weapons of massdistraction

This weekend I experienced some serious deja vu / Groundhog Day syndrome. Though the circumstances are different. This time last year I was also preparing for a move. But then it was hastened by black mold blooming in our rental and a shitty landlord who refused to remediate it. We quickly moved to the first good spot we could find, for my health. Now I’ve had the past year to consider what we need and, most importantly, where. Hence the impending purchase of the perfect condo. But we need to kick our purging and packing into high gear. This morning I made some progress. Loaded up three grocery bags of clothes that definitely do not spark joy. We’d gotten rid of so much before the last move but more stuff has accumulated somehow. Oh yeah, late stage capitalism - that’s how.

Five items to fascinate and delight:

• I’m late to the party, but recently I discovered and then binge-listened to every episode of Tell Them, I Am - a podcast miniseries hosted by the ineffable Misha Euceph. I found it relatable as an Arab-American, of course, but the stories are universal. Each episode features Misha talking to an interesting guest who shares the defining moments in their lives. It made Time’s list of “The 10 Best New Podcasts of the Year So Far.”
• And, a little too topical, she also produced The Big One: Your Survival Guide:
  

  There’s a 50 percent chance that some time in the next 30 years, Southern California will be crippled by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. It’ll take less than two minutes for more than 10 million people to lose water, power, internet. Host Jacob Margolis and Producer Misha Euceph go on a journey to understand what the disaster means for Los Angeles, the U.S. and the world.

• Also, thanks to Tell Them, I Am I am now a fan of Ramy Youssef. I started watching/enjoying his self-titled show on Hulu:
  Ramy Youssef On Making Ramy A Nuanced Portrait Of His Muslim-American Experience & How He Opposed The Tone-Deaf Concept Of An “Average Muslim Family” and am hoping to watch his HBO comedy special soon.
• Heck yeah. I love this SO much: Stadium Erupts In ‘Equal Pay’ Chants As U.S. Wins 2019 World Cup - The chants began when FIFA President Gianni Infantino walked on the field for the postgame ceremonies.
• Since life is so very full these days I am taking on fewer photography clients. But I couldn’t turn down Jenny and Kevin’s wedding! I knew it would be a delightful one, and not just because of the incredible catering by Muddy Paws Cheesecake (though that didn’t hurt).

While packing and fretting over my finances I slipped into hypothetical travel planning mode. Recently I received my school schedules for Fall/Winter and Spring. I’ll be teaching without a break from mid-January to late May. Looks like the second week of January would be the perfect time for me to take off. I plugged in a variety of locations to see what would be the most affordable. Somehow packages to Paris or Berlin beat out everything else, including Mexico and domestic locales. There’s a deal for a direct flight to Paris plus five nights at a decent hotel for $775. Dangerous knowledge. And yeah, it’s Paris (or Berlin) in January but that would still be milder than Minnesota. The more you know?

My birthday wound up being one of the best I’ve had in a while, despite some stress and a few bummers (mainly my love life). Overall, I was able to focus on the fun times with friends. Two fantastic women spent the night with me in a yurt, surrounded by a field of fireflies. We could also see the constellations above. The next day we were treated to peak summer weather at the beach. Later on, we drove alongside Lake Pepin, stopped at Stockholm Pie Company and met up with a good-sized crew at Pizza Farm. All right, all right.

Five (of the many) Things On My Mind:

• Queer Eye Season 4 comes out July 19th! Very excited. In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed a few episodes of Dressing Funny with Tan France
• A friend in Scotland and fellow Low fan sent me this: Low - Live at Glastonbury “Minnesotan masters of vocal harmonies give a sublime performance on the John Peel Stage.”
• Well, it’s happened again. A book I enjoyed has been adapted into a bland, humorless TV show. I’ve started hate-watching The Rook but it is bumming me out. Starz’s new series The Rook lacks the magic of the book it adapts: Literally — it’s cut the fantasy elements, and it’s just another superhero show.
  

  Overall, The Rook feels like a missed opportunity, departing so far from its source material that it’s lost its identity, while failing to build a new one that justifies its existence.

  Thankfully I’ll have a new Season 6 episode of Endeavour to watch tomorrow. That’s television worth watching.

• Since I am about to buy property again, I’ve found myself shopping online for home furnishings. One of the places I was looking was Wayfair. And then the big story hit. About Wayfair employees protesting when they learned the company was supplying the concentration camps at our borders. Employees have been able to donate to Raices Texas through an employee matching program. Unfortunately, most consumer boycotts accomplish very little in the long run. Though nationwide Close the Camps protests will be happening on Tuesday, July 2nd.
• I should heed this advice (again): Step Away from the 24-Hour News Cycle - It’s never a bad time to re-evaluate your digital addiction. Also on my list? Reducing my caffeine intake. My anxiety has been on the rise.

After my birthday adventures, I returned to work on Wednesday. And stayed way up too late Wednesday night, to retrieve my offspring from the airport. Whenever I think I’m not really that old I just need to take a look at him, with his big shaggy beard. Last week I turned 46 but he will be 20 soon. No longer a teenager. Yet another milestone I’m not quite ready for. But I don’t have a choice. The mad dash continues.

On the drive into work Tuesday morning I listened to icon Kathleen Hanna on the Going Through It podcast. And went on to have a Le Tigre sort of morning. Just the thing after a long holiday weekend. But then I went out on my lunch walk. Curse you, Phoebe Robinson! Listening to her podcast, Sooo Many White Guys, got me on a U2 kick. All afternoon I listened to The Joshua Tree for the first time in years.

