The question not asked

This morning I read a post by Erin over at ” this would make a great story ”

Robert Frost’s Road Not Taken is one of the first poems I read that made any kind of sense to me at all. It was the first time that structure, purpose, and cadence were more than concepts on a page.

At the moment I’m in the middle of a long, strange trip.

But who isn’t?

In what life is there a static achievement that allows us to Stop. And Never Change. It comes back to the questions that we ask ourselves, in action and in word.

Two questions diverge on the precipice of Change,

I wonder which I should choose, and look down to see as far as I can what the answers might be,

But there is no way to know.

I chose the one less asked and that has made all the difference.

I’m a big fan of the Gay Dad

I’m a big fan of the Gay Dad Project  because they are on a mission to open people’s hearts and minds. One of their loyal supporters, Joel Ferris,  just posted a great story about his relationship with his dad and being a role model for his own kids.

Hop over and read the piece, it’s worth putting in your brain and thinking about for a couple of days. Some real lessons on not only tolerance but how we welcome change and push our definition of compassion.

Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign and the need to acknowledge a harmful beauty culture

I’ve watched the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign with mixed feelings over the last couple of years.

On the one hand, it’s a counterpoint to intense cultural pressures to be thinner and prettier. Women I know have said it’s a relief to see a mainstream voice that praises women, instead of undermining them.

But there’s something troubling about the whole thing: at its core the “Real Beauty” campaign isn’t about redefining beauty, it’s about slightly pushing the envelope on the current definition.

Censoring & LGBT Civil Rights

Update: CNM Administration claims they pulled the issue because a minor was mentioned in it.

Which is a different tune from their original statement when they said “CNM felt the content was offensive and not appropriate for the educational mission of CNM.”

Apparently they are so hypocritical that they can’t even admit they made a mistake, something that’s obvious to pretty much everyone else.

Something just teed me off.

On the list of things that I dislike, messing with LGBTQIA rights is big and messing with the 1st Amendment is even bigger.

So when I read this story in the NM Compass about how the Central New Mexico Community College pulled an entire issue of the student run paper, I was not pleased. The response from “the administration” wasn’t particularly inspiring either.

IBnA Thursday: The Cowbells “More”

***This is the third in a series of  two, wherein I review bands that don’t exist.

Under pressure, almost any musician will admit to having dictatorial ambitions.

A prime example is John Tesh, who in a heated 1997 interview with Geraldo Rivera acknowledged he’d been building an alternate society on Alexander Island, just off the tip of Antarctica. He’d gone so far as to import a large population of Maltese dogs, taught them Moon Phase Farming, and indoctrinated them to believe they were destined to rule the world when the nuclear holocaust occurred. It went unstated in that interview but was implied that he would be their leader, given that nomenclature in this society would refer to the dogs as “Teshians.” When queried the U.S. Department of State would not comment but did confirm that “Maltese are a lovely breed of dogs.”

The Cowbells revealed similar ambitions in their debut release three years ago on Putin Is Really Just Louie Prima In Disguise Records. “Skim Milk is Good Enough For Us and Better Be For You, Too” was a masterpiece of pop ambition, hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the best records released on April 11, 2010, ever” and called “astonishingly pointless” by Verve.

A note to men on righting the culture ship that forces unrealistic notions of female beauty

Note: Although it didn’t start out that way this post is sort of my supplement  to today’s Beauty of a Woman Blogfest II. Please take a moment to hop over and look at some amazing writing by a diverse and passionate group of women.

I was in a relationship a while back with a woman who had an eating disorder. Because her identity was bound up in cultural notions of what a woman is supposed to be, a big part of its formation came from being thin or physically fit/healthy. Although I did my best to be supportive I found the experience maddening, which gave me a small window into the paradoxes women regularly face.

Well intentioned men (and I’ve been guilty of this in the past) often use phrases like “real beauty is more than skin deep” (I’ve never used that cliche, thankfully) or “stick thin models in magazines aren’t attractive, real women are” or “I’m attracted to healthy women, not women who are just thin.”

IBnA Thursday: Arakacha – “Murmodansay is for lovers”

***This is the second in a series of band & album reviews. Thursday is one of the worst days of the week, right after Mon/Tue/Wed/Sun/Sat, but hopefully expanding your mind with fresh, musically related blog posts will help. If not, there’s always Facebook.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Arakacha, it was in the small city of Cirtu in Southern Argentina in the basement of a sarcastic dairy farmer. I could tell he was sarcastic because he kept declaring his love for soy products, which as anyone knows is the dairy farmer’s biggest competition. But I diverge.

Anyway, Arakacha was on the last leg of their South America tour and appeared to have gotten into a carton of blueberries before the show, unless there’s some other way to stain your face blue that I don’t know about. I’d heard they were wild but wow, they really knocked the socks off of every single person in the place. It was kind of a small space, and all 11 members of Arakacha were in one tiny corner, including their two trombonists who were so close that they occasionally pulled the slide on the others trombone by accident. It was very erotic.