The Joys of Time Travel 5.8.11 (Fundo El Encino, Chile) The power is out. I am writing longhand, on paper, by candlelight, warmed by a wood-burning stove; I have no charged computer or cellphone to play music, no battery-operated camera to scroll through photos as a record of my travels. This trip shall leave noRead moreRead more
Notes From South America
Manifest…ish
Written fall 2012. The modern world is a confusing place. It can be complex and daunting; Wikipedia alone contains more entries than your average 1970s phone book, and they’re all interconnected with those irresistible blue hyperlinks, and before you know it you’ve wasted four hours of your life reading the complete history of the mid-90sRead moreRead more
A Marvelous Grief
Note: I use “MCU” here to refer strictly to the film franchise, not to any of the Marvel television properties. Acknowledgments: thanks to all those who engaged in a fascinating and deep discussion of superheroes with me via Facebook. There are few analyses of the topic that center on women’s perspectives or include theRead moreRead more
Spamming States’ Rights
Disqus has apparently decided that I am a spammer. Because spammers always read posts like this and leave comments like this: The structure of the US Senate is a very real problem. Relying on states’ rights as a solution is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. States’ rights are not a friend to progressivism. TheRead moreRead more
Dear Al Franken
Please. Step down. It’s been a long few weeks for women (and men) who hold memories of assault and harassment as part of our lived landscapes. It’s been a good, surprising kind of pain, to see predation and abuse met with actual consequences, but those consequences nonetheless demand the excavation of our own scarRead moreRead more
When You’ve Gotta Be Right
Berners, spring/summer 2016: Any result that is not Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee is illegitimate and wrong! We must disregard the votes of millions of black women, who have overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton, to get what we want! Also identity politics is a stupid distraction from the *real* problems facing America, which can onlyRead moreRead more
An Incomplete List of Things That Have Failed, Despite Mayim Bialik’s* Opinions, to Protect Me From Sexual Assault
-wearing khakis -wearing sweatpants -(wearing unisex sweatpants) -wearing a hoodie -(wearing a Shaun White for Target boys’ hoodie) -not wearing makeup -wearing glasses -long hair -short hair -being fat -not being fat -being outspoken -being well-mannered -being intellectually serious -being a comedian -being a feminist -femininity -androgyny -plainness -daytime -nighttime -who i was hanging outRead moreRead more
Santa Rosa: A Love Letter
I was there last in August, on my most recent trip to the Bay Area. I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house, just across the street from the high school and down the road from Santa Rosa Junior College; my aunt and I made our usual stop at the Santa Rosa fish market, aRead moreRead more
Water Music
The final essay brought up from the archives… a personal piece, written in the immediate aftermath of late January 2010, edited later that year, still felt in 2016. I am on the BART back to Oakland and the music pulses in my purloined headphones, hijacked from the seat-back pocket and emblazoned with the United AirlinesRead moreRead more
On Israel
Written in September 2014. Not posted because WHY WOULD I INVITE THAT INTO MY LIFE eh fuck it though… My life isn’t complicated enough. I think I’ll write about Israel. Much ink has already been spilled about Israel, and Palestine; my purpose here isn’t to add to the cacophony but to clarify certainRead moreRead more