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About kb

free spirit, lover of red wine, bacon, sushi, the ocean, and adventure. I work in the legal field, do freelance writing, and take care of children.

On Romance Novels

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I swear I’ll get back to work after this….but….
I love historical romance novels. 
When I write one, Evan Stone (below) shall grace the cover. I’m sure he’ll say yes when I ask him….

Romance Novels, Hairless Chests, And 


by 

(published 10/3/2011 on NPR)
Sarah Wendell undoubtedly knows exactly what you’re thinking when you hear the title of her new book,Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels.
She’s been working at the web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for years now, and she’s heard everything you care to say about what kind of a woman would actually learn everything she knows about love from romance novels. You’re thinking: This is how people develop unrealistic expectations and cannot form healthy relationships, and what’s the deal with the bosoms and bodices and pecs and roses and OH RIGHT, LADY, I GUESS EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE FABIO.
(It’s always Fabio in comments of this kind. Fabio is to romance novels as eating bugs is to reality shows.)
She knows. She’s over it. I’ve been reading Sarah for a long time — and, in the interests of full disclosure, we chatter back and forth on Twitter now and then about Downton Abbey and what books I should read next — and I can tell you, you have nothing snide to say that she hasn’t already been told. Probably many times. But she remains, as I said she was back in late 2009, one of the best explorers I know of the interesting aspects of things typically deemed lowbrow and unimportant, and this book is a great example.

 

Collecting comments from her readers and from authors, as well as drawing on her own experience as a reader and a blogger, she sets out to explore the relationship between what romance readers get from novels and what they experience in their own lives. She talks about the kinds of men you meet on the page, the kinds of conflicts that arise between couples, and the qualities that separate healthy relationships from unhealthy ones.
What Sarah ultimately identifies is not a one-way transfer in which books teach women (because it is mostly women) about romance. It’s more of a feedback loop. That’s the trick to the book’s title. If it were entirely, totally accurate, it would beEverything I Know About What I Already Think About Love, I Learned From Romance Novels. While her thesis is not that a romance novel indoctrinates readers into believing in certain kinds of relationships — that would be creepy — there’s a strong argument here that the genre helps readers identify and articulate needs and feelings they already have, as they notice what kinds of books and heroes they gravitate toward.
This is one of the interesting points about genre entertainment in general: when there are elements of formula, identifying which versions of that formula appeal to you is surprisingly enlightening. Which iteration of a hero, for instance, do you choose, and what does it mean when you do? Everything from personality to chest hair tends to be specified in great detail; you can pretty much take your pick.
I’ll give you an example. (You knew I would.) I’m a romance reader myself, but I almost never read historical romances, which are probably more numerous than any other kind. I don’t read the ones with the voluminous skirts and Lord Whomever and Lady Anne Blah Blah Blah whose father is the Duke or whatever happens in those books. (I don’t know. I think they mostly drink sherry?)
Instead, I am almost entirely devoted to contemporaries, which are books set in the approximate here and now, in approximately the culture and world I live in. I had never given a whole lot of thought to why that is, until I read this book and realized that for me, freestyle back-and-forth banter is so fundamental to any remotely affecting flirtation that the courtly love stuff — people who cannot speak of their feelings because IT IS TABOO — is too restricting. I am what I am, and nothing charms me like a good zinger. I don’t like status and manners interfering with everybody yammering a mile a minute. (See above: I am what I am.)
Other people are the opposite: they’re charmed by the restriction, and they find the unspoken things to be the most romantic. Corsets, in that way of seeing the world, are sexy precisely because they’re an obstacle. I prefer for the obstacle to be stubbornness and never shutting up. Potato, po-tah-to. But the fact that I feel this way is something I arguably learned and noticed from reading and then reflecting on these books. (None of which contain Fabio, I’ll just have you know.)
There are plenty of variations on the theme. Some people find possessive, aggressive partners (within reason) to be alluring, and some find them terrifying. Some people like a lot of overt reassurances that they’re loved, and other people like things to go unspoken. When you really, really love a book that does, in fact, have a lot in common with other books like it, it’s a kind of spelunking into your own tastes, not only in reading, but in reality. Not because you actually expect anything to go as it does in a book, but because individual elements jump out and make one book up your alley while another isn’t. Why … well, why does your brain see the book and say, “This one”? It’s not necessarily the book you learn from as much as it is the fact that you picked it.
The sex chapter, incidentally, works basically the same way. It’s less about “I read this in a book, so this is how you do this particular thing,” and it’s more about … well, let’s make it about handholding, just to keep things on the up and up. The analogy would be that the book would allow readers an insight like, “When I read about having my right hand held, that’s not sexy, but when I read about having my left hand held, that’s very sexy, so maybe I’ll ask the next guy to hold my left hand instead of my right hand.” There you go; you’ve learned something. Not about handholding, but about you.
Lest you conclude the book is entirely analytical, I will assure you that it contains Sarah’s trademark snappy, funny writing, as well as her tireless defense of the readers she’s met. One example:
Ironically, many people who disdain the romance genre and look down on the women who read it presume that reading about courtship, emotional fulfillment, and rather fantastic orgasms leads to an unrealistic expectation of real life. If we romance readers are filling our own heads with romantic fantasies, real men and real life won’t and cannot possibly measure up to our fairy-tale expectations, right? Wrong. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong. That accusation implies that we don’t know the difference between fantasy and real life, and frankly, it’s sexist as well. You don’t see adult gamers being accused of an inability to discern when one is a human driving a real car and when one is a yellow dinosaur driving a Mario Kart, but romance readers hear about their unrealistic expectations of men almost constantly.
It’s always refreshing when anybody cares about anything enough to put a title on a book that is guaranteed to draw the same angry snorts she’s been hearing for the last … oh, five or ten years. I am inspired to write a book called I Am Made Of Television, Slapstick And Jackie Collins Books. I owe no less.

