Target Women: Hair

The Teaching Breakthrough…

…happened when I realized that not all my students actually knew what a “periodical” was.

Need to ask more questions.  Even questions that seem like they shouldn’t need to be asked.

Lesson learned.

Review: The Best Spiritual Writing 2010

The Best Spiritual Writing 2010

Philip Zaleski, ed.  Penguin Books, $16.00 paper (256p) ISBN 978-0143116769

It can be easy to dismiss the word “Best” on the cover of anything these days.  It has been a term devalued, slapped on too many CD covers and kitchen appliances, erasing its formerly profound linguistic value.  Zaleski’s compilation of spiritual writings, however, restores “Best” to the exceptional place it belongs.  The book’s selections range from poetry and short fiction to memoir and essay, hailing from a variety of authorial and geographical sources.  Zaleski wisely recognizes, too, that spirituality can be defined almost infinitely, accepting a vast range of belief, and even non-belief.  Poems from The Atlantic or The New Yorker peek between longer treatises on “The God of the Gaps” and Buddhist enlightenment.  John Updike sits next to Orthodox Judaism while the Dalai Lama spends the night in suburban New York.  A Kazakhstani healer chats with Seamus Heaney and secularization theory listens in.  It is a curious party at first glance, but, listening to the cacophony gradually meld together, it coalesces into something bigger and abstract and elegant.  Something spiritual.  Something extraordinary.  “The Best.”     (Jan. 26)

{{I would read this over Mitch Albom any day.}}

There’s nothing funnier…

than BYU’s Police Beat and really, really horrendous student essays that I unfortunately can’t publish here because of FERPA…

…but oh man, Atticus and I almost peed the bed last night over those bits of elegant prose.

Does this make anyone else wig out?

The Pioneer Woman! She Publishes!

One of the most satisfying things in life…

…is ordering textbooks you chose yourself that other people will have to buy.

Something to consider:

fmhLisa’s: The Fourth Wave–Motherhood Feminism

When I spoke at the Counterpoint Conference (Artemis took notes and I hope she does an overview for us), it was the second time I have spoken briefly about my idea of motherhood feminism both times I have been eagerly approached and asked to expound on the subject.

It is an idea whose time has come.

Somewhat problematically however, I feel unprepared to expound on the subject in as through a manner as I think it needs. So here I will give you the gist, and then I am hoping that together, as a community, we can end this exercise with a fully formed forth-wave manifesto. Or something.

At the Conference, Margaret Toscano mentioned that in a class she wrote down “Mr. Mrs. Miss. and Ms.” and then asked her (young adult) students what “Ms.” meant. And not a single one of them knew. This blows my mind, but then another part of me kinda gets it. These young women have in most respects faced a world in which old gender restrictions (as symbolized in Mrs. and Miss) are a part of (ancient) history. They have experienced something all new to history, something almost pretty fairly close to equality (hard earned by the first three waves).

This equality falls utterly apart however, as soon as motherhood is factored in. Statistically speaking childless women have very nearly the same educational and job opportunities as men (regardless of their fatherhood status.) However, as soon as a woman become a mother, there is nothing even remotely resembling parity between the sexes. Motherhood is the number one risk factor for poverty in America.

This morning I saw…

…two children walking their mini-ponies down the city-center sidewalk.  Just going for a walk.  Downtown.

I live here.

Till it’s gone…

You never know how dependent you are on sugar until you spend a week house-sitting for a diabetic.

::Crazy Eyes::

Stape-rer wa doko desu ka?

This is pretty much the best thing that has happened to me so far this week:  “The Japanese Office”