The Niagra Health System has proposed closing the maternity ward at the Greater Niagra General Hospital as a cost-cutting measure, despite the lack of another immediately local maternity ward and the closest ward being in an area not easily accessible by public trans.
Renee has more info here; read her excellent post and then sign the petition to save the GNGH Maternity Ward.
Action Item: Save the GNGH Maternity Ward
Stormy Weather, II
As MB mentioned, we had some seriously crazy weather here last night. (Again! And the year before…) We lost power a few times, but it's back on now. The other side of the street, however, is without power, because lightning struck the power box at the top of the street on their side. Ours is usually the one that gets struck, so that makes a change!
I've never been in such a crazy lightning storm. We have skylights in the loft upstairs and I was standing in the center of the room, in the dark, in the middle of the night, and it was like I was in a club with a strobe light. Blinkety-blinkety-blinkety-blinkety... I looked up into the skylights, and watched the sky light up and go dark, flickering over and over with licks of lightning; when I looked down, the cats were at my feet, looking up at the skylights, too. Then they looked at me as if to say, "WTP?" I shrugged.
It just went on like that for hours, with thunder rolling and crashing and booming—and rain occasionally sweeping through, pelting the windows and tapping on the skylights.
This morning, it's gray and still.
The frogs in the garden are chirping away more loudly than usual, probably happy to be alive.
Shaker Gourmet: Roasted Ratatouille
Our recipe this week comes from Shaker Carol!
Roasted Ratatouille
1 medium eggplant
1-2 small zucchini
1 red or green pepper
1 large spanish or vidalia onion
2 dozen cherry tomatoes or 2 medium regular tomatoes
3-4 garlic cloves
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
2 tablespoons olive oil
8-10 fresh basil leaves
balsamic vinegar
1. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil
2. Spray with cooking spray or use release foil
3. Cut the eggplant, zucchini, and pepper into 1 inch cubes
4. Cut the onion into large wedges, maybe 8-10
5. If using cherry tomatoes leave whole, if using regular tomatoes cut each one into 6 wedges
6. Roughly chop the garlic
7. Put all vegetables on the prepared pan
9. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste and dried herbs
10. Drizzle with olive oil. Use your hands to gently toss and coat everything with seasoning and oil
11. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Turn every 15 minutes
12. While it is warm toss with fresh basil and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar to taste
13. Leftovers are great cold with any salad type stuff you want to add.
Carol added: "For vegetarians--add 2 ounces crumbled goat cheese along with the basil. Omnivores can add goat cheese and whatever protein you want: Cooked shrimp, left over chicken, salami, etc."
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me (include a blog link!) at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
Stormy Weather
I'm guessing this is probably having an impact on Chicago-area bloggers (as well as some folks in northwest Indiana):
Clean-up efforts were under way Tuesday morning after a line of severe thunderstorms moved through the Chicago area Monday night, downing trees and power lines, starting fires, peeling off roofs, briefly closing down both Chicago airports and ending a Cubs game after two rain delays.I'm sure they'll all have their share of stories to tell when they get the lights back on.
About 238,000 Commonwealth Edison customers still were without power as of 7 a.m. At the storm's peak, 426,000 were affected.
Morgan Freeman Injured - Update
Updating yesterday's post, from CNN:
Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman was in serious condition but in "good spirits" Monday at a Tennessee hospital after a car wreck near his home in northern Mississippi, his business partner said.Best wishes, Mr. Freeman, for a speedy and uneventful recovery.
Sunday night's wreck -- in which Freeman flipped a car owned by his passenger, according to a witness -- left him with a broken left upper arm, other fractures and neck and shoulder injuries, Bill Luckett said.
"He's in good spirits, but he's in a lot of pain," said Luckett, who co-owns a restaurant and blues club with Freeman.
Question of the Day
An email from Shaker Juliemania, published with her permission:
Its almost 3 am, I am getting sleepy sitting on my comfy couch (been there for hours) reading. I'm trying to get the end of a chapter so I can go to bed, when out of the corner of my eye I catch movement on the floor by the coffee table.
I try to focus realizing I can't see shit with my reading glasses on, I look again sans glasses and see a ginormous spider scuttling-running across the floor. Squealing and jumping up barefooted to see where its going, and when I get about 3 feet…it sees me and Stops! Shit!—now what?
