"I think it's a shame that when there is a woman that is strong and doesn't mind speaking her mind there is no other word that can be used [to describe her] except for 'bitch.'" — Tabatha Coffey, star of Tabatha's Salon Takeover, responding to the query if she ever gets tired of being called a bitch.
[H/T to Shaker Hoshi.]
Quote of the Day
Help for Haiti
The Miami Herald has a listing of relief agencies that are helping the people of Haiti recover from yesterday's 7.0 earthquake that hit just outside the capital Port-au-Prince.
• UNICEF is seeking donations to the ongoing emergency relief efforts in Haiti and the Caribbean region through www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake or call 1-800-4UNICEF.ETA: This is by no means a comprehensive list. If you know of other organizations that are helping out in Haiti, please list them in the comments.
• Operation Helping Hands, a joint community project of The Miami Herald and United Way-Miami, will be collecting donations to support the relief effort in Haiti.
To make a contribution, go to www.iwant2help.org
Checking on relatives in Haiti:
• Mercy Corps established a Haiti Earthquake Fund, PO Box 2669,Portland, OR 97208, www.mercycorps.org, 1-888-256-1900
• The Archdiocese of Miami is accepting financial donations to assist with recovery efforts for the earthquake victims in Haiti. People may send their donations to Catholic Charities, 1505 NE 26th St. Wilton Manors, FL 33305, Attention Earthquake Victims.
• The Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) -- the natural disaster relief arm of the OAS -- was asking people who want to donate to visit its special relief website called www.PanAmericanRelief.org.
Also, U.S. citizens wondering about family in Haiti can ring the U.S. State Department's American Citizen Services line at 1-888-407-4747.
Question of the Day
I read a thread at Echidne's today that quotes Jimmy Carter. A few comments mentioned remembering Carter's presidency or being too young to recall it. I wrote in part,
[...] one of my earliest political memories was Jimmy Carter and the Swamp Rabbit. That was the spring after Milk was shot, and in the Bay Area where we lived everyone was still talking about it in hushed tones (White and Milk, not The Rabbit). Ah, kindergarten!Other dominant themes in my memory from that time include the Iran hostage crisis and the 1979 energy crisis. I clearly recall my parents explaining California's odd-even gas rationing to us. This explanation prefaced anecdotes about how they had to give their rubber duckies and Kewpie Dolls to the war effort* when they were little.
In October 2008, Melissa asked about our earliest memories of presidential politics. Here's my answer to that one:
The first presidential election I remember was 1980. I remember riding in the car after dark with my mother one evening. She was worrying out loud that my father was "probably going to vote for that moron!" (she meant Reagan.)But my question this evening is broader:
The rest of the story is priceless and I think I've related it here before. I remember saying, so, you're going to vote for Carter? and she looked at me like she'd said too much and told me that asking people who they're going to vote for was like going into their living room and mooning them. ("pulling your pants down" was the way she put it; I guess she figured I didn't know what "mooning" meant, like it would occur to me to do that anyway, lol!).
What is/are your earliest current events memories? Tell us memories from every time and place. How did you process these events?
_____________
* World War II
Iced Tea
The National Tea Party folks planned a big protest at the auto show in Detroit yesterday. They wanted to show their disgruntlement over the government's bail-out of General Motors and Chrysler. Two people showed up.
One of the reasons might have been that it was very cold in Detroit yesterday, but another reason might be that some of the people in Michigan who are sympathetic to the tea party movement are also some of the people who work in the auto industry and are grateful that they still have jobs.The Michigan Messenger reported on Michigan tea partier and ex-GM employee Joan Fabiano Facebook campaign urging her fellow protesters to stay away:
It's all well and good to talk about something like letting the auto industry fail -- hey, that's capitalism -- but it's also well and good to remember the butterfly effect; one plant closing touches more than just the lives of the people who work there. It also closes businesses, which reduces the tax base, which then hits the schools and the infrastructure such as public utilities, which then start to crumble and fail. People move away or become dependent on the public safety net, which begins to unravel because it doesn't have the funding to keep going, and so on. Even in towns hundreds of miles away where fifty people work in a small company that supplies the parts for the auto industry -- electrical wiring harnesses or roller bearings, for example -- have to cut back or even go out of business, and that then hits that small town... you get the idea.
