In Wear It, Bitch Annalee Newitz rants (brilliantly) about the recent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling making it legal for an employer to fire a female employee who refuses to wear makeup: Think this through slowly and carefully, girls: if you live in the 9th Circuit (which covers California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho and Montana), you could be fired tomorrow if your … Read More

Reminder: storySouth Million Writers Award for Fiction–open for nominations!

The Million Writers Award for Fiction is now officially open for nominations of stories of 1,000+ published in online lit journals, online magazines and ezines in the year of 2004. There are hundreds upon hundreds of worthy stories to choose from. Nominating a story is an easy process. The deadline for submitting story nominations is February 1, 2005

you must read: Evangelic, by Joseph Young

Liars and Saints, by Maile Meloy

Maile Meloy’s Liars and Saints snuck up on me. It’s not a brash book. It does not force you to love it. It sits quietly with its hands folded in contemplation and waits for you to find what it is within it that moves you. And when you are moved by this book,you are most certainly moved. Told in three parts (Part I about … Read More Liars and Saints, by Maile Meloy

Ascension (as originally seen in FRiGG) Myfanwy Collins Here is what I will say: Turn your cheek to me and I will paint the walls navy blue, representing the sky or the cold fires of that place. Turn it and I will make the windows a kaleidoscope with my paintbrush, the room becoming your own glass cage. It will mimic the movement of light … Read More

at the bird feeder this morning: two blue jays: they are always the first to arrive in the morning, in the grey light before the sun is up. five or six chickadees and nuthatches one bird of indeterminite origin–I can’t make it out. the red squirrel: he thinks it belongs to him. one mourning dove: she likes to eat the seed underneath the feeder–sort … Read More

Another reason to avoid bologna (in case you need one other than the fact that it is disgusting): Those who ate a piece of bologna five days a week or a similar amount of other processed meat were 50 percent more likely to develop colon cancer. The cancer risk may stem from fat in meat, nitrates in processed meat, and carcinogens produced by cooking … Read More

Happy Birthday!

Three years ago today we brought Darby home from PoundHounds–an organization which rescues dogs from small town ACO’s. We went there to look at two dogs–a great big guy called Atticus (who turned out to be really scary) and Darby–the goofball, the charmer, the 70 pound lap dog. Well, what can I say? I love him and have spent more time with him than … Read More Happy Birthday!

two poems by William Stafford for 1/12/05: Once in the 40’s & Traveling through the Dark

Scholars for Dollars

So last night I stumbled across The Granite State Challenge–a high school quiz show on the local PBS station. I was fascinated. Not because of the questions (some of the questions were actually quite difficult–I was flipping back and forth to Jeopardy, which seemed much easier. Of course, my saying this is self-serving, as you will soon see), but because I was reminded of … Read More Scholars for Dollars

Katie Weekley writes and excellent review of Shalom Auslander’s Beware of God in Small Spiral Notebook.

A Conscientious Objector speaks out on the conditions at Abu Ghraib: I’m not really interested in naming names or getting culprits caught; I’m just interested in letting people know that what happened in Abu Ghraib was not an anomaly. It was virtually standard operating procedure. read the whole story.