Expanding Words Volume Two

admixture (n) a mixture; something mixed with something else, typically as a minor ingredient.

cachectic (adj) signs of physical wasting with loss of weight and muscle mass due to disease.

hagiography (n) a biography that idealizes or idolizes the person, typically a saint or other venerated person.

mimesis (n) the imitation or representation of aspects of the sensible world, especially human actions, in literature and art.

pecadillo (n)  a small, relatively unimportant offense or sin.

prelapsarian (adj) characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoiled.

recidivist (n) one who relapses into a previous behavior or condition; especially a habitual criminal.

strewth (exp) an expression of surprise or dismay.

"The Mindy Project" Round-Up

Last week, Mindy Kaling's new show, "The Mindy Project," premiered on Fox. This is a Big Deal for Women in the Media, as Kaling is creator, star, and head writer of the tongue in cheek rom-com lampoon of  a show. 2011 had a surge in female-led comedies ("New Girl," "Whitney," "Two Broke Girls") but "The Mindy Project" is different right out of the gate: our heroine is a thirty-something OB-GYN woman of color, while last years shows centered on aimlessly drifting white girls.

Here are some articles on "The Mindy Project," also a #LongListen from NPR, and a piece Kaling wrote for The New Yorker last year about rom-com tropes:

from Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/09/24/mindy_kalings_entitlement_project/

from The New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/107812/mindy-kaling-tvs-smartest-airhead

#LongListen from NPR: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/25/161745528/mindy-kaling-loves-rom-coms-and-being-the-boss

The New Republic asking, where are the female writers? http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/107818/the-woman-project

By Kaling for The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/10/03/111003sh_shouts_kaling?currentPage=all

LongReads Round Up Volume Two

#Biography

The Texan who designed for Hermes http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-10-01/feature2.php #Biography #Fashion

The Woman King of Egypt, Hatshepsut: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/biography/the-woman-who-would-be-king.php?page=all #Biography #Egypt

#CurrentEvents

An argument that our relational duties to other humans should outweigh the validity or invalidity of “blasphemy:” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/whats-wrong-with-blasphemy/ #Religion #Philosophy #CurrentEvents

Religious Lampooning in Cartooning, a brief survey: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2012/09/cartoon-of-atonement.html   #Cartoon #CurrentEvents

Transcript of President Obama’s Sept. 24 UN Speech (that I cried a little during reading): http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/25/did-obama-stand-up-for-a-free-society-at-the-un0.html #CurrentEvents #International

#Development #Education

Evaluating Children Sponsorship Programs (primary source): http://usf.usfca.edu/fac-staff/wydick/csp.pdf #Development #Aid

Child Sponsorship- the big feel good flack or effective outreach?: http://devpolicy.org/child-sponsorship-works/ #Development #Aid

Education reform that is best for the children: http://devpolicy.org/are-we-neglecting-childrens-participation-in-school/ #Development #Education

The dearth of skilled workers in India, and how education isn’t helping the situation: http://www.economist.com/node/21563418 #Education #India

#Essay

Watching your parents age and the places where they do so: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-last-place-you-ever-live/ #Essay #Aging

Like an email you’d love to receive: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/how-i-know-i-love-you/ #Essay #Love

#Feminism

Oral Remembrances of early feminist activist Shulamith Firestone: http://nplusonemag.com/on-shulamith-firestone-part-one; http://nplusonemag.com/on-shulamith-firestone-part-two  #Feminism #Obituary

#History

Charles Kaiser’s afterword from gay rights activist Merle Miller’s new collection of writing, a brief snippet of modern history for the American homosexual: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/25/when-new-york-times-came-out-closet/ #History #Gay

#Literature

A great interview with Martin Amis: http://www.themorningnews.org/article/martin-amis-redux #Literature

The strange inaccessibility of JK Rowling and her upcoming novel of small parish politics and life: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/01/121001fa_fact_parker?currentPage=all #Literature

Martin Amis’s bromance review of Don Delillo's 2011 short story collection: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/11/21/111121crbo_books_amis #Literature

Salman Rushdie writing about George Orwell and the politics of the artist: http://www.granta.com/Archive/11/Outside-the-Whale/Page-1 #Literature #Politics

A revived interview with Ray Bradbury, first begun in the seventies: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury #Literature #Writing

#Media #Film

You know you’ve made it when your video gets parodied by North Korea: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/world/asia/gangnam-style-video-gets-north-korean-propaganda-treatment.html #PSY #Media

“[C]omputer-generated imagery has introduced a radical impurity into a motion picture apparatus that, save for the introduction of synchronous sound, remained markedly consistent for a hundred years:” http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/26/trapped-total-cinema/ #Film #Technology

#Politics

What does your beer say about your voting stance: http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2012/09/the-politics-of-3.php  #Politics

#Psychology

Is the pursuit of happiness making Americans nervous wrecks? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/america-the-anxious/ #Psychology

Expanding Words Volume One

apparatchik (n) an official in a large organization, typically political. derogatory- member of a party apparat.

atavism (n) the reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence, usually caused by a chance recombination of genes.

cicerone (n) a guide who gives information about antiquities and places of interest to sightseers.

euphony (n) the quality of being pleasing to the ear, especially through a harmonious combination of words.

felicific (adj) relating to or promoting increased happiness.

folderol (n) trivial or nonsensical fuss.

indexicality (n) in pragmatics and linguistics, the features of a language that refer directly to the circumstances or context in which the utterance takes place.  

obstreperous (adj) noisy and difficult to control.

scrofulous (adj) of, relating to, or affected with scrofula. having a diseased, run-down appearance; morally contaminated.

tsuris (n) trouble or woe; aggravation.

