Shaker M writes (which I am sharing with permission): "I have been thinking about getting my first tattoo for a long time, and I need inspiration and courage. As a fat woman, I have been nervous about getting tattooed, but seeing the pictures you've posted of your tattoos has helped. Any chance you'd be willing to host a thread where other Shakers could share pix of their tattoos?"
Yep! So here it is. Have at it in comments. My only request is that we keep the images safe for work. ;)
Show Us Your Ink (If You Want To!)
Here's a Great Story about Republican Strategy
[Content Note: War on agency; homophobia; classism.]
"Will Republicans mute the culture war in 2016?" Right from the headline, you know this is going to be a terrific story, because it's always neat, ahem, to hear about how the Republican party is debating whether to openly advocate their bigotry but never, ever, about whether to stop pursuing bigotry as policy.
Kindred spirits on many issues, Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, nonetheless find themselves at the center of an escalating dispute over social policy that could spill into the 2016 presidential primary.The thing I love most about this debate, such as it is, is that Republicans already "mute" their rhetoric on the culture war, by using bullshit turns of phrase like "stand for life" and "stand for traditional marriage," instead of straightforwardly saying "oppose reproductive rights" and "limit reproductive choice" and "deny women and others their agency and bodily autonomy" and "advocate forced birth" and "oppose same-sex marriage equality" and "entrench straight privilege" and "treat gay/bi people like second-class citizens." I mean, if they have the conviction of their positions, why not be honest about them?
Paul, who has been pushing the GOP to broaden its appeal, said last week that Republicans may need to mute the culture war to avoid alienating moderate, younger voters.
"I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues," he told vocativ.com. "The Republican Party is not going to give up on having quite a few people who do believe in traditional marriage. But the Republican Party also has to find a place for young people and others who don't want to be festooned by those issues."
Paul's suggestion echoed then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels' 2011 proposal of a "truce" on social issues, which was roundly criticized by religious conservatives. And right on cue, Cruz, who has built a reputation on criticizing fellow Republicans for impure thoughts, pounced on Paul's suggestion.
"I am a fiscal conservative, I am a social conservative," Cruz told the Des Moines Register when he was asked about Paul's remarks. "There are some who say the Republican Party should no longer stand for life. I don't agree with that. There are some who say the Republican Party should no longer stand for traditional marriage. I don't agree with them either. I think we should continue to defend our shared values."
I don't parse my positions. I'm pro-abortion. They oughta be principled enough to say "I'm not in favor of letting women make choices about their own reproduction, and, despite my claims about smaller government and individual liberty, I believe the government should dictate what pregnant people are allowed to do with their bodies."
But they aren't. So we're left with this bullshit frame about whether they'll "mute" their social policies as if they're not already muted by dishonest spin-talk.
It's not just Cruz and Paul staking out some early terrain on the 2016 landscape. Other potential candidates have also recently offered some thoughts on the role of cultural issues in the next presidential race.Unless they've got a womb. And/or are gay/bi. Then fuck 'em, eh, Christie? Because, not for nothing, but forcing pregnant people to seek unsafe abortions risks their safety and lives, and dehumanizing gay/bi people for political expediency risks their safety and lives. Being anti-choice and homophobic are not neutral positions; they result in harm. To living human beings.
...Even Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., who has had a combative relationship with hardcore conservatives, recently burnished his culture war credentials during a speech before the Conservative Political Action Committee, noting that he was the first anti-abortion governor elected in New Jersey since the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade.
"When we say that we're pro-life and that we're proudly pro-life, that doesn't mean that we're pro-life just when that human being is in the womb," Christie said. "We need to be pro-life when they leave the womb as well, for every step of their lives."
Which is why whether Republicans talk about these positions is really not the issue. The issue is that they hold them at all.
Question of the Day
What positive word do you frequently hear used to describe men, but rarely used to describe women?
The first one that popped into my mind was genius.
[Originally run October 11, 2011.]
Photo of the Day
You can do it, buddy!
[Snail Stretch, via the Smithsonian's Photo of the Day series, which I highly recommend checking out. Photograph by by Chairunnas Chairunnas in Bontang, East Kalimantan, Indonesia.]
Discussion Thread: Favorite Puzzly Type Games
So, I love puzzly type games, digital or analog, and my friend Ben just introduced me to 2048, on which I reached the 512 tile on my first go, and now all that is left to decide is whether that will be my last go ever, or the first of A MILLION.
