Liz's Bloglet - Tuesday 4 April 2006

God and Abortion Rights Jill at Feministe writes from the viewpoint of most of the religious people I know, in contrast to those who get to be on TV, about the religious folks who have always allied themselves with Planned Parenthood. And I liked her final clarification:

Allow me to clarify a minor point. I wrote about this because I thought it was interesting, not because I think that religious beliefs should at all influence legal standards. They shouldn’t. That should be obvious enough from everything I’ve ever written here.

And, not to criticize anyone in particular, but I’m quickly tiring of the legal strawman that is too often propped up in response to any assertion or observation. If I say, “I think it’s really abhorrent that Neil Boortz said that Rep. McKinney looks like a ‘ghetto slut;‘ if you support him by listening to his show, now might be a good time to stop,” it doesn’t mean that I’m trying to legally infringe on Neil Boortz’s legal right to free speech (and I’m not the government, so, you know, that would be tough for me to do either way). And if I say that religious people have had, and continue to have, an influence on abortion rights, it doesn’t mean that I think religion should dictate law on abortion. Ok, bitch over. _
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10:01:18 AM, Tuesday 4 April 2006

Amanda Marcotte and I are the same age and came to our feminism in pretty similar ways. _
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02:35:30 PM, Sunday 2 April 2006

If you haven't heard Girlyman, well, you should, because, well, they're awesome. _
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01:36:24 PM, Saturday 1 April 2006

Last night I went to see the Durham Choral Society and the North Carolina Symphony doing the St. Matthew Passion at Duke Chapel. It was amazing. The pace was blistering, faster than John Eliot Gardner, and it worked so well. The Evangelist was performed by James Gilchrist, who I gather is the modern master of the role. He was seated in the middle of the orchestra next to the principle cellist and he brought her to her feet with him when he took his bow because given the tempo of the evening, her continuo was phenomenal, as was the work of the orchestral soloists, especially the flutes. Jesus was done by Philip Cutlip, whose voice was perfect and who obviously loved the part. He performed from the pulpit, but then (surprisingly to me, but maybe this is a thing) came down to stand with the other soloists to sing the bass aria "Mache dich" after Jesus's death.

The other soloists were fine. The soprano soloist on "Ich will dir" and the alto on "Erbarme dich" were what I would hope for in seeing the performance. I've never cared for most of the tenor and bass arias, and if I were Stephen Lowell, the bass soloist, I would feel robbed of the "Mache dich", since it really is the bass's only pretty aria. The chorus was pretty amazing. Johnnies are familiar with the "Sind blitze sind donner" chorus and it was definitely thunder and lightning.

So often, in studying it to death in little pieces, we miss the brilliance of Bach's use of the chorus, how they switch from the Greek Chorus style commentators to active participants. I don't just mean that sometimes they have lines. I mean they have a line and then switch from narrative to chorale--from "Herr, bin ich?" to "Ich bin"--and it brings the audience into the story, that it's not just a story that happened once upon a time, but it involves the people in the room. _
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07:57:59 AM, Friday 31 March 2006

I read this excellent post by a Duke student yesterday. Today I discover she is frequently mentioned niece of Chris Clarke of the excellent nature and culture blog Creek Running North. The Intarweb is a small place. _
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04:20:40 PM, Thursday 30 March 2006

Home By Now
David LaMotte

You were reading in the café about that kid who left his home
Disappeared into the north woods and died up there alone
You were staring out the window like your thoughts had wandered far
Then you ordered cappucino and got back into your car

Keep the traffic moving
There's nothing to see here
Rubbernecking in the buffet line
Where the choices all seem far too clear
So comfortable it's painful
Can't feel it anyhow
Hey if you lived here
You'd be home by now

They were sitting in the hot tub of a cheap resort hotel
They were toasting to the good life, but they didn't look too well
He said this is why you work for forty years and pay your dues
Then she told me about his bypass, how he's careful with his food

Keep the traffic moving
There's nothing to see here
Rubbernecking in the buffet line
Where the choices all seem far too clear
So comfortable it's painful
Can't feel it anyhow
Hey if you lived here
You'd be home by now

Pay your money, take your choice
Choose your vision, lose your voice
Tell the story with a sigh of a thousand roads not taken

