When my mother was an astronaut (oh, man, this is so good.)
US abortion doctors speak:
Recruited as part of the first batch of legal abortion counsellors in Texas, Glenna joined Curtis at his first clinic, the Fairmount Center in Dallas, in 1974. Since then, she says, things have changed for the worse. “Women express more shame. I can’t think of a time when it was worse than it is now. I used to ask women how they first heard the word abortion, how they learned about it. There were always very personal stories about someone they knew, or found out had had one. Now, the first time they saw it was on some ugly billboard. It has been legal throughout their lifespan, not to mention their reproductive lifespan. But it has been completely politicised. ”
Curtis, 76, agrees: “Patients never came in talking about all this shame. They felt it was an OK thing to do, if they could just find somebody to do it for them.”
Buzzfeed charts the sequence of events that slowlyyyyyyyy led to Bill Cosby’s downfall (I mean, he’s rich, he has plenty of fans, he’s not going to go to jail, people are just angry at him, let’s be clear about that.) And the Washington Post does a good job putting it all together.
Marion Barry has died. I actually really recommend social media to get a sense for how someone who’s been largely seen in pop culture as a punchline is being missed by so many.
I have been obsessed with this movie for YEARS.
On being the only brown person at a Dallas wedding, and also THIS NONSENSE (it gets better):
During our senior year, Texas released its own version of the Common Application for colleges. Unlike the one I used to apply to out-of-state schools, Texas’s version had three essay choices. One of these, Essay B, asked applicants to imagine living a roommate who was different from them in every way possible, and describe how they’d react. Most of my friends chose this essay option — and most of them wrote about a hypothetical roommate with my features, my name. Ultimately, these essays intoned, they’d realized we were all human; hypothetical Mariya’s winning personality showed them how to embrace her differences. For weeks I struggled to explain to myself why exactly this had hurt so much. All that effort I’d put into being just like them, and they’d still seen me as different — not just different, but the apotheosis of differentness, the first person they pictured when asked to imagine someone who was not like them.
Jenna’s essay had delivered the most devastating blow. In it, she wrote how transformative it was to learn that my DNA was only 0.2 percent different from hers, the same amount that varied between two white people. I couldn’t understand why science had to tell her we were the same. We enjoyed the same music, had the same friends, and could complete each other’s sentences: a random factoid in a textbook shouldn’t have been the detail that convinced her.
On the confusing state of our statute of limitations laws for rape:
On January 23, 2014, Bart Bareither walked into the Marion County Sheriff’s Department in Indianapolis. The 39-year-old computer engineer confessed to having raped a nursing student nine years earlier, while he was a teaching assistant at Indiana University. “He had a sincere demeanor. His head was bowed. It was clearly eating at him; he was apologizing,” recalls university detective Kimberly Minor, who was brought in to take his statement. Minor then contacted Jenny Wendt, who had been 26 at the time of the assault. She had not originally reported the crime because she thought it would be difficult to prove since she’d been on dates with Bareither. But even now, she soon learned, Bareither would not face any charges.
Indiana law classifies sexual assaults into two categories: Class A felony rape, in which an assailant causes serious bodily injury, uses deadly force, or drugs the victim; and Class B felony rape, which includes other types of sexual assault. There is no statute of limitations for Class A offenses, so charges may be filed anytime after a crime is committed. The statute of limitations for Class B offenses—like what happened to Wendt—is five years. Minor says she and the Marion County prosecutor searched for a way to bring Bareither to trial, but it was soon clear that the opportunity had passed. “I think he knew about the statute,” Minor says. (Bareither did not respond to emails and calls from Mother Jones.)
Cats. Welcoming. Soldiers. Home.
i am laughing too hard right now to function, thank God, because there’s been a lot of real bullshit in this roundup today, here’s Linda Rondstadt CRUSHINGGGGG “Desperado” for you:
If you haven’t seen The Nine Lives of Marion Barry, it is on Hulu go watch it IMMEDIATELY.
And then come back so we can talk about the fact that Marion Barry was the greatest politician in America and his godson is definitely the winner of “children that will one day run the world.”
I’m going to try and listen to it in the background at work today. Do you have any other rec’s for pieces that talk about his impact? I’ve lived off and on in DC for a few months in 2012 and now in 2014 and am trying to better understand his impact and legacy.
Linda freaking Ronstadt! She is my number one voice crush. (It’s probably quite lucky I can’t sing like she could or I would never ever shut up.)
A child from Tucson, Arizona, given the wings to fly through harmony.
linda ronstadt + mary poppins + wonder woman = all my childhood impressions about what it means to be a great woman
I’m no soldier, but Klaas-Jan waits at the door for me to come in and then spends a while demanding attention and pets, so clearly he’s a better cat than most.
