I keep telling myself that nobody's sick and nobody's dead. But I am completely afflicted by Economy Angst. I don't want to be. I want to be positive and hopeful but damn! I keep telling myself to turn off Morning Joe before they go the European/Asian markets report and watch Angel on TNT instead. Pretty pitiful.
Anyway, I'll be back with a real post soon.
Oh and this photo has nothing to do with anything. It's a peaceful beach on the Jersey Shore and nicer to look at than the headlines.
This photo is on my friend Leticia's wonderful blog Tech Savvy Mama. Why? Today is the birthday of the wonderful Theodor Seuss Geisel , known to all of us as Dr. Seuss. For twelve years now, the week of Dr. Seuss's birthday ( he was born in 1904) has been "Read Across America" week, which uses Geisel's beloved books to encourage reading and a love of books.
Leticia has a wonderful set of resources for activities, books, games and teacher support for any who want to make the most of this very smart holiday. Everyone from the National Education Association, which initiated the effort, to Reading Rockets to You Tube boasts special features. Leticia even has a link to free digital book downloads!
So for heaven's sake, send every kid you know a Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss email or call them and sing happy birthday with them. Even better, hit Tech Savvy Mama and use some of the dozens of great ideas to share some quality time with them.
Oh, and, in case you forgot, here's a list of the amazing works of this remarkable man, from the Seussville website:
How the Grinch Stole Christmas Anniversary Edition
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins I remember this one from when I was, literally, a little girl.
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
Bartholomew and the Oobleck Loved this one too.
The Cat in the Hat Mischief personified.
Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?
Green Eggs and Ham Great baby present for kids named Sam, except they get so many of them!
Horton Hatches the Egg My second most favorite. "An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent."
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
I Am Not Going to Get Up Today!
The Lorax My MOST favorite (and my kids loved it) "I am the Lorax I speak for the trees."
Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
The Sneetches and Other Stories
Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose
Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog?
Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories Anniversary Edition
The Cat in the Hat Beginner Book Dictionary
Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss. And happy Read Across America Week to all the rest of us.
I spent part of Thursday sitting in Starbucks on the GW (George Washington University) campus after a meeting, loving being around all these students buzzing and working and laughing. I loved college; could feel my head growing. It's an amazing time in a young person's life and one that forms much of who we are later. Now, though, the carefree collegian is a thing of the past. Everyone has jobs and student loans. Instead of leaving school with a "sky's the limit" ambition, many must look first for the job that will help them pay off their loans, and only then for the one they'll really love.
Here are some stories:
So. This is kind of a random list but when we're arguing over stimulus packages, we need to remember the people behind them. Like these.
SWhen I was a kid on Oscar night, my parents made me go to bed way before the show was over, but my dad always kept a winners list for me on a shirt cardboard so I wouldn't miss anything. It seemed so important then. Without the entertainment shows like ET and Access Hollywood, the unedited Oscar acceptance speeches were one of the few times we got to see celebrities revealed. It was thrilling.
It’s Carnival time again; the Blogging Boomers have landed here at Don’t Gel Too Soon, and they have plenty to offer. From Hole in the Donut, a story of how small the world really is – her blog helped a man discover his lost family roots when she published a present day photo of a storefront in Matten, Switzerland that had belonged to his grandfather. He was able to match it to a historical photo that ultimately led him to records that confirmed his ancestry.
Meanwhile, Rhea Becker tell us that she’s always dreamed of opening a restaurant. Would her Amish-concept restaurant survive in Boston? Learn more at The Boomer Chronicles.
Is it possible to go through menopause “naturally”? asks Wendy Lawson, who put that question to a well-respected herbalist and integrative medicine physician, and shares her advice at Menopause The Blog.
On another topic, were you part of the Oscar audience? Over at Fabulous After 40, they ask the question…How do the over 40 celebrities get to looking so sleek and perfect on the red carpet?
We all know that I Remember JFK comes up with some great memories. This time it’s a Buffalo Nickel, in typical 1960’s condition, that he found as a kid. As he puts it: “It wasn’t often that a kid of the 60’s had change in his pocket. At least it wasn’t often that I did. Come to think of it, I’m short of cash right now. Some things never change.
