I have a small and intimate network of friends. One is a full-time housewife with three kids; she’s perfection and for a long time, eschewed all things internet, which now that her children are older and interested in all that is viral, has been downgraded to a tolerance worth a slice of her legendary apple pie. Another holds a full-time power-boss job, a legendary career in journalism and she too has three kids, a doting husband, is not on Facebook and yet still always remembers my birthday. The man I consider my big angel—not because he’s older, but because he is six foot three—has a career for all to covet, is child-free, social media-free and yet juggles the tsoris of all of his friends with aplomb. There’s more, of course, but the point is this: I am a woman in her 50s, lucky enough to have trusted and reliable friends. Of the aforementioned and the others not, we text more than we speak on the phone; the nature of our lives and careers curtails the days of yore, when I could lay in my bed recounting the days events. Now, the texts can be day-long (this I have with my West Coast & Whatsapp peeps, in volumes); often mindless as well as often substantive dialogues of the moment’s events. It’s the small moments that can drive a woman to vent, that’s for sure. Texting has, for me, made it possible for my friendships to have a deeper intimacy in a way, because the contact is constant. I need the consistency; I feel lost without it. And on those days when the phone doesn’t ring at all, those texts? They are a lifesaver.
Kamala Lopez: “Once I was able to allow the reality of the absence of basic civil and human rights for women to sink in—which took a long time, and was almost like a death of something that I held near and dear, and was a major part of my personal identity; i.e. coming to terms with the fact that my perception of my personal “empowerment” was a false facade and that I, like most American women, was the victim of pervasive and concerted propaganda campaign—I posited that there would have to be consequences to such a basic absence, and that these could and should be studied and quantified.”
The trailer for American Gods. Yay!
There’s a reason my dog Rocky is a bit on the plus-size end of the pug scale.
The legendary women-run cafe-slash-book-and-postcard store, Bloodroot is turning 40.
Peggy Orenstein did a TED talk.
Shitty career advice.
And now have a laugh with Maria Bamford.
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