It's huge (2+ inches in diameter) and its just sitting there waiting. No frigging way I am stepping on it. I remember the last time I tried to kill a spider that big—it jumped at me. (It was a very traumatic experience.)
Adrenaline pumping, I.Don't.Like.Spiders. I grab my now empty wine glass, thinking I will trap it and get it out the house. I look at the tarantula spider and then at the opening of the wine glass, no friggin way, not big enough, not getting that close.
For an eternity me and spidey stand there looking at each other. I'm afraid to run past him to the kitchen and I'm frantically looking around the living room for something, anything to get this fucking spider out of my house.
I spot the small tupperware of mixed nuts, fuck it, I dump the contents out on the table, and throw the container over the spider. Nothing, it just sits there waiting. Shit. What's it planning?
What to do? Maybe I should wake up my wife, she'll get it out. NO! I'm butch for christsake, I.Can.Do.This!
I grab a sheet of paper from a pile on the table, no wait, grabs two more, and slowly slide them under the tupperware container. Reaching out, Stop! the paper is not thick enough to pick up, it could bite me, escape or something. Yikes. Find a small notepad, not wide enough, but hopefully, hopefully it will add integrity to the paper.
Heart pounding, I inch my hand under the notepad and paper, the spider still hasn't move, until…I…lift and then it goes fucking crazy, running around the corners of the square container looking for any breach at the paper edge. Shit!Walking Running to the front door praying that the edges are flat enough, noticing the cats have finally come to see what's going on, where the fuck were they hours minutes ago? I get the door open, I want to just hurl everything out the door, but I know, just know, it will jump on me as soon as its airborne. So I run down the steps, grab container in left hand, paper and pad in right and push them apart as hard and as far forward as possible. And it fucking disappears.
Eeek! making sure its not on me, I race into the house practically hyperventilating, the cats are freaking out trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. I.Can.Not. shake the willies.
Wide Awake now, I pour myself another glass of wine, I am so glad I didn't use it to trap the spider, yuck. I finally got to bed around 4:30am.
I.Do.Not.Like.Spiders!
---------------------------------
So…what don't you like? Spiders don't bother me at all, and most insects don't phase me in the slightest—although I'm not crazy about these really big, hairy moths we get in the house sometimes, because they have, on multiple occasions, gotten tangled in my hair when I'm trying to catch them and get them back outside. So I tend to leave those to Iain, and I take the spiders, which I'm happy to let crawl all over me, while he squirms and shouts about how he's certain they're from another planet because "noothing else oon earth looks like thoose bloody fings!"
Don't Miss 'Em!
[Trigger warning for violence.]
So, I'm reading a piece on CNN about a gruesome murder case that's gotten wide coverage in European media, as its facts are alarming and deeply upsetting. (I won't recount them here—although I'll note that this maniac's "trail of violence" included his girlfriend, her dog, a police officer he knifed, two female doctors knocked from their motorbikes during a car chase, and a female tourist hit by a stray bullet during the shoot-out, the last four of whom will survive.)
Anyway, in the middle of the page, appears this graphic:
Don't miss the other mutilation in the news!
I recognize this widget is probably an automatically-generated related reading feature, but that's why you don't leave such sensitive material to automatic fucking generators. Or, at minimum, don't name them "Don't Miss" as if it's must-read content for the sassy CNN reader on the go.
Caption This Photo
OK - so like I was telling you. The other day I was chatting with Hubert and..
Wait a second.. Hang on. Incoming transmission from Benjamin Grumbles.
"I believe I said GOOD DAY!"
(care of the almighty Disapproving Rabbits)
Almost Three Years After Katrina, Baton Rouge Residents Still Struggle
Via Susie, a heartbreaking piece in today's New York Times: Out of FEMA Park, Clinging to a Fraying Lifeline. Not only are the residents' situations being described absolutely wrenching, but the underlying yet insistent tone that the residents themselves are ultimately responsible is just infuriating, especially when there's this, tucked in the middle:
The Homeless Alliance and the Community Initiatives Foundation, directed by Sister Judith, are part of a small consortium of agencies that is trying to keep those ineligible for FEMA assistance from becoming the homeless. …No one is sure how many ineligible people there are, but what is certain is that their numbers far exceed expectations and many are mentally or physically disabled.And forgive my insistence on
When you're already down, and you keep hitting roadblock after roadblock, even if they aren't incredibly difficult hurdles to manage, the psychological defeat can be overwhelming. Most adult humans know that. And it shouldn't be so difficult to imagine how much harder it is to navigate the constantly moving target that is bureaucratic clusterfucktastrophe of disaster relief when you haven't even laid your head on your own pillow, not really, for three bloody years.
