a bit repetitive (these are two of about five examples in the first season alone), and implies that the only (and far too simple) reason mean conservatives aren't nice ones is that they're stupid.

Mandy disappears Remember Mandy? The media consultant played by The Cutting Edge alum Moira Kelly? Her without-a-second-glance disappearance from the show after its first season was pretty ballsy in its complete and utter lack of further mention. But it kinda works. Well-played, Schlamme and Sorkin. Well-played.

Cool-girl sexism I welcomed the season 2 arrival of Ainsey Hayes to the Bartlet White House. Emily Procter is a delightful actress, and the character is a ton of fun. Plus, she gave the show the opportunity to explain what the White House Counsel's office does on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to when a crisis (The president's MS diagnosis going public, for example.) is in motion. She is also, unfortunately, a vehicle for much of the show's casual sexism; in this case, she exemplifies the "cool girl" fantasy---the kind of girl who can eat donuts all day long and still be a perfect size 2, the kind who just loves being one of the guys but also having her sexiness acknowledged, openly and pretty ickily, in an office environment. She's The West Wing's resident Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

C.J. Cregg is still my idol Allison Janney made Claudia Jean Cregg one of the most compelling women on TV---not just at the time, but pretty much ever. Sorkin wrote her some snappy dialogue, to be sure, but the depth, the sexiness, the ridiculously sympathetic nature? That's all Janney, and it's marvelous to behold. Witness, if you will, her statement about gun violence in the aftermath of the Roslyn shooting, her struggle on behalf of the women of Qumar, or even the time she dealt with a total jackass whom she 1) used to sleep with and 2) decided not to hire for a job at the White House. I would follow C.J. Cregg into battle anytime. For reals.

Related: C.J. and Danny are the hottest OTP in history I always wanted C.J. and Danny to get together, but it's only with time, age, and an appreciation of how rare it is to have both true sexual and intellectual chemistry with a single person that I can see how incredibly hot the match is. Right from the start, it is achingly delicious. The two of them finally ending up together is possibly the most satisfying part of the series, especially since it also involves a career move that C.J. actually wants to make. Loves. It.

Blatant heartstring pulling pulled off by magnificent actors Aaron Sorkin is pretty much the most blatantly emotionally manipulative television writer in history. (Hyperbole? I think not!) He injects some pretty obvious heartstring tuggers in a high percentage of West Wing episodes, things I would normally find gag-inducing. He's saved, though, by the incredible barn of performers---especially Dule Hill, Martin Sheen, John Spencer, Allison Janney and Richard Schiff. This cast can take some seriously cheezy writing and spin it into gold. A few favorites, you ask? How about the time President Bartlet gives Charlie his family's heirloom carving knife? Or the time Toby and Mrs. Landingham attend a homeless vet's funeral? Or maybe, just maybe, the time C.J.'s romance with a Secret Service officer ends in his murder? Oy.

All in all, I'm enjoying my re-watching binge. While watching the episodes in such quick succession brings out some of the show's fault lines, it also reminds me of why I loved it so much the first time around. And nothing at all can be bad about spending so much time with Ms. Cregg.

[photo: NBC]

Gertrude Bell: Mapmaker. Statemaker. Of Arabia.

Ah, Gertrude. My soulmate, my nemesis, my role model.

She is my soulmate because we are both white(ish) women who have taken a deep interest in the Middle East, making it the object of study, scholarship, and advocacy.

She is my role model because she was a woman who surpassed her menfolk colleagues in bravery, ambition, tenacity, and, in most cases, accomplishments. Back in the 1920s, of all places!

She is my nemesis because she was a British imperialist who got all up in the Arabs’ business. But to be fair, that was definitely in vogue at Whitehall in those days.

I tend to feature historical women that are uncontroversial, that I can say with almost no compunction, this is a life well-spent. Yet here I feel I diverge from that tradition. Not to say that Gertrude Bell’s life wasn’t well-spent. As intimated in my opening lines, I deeply respect and admire much about her. But whenever you get into the Middle East— or when you, specifically, get into the Middle East by way of France, America, or Britain—you’re getting into murky moral territory. Not bad, necessarily. But murky. And with serious implications to the present.