I saw you glancing in that window driving past that pretty house
There was a family in the dining room, forks half-way to their mouths
Makes you want to pass your plate back to have a little more
But you left that table years ago, your key won't fit the door

Keep the traffic moving
There's nothing to see here
Rubbernecking in the buffet line
Where the choices all seem far too clear
So comfortable it's painful
Can't feel it anyhow
Hey if you lived here
You'd be home by now _
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02:04:52 PM, Thursday 30 March 2006

The United Church of Christ has another awesome commercial. Let's see if this one gets to be on tv. _
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01:31:59 PM, Thursday 30 March 2006

Oh my gosh this is awesome
I wasn't sure whether to use chorizo or bacon in my paella last weekend, so I called South Dakota state senator Bill Napoli and asked him to make my decision for me. _
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11:04:42 AM, Thursday 30 March 2006

I had forgotten (amid the horror at what a bad book it was) that Tom Wolfe had done a send up of the out of control behavior of the Duke lacrosse team in I am Charlotte Simmons. He got female college students wrong in pretty much every way, but I guess he got the lacrosse team right. _
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10:16:03 AM, Thursday 30 March 2006

My Personal Dna Report
None of this shocked me. _
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03:56:09 PM, Wednesday 29 March 2006

The new Allison Brown cd features Indigo Girls singing Paul Simon's "Homeward Bound" accompanied by Allison's awesome banjo. It's Liz Music Nirvana. _
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10:32:56 AM, Tuesday 28 March 2006

Team's silence is sickening. _
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10:31:23 AM, Monday 27 March 2006

There is now a blog keeping track of developments in this case. The one lacrosse team member who did not have to submit a DNA sample is the only non-white member of the team. _
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08:58:06 AM, Sunday 26 March 2006

No matter how many times I read stories like this, I still am at a loss for words. More details: She is a full time college student and mother of two doing what she could to make a lot of money in small amounts of time, leaving her more time to study and be with her kids. She was black, they were white, they screamed racist slurs throughout. _
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05:05:30 PM, Friday 24 March 2006

We’re just too dumb to get the subtle nuances that facilitate an understanding of how inaction=action. Shakespeare's Sister eloquently expresses the bewilderment of many of us stupid little people who just don't quite understand why the Democrats aren't getting behind Feingold on the censure thing. I mean, they censured Bartlet for not telling anybody about his MS...er...I mean they impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job...surely we can get behind censure in the case of violating FISA. _
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04:49:39 PM, Monday 20 March 2006

Majikthise has it right:
I'm a firm believer in equal rights. I agree that every pregnant man has the right to an abortion! (This is the safe, legal, and very, very, very rare kind.) Or, not to give birth if he doesn't want to. His body isn't the property of his wife or his girlfriend. She shouldn't be allowed to force him to carry the pregnancy. Nor should she be able to leave the child destitute if he makes her a mother before she's ready.

If I ever knock up a guy, and he decides to have the baby, I solemnly pledge to pay my child support on time, in full, every month. Even if I don't want to be a mother. And yes, even if he told me he couldn't get pregnant! _
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08:57:52 AM, Sunday 19 March 2006

Can Apple make a campus comeback? _
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04:08:44 PM, Thursday 9 March 2006

The Health Care Myth
Health care is difficult, both in the field and in the policy arena, but the least we owe people who are struggling is to stop fooling ourselves that we are a compassionate nation where only lazy and immoral people go without health care. That is a myth we are telling ourselves to feel better. It certainly is not the "law of the land" -- unless, of course, we choose to make it so. _
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02:46:58 PM, Wednesday 8 March 2006

A very interesting post on framing and metaphor (with regards to abortion).
What I want to point out is that to call a fetus or zygote or an embryo a human being, a person, an entity identical in its essence to you sitting here reading this or me as I sit (sat) writing it is to engage not in scientific analysis, but rather in precisely the kind of metaphorical thinking that Lakoff and Johnson’s book is about: Because to decide that “the life of a human being begins when the ovum is fertilized by male sperm” (as if it could be fertilized by female sperm?) is to decide that there is a basis of comparison by which something that is radically not like me or you is, in fact, just like me or you. _
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11:26:04 AM, Tuesday 7 March 2006

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11:24:25 AM, Tuesday 7 March 2006

