sapphelle:
urukhai:
I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this —But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it. - Vita Sackville West to Virginia Woolf
Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.--Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville West
I wrote my senior thesis partially on the love letters between Vita and Virginia. I also absolutely love this portrait of Virginia.
world-shaker:
It’s a Seuss Army Knife. Eh? EHHHHHHH?!
How, then, should we measure students and teachers? In ninth grade, my students learn about the scientific method. They learn that in order to collect good data, scientists control for specific variables and test their impact on otherwise identical environments. If you give some students green fields, glossy textbooks and lots of attention, you can’t measure them against another group of students who lack all of these things. It’s bad science.
Until we provide equal educational resources to all students and teachers, no matter where they come from, we can’t say — with any scientific accuracy — how well or poorly they’re performing. Perhaps if we start the conversation there, things will start making a bit more sense.
suicideblonde:
Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground) (1989) by Barbara Kruger
This piece that was done 23 years ago still rings very true in our current political times.
informate:
Joaquin Reyes, 15, sits next to his mother Shirley and listens in anguish to his father’s voice on the phone when he calls from federal prison Tuesday (Feb. 28).
Julio Reyes doesn’t exist.
He is a voice on speakerphone, telling his wife and his two youngest sons Joaquin and Alejandro that he loves them from prison. He is a letter worn at the creases, written by a cellmate who can read and write.
… But on paper, he is nowhere. As an undocumented Mexican national, Julio Reyes has no birth certificate, no social security number, no driver’s license and no proof that he has lived and worked in Northern New Mexico for most of his life.
Read more
stfuconservatives:
dank-potion:xombebe:thegoddamazon:howtobeterrell:
two gay fathers and son
And a beautiful Black family. <3
How about, “And a beautiful family. <3”? Why choose to add “black”? I didn’t even register their skin color until I read that comment..
*Shrugs*
-X
No, its not that simple. We live in a world where Black men are universally demoralized for being homophobic and absent fathers. This picture simultaneously defies both stereotypes and its important to recognize that. In addition, they’ll face erasure for being black in the LGQBT community and for being queer in the Black community. Erasing their race isn’t equality, its just dismissive of their specific struggles.
^Excellent commentary.
Noel on Mickey & Ian+Mickey
Mickey is a tough guy, but Shameless’ second season has dived a bit more into defining Mickey and Ian together, specifically with the scene in the baseball field.
NOEL: It’s interesting, because in terms of being out and being in himself, I think Ian’s character is miles ahead of Mickey. And then in another way, Mickey is so much in himself and who he is and okay with that rough, not needing to impress anybody [persona], that he’s miles ahead of Ian in that regard. So a really wonderful thing about that particular scene—which was one of my favorite scenes that we’ve ever done, the writing is beautiful in it—it’s a scene where you get to see how those two opposite characters compliment each other in a lot of ways.
Right- but as of last night, Mickey goes and gets himself arrested in order to avoid coming out, and it ends their relationship.
NOEL: The funny thing about Mickey is—and I think that a lot of the Shameless world takes place in this kind of mindset, and it’s especially true with the Milkovichs—jail is just kind of an accepted part of life. In the first season there’s a scene after I go to jail with my dad where he basically says “hey, he lasted longer than I thought he was going to.” So I think that’s kind of an accepted reality for Mickey, that he’s going to spend a significant portion of his life in jail and that’s just how it is. But this episode is particularly important for Mickey because it’s the first time where there’s serious consideration of doing something that would land him in jail forever. It’s a different level of danger there.
Do you think Mickey has a heart, way deep down?
NOEL: I think Mickey has a really big heart. My experience in life and also in parts is that the harder people are on the outside, the more they’re just trying to protect something on the inside. I mean, if you look at Mickey, he’s the kind of guy that would go to jail for you if you needed him. He would do anything for you if you’re in that inner circle of his family. And it’s interesting to watch someone struggle with someone that he would want to have in his inner circle but because of his own personal demons there’s no way that he can be that person yet. I think he definitely has a heart, but it’s just a matter if his heart is going to grow to a place where it can be available. I guess we’ll have to see. I don’t know if that’s possible for him. [read full article here]
(Source: ukume)
Research consistently demonstrates a link between decreased fertility thanks to contraception and increased female employment. And right on cue, women, freed up from unwanted child bearing and child rearing, consequently flooded the workforce after the pill became widely accessible. In 1950, 18 million women were in the workforce. By the 1980s, the pill’s impact had had such an effect that 60 percent of women of reproductive age were employed. By 2000, the ranks of women in the workforce had more than tripled since the ’50s, rising to 66 million. Overall, from 1970 to 2009 women went from holding 37 percent of all jobs to almost half of them.
This change has had a significant impact on women’s lives and families, the fallout of which is still reverberating throughout the culture wars. But the impact on our economy is easy to quantify. The private sector has long recognized this fact: consulting giant McKinsey explains that without the huge increase in women’s workforce participation since the 1970s, “our economy would be 25% smaller today — an amount equal to the combined GDP of Illinois, California and New York.”
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According to the Economist, since the 1970′s, “back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the employment of extra women has not only added more to GDP than new jobs for men but has also chipped in more than either capital investment or increased productivity.”
And then, of course, there are the health care savings that come with contraception. Nationally, every dollar spent on family planning saves $3 in Medicaid costs. According to the Guttmacher Institute, “every $1 spent on public funding for family planning saves taxpayers $3.74 in pregnancy-related costs.” When California spent $400 million on family planning services in 2002, “$1.1 billion was saved in public funds that would have been spent on medical care, income support, and social services through averting pregnancies up to age two, and $2.2 billion up to age five.”
Since the GOP doesn’t give a shit about women, maybe talking about their precious capital economy will get them to not be total asshats.
(via anticapitalist)
