Jim Greer, one-time Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was arrested today, charged with bilking the party out of 125,000 bucks.
Greer resigned [as party chairman] in February after reports surfaced that he used party funds on ritzy hotels, gourmet restaurants and private jets.Oops!
Brought to you by Shaxco, makers of the Shaker Trolling Motor - all the best for your fishing needs.
The FWord are doing a fundraising drive.
- If you've got it to spare, they're one of our feminist sister sites, and they could use the help.
Built on Facts: Zero-Point Free Lunches
- one of my favourite geekout blogs, this is a fairly typical example of their posts. I don't get most of the math, but the discussion and comments are totally cool.
Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog: Some remaining thoughts on Avatar (CC: Cameron's, not The Last Airbender), and two new reviews of Who Fears Death
- the very talented Nnedi Okorafor, with a different (and thought-provoking) take on Avatar than largely seen from the progressive community, as well as two new reviews of her newest book.
Edit: I'm not sure what happened to this post, but I swear it was there yesterday. Anyway, Ms. Okorafor's blog is full of awesome (as is her writing), so go there anyway.
The Pursuit of Harpyness: Challenging the Dominant Story of Masculinity
- Harpy SarahMC on a youth development program aimed at challenging the rape culture and the construct of masculinity among young men.
The Feminist Agenda: Some Thoughts on Religion and Sexual Abuse and Patriarchy and Forgiveness (Trigger warning: sexual abuse)
- This is very hard to read, and very worth the effort. Take the trigger warning seriously.
Bird of Paradox: Malawi: Tiwonge Chimbalanga is reportedly missing (Trigger warning: post contains quotes from articles with transphobic language)
- I don't recall having seen this mentioned here, and I'm sorry I hadn't gotten to doing it myself (personal reasons, much going on this week): the couple in Malawi who'd been jailed for their reportedly "gay" wedding are in fact a hetero couple, where one of the partners is trans. The woman of that couple, Tiwonge Chimbalanga, has been missing for several days now.
What Tami Said: What Tami Said can save you $8 - my review of "Sex and the City 2"
- What it says on the package: a skewering review of the multiple intersecting empathy failures at the heart of the new movie.
K. Tempest Bradford: Thoughts on Jay Lake's Continued Ass-showing
- A post which touched home with me after the "A Girl Like Me" thread this week, showing concrete examples of exactly the sort of thing PlusSizedWomanist was trying so hard to push through my thickness. I do learn, eventually.
Womanist Musings: Woman Has Her Mobility Scooter Taken By Police
- Renee on an incident in Scotland, and the ablism involved in taking away a person's mobility.
Mongoose Chronicles: Newsclips and Quotes: Still Working on that Unexplained Stigma
- Mar with a wry take on the chairman of an AIDS foundation and his totally croggling statement about PWA and the "unexplained stigma" to which they are all too often subject.
Tiger Beatdown: Welcome to the Menaissance Festival
- Sady with a totally unusual (for her) very snarky post about the "menaissance", a portmanteau that (I feel, in my Totally! Unbiased! Way!) should die the same death as "bromance" and "metrosexual" and all the other sneering enforcers of traditional masculinity (that is to say, oppressive masculinity).
Drop your links in comments, Shakers, and get reading.
What's the last song you were passionately singing along to when someone "caught" you?
I saw Melissa and Deeky this past Saturday; on the way, I was really getting into Lou Rawls' "You'll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine)." The people in the car next to me were very amused.
Note: As a singer, I'm no Lou Rawls. Hell, I'm no Lou Grant.
Image description: Our black, white, and brown Cavalier King Charles spaniel just after his bath, wrapped in a beige towel, on my sister's lap. They are seated on a wooden slat chair on our front porch on a bright, hot day.
I used to have a hair-dresser who I would allow to do all kinds of weird-ass things with my hair.
She loved me because I wasn't averse to ridiculous experimentation, and every time she started something really wild with me (I sported a leopard-spot crew-cut before anyone even knew what to call it), she would begin by running her hands through my locks and saying: "OK! Here We GO!"
In precisely that spirit, tonight I'm kicking off my new thrice-weekly Ustream show -- called MadWoman At Play.
I have no clear idea what the result will be, but I know what my intention is:
To express myself fully in a way that moves me (and everyone who wants to come along) to the world I want to live in.
I've been talking to 'Liss about this on the phone so long she probably thought I was NEVER going to do it, but -- tonight's the night.