It's just shitty to imply that anyone who'd been through the goddamned wringer the way these people have should be pulling themselves up by the bootstraps already, when they're probably using formaldehyde-soaked shoestrings for bootstraps in the first place, thanks to FEMA.
KBR is Serious about Solving the Rape Problem
After rape victim used cell phone to call for help, KBR bans use of personal phones in Iraq.
Oh, you thought they meant solving the problem of their female employees getting raped by their male employees? Ha ha—no. They mean the problem of people finding out about it.
Truthdig on military sexual assault hearing
Activist and retired Army Colonel Ann Wright has been indispensable to the effort to prompt a renewed investigation of the death in Iraq of Pfc. LaVena Johnson. She has also fought to make known the wider issue of murder and sexual assault of women in the armed forces. Col. Wright attended the recent hearings on sexual assault in the military held by the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and has written at Truthdig a critical account of the refusal of the Department of Defense to allow a witness to be heard:
Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?
There was quite a struggle in Congress this week. The Department of Defense refused to allow the senior civilian in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) to testify in Thursday’s hearing on sexual assault in the military. Rep. John Tierney, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, angrily dismissed Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michael Dominguez from the hearing when Dominguez said that he, the DoD chief of legislative affairs and the chief of public affairs, had ordered Dr. Kaye Whitley, chief of SAPRO, to refuse to honor the subpoena issued by the subcommittee for her appearance.
Full committee Chairman Henry Waxman called the DoD’s decision to prevent Whitley from testifying “ridiculous and indicating DoD is covering something up.” It could also place Whitley in contempt of Congress. Rep. Christopher Shays said the DoD’s decision was “foolish.”
One of the questions that would have been put to Whitley was why DoD had taken three years to name a 15-person civilian task force to look into allegations of sexual assault of military personnel. The panel was finally named early in 2008 but has yet to meet. She would have also been queried on the SAPRO program’s failure to require key information from the military in order to evaluate the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention and response programs.
In addition to LaVena Johnson, Col. Wright references the cases of Army Spc. Suzanne Swift, Army Pfc. Tina Priest, and Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach.
Read more of Col. Wright’s article at Truthdig.
It should be noted that the chairman of the subcommittee's parent, the House Oversight Committee - Representative Henry Waxman - is the named petitionee of a new public appeal for hearings on the LaVena Johnson case. This petition is authored by the advocacy group ColorofChange.
Black Weblog Awards
The nominations for the Black Weblog Awards are now open! Go here to nominate your favorite black-owned and –authored blogs. (Thanks muchly to Kevin for the heads-up.)
I just did my first round of nominating; there are a ton of categories (although no feminist/womanist category—hmm), for many of which I'll have no nominations because I don't read any blogs in those categories, but I'm sure I've forgotten someone (I always do with these things!) and will have to go back… My nominations so far:
Best Blog Design: All About Race
Best Blog Post or Blog Post Series: Black Girls in Magazines by Aulelia at Charcoal Ink
Best Culture Blog: Racialicious
Best Group Blog: Elle, PhD
Best International Blog: Bastard.Logic
Best LGBT Blog: Pam's House Blend
Best New Blog: Womanist Musings
Best Personal Blog: Waveflux
Best Political/News Blog: A Slant Truth
Best Science/Technology Blog: Urban Science Adventures!
Best Video Blog: Ill Doctrine
Best Writing in a Blog: Angry Black Bitch
Blog to Watch: Diary of a Black Male Feminist
Head on over and make your nominations!
Monday Blogaround
Sock it to me, Shakers.
Recommended Reading:
Cara: Update on Kyle Payne
Matttbastard: Dear Kyle Payne: Fuck. You.
Katecontinued: Dead Presidents
TBogg: Painting Tom Sawyer's Fence
Deb: Second Wave of Mortgage Foreclosures to be Even Bigger?
BTD: When Obama Does Not Pick Hillary As His VP
Leave your links in comments...