On Collecting Thoughts

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…this is a post full of random thoughts. Nothing cohesive and certainly no structure. non-apologies, in advance.

Driving home last night, I saw the leaves strewn about on the road and I realized that it’s really fall. Apparently, the massive amounts of pumpkin spice lattes I’ve been consuming have done nothing to drive that home.

That said, I have no idea what I’m going to be for Halloween and I’m started to stress about it. I was Snow White for three of the past four years, which worked out really well. I missed last year, which was a relief creatively and a major bummer in all other ways.

Any thoughts?

It’s like that scene from the movie Mean Girls where she shows up at the party dressed in costume, and all the other girls are wearing lingerie and ears.

(linked here – not the best, but whatever. I’m at work, trying to shove ravioli down my throat and type at the same time.)

I want something with a lot of fake blood, or something funny, or something super clever. My friend E has some pants that are her “smarty-pants”…she painstakingly glued packages of Smarties candy all over them. That’s cute. I don’t want to do that, though.

I don’t want to be anything slutty…like a slutty cop. I’ve never understood that. Besides, furry handcuffs are lame. But then again, I could be Lieutenant Dangle from Reno! 911. That’s slutty and a cop. But not in the way you’d expect.

I was 0 for 2 at going out this weekend, so perhaps that’s why the party itch is so strong for a Monday. Friday and Saturday were both “let’s drunk dial Katie and tell her how much fun we’re having and invite her out at ridiculous hours” nights. Boo. Responsibility is so overrated.

Long bike ride with Mike on Friday evening. My Camelbak started leaking down my back nearly immediately after we left the house, and by 7th Avenue, it was dripping down my legs when I stood up. Thankfully, it was a warm night, but it made for a very uncomfortable ride. I hope the weather holds long enough that we’ll be able to do a few more of those before it gets too cold.

On the plus side, I did a ton of laundry and cleaning this weekend. My closet is actually being used as a closet. I just don’t get why people hang clothes up. But I’m doing it. We’ll see how long this lasts.

I was out having dinner on Broadway with R the other night, and he asked me if I’d ever gotten my second bookshelf put together (he built the first one for me back in February – I’d like to interject that I was in the middle of doing it myself, but he interrupted and finished it. I can dig that kind of masculine projection. It saves me some work). I looked back at him and smiled, “I’ve been meaning to call you about that.” He laughed at me. You’ll notice he didn’t build it for me, though. So that’s my goal  for tonight. Consider my handyman independence fostered.

Btw, 8tracks.com is my saving grace at work. And so is this mix: 

Love to all, and Happy Monday!

On Smoking Cessation

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I’m not proud of this, but I’m not embarrassed by it either. It is what it is. They’re my decisions and I own each and every one of them, for better or worse.
I was fifteen when I smoked my first cigarette. I was really bad at it. I used to snap them in half with my nervous, clenching fingers. 
I’ve been an on-again-off-again smoker for the past eight years. Sometimes I am a heavy smoker, sometimes I’m a non-smoker, sometimes I’m an ex smoker. But I’m still a smoker. 
Every time I put on perfume, I’m reminded of what K’s mom once said to us: “Perfume hides a multitude of sins.” I can’t smell the Cool Water perfume I loved so much without thinking of those days when we used to sneak around and try to pretend we weren’t smokers. 
This gas station used to sell me cigarettes. The lady at the counter would tell me I was beautiful and give me chocolates. I really enjoyed the slight ego boost. 
I met my roommate in college by asking her if I could smoke with them. I’m grateful for that. Without her, college wouldn’t have been the same at all. 
I quit during the cancer scare in college. I quit hard. I gave up a lot of things so it would go away, and cigarettes were of course the first. I stuck with it. I was doing really well, for many many months, until the night I came home to find my laptop missing. I went to 7-11 and smoked an entire pack of Marlboros while sitting in the kitchen in my apartment.
I always told myself I’d quit for real when I graduated from college. And I did. 
Then I went to South Africa. There’s no way to escape the cigarette smoke there. People smoke in their beds, in their living rooms, over tea, while dancing at the club. 
I’m not exactly a chimney, but I really enjoy them while I’m drinking. 
I’ve been really realizing that I need to stop sooner rather than later. I obviously don’t want to be a woman smoker (eek, this woman business is complicated). I don’t want to be a mom who sneaks cigs behind the garage when the kids are napping (I’m sure they exist?). 
I’m not dating/dating (whatever) a boy/man-thing [haha, I would seriously love to see his face if he knew I was referring to him as a boy/man-thing] who really hates smoking. He’s nice because he’s a good reason to really quit. Last night, he kissed me and then pulled away and said, “You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?”

