“Why is a white woman like a tampon?
Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris, Act II climax. This is the best play I’ve seen in years.
Rio+20 has concluded without much fanfare or substantive progress, but maybe that’s not so surprising given that in the US, states like Alabama and North Carolina are passing laws banning precisely the kind of sustainable development that the UN conference was designed to promote. Why is sustainable development important? This UN graphic should help. Why is the US lagging in leadership on this critical issue? That’s a discussion for another time….
In case it needs to be said, this is not just some provocative fluff designed to get clicks, it’s really worth a read.
Sure, there are plenty of important criticisms to be made: Why are we even talking about “having it all”? Doesn’t this perpetuate the anti-feminist stereotype of “sad white babies with mean feminist mommies”? Are the hard choices described here really only women’s choices? Why should normal folk even care about how hard it is to be an ambitious woman of superprivilege? Not to mention my personal pet peeve: does AMS really think that electing a woman president would itself cause - or even reflect - a society that’s ready to reinvent itself in the ways she recommends?
But if you get through the whole piece, you’ll see that she addresses, or at least acknowledges, most of the above.
I am unbelievably lucky not only to have experienced a flexible/virtual/progressive workplace early in my career, but also to have a husband who I trust completely as a true partner in every aspect of our life - and yet these challenges still haunt/worry me.
Thank you, AMS & theatlantic, for igniting this dialogue.
Rebranding America’s Schools — One Tumblr Post at a Time
In the heart of East Los Angeles, in an office building turned magnet school, Jonathan Araiza speaks into a camera. “My dream is to get out of high school,” the former gang member says. “I will be the first one to graduate in my family.” The man behind the lens, Jason Pollock, would say that Araiza is “undroppable” — he has persevered, against trying circumstances, to graduate this year. For the past two months, Pollock has interviewed hundreds of students like him, in some of the poorest districts in the country, to find out what keeps them from dropping out. The result — a documentary film project and vast social media campaign that launches today on Tumblr — is called Undroppable.
A hugely ambitious project to document the challenges facing our education system launched today on Tumblr - read the #Storyboard piece, follow the #Undroppable blog, and stay tuned as the story unfolds…
Today, while members of Congress speak at a full grade level lower than they did 7 years ago, for the first time in history the majority of unemployed folks aged 25+ have attended at least some college. Oy.
Color-mapping the outcome of every American presidential election ever. Also see 88 years of red-blue divide animated in one minute.
Well if you put it that way…. wow.
Political art from the new Walmart-family-funded Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR. (It’s worth a trip!)
Apparently the 1840 Presidential campaign was the first to create a mass market for political souvenirs like these brass campaign buttons. Opportunistic businessmen were quick to cash in on the campaign’s popularity - especially among women, for whom the pink Harrison teapot was made, even though they could not cast a vote.
And art inspired by the 1896 Presidential campaign reminds us that much of our political debate is nothing new: candidate William Jennings Bryan stated his opposition to Republican William McKinley’s support of the gold standard in religious terms, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
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