Meet Your Twin Messiahs
Way to go, People. Pay $14 million (or part of $14 million or wevthefuck it was) to put one of the most famously multi-racial and adoptive families on the cover of your magazine, then only show the white and biological members. And, ya know, it would have been one thing if it had only been Brangelina and the twins, but you just had to go and stick that picture of their only other white and biological child on the cover, too. I guess Maddox, Pax, and Zahara are just pets.
I know I shouldn't be surprised by this kind of stuff anymore, but that one really smacked me in the face.
(Meanwhile, Jolie and Pitt will, of course, donate to charity the ridiculously exorbitant fees paid for the pictures of their children. My love for them continues unabated.)
Gauging Reaction
The right wingers are making a mockery of Barack Obama's suggestion that tuning up your car and keeping your tires inflated are a couple of ways to save fuel and thereby reduce our dependence on foreign oil. They're even going to the point of handing out tire gauges at campaign events as "Obama's energy policy."
Okay, I'm no political strategist, but I do know something about cars, and it's a perfectly normal piece of advice, along the lines of turning off a light when you leave the room.
I think it's the GOP that's running on a flat here.
By the way, as Steve Benen notes, there are some other crazy lefties who think tune-ups and proper tire inflation is a good idea, too: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, and those crazy tree-huggers over at NASCAR.
From the Mailbag
Shaker Misfitina sends the link to what she (accurately) describes as "5 minutes of horrible fat-hating dialog" between Anthony Bourdain and Ted Nugent. Says M: "Anthony put this on Twitter and it's on the Travel Channel site. Apparently obesity is 'unpatriotic' and it's not the wacked out Libertarian saying that. I'm really depressed by this one, but not surprised by 'the Nug'."
Shaker Anna sends this article about an auction of Queen Victoria's panties. Even though she is so highly regarded that her undergarments can fetch thousands of dollars, it's still hilarious to make fun of how fat she got! Wev.
Shaker Katie sends this item about a club telling fat women to go home because they're "bad for business." Nice graphic, btw. Cheesus.
Meanwhile, Shaker Dean Lewis recommends this article in Time about the myth of moderate exercise, which suggests that it takes a lot more to lose weight than conventional wisdom has us believe.
Shaker Broce passes on "sort of an interesting 'what if' article about how the nation, and the world would have changed had Dukakis been elected in 1988, interspersed with a 'catching up' type interview."
Shaker Jay in Oregon passes on this Wired article about the AutoAdmit debacle with the note: "WTF is up with Daniel Solove? He thinks duels should be reinstated to defend people's reputation? (Oh no, there can't be any coded message about 'protecting a women's virtue' in THAT, can there?)"
And Shaker Jha sends along this brilliant piece from Pravda about a Russian physiologist who believes "that most male diseases are caused by women who adhere to provocative clothes and behaviour. As a result, the Western civilization gradually turns into the society of sexually unsatisfied men and eventually unsuccessful and physically unhealthy men." Who knew blue balls causes male pattern baldness?
Morgan Freeman Injured in Car Accident
Via WMC-TV:
Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman was involved in a serious car accident Sunday night in north Mississippi.He and his family are in my thoughts.
Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesperson Ben Williams said Freeman and a female passenger were traveling eastbound on Mississippi Highway 32 in Tallahatchie County when his vehicle went off the edge of the road. Freeman overcorrected, flipping his 1997 Nissan Maxima several times before coming to a rest.
Emergency crews extracted Freeman and his passenger from their vehicle using the jaws of life. According to Williams, they were both airlifted to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, where Freeman was listed in serious condition Monday morning.
U.S. Investigates GI Accused of Rape
by Shaker Pizza Diavola
A few nights ago, I was reading the SF Chronicle and tucked away on page 14 of section A in the WORLD DIGEST column, which is full of blurbs about things going on in the world, I found this article by Mari Yamaguchi at the AP:
U.S. investigates GI accused of rapeThat was the full text of the print version of the blurb. The online version is different, and although it still says
TOKYO - The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, after Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.
An army-appointed investigator began the military equivalent of a pretrial probe on Monday into the allegations against a 25-year-old specialist assigned to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Army spokeswoman Amanda Kraus said.
