Category Archives: Life

Everyday Feminism

[T]oo many people, and to my dismay, too many young people, see feminism as more a label than a praxis. When I’m teaching Race, Racism and the Law and I talk about the intersection of race, gender and sexual orientation, when we talk about what would be mainstream feminist thought, many students would agree with those ideas , ideals and ideology more broadly. But if you call them feminists, many of them get upset, because they see it as this static label, and they’re not even sure what it means, but a lot of them think it’s bad, even people who would otherwise embrace feminist principles. So that’s probably the biggest challenge: Getting people to understand that there is such a thing as everyday feminism, and that’s what thoughtful people practice. Many of us do feminism all the time, and we should be comfortable acknowledging that. If I asked a class of people “are you a feminist?” half the people would say “no.” But if I said, “do you believe the following things or do the following things?” then I’d see very different results. I mean, if you love and respect and value women, you’re a feminist.

—Lolita Buckner Inniss

A Basic Life Skill

This.

I feel strongly that kids should learn how to cook, it’s a basic life skill. I had friends in college who arrived on campus as freshmen not knowing how to boil water to make pasta (or how to do their own laundry). This seems downright dangerous. People should be empowered to take care of themselves, to be self-sufficient. What is more important?

—Tea

Found this via 101 Cookbooks on Twitter… how funny that someone else blogged about 101 Cookbooks & Jamie Oliver in the same post!

ETA: I knew I’d seen her book mentioned somewhere else recently! It was at Chookooloonks!

As Best You Can

We want to say to musicians and parents, ‘Even though your child has chosen a path that you might not have wanted him to or know will be a hard one for them, if they need that in their life, then let them follow their passion and encourage them and support them as best you can.[‘] Devon was really satisfied with his music. It was all about him, his band and their fans.

—Edna Clifford

You Say Party! We Say Die! “Laura Palmer’s Prom“

What stands between us and joy

Perhaps the quotidian is tedious to others only if tedious to oneself, only if it fails to enrich, deepen, and broaden the experience. It is a rare person and a rare book that can make us understand that nothing is tedious in itself no matter how quotidian, and that what stands between us and joy in everyday experience is our own mindless self.

—Maja Djikic

Writing about the things that really matter

One of the places you can really see the influence of “Operating Instructions” is in the proliferation of mommy blogs. I wonder if you read any — or if you think, if you were a young and single mom now, you would be blogging?

I don’t think I would have ever blogged. I am not even sure how you find someone’s blog. What I loved were all those years of doing shaped, crafted essays about my life and spiritual or political pursuits — but those 1,200 or whatever words took a full week to get just right. They were the length and the topics I love to read. I always used to tell my writing students to write what they’d love to come upon — and I love deeply honest, authentic writing about the things that really matter in our lives. I asked Sam the other day if people could make money on Twitter or blogging, and he said, not really. Plus, my friend Mary saw a T-shirt at the airport that said, “No one reads your blog.”

What I think is great is everyone writing their truth, keeping a written video of their lives, their families’ lives — growing up, and seeking connection with others in this very jarring and disconnected world. But I don’t think I’m a blogging type — I’m-too much of a perfectionist. I keep trying to capture moments and passages just right, so other people might find a little light to see by in my work. And that takes forever.

—Anne Lamott
in an interview with Sarah Hepola

Those who dwell in the land of ambivalence

Border crossings require resolve. Getting on a plane, getting married, moving, taking a job, writing the first words. Babies cry themselves to sleep resisting the transition from wakefulness to slumber. Throughout my life I’ve kept a classification of the two kinds of people in the world: those who dwell in the land of ambivalence and those who give it a glance and drive on. Those who know where they’re going, and the perpetual rubberneckers.

—Elizabeth Rubin

The ability to imagine

Reason is ultimately guided by context.  … To be un-empathetic is to be unable to transpose oneself into an unfamiliar context, and ultimately, develop blind spots (which, even worse, one does not even know they have). The fundamental misunderstanding, I believe, is the confusion between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is about emotion- feeling sorry for someone who has cancer, for instance. Empathy is about the ability to imagine what it might be like to have lung cancer, and what effect such a state would have on that person’s outlook on the world. The former is lacking in the world, and may or may not have a place in the judicial system. However, the latter is vital and essential to a judicial system that is able to recognize the entirety of the society of which its decisions touch.

—Max Falkoff
in comments on “The Unsung Empathy of Justice Stevens” at Slate

Precious

When you have the kind of low-rise density that Montreal does, where it packs in a lot of people but not in towers, that means wall to wall housing. Between the endless rows of brick and stone houses, the paved streets and the concrete sidewalks, I sometimes feel as though I’m living in a cement box when I’m there. It’s like taking Gastown and spreading it out over 10 square miles. It’s so hard. (And, adding to that, so dirty — cigarette butts and litter everywhere.)

Okay, it was early spring and the trees were still bare, but I know I’ve felt the same way even in summer. In my one and only interview ever with Richard Florida, he said Vancouver surprised him because he had always supposed that urbanity couldn’t be combined with green. But he appeared to be entranced with the way this city could be both dense but filled with landscaping. We shouldn’t forget how precious that is.

—Frances Bula