Generation Gap

Back in late June, I was talking to my friend Adam, who was going to see his nieces, ages 11 & 13.  They were passing through NYC on their way to summer camp, and Adam wanted some gift ideas.  Now, my memory of summer camp is that the best thing one could possibly receive was a food package, particularly if that package contained ramen noodles, Easy Cheese, and candy.  But that concept was rejected out of hand, so we moved on to books.  Adam went through a list of books he still had from back in the day, and I yay’d and nay’d and pondered age-appropriateness (which has never been my forte).  Paula Danziger? Totally.  Bridge to Terabithia? Probably read it in school.  Lord of the Rings?  Oh right, the movies.  Sylvia Plath?  Mmm, maybe wait a few years for the teen angst to bloom more fully.  Anyway, I was having fun, but Adam eventually decided to bring several options and let them each pick one out.

The report the next day? The 13-year-old heartily recommended that her younger sister take The Giver.  To which the younger sister replied, “yeah, well – I have a kindle.”

And then I felt old and out of touch.  Because that had not even for a second crossed my mind.

For that special someone…

A special valentine.

I am a terrible, terrible blogger.

But while I’m castigating myself, here’s one thing I did write recently: a letter (stemming from a loooong debate about animal rights) about the disability rights movement in the U.S. This history is awesome, yo.

Why yes, I am just posting thirty amazing animal photographs. Why do you ask?

I’d love to credit the photographers, but I only got these in an email forward from Michael Schwartz, abusing his own excellent Iraq analysis listserv.

Click for full sizes.

Strangest thing I’ve seen on Halloween (so far…)

A man wearing what were, from the front, normal tan pants, approximately the color of his skin… and from the back were painted to look like he was wearing a thong. By which I mean, only a thong.

“What are you going to be for Halloween?”
“Naked from the back.”

Huh???

“Well, I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm, EWF.”

That’s what my step instructor said in class. It’s not what you most want to hear your step instructor say.

What I yelled and how I (battle)-cried: Chants from the National Equality March

I forgot to type the Wednesday Words I’d picked, or bring the book to school with me today, so Thursday is the new Wednesday. In the meantime, here’s…

Chants from the National Equality March

• Harvey Milk was right!
  Show your pride and fight! [or: Come out proud and fight!]
• Heeeeey, Obama!
  Let Mama marry Mama!
• Hey Congress, we won’t wait!
  Equal rights for gay and straight!
• We’re proud, you know it
  We’re here to show it!
  What you see is what you get —
  And you ain’t seen nothing yet!
• L! G! B! T!
  We demand equality!
• Tell me what you want, what you really want
  JUSTICE!
  Tell me what you need, what you really need
  JUSTICE!
• Barney Frank is wrong!
  We’ve been waiting FAR too long!*
• Back of the bus — hell, no!
  Barney Frank — fuck you!*
• We’re not waiting any more!
  Civil rights or civil war!
• Gay, straight, black, white!
  Marriage is a civil right!
• Gay, straight, black, white!
  One struggle, one fight!
• Get up, get down!
  There’s a civil rights movement in this town!
• We are here and we will fight
  ‘Til you give us civil rights
• We’re out! We’re proud!
  We’re here to fight, we won’t back down!
• Money for health care, not for war —
  Money for AIDS, we need a cure!
• Bigots say Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
  We tell them to go to hell
• They say: Prop 8
  We say: Stop hate!
• Hey Obama, take a stand
  Equality’s what we demand!
• Down with 8
  No more hate
  Se – pa – rate the church and state
• Hey Obama, get to work
  Won’t settle for crumbs, won’t settle for dirt
• Black — Latino — Arab, Asian and White
  Our community is proud, you see
  Give us equal rights!
• Si se puede! Yes we can!
  Equal rights across the land!
• No discrimination!
  We want liberation!
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
  TEAR IT DOWN!
  DOMA
  TEAR IT DOWN!
  Bigotry
  TEAR IT DOWN!
  The whole damn system
  TEAR IT DOWN!

Chant fragments I wish I could remember the rest of:

• Justice delayed is justice denied!

Anyone else there hear other good ones?

* The Barney Frank chants are because he basically denounced the march, saying “the only thing they’ll be putting pressure on is the grass.” Yeah, people were pissed.

Strangest thing I heard on the way to the National Equality March

… and considering that was 18 hours (each way!) of bus ride full of giddy college students, there was a lot of competition in this category.

This is from one of the regularly occurring automated announcements in one of the rest stops:

At the end of the night, you might not be able to perform brain surgery. But you will be able to say you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express!

Um, right. In other news… 200,000 beautiful people, y’all.

Marrakech!

Hello,

Just a quick note to let everyone know I am writing this from the lovely Riad dar Maia, AKA my hotel in Marrakech, Morocco, where I have just landed for a combination of academic conference + really freakin’ needed vacation. (What proportion those two things are occurring in is something best left undiscussed on this quasi-public forum… but who knew there were such perks to being a demographer? The International Population Conference is high in my esteem already, and it doesn’t even start until Sunday!)

The only YA/kidlit I brought were Jennifer Donnelly’s THE TEA ROSE and Phillip Pullman’s THE SUBTLE KNIFE — I still haven’t read past THE GOLDEN COMPASS! — but, in a break from form, I brought tons of adult fiction. Almost finished THE CITY & THE CITY on the plane — now I can do it in a cafe in Morocco’s city square!

I probably won’t be posting much, in other words, although you never know. Frankly I haven’t been posting much anyway of late, and it’s possible this can I stress again how MUCH-NEEDED this is vacation will be just the thing to get me back into book chatting…

The travails of the curly-tressed continue.

Y’all, I’m sorry to compound my extended absence from blogging (while I was preparing for, and then attending, this conference) by having my first return post be about not children’s books, but that other topic of much interest here, straight-haired people’s misapprehensions about curly hair. But I just got a haircut, and it kind of sucks.

It’s just… overly fluffy. And, like, why?

My theory is that straight-haired people who love curly hair do so for entirely wrong reasons, from a curly perspective. They envy us our volume, whereas every curly-haired woman I know has spent her life trying to make her hair less voluminous. This leads to incompatible desires between our straight-haired ‘dressers and we with the curls.

Or, as my friend Anna said more simply (if plaintively) upon seeing me yesterday, “Why do they always do that to us?”