Recently in girlcrush Category

Y'all, I guess what I'm trying to say is that life is too short to stuff a mushroom.

(Thanks to one of my favorite young adult authors, Jennifer Donnelly, for this insight. She blogged about it here. You should read her new book, Revolution, regardless of whether you like historical fiction or teen fiction. It's just plain GOOD.)

In an effort to bring some discipline and creativity to bear on this holiday season, I'm going to attempt this sweet blog project by Princess Lasertron. (Which, by the way, what a terrific online alias-slash-business persona, am I right? How have I not heard of her before now?)

Here's how it works. Every day, Princess Meg posts a prompt like the one below. I will respond to that prompt here (and also at a private Tumblr I'm working on with some local friends). My plan is to sit down with a cup of coffee during Adelle's first nap of the day and bang it out. It probably ain't gonna be too deep though, y'all. A few bullet points, a few photos. There's a baby to wrangle. Household chores to studiously ignore. Facebook statuses to update. Ahem.

Anyway. Here's to a new beginning.

According to Livejournal, this is what I was up to five years ago. (Remember Livejournal? No, just me, the sole cyber-nerd among you?)

• In 2005, I still lived in Michigan. I worked at Calvin College, thinking and talking and obsessing about pop culture. I was getting restless.
• In 2005, I was writing a blog called Evangelical Expatriate. I was still wrestling deeply with questions about what kind of Christian I was and wanted to be. I guess in some ways, I still am. Looking back, I'm proud of what I wrote there.
• In 2005, I got married to Nathan and we created our compound-named family. We celebrated our first Christmas in a tiny apartment with a single space-heater. We didn't have enough vacation time left to go home to our families on the East Coast, so we spent Christmas day driving around Michigan's Upper Peninsula, crossing over into Canada. We had dinner at the only place open, a Chinese restaurant.
• In 2005, we were pretty sure we were going to move to Philadelphia. I was seriously contemplating a new career as a librarian. I was volunteering at a library and it felt immediately right - one of the few "eureka moments" in my life.
• In 2005, I didn't know any of you [the friends with whom I'm doing this project on Tumblr] except for Josh & Kathryn. I didn't know what I had to look forward to.

Living vicariously through my dear friend and international relief superstar Sarah M. is an old pastime of mine. Most recently, she realized my ultimate fantasy of appearing on a public radio program.

Far better her than me, though - only Sarah could speak so eloquently about the issue at hand on PRI's The World, namely gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the GBV coordinator for a large aid organization there, where she works with women whose bodies are used as pawns in violent conflict.

>> Listen to Sarah on PRI's The World, or read the full transcript of the interview.

A month ago, I sat in a funky Brookline hair salon with Sarah, catching up at the beginning of her holiday leave. She was still jet-lagged and culture-shocked, and the first order of business (after breakfast) was a cut and color. I ended up asking her about the women she knows in DRC, and why the hell so many of them are getting raped, and what the hell anybody could do about it.

(I can only guess what the stylist, coating Sarah's hair with dye and folding it carefully into aluminum foil squares, thought about this conversation. Possibly "God, lighten up and read Marie Claire, already.")

Sarah's stories, and her partly sad, partly angry, completely fatigued statement that "I'm really tired of rape," haven't left me since. Neither has her reply to a question I asked the previous evening, almost hypothetically, during a discussion about Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series. I was blathering about the tension between free will and determinism in the books, explaining how a dictatorial church would stop at nothing to prevent the heroine from causing a second fall. I think I asked something like, "If you had the chance to prevent the fall, even if it meant taking away free will, would you? I wouldn't."

I wasn't even sure Sarah was still awake at that point, a glass of wine tilting precariously in her hand, the jet lag taking over. "I would," she said, suddenly looking at me, smiling her Sarah half-smile. I saw a lot of things in her sleepy eyes just then.

She says she's tired of rape. She's more cosmopolitan, a true expatriate, than the last time I saw her; more detached from her work in a necessary, healthy way than she has been in the past. One must be blase after a certain point, or else live in a non-stop hell of emotions, fear, hatred, hope, despair.

But here is a woman who has seen what people can do to each other, and who says she would stop it all if she could. It left me feeling conflicted, and gladder than ever to call her my friend.

More about DRC gender-based violence:
> NYT: Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War (with excellent slideshow)
> Eve Ensler reports in Glamour
> Anderson Cooper on the DRC conflict

(Hi, by the way. I am unceremoniously back.)

This entry was written on Valentine's day, but blog support went down and then I forgot about it. Better late than never?

A single rose for my small circle of readers, on Valentine's day. Sweets for the sweet and all that!

My longtime girlcrush and lexicographical heroine Erin McKean recently gave a delightful talk on language at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and I've since been obsessed with her blog on quite a different subject: dresses, both vintage and modern. Ms. McKean makes a lot of her own clothing, including the cheerful Valentine confection at left (click on the photo to see the whole thing), and displays her projects and eBay conquests at Dress A Day. But my favorite part of her website is a fictional series she calls "The Secret Life of Dresses," sad little vignettes written from the point of view of garments that ultimately tell the story of their human wearers. As old-fashioned as the garb that illustrates them, the stories are heartbreaking and sentimental - perfect for Valentine's Day.