Maybe. (I’d had one like four hours earlier because I thought I wasn’t going to see him and could get away with it.) I didn’t lie to him. 

And I know that you need to “quit for yourself” but at the same time, I usually need a good push. It’s not that I fiend, it’s just that they feel so nice. Having never smoked, you might not understand. But it’s the same feeling as sinking into a hot bath after a long day. It’s like coming home to fresh melted cookies. It’s like waking up in someone’s arms. Actually, all of those things are better than smoking. 
So I’m going to have to learn how to live without them. And I will. Not for him, but for me. 
Anyway, this article reminded me of it and made me want to blog about it.

From ThoughtCatalog.com:

When It’s Good To Give Up

SEP. 30, 2011

By STEPHANIE GEORGOPULOS

I started smoking when I was 14. I used to say things like, “I’ll quit when I’m pregnant,” as though that was an actual plan, as though I could count on my addiction floundering just because there happened to be two of me growing instead of one. I made similar excuses over the course of my ten-year love affair with nicotine, none of which made logical sense but all of which allowed me to poison myself on an hourly basis without remorse. I wanted to poison myself.

But then, much to the shock of just about everyone who knows me, I quit. I didn’t chew gum or feed nicotine through my pores, I just abandoned the one constant in my life, the one companion I’d had for the past decade. The one-year anniversary of my quit date was this week. I don’t think I’ll go back.

It’s true that nicotine is addictive, it affects your mood, it changes the way you make decisions. It’s easy to point out that cigarettes are ‘the bad guy,’ the way they empty your wallet and yellow your fingertips. This is a negative habit that most people will commend you for giving up.

But we could stand to give up more often. Maybe there are no instructional pamphlets or illustrative posters to point out each and every one of the things we need to rid ourselves of, but there they are – lurking in the shadows of our subconscious. They are the people who make us feel like our lungs are in a vice whenever we see them. The humanization of our bad habits, walking and breathing and telling bad jokes.

Some people just make you feel bad. The way you can wake up smelling like some half-rate casino and think to yourself I don’t want to do this anymore, you can feel that way about people, and the worst part is that you can’t extinguish them, you can’t smother their head into an ashtray or make them someone else’s problem.

It’s in our nature to not want to give up, especially not on people; fragile, harmless people – we all just mean well, don’t we? Don’t we all just want to be happy? Don’t the things we do to achieve that happiness, the things that tear us apart from one another – aren’t those the things that make us similar? Aren’t people inherently good? Maybe. But what does it matter if that goodness is not reserved for you? What if all you extract from a person is negativity? How do we justify allowing ourselves to feel badly because someone may or may not be redeemable?

We don’t always recognize when someone is bad for us, but sometimes we do. Sometimes we become all-consumed by the disgust that’s bred from this idea that we allow hate to affect us so deeply. People create art because of it. It can drive us; it can turn us into something we’re not. And even though it’s ugly, it’s addictive. We become addicted to toxicity.

And in that case, it’s good to give up. It’s good to fight against the cancer growing inside of us by neglecting to feed it. We have to starve it into submission, forgo the efforts that help it grow. The brooding and the anguish, bury it. Extinguish whatever it is that’s making us feel badly and worry about ourselves. We need to quit allowing something that’s decidedly negative to drive our actions, our moods. We need to quit poisoning ourselves with vitriol.

The thing is, there are people who don’t make us feel terrible. There are people who listen to us and care for us and make us smile. They loosen the vice around our lungs and help us breathe. They are the fresh air. They alight us in ways a carcinogenic never will. Whatever energy we devote to a toxic situation, we take away from the people who deserve it – the people whose goodness doesn’t have to be assumed; their goodness is just there, in plain sight. They are worth quitting for.

On #OccupyDenver, #OccupyWallSt

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It started here yesterday, a show of solidarity with those who have been gathered in New York for 12 days, protesting nearly everything, but agreeing on only one thing: We are the 99% vs the 1%. 


(Read this for more information: 

https://occupywallst.org/

and read this just because: 

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/  )


I love the idea of protests. I think that we haven’t done enough of them in last twenty years. I think that a lot of hope can be fostered, and a lot of information can be spread. 


That said, I agree that protesters are often ill-informed and easily distracted away from their original purpose. 

I haven’t decided where I stand on these protests – I’m not sure that they’re focused enough to actually be making specific demands, but it seems like they’ve gotten only more organized since they started. I like that they’ve got the resolve to stick it out, and I fully support a more vocal movement from the citizens of the US. So I guess I’m behind it.


If you’re on twitter, check out #occupydenver or #occupywallst for up to date information on what’s going on. 


And as always, if you’re protesting, write a lawyer’s number somewhere on your body, drink plenty of water, and do nothing to disrespect or disrupt the marches/protests. Be respectful, peaceful, and wise.  