Anyway. I know I am hardly the only Shaker who loves puzzly type games, online and/or off, and I bet I'm not the only one who loves discovering or being recommended new ones, so here's a thread to share all our favorites.
Have at it!
An Elephant Never Forgets
[Content Note: References to animal abuse.]
Via Shaker Kevin Wolf, who saw it at Reshareable, this video of two elephants being reunited after 22 years is amazing and beautiful and moving and all the words just watch the video (or read the below transcript):
Background: Shirley is a 52-year-old elephant who languished alone at a Louisiana zoo for 22 after being rescued from a circus. Jenny is an approximately 23-year-old elephant who, as an infant, met Shirley at the circus before she was rescued and brought to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. This PBS video captures their meeting when Shirley is brought to The Elephant Sanctuary to live out the rest of her life.
Video Description: Shirley arrives in a big white truck at the sanctuary, a lush piece of land spanning 2,700 acres and consisting of three separate and protected natural habitat environments for Asian and African elephants. A female narrator says Shirley's journey took fourteen hours across two states. Shirley's trunk creeps out of the open window, feeling the door latch, clearly ready to get out of the truck.
Shirley is brought into a big barn, with huge stalls separated by green metal gates. "This is like a palace," says Solomon, her handler from the zoo, a middle-aged black man. He gently removes a chain from her leg and sets it on the floor. He smiles at her.
Cameras film the scene. The narrator says: "The press stands by for Shirley's big moment." An elephant walks into another stall in the barn. Narrator: "Tara is the first to return to the barn. She'll be the first elephant Shirley has laid eyes on in over two decades. No one can predict how she'll react."
Shirley and Tara meet at the large, slatted gate. They reach out their trunks toward one another, and, as the people watching gasp with awe and joy, their trunks encircle each other. Tara reaches out her trunk to investigate Shirley's face. They nuzzle each other. Solomon watches with a bittersweet expression on his face.
Narrator: "Solomon can tell Shirley's going to be fine." Shirley lifts clean hay with her trunk and puts in in her mouth. Narrator: "But the time's come for him to do something he's been dreading: This will be the last time he bathes his old friend." Solomon sprays Shirley with a hose, as she munches contentedly. Solomon turns toward the camera, and says: "I believe she's gonna love it. I really do. Nice place. I'm gonna miss her." He chokes up; touches his face. "Man. Ah. She don't have to wear that chain anymore." He wipes his eyes. He touches her trunk; she lifts her foot and he pats it. "Take care of yourself, girl," he tells her, stroking her side.
With his hand resting on her side, Solomon says to the camera: "When I saw this place, I told her that there'd be no more chains." He shakes his head. "She's free now." He strokes her side, overwhelmed with emotion. "And I just thought: I don't know who was the first to put a chain on her, but I'm glad to know that I was the last to take it off." Cut to Shirley's leg, free of the chain. "She's free at last." Solomon hugs her trunk and feeds her hay. "I'm gonna miss you, Shirley." He strokes her trunk and gazes lovingly at her. "My big girl."
Cut to later in the day, at dusk. Narrator: "At nightfall, the last elephant, Jenny, returns to the barn. Trumpets and rumbles echo into the morning." Cut to the next morning, and Shirley and Jenny are standing on either side of one of the stall gates, cuddling each other and making happy noises. "Carol and Scott have never seen a reaction like this." The two elephants push against the gate and reach through it, trying to get to each other. "In their desperation to get closer throughout the night, Shirley and Jenny have bent the steel bars between them."
Scott, a middle-aged white man, opens the gate. Narrator: "Scott finally manages to pry open the gate, so Shirley can get through, and the reunion is complete." Shirley slowly walks through to be beside Jenny, and they rub against each other happily. "They say an elephant never forgets: Almost 25 years ago, the two were together in a circus. Jenny had just been brought from Asia, only an infant. Perhaps Shirley was her comfort and mother, in this strange new land." The elephants touch each other's faces with their trunks and bump up against one another. "These two old friends are the closest thing to family they will ever know."