My angry old cat demands that I hang out with her in my closet, which is where her food bowl is (when we brought her home she hid in there and wouldn’t come out for weeks, so we had to put all her stuff in there). I used to think her piercing yowls meant she was hungry, but if I fill her bowl and walk away she follows me around the apartment, grumbling and attacking my feet. She only stops if I accompany her back to the closet and sit on the floor and just chill out with her for a while.
I went on vacation for two weeks, and my cats were so extremely happy when I came back. They’ve been extra cuddly for the past week, sleeping on me, meowing for extra pettings. Definitely not like the above cats, or like my friend’s cats, who get angry and pee on things when she goes away.
My boyfriend’s cat comes to greet me when I walk in and will follow me around, jumping to whatever level is necessary for some easy skritchin’. He also snuggles with me as soon as he notices I’m awake and will sometimes go spend an hour by himself, only to march down the stairs and demand attention by head-butting us.
I brought in homemade pumpkin pies to the office this morning and is has been received with the perfect blend of thanks, childish excitement and office camaraderie. Thanksgiving is the best.
I also bought whole sugar pumpkins, hacked them up with a butcher knife (which took an entire episode of Walking Dead), roasted them AND made my own all-butter vodka crust. If no one had appreciated this I might have went into a rage. So. Happy Monday, all!
I’ve made pumpkin bread out of actual pumpkins now twice! It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, except for the hacking part.
Love that you were hacking things up with a butcher knife while watching WD.
it might be the closest i’ll ever get to being Michonne
You are awesome and amazing and would you be willing to advise me as to how to get the pumpkin to a texture which does not resemble rice pudding? Did you use the (ironically named!) ricer?
Immersion blender! Adding water if necessary to get it to smooth out, and then using a cheesecloth + strainer + spoon to get all the excess water out. You can try a food mill, too–I’ve done that for extra-smooth pie filling (though it ended up a little too smooth).
Thank you! I will give the cheesecloth + strainer a try next time. Our partner made a homemade pie and he used an immersion blender but the texture still came out unfortunately tapioca-y.
Oh man, that “When my mom was an astronaut” essay. I teared up.
The Captain is brilliant, at life and at writing.
Superb round-up today. Thank you.
I cannot believe that Marion Barry is dead. Every time I read about it, I’m like wait…what?! Love him or hate him, he was a giant. It’s surreal when giants die.
I know! He was such a huge part of DC for basically my entire life. One of my earliest memories is learning that DC wasn’t run by two people named “Mary and Barry.”
Yup, still remember the moment I realized Marion Barry was one person. I even thought Mary and Barry were the two people in that hotel room.
aahh, yup. i remember that. i think it took a post headline for me. and even seeing it in print, i didn’t *quite* buy it (i was young and not to be swayed in my opinions).
Beautiful and perfect. My not-crying-at-work switch must have malfunctioned, though. Anyone have tissues?
LINDA RONSTADT! I was a tiny child in her heydey; she’s one performer all of The Big Kids in my family listened to. (By the time I was A Big Kid, the other kids were out of the house and I was skewing punk, so Ronstadt dropped out of the rotation.) So for me, she’s a strong voice of my childhood, bringing back memories of a time before disillusionment and responsibilities.
None of that explains why the Ronstadt song I most routinely belt is the Plow King jingle, with a reprise in Spanish.
Whaaaat, Nicole, are you secret mind/music-twins with my dad? I’m staying with my parents this week, and I was reading in bed late yesterday morning when I heard music in my dad’s office come on. He must have thought I was still sleeping, because he started to sing along to “Desperado,” soft and earnestly.
To solidify this connection, you would have to post a video of what he sang along to today: Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” (hands down, my favorite thing to hear him sing while he’s working).
The Washington Post article is damning. It reminds us is that monsters aren’t ugly. Instead, monsters are clever, charming, beguiling; they use every tool to cloak themselves with wholesomeness and respectability. This man is evil.
Even if we can’t send him to jail, we can shun him and treat corporations and institutions that provide him cover as the enablers they are.
Many people knew about this, and they just looked the other way.
I don’t know how his lawyers sleep at night.
On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.
(I agree 100% with your comment and I apologize but my Simpsons quote reflex jammed and I can’t get it to turn off)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO0JaecRWy0
If it’s possible that any Toasties missed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ post on Cosby the other day, please go read it now.
Link to the essay
Wait was the astronaut article written by Captain Awkward? CA’s mom was an astronaut?!?
A) Yes, B) Not in the usual sense. Read the piece, though; it’s excellent.
ETA: This is a reply to plspassthePinot
Vodka Pie Crusts! I’d never heard of that so I just spent the last fifteen minutes down a pie recipe blog hole.
