Got all excited about going to my first city counsel meeting, but now I’m cooling my jets in an overflow room. Neat building, though.
Read this right now. Then: refrain from selling out. Then: call your senator and say something about executive compensation and the widening gap between rich and poor in this country.
Then maybe have a chai, it’s tough to think depressing thoughts all day.
I just started using WriteRoom, and I am in love.
The program is marketed as “A distraction-free writing environment,” which doesn’t sound possible, or is just a matter of discipline. But the slick black screen makes all the difference. WriteRoom is obviously no good as a full-function word processor, but it’s perfect for banging out a first draft or fleshing out an idea for later.
Basically what I’m saying is, I’d like to move my whole life into WriteRoom. Distraction-free living sounds delightful.
Had a dream that George Clooney’s two blonde shi-tzus liked me better than him. Freud? Anybody? Help me out, don’t get it.
Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity not being for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
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| — | E.B. White, The New Yorker: 4/8/33 |
I count my first trip to the Western wall as part of the death throes of my religious commitment. The crowded plaza in front of the wall is sectioned off into men’s and women’s sections. The men’s section is four times as large, and women are routinely badgered and outright assaulted for the temerity of reading Torah or praying too loudly. Groups of braying Orthodox men will surround the offending women, screaming and shouting and pushing her away from the holy site she came to worship. Because that’s how pious Jews deal with uppity bitches, too.
It’s a new level of awful to arrest someone, though. While the government is quite openly in the pocket of Israel’s most religious minority, religious offenses shouldn’t ever be civil matters.
The Wall’s resident rabbi said at the time, “We must distance politics and disagreement from this sacred place.” Meaning, you should leave your modern ideas of equality and your own personhood at the door. As if that which is sacred is not inherently political, when half the goddamn population is restricted from interacting with it.
My workday lunch outlook got a lot less bleak when I figured out how to perfectly steam broccoli in the office microwave.
via contexts.org
I just watched Ricki Lake’s “The Business of Being Born” this week, and it makes me want to quit my job and become a midwife. What kind of jackass doctor erases women from their own birth experience? In what world is that likely to make things run more smoothly?
