redjenny: The Power of Poetry

April 30, 2009 by Red Jenny

A while back, I posted a poem written by Drew Dillinger. It begins:

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

Words have power. And these are powerful words.

I am not the only one who think so. Recently a congresswoman quoted the poem during Congressional hearings on climate change legislation.

DellingerPoem_Congress from drew dellinger on Vimeo.

The Stormy Days of March: Crock of the Week: WOO! 1998!

April 28, 2009 by Paladiea

Enjoy!

The Stormy Days of March: No Words

April 21, 2009 by Paladiea

‘Iraqi militias have deployed an unprecedented form of torture against homosexuals by using a very strong glue that will close their anus.’ According to her, the new substance ‘is known as the American hum, which is an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. [...]

redjenny: The media have finally discovered homelessness. Not surprisingly, they get the story wrong

April 21, 2009 by Red Jenny

One of the fundamental human requirements is shelter. How do homeless people survive? Where do they sleep? On friends and family’s couches and floors (if they are lucky), at shelters, in churches, in parks, on sidewalk grates, in abandoned buildings, in doorways, under bridges, in cars, or wherever else they can.

And of course, they sleep in tents. The burgeoning tent cities in the U.S. have finally made the national awareness. Interestingly, it seems as though the media is only interested in the newly homeless, those middle class folks who lost their homes because of the economic collapse. In other words, those who they believe are homeless because of circumstances, not because of some kind of individual moral failing. Unlike, you know, the other kind of poor.

Over the past few months, reporters from around the world have flocked to the now-famous tent city in Sacramento, Calif. When they find out that 55-year-old John Kraintz has been living in a tent for almost seven years, they turn around and walk away.

“They don’t want to talk to me,” he says. “They’re searching for people who just lost their homes. It’s kinda tough to lose a home when you’ve never owned one. Sorry, but most of the people here have been homeless for a long time.”

Homelessness is seen as an anomaly, a sign of the economic crisis, not as a structural problem with capitalism. But there are homeless during the boom times, too, lots of them.

“The other day, I heard a German reporter ask if this is happening because of the recent economic collapse,” says Kraintz. “This has been happening for 30 years, but the powers that be have been able to pretend it doesn’t exist. Why aren’t reporters asking about flat wages, jobs being shipped overseas and the lack of affordable housing?”

Burke agrees, saying one of the many issues ignored in most articles about tent city and homelessness is the fact that poor people cannot afford housing, especially in an expensive state like California.

“People who are poor end up homeless through no fault of their own, but because people higher up on the food chain have made affordable housing a very scarce commodity,” she says. “If we had sound housing policies and programs that helped people when they have a run of bad luck, we would not have a tent city.”

Kraintz says he knew the system would finally blow up. It was just a matter of time. The question, according to him, is this: Do the powers that be have the political will to create a fairer, more just economic system? <Alternet>

Photo Credit: A tent city in Fresno, from a 2004 article by Mike Rhodes on Indybay

Antigone Magazine: The Future of the Women’s Movement?

April 20, 2009 by areaume

Sabine at the fabulous blog, www.confabulous.ca (check it out – it is my new obsession!) has started up a discussion on the future of the women’s movement, that I think everyone should check out!
I think this is a difficult discussion that we need to have and which I’ve been having offline with a number of [...]

the black ewe: The law of diminishing returns

April 20, 2009 by brebisnoire

Last week I got together with a childhood friend to catch up on each other’s lives. Inevitably, as we always do, we compared our childhood memories from the several years we spent together in competitive gymnastics, back in the days when we could be found in the gym up to five times a week for [...]

A Secret Chord: Waking Up

April 20, 2009 by purtek

After having directed all of my brain energy into my end-of-term papers, I feel like I should have something to say about something here, but I seem to have lost track of all those random things I said I would write about, at some abstract future point and never bothered noting.
First of all, though, general [...]

Antigone Magazine: Bad Dates, Campus Creepers and Drug Rapes

April 17, 2009 by areaume

Please come out to Our Town Cafe (245 East Broadway) on Thursday, April 23, 7:00PM for Bad Dates, Campus Creapers and Drug Rape. Two representatives from Antigone Magazine will be there with representatives from the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, the BC Women’s Hospital Sexual Assault Center, Vancouver Rape Relief and WAVAW.
It’s all part of their [...]

redjenny: Early Farmers in the Americas – Farming because they wanted to, not because they had to

April 16, 2009 by Red Jenny

This is an interesting article, especially for me, with my interest in indigenous precolumbian agriculture in the Americas.