Long Reads September 26th

Reviews and Responses to Naomi Wolf’s newest book, Vagina

Laurie Penny at New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2012/09/problem-naomi-wolfs-vagina

Zoe Heller at The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/pride-and-prejudice/?pagination=false

(favorite sex positive feminist writer) Jaclyn Friedman at Prospect: http://prospect.org/article/vagina-myth

Katha Pollitt at The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/169888/naomi-wolfs-vagina-no-carnations-please-were-goddesses#

Wrap Up: Feminist Hate Read Panel at The Millions: http://www.themillions.com/2012/09/the-feminist-hate-read-book-club-reads-naomi-wolfs-vagina-a-new-biography.html

Thoughts on the Serendipity of Traveling: http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dispatch/serendipity/

Ex-Pats Seeking Community: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/what-happens-when-you-live-abroad/

Ladies, the Republican Party is not your friend (more from Katha Pollitt): http://www.thenation.com/article/169630/women-who-love-republicans-who-hate-them

Review of Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/oct/11/imaginary-friends/?pagination=false

Review of Junot Diaz’s new short story collection:

http://www.themillions.com/2012/09/the-you-in-yunior-junot-diazs-this-is-how-you-lose-her.html

Reflections on Salman Rushdie’s new memoir:

http://www.themillions.com/2012/09/salman-the-messenger.html

Indonesia’s Anti Corruption Curriculum:

http://devpolicy.org/educating-against-corruption/

http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2012/05/08/gila-kurikulum-pendidikan-korupsi/

http://www.tabloidjubi.com/jayapura/8939-kurikulum-anti-korupsi-bukan-solusi

On new documentary “The Artist is Present” and performance artist Marina Abramovic:

Juliet Jacques at New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/art-and-design/2012/09/marina-abramovic-artist-present

Francine Prose at New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/06/marina-abramovic-when-art-makes-us-cry/

Interview by Andrew Goldman for NYTimes Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/the-devil-in-marina-abramovic.html?_r=0

http://the-talks.com/interviews/marina-abramovic/

A Guide to Better Living

I cage myself with ladders of words, phrases, syllables;

all meant to somehow lead me out

of a pit of fluorescent lights and into a bank of real sun.

All meant to make my life whole and complete

like a vowel on the edge of rounded lips.

Overflowing founts of wisdom fill my shelves,

bathroom counters and the passenger seats of cars.

If I keep reading, I should find answers, inspiration.

But when does inspiration fade into mere imitation?

How long can I cover myself in slips of paper, drips of ink,

tracing letters like paths through mazes, life?

Emerson says to put down the book and experience

but you still have to read that in a book.

For Dr. Potter, Forever Ago

The Maddalena in Wood and Gold

And so she crawled out of the desert,
dressed in nothing but her hair,
long, dirty tangles hanging to her knees.
She had served her penance for previous misdeeds
born from the inglorious times before
she met her lord in a field like a gardener.

Cheeks hollowed and eyes sunken,
she might be half dead for all we know,
her face a mass of scars and burns.
But in those smooth hands,
perfectly carved to each muscle
sliding under her wooden skin,
we can recall the beauty
that brought men to her door,
like the strands of gold glimpsed
in the knots of her hair.

Burkha

While darting through crowds in the Oxford train station,
constantly battling luggage with the broken wheel,
perpetually lagging at the back of the group,
I glanced a glance between a black-shrouded woman
And her smooth haired, well-suited husband.

I had considered that black wrap a fabric prison,
forbidding any passion, any desire from escaping,
draping the body, hiding crossed knees.
Not even a chance to laugh, to turn one’s head,
and to smile over the back of a bare shoulder.

Yet her eyes, as they watched him under kohl lashes,
smoldering hot and deep brown,
revealed more than any plunging neckline.
That look was purely female, from the first time
Samson met Delilah, and went weak at the knees.

That look transcends all religious observations
and the puritanical collars that drove Hester Prynne
into the woods with the reverend one night.
And contained within the depths of a void of cloth
there beats the heart of a woman, well alive.


Little Globe, Big Dreams

This is an impotent globe.
China, barely the size of a pencil eraser,
is a stub mark on a tennis ball.
What can this globe really tell
the questioning traveler
about the Victoria Falls?

This is a tiny globe.
It will over compensate
for its diminutive stature
with a shiny golden stand
and intricate blue veins
tracing the path of the Nile.

This is a resigned globe.
It cannot rise above
its status as a novelty toy holding court
on a professor’s crowded desk;
knowing it will never be used
to find the capital of Uraguay.


A Prince’s Lost Future

If I had lived to be an old man
maybe I would have reflected in wisdom,
looked into my youth, and asked myself;
was fulfilling my desire worth the loss?
When I saw her walking among my women
was it necessary to demand her
without even knowing her name?
I was a prince, I could have been king.

If I had stopped to think, consider;
maybe my brothers would still be living,
and we would have grandchildren
playing among our tents in the dirt,
instead of a city full of graves
and women without men.
I was a prince, I could have been king.

If only I had not loved her, needed her,
from the moment I saw one graceful wrist
bending as she gestured to my sister.
If only I had known a tribe of families
could bring the wrath of nations
against indisposed men.
I was a prince, I could have been king.