Shirley and Jenny walk out of the barn, into the sunlight. A black and white dog trots out of their way. Narrator: "They are comrades; survivors in a captive world. With Jenny by her side, Shirley stands to face her future." The elephants walk side-by-side out into the sanctuary. "Home at last, they'll live out their days together." Cut to the elephants at a watering hole, splashing water on themselves and each other. One of them kicks water at the other. One of them lies down and lazily luxuriates at the water's edge, then stands, trumpets, and bumps her head against the other.
They lie in the grass. They walk side-by-side across an open area. They stand beside one another, their heads bumped together and their trunks entwined.
They caress each other, and then are seek walking beside each other across the sanctuary.
You Don't Complete Me
[Content Note: Diminishing romantic narratives; abuse.]
The other night, Iain and I were watching something on television—I can't for the life of me remember what it even was now—and someone was telling a straight couple that they were the best couple zie knew, because he was like this and she was like that and together they made one awesome person.
Iain and I turned and looked at each other with yikes-face.
"That, ahh, doesn't feel like a compliment to me," I laughed. "I mean, I'm really glad you and I bring out the best in each other and all, but I am pretty invested in the idea of our being two completely separate people who are capable of being awesome all on our own."
Iain nodded. "Uh, yeah."
Iain and I are capable of, and enjoy, spending lots of time together. There was a time, when I was living in Scotland without a work permit while we waited on his visa approval, after he'd already quit his job because he'd expected to be living in the US by then, that we spent all our days together. This was hardly a challenge after living for so long on two different continents, but a few years later, we were working in the same office, spending all our days together, and it was hardly a challenge then, either. And after 13 years together, we still enjoy taking a staycation together, during which we typically spend all our days together.
But we're also capable of, and enjoy, spending time apart. We both travel occasionally for work, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a week. He's traveled back to Scotland on his own; I've traveled to see friends on my own. He has hobbies he pursues on his own, friends he sees that are his alone, and I have mine. We can be in the same room, each lost utterly in our own respective worlds, immersed in a video game or watching a movie or reading a book.
We are separate people with individual identities. And, most importantly, with individual boundaries.
The idea that a couple (or any number of partners in a romantic entanglement) complete each other, in some way forming one whole entity, is fundamentally incompatible with the recognition of individual boundaries. It subverts consent. It elides that one's own preferences might be different, and even contrary to, another person's preferences.
I have heard, in response to my insistence that Iain complements me but does not complete me, that I'm being too literal, that it's just a romantic turn of phrase that doesn't really mean anything.
Would that that were true.
Romantic conceits, like everything else that comes together to form a culture, do not exist in a vacuum. The romantic conceit of together forming one entity exists in a culture in which romantic relationships are one of the most common stages for abuses that begin with the subjugation of one person's identity, with the expectation that they are to subsume themselves fully into the other person's sphere.
It exists in a culture in which even women in safe relationships with men may struggle to assert themselves fully, and in which women who make efforts to define themselves as more than an extension of male partners may face external pressure to show more deference. And those male partners may face criticisms for failing to properly exert control over "their" women.
It exists in a culture in which we still debate the existence of "implicit consent" inside romantic relationships.
That's a turn of phrase with a whole lot of baggage.
I have no interest in making "one awesome person" with my partner. I can't even imagine what parts of me I'd have to consign to the abyss in order to merge with another human. And I don't want to spend my life with someone who looks to me to complete him. I got enough trouble trying to complete myself.
I've written before about my tattoo, which represents Iain and me with a thistle and a bee, in proximity but not touching.
Our relationship lives in that space. That space is an entire universe—a universe in which I can look at Iain, and he can look at me, and say, "This is my boundary," and it is met with respect. Because there is no confusion about where one of us ends and the other begins.
Words matter. The words we use inside of our relationships, and the words we use to describe our relationships, matter. The words Iain and I use, from the words we carefully chose and asked the judge to use at a courthouse the day we were married, have shaped our relationship. Into the shape of two people.
When we were getting ready for bed, the evening we saw the above described exchange on some show I have already forgotten, Iain smiled at me in the mirror. "You don't complete me," I told him, smiling back. He laughed. "You don't complete me, either."
Daily Dose of Cute
Wee Sophs.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Hawaiian pizza.