Occupy Wall Street Protest: 12 Days and Little Sign of Slowing Down

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Topics: , , , , , ,

Michael Nagle / Getty Images

A protestor looks in his bag in Zuccotti Park, where demonstrators against the economic system have been gathering since September 17
Michael Nagle / Getty Images
Nearly two weeks ago, an estimated 3,000 people assembled at Battery Park with the intention of occupying Wall Street. They were an eclectic group, mostly young, some with beards and tattoos, other dressed in shorts and sneakers; a few even wore suits for the occasion. But nearly everyone was angry at what they saw as a culture of out-of-control greed. They didn’t succeed — at least not geographically, forgoing Wall Street for nearby Zuccotti Park, just around the corner from Ground Zero.
News outlets put the crowd there at several thousand, but that seemed to overestimate its true numbers. When I visited the park on Sept. 17, I counted backpacks and sleeping bags, trying to differentiate the tourists and casual marchers from those who were in it for the long haul. I came up with about 200 people.
Over the past 12 days, however, those numbers have grown. On a late-night visit to Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, the fecklessness and disorganization reported earlier in the New York Times seemed largely absent. A protest that began in utter dysfunction has given way to a fairly organized movement with a base camp for its most stalwart members, now numbering more than 300 people, who have slept in the park for 12 nights straight–and who say they intend to stay.
Perhaps no incident galvanized the protesters more than their march north to Union Square on Sept. 24. Police arrested nearly 80 people whom they say were blocking traffic, and video of a penned-in female protester being pepper sprayed by a police officer went viral on the web. The protesters have posted the video on their website and a picture of the woman adorns the board at the entrance to the park, at what’s now become the groups quasi-official information booth. At small table, posterboards lay out the schedule for the day, which includes marches down to Wall Street for the stock exchange’s opening and closing bells, each followed by a “General Assembly” where the various groups gather to discuss their goals, their current status and what might come next.
The park has become a semi-permanent home, complete with a medical station and a distribution point for food and water. The protesters have organized themselves into committees to remove the garbage, roam the camp to enforce a ban on open flames (an evictable offense in the eyes of the NYPD) and engage with the people in the area. A couple of pizza joints, a Burger King and a deli have let the protesters use their bathrooms; some have even donated food. In the middle of the park is a media center where protesters send out Twitter updates and live-stream the latest news on their website. At 1 am Wednesday, more than 3,000 people were sending in questions while a young woman in a yellow poncho answered them on a live feed.
But while “Occupy Wall Street” has become more organized, its demands haven’t coalesced into a coherent message. The only thing its various constituent groups appear to have in common is a deep-seated anger at inequality in this country. For them Wall Street symbolizes that unfairness, but the groups have other concerns as well. Many want to redistribute wealth; others want to enlarge government social programs. Some are protesting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Daniel Levine, a journalism student from upstate New York, said he was taking a stand against the controversial method of natural gas extraction known as hydrofracking in his hometown – but also noted that the practice can bring jobs to economically disadvantaged regions.
Just as it lacks a single message, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has been defined by the absence of a clear leader. Participants say that is by design, and point to the committees that have sprung up to tend to the daily needs of those camped in Zuccotti Park. It isn’t clear that they want a single leader, and many think the movement is better of without one. “It’s kind of cool how it’s growing organically,” one said. “People just need to give it time and it’ll come together.”
Assuming organizers can keep the protest on the good side of the law, all indications are that it will continue for a long time. A sign by the information booth held a wish list: hats, gloves, tarps, and warm clothing. On live streams on the website, organizers answered questions about what supporters could bring or send. If last weekend is any indication, the numbers could swell this Saturday as supporters come in from out of town. For those who eventually leave again, Levine hopes that they take the skills they’ve learned back to their communities to continue to protest for whatever cause they support. “Every person who’s been here more than three days can completely organize a protest in their hometowns,” Levine says. “This is the most productive homelessness I’ve ever seen.”

Read more:http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/29/occupy-wall-street-12-days-and-little-sign-of-slowing-down/#ixzz1ZNxdcB2p

Views On Parenthood (from 23)

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I’m wholeheartedly certain that when I’m 33 and I read this post, I’ll have a good laugh.

I think it might have something to do with being adopted, but I crave the opportunity to someday create new life. I want to feel it growing inside me, to see my facial expressions replicated in my offspring, to watch my features merge with someone else’s and become an entirely unique human being. I love the idea of nature vs. nurture. My mom used to say that when I was little, I’d say something and she’d turn around expecting my birth mom to be standing there, because I sounded so much like her.

