March 2012
0 posts
syeda:
One of my best friends mailed me a gift. In return I mailed our other best friend a gift. I’m sure she’ll reciprocate in the same fashion and mail another good friend a gift. Let’s just start mailing each other gifts, and invite a new person into the process of exchange each time.
Yes!!!! I’m that first best friend :)
February 2012
40 posts
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“One of the first things to like about Tracie McMillan, the author of ‘The American Way of Eating,’ is her forthrightness. She’s a blue-collar girl who grew up eating a lot of Tuna Helper and Ortega Taco Dinners because her mother was gravely ill for a decade, and her father, who sold lawn equipment, had little time to cook. About these box meals, she says, ‘I liked...
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andsotimshel:
America
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,
And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu
...
becoming-wave:
People who refer to my neighbourhood as “sketchy” really grind my nerves.
I have *never* felt threatened here. No one has ever bothered me. I live right next door to a halfway house, and yes, shirtless ranting dude who pees out his window is kind of irritating, but sketchy is a whole nother story.
Sketchy is a code word for fearing the poor, the mentally ill and all them brown...
This week I taught the first chapter of A People’s History of the United States. We discussed conquest, colonization, human progress, hypocrisy, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The students were incredible. I was so happy I was practically bouncing around the room.
- My back has started hurting again and I’m really scared it’s going to go back to the way it was, when each night was painful and each morning I would discover that the throbbing had moved to new places. - A and I went to the mountains this weekend, which was super relaxing, but he wasn’t thrilled when I didn’t talk to him for four hours because I couldn’t get my...
Can someone please, please help me come up with a lesson plan for tenth graders about the Age of Exploration? It’s not yet at the part about colonization and what exactly the explorers did in the Americas, but more about how exploration grew out of the Renaissance. Please help!
Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare Console you if I could. What can be said, Except that suffering is exact, but where Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?
- Philip Larkin, Deceptions
Just finished The Hunger Games. HOLYFUCK.
Written by a dear friend and comrade:
Hip-Hop Has Saved My Soul (and Spirituality)
As insomnia kicks in, another profound post (I hope) is produced. I only get exciting ideas to write about in the middle of my sleep- surely, it’s divinely inspired. It’s like the Tupac line from Ghetto Gospel, “Never forget, that God isn’t finished with me yet//When I write rhymes, I go blind, and let the...
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Guerrillas use violence, generally directed against the police and army, but sometimes causing injury and death to civilians caught in the crossfire. Does she condemn that violence? “I don’t condemn it any more,” she says. “If you’re an adivasi [tribal Indian] living in a forest village and 800 CRP [Central Reserve Police] come and surround your village and start...
lovingblackness:
“Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. […] Most of us learn to think of love as a feeling. When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of...
Anonymous asked: re: The idea of leaving is becoming more seductive by the minute. Where are you going?
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Check it out:
“Education for the 99% is the newsletter and blog of the Occupy Oakland Education Committee.
Through the publication of this analysis we seek to confront the continuing destruction of quality public education for the working class and people of color in Oakland and across the United States and thus the elimination of our childrens’ right to learn and grow. Our youth, full...
“I don’t know why we care what you have to say. We don’t have the luxury to starve for fashion. We have to work for a living. We have double shifts. We carry groceries we can barely buy with our meager salaries up many flights of stairs and feed our children and deal with our children being molested and woefully sometimes bury our children and find a way to live through this, being merely children...
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Everyone is talking today about Chris Hedges’ piece, “The Cancer in Occupy,” so here’s some others to read in conversation with Hedges:
- To Be Fair, He Is a Journalist: A Short Response to Chris Hedges on the Black Bloc
- The Folly of Christopher Hedges
- A presentation from Harsha Walia of No One Is Illegal, Vancounver, in three parts: First Part Second Part Third...
“The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve...”
– M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized - The New Yorker
(via stopdroptroll)
Hardest day teaching so far this semester. Wanted to scream and cry, so now I’m just drinking. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the hardest job in the world.
Whenever a woman says, “I hate girls; they’re catty bitches,” a patriarchy fairy gets its wings.
“She had stayed a virgin so she wouldn’t be called a tramp or a slut; had married...”
– Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (via anuraglahiri)
“We too have been seduced by the false assumption that the goal of academic...”
– bell hooks, “on being black at yale: education as the practice of freedom”; Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black; (1989); (p. 64-65). (via agradschoolbreakup)
“The other quite exceptional paper came from a white girl, one of the few who come to the school. We had been doing sociological study in which I was emphasizing the behaviour of people in regard to the economic and political development of a country. I told them to get a subject to prepare during the last month, any subject. I didn’t notice anything particular in the young woman’s attitude… When...
hysteriarama asked: Hey, if you're looking for articles on lack of sexual desire, I recommend Starved by Lauren Berlant. It's easy to find on google or wherever.
How to find textbooks online for free: a post.
This is great. Cracks me up that they don’t list the library though. I got all of my books from the library this semester.
obsessionfull:
Textbooks are fucking expensive, and if your professor doesn’t require a physical copy (most don’t - they just want you to have the book at hand. Or maybe even not. Some professors literally give no fucks about whether you have the book or not) and you...
What do yall think about the look of my blog? I changed the layout a few weeks ago, but I’m wondering if folks like it. Should I change the background to black possibly?
January 2012
41 posts
“…there are nearly three whites with doctoral degrees for every one behind bars,...”
– Michael Hames-García, “Which America is Ours?: Martí’s ‘Truth’ and the Foundations of ‘American Literature’” (2003)
“I’m not writing to be included in the canon. I’m writing to save something...”
– Nikky Finney (via dearlittleblackgirls)
dianebluegreen asked: me,diane,again. look up asexuality or ace. also,i follow 'outlawroad' and 'vladdracula' who are both ace and activiist. check out 'aven' via google too. i'm far from an expert,but feel free to ask me any more questions if you want to!
“I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
– Pablo Neruda (via just-olive)
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Today I tried to convince some people that I truly do have Tumblr friends that I’ve never met. I told them about oplopanax horridus (or is it becoming wave?) and how I am definitely going to go to Canada one day and meet her and they thought I was totally insane. Then I got home and she had reblogged my post to help me find information I’m looking for and is getting people to follow...
Concerning my last post, if you’ve seen any writings that fill this void, please share!
There is a serious lack of writings and discourse within radical circles concerning the lack of sexual desire. I’m so thrilled that we are increasingly able to talk about sex in all its dimensions, particularly the calling out of slut shaming. I’m really, really glad that within radical spaces (the good ones) people, especially women, can now own their sexuality and desires proudly and...
“It’s not that the lack of compliments made me doubt his feelings for me. He gave the best hugs, ones that communicated how much he meant it. He called me loving pet names and gave thoughtful gifts. We could talk about any subject for hours on end, and after the first year or so he even began trusting me enough to reveal more than what was on the surface. I was in love with him, and for...
