Friday QuoteDay

“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Friday QuoteDay

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

 ― Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, 100 Love Sonnets

Friday QuoteDay

“The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet.”

― Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek novelist

Friday QuoteDay

“Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Friday QuoteDay

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” 

― Ray Bradbury, American author, from Zen in the Art of Writing

 

Friday QuoteDay

"Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman’s body takes on as she matures -- the fuller breasts and rounded hips -- have become distasteful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men.”

— Sandra L. Bartky, philosopher, "Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," in Feminism and Foucault: Paths of Resistance

Friday QuoteDay

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, Native American author, from The Painted Drum LP

Friday QuoteDay

"I’ve been told by producers, 'Well, you know we need to get on this because you’re not getting any younger ...' Women are reminded of their age all the time and it’s usually by a fricking fat, big-bellied old man with a comb-over and you look at him and you’re like, 'Really? Give me a break. You just have more money and more power in this situation than I do, but not in my life.'"

— Zoë Saldaña, American actress in InStyle UK, June 2013

Image property of InStyle UK. Click to enlarge.

Tuesday QuoteDay

"I really don't care about being the first.

So long as it inspires someone else to be second."

— Raha Moharrak

From the BBC:

A Saudi woman has made history by reaching the summit of the world's highest mountain.

Raha Moharrak, 25, not only became the first Saudi woman to attempt the climb but also the youngest Arab to make it to the top of Everest.

She is part of a four-person expedition that also includes the first Qatari man and the first Palestinian man attempting to reach the summit.

They are trying to raise $1m (£660,000) for education projects in Nepal.

Friday QuoteDay

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.” 

 — Aldous Huxley, English writer, author of Brave New World

 

Saturday QuoteDay

“The model for tomorrow, and this is the model I’ve been using with enormous enthusiasm since I started blogging back in 2001, is to try everything. Make mistakes. Surprise ourselves. Try anything else. Fail. Fail better. And succeed in ways we never would have imagined a year or a week ago.” 

— Neil Gaiman, on blogging. 

(Previous Mr. Gaiman quotes here, here and here!) 

Friday QuoteDay

"It's the disconnect of being trained since birth to look a certain way, only to have dudes turn around and go, 'Don't you know we hate all that stuff on your face?' Like it was our idea! Like women collectively woke up one day and thought, 'Wouldn't it be awesome to slap a bunch of chemicals and dyes on our faces every morning from now on?'

We've got a multi-billion dollar industry doing their best to remind us daily that we need what they're selling, so don't act all befuddled about where we got the idea that we looked better this way. Plus, it's not like men don't still expect us to look beautiful. They just don't want us cheating with cosmetics. Hope your face is naturally flawless! 

And while we're talking, don't you ladies know how annoying it is that you're all hung up on your weight? Sure, we expect you to have a great body. But don't be one of those lame girls who orders salads on a date. We like to see you eat! 

Most of the time, when men say they prefer 'natural beauty,' they don't mean that they're ready for us to start leaving the house the way we roll out of bed in the morning. They mean that they want us to look perfect without appearing to try. 

Basically, it's a trap. 

— Emily McCombs, Editor at XOJane, "On Men Who Don't Like Women In MakeUp" 

Weekly Flâneur: Book It

Click to enlarge.

The Main Library of Uptown Charlotte has featured a multitude of literary quotes on its outer columns since 1996. (Though the building itself has been around as long as I can remember. And I remember being kicked out of Main as a small child for being rowdy* with a friend in the late 1980s, so that's at least 20 years. They let me back in. Eventually.) It's a lovely way to enjoy some light outdoor reading on a lunch break from the skyscrapers that dwarf the building, before heading inside to grab a book on hold or wander the stacks.

Since I missed both Weekly Flâneur and Friday QuoteDay last week due to travel, I'd like to think that a photo of a quote can make up for it? What say you, dear friends? All smiles and forgiveness, or will you take your flaneuring needs elsewhere? (Kidding, I know you'll stay here with me forever! BBFFs, best blog friends 4eva!)

Mr. B is fond of Groucho Marx's quote, and so one recent night out on the town I snapped this pic. The first shot I took was without a flash, which ironically made the photo ... too dark to read. All the quotes can be found here.

"Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend, and inside a dog, it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx

The bonus side quote reads:

"The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it from you." B.B. King

And hidden behind them both is this quote:

"One of the greatest gifts adults can give – to their offspring and to society – is to read to children." Carl Sagan

Let's all go take a blanket outside to the newly sprung grass and read a book in the sunshine. Don't wake me if I fall asleep. See you there.