However, as I get older, I’m less certain of this drive to procreate. Maybe it’s the fact that I might not have health insurance after I turn 26. Maybe it’s the fact that we might be living in the end times (I’m just being facetious, mostly). Maybe it’s because I’m totally afraid I’ll mess up my kids. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve realized that eventually they’re not babies anymore. And then they get emotionally complex and smelly. Ugh. Puberty. 
I once had a deal with an ex-boyfriend that I’d take them from birth to age 4. He’d take them from 5 to 18. I really like this plan. 
Regardless, I’m just not sure it’s worth it. Kids are expensive. They’re annoying. They’re ungrateful. But on the other hand, they’re so cute. They wear little shoes. (It’s the shoes that get me every time. Adorable.) The looks on their faces when they discover something new are precious. Their giggles are universally uplifting. 
However, I think that financial drain aside, it might be one of the most beautiful things I’ll ever do (if my eventual marriage can sustain the blow that is the stress of child-rearing). 
It really hit me when I went to the Barney! Live show with my favorite family (I realize this is on the internet, so it’s entirely public, but how embarrassing is it that I missed Slightly Stoopid and Shwayze to see Barney?). The girls were so happy, and somewhere inside my cold, dark, hardened heart, something cracked. I was filled with this strange sense of inner warmth. 
The mom told me that experiencing things with them for the first time is three times what it is to discover it yourself and that parenthood is all about gathering these little moments. 
I don’t disagree. 
Apparently the return on investment as far as emotions and experiences go is incredibly high. 
Mom always says that the steps to child-preparedness are thus:
1. Get a plant. 
2. If you don’t kill the plant, get an animal. 
3. If you don’t kill the animal, you can get a kid. 
I had a bamboo plant once, if that counts. 
And Carlos, despite probably having used up 8 of his lives, is a very happy cat. An expensive, spoiled, rude, but adorable cat. 
I’ve got years before I’ll have to worry about the proper techniques for parenting, but to be honest, I’m not that scared. 
Or maybe I am. 
The only thing I worry about is losing me. I don’t want to lose my life to babies. I want to be fun. I just want to dance. I don’t want to lose the things I’m passionate about. I don’t want to give up everything to raise children. Did you know that kids who are raised in houses with two working parents are more resourceful and resilient? So that’s reason to believe that it’ll all work out.

I taught one of the twins how to swing the other day. She knew the basic pumping motions, but I showed her how to lean back and lean in and pretty soon she was flying above my head. I was filled with anxiety (what if she falls? is she okay?) but this wonderful sense of accomplishment (look at how happy she looks! she’s really doing it!). If that’s what parenthood is all about, I’ll take it.

On Fertility Rates in the US…

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And yet they still want to stop providing family-planning services to our citizens? I vote free birth control for everyone! More sexual and health education! More paid paternity leave! 


At the very least, let’s educate our citizens about what having a child really means, not just from a “don’t-have-sex-because-Jesus-won’t-like-it” standpoint, but from a “kids-cost-way-more-money-than-you’d-think” standpoint. Let’s put the economics of it into focus and hope that maybe that will hit home with some of our impressionable young people. 

Also, we need to be more supportive of our working parents. We can’t all be the Cosbys and magically have great careers yet be home in time for dinner. Let’s realize that it’s a sacrifice and one that we should support – for the future of our country. Paid maternity leave. Better daycare options. Safe places to pump breast milk at work. 

As a society, we need to step it up. Granted, we don’t want everyone having kids just because they can, but we need to better educate prospective parents about their options. 

Knocked Up and Knocked Down

Why America’s widening fertility class divide is a problem.

By Sharon LernerPosted Monday, Sept. 26, 2011, at 4:14 PM ET

Pregnant woman holding crying girl while doing chores.Are we experiencing a national fertility crisis?Since the average American woman has 2.1 children, you might think we aren’t experiencing a national fertility crisis. Unlike some European countries whose futures are threatened by low birth rates, Americans, on average, produce just the right number of future workers, soldiers, and taxpayers to keep our society humming. Our families are also, on average, comfortably smaller than those in some developing countries, where high birthrates help keep women and children severely impoverished. But here’s the problem: Because the American fertility rate is an average, it obscures the fact that our country is actually more like two countries, which are now experiencing two different, serious crises.
You hear about the “haves” versus the “have-nots,” but not so much about the “have-one-or-nones” versus the “have-a-fews.” This, though, is how you might characterize the stark and growing fertility class divide in the United States. Two new studies bring the contrasting reproductive profiles of rich and poor women into sharp relief. One, from the Guttmacher Institute, shows that the rates of unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women now dwarf the fertility rates of wealthier women, and finds that the gap between the two groups has widened significantly over the past five years. The other, by the Center for Work-Life Policy, documents rates of childlessness among corporate professional women that are higher than the childlessness rates of some European countries experiencing fertility crises.
Childlessness has increased across most demographic groups but is still highest among professionals. Indeed, according to an analysis of census data conducted by the Pew Research Center, about one quarter of all women with bachelor’s degrees and higher in the United States wind up childless. (As Pew notes, for women with higher degrees, that number is actually slightly lower than it was in the early 1990s—but it is still very high.) By comparison, in England, which has one of the highest percentages of women without children in the world, 22 percent of all women are childless. According to the new Center for Work-Life Policy study, 43 percent of the women in their sample of corporate professionals between the ages of 33 and 46 were childless. The rate of childlessness among the Asian American professional women in the study was a staggering 53 percent.
At the same time, the numbers of both unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women have climbed steadily in recent years. About half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, with poor women now five times more likely than higher-income women to have an unplanned pregnancy, and six times more likely to have an unplanned birth, according to the Guttmacher Institute’s recent analysis of government data.

Across the reproductive divide, there are other serious problems. The declining fertility of professional women ought to be sounding an alarm, highlighting the extent to which our policies are deeply unfriendly to parents. Low birthrates in Europe have inspired a slew of policies designed to make it easier to simultaneously work and parent, yet here, because our overall birthrate is robust, we’ve had no such moment of reckoning. So while Germany recently responded to the fact that its birthrate had slipped below 1.4 children per woman by making its paid leave policy more generous, allowing mothers and fathers to split up to 18 months after the birth of a child, the United States still has no national paid leave law in place. And while Denmark, France, and Sweden provide good subsidized care to the vast majority of their populations, we still have no decent childcare system.