"In conclusion it is my opinion that this protest is ill-conceived and quite frankly an attempt at attention grabbing grand standing by those outside and unfortunately inside of Michigan. ... Why must some Americans boycott G.M. and throw INNOCENT people, such as myself, out on the street trying to find another job in this economy? Did I do something wrong? Would you like to see yourself out of a job if your company's leadership made the errors and you had NOTHING to do with it?"
As the Messenger reported, Fabiano, like most tea partiers, is opposed to the government bailouts of banks and the so-called "out of control spending" in D.C.. But when it comes to General Motors and Chrysler -- two companies bought out by the government in the depths of the economic downturn -- Fabiano said the protest could hurt the business climate in the one of the worst states for unemployment in the country.
The problem with movements like the Tea Party isn't their politics, it's that they don't think things through. They come up with bumper-sticker answers for complex problems. It sounds good when you call in to C-SPAN, but it doesn't really solve the problem, or it causes more problems. Let GM fail? Sure. Then what? Who is going to help the people who are out of work? Are the tea-baggers going to help them find another job, get health insurance, or make their mortgage payments? Or should they just tough it out because it's better to suffer than succumb to socialism/fascism at the hands of the Usurper? That's easy to say unless you're the one that's going to end up living in a refrigerator box under the approach to the Ambassador Bridge.
Crossposted.
Headline of the Day
"Vatican Says Avatar Is No Masterpiece." Yeah, I've been wondering what they think.
[Cross-posted.]
RIP Miep Gies
Miep Gies hid the family of Anne Frank for more than two years in an Amsterdam attic after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands.
Gies never accepted the label of hero she was given, stating "I don't want to be considered a hero. Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."
She died yesterday at age 100.
For two years Miep Gies and her husband Jan, a municipal employee whom she had married in 1941, risked their lives to smuggle in food and provisions and news from outside, begging, buying and bartering what they needed from farmers and shopkeepers. They were helped throughout by her colleagues Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl.Rest in peace, Miep Gies. And yes, you were, in fact, a hero.
Miep acted as a confidante for the adolescent Anne, bringing her paper for her diary and, on one occasion, a pair of second-hand high-heeled shoes. The Gies's heroic feat of humanitarianism ended on August 4 1944, when the Frank family were betrayed (by a person whose identity remains unknown), arrested and sent to concentration camps.
When the Gestapo arrived, Miep Gies was at her desk in the office below. She recognised from the voice of one of the arresting officers that he was Viennese, and she managed to charm him, perhaps saving her own life.
She never saw her Jewish friends again but "could tell from the sound of their feet on the wooden steps that they were coming down like beaten dogs".
Later, at considerable personal risk, she went to Gestapo headquarters to try to bargain for their release – but to no avail. Eventually she returned to their hiding place and found Anne's diary, its pages scattered over the floor.
She intended to return it to its author, knowing how important the diary had been to her, and locked it away without reading a word. Nearly a year later, Anne's father Otto returned from Auschwitz. He knew his wife and friends had not survived, but still hoped that his two daughters, Margot, 18, and Anne, 15, had been spared.
Two months later he received a letter that confirmed that both girls had died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, less than a month before the camp was liberated by British soldiers.
Miep Gies was with him when he received the news and could not find the words to comfort him. Then she remembered Anne's diary. She took it out of the desk and gave it to him, saying: "Here is your daughter Anne's legacy to you."
Question of the Day
Following up on Sarah Palin's announcement she'll be joining the Fox News team: Who would you like to see leave the world of politics and pursue something they are, perhaps, better suited for?
And In Other News From The World Of Entertainment
Sarah Palin has accepted a job at Fox News providing "some type of commentary," says her attorney. No other details were available.
