Ah Spring, buds on trees and feminists getting hitched

A lot of kids here at Fringe are doing the nupital dance this season, and I thought of them when I read this wonderful article by Christie Church (it's been making the rounds: originally at girlistic magazine, here on alternet, but I first saw it on my truthout feed).

How familiar a script, and how refreshing a story! (but when they visit the jeweler, ooh: I read that, became physically angry, and spent a pent-up commute really, really hoping they took their business elsewhere).

So friends, headed to the altar in church or backyard or city hall, do it your own way and be proud.

Direct Democracy

I went on a road/ski trip to Vermont with my mama at the beginning of this week, and am convinced this state is doing something every single state in the country should be doing.

The first Tuesday of March is Town Meeting Day in Vermont. You don't go to work; you go to Town Meeting and talk about the small and large issues that affect your community. Nobody elected by a 51-49% margin is going to represent you: you're in charge of doing it for yourself.

And it coincides with Primary Day, encouraging people as both citizens AND voters to participate in the democratic process!

Wouldn't our country be so much less divisive if once a year, everybody sat down next to their neighbors and hashed it all out?

I found a terrific guide to Town Meeting Day for kids (but useful for all of us who didn't grow up in the Green Mountains) on the VT Secretary of State's website.

Super Tuesday

A reminder to everyone that this is Super Tuesday, the day that 24 states around the country hold primaries or caucuses. With enough participation, today could determine the nomination in one or both parties.

A MAJOR reminder to Massachusetts Fringe readers and voters: If you, like me, are NOT enrolled in a major political party, you CAN still vote in today's primary as long as you are registered to vote. You will be given the option of voting in either the Democratic or Republican primary. YOU CAN VOTE IN THE PRIMARY, EVEN IF YOU'RE UNENROLLED.

Fringe loves democracy! Woooo!

A cheer for Small Beer

Small Beer is a teeny tiny press out of Easthampton, MA, founded by Gavin Grant and author of the highly acclaimed story collection Magic for Beginners Kelly Link. They publish like 2 books a year. We love small indie presses, especially when they do wonderful, unconventional books.

Small Beer is the publisher of Elizabeth Hand's novel Generation Loss. The title refers to what happens to a picture when you copy a copy, not a generation of adrift people. Except of course it does: Hand's narrator, photographer Cass "Scary" Neary, is a burnt-up relic of punk's quick arc. She goes to Maine and meets people who are worse psychological wrecks than herself. She solves horrific crimes that have been perpetuated and tolerated for decades.

I've never read a book quite like this before. Hand absolutely nails down characters, each of whose world has dissolved without them, and mythbusting the romance surrounding each world: East Village punk; the rural hippie commune; coastal Maine minus New Jersey's summer cash; even sings a little death knell for film photography. Then weaves a fantastic, horrifying mystery out of these lost souls. And never veers into camp, because these characters are so finely drawn. Realistic? Yes, in hell. It's totally entertaining. You'll read it in 2 hours, I swear.

The 25 Books polls have closed, otherwise I'd advise you to stuff the write-in box. Thanks to everyone who voted.

Thanks a lot, Dave Obey.

Full disclosure: I'm cross-pollinating. The publishing company I work for, Beacon Press, has a great blog (the Beacon Broadside) and a terrific and thoughtful blog editor.

I just do not understand why this country keeps throwing money at abstinence-only education. Clearly, it doesn't work; clearly, we don't have the best interests of our youth at heart if we refuse to give them scientifically based education that respects them as thinking, and yes, sexual human beings. So it is incredibly disturbing that abstinence-only funding is being used as a pawn on the Hill by a party with a so-called progressive agenda. I hadn't planned to mix work and Fringe, but today's post by Carole Joffe is just the kind of thoughtful whistleblowing we need in this country:

But Democrats supporting "abstinence-only," especially after the November 2006 election, when they regained control of the House and Senate?! A powerful Democratic committee chair proposing to give even more to these programs than the Bush administration has asked for?! No, this is not a Saturday Night Live or Jon Stewart parody. This is Washington politics. In a move that stunned advocates for "comprehensive" sex education—that is, programs that include discussion of both abstinence and birth control options—Congressman James [sic] Obey of Wisconsin, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, proposed increasing by $28 million the current abstinence-only allocation of $113 million. Obey made this move in order to lure Republican votes for Congress’s main domestic spending bill. (In fairness, an equal increase was suggested for Title X, a federal family planning program that has been consistently under-funded during the Bush years.)