If our overall fertility rate is at replacement level—if we have enough young people in the pipeline to do all the jobs that will need doing going forward—does it really matter so much if some women are having more kids than they are ready for and some are having fewer? Unfortunately for women on both ends of the economic spectrum, it does. Poorer women suffer when they have unintended births—as do their children. Research shows that women with unplanned pregnancies are more likely to smoke, drink, and go without prenatal care. Their births are more likely to be premature. Their children are less likely to be breastfed, and more likely to be neglected and to have various physical and mental health effects. Then, reinforcing the cycle, the very fact of having a child increases a woman’s chances of being poor.

This lack of support makes for not a little unpleasantness in the lives of working parents. Consider the harried existence of professional parents, as described by the Center for Work-Life Policy report:

They are working longer and harder, shouldering new responsibilities for aging parents, and striving overtime to provide their children with all that they, in many cases, had lacked—a smooth path of success and both parents by their side. The costs are steep and include anxiety and exhaustion.
If this is the job description, it’s easy to see why women would skip the interview.
At the same time, there’s little question why poorer women are having more unintended pregnancies. Only about 40 percent of women who needed publicly funded family planning services between 2000 and 2008 got them, according to the Guttmacher Institute. During that same period, as employment levels and the number of employers offering health insurance went down, the number of women who needed these services increased by more than 1 million.
The fact that our extremes seem to almost magically balance each other out is only part of the reason we’ve failed to recognize these problems. The other part is that we’ve applied a distorted notion of choice to both trends. Certainly many professional women opt out of motherhood because they want to—and because that choice is now less stigmatized than it once was. And many women in all income brackets come to embrace an unexpected pregnancy as a happy accident.
But as much as we’d like to see our decisions about pregnancy and childbirth as straightforward exercises of individual will, or choice, there are clearly larger forces at work here, too. “Whether it’s the lack of services and education you experience because you’re poor or the corporate pressure because you’re successful, the broader society’s organization of work and support completely affects something as personal and intimate as whether you have children,” says Wendy Chavkin, professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia. “These latest numbers show how the macroeconomic trends are lived out in people’s personal lives.”

With growing poverty rates and political attacks on already inadequate family-planning funding threatening to drive the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women even higher, and little effort being made to address the pressures driving other women away from having kids, it’s easy to imagine how these forces could push professionals and poor women further apart. Still, in their own ways, both are struggling with the same problem: an untenable “choice” between children and financial solvency. At this point, it may be the only thing they have in common.

On Moving Very Slowly

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The American Dream is a bunch of bullshit.

We all know that, but do we really know it?

No, of course not. The idea that upward mobility exists and that some day I too can own a house that has a four-car garage if only I work hard enough is cemented in my mind.

Blame the media, blame optimism, blame whatever.

We watched as tiny little bungalows morphed into giant, sprawling houses with three-car garages. Those giant homes became the norm. Suburban settlement at its finest. You’ve made it.

For the record, I dream of owning a tired, old house and turning it into something magical. I love old wooden floors that creak and leaky faucets and the idea that so many people have lived there before you. I love the cramped rooms, the feel of warm rugs on worn floors. I want that. My only requirement is a sweet bathtub.

But at the same time, I’m threatened by the idea of never having enough.

What is enough?

To live, to love (and to be loved), and to breathe in every beautiful moment that I can find.  But also to someday have a garage (not four!).

For the next month, I’m going to try to implement small changes that will hopefully make me a bit more optimistic about my current situation. Lately, I’ve been wallowing in the pit of despair that is these months and I feel as though my wallowing is only making it worse.

I’m determined to be a little bit more hopeful, rather than so exhausted. So we’ll see. (Start taking bets now about when I’ll have my next “oh my g-d, what am I doing with my life” miniature meltdown)

Also, for the record, I am super awesome and got a raise at work! Friday was yearly reviews. I was terrified. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I was a really well-behaved child or the fact that my generation was super coddled, but either way, I don’t take criticism well.  (My wonderful lady-boss popped into my office on Friday morning and told me not to worry, and after that, I didn’t. She really made my day with that.)

My boss offered me a 5% raise. I requested more. He came back with an offer of 12.5%. Of course I took it.  I was so proud of myself for being super calm and absolutely realistic and logical about the whole thing.

Baby steps, dear world. I am taking baby steps. But at least I’m moving.

On the Death Penalty

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I am against the death penalty. I don’t think that anyone should be killed for their crimes, no matter how heinous. I believe that the presence of doubt, the potential for human error, and the predilections toward bias affect the outcome of every single thing people do. Therefore, there is no impartial jury, no impartial judge, no impartial anything. 
To live with the guilt I’d feel of sentencing someone to death would be to live a smothered life. 

I understand the innate desire for revenge, the “eye for an eye” mentality, the satisfaction of schadenfreude. But to kill another human being? You play g-d. You take on a responsibility that is not yours. If your g-d will judge the guilty, why should you? Punish them, lock them away, but do not take their lives. 