I adore Philip Seymour Hoffman and I can't believe it's taken this long for him to win an Oscar, because he acts circles around whoever he's cast with. _
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10:04:11 AM, Monday 6 March 2006

Garry Trudeau gets it Situational Science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts! _
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04:59:35 PM, Sunday 5 March 2006

A judicial commission of the PCUSA found a minister not guilty of misconduct for blessing same sex unions. _
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07:55:35 AM, Sunday 5 March 2006

Remember how Bush was on vacation when Katrina hit? _
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05:41:47 PM, Thursday 2 March 2006

This is how it happened. Real Live Preacher explains how, after many years, he came to the conclusion that homosexuality is not wrong.
The bottom line is, I don’t give a damn what you think the Bible says. I’m not going to stand against my friends on this. I can’t. I cannot. I am unable to stand against them and not collapse from sorrow and despair. _
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01:00:34 PM, Thursday 2 March 2006

RoeDepot: Where women take control of their reproductive rights. If you try to make safe abortion illegal, we will take it upon ourselves to make it possible for any woman, anywhere to travel to a person who can safely care for her health needs. _
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08:37:34 AM, Wednesday 1 March 2006

This is so awesome. Another day, another family proving that "race" is a lie. _
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02:44:50 PM, Tuesday 28 February 2006

This is really screwed up. This alleged pastor used the clients of his unlicensed mental health treatment center as "volunteers" to work security at sporting events in Georgia. They say they were promised money that they never received. The event organizers say the pastor was given checks to benefit his non-profit and that the events were supposed to be staffed by volunteers. When one of the mentally ill people told the pastor he wouldn't pass a background check because of things he had done due to his illness, the pastor told him to make up a name for the check.

Just one more reason that the government--not random "faith based groups"--should provide health care and services in this country. _
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11:22:11 AM, Tuesday 28 February 2006

As of a couple of minutes ago, I have finished pretty much all of my obligations to the working group which I have been part of for the past 3 years. I will still have to do final response to reviewer edits on my manuscript and probably help with some other people's, but otherwise I am done. It's a really weird feeling, the way graduating from SJC was weird--it's so nice to be done, but it's been such a major part of my life for so long that I can't even comprehend what tomorrow will be like. _
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05:09:33 PM, Monday 27 February 2006

Poor crazy people in St. Louis--somebody vandalized their hatefilled billboard. _
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11:52:32 AM, Monday 27 February 2006

I am so incredibly tired of those people who can get a cold and not feel that bad and still come to work and spread their germs around. You all make life completely miserable for those of us who always get really sick whenever we get anything. _
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09:58:17 AM, Monday 27 February 2006

The short-track speedskating relay is the craziest event in the crazy Winter Olympics. A bunch of people skating really really fast around the outside while other people skate slower in the middle and then they sometimes switch. _
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11:15:59 PM, Saturday 25 February 2006

Build a Democratic majority one red state at a time. Amanda says succinctly what I want to say to all those progressives out there who think there's something wrong with those of us who don't dream constantly about fleeing our blue oasis in a red state for New York City or California.

All week I've been reading people whose response to the unconstitutional South Dakota legislation banning abortion is that women who treasure their rights are idiots to live in that state anyway. As though South Dakota would be a better place for the children born there if all the liberals left. As though the country would be so much better if we all were completely politically segregated. _
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05:01:24 PM, Saturday 25 February 2006

While looking at a display of political cartoons on an office door, I surprised to see that the artist at the Albuquerque Journal had a familiar looking name. I was all set to call Remi up to see if there's a possibility that he has a long lost relative who's a cartoonist. It turns out that his last name is actually Trever, which is the most common interpretation of Remi's last name when handwritten. _
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08:39:10 AM, Friday 24 February 2006

A New York Times article about the "virtual personal trainer" type games that Julia was talking about awhile ago. _
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04:09:22 PM, Thursday 23 February 2006

So maybe I was correct in thinking the Larry Summers was a terrible university president? Maybe someone who makes offensive, uninformed comments well outside his area of expertise at the same time as a participating in a decline in the rate of hiring of applicants of the sort he denigrated (and was involved in shady dealings, and couldn't get along with anybody) should no longer have a job? _
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04:41:32 PM, Wednesday 22 February 2006

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