Who was Gertrude Bell? She was a British writer, traveler, and statemaker extraordinaire whose most lasting legacy was helping to establish Iraq as a nation-state. The daughter of North England iron-workers, Bell excelled as a student at Oxford, took an interest in the Middle East, got involved with a guy who died at Gallipoli (think: Turkey, Mel Gibson, running, Adagio in G, freeze-frame dying). Rendered a single lady, Bell turned all her attentions to making political history.

Bell had traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, writing about her travels and drawing maps of previously uncharted areas. By the 1910s she was playing an important role in the British colonial government and worked with the likes of T.E. Lawrence (you know, of Arabia) and Winston Churchill, scoring an invite to the male-dominated Cairo Conference in 1921. This was the conference that helped determine the borders of the British colonies—oops, I mean “mandates”—that were established in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, of course, having so recently been ass-whooped in World War I and losing their substantial Middle Eastern holdings to the Allies (though Turkey was able to speed-build a state before the British and the French could get their grubby hands on it).

As far as smoke-filled rooms go, Bell and Lawrence were smoking on the side of the underdog. Both promoted the regimes of brothers Faisal and Abdullah, two of the leaders of the Arab Revolt—literally, a revolt by the Arabs against the Ottomans during WWI, which had been partly arranged by the British to weaken their enemies internally. They kinda owed the guys, but then a lot of promises were made back then. The British were quite the international heartbreakers.

By the end of negotiations, it was decided that Faisal would be the king of a newly-created state called Iraq, while Abdullah would preside over a similarly newly-created state called Transjordan, Jordan for short. (Okay, that name change actually came later.) These regimes would be far more “indigenous” than having British dudes run the show, for sure, but it should be noted that neither Faisal nor Abdullah were “indigenous” to the areas they ended up ruling—both were from what is now Saudi Arabia. Also, it took a while for the British to actually, you know, leave. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Gertrude Bell spent much of the rest of her life in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. She spoke Arabic and Persian, had what was quite a strong understanding of local politics, conflicts, and culture, and even helped to establish the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in Iraq. Her crazy idea was that art and artifacts from the region should maybe stay there to be featured in regional collections, rather than being shipped halfway around the world to the British Museum or the Louvre. Power to the non-European peoples.

She died in 1925 from what appeared to be an overdose of sleeping pills. In a 2007 review of a new book about Bell, Christopher Hitchens said that she was one of those “English people who thought other peoples, too, deserved their place in the sun.” It’s a nice sentiment, and it’s also an implicit statement on power. As I, an American with no Middle Eastern heritage, have undertaken and continue to undertake study of Middle Eastern countries, as I learn Arabic, as I go on photographic tours of Lebanon, I recognize in myself the paradox of Gertrude Bell. Is it a good or a bad thing?

(Proof that Bell is still remembered fondly to this day: Naomi Watts may or may not play her in an upcoming film. With Robert Pattinson, our most beloved star.)

Matera, A Gem Of Italy

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

I have never had an easy relationship with my country. Until the "American period", when I moved to Washington DC and taught Italian for three years, I had lived in Italy my whole life. My hometown is Bergamo, a city close to Milan, where I studied, made intimate friendships, met my husband and lived happily with my family. Yet, when I graduated, I felt the urge to leave. It was a strong feeling, something from deep inside. I needed to find my own way, my way of thinking and living. I am happy I left for a while---America was a land of opportunities to me, a place where I felt free and happy.

As weird as it may sound, during the time in the United States I grew to know that country much better than my own---I was living every day like a tourist, surprising myself like a baby for every doughnut covered in chocolate, cinnamon, sprinkles, maple iced, lemon filled and so on. Places like Barnes & Noble were new to me---could I really take a magazine from a shelf, read it for a while and then place it back? In Italy, that was (still is?) quite unimaginable. And what to say about sports---I am a couch potato, oh yes, and seeing all those people running at all times was a kind of culture shock. I was about to convince myself to go running, too (not sure I could survive a mile!) but well . . . I made it back to Italy before even trying.