UPDATED: Fox News has slightly more info:
[Palin] has signed a multi-year deal to offer her political commentary and analysis across all Fox News platforms, including Fox Business Channel, FoxNews.com and Fox News Radio.[Cross-posted.]
She will also participate in special event political programming for Fox Broadcasting.
"I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News. It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news," Palin said in a written release.
"Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum and we are excited to add her dynamic voice to the FOX News lineup," said Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming.
Finally, Some Good News
After a mere six months on the air, NBC is cancelling The Jay Leno Show.
Leno's low ratings were "leading fewer viewers into [affiliates'] late news programs, costing them significant advertising revenue." His final show will air February 12.
The bad news is Leno will be given a new half-hour show at 11:30, pushing Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show to midnight.
[Cross-posted.]
Monday Blogaround
This Blogaround is brought to you by Shaxco, not yet producers of petri dish cookies--not yet. But soon, dear readers, soon.
Health Skills: Getting through it. ( H/T Dave Munger's latest research blogging round up.)
Working With Chronic Illness: 3 traps you can avoid
The Design Blog: ASUS Waveface Ultra: Wear your computer around the wrist like a bracelet (Slow-loading link, but very cool.)
Columbus Museum of Art Blog: CMA Executive Director Nannette Maciejunes and Bruce Harkey of Franklin Park Conservatory discuss their respective Dale Chihuly exhibitions on All Sides with Ann Fisher (Streaming audio available at the link. No transcript as far as I know; please leave a link in comments if I'm wrong.) Here are text links about the Franklin Park Conservatory's Chihuly Reimagined exhibit and the CMA's Chihuly Illuminated exhibit.
Tayari Jones: Upstate Girls. Jones discusses video essay "The Women of Troy" by Susan Sommers-Willet and Brenda Ann Kenneally. Jones labels the images in the video to which she links NSFW:
...not because they are sexually graphic, though there is a lot of skin. The photgraphs [sic] sort of give me the feeling that I am looking into people's private lives and I am not sure if it's okay for me to watch. [...] My real question is about the images. Are they too much? [...] Or does it matter who's looking? It seems that this is the precious question of 2010.Maud Newton via Laila Lalami on Twitter lets us know that The Boston Review has a 1975 interview with Susan Sontag up in celebration of its 35th anniversary.
Ben Zimmer: "Tweet" Named Word of the Year, "Google" Word of the Decade
Three-Toed Sloth: Books to Read While Algae Grow in Your Fur, December 2009
Not So Humble Pie: Science Cookie Round Up #1
Quote of the Day
"I'm blacker than Barack Obama." — Rod Blagojevich , reality show star and one-time Illinois governor, in a recent interview with Esquire. He continued, "I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up."
NQDTR Discussion Thread - M100111
Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
The Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report - M100111
Time for another Teaspoon Report. Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
ô,ôP
Perry v. Schwarzenegger
Opening today is the first ever federal trial to determine if the U.S. Constitution prohibits individual states from outlawing same-sex marriage.
Among the questions [Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn] Walker plans to entertain are whether sexual orientation can be changed, how legalizing gay marriage affects traditional marriages and the effect on children of being raised by two mothers or two fathers.It boggles my mind that such ridiculous questions are being asked in a court of law. Of courwe, we all know these arguments can so easily be dismantled with facts. (Not that logic, reason and sense enters into it all.)
As Jennifer Pizer, marriage director for Lambda Legal says:
Can the state reserve the esteemed language and status of marriage just for heterosexual couples, and relegate same-sex couples to a lesser status? Are there any adequate public interests to justify reimposing such a caste system for gay people, especially by a majority vote to take a cherished right from a historically mistreated minority?Proponents of bigotry fall to their old stand-by: What about the children!?!?
Their witnesses will testify that governments historically have sanctioned traditional marriage as a way to promote responsible child-rearing and that this remains a valid justification for limiting marriage to a man and a woman.Regardless of the outcome, the case is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
[Proceedings can be viewed here.]
UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme court has temporarily blocked broadcast of the trial.
