A Toastie wanted to share her own bird dog with us, please enjoy.
“Shuffle Along” and the history of black performance in America:
The blacks-in-blackface tradition, which lasted more than a century in this country, strikes most people, on first hearing of its existence, as deeply bizarre, and it was. But it emerged from a single crude reality: African-American people were not allowed to perform onstage for much of the 19th century. They could not, that is, appear as themselves. The sight wasn’t tolerated by white audiences. There were anomalous instances, but as a rule, it didn’t happen. In front of the cabin, in the nursery, in a tavern, yes, white people might enjoy hearing them sing and seeing them dance, but the stage had power in it, and someone who appeared there couldn’t help partaking of that power, if only ever so slightly, momentarily. Part of it was the physical elevation. To be sitting below a black man or woman, looking up — that made many whites uncomfortable. But what those audiences would allow, would sit for — not easily at first, not without controversy and disdain, but gradually, and soon overwhelmingly — was the appearance of white men who had painted their faces to look black. That was an old custom of the stage, going back at least to “Othello.” They could live with that. And this created a space, a crack in the wall, through which blacks could enter, because blacks, too, could paint their faces. Blacks, too, could exist in this space that was neither-nor. They could hide their blackness behind a darker blackness, a false one, a safe one. They wouldn’t be claiming power. By mocking themselves, their own race, they were giving it up. Except, never completely. There lay the charge. It was allowed, for actual black people to perform this way, starting around the 1840s — in a very few cases at first, and then increasingly — and there developed the genre, as it were, of blacks-in-blackface. A strange story, but this is a strange country.
This is a story about a mom who had a shitty midwife who let her bleed out in a birthing pool. It is horrible. I am linking to it because the mom asked to go to the hospital and was ignored, and if you are considering a homebirth, please please please ask your midwife a lot of very specific questions and push if you feel like you’re not getting the full story.
Here are a few suggestions:
Can you tell me about your experience with hospital transfers?
Can I talk to one of your clients who transferred to the hospital during a difficult birth?
Under what circumstances would you recommend or insist on a hospital transfer?
What steps do you take to monitor blood loss?
If I DO experience excessive blood loss, what do you plan to do to control it while we wait for the ambulance? (“Feed you a chunk of your placenta” is not an acceptable answer.)
The midwife in question is criminally negligent, so who knows if these questions would have been answered honestly, but also, if you are having a homebirth, make sure you have immediate access to a support person who is NOT your care provider (your romantic partner, a family member, a good friend) who will call an ambulance for you if you want them to. Have a CODE WORD if you want. Be safe.
Not everyone enjoys being eaten out, and that’s cool:
So in 2016, pussy eaters are far from rarities. There’s a good chance that by now, men who like doing it vastly outnumber those who refuse. Take the word of women who hate receiving; we pretty much have to physically fight guys off to stop them from latching onto us with their mouths. If you don’t respond positively to the basic experience of being eaten out, even competent oral is pretty icky.
But certain men aren’t willing to hear this. They often won’t listen to our clear statements that we’re not into it, because they’re going to be the special slobbery snowflakes who finally convince us how wrong we are about our own bodies. For men who appear to be in it only for their own ego—like Cosmo Frank—eating a woman out is far from proof positive of respecting her as an equal human being. It’s all about establishing how sexually accomplished and maybe even how feminist (!) they are.
https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/713055088504209408
Kiki and Herb, for now and always:
And then there was Kiki DuRane. Bond had started performing as Kiki in the late 80s, finding inspiration from a friend’s mother. “She was a showgirl in the 50s and got pregnant and had a kid,” Bond says. “She terrified me, but she was so amazing. Her physicality and the way she walked, the way she carried herself, her radical politics. She was the spirit of the character.” Kiki and Herb met almost accidentally after the gay pride parade. After marching and performing that afternoon, Bond realized it’d be hard to repeat the performance at a gig that night with Mellman. Kiki, then, came to the rescue. “I said, I can’t sing,” Bond says, “so we’re going to do our material as Kiki — and you’re Herb.” Bond and Mellman showed up before their gig in costume (and in character) and sat—and drank—in the back of the bar, casually interacting with the wait staff and some of the patrons. Then they hit the stage, and Bond interspersed their set with improvised anecdotes about Kiki’s life. “We got a standing ovation,” Bond says. “I thought, I never have to look good or sound nice again!”
no:
Dear Prudence,
I have been having the same problem with my husband for years. He sets his alarm incredibly early in the morning and mine goes off about two hours later. He gets up with his alarm about two-thirds of the time. Even then, he’s never the first to respond to it. Every single morning for 10 years, I’ve had to shake him awake to shut off his alarm, and sometimes I have to repeat it every 20 minutes until he gets up. I do not fall asleep so readily, so I am often awake in between snoozes. In addition, he is a great sleeper through the night, whereas I toss and turn and wake up for every sound the kids make. When he actually does get up on time, he works very hard on stuff, so I don’t want to insist he “can’t” set his alarm early. Is this just something I have to deal with? He’s a nice guy and a good husband. I just wish our sleeping patterns matched up better.
—Going Off
#BLMTOtentcity is happening, and we support the Torontonians who demand more from their city.
My heart is shredded from the Jian Ghomeshi acquittal. Not just because he’s an abuser, but because the judge went out of his way to belittle the victims. I’m so sorry. What are you reading about the trial? Please share.
I’m very glad that Tracy Morgan is back with us:
When Morgan woke up, he was blind for six days. (“Where I come from, you don’t wanna be blind for a second,” he says onstage, referring to his childhood in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.) He doesn’t really remember any of it: not the Delaware show, not the accident, not the initial recovery. But he’s convinced that he paid a visit to the afterlife during his coma, where he encountered his father, Jimmy Morgan, a gifted musician who died of AIDS from contaminated-needle use when Tracy was 19. Though Tracy jokes that he turned away from heaven’s white light because he “thought it was the police,” he’s pretty sure that it was his dad who sent him back to Earth.
“He was the one who said, ‘Go home, son. I ain’t ready for you yet,’ ” says Morgan. “I don’t think I cheated death. I think this was the plan. My room wasn’t ready.” He would have left behind Megan, Maven and his three kids from his first marriage, who range in age from 24 to 30. “I still have shit here to do,” Morgan says. “It’s gonna take more than 18 wheels for me to get out of here. I have to raise my girl, raise my wife, raise my family.” Exotic pets, too. “Gotta keep my octopus alive. Gotta keep my sharks alive. Those are God’s creatures! I’m needed!”