This (mis)appropriation may not see the light of day, given the wrangling taking place on the hill, but whatever transpires in the next few weeks, reproductive justice advocates are deeply demoralized to see how casually an issue of such intense importance could be horse traded away.

Complete posting is here.
Good HuffPo article too.

Yikes, it's a whiteout in downtown Boston. Safe travels, everyone.

Two Cities: A Love Story by John Edgar Wideman: A Review by Katie Spencer

This is the thirteenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project

It may be that the most enduring, affecting art produced within modern cultures develops when cultures are in crisis. Think about the greatest Russian literature. And think about the art that has come from black urban America in the final third of the 20th century. When beauty and destruction, oppression and exhaustion, history and outrage, love and grief combine, you get art distilled to such poignancy that it makes your heart literally ache. You get, for example, Funkadelic’s instrumental Maggot Brain, you get John Edgar Wideman and his brilliant, heartbreaking Two Cities.

Two Cities skips perspectives, delving most deeply into Kassima, a young woman who has lost a husband and two sons to AIDS and violence; Robert, the man who breaks the shell around her heart; and her tenant, ancient Mr. Mallory, a quiet man with a rich inner life and backstory.

The love between Kassima and Robert is a buoy neither expected to find, but one that nourishes long-dormant tendrils of sweetness and vulnerability in both of them. It's a love as sexy and sad as a doomed affair, as warm and kind as the strongest marriage.

These characters float between the decayed neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. They stay quiet and invisible out of self-preservation, though the cycle of young black men annihilating one another continues, and they are infected with sorrow and rage.

The subtitle for the novel is “A Love Story,” and this is the thread of hope that makes this novel so redemptive and powerful amidst so much grief – the relentless love of the characters for things that can slip away at any moment – each other, their cities, their culture, the homes they’ve built, the sons they’ve lost.

Great cause, bad taste

There is a fantastic benefit the dames at LUPEC Boston have created this September: a number of area bars and restaurants are donating the proceeds from a specific woman-themed cocktail to Jane Doe, Inc, the MA Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. So naturally, when Julia, Janell, Joanna and I met up after work last night, we went to participating restaurant No. 9 Park, to splurge on a fancy cocktail and know the proceeds were going to help a great organization.

We had a lovely time. And then at the end of the night, someone from the restaurant approached Julia and me to ask how our drinks were. There was some awkward banter, and then he asked why we were there. Well, we like the idea of cocktails for this cause. Our literary magazine, Julia pointed out, is run by all women.

"Hopefully not battered women!" he quipped.

Ha ha, it's a safe joke, guys! Because everyone knows battered women don't drink cocktails at No. 9 Park! It's not their scene. Battered women don't go out in public. In fact, I don't know a single woman who's been physically or psychologically abused by a partner or parent, or witnessed the abuse of a mother, sister, friend... It's a them issue, not an us issue. And it certainly doesn't touch the editorial staff of Fringe.

I think this was an isolated case, as No. 9 Park is woman-owned and operated and known for civic engagement. So chalk it up to awkwardness, insensitivity or ignorance on this one employee's part. But I left feeling a little angry, and conscious of how much more work we need to do to build awareness of violence against women.

For more information about LUPEC Boston and Jane Doe, Inc, please click
here:http://lupecboston.blogspot.com/
and here:http://janedoe.org/

Follow the LUPEC Boston link to find out which bars are doing the cocktail promo in September. The Jane Doe site has info on how to donate directly.