But go back to 1967, and if a fortunate youngster found himself with a chunk of change in his pocket, the odds were pretty favorable that among the coinage was a Buffalo Nickel or two.
And while we’re looking back — we all do it, but it’s got a bad name with most mental health professionals. That might be changing though. What are we talking about at LifeTwo? Nostalgia.
Here’s a nice simple one on Boomer life from the Midlife Crisis Queen: Behaviors to avoid when midlife crisis strikes!
In another take on life, Dina at This Marriage Thing says: Single? Here’s a bit of advice on choosing the purrfect mate..
After reading a magazine article about young entrepreneurs where only 3 of 16 were women, Andrea Stenberg wonders Are Young Women Less Likely to Be Entrepreneurs?
On the political side (sort of:) Feeling a bit Obamar-ific, Janet Wendy at Gen Plus, brings you some new online goodies from the White House
Add some technology to your politics: Barack Obama does it. So do William Shatner, Richard Branson and John Cleese… What is it? Twittering.
Tweating. Microblogging… If you want to get in on the act, head over to Contemporary Retirement.
Even if this is only half true, it's pretty amazing. Next time we wonder about the impact of this election this is something to add to the equation. Just ask an anthropologist or a semanticist or semioticist — or for that matter a historian: language forms perspective on ideas and this is, well, riveting.(H/T to Ben Smith's Politico blog for this clip.)
I didn’t know about this until my friend Madeleine Perry tweeted it, so I thought maybe you didn’t either. It’s the Obama-Biden Tax Cut Calculator. This video explains it. Instead of fighting over tax cuts, who gets them and how much they’ll yield, we can just figure it out here. Give it a try.
OK here's my question. Did you go to high school? Didn't they teach us all that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was leveraging, buying "on margins": buying stock for a percentage and paying off the rest from sale of the stock at a higher rate, until price slides caused the crash? AND didn't they teach us that we had rules and regulations now that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again? And that our government kept an eye on all that sort of investment? And that we were safe?
So what happened? Wasn't the SEC supposed to regulate speculation? Weren't banks, like stock investments, supposed to be monitored? Weren't bank boards supposed to monitor housing loans? How did we land here again?
I wish I understood better the deregulation that I know has been implemented over time. I know that some of the housing regulatory let-up was designed to make it easier for less affluent Americans to buy homes and ended up making many of these same people vulnerable to predatory lenders. I know that some people simply bought homes they couldn't afford, and banks let them do it. I know that there have been stories about this for years, yet it continued.
I know that regulation has been substantially lifted from our entire market system. I know that our crisis is infecting other countries and taking the global economy with it. That the American consumer has kept our economy strong for years and that now, as consumers lock up their money and cancel their credit cards, that vital tool is fading.
As a US website, America.gov, explained in December:
Goods and services purchased by Americans make up
one-fifth of the global economy, but the third quarter of 2008 saw the
largest drop in consumer spending since 1980.As the financial-market turbulence prompts U.S. households to cut back spending, economies around the globe feel repercussions.
Even after all this time, it's so hard to think about this – about how clear it is now that the deregulation and even the push for an arguably necessary but overdone easing of credit for housing purchases, how between politics and greed, banks lent to many who had no business entering into the debt that has rendered them homeless now. And that doesn't even begin to consider the careless greed of much of the financial community.
Nothing new here.
But I'll bet I'm not the only one whose anger continues to grow, whose frustration continues to grow, whose sadness overpowers. The futures of my honorable, hard-working children and their friends, and the younger ones who come after, are rendered fragile and discouraging. The future of the ideas and principles that were the Obama campaign are endangered by debt and the need to rescue the economy. The debts of the Bush years have eliminated alternatives. And as usual, when politics gets ugly and institutions become careless, the future of those who most rely on government support or protection, the weakest and less established among us, are hurt the most.