I think the reason its successful is that vodka in the freezer is extremely cold, as required by the pastry Gods for a winning pie crust. Plus its fun and mildly subversive, which Im all about.
And it’s supposed to keep the moisture content down, thus avoiding the dreaded soggy bottom!
It’s actually got more to do with the alcohol content of the vodka. When you work wheat flour and water together, you develop gluten strands. In a pie crust, this can translate to a really tough crust. When you use vodka, you can use the same amount of liquid, but you actually have less water (gluten won’t form in the presence of alcohol), so you can make a nice, soft dough that is easy to work with and still turns out crisp and flaky and not like a hockey puck.
WOW! #GalScience
I swear at some point I will start the feminist, body-positive food blog I’ve been thinking about. Then you will get ALL THE FOOD SCIENCE. Mwahahahah!
thats relevant to all of my interests
Please yes I would like to read this.
If the project my friend and I are hoping to launch ever comes to fruition, I will be contacting you!
Oh yes, my mom and I make vodka pie crusts for all our pies. 🙂
We had some apple flavored vodka, so my wife used it for an apple pie crust. Genius!
I wish I could give this about forty thumbs up, because it sounds amazing.
I was just going to ask if anyone had tried other high-proof spirits. I don’t keep vodka around but I always have some bourbon.
Oooo this is… intriguing
I bet this would work great, the only thing is it might cause the crust to be a darker color, which might make it tough to tell when it is fully baked.
I’ve never put it in crusts, but I put it in pumpkin pie last year at Smitten Kitchen’s suggestion, and it was really good.
This piece by Adam Serwer is really excellent about why Marion Barry was so popular in DC. http://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/why-dc-will-al… .
Also, shows how “objectivity” is basically a fraud and simply what rich white people want, (edit: I just realized this is basically word for word a tweet from Adam Serwer so… his point still stands, and now you know so I’m not straight stealing from him)
“President Lyndon Johnson pushed a bill through Congress allowing an appointed mayor and city council that paved the way for home rule — the white elite in the city, including, Jaffe and Sherwood note, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and editor Ben Bradlee, urged Johnson to appoint a white mayor.”
This weekend I was puttering around making pumpkin pie and butter tarts when Nicole posted that Linda Ronstadt video on twitter, and it kicked off a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon of baking while watching all the Linda Ronstadt and Eagles videos I could find on youtube and singing along… at full blast… sorry neighbors (except not really, no regrets, living my best life, thanks Nicole).
you have made me so happy, this day
I saw a headline on twitter this morning that said something to the effect of, in light of the shooting deaths of tamir rice and john crawford, ohio lawmakers are considering new legislation. I expected it to be something about cops shooting unarmed black people and how that shouldn’t be allowed, right?
Of course not. How naive of me. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/ohio_la...
Jesus Fucking H(imself) Christ.
Is that more depressing than cops basically getting free passes to kill people? No. But it’s up there.
Well, at least it would help cops distinguish real guns from fake guns at a glance, and remove any plausible deniability that they would have had otherwise! That’s good, right?
While a new law could make it easier to recognize imitation firearms, it could also result in criminals painting real guns to make them look less dangerous, Follmer said. Officers would follow the same protocol if a suspect pointed a gun at them, regardless of whether that gun was brightly colored or not, he said.
Oh.
I’m sorry, I demand complete silence while Desperado is playing.
Can’t we share Desperado?
NEVER! But. You may find this video to be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVXqocPAz1k
My heart just broke when I read this quote in the Guardian article:
When Roe v Wade made abortion legal, he was jubilant. “We thought we had won, it was over. At that time, the media mocked these crazy anti-abortion groups. They were not taken seriously.”
What a terrible downfall America has had – we’re going backward, really. But, at least this article has an appearance from Your Hero and Mine, Doctor Willie Parker.
Doctor Parker is indeed Everyone’s Hero. That man does more for the prochoice movement than almost anyone. AND my friend who works at Physicians for Reproductive Health says he’s an incredible nice person outside of his work too 😀
Willieeeeee!
If we could have secular saints I nominate every doctor performing abortions in the US right now, and Dr Parker for Chief Saint. (That’s a thing, right? He should have his own feast day, is what I’m saying.)
I’m kind of stuck on the part of that Buzzfeed story on Bill Cosby where the writer emails his publicist, gets a super-weird response, and then gets another reply that says “I’m sorry, my computer was hacked and also that wasn’t me who emailed you, it was my NOSY IDENTICAL TWIN.” Like. I. What?
It was the nanny!