Three thousand eight hundred years ago, long before U.S. plains rippled with vast rows of corn, Native Americans planted farms with hardy “pioneer” crops, according to new evidence of the first farming in eastern North America.

Because the area appears to have been well stocked with wild food sources, the discovery may rewrite some beliefs about what led people to start farming on the continent, scientists say.

Rather than turning to farming as a matter of survival, the so-called Riverton people may have been exercising “free will” and engaging in a bit of gastronomic innovation, archaeologists say.

This does not surprise me in the least. We always assume ‘prehistoric’ peoples started farming because they had to, as a survival technique, but we don’t ever stop to think that they might be just like us, inventing new things simply because they want to. Did we need the iPod or the car? Was our survival significantly enhanced because of either of them? We grow later to think we can’t live without electricity, flush toilets, and the internet, because they make our lives easier or more enjoyable.

Around the world and throughout ancient history, people switched from mainly hunting and gathering to farming as a way to cope with environmental stresses, such as drought—or so the conventional wisdom says.

But the new research “really challenges the whole idea of humans domesticating plants and animals in response to an external stress [and] makes a strong case for almost the polar opposite,” said lead study author Bruce Smith, curator of North American archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Before they began farming, the Riverton people lived among bountiful river valleys and lakes, apparently eating a healthy and diverse diet of nuts, white-tailed deer, fish, and shellfish, the study says.
[...]
But that doesn’t mean farming didn’t give the Riverton culture a practical advantage: In addition to their normal fare, the people may have relied on the crops as a stable source of food—insurance against shortages of wild food sources..

Lilith Attack: Introspection

April 16, 2009 by lilith attack

The first time I saw a Heidi Taillefer painting was in Montreal. The Yves Laroche Gallery had her work in its front show room and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Her detail, design and mechanical subject took my breath away. Ms. Taillefer muses in her blog:

Maybe art is soul, and to say it has no purpose in the world would be like saying the physical body has no purpose if the spirit exists. Art seems to carry us along the drama of life, providing meaning to our existence as it acts as the channel through which the soul can pass into this dimension, a dimension we can perceive and understand. We live in the physical world, a world of imperfect modes of expression, communication, or representation, such as language, medium, context or technique…and this challenges and engages us in a way that actually makes things more interesting, if not also frustrating.

I have a crush.

Lilith Attack: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

April 15, 2009 by lilith attack

“Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, whose critical writings on the ambiguities of sexual identity in fiction helped create the discipline known as queer studies, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 58.”

Lilith Attack: Epilepsy is Dancing

April 15, 2009 by lilith attack

Thanks to MS for the introduction to Antony & the Johnsons. This video is just a beautiful celebration. From the website:

Antony asked his friends the Wachowski Brothers to work with him on a video for his new single “Epilepsy is Dancing”. They in turn invited painters Tino Rodriguez and Virgo Paraiso to create costumes and a mystical environment and choreographer Sean Dorsey and his dancers to bring the dream sequence to life. Antony’s artistic partner Johanna Constantine stars as herself in the role of “Deer Monster”. The video was lit and shot by the up-and-coming directors of photography, Chris Blasingame and Banker White, and produced by Jim Jerome. The production team collectively named themselves AFAS. Please enjoy the fruits of their San Francisco art party.

Lilith Attack: Golly, Thanks!

April 15, 2009 by lilith attack

Gosh! Lilith Attack was nominated for The Candian F-Word Blog Awards, Best Feminist Blog – Oh! Canada! English!
Thank you!!!

Antigone Magazine: Dreams for Women?

April 12, 2009 by areaume

So, you might be wondering where Dreams for Women went? Well, our wonderful community art project is not gone… it is just on hiatus.
What is this hiatus for, you might ask? Well, its because I’m currently working four part time jobs and finishing my graduate degree. Ugh! Craziness. Anyways, we have gotten some absolutely [...]

Antigone Magazine: We’ve been nominated…

April 12, 2009 by areaume

I just got this e-mail! Yay Antigone Magazine:
Just in case you didn’t know, you’ve been nominated for Best Feminist Blog – Oh! Canada! English in the 2009 Canadian F-word Awards! First round voting is April 11 – 14 (extended!). One vote per IP addy, please.
What does being nominated for [...]

Antigone Magazine: From the Center for Teaching and Academic Growth

April 12, 2009 by areaume

***We are recruiting a diverse group of students from all walks of life at UBC***
The Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth at UBC announces a new project:
TAG LIVING LAB — Walking the talk for educational equity
Be a part of:
-Improving educational equity at UBC
-Finding solutions to [...]