In the last couple of years my family of two rooted between Bergamo and Milan. Husband and I made a promise to ourselves: stop thinking that traveling means going to the most faraway places, and start exploring Italy a little more. So this past Halloween we left the north and drove all the way to the south to visit a real gem, a place which is unknown to most of the people who visit Italy, and a little out of the main routes. The city is Matera, and this is why I call it a gem . . .

We arrived in Matera in the evening, and here is what we saw, a landscape that at first sight was very similar to Jerusalem.

At night, the cathedral's tower jetted out in the black sky, and the rest of the sassi glimmered in shades of yellow and orange. Have you heard of the movie "The Passion", by Mel Gibson? It was shot here.

We dropped our bags at the Hotel in Pietra and asked the receptionist, a very nice lady, to recommend us some good restaurant to taste local food. After a few minute walk, I had already fallen in love with Matera, and there was still more to see the next day! We spent the night in a tiny and beautiful room at the hotel (by mistake, Husband had made reservations for a single room, and since it was too beautiful to give it up we squeezed a little!) and the next morning we had breakfast with homemade cakes and foamy cappuccino. Everything was so delicious, and the atmosphere was quite relaxing. Imagine a 12th-century Benedictine church converted into a hotel, where the rooms are dug in the rocks.

After breakfast, we explored the sassi and the cave churches. The sassi left us speechless and in awe of its beauty. It’s hard to describe the feelings–when you see such places, you can’t help but thinking there must be something beyond this world, some holy entity that gave us all this beauty to enjoy.

Matera was a gift, and now it is one of my favorite places in Italy. I can’t recall having met such wonderful people elsewhere. Everyone was smiling and ready to help, the food was great and the sassi were so unique and beautiful you could easily get lost in the small paths by looking up and around all the time.

This trip to the south helped me to recall that Italy is an amazing country. We struggle with politics, unemployment, financial crisis, but still we find our way to smile broad smiles and treat each other with welcoming hospitality and warm hearts. I’m happy I took this trip. It opened my heart and mind to places I didn’t know, that felt so far but were yet so close.

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What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Samantha Shorey is an essay writer and film photo taker from Portland, Oregon. She recently moved to a small New England town to get her masters studying communication and culture at The University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her current research focuses on the way people create authentic identities online.  Samantha's blog Ashore looks at everyday life through metaphors and a camera lens, mostly in close-up. She believes photos should look more like memories and in Motown records on Sunday mornings. Even though I love (I mean, really love) browsing bookstores, back-cover paragraphs just don’t work for me. They’re all plot synopsis, and no “this book made me realize that love is the bravest choice!” or “this book made me ugly cry on public transportation.”

So, I asked my friends Laura and Meg for a recommendation over coffee at Stumptown in New York. Both of them are heart-stirring writers, and they’re my go-to girls for books that make me feel.

After our chat and a little iPhone voice-memo magic, here are five books to make you feel hopeful, encouraged, understood, inspired, and interested---respectively.

Recommended by Laura Marie Meyers | Little Things and Curiosities

Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos When people ask me for book recommendations (which happens a lot because I’m a full time writer!) my number one choice is Love Walked In. I’m a sucker for characters that stay with you long after you’ve finished the book---as if you might actually run into them somewhere. With names like Cornelia and Teo, they were so unlike anyone I’ve ever known that I wanted to find pieces of them in people around me. This book follows so many different types of love that you’re not really sure which is the most important---whether it’s the love of a child, or the love of a family member, or the love of a lover. It’s about every type of love.

And really, I’m a sucker for the title. I love the ide of love walking in---as if it was somewhere else and then stepped through the door. Like Love was out doing it’s own thing and it wanted to drop in on you one day. Love walked in? “Oh! Hey, Love! It’s been a while, fancy seeing you here!”

Recommended by Meg Fee | The Wild and Wily Ways of a Brunette Bombshell

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed Dear Sugar is a collection of advice columns written by Cheryl Strayed, previously written under the pseudonym “Sugar”. Advice columns are usually all about the person asking for advice and not the person giving it. But, she totally turned the thing on its head and decided to talk from her own personal experience.