I mean, this just seems like elementary-school level Basic Lying. Bullshit 101: How Not To Overexplain. EITHER your computer was hacked OR the email was misdirected to your nosy twin, not both. (Unless you mean to suggest that your nosy identical twin was the person who hacked your computer, in which case, 1. I don’t really need to know that, you’re still overexplaining in a way that makes your story sound less plausible and 2. maybe you guys should look into family therapy or something.)
Some people need to spend more time on the internet to learn Sockpuppeting 101 before trying it out in real time.
Somewhere, Msscribe is shaking her head in amusement.
HA.
A short note before actually reading the article all the way through: My best friend from elementary school is also named Mariya and lives in Dallas, so when I read that pullquote I immediately wanted to know who this Jenna was and how I could best destroy her.
I can’t not read Linda Ronstadt’s name in Barney Gumble’s voice.
This is unrelated to today’s link roundup but I marathoned half of Brooklyn Nine-Nine this weekend and I was just wondering if Detective Rosa Diaz has been elected patron saint of misandry yet
ROSAAAAA
BEAUTIFUL ROSAAA
rosa is really everything i want to be in life.
super competent. terrifying. beautiful. excellent collection of leather jackets. loyal to her friends. actually incredibly kind to those who do not enrage her with idiocy.
Yesterday I went out wearing all black, leather leggings and a leather jacket and didn’t realize I was subconsciously channelling Rosa until it was pointed out to me. I probably need to buy nunchucks and an axe next.
My favorite Rosa vs. patriarchy moment is in season 2 ep 3 “The Jimmy Jab Games”. I won’t spoil it for you, just know you have a lot of greatness to look forward to 🙂
Rosa is an inspiration. “What kind of woman doesn’t own an axe?”
cats are fuckin’ dicks, i love them
I was listening to a podcast a couple weeks ago, and they were talking about how if you die in your house and you have a dog, the dog will wait until it’s absolutely starving to eat you, and it’ll start with your extremities and leave your head until last, while a cat will wait about an hour and then start with your face, and how that information doesn’t change how people feel about cats at all – people who don’t like them use that as evidence, and people who do are like “yep, that’s my little psychopath!”
How…how do they know that
Well there’s no reason my face should go to waste after I’m dead! That cat is just being economical.
Totally! It’s not like I’m going to need it.
I don’t believe this is true about my cat, because my cat 1) refuses to eat food that is not to his varying, but exacting standards and 2) prefers to eat while having his butt rubbed rather forcefully, which I would have a hard time doing if dead.
Not because my cat is sentimental about me.
“Who was Linda Ronstadt’s backing band?” – my dad, quizzing his children any time Linda Ronstadt comes on
“Everyone knows it was the Eagles, dad.” – any of said children
Then we all agree that she had the best voice of her generation and that her loss of control of it from Parkinson’s is a tragedy, and my dad will tell some possibly false story about seeing Linda Ronstadt and, like, America perform in 1973. Dads!
When she was a Stone Pony, she frequented the same laundromat as my dad. You’d best believe I heard about that plenty.
Wow, that statute of limitations on rape piece was rage inducing. Honestly, I think all rape charges should not have a statute of limitations, for the obvious reasons, i.e. that it is very difficult for victims to come forward right away. Obviously men made those laws. (Haha, most laws.)
I actually can’t speak to our criminal laws, but in my jurisdiction there is no limitation period for civil suits for sexual assault. I definitely encourage victims like the woman in that story to seek advice about a civil suit. The standard of proof is also way lower, which can be very helpful.
Linda Ronstadt! I was at a Kate & Anna McGarrigle concert one time where at the very end they were joined on stage by Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. It was amazing.
Well, now I’m just jealous.
I was only 8 or so, and didn’t appreciate it as much as I would now, but it led directly to my listening to Sleater-Kinney and Visqueen when I entered my riot grrl phase. Also amazing was that since Loudon Wainwright played a concert at that same festival, Martha Wainwright got on stage during her mother and aunt’s concert and sang a beautiful diss track about how her father was never there for her growing up. They are a talented family.
If anyone needs me I’ll be over here listening to Linda Ronstadt all day.
Jinx Tiberius Kittyman will poke his head under the curtain over the front-door window and yell at me to hurry up if I don’t unlock the door quickly enough. Then he has to tell me all about his day and show me that his belly is (a) still furry and perfect, despite being (b) empty of treats.
This cat actually got really excited to welcome his soldier home and it’s adorable: http://youtu.be/Cx14ohE6nHs?t=50s
That is awesome and adorable.
Jesus Fucking H(imself) Christ.
Is that more depressing than cops basically getting free passes to kill people? No. But it's up there.
Well there's no reason my face should go to waste after I'm dead! That cat is just being economical.
Totally! It's not like I'm going to need it.