01 Friday May 2009
Posted in our family
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My grandma back in Holland (Mich.) is adopting a puppy this summer, and the litter was born earlier this week. My dad forwarded me a picture of the mama dog with her brood.
Somewhere in there is a sweet little female who will someday be named Addy!
01 Friday May 2009
Posted in media
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In my archives class tonight (LIS440: Archival Access and Use) were were getting the cliff notes version of digital preservation, the future of archives. Because even though we will continue for the foreseeable future to have and acquire traditional materials in, say, paper form (or am I seriously the only person who still keeps my journal long-hand? writes actual pen-and-ink letters?), we’ll also get an increasing proportion of “born digital” materials — say drafts of a novel preserved in Word format, or an Excel file detailing travel expenses for a conference, or a computer program modeling data sets from a science experiment.
One of the concepts for preserving this data and making it available to researchers is “emulation.” Basically, it’s creating–using newer technology–a way of accessing older data that will re-create as closely as possible the original experience of accessing the data. For example, making it possible to run an old computer game (Donkey Kong anyone?) on newer technology, but maintaining the look and feel of the original game.
Our professor, Susan Pyzynski, showed us this digital archive, the agrippa files dedicated to Agrippa (a book of the dead), a sort of performance art collaboration created in 1992 by artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. It was a limited-edition book meant to be read for a limited time only before its text faded packaged with a diskette containing a digital file of a poem meant to be opened and read only once before it self-destructed.
the agrippa files managed to capture and emulate the experience of reading this poem, a process which they detail on the website and have made available through Google video with the permission of the original creators. Check out this experiment in 21st century archival access!
(note: if you actually care about reading the poem, you can find a higher-resolution Quicktime video on the agrippa file website)
28 Tuesday Apr 2009
Posted in think pieces
The final weeks of the semester have officially made me incapable of composing even simple links lists, so the blog post ideas are piling up. But in an hour between classes in which to occupy myself catching up on my rss feeds, this post by fellow West Michigan feminist Rita tipped me off to Dahlia Lithwick’s recent column on Redding v. Safford Unified School District, Search Me: The Supreme Court is neither hot nor bothered about strip searches.
Now, I am an amateur SCOTUS junkie who also happens (ahem) to be a feminist interested in children’s rights, women’s sexuality and embodiment. So when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the legality of strip-searching a 13-year-old whose classmate had intimated she was in possession of (gasp!) ibuprofen, it’s like being handed an oreo cheesecake ice cream sundae. When Dahlia Lithwick weighs in with her very own account of the proceedings, it’s like adding fudge sauce, whipped cream, and graham cracker crumble to the top. To whit:
Editorialists and pundits have found much to hate in what happened to Savana Redding. Yet the court today finds much to admire. And even if you were never a 13-year-old girl yourself, if you have a daughter or niece, you might see the humiliation in pulling a middle-school honor student with no history of disciplinary problems out of class, based on an uncorroborated tip that she was handing out prescription ibuprofen. You might think it traumatic that she was forced to strip down to her underclothes and pull her bra and underwear out and shake them in front of two female school employees. No drugs were found. But even those justices lacking a daughter, a niece, or a uterus had access to an amicus brief in this case documenting the fact that student strip searches “can result in serious emotional damage” and that student victims of strip searches “often cannot concentrate in school, and, in many cases, transfer or even drop out.” Savana Redding, herself a data point, described the search as “the most humiliating experience” of her life. Then she dropped out of school. And five years later, at age 19, she gets to listen in on oral argument in Porky’s 3: The Supreme Court Says “Panties.”
. . .
Yet in recent years, the high court has slowly chipped away at the privacy rights of students—frequently based on the rationale that there were drugs!!! Somewhere in America!!! Drugs!!! Creating danger!!! (This led an annoyed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to dissent in a recent case that the court was peddling “nightmarish images of out-of-control flatware, livestock run amok, and colliding tubas” to justify drug tests for any student with a pulse. )
Today’s argument features an astounding colloquy between Matthew Wright, the school district’s lawyer, and Justice Antonin Scalia, who cannot understand why “black marker pencils” are also considered contraband. “Well, for sniffing!” answers Wright. “They sniff them?” asks Scalia, delightedly. “Really?”
. . .
Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.
Her penultimate observation? “Evidently teenage nakedness is only a problem when the children choose to be naked.”
Dahlia Lithwick, I am yours forever.