Some good news before the bad news:


Death penalty

Capital account

Sep 22nd 2011, 16:58 by The Economist online
Both executions and death sentences have fallen sharply in recent years in America
DURING the night of September 21st two prisoners were executed in America. Lawrence Brewer, a member of a white-supremacist gang convicted of dragging a black man to death behind a pick-up truck in 1998, died in Texas. Troy Davis, a black man convicted of killing an off-duty white policeman in 1989, was put to death in Georgia after international protest over the quality of the evidence against him proved fruitless. Their deaths brought the number of executions in America so far this year to 35. The charts below show two interesting trends. The first is the sharp fall in both executions and death sentences in recent years in America. The second is the increasing lag between sentencing and execution. And killing a white person seems disproportionately likely to secure a death sentence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s latest figures, for 2009, show virtually identical numbers of black and white victims of homicide, yet on NAACP figures capital crimes against whites lead to three-quarters of all death sentences.
Read also: “A death in Georgia“
(above from the Economist, below from CBS)






Troy Davis executed, supporters cry injustice


(CBS/AP)  

JACKSON, Ga. – Strapped to a gurney in Georgia’s death chamber, Troy Davis lifted his head and declared one last time that he did not kill police officer Mark MacPhail. Just a few feet away behind a glass window, MacPhail’s son and brother watched in silence.
Outside the prison, a crowd of more than 500 demonstrators cried, hugged, prayed and held candles. They represented hundreds of thousands of supporters worldwide who took up the anti-death penalty cause as Davis’ final days ticked away.
“I am innocent,” Davis said moments before he was executed Wednesday night. “All I can ask … is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight.”
Prosecutors and MacPhail’s family said justice had finally been served.
“I’m kind of numb. I can’t believe that it’s really happened,” MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said in a telephone interview from her home in Columbus, Ga. “All the feelings of relief and peace I’ve been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace.”
She dismissed Davis’ claims of innocence.
“He’s been telling himself that for 22 years. You know how it is, he can talk himself into anything.”
Davis was scheduled to die at 7 p.m., but the hour came and went as the U.S. Supreme Court apparently weighed the case. More than three hours later, the high court said it wouldn’t intervene. The justices did not comment on their order rejecting Davis’ request for a stay.
CBS News justice correspondent Jan Crawford reports that even the four liberal justices on the nation’s highest court agreed – Davis had multiple chances to prove his innocence, and each time he failed.
Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions on Davis’ behalf and he had prominent supporters. His attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, but state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against him — three times on Wednesday alone.
Officer MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, said it was “a time for healing for all families.”
“I will grieve for the Davis family because now they’re going to understand our pain and our hurt,” she said in a telephone interview from Jackson. “My prayers go out to them. I have been praying for them all these years. And I pray there will be some peace along the way for them.”
Davis’ supporters staged vigils in the U.S. and Europe, declaring “I am Troy Davis” on signs, T-shirts and the Internet. Some tried increasingly frenzied measures, urging prison workers to stay home and even posting a judge’s phone number online, hoping people would press him to put a stop to the lethal injection. President Barack Obama deflected calls for him to get involved.
“They say death row; we say hell no!” protesters shouted outside the Jackson prison before Davis was executed. In Washington, a crowd outside the Supreme Court yelled the same chant.
As many as 700 demonstrators gathered outside the prison as a few dozen riot police stood watch, but the crowd thinned as the night wore on and the outcome became clear.
Supporters lament Supreme Court's refusal to intervene in Troy Davis execution

Minister Lynn Hopkins, left, comforts her partner Carolyn Bond after hearing that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last minute plea of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis In Jackson, Ga., Sept. 21, 2011.

 (Credit: AP)

Davis’ execution had been halted three times since 2007. The U.S. Supreme Court even gave Davis an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence in a lower court last year. While the nation’s top court didn’t hear the case, they did set a tough standard for Davis to exonerate himself, ruling that his attorneys must “clearly establish” Davis’ innocence — a higher bar to meet than prosecutors having to prove guilt. After the hearing, a lower court judge ruled in prosecutors’ favor, and the justices didn’t take up the case.
His attorney Stephen Marsh said Davis would have spent part of Wednesday taking a polygraph test if pardons officials had taken his offer seriously. But they, too, said they wouldn’t reconsider their decision. Georgia’s governor does not have the power to grant condemned inmates clemency.
As his last hours ticked away, an upbeat and prayerful Davis turned down an offer for a special last meal as he met with friends, family and supporters.
“Troy Davis has impacted the world,” his sister Martina Correia said before the execution. “They say, `I am Troy Davis,’ in languages he can’t speak.”

Members of Davis’ family who witnessed the execution left without talking to reporters.