I think this book is so great because every time you think you know the advice she is going to give---it isn’t. Her advice just calls attention to what the person is actually telling her. They already know the answer. She tells people that they have to be guided by their truest truth, and that is an immovable thing.

Two of my favorite pieces of advice from her are: “every last one of us can do better than give up” and “we have to reach in the direction of the life we want.” I think about that last one a lot. Real change is happening on the level of the gesture. It’s one person creating a tiny revolution in their own life.

Recommended by Samantha Shorey | Ashore

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby “Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at twenty-six.” If you’re that type of person---and I definitely am---then High Fidelity is a book for you. Rob, an English record storeowner, narrates the story in the days after his live-in girlfriend moves out of their apartment. Hornby’s writing is funny, full of emotion, and punctuated by music references and “top 5” lists.  I’d like almost any book about heartbreak, but this one especially captures the messiness and uncertainty of this in-between age---the unquietable desire to love and be loved, but the fear of being tied down. In times of happiness and in times of sadness the question is the same: is this all there is? or will something better come along?

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck Walkable City is the perfect book for cocktail party conversations with the hip and urban. After reading it, I’ve started quite a few sentences with “did you know _____?”. (Did you know that additional highway lanes often make congestion worse because of “induced demand”?). Being from Portland, Oregon, I have first-hand experience with a lot of the things that Speck says make a city walkable---and ultimately, wonderful. His argument is so compelling because it has less to do with buying into “being green” and more to do with the tangible things that make life better. Cities have corner coffee shops, chance encounters on the sidewalks, easy errands, and less time spent in traffic. All of these are the reasons why cities like mine and San Francisco, Chicago, New York and even Charleston are attracting disproportionate numbers of the bright and creative.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion I’m pretty sure Joan Didion is my spirit animal! Slouching Toward Bethlehem is a collection of her essays about California and the counter-culture movement, written in the style of “New Journalism”. It isn’t removed third-person newspaper writing---her sentences have such extraordinary presence and clarity. She’s inspiring to me as a researcher too, because she’s acutely interested in the way people live their every day lives.

One of the personal essays in this book, On Self Respect, is the most important piece of non-fiction I’ve ever read. In it she writes “People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.” Without it “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out . . . their false notion of us.” As a people-pleaser, it’s a bit of tough love that I’ve always needed.

On finishing what you've started

I started thinking about resolutions early in December, and I finally settled on something specific just in time for the New Year. I knew I wanted to dig deeper and put down roots. I wanted to focus on paying attention and following things through. I had a sense of what my intentions would be for 2013, but I knew I needed something a little more tangible to measure my progress and keep myself on track. Our little dining area is crammed with shelves and shelves of books, a combination of the two libraries and reading histories we brought into our relationship. Over the course of a meal, it’s not unlikely that we’ll pull out one or two, a bilingual dictionary or a novel or a theoretical tome, and mull over its past or flip to a familiar passage. I love our little library, but I’m always aware that it’s laced with a funny little secret.

The truth is, there aren’t so many books on those shelves that I’ve actually finished. Sure, I’ve read zillions and zillions of pages, if you consider them all together, but finishing one whole book is another thing entirely. If you pull out any of the books that are my own, you’re likely to find a bookmark stuck halfway through, or a worn first few chapters followed by crisp, untouched pages through the end. In some cases, I even stopped just a few pages before the end.

It’s not that didn’t love those unfinished books—in fact, I’ve claimed many of them as my favorites. Mostly I’ve just been drowning in reading assignments for the past few years and never felt like I could give my full attention to one whole book before sailing into the next. And maybe, in some cases, I liked those books so much that I didn’t want them to end.

Whatever the reasons may be, those unfinished pages are calling to me, especially now that I’ve got a little more time to attend to them lovingly, rather than whizzing through their pages in a race to some imaginary finish line. I think I set each book aside with a pang of guilt, but also with a glimmer of hope that I’d come back to it sometime in the future and finally do it justice.

