May 2013
Daily gratitude: Home sweet home
It’s been a trying week but as I sit at our dining room table with the wind roaring outside, knowing that if I still lived in Brooklyn I’d have had to haul my laptop out in the rain to Gimme Coffee, I’m very grateful to be here where the only real noise is the wind outside and the weights from the gym nearby. And also that I am not dating or trying to date. I look back at that...
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“DS sex is still collaborative and involves mutual gratification. Submissive...”
– Emily McCombs, xoJane, “How Not To Be a Dick To a Sexually Submissive Woman (If That Sexually Submissive Woman Is Me)”
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Can Men Write About Sex Without Sounding Like... →
Let’s talk about why there are not more straight men writing about sex. Are they afraid of seeming like douchebags? sex writing, journalism, men, sexism
Woo-hoo for Best Sex Writing 2013 Jonathan Lethem essay shoutout!
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Akiba Solomon: The Missionary Movement to ‘Save’... →
journosofcolor:
COLORLINES || May 2, 2013
[O]ver the past four years, national anti-abortion strategists have designated “urban” and “underserved” women and babies as a priority for saving. In practice, these terms tend to be euphemisms for “black” and, to a lesser extent, “Latina.”
And one has my name: Rachel House.
Evangelicals have long approached their anti-abortion work with...
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“Having myself been confronted with a lover’s odd kinks spontaneously in the...”
– Whole Sex Life on my age play essay “Baby Talk” in Best Sex Writing 2013, part of the virtual book tour.
CHEEMOBILE: Some Signs You Could Be A Fiction... →
alexanderchee:
You are always thinking of insane jobs for yourself that you never follow through on.
Conversations with other people repeat in your head for days after you have them.
Conversations with other people repeat in your head for days before you have them.
Conversations with other people…
Cannes Film Festival: A 'Bling Ring' Star's... →
The film newcomer Katie Chang talks about starring in “The Bling Ring” as a clotheshorse thief and then walking down the red carpet and being asked about, yes, her clothes.
Daily gratitude: new home edition
Even though I spent the first night in my new home wheezing and using Vicks Vapo Rub, which I can’t shake the impression is for people 40 years older than me, I’m so happy to be here finally. I have 2 walls of boxes to unpack but since I already had some clothes here there’s no rush. If I was at all uncertain about it, being sick and having my boyfriend run out to get me medicine...
The Oakland Lesbian Sleeping With Her Submissive... →
This week’s sex diary.
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“For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was...”
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (meta context: quoted in The Journals of Spalding Gray)
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“Michelle Tea has been a horoscope writer, an activist and a sex worker. She...”
– Amy Benfer profiles Michelle Tea about her new YA novel Mermaid in Chelsea Creek, LA Times
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“At the beginning of the session, my mind was stubbornly racing to all the dark...”
– Greta Christina, “Some Thoughts on Secular Meditation and Depression/Anxiety”
My latest newsletter →
Daily gratitude: 6 more days
Even though my asthma/moving-induced insomnia has been kicked up a notch this week, I’m so excited that this is my last Wednesday before I move. Last night while I couldn’t sleep, lying on my couch, since my room is now officially too dusty, I was thinking that in a week I’d be lying in my clean bed in my blue bedroom, with my guy down the hall. I guess I always thought I...
HAVE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO WRITE FOR THE RUMPUS?
therumpus:
No? Why not?
We’d like to know the last book you loved and why. Send us a writeup of the last book you truly loved — a little bit book review and a lot about why you loved it — along with a short bio. We’ll publish our favorites in The Rumpus blog. No length requirements, but please refrain from reviewing books written by people you know.
Please send The Last Book I...
Post-merger American Airlines could lead field in...
shortformblog:
$1.1B+in combined baggage fees between US Airways and American Airlines throughout 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The two airlines are in the nascent stages of a merger at the moment, after which the resultant American Airlines could claim Delta’s current spot as the airline most bleeding all of us dry on our luggage. source
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The Polyamorous Mother Waking Her Baby With Her... →
This week’s sex diary.