(A note for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, *or for those who have difficulty processing audio/video input -- I'm going to be getting captions up as soon as possible after the live broadcasts -- the video above is close-captioned, and a transcript is available at youtube just under the video, but Ustream hasn't mastered that yet, so captions and/or transcripts will follow the live broadcasts a few days later, when I post recorded shows on Youtube.)
If you visit the MW@P homepage, you can find links to follow the show on Ustream, Facebook, Twitter, and/or Myspace.
Hey! Come on over tonight and see me being weird-ass!
(If you can't make the live broadcast at 5 pm PDT, you'll still be able to watch the last recorded show until the next live broadcast.)
*Thanks to Dorian for pointing this out in comments.
Baseball players come and go - and notable ones have both come and gone recently. Dorothy Kamenshek, who was one of the inspirations for the character of Dottie Hinson in the movie A League of Their Own, died two weeks ago at the age of 84. She was one of Sports Illustrated's top 100 female athletes of the century. Kamenshek, a seven-time all-star in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, played first base for Illinois' Rockford Peaches from 1943 through 1953, except during the 1952 season.
Another veteran of the League, her friend Lavone "Pepper" Paire Davis, called Kamenshek the best player in their league. Kamenshek, she said, "had the whole package. She could hit with power, she could lay the bunt down and steal the base. She was a great first baseman — she could go off the ground three feet and grab it, or dig it out of the dirt. She was a tough lady, and she was as smart as they come.”
A minor league men's team offered to buy Kamenshek's contract in 1947, but Kamenshek chose to stay with her own league. She thought the motive behind adding her to the men's team was a "publicity stunt" and that, at 5'6" and 135 lbs., she was not well-matched physically with "those big guys."
Standing 5'1" and weighing 115 lbs. then, as Eri Yoshida does, presents quite a challenge to one who would compete in a sport in which some top contemporary male performers have felt the need of taking steroids to bulk them up beyond the natural physiques which provided them with sufficient success in their sport to admit them to the major leagues in the first place.
But as Tom Hanks' character, Jimmy Dugan, says of professional baseball in A League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great."
Yoshida must believe in the greatness of baseball, as she has come a long way from home at the age of 18 for the opportunity to play in a U.S. independent league, and she seems to be entirely ready to face its difficulty. “She’s always doing the extra step,” according to fellow pitcher Justin Segal.
The question of whether Yoshida's invitation to play in the independent Golden League was to some extent a publicity stunt has been raised. A lot of media were in attendance for her debut appearance in the League, from both the U.S. and Japan. More than twice as many fans showed up as had been in the stands the previous night for the team's home opener.
But the fans the Times reporter spoke to clearly didn't come to see a gimmick. Despite Yoshida's inability to speak English (she's taken advantage of the fact that her team is based in a college-town, Chico, CA, to enroll in an English class), and her having arrived in the U.S. without friends or family, she has rapidly developed a base of support.
A high school Japanese teacher, Michelle Martin, brought some of her students to see Yoshida play. They held up signs they'd made, in Japanese, to encourage her. Another fan, Nicole Ferroggiaro, who'd been one of two women in an 89-member Air Force security detail, teared up when Yoshida hit a single which drove in a run. Says Ferroggiaro, "She's representing a lot of women."
Times have changed since Kamenshek played, and while baseball has changed little, the ways in which both baseball and the times have changed don't necessarily make it any easier for a woman to compete - except for the fact that, unlike the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Yoshida wears the same uniform as the men and therefore doesn't have to slide into a base in a skirt and bare thighs. Nevertheless, Yoshida says her goal is to reach the major leagues.
One caveat about the otherwise good NY Times story on Eri Yoshida which is linked to: It begins with the writer's claim that an ex-major leaguer playing in the same game being jeered by a fan to "hit like a man" when he bunted constitutes "the ultimate compliment" to Yoshida, as it shows that she is accepted as "just one of the guys."
I think it's a mistake to attempt to reframe as a compliment, or as meaningful commentary of any kind, remarks from someone who thinks smashing rotely at the ball, as an expression of "manliness", is more important than playing strategically in the manner you think is most likely to serve the team well. And regardless of what level of success Yoshida achieves in baseball, she will do it not "like a man" but like a woman - herself.
(Trigger warning for sexual abuse of children)
Following up on a statement made in a pastoral letter he sent to Irish Catholics in March, the pope has appointed the archbishops of Boston, New York, Toronto, and Ottawa to begin an Apostolic Visitation in Ireland, in a further effort to contain "explore questions surrounding" a furious scandal in that country which erupted on publication by the Irish government of two reports documenting widespread physical and sexual abuse of children in the care of the Church, as well as decades of cover-ups of abuse by both the church and Irish police.