Recommended Reading:
Jon: [Content Note: War] Bill Kristol Confuses Fiasco-Fatigue with War-Weariness
Parker: [CN: Transmisogyny; transphobic slurs; misogyny] RuPaul Stokes Anger With Use of Transphobic Slur
Rafi: [CN: Transmisogyny; transphobic slurs; misogyny] RuPaul's "Female vs. SheMale" Game Might Be the Last Straw for Me
Steen: [CN: Misogynoir; hostility to consent] Why Kelly McBride Owes Me An Apology
Gaayathri: [CN: Othering; racism; "good immigrant" narratives] Mushy Carrots
Brian: [CN: NiceGuyism] Dear Fat Admirers: Maybe, Let's Not Be Assholes!
Julianne: [CN: War on drugs; racism] How Bad Is the Black-White Disparity In Your State's Drug Arrest Rate?
CeCe: Plus Size Dresses with Sleeves: Where Are You?
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War on agency] The "heartbeat" abortion ban bill has been reintroduced in Ohio. Because of course it has.
[CN: Homophobia; description of violence at link] Many members of Crimea's gay community are understandably anxious about the peninsula being annexed into Russia, where severe anti-gay legislation was passed last year.
[CN: War on agency; Christian Supremacy] If Hobby Lobby Wins, It Will Be Even Worse for Birth Control Access Than You Think: "The two plaintiffs in these cases object not just to covering specific types of birth control, but also to providing counseling about that birth control. ...[T]he second part threatens to have incredibly far-reaching ramifications for women and doctors in this country, too. Essentially, if Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood are successful, they'll win the right to refuse to extend coverage for doctor's visits that include discussion about certain forms of contraception, like IUDs or the morning after pill. 'It's frankly a rather radical idea—the idea that someone can say that if your visit to your doctor is going to receive payment from your insurance company, then your doctor can't talk to you about certain subjects,' Adam Sonfield, a senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, explained in an interview with ThinkProgress." Fuck. I wish I felt confident the Supreme Court was going to decide this one in our favor.
[CN: Food insecurity] This is such a good idea: "D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) introduced a bill Tuesday that would require the District to provide free meals for poor children on days when schools are closed for snow or other inclement weather. Under Cheh's proposal, the Department of Parks and Recreation would be responsible for ensuring that meals are available to kids, with rec centers in low-income neighborhoods serving as distribution points."
[CN: Violence; guns; description of murder] The Pistorius trial continues, with testimony that Oscar Pistorius was probably not wearing his prosthetic legs when he fired the shots that killed Reeva Steenkamp, and that she was probably standing when the first shot was fired, and then slumped in a defensive position during subsequent shots. Pistorius also used a type of bullet designed for maximum damage: "It hits the target, it opens up, it creates six talons, and these talons are sharp. It cuts through the organs of a human being." The more I read about this trial, the more I'm just like I don't even give a fuck if he genuinely thought Steenkamp was an intruder. His choices and behavior are totally unjustified even if she had been.
The New York Times Public Editor introduces "AnonyWatch" to highlight "some of the more regrettable examples of anonymous quotations in The Times." LOL that sounds fun!
Do you remember when then-Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a passionate speech to Parliament calling out then-opposition leader Tony Abbott's hypocrisy on misogyny? Well, composer Rob Davidson turned it into a song, and here is a video of The Australian Voices performing it.
Do you want to know who President Obama picked for his final four? (Something something bracket ballsports.) You'll never guess! (You might guess.)
Last night was the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere in New York. Here is the newest trailer for Season 4. (OMG!) And here is a picture [via] of Lena Headey at the premiere looking fucking amazing. You're welcome.
Recommended Reading
[Content Note: Prosecutorial misconduct; misogyny; racism; classism; death.]
Nina Martin for ProPublica: "A Stillborn Child, a Charge of Murder, and the Disputed Case Law on 'Fetal Harm.'"
Rennie Gibbs's daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant's most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.Read the whole thing here.
But within days of Samiya's delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi's de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya's blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by "cocaine toxicity."
In early 2007, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Gibbs, a 16-year-old black teen, for "depraved heart murder" — defined under Mississippi law as an act "eminently dangerous to others…regardless of human life." By smoking crack during her pregnancy, the indictment said, Gibbs had "unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously" caused the death of her baby. The maximum sentence: life in prison.
Seven years and much legal wrangling later, Gibbs could finally go on trial this spring — part of a wave of "fetal harm" cases across the country in recent years that pit the rights of the mother against what lawmakers, health care workers, prosecutors, judges, jurors, and others view as the rights of the unborn child.
