“Whiteness and White privilege involve the luxury of being able to decide how, in what ways, and under what conditions, you will be allow yourself to be uncomfortable. White privilege also involves the luxury of not having to have a conversation with your kids about how to avoid being murdered by the cops because of your skin color. In many matters of life and death, white supremacy remains, in many ways, unchallenged. Black and brown folks, if they are responsible parents, cannot avoid such conversations with their children. The foot-dragging by the police in regards to the murder of Trayvon Martin reveals this ugly truth.”
—Chauncey DeVega in
“Trayvon Martin and Life Lessons for Young Black Boys”Why I Love Greenpoint, Brooklyn indie bookstore WORD
open.salon.comFrom Open Salon - please like it there if you’re so inclined! I am trying to get back to actually writing. A mini attempt here.
I love books, and I love talking about books, but I’m often hard pressed to find people outside the internet as eager to chat about the latest romance and young adult novels as they are about the new Gary Shteyngarten or Haruki Murakami (no offense). Where I know I can always go and discuss the nuances of historical romance novelists Sarah MacLean and Eloisa James, or debate the fact that so much YA is full of death, or simply compare tattoos or thoughts on what’s new in book land, is WORD, at 126 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where the staff genuinely love books. When they recommend something to me, I don’t feel like I’m getting the hard sell so they can make a buck, but rather a genuine, customized recommendation. “Sometimes I buy books online,” I whispered a little shamelessly while in the store last night. “When they’re cheaper,” I hastened to explain. Nobody gave me a hipster death stare.
"Post Traumatic Surgery Disorder" by J. Christopher Arrison
open.salon.comLink to the latest open salon update from JCA’s perspective. We’ve both had trouble figuring out how to sum up the last few weeks, and I think he knocked it out of the park.
I keep promising an Unfortunate Brain News video update or five, so one day I’ll do those. Now that Chris has lapped me, I’ve got more motivation!
“This is Ronan’s second Christmas, and it might be his last (I threw out all those “My First Christmas” onesies, and I was tempted to burn them). Or it might not. And there’s this: it might be my last Christmas, and it might be yours. Don’t think you are immune to turning around on that path yourself and seeing something you don’t like: loss of love, life, ability, anything. And if you do experience a loss that you live through, I hope you’ll find me so that I can say to you what it DOES help to say to a grieving parent (or at least this parent) during the holiday season, or any season at all: 1. How are you today? 2. I want to be helpful. Tell me what to do. 3. I’m thinking of you.”
—Emily Rapp, “Holiday Grief Etiquette: A Beginner’s Guide,” Open Salon. Be prepared to cry. And yet…while Rapp is writing about life and death and illness, her blog is not maudlin, it’s just raw, and real. There is so much heart at Open Salon, I’m so glad I discovered it, and highly recommend exploring its offerings.
Mark Cuban Invests in Switchcam
open.salon.comvia Open Salon by Daniel Spelzmann
San Francisco-based startup Switchcam has created technology that combines videos from multiple sources and allows users to watch concerts, political rallies, conferences, and other events from multiple different points of view. And it’s attracted investment from one of the biggest names in video, raising $1.2 million in a seed round led by Dallas Mavericks owner, HDNet founder, and billionaire Mark Cuban. But he’s not alone: 500 Startups, Turner MediaCamp, Vikas Gupta, David Beyer, Jeffrey Schox, Niket Desai, and Reed Morse also participated in the round.
If you ever want to piss yourself off, go read this woman's blog.
Barbara Joanne- You may know her from the article going around- “Rick Santorum would have killed my daughter” or whatever? She commented on the article 9879137491 times, attacking the writer and completely blowing off anyone who attempted to explain the things she was “confused” about. Basically, she was just an asshat. So I investigated further.
I especially disenjoyed this article about Michelle Obama.
I literally signed up for this site just so I could rage against all of her articles. But they pissed me off so much that I could not form a coherent thought.
Also, no matter what she says, I firmly believe she is racist.
The Wire
open.salon.comOpen Salon, Jan Wilberg
AUGUST 23, 2012 1:22PM
It wasn’t a coat hanger. It was a wire.
The theory was that by inserting the wire through the cervix, moving it around a bit and then removing it, an infection would result and the pregnancy would be aborted. It worked. It was March 1967.
Afterward, after I watched the ‘doctor’ wash his hands with one of those little soaps wrapped in white paper, after he tilted the bedside lamp just so and after he said, “That should do it,” I got dressed, left the motel with the flashing vacancy sign, made my way to the bus station in downtown Detroit, and rode in the dark in the eerie silence of a mostly empty Greyhound all the way back to Mt. Pleasant, the tiny Michigan town where I was a freshman in college. Curled up next to the window under my black pea coat, I wondered how long it would take, whether it would be on the bus or later. I worried that something a lot worse than being pregnant would happen to me because of what happened in the motel room, that I’d get sick or bleed to death. I wondered if I would ever feel right about what I had done and if there had been choices that I hadn’t considered. I remember feeling like a mouse that had found the tiniest hole for escape while a giant tomcat loomed. I was distraught, empty, and alone on that bus. Back in my dorm room, Jane, my roommate, held both of my hands in hers and said, “It will be ok. You’ll see. You’ll have lots of children when the time is right.” It was a gesture of kindness and compassion that even now brings tears to my eyes.