Davis’ supporters included former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, a former FBI director, the NAACP, several conservative figures and many celebrities, including hip-hop star Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.
“I’m trying to bring the word to the young people: There is too much doubt,” rapper Big Boi, of the Atlanta-based group Outkast, said at a church near the prison.
At a Paris rally, many of the roughly 150 demonstrators carried signs emblazoned with Davis’ face. “Everyone who looks a little bit at the case knows that there is too much doubt to execute him,” Nicolas Krameyer of Amnesty International said at the protest.
Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing MacPhail, who was working as a security guard at the time. MacPhail rushed to the aid of a homeless man who prosecutors said Davis was bashing with a handgun after asking him for a beer. Prosecutors said Davis had a smirk on his face as he shot the officer to death in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah.
No gun was ever found, but prosecutors say shell casings were linked to an earlier shooting for which Davis was convicted.
Witnesses placed Davis at the crime scene and identified him as the shooter, but several of them have recanted their accounts and some jurors have said they’ve changed their minds about his guilt. Others have claimed a man who was with Davis that night has told people he actually shot the officer.
“Such incredibly flawed eyewitness testimony should never be the basis for an execution,” Marsh said. “To execute someone under these circumstances would be unconscionable.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which helped lead the charge to stop the execution, said it considered asking Obama to intervene, even though he cannot grant Davis clemency for a state conviction.
Press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement saying that although Obama “has worked to ensure accuracy and fairness in the criminal justice system,” it was not appropriate for him “to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.”
Dozens of protesters outside the White House called on the president to step in, and about 12 were arrested for disobeying police orders.
Davis was not the only U.S. inmate put to death Wednesday evening. In Texas, white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death for the 1998 dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr., one of the most notorious hate crime murders in recent U.S. history.
On Thursday, Alabama is scheduled to execute Derrick Mason, who was convicted in the 1994 shooting death of convenience store clerk Angela Cagle.


On Singledom, from the NYT (9/19/11)

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September 19, 2011, 5:10 PM

In a Married World, Singles Struggle for Attention

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Stuart Bradford
Here’s a September celebration you probably didn’t know about: It’s National Single and Unmarried Americans Week.
But maybe celebration isn’t the right word. Social scientists and researchers say the plight of the American single person is cause for growing concern.
About 100 million Americans, nearly half of all adults, are unmarried, according to the Census Bureau — yet they tend to be overlooked by policies that favor married couples, from family-leave laws to lower insurance rates.
That national bias is one reason gay people fight for the right to marry, but now some researchers are concerned that the marriage equality movement is leaving single people behind.
“There is this push for marriage in the straight community and in the gay community, essentially assuming that if you don’t get married there is something wrong with you,” says Naomi Gerstel, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who has published a number of papers comparing the married and unmarried.
“But a huge proportion of the population is unmarried, and the single population is only going to grow. At the same time, all the movement nationally is to offer benefits to those who are married, and that leaves single people dry.”
Yet as she and other experts note, single people often contribute more to the community — because once people marry, they tend to put their energy and focus into their partners and their own families at the expense of friendships, community ties and extended families.
In a report released this week by the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr. Gerstel notes that while 68 percent of married women offer practical or routine help to their parents, 84 percent of the never-married do. Just 38 percent of married men help their parents, compared with 67 percent of never-married men. Even singles who have children are more likely than married people to contribute outside their immediate family.
“It’s the unmarried, with or without kids, who are more likely to take care of other people,” Dr. Gerstel said. “It’s not having children that isolates people. It’s marriage.”
The unmarried also tend to be more connected with siblings, nieces and nephews. And while married people have high rates of volunteerism when it comes to taking part in their children’s activities, unmarried people often are more connected to the community as a whole. About 1 in 5 unmarried people take part in volunteer work like teaching, coaching other people’s children, raising money for charities and distributing or serving food.
Unmarried people are more likely to visit with neighbors. And never-married women are more likely than married women to sign petitions and go to political gatherings, according to Dr. Gerstel.
The demographics of unmarried people are constantly changing, and more Americans are spending a greater percentage of their lives unmarried than married. While some people never marry, other adults now counted as single are simply delaying marriage longer than people of their parents’ generation did. And many people are single because of divorce or the death of a spouse. About one-sixth of all unmarried adults are 65 and older; nearly one-eighth of unmarried people are parents.
The pressure to marry is particularly strong for women. A 2009 study by researchers at the University of Missouri and Texas Tech University carried the title “I’m a Loser, I’m Not Married, Let’s Just All Look at Me.” The researchers conducted 32 interviews with middle-class women in their 30s who felt stigmatized by the fact that they had never married.
“These were very successful women in their careers and their lives, yet almost all of them felt bad about not being married, like they were letting someone down,” said Lawrence Ganong, a chairman of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri.
“If a person is happy being single,” he said, “then we should support that as well.”
Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has a term for discrimination against single people, which she calls one of the last accepted prejudices. It is the title of her new book, “Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It.”
As an example, Dr. DePaulo cites the Family and Medical Leave Act. Because she is single and has no children, nobody in her life can take time off under the law to care for her if she becomes ill. Nor does it require that she be given time off to care for a sibling, nephew or close friend.
Stephanie Coontz, director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families, says policy makers often neglect the needs of single people because their view is outdated — based on the way they themselves grew up.
In researching her latest book, “A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique in American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s,” Ms. Coontz found that in the past single people were often called “deviant,” “neurotic” and “selfish.”
“We do have the tendency to think that there is something special about married people, and that they are the ones who keep community and family going,” she said. “I thought it was important to point out that single people keep our community going, too.”