...Those who share such worries point to a report last year by the New York–based National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) that documented hundreds of cases around the country in which women have been detained, arrested and sometimes convicted — on charges as serious as murder — for doing things while pregnant that authorities viewed as dangerous or harmful to their unborn child.
The definition of fetal harm in such cases has been broad: An Indiana woman who attempted suicide while pregnant spent a year in jail before murder charges were dropped last year; an Iowa woman was arrested and jailed after falling down the stairs and suffering a miscarriage; a New Jersey woman who refused to sign a preauthorization for a cesarean section [pdf] didn't end up needing the operation, yet was charged with child endangerment and lost custody of her baby. But the vast majority of cases have involved women suspected of using illegal drugs. Those women have been disproportionately young, low-income and African American.
[Via Soraya Chemaly.]
It Continues to Be a Real Mystery Why Republicans Aren't Connecting with a Majority of Female Voters
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Over the weekend, Cari Christman, executive director of RedState Women, a Republican PAC in Texas "aimed at rallying women voters for GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott," was asked about equal pay for women. And this was her extraordinary answer:
Male anchor, with his back to the camera, speaking to Christman, a young thin white blonde woman, on a screen in the studio: —do you think, and does RedState Women PAC think that, uhhh, an equal pay act should be passed in this state, Cari?Wowwwwwwwww.
Christman: We believe Texas women want and deserve equal pay. But honestly, Jason, we don't believe the Lilly Ledbetter Act is, uh, is what's going to solve that problem for women. We believe women want real world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric. We believe that if Senator [Wendy] Davis were serious about solving this problem, she'd focus on job creation and increase access to higher education.
Anchor: So what's the solution then, do you think, for equal pay then, Cari?
Christman: Well, if you look at it, women are, are extremely busy. We lead busy lives, whether working professionally, whether we're working from home—and, and times are, um, are extremely, um, uh extremely busy. It's just a—it's a busy cycle for, for women, and we've got a lot to juggle, and so when we look at this issue, we think: What's practical? And we want more access to jobs. We want, uh, we want, uh, to be able to go to, um, get a higher education degree, at the same time that we're working or raising a family. That's common sense. And we believe that that real world solution is a more practical way to approach the problem.
Now, let me just state that I have issues with Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act being (mis)represented as having achieved "fair pay for women." Women are still (illegally) being paid less than their male counterparts all across the country, and what the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act did was increase the statute of limitations in which women who discover they are being paid unequally can sue.
That's no small thing, but it's also not the comprehensive solution to the pay gap it is frequently purported to be. That problem requires a complex set of solutions which address the intersection of gender, race, sexuality, disability, etc. that mean some women are likely to experience a more significant pay gap than other women.
Still: Ledbetter was one part of that complex set of solutions. While it's not a magical cure-all, it's more than "rhetoric." It legally empowers women in a way we were not empowered previously.
That said: WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS PERSON TALKING ABOUT?!
"Women are hella busy, y'all, so it's just common sense to solve the pay gap with jobs and higher education!"
Whut.
Sure, yep, we need more jobs. And we need more access to affordable higher education for people who want to pursue careers where higher education is a requirement. But neither of those things has anything to do with closing the pay gap. There isn't a pay gap because of unemployment (although that drives down wages across the board); there's a pay gap because people think they can get away with paying women less. And whatever degree women have, they tend to get paid less than their (white cishet) male counterparts.
A "real world solution" to the pay gap is something very simple: An employment law that requires employers to make public their employees' salaries, so every woman working in the US would have the ability to see whether she is being paid equally.
But Republicans are never going to support that, because corporations save billions of dollars every year underpaying women. And the Republican Party pretty much exists precisely to care more about corporations than women.
Anyway. After Christman's response was roundly criticized, Beth Cubriel, executive director of the Texas Republican Party, stepped in to try to rescue her, with similarly extraordinary results:
"Men are better negotiators," Beth Cubriel said on YNN's Capital Tonight. "I would encourage women, instead of pursuing the courts for action, to become better negotiators."HA HA PERFECT! What a perfect answer.
"Women are to blame for the pay gap because of their shoddy negotiating skills!"
