Kenyon Anti-Outsourcing ProgressCampus Worker Justice Tour Kicks Off At Kenyon College -- Have I mentioned recently how proud I am of our community and our students?
Kenyon Community Alliance on Facebook -- if you're not FB-afflicted, and would like to be kept up to date on their work, send me a message and I'll get it to Melanie; I've already asked her about a mailing list for non-FB alums to maintain contact.
Photo Album: Informational Picket 9-19-12Heather Ault/4000 Years for ChoiceHeaded out early today to catch Heather Ault's discussion of contraception, art, and activism at the Dittrick Medical History Center. Good stuff; lots of chewy thought-provoking ideas about activism and messaging. Heather particularly specializes in positive and affirming framing; talking about our values, about what we're FOR, not just what we're AGAINST. Great ideas for future protest signs; anyone got some posterboard?
Also, I'm totally a Heather Ault fangirl, and have been for several years, so it made me quite happy to get to hear her in person.
4000 Years for ChoiceMore about events in Cleveland this weekend around Heather's visitOh, and she's on Facebook tooI'm not 100% sure, but I think these are the two prints I have at home from the My Abortion My Life event last year (they're in the attic with all my other decorations at the moment):
TREASURE THE MENSTRUAL EXTRACTORCOOPERATE JANE COLLECTIVEMine are "framed" much like these:
I love the simple yet evocative coat hanger, clips, and plexi approachOn FB and her site, Heather's also now working on pieces drawn from women's personal statements about their abortions and also statements from providers' experiences. This is one of many that I absolutely love:
"We need to support all women’s ability to decide to terminate a pregnancy and not demand that they tell us a story of victimhood in order to gain access to abortions." - Tracy WeitzYes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
RandomThe other fun thing about the Heather Ault talk today was that it was held at
Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum. It's not a huge place, but it's fascinating, and their History of Contraception exhibit is among the best in the country, if not THE best -- Heather spoke there because she came out to Cleveland from CA just to see it when she was doing her project research. Last time I saw it was back in 2009 when it opened; I'm happy to report it's just gotten bigger and better. More on that exhibit here:
This unique collection includes a wide range of contraception items, prototypes, and manufacturing devices. The Dittrick Medical History Center learned in August of 2004 that it would receive the Percy Skuy Collection on the History of Contraception. Mr. Skuy, past President of Ortho Pharmaceutical (Canada), assembled the world's most comprehensive collection of historical contraceptive devices, numbering over 650 artifacts. Since its arrival the collection has grown through donations and museum purchases to approximately 1100 artifacts. The Dittrick also maintains a collection of literature on the topic, including primary source material as well as historical writings.
The exhibit depicts the social and cultural climate that influenced birth control decisions in this country, says James Edmonson, chief curator at the Dittrick. The Dittrick staff with guest curator Jimmy Wilkinson Meyer from The College of Wooster designed the exhibit.Broke Clevelanders, this is a FREE Museum!Wake The Fuck Up (Obama ad with Samuel L. Jackson; I love it!)
Also, for those who have not yet experienced it,
Jackson reading "Go the Fuck to Sleep" is magnificentBooks!I've finished two via Audible recently:
House of Many Ways by
Diana Wynne Jones, one of the greats of YA Fantasy (also, I highly recommend that site, FantasticFiction.Co.UK, if you're ever struggling to sort out series and their sequence). This is related to
Howl's Moving Castle and
Castle in the Air, although I wouldn't call it a direct sequel. Howl and Sophie are moderately important secondary characters, though.
Incidentally,
Studio Ghibli, my favorite animation studio, has done a lovely version of
Howl's Moving Castle that is, while different from the books, quite excellent.
Ummm... Getting back to the book I just finished, now that I'm done with the more general fangirling:
House of Many Ways was wonderful; gentle and funny with marvelously imperfect characters. Highly recommended! The Audible version had a wonderfully British reader, as appropriate, and I haven't a lick of complaint about its translation to audiobook.
Animals Make Us Human by
Temple Grandin. I was already well familiar with her work and deeply impressed by it, but this is the first of her books that I've read. Read it. Read it, read it, read it. If you ever interact with or eat animals, if you ever go to a zoo, if you ever interact with other humans, even, read it. I love animals, I almost went into an animal-centric career, I've lived with multiple critters my entire life and read a good bit about behavior, and I still gained a whole new framework from this. Hugely valuable. Although her old-school pronoun use throughout the book drives me a bit up the wall, and there are moment of gender essentialism as well, these are minor detractions (along with what I hope was an editing error that replaced "mammal" with "animal" in the chapter I link below -- I totally headdesked at her, of all people, making that error) from a thoroughly amazing book.
The excellent first chapter, free on her website The section on "Blue Ribbon Emotions" (Seeking, Rage, Fear, and Panic are the life-long ones, and Lust, Care, and Play are the more intermittent) is well-worth reading even if you aren't interested enough to read the entire book. It's really at the heart of what she's teaching, and I found it incredibly helpful not just for better contextualizing animal behavior and reactions, but for doing the same with human behavior and reactions. Although she never explicitly makes the latter connection in the book, I couldn't help seeing it jump out at me over and over again, and I found it quite valuable (especially the writings about the relationship between frustration and rage).
The chapters on animal husbandry (Cows, Pigs, Chickens) can be rough, and may be too rough for some folks (because some really fucking horrific shit happens to animals in the bad side of the meat industry), but I find reading her writing about them somewhat reassuring, so I'd encourage getting through them. Because Temple is so involved in livestock work, and revolutionizing livestock care approaches, I found the horror of hearing more details about some of what I already knew was happening to be counterbalanced by hearing compassionate and ethical approaches to correcting these problems, and specifically in hearing it from someone who's actively working in the system to create that change, and has already accomplished it to a greater extent than just about any other modern human (when fucking PETA, of all groups, gives someone in the Livestock Industry a "Visionary" award ya gotta be impressed --
not because PETA doesn't suck monkey balls, but because it's so damned amazing for them to take positive notice of anyone doing animal rights work that isn't extremist). If you can do it, read those chapters. If you can't, the book will read just fine even if you skip those three.
Something I noticed on Audible while looking those up:
WhisperSync -- Hmmm. Fascinating. I've lamented frequently that I couldn't do this, so it's definitely a step in the right direction. Really not loving having to buy a book twice just to be able to do it, though. Boo.
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