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“Ronan never expressed “love” in the way we’ve come to understand it, through...”
– Emily Rapp, interviewed at The Rumpus
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“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
– Thomas Paine (hat tip, Cleo Coyle, Through the Grinder). Fitting, as I purge my old life and get ready to start a new one next Tuesday!
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Daily gratitude: I love it here
I woke up in my new apartment and it felt so wonderful, to have blue walls and light and clear floors and a bed (a bed!! I’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor for years) and my guy in the next room. My boyfriend has already made it a home and while I’m only here for two days, I’m already in awe of how infinitely better for life and work it is than my old place. Being able...
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“Perhaps part of my desire for a tattoo with my kids’ initials is a desire for...”
– Gayle Brandeis, “When Mom Gets a Tattoo,” Kveller
Daily gratitude: being receiptless
In an attempt to reduce the root of all clutter, paper, I just purged every receipt in my purse, save for one I need for a rebate. Felt amazing. Now to put the new me into practice and rip them up before they even enter my bag. I am actually excited about starting this and also not bringing junk mail into my home, or anything useless. I’m being given a gigantic gift of a new, clean home and...
I shouldn't be allowed to watch videos of children... →
I’m already basically like “I have to have kids so I have something to do on Mother’s Day.” This was just beyond. Maybe I should become a nursery school teacher? And then aside from kiddie cuteneess you get a mountain of wisdom from Rebecca Woolf in the form of one short sentence: “Fear is the first paving stone to fearlessness.”
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Authors over 50 in Best Sex Writing 2013 →
Naked at Our Age author Joan Price highlights authors over 50, specifically the essay “Ghosts: All My Men Are Dead” by Carol Queen and the New York magazine article “Very Legal: Sex and Love in Retirement” by Alex Morris, in Best Sex Writing 2013 as part of the virtual book tour!
Daily gratitude: better problems
Last night I broke down after misplacing my cell phone the second I stepped in the door and therefore having to skip my radio interview. That moment felt like the story of my life. I felt stupid for not having internet access at home so I could call my phone, for being so hurried and harried I put the phone down on the floor rather than somewhere safe. I cried hard, ugly. It sucked and I felt...
Daily gratitude
It’s my last few hours of cozy hotel bed living, before packing to move in 16 days. My head is filled with ideas and article research but mostly by inspiration. The authors at RT were incredibly supportive, both friends and strangers, about big and little things. This is truly a community and even a relative outsider like me was welcomed into it. That meant a lot to me and is an example I...
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April 2013
“Under D.C. law, it is generally permissible for one party to a conversation to...”
– Something I didn’t know, from the Washington Post article on Lila Rose and the recent undercover antiabortion videos
30 things to tell a book snob | Booktrust →
In which Matt lists things to remind us we’re human, and snobbery is not a characteristic we should celebrate…
Daily gratutide
I’m still sick enough that I don’t have as much energy as I wish I did, but I do have dark chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, finally filed one of my anthologies with my assistant to proofread, and am looking forward to a week in a hotel room and being surrounded by women who know a million times more than I do about writing and book promotion. Hopefully being away from Dust Central...
5 tags
“After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If...”
– Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be. (via awelltraveledwoman)
Daily gratitude
Taking a break from packing boxes and sneezing like crazy for coffee and waving at cute babies. Several Gimme Coffee staffers have already said they’re going to miss me. Maybe I can campaign for them to open in Red Bank! Things are coming together, with 24 days left. My body thinks I’m trying to destroy it, I suspect, but I’m fired up with ideas and hope I never have a move this...
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“Part of my own affection for Kim Gordon, I realize, is her association with an...”
– “Kim Gordon Sounds Off,” Lizzy Goodman, Elle
“If you sit up and pay attention, if you stop making excuses for the appalling...”
– “Fat-Shaming All Around Us,” Chloe Angyal, The Nation 