There exist in this world studies that have found US women employed as "knowledge workers" tend to be less aggressive negotiators than men. But the thing about those sorts of findings is that they don't exist in a void. They exist in a culture in which women employed in such fields are forever suspended in a state of Can't Fucking Win, where if you're too "feminine," you're not taken seriously, and if you're too "masculine," you're considered a bitch. Women are expected to navigate our ways through the eye of a needle finding some perfect balance of deferential and assertive that doesn't actually exist.
That makes negotiations, which are themselves a balance of deference and assertiveness, extremely difficult for many women, even if we are otherwise competent negotiators. And it's difficult for reasons over which we have no control.
Further, there are millions and millions of US women employed in jobs where salary negotiation isn't even a thing. The lower-wage the job, the less likely there is to be any salary negotiation. If there isn't even an opportunity to negotiate, telling women to be better negotiators isn't much of a solution.
But the Republican Party pretty much exists precisely to care more about corporations than low-wage workers, too.
So in the grand game of Corporations vs. Female Workers, the Republicans aren't going to have any meaningful answers for women.
And, clearly, they're not even bothering to try to pretend otherwise anymore.
Transcript Update: Pencils Down!
Pencils down, volunteers! Because we have finished transcribing all the videos! I really wish you could see the happy dance that I am doing in my head right now! Because it is a GOOD happy dance!!
Record | Splice | Transcribe | Proof (Vol.) | Proof (Prof.) | ePubify | ePublish | Paper Layout* | Paper Publish* | |
SB5 Video | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started | not started | stretch goal | stretch goal |
HB2 Video | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started | not started | stretch goal | stretch goal |
SB1 Video | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started | not started | stretch goal | stretch goal |
Citizen (1) | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started | not started | stretch goal | stretch goal |
Citizen (2) | complete | Complete | complete | complete | working | not started | not started | stretch goal | stretch goal |
That one remaining orange square means that the final video has been sent off to the professional editor for final proofing and editing. The final video! There is officially no more transcribing work to be done on this project! Yayayayayayayaya!
So! What comes next?
Well, first of all: I need to start putting the proofed scripts into Sigil (my ebook editor) so that I can get a readable version of this baby out the door. Several of you have asked if you can help on this stage, and I cannot tell you enough how much I appreciate the help, but it will be faster and easier if I do this part on my own. I'll probably be harder-than-usual to reach for a couple weeks while I work this, but I'll try not to let this affect my posting schedule too much.
Once the proofed scripts are in Sigil, there will be a flurry of eReader testing (thank you bunches to those who volunteered to be beta testers--if you'd like to be one of those, send me an email and tell me which eReader you'll be testing it on because that'll help me a lot) and then the final product will go up in the Amazon store to be followed (hopefully closely!) by other stores like Barnes and Noble. Fortunately this isn't my first rodeo on that front.
If you were a volunteer on this project, and if you are not getting my update emails, and if you would like to get my update emails, please send me an email telling me your new email address (or telling me that you haven't heard from me, and we can troubleshoot from there). I mention this because I intend to send out a few private updates on this project in addition to the public ones and you might wanna be in on that! (If you don't, that's okay too! I know not everyone wants to be spammed on this!)
The final question is prolly: How long will this take? That's trickier to answer. It takes me about 12 hours of work to copy-and-paste the individual transcript documents into the big one for the editor. (Part of the length of time has to do with cleaning up artifacts between document types. As several of you have already run into, the conversion from one type of file extension can do wonderful things, like stripping out spaces!) Moving from .doc to .epub can be even more sensitive, as I found when I was publishing my novel a couple years ago.
My rough estimate right now is 2 full days per transcript, so that's 10 days total to get a rough draft out for the beta users. Then maybe another 5 days to polish any errors they find, plus whatever time they needed to find the errors in the first place. Since I need to keep working my day job during this time, that means a lot of this will be done over weekends and evenings. My goal is to get this finalized and loaded into the Amazon Kindle store by May 1st, which I think is something that I can meet. That would also mean that it's available for public consumption for 6 months prior to the election cycle (if I count correctly), which I think will be amazing.
On a final note, I want to thank everyone involved in this project for the amazing, truly amazing, work that you've all done on this. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I could not have done this without all of you and I cannot thank you all enough from the bottom of my heart. Every time I feel lonely as a Texan or frightened about the state of healthcare in my state--feelings I get often these days--I remember what so many people have reached out to do for us and I don't feel quite so alone. Thank you.