*Well, not so much rowdy. More like a champion of justice. Another child stole my friend Katie's purse, containing a prized $2 bill inside, so I tackled him while she punched. We were in full Brownie Troop uniform. The attending librarian who found two girl scouts sitting on a boy's chest and beating him took pity on the thief and hauled us out of the kid's section and straight to the troop leaders, who happened to be our mothers. Sorry, Mom/Scout Leader!

Friday QuoteDay

“I want you to know that it is not always easy to love me. That sometimes my chest is a field full of landmines, and where you went last night, you can’t go tomorrow. There is no manual, there is no road map, no help line you can call; my body does not come with instructions, and sometimes even I don’t know what to do with it. This cannot be easy. But still, you touch me anyway.” 

 — Ivan E. Coyote, spoken word performer and writer. Quote from Missed Her. 

Friday QuoteDay: International Women's Day 2013 Edition

Image via stfuconservatives

Today is International Women's Day.

While we raise a toast to the amazing, brave and intelligent women in our lives, we also have to remember why today is still a necessity. Visit internationalwomensday.com to learn about events in your area and ways to reach equality in our lifetime.

Friday QuoteDay

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

— Maya Angelou, African-American poet and civil rights activist.

Friday QuoteDay

“I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been inextricably linked to their value as an individual, and that no matter how encouraging your parents were or how many positive female role models you had or how self-confident you feel, there is an ever-present pressure that creeps in from all sides, whispering in your ear that you are your body and your body defines you.

A world where, from the time of pubescence on, you can feel the constant and palpable weight of the male gaze, and not just from your male peers but from teachers and sports coaches and the fathers of the children you baby-sit, people you’re supposed to respect and trust and look up to, and that first realization that you are being looked at in that way is the beginning of a self-consciousness that you will be unable to shake for the rest of your life.

Even if they are never verbalized, the rules of bodily conduct for females become clear early on: when school administrators reprimand you for the inch of midriff that shows when you lift your hands straight in the air or youth group leaders tell you that the sight of your unintentional cleavage is what causes godly young men to fall, you learn that your body is dangerous and shameful and that it’s your responsibility to cloister it in a way that is acceptable to everyone else. You learn that your body is a topic of public debate that everyone is entitled to weigh in on, from a male classmate telling you that those jeans make your ass look huge to the male-dominated United States Congress dictating the parameters that rape must fall within to be considered legitimate.

To be a woman, and to live life in a woman’s body, is to be held to a set of comically paradoxical standards that make you constantly second-guess yourself and jump through a million hoops in pursuit of an impossible perfection.”

 — From Thought Catalog's Stop Catcalling Me by Kendall Goodwin

Friday QuoteDay: Love For The Distant Elsewhere

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” 

 — Attributed to Miriam Adeney, anthropologist and author

Friday Feminism

“Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.

Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.

In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:

'The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.'

In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts. This may sound outrageous, but think about how you react when precocious children dominate the talk at an adult party. As women begin to make inroads into formerly ‘male’ domains such as business and professional contexts, we should not be surprised to find that their contributions are not always perceived positively or even accurately.”

-- From Language As Prejudice, PBS.org (http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/women)

I have often been told I talk too much. I've been told I am too loud, too boisterous, too much. If I wear heels I am too tall, too show-offy, take up too much room. But this is what I know, as the introverts and the shy and the bullied always know, that if I am quiet, I disappear. Sometimes for the better, to fend off the brutal pokes and bruises of youth. Sometimes for worse, to be overlooked for perks and favors and kindness. As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Unless that squeaky wheel is underprivileged, or of a skin color, of a gender, of a sexual orientation that those who wield the oil find objectionable. So then we just squeak on and on. Or sometimes we go silent, and never move forward again. And they do not notice when we are gone until they need someone new to kick.

Silence doesn't always protect us. Silence can erase us.

 If young boys are taught in school that on every level their thought process, needs, questions, and ideas matter more than the girls raising their hands next to them, we have failed all of them. We have taught boys not to value half of the human population, to disregard empathy and to put importance on what their male peers think above what is morally and ethically right. And we have taught girls to accept this silently. If children are the roots of our future societies, are the branches of current society, then this is a society that perpetuates a rape culture that allows for women to be subjugated, victimized and blamed at every turn.

And we ALL deserve better. We deserve more than silence.

Friday QuoteDay

“Our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.

Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law—for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.

Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

— President Obama, second inaugural address