A change in my reading habits is just one small example of the attention and depth I hope to cultivate this year, but I think it’s a good place to start. I’ve left plenty of loose ends dangling over the past few years, and I think it’ll feel just right to return to those characters and stories and ideas, one by one, and find out how things turned out.

Barbie and the Blonde Normative

While shopping for Christmas presents for the young children in my life, I was able to get reacquainted with the toy aisle, with all the nostalgia and wonder that entails. It’s a feeling akin to what happens when I step inside my childhood closet, still so snugly preserved in my room at my parents’ house, which overflows with shelves of vintage Barbies, Littlest Pet Shops, Polly Pockets, trolls, stuffed Disney characters, and Happy Meal toys of yore.

The kid part of me rejoiced in the possibility of the toys and was immediately drawn to all those that are obviously aimed at the female gender. The social critic in me, however, registered shock at the sheer catastrophe of gender and racial normativity that the American toy aisle promotes (i.e., the marketing aimed at boys vs. girls; the way dolls default to white, blonde, straight-haired, blue-eyed). This caused me to reevaluate my own historical relationship with toys and the ways in which toys shape our understanding of the world from a very young age---and what, potentially, could be addressed to improve them in the future.

Take Barbie and her absurdly voluptuous figure which, achieved in a human, would probably point to severe physiological abnormalities and health problems. Incidentally, when Barbie appeared on the toy scene in 1959, many mothers were indignant about her “sexy” image. But despite this she went on to become the standard-bearer of dolls for the next half-century because Mattel understood that little girls often like to think forward, to what they aspire to be when they get older; and Barbie’s body, distorted as it may be, represents our society's ultimate feminine beauty ideal. Also-- while Barbie has brunette, redheaded, and minority friends, the woman herself is always as white, blond, and blue-eyed as her legs are long.

My own Barbie drawer, by the way, overflowed with blondes. I had roughly forty Barbies with an approximate demographic breakdown of 96% Caucasian, of which 96% were blonde. A good portion of the non-blondes (and non-whites, for that matter) were Disney characters---Jasmine, Pocahontas, Belle and Ariel. Other non-blondes included a Hawaiian doll and a 1996 Olympic gymnast that I named Dominique in honor of Ms. Dawes. A rainbow coalition it was not. More likely, it was probably a contributing factor to an early childhood desire to be blue-eyed, fair-skinned, and blonde.

A slightly more inclusive and educational doll franchise is the American Girl line, which features tweenish girl characters of diverse backgrounds from important periods in American history. Each doll comes with multiple cultural outfits and her own series of books. Of course, most of the characters are white and a good number are blonde, but there is an effort at representation of minority backgrounds, most notably in characters like Addy, Kaya, and Josefina.

However, these characters’ stories don’t necessarily do much to present complexity to minority stories: Addy is a runaway slave, and one of Kaya’s playsets is a horse, saddle, and tepee. While there are definite positive efforts going on here, it would be great to be presented from time to time with minority characters who aren’t merely historical and tied to a mythic essential identity---instead, maybe breaking with tradition by having a Native American girl living in the 1970s, a black girl living during World War II, and giving children of color someone to identify with in the now (or relatively now)---which, unlike white children, they often don’t have readily available.

(A possible response to the minority doll question: American Girl’s popular “design-your-own-doll” feature, which encourages girls to choose the hair color, skin color, eye color, and facial features of their doll to ostensibly resemble themselves.)

And while we're on the normativity train, lest we forget that the toy industry also has the teensiest tendency to reify gender categories and designate which types of toys boys and girls “should” want to play with, usually tying into concepts with wider implications like respective household roles, occupations, and standards of appearance. So few playthings for the over-4 set are gender neutral---really, the marketing of toys is probably one of the earliest socialization experiences we have, when it comes to gender traits and aspirations. More could be said on this, but I think this kid kind of sums it up.

I'm wondering if the upcoming gender neutral EZ Bake Oven is a sign o' the changing times? Or a testament to the power of the individual to contest the deeply-entrenched normative stereotypes in the toy industry?

A Christmas Present

A lovely video by Molly McIntyre