Protocol will be maintained. To investigate the Archdiocese of Armagh, the seat of All-Ireland primate Cardinal Sean Brady, the pope has appointed a fellow Cardinal, Cormac Murphy-O'connor. It would not do to have the work of a Cardinal investigated by someone of lesser rank, even that of a Cardinal whose resignation is being called for because of his participation in a church investigation of an abuse case in 1975 "in which two children were forced to sign secrecy oaths."
The U.S. and Canadian Archbishops will lead investigations in three other dioceses, as well as one into Ireland's seminaries. In addition, religious orders will be investigated by two priests and two nuns.
In further evidence of how seriously the church takes the issue of (bad publicity resulting from) child sexual abuse by clergy, the pope yesterday accepted the resignation of Richard Burke as Archbishop of Benin, Nigeria. Burke withdrew from the actual administration of his archdiocese over a year ago, when the St. Patrick's Missionary Society of which he is a member informed him that they were investigating an allegation by a woman that he had begun sexually abusing her when she was 14 and he was a priest in her diocese.
A year and a half later, the pope has chosen to accept the Archbishop's resignation from his position, which he says he submitted because he has been "unfaithful to my oath of celibacy." That seems implausible in several respects.
It's certainly an odd statement coming from a Catholic bishop since, in church doctrine, celibacy refers specifically to remaining unmarried, and while it is mandated for all priests, I'm not aware of any required oath-swearing in connection with it. Chastity refers to refraining from all sexual activity, other than with one's spouse, if one has a spouse, and while members of some religious orders do make a vow of it, it is expected of all Catholics, not just priests.
Burke says he had a sexual relationship with his accuser, but that she was 21 when it began. The St. Patrick's Missionary Society also issued a statement Monday, saying their investigation into Dolores Atwood's allegation "found no evidence to corroborate the allegation of child sexual abuse."
They do not appear to have made any statement as to what they would consider corroborating evidence. Stone tablets, perhaps, with a full account of the events engraved thereon by a heavenly hand? The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has "taken over" the case, according to The Irish Catholic's story, and there it lies.
Burke still maintains that he has "never, ever, in my life – in any way – sexually abused a child." Dolores Atwood says otherwise. The Irish Catholic says Burke "has given an exclusive interview to The Irish Catholic and this will appear on Thursday."
Perhaps dogma has once again confused Burke. The Church's official position seems to be that the problem of children being sexually abused by priests has been caused by allowing gay men to be priests. Banish gays from the priesthood and voilá - no more sexual abuse of kids. Since Burke is straight and his victim was a girl, he can't have sexually abused a child. You just have to learn to logic like the pope, and all is made clear.
This is a fascinating and heartbreaking* look at how young Black women (and a few young Black men) see themselves, the pressures they feel around their Blackness, and their relation to their roots. Entirely work-safe. Kudos to Ms. Davis for the superb film.
Edit: As Shaker codeman38 points out, I completely failed to take into account the needs of Deaf people here, and I'm sorry for that. I don't have time to add a transcript to the post, and codeman38 informs me that the automatic transcription is useless. If anyone has time to do a transcript, I'd be most appreciative.
More edit: Shakers TheChemist and nomethegnome both leapt to do their All-In best, and a transcript is now appended.
For my high-school literature class I was constructing an anthology with a wide range of different stories that I believed reflected the black girl’s experience. For the different chapters, I conducted interviews with a variety of black girls in my high school, and a number of issues surfaced concerning the standards of beauty imposed on today’s black girls and how this affects their self-image. I thought this topic would make an interesting film and so when I was accepted into the Reel Works Teen Filmmaking program, I set out to explore these issues.- Filmmaker Kiri Davis, on how she came to make the film.Tip of the CaitieCap to Emily W for the link.
Today's blogaround is brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Tilsy McEwan's Kitty Gone Fishin' fishing poles, for McEwans with no opposable thumbs.
Alexander Chee: You're Not From Around Here
Historiann: Violence, Rape, and Class. They're talking about [Trigger Warning] Jonathan Franzen's New Yorker story, "Agreeable", over at Historiann's place.
Ecoratorio: Paper of the week: Effects of prenatal exposure of pthalates
Neuroskeptic: This Is Your Brain's Anti-Drug
Disability Rights Advocates for Technology (DRAFT): Segs4Vets Program receives Secretary of the Army's Public Service Award
taz at Sepia Mutiny: The Copycat Facebook Ban
Amy Shah: Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Limbs