The soldier, who is accused of assaulting the woman in February in a hotel room, has been restricted to base but is not facing formal charges on any of the allegations, she said. [emphasis mine]
The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa before Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.—the title is softened and shortened to "US investigating soldier in Japan." The online version also reveals some problematic attitudes toward rape (i.e. "real" rape is physically violent and therefore the absence of physical violence means it wasn't rape) on the part of the Japanese authorities investigating the case.
...
The soldier, who is accused of assaulting the woman in February in a hotel room, has been restricted to base but is not facing formal charges on any of the allegations, she said. [emphasis mine]
Anyway, the reason that the article caught my eye was the title.
Liss has extensively documented the euphemisms that writers, journalists, and editors in the mainstream media use to describe rape, such as being "forced ... to engage in sex acts" and being "hid in a cellar" or "abused by father, falling pregnant", etc. And there's the judge who banned the use of 'rape' in a rape trial.
It is common for people to rhetorically deny rape. It is so common for people to call it 'sex or 'sex without consent' or 'gray rape' or 'forced to have sex' or any number of misleading terms that hide that what happened was in fact rape.
Perhaps they do so to soothe their own discomfort at hearing a word signifying an ugly, vicious act; to deny that such a nice person as so-and-so could possibly be a rapist; or to deny that an ugly, vicious act was perpetrated against the victim.
Perhaps they do so because they've been taught to assume that women are in a default state of consent to sex; that calling a rape a rape diminishes the impact of "real" (i.e. any hypothetical rape but never the real rape you're currently talking about) rape; or that women and girls are responsible for being raped.
Pick any of those reasons; I bet we can come up with many more. Whatever the reason, the effect is the same: every time someone comes up with euphemisms to avoid calling a rape a rape or even use the word correctly in casual conversation, that blurs peoples' understanding of what rape actually is. It takes away the word that describes the experience and tries to turn the act into something it is not (consensual sex). It hides the reality that rape is common and prevents people from realizing how widespread rape and sexual assault are. If you can't even talk about a problem then it's difficult to realize that it exists, which makes it even more difficult to realize that it urgently needs solving, to say nothing of actually solving the problem.
In light of all that, it is a sliver of hope to see a rape case described as an accusation of rape, even if it's in a short blurb tucked away in the middle of section A in the world briefing column. It is especially heartening given that it appears in an article about a rape investigation. The reason for that is that within the context of trials, rape apologists frequently argue that using the word rape is somehow prejudicial. It makes the defendant appear guilty before the trial is completed and so instead of calling it rape we ought to call it "sexual intercourse" or "sex" or similar or anything other than rape, god forbid. That's such a nasty, prejudicial word, donchaknow. It has power. It's such a powerful word that it should never be used, apparently. The simple response to that, of course, is:
1. Rape IS nasty, traumatic, violating, evil, and awful. Trying to diminish the real impact of violation of one's self by describing it as "sex," with the consent that implies, is not comforting or helpful to anyone except the rapist, who then receives carte blanche to rape again, knowing that not only will there be no consequence to raping someone, people will come up with justifications to dismiss the rape.
2. "Sexual intercourse" and "sex" carry their own connotations--of consent. If alleging rape somehow mysteriously, definitively declares the rapist guilty (low conviction rates for rapists be damned!), then calling rape "sexual intercourse" or "sex" makes it seem that the rape was a consensual act and not, in fact, rape at all.
3. If, within the context of a trial, you are worried about implicit allegations of guilt somehow influencing the jury, use the standard legal talk employed in writing about or discussing trials: So-and-so is accused of raping the victim. So-and-so allegedly raped the victim. See? Presumption of innocence satisfied. Rape called rape. As Yamaguchi and the SF Chron show, it is this easy:
U.S. investigates GI accused of rapeI believe that the mainstream silence around sexual violence is part of what allows it to flourish, because most people are good, and I think that if they had any idea of how rampant sexual violence is, they would be up in arms. Not only feminists, not only victims, not only allies, but everyone. Breaking down the wall of silence is a vital task and seemingly endless, but at the same time, it is so heartbreakingly easy, when you get down the bare bones of it. And this is a starting point: call a rape rape.
TOKYO - The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, after Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.
Happy Birthday, K-Blogz!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuu!
You look like a Great American Paaaaatriooooot!
And you smell like one, too!
(Old Spice + gun powder.)
Happy Birthday, Kenny Blogginz!!!