Heartbreak Hotel by Gabrielle Burton: A Review by Katie Spencer

This is the eleventh of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

Gabrielle Burton's Heartbreak Hotel runs each of its engines at full capacity. It is completely intelligent, completely feminist, completely hilarious, completely furious, completely compassionate, and it does the whole thing inside out. It is an exhausting book. It is worth the effort, and then you will force it on your friends.

This is a story of the rebirth of the straight white middle-class American feminist, written in the mid-1980s, and it takes place in Buffalo. It is dated, but to a feminist era and type I feel unlived nostalgia for: there's a Midwest-runaway New Yorkiness about this sarcastic, corny, male-affectionate, DIY feminism; little bits Gilda Radner and Silver Palate Cookbook. Characters are tortured by middle-class feminist questions like, does it bring me pleasure to serve others? I say this without mockery. It’s a good, often hushed question.

Heartbreak Hotel is intentionally written to be diffuse, not like those, ahem, linear books you're used to reading, and it has the guts to create two-dimensional characters and give each a voice, and through jokes, compassion, and a series of haunting witness-bearing litanies, resurrect the squashed third dimensions. Six women, each a type you'll recognize, live in a house attached to the Museum of the Revolution, in which they all work. They're resting, because they're all burned out from their roles. The Museum's humpbacked curator is in a coma, and they must decide whether or not to save her; also, Buffalo wants to close the Museum.

I quit; it’s impossible to explain the plot without sounding ridiculous. The book is a joyride. If you made it this far, you’re gonna love it.

Katie Spencer graduated from Skidmore College in 2004 and is tiptoeing toward a master's degree at Emerson. She spends most of her time in the kitchen, and likes to walk around with a cat on her head.

Mary Gordon and Speaking One's Mind

Deborah Solomon's interviewee in her August 5th weekly New York Times Magazine column was the writer Mary Gordon. When asked, "Are you a Hillary Clinton supporter?" Gordon replied, "I think no woman is electable in America." She kept going, but reading that line, I remember thinking, "Wow, this woman has guts. Thank goodness someone is saying it. " My second thought was, "I bet she gets trashed in next week's letters."

This past week, there was one response: I've quoted it in its entirety below; click the link for author info.

"Thinking (out loud, in a highly public forum) that “no woman is electable in America” is a sure way to help make it true. Mary Gordon is a role model for this country’s female intelligentsia. Her publicly defeatist attitude is deplorable."

Succinct, well-written, and a bit knee-jerk? If, when directly asked, Gordon states what she perceives to be today's truth, is that "defeatist" and "deplorable," or is it exposing a sickness and giving it the air to heal? Even if she supports the candidate's agenda, and still doesn't think she's electable, would it have been a better thing to say "Yes"?

No matter the issue at hand, I believe that any feminist who suggests another should keep her or his mouth shut plays a dangerous game. That's why I adore these fine people.

Trend: Keeping the baby

Before Harry Potter took over as Ultimate Hit of Summer 2007, there was a very popular movie called Knocked Up, comedically chronicling two young people deciding to keep the baby. All of a sudden, these stories are everywhere: Glamour has hired a 26-year-old single mom-to-be to blog about her experience (and here's what Gawker burped up), and the NYT recently ran a poignant Modern Love about journalist Ronda Kasen's decision to keep her unplanned baby.

What's going on? First question, is there a subversive anti-choice message going on here? As the trend grows, it's almost inevitably going to swing that way, unfortunately. But for all the backlash about the film Knocked Up being anti-choice propaganda, I don't think that's the case. I think we can thank the ultraconservative, sex-fearing MPAA for abortion and sexual issues' absence in contemporary American film (and if you haven't seen Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, you oughta).

I think this trend elicits something different -- the bittersweet idealism of launching a baby into a crumbling world. I'm 25, and of all my friends and cousins, know no one having a kid. It's too awful out here. Even despite these troubled times, we're just too poor, too busy, have too many plans. So when we see other compassionate, intelligent, flawed people in those months before the little human lands, it's hard not to get sucked in, and put pessimism aside for a moment to nod to the potential of new life.