Seriously. Go enjoy the whole thing.
24 Friday Apr 2009
Posted in media
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well, okay. maybe not EVER. Wall-E was pretty darned adorable. but, anyway, via Alas, a Blog comes this New York City art project involving mobile “tweenbots” who are let loose on the streets of the city and aided by passersby.
22 Wednesday Apr 2009
Posted in linkspam
A couple of weeks ago, I rounded up a few links on policing “imperfect” bodies (women’s bodies in particular). Here are a few more.
Watching the blogosphere coverage of Susan Boyle’s performance on the Britain’s Got Talent television show has been an a thought-provoking and often intensely discomforting experience (as was watching the video itself, though she does indeed have a gorgeous voice and sings with her whole body). Here are blog posts and threads I found particularly spot-on with regards to what’s off about the hype.
1) The Pursuit of Harpyness asks whether Susan Boyle’s performance at Britain’s Got Talent and the freak-show aspect of media coverage surrounding it is “Heartwarming or Heartbreaking?”
2) via radishette: What he said. Nailed it.
3) Courtney Martin writes: “I don’t think the majority of us are really willing to look at the ugly scripts in our heads, the fat discrimination, the self-hate (oh so relate to our merciless judgment of others),” that the popularity of the Susan Boyle video draws out.
And then: I’ve written a lot about how ageism hurts young people, and specifically about the American obsession with teen sexuality. Now here’s a story about Massachusetts attempting to legislate against elder expressions of sexuality. The legislation is ostensibly to protect elders and disabled individuals from exploitation (a laudable goal), but has been carelessly and broadly worded. Not cool adopted state.
*Image (c) ria hills @ flickr.
22 Wednesday Apr 2009
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Two links on bullying that came across my rss feeds lately remind me again about how integral children’s experience and childhood spaces are to the struggle against power-over hierarchical relationships (i.e. the kyriarchy.)
First, via Feministe and Feministing, stories of two boys who killed themselves as a result of bullying that hinged on homophobic and sexist taunts: Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and Jaheem Herrera.
Partly in response to these stories, as well as her own experience, Antigone over at punkassblog declares “If We Have Kids, We’re Homeschooling“:
Based on the number of people that had to live through bullying, and the complete lack of any systematic effort to stop it, I’m calling bullshit, hard. Public school does not properly socialize anyone, it teaches children to become bullies, victims, or learn the nifty trick of “not my problem”. That is not a socialization I want to give my kids at all.
Home education isn’t the only possible solution to this type of situation (and indeed, will like not shield kids from bullying entirely — though it can serve as a life-saving buffer for some), but I think Antigone’s “I’m calling bullshit” is an important impulse. Systemic violence is not okay, regardless of where it happens and to whom it happens. Children — who spend much of their time segregated from the general population — often suffer from the same discrimination as marginalized adults (sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) while they are simultaneously less able to name and combat it — because they lack the (developmental and experiential) perspective of adults and the resources and agency of adults.
Many children must — through lack of individual choice or material options — return to these hostile situations day after day after day where oversight by adults is inadequate at best and indifferent at worst. This is not acceptable. And I see calling bullshit on the intensely hostile world in which our children (who will grow up to be caretakers of our world and of us in our elder-hood, whether or not we are parents ourselves!) as integral to the feminist project.
20 Monday Apr 2009
Posted in think pieces
Many of you who read my blog don’t necessarily spend a lot of time in the “feminist blogosphere,” I know . . . so the heated, often polarized, conversations that have been happening in that virtual space over the last couple of weeks are possibly completely off your radar. But to me they have been important. They have encouraged me to be mindful about how I interact with others in virtual spaces — on this blog and in comment threads on other blogs. They have challenged me to think about how to be open to learning in a spirit of humility while also refusing to let others set the terms of my own participation in the world of feminist activism.
I’m still thinking about what all of these conversations mean to me in terms of this blog and in terms of my participation in online communities generally. And I don’t feel ready, quite yet, to offer my own composed thoughts on the subject. I thought, therefore, that I would round up a few posts that have spoken to me on the issue of interpersonal conversation and debate and share them with you:
Miriam Perez, at Radical Doula, writes about why she blogs and why she refuses to be bullied into silence in relation to this conversation about comment threads and transphobia at Feministing.
(For further background, you can see this earlier Feministing post for links).
