Picture yourself on a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marshmallow skies

Perhaps it's the phrasing of the question, but when I picture myself in a world in which transportation has become green, I imagine flying. Not drug-induced, like those women in the 10th century who believed they flew wit… Read full post »

Mustang Sally:

Run and tell all of the angels
This could take all night.
I think I need a devil to help me get things right
hook me up a new revolution
'coz this one is a lie

Mr. Mustard: 

You say you got a real solution
Well,… Read full post »

I was born in 1963.

Nelson Mandela was in jail.

I graduated from high school in 1980.

Nelson Mandela was in jail.

I graduated from college in 1987.

Nelson Mandela was in jail.

I got married in 1989.

Nelson Mandela was in… Read full post »

Pop!

Did you hear that? No? 

Put your ear closer to the suds of culture and listen more closely.

Pop. pop. 

Two more tiny bubbles of celebrity burst. Two people whom I never met have passed, and all around me, I'm watching folks mourn. 

Yes. I understand that if "I'll Be… Read full post »

It is quiet here at night. No traffic noise, no screaming and yelling drunks, no early morning construction. It's one of the gifts of living in a small college town in a rural area.

(chicory)
The sky has been clear the past few nights. Temperatures have been ridiculous—below zer… Read full post »

Incensed that parents are complaining that Where the Wild Things Are is too frightening for children, Maurice Sendak responded to a reporter's query thusly:

"I would tell them to go to hell," Sendak said. And if children can't handle the story, they should "go home," he added. "Or wet your pants.… Read full post »

CNN is running a news conference on the details of the "dignified" memorial for Jackson's service on Tuesday.

Wristbands. A lottery. Bullshit about how money is set aside for this sort of thing like they do for "first amendment marches." Fuck this shit. How many homeless people could have been fed… Read full post »

 Anne Boleyn

I'm hanging out with Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the English court. It's the year 1536 as I write this, and Anne Boleyn's lovely head is about to be separated from her body. Her crime? Being unable to produce a male heir to assuage Henry's panic that… Read full post »

I spent the entire Bush years pissed off. Too many forces were at work seeking to deprive me, and the people I love, of basic civil rights. I read Frank Rich this morning, a columnist for whom I have enormous respect, and I respectfully disagree with him.

Rich believes the… Read full post »

No one has any idea as I sit here quietly in the midst of the gathering, passing crowd in front of the triptych, that my calm is my cover. Once when someone asked if I knew anything about panic attacks, I said, "Yes." I told them I heard it was like… Read full post »

It's funny how events are open to interpretation. Actually, it's a good thing that events are open to interpretation, or most of us in academia, journalism, and the blogosphere would have nothing to talk about.

Take, for example, another stellar column from the New York… Read full post »

Henry Louis Gates, one of the most distinguised academicians in the United States, Full Professor at Harvard University, was arrested on Thursday. His crime?

Atttempting to enter his own home.

According to :The Guardian:

Henry Louis Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct af… Read full post »

Ha'aretz, the Israeli newspaper, is showing remarkable footage today. The Frank House, in Amsterdam, has realeased this short 20-second video snippet from the life of Anne Frank. The video was shot approximately a year before Frank and her family went into hiding. 

From he… Read full post »

In a bizarre turn of events, an Australian Member of Parliament has accused the Church of Scientology of all manner of crimes from the floor of the Senate.

In a senate speech late on Tuesday, independent south Australia senator Nick Xenophon said: “Scientology is not a religious organisation. I… Read full post »

Our very own Salon Broadsheet staff is covering the outrageous (one could say "dotty," or "fucking irresponsible") comments of  Midwife Denis Walsh. It seems that he thinks that Great Britain's epidural rate of 36.5 percent is too high (rates are higher in the U.S.). 

The reason? Guess. Yep… Read full post »

CUNT: A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
(EXPANDED AND UPDATED SECOND EDITION)
by Inga Muscio
Seal Books: 2002

I love my cunt: source of so much intense, noisy pleasure in my life (just ask the neighbors), and the place in which my two daughters came to be before being pushed out into this world.

Sigh.

This w… Read full post »

I assume you recognize this image. It's become such an icon, a short-hand for referring to what we have perpetuated in our name in our "War on Terror." (Always be suspicious when you're going to war against abstract nouns or emotions--it makes for messy foreign policy.)

The iconography seeme… Read full post »

"It does not profit a man to marry. For what is a woman but an enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic danger, delectable mischief, a fault in nature, painted with beautiful colors?"

St. John Chrysostom

 … Read full post »

Judith Warner's column today most likely gave Suffragettes, Sappho, and all of our Feminist Foremothers the vapors today.

Seriously. 

How else to react to the following:

The health care reform bill currently being debated in the Senate contains a provision known as the Bo-Tax — so called… Read full post »

(Reuters)

In 2006, Afghan human rights activist Safia Ama Jan was assassinated by Taliban terrorists who wanted to silence the woman who had secretly educated girls during the worst years of Taliban rule. At the time of her death, she was still speaking out for women in a supposedly… Read full post »

Regardless of your feelings about the war in Afghanistan, (and believe me, I'm the first to admit to a deep-seated ambivalence especially after reading something like this soldier's story about what it's like on the ground there), the women of Afghanistan continue to suffer, and… Read full post »

Image taken from The Art of Romance: Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs by Joanna Bowring and Margaret O'Brien

Am I more than my body? 

As a woman, of late, I feel as if I have had to defend the boundaries of my body in order… Read full post »

In 2005, incensed that the FDA, which, at the time, was so under the thumb of the woman-hating, sex-hating, body-hating, science-hating Bush administration that it made a decision that Plan B contraception would not be available at pharmacies to those under the age of 18, AND, really pissed off that… Read full post »

photo from the New York Times

Men are being raped.

GOMA, Congo — It was around 11 p.m. when armed men burst into Kazungu Ziwa’s hut, put a machete to his throat and yanked down his pants. Mr. Ziwa is a tiny man, about four feet, six inches tall.… Read full post »

The Guardian reports that a new drug, originally tested as an antidepressant, has been shown to increase sexual desire in women.

Women who took the drug during the six-month trial reported more satisfying sexual encounters and higher libidos than those who were given a placebo.