If I were my friends PunditMom Joanne or Jill, at Writes Like She Talks, I would have lots of policy citations to back all this up. But this is a piece built more of mourning than reporting. Some days recently, as I think about all this, I can literally feel myself in my seat in AP American History reading about the Great Depression and the checks put into place to prevent its recurrence. I can literally feel myself listening to my parents describe their lives in the 1930's and the permanent scars those years left. And in some ways, I can't believe it, can't believe that carelessness and greed and ignorance and an arrogance beyond describing has threatened us with those times once again.
It's the morning after the remarkable event that was Fem 2.0, and I want to think a bit about what yesterday meant. Fem 2.0 is a new entity whose leaders organized a conference on the future of feminism and women's issues. Sounds like old stuff, but it's not. Because of their vision and connections, the organizers, especially Shireen Mitchell, Heather Holdridge, Liza Sabater and Gloria Pan were able to attract women who think about these issues but don't always attend the usual central-casting women's gatherings. Combined with them: several of the "rock stars" of 2nd and 3rd Wave feminism – from Gen Y to Boomers, as well as stars in the blogger universe.
For the first time I saw, at the same meeting, women my age and older, Gen X and younger, institutional and independent, white, black, brown and Asian – all terribly accomplished, articulate and thoughtful. The goal was to work toward the elimination of barriers among these varied groups to allow more focus on the issues that unite us. I know that sounds like Barack Obama and maybe his style increased the reception for this call to meeting, but it was really quite remarkable.
Gathered were institutional "rock stars" like Eleanor Smeal, President of Feminist Majority Foundation and publisher of Ms. Magazine, Kim Gandy, President of NOW, and Karen Mulhauser, former head of NARAL – all fierce veterans for women's rights, Rene Redwood of Redwood Enterprises and Ann Stone, introduced to the assembled as VP of the National Women's History Museum, which she is. She is also the courageous founder and long-time leader of Republicans for Choice – a group that, for many years, was enormously unpopular in Republican circles. It wasn't easy.
Alongside them as stars, but emerging more from the world of 2.0: Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer, Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner of Moms Rising, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and RH Reality Check, and Tedra Osell of Bitch PhD, among others. For the first time that I know of, the cohorts that these women represent were in the same rooms, talking to each other not only about feminism, but also about the factors (age, geek level, parent status etc) that divide them.
Many people have posted detailed descriptions of parts of the day. Here are a few: Jen Nedeau at Chang.org offers a nice summary. Laurie White live-blogged several sessions including the one at which I spoke. Momcrats (no surprise) were out in force and report here. Friend, house guest and major league blogger Jill Miller Zimon sums up the plenaries and some other events.
I'm sure there will be more; if there are enough I'll do a follow-up. The day was very important to most of us and if I haven't convinced you, read some of the accounts. Sometimes barriers among allies are tougher to overcome than those among adversaries. Fem 2.0 gave us a real start. They deserve our thanks. And have them, from over here where I sit.
Thanks to the amazing Nerdette, who managed to participate brilliantly and shoot the panel at the same time, you can watch at least a portion of our Fem 2.0 panel. TanyaTarr, Jen Nedeau
and I were honored by a smart, challenging and provocative audience and
learned at least as much as we talked. As Tanya put it, "I just gained
300 more sisters. There's no other way to say it."
I also promised an updated set of links if many more posts appeared. Here are a few:
Loryn C. Wilson's take on Womanism and the conference
Nerdette's post on Not My Gal, including this video, which she shot and edited
Our third panelist (and expert moderator), Jen Nedau's review
Veronica I. Arreola at Viva La Feminista describes her very interesting plenary appearance with Eleanor Smeal, Kim Gandy, Elisa Camahort Page and others.
Laurie White at Laurie Writes continues her phenomenal series of live session posts
more measured response from
Jill Miller Zimon at Writes Like She Talks has a second post with links to more than a dozen reviews of the Linkfluence presentation
On TechPresident, Sairy Granger offers a different take on the Linkfluence map of feminist bloggers, presented at the conference.
There are also posts by Emily Kronenberger at New Wave Grrrl, FlashFree, DJ Nelson at All Diva Media and, I'm sure, many more to come.
As you can see, it was an experience everyone wanted to share.