Five More Things That Bring Me Joy:

• London artist hosts first gallery exhibition aged 98: Luchita Hurtado was born in Venezuela and has been painting her whole life.
• Zoos Are Posting Hilarious Reviews Of Animals As If They Were Ordered On Amazon and bonus - Lebanese Monkey Escapes Nun’s Farm, Infiltrates Border, Drives Israelis Nuts - The monkey escaped the ‘Ship of Peace’ farm in southern Lebanon and has been spotted in several locations in northern Israel
• Why New Zealand Measures Success by Human Well-Being Instead of GDP Growth: The two are inextricably linked.
• Serena Williams Won’t Be Silenced. Her Clothes Are Doing the Talking. A year after the catsuit controversy, the tennis star is smashing old rules and stereotypes.
• Black Mirror season 5 is coming. And in the meantime there are the Little Black Mirror promotional videos.

My son and I enjoyed the Museum of the Moon exhibit at the Bell Museum, along with a showing at the Planetarium. Check it out before June 9th if you can.

Mother’s Day has always been fraught for me. I barely survived a terrifying mother and have, thankfully, been estranged from her most of my adulthood. My own motherhood has been complicated but joyful. My surviving child is an amazing young man. Our lives would have been very different if those two interrupted pregnancies had not failed. And I boggle at the complexities of human reproductive biology and the horror of politicians attempting to regulate it. The erosion of women’s rights in the US, and abroad is beyond discouraging. With headlines like:

US Stance at UN a Backward Step on Women’s Rights
Trump Administration Threats to Veto Security Council Resolution on Sexual Violence

What You Can Do to Help Women in States With 6-Week Abortion Bans
This past week, Georgia became the sixth state to pass an ultra-restrictive law banning abortion at six weeks. Effectively, these bills outlaw nearly all abortions, since they leave a prohibitively short window for women to both confirm they’re pregnant — six weeks is just two weeks after a missed period — and then schedule and obtain an abortion.

We have these politicians attempting to exert control over women’s reproductive health, while revenge porn and worse are also rampant problems. So dire we have law professors like Danielle Citron, who has written an article on Sexual Privacy, published by the Yale Law Journal.

ABSTRACT. Those who wish to control, expose, and damage the identities of individuals routinely do so by invading their privacy. People are secretly recorded in bedrooms and public bathrooms and “up their skirts.” Such images are used to coerce people into sharing nude photographs and filming sex acts under the threat of public disclosure. People’s nude images are posted online without permission. Machine-learning technology is used to create digitally manipulated “deep fake” sex videos that swap people’s faces into pornography.

Each of these abuses is an invasion of sexual privacy—the behaviors, expectations, and choices that manage access to and information about the human body, sex, sexuality, gender, and intimate activities. Most often, women, nonwhites, sexual minorities, and minors shoulder the abuse. Sexual privacy, this Article contends, is a distinct privacy interest that warrants recognition and protection. It serves as a cornerstone for sexual autonomy and consent. It is foundational to human dignity and intimacy, and its denial results in the subordination of marginalized communities.

Traditional privacy law is increasingly insufficient to protect this interest. Its efficacy is eroding just as digital technologies magnify the scale and scope of the harm. The Article suggests a new approach to protecting sexual privacy that focuses on law and markets. Law should provide federal and state penalties for all types of sexual-privacy invasions, remove the statutory immunity from liability for certain content platforms, and work in tandem with hate-crime laws. Market efforts should be pursued if they enhance the overall privacy interests of all involved.

Times like these I’m ready to hide my head in the sand. Or flee the country. It’s all so exhausting. A never-ending shuffle of one step forward, two steps back. Today I haven’t got any fight in me. Instead, I’m going to enjoy the Bundt cake my son baked for me. And the company of a few close friends and family members. And think of those mothers who have lost children, those who have lost mothers, those with strained relationships with their mothers, mothers with strained child relationships, those who have chosen not to be mothers and those still yearning to be mothers.

The Heart of the Beast May Day Parade has been a huge part of my life since I was a young adult. I’ve taken my son nearly every year of his life. Yet there have been rumblings for a while that the organization is struggling, like many other arts organizations locally and nationally. From MPR:

For 45 years, the May Day parade has ranked up there with robins and daffodils as a sign of spring’s arrival in the Powderhorn neighborhood of south Minneapolis. But now, financial setbacks have made the parade’s future uncertain.

I do hope they are able to continue. After traveling to other countries I’ve seen how some value and fund the arts in a more sustainable way. It makes me even more disgusted by what gets prioritized in the US (along with the greater disparities between rich and poor). We already have an incredibly busy weekend ahead but there’s no way I’m going to miss Sunday’s parade. And I will enjoy the heck out of it. Keeping to that theme, how about Five More Things I Have Enjoyed recently:

• Untypical Girls: Early Photographs Of Women In Punk From Between The Late 1970s And Early 1990s
• Free Comic Book Day 2019 is this coming Saturday. My son will be cosplaying as usual, which is always fun. But I’m excited to pick up a copy of Lumberjanes.
• This made me giggle: Seagulls Photobomb Traffic Camera And Fly Away With Viral Fame “We are still waiting for confirmation that the chicken has indeed crossed the road. Back to you,” one Twitter user joked.
• Veronica Mars is kicking asses for the ‘gram in the new trailer for Hulu’s revival series - YESSSSS
• Also Saturday, the opening of First Avenue: Stories of Minnesota’s Mainroom at Minnesota History Center. I’ve spent so much of my life, from age 14 or 15 on up, enjoying shows at First Ave. I’ve been looking forward to this exhibit.