Rachel, at the Feminist Agenda, muses about a dynamic I try to keep in mind when participating in the blogosphere, both as a way to check my own defensiveness and as a way of understanding others’.
On a related note, MK asks when is comment-thread engagement worth the fight?
Mandolin, over at Alas, a Blog, writes about disliking “competitive conversation.” As someone who likewise finds oppositional debate both exhausting and unproductive, I really appreciate the distinction she draws between collaborative discussion of divisive issues and debate that is polarized.
More to come (hopefully) as the semester winds down and I have more time to think about the nature of this particular virtual space in relation to activism, online communities, and my daily life.
19 Sunday Apr 2009
via the H-Net listserv on history of childhood comes a link to a recent New York Times article about children who care for parents and grandparents with health and other concerns.
Across the country, children are providing care for sick parents or grandparents — lifting frail bodies off beds or toilets, managing medication, washing, feeding, dressing, talking with doctors. Schools, social service agencies and health providers are often unaware of those responsibilities because families members may be too embarrassed, or stoic.
Some children develop maturity and self-esteem. But others grow anxious, depressed or angry, sacrifice social and extracurricular activities and miss — or quit — school.
“Our society thinks of children as being taken care of; it doesn’t think of children as taking care of anybody,” said Carol Levine, director of families and health care at United Hospital Fund, a health services organization that studied child caregivers.
As people on the listserv point out, the concept of children as automatically dependents, rather than caretakers, is historically contingent: throughout history children have been in the position of caring for others. Yet in our contemporary culture, we assume that, ideally, children will be cared for not caretaking. As a result, children who are taking on these responsibilities are often invisible to the public at large, at least in public policy and mainstream media discourses.
What is particularly interesting to me about the NYT article is that many of the organizations they profile are not treating child caretakers as automatically being taken advantage of, although they acknowledge the ways children are often ill-equipped to provide care, and the ways in which their own mental and physical health suffers.
The Caregiving Youth Project in Florida offers the most comprehensive approach, holding weekend camps to give children breaks and teach them caregiving skills. It counsels families and conducts classes and meetings in schools.
While I would obviously have to do much more research and reflection before offering an opinion about the efficacy of this approach in terms of the benefit to children and families, my knee-jerk reaction is to believe that meeting kids where they are realistically at (that is, honoring the valuable work they are doing in their families) rather than treating them as potential delinquents or devaluing their caretaking, is generally on the right track. Thoughts?
17 Friday Apr 2009
Posted in media
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I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how quickly and chaotically conversations sometimes happen in the blogosphere, and the pressure I — at least — feel to be instantaneously thoughtful on issues of great importance. I’ve never felt particularly adept at rapid response, and in the virtual world — where the daily demands of our lives are often invisible — impatience for instant feedback, apologies, clarifications, and elaborations can feel that much more intense. So today, when Diana put this xkcd comic up on twitter, it spoke to me.
It’s nice to know there are other people in the world who don’t feel so quick on the uptake either!
Tomorrow I’m off early to the New England Historical Association spring conference in Portland, ME. Then back home to work on grading student quizzes, reading Foucault, my seminar paper on mid-20th century humanist pedagogy (say it five times fast), and laundry, cooking, and perhaps even and episode or two of sarah jane or carnivale. Hope you all find ways to enjoy the weekend as well.
13 Monday Apr 2009
Posted in think pieces
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Stupid headlines like this irritate the hell out of me:
This was a story in the Boston Metro (free transit newspaper) today that Hanna and I noticed while riding the T out to Harvard Square. The entire text of the article reads as follows:
China’s budding gender gap — inspired by decades of one-child-per-family law, and the resulting rise in baby-girl abortions and infanticides — could develop into an increase in violent crimes, a new study reports.
With 32 million more young men than women, and the imbalance only growing, sociologists worry about a coming spike in crime, when men take out their frustrations on an increasingly wealthy population.
The report paints a grim picture for a modernizing China. “If you’ve got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes,” lecturer Therese Hesketh told the AP.
I was particularly charmed by the boxed quote attributed to “Researchers” (names please? the title of this report? anything that would reliably enable readers to fact-check the study**?) which read: “Nothing can be done now to prevent this.”
Because, you know, dudes are just violent animals without wives to keep them in check.
I dunno, people. I personally have faith that guys in China may find another, less violent, solution to the dearth of women.
*or “sexism” or “kyriarchy” if you prefer.
the feminist librarian 