This weekend I participated in The Great Saunter–a walk around Manhattan, sponsored by an environmental conservation group called ShoreWalkers. Â Their motto is “See Manhattan at 3MPH!” Full disclosure: My crew and I walked from 42nd St to the northern most tip, then took the subway home. Â But still, it was an amazing chance to just walk and talk and talk and walk and take in the Hudson River. Â This here is a pic of that little red lighthouse underneath the George Washington Bridge. Â There’s a kids’ book about it, and I’m here to say the lighthouse really does exist.
And thank goodness they are. In an earlier post I commented on the CCF panel on hooking up and wrote about the scarcity of research on adolescent sexuality. Well, I just learned that researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women have been following a sample of Gen Y kids* through six grade and, over the next year, new research from the study will look at children’s friendships, adolescent romantic relationships, puberty and adolescent health, risky behavior and aggression, school achievement, the black-white achievement gap, and more. For more info on the study, click here. And to sign up for the WCW’s e-newsletter, try here.
*Gen Y is that cohort name for children born to Boomer parents between 1981-1995.
Caroline Grant, coeditor of the forthcoming anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, just gave me the heads up that InsideHigherEd.com is launching a new Mama PhD blog, and seven of the book’s contributors — Libby Gruner, Megan Kajitani, Susan Bassow, Dana Campbell, Liz Stockwell, Anjalee Nadkarni and Della Fenster — will be blogging regularly for them. As Caroline notes, “This is a terrific opportunity to bring the discussion of academic work/ family life balance issues out of the book, into the blogosphere and from there into classrooms and campus administrative offices.” Hells yeah.
Megan, of the very cool blog Having Enough, will be writing a weekly advice column. For more on everything, check out the book’s website here. And congrats, you Mama PhD powerhouses out there! I’ll be sure to blog more about the book in this space when it comes out.
Regular readers know I rarely catblog. But Marco just sent me this image, and I just couldn’t resist. This, my friends, is the sneaky Amelia Bedelia in the tub, who we are convinced has been on some secret government mission all along. This confirms.
Four quick hits, thanks to Rebekah over at the Women’s Media Center, below. To subscribe to the WMC’s daily newsfeed–which I highly recommend for those looking for a way to keep up with women-focused news headlines–click here. (And next roundup I post, I promise to include links!)
Woman Gains Silver Star — And Removal From Combat
Washington Post: In Afghanistan as well as Iraq, female soldiers are often tasked to work in all-male combat units — not only for their skills but also for the culturally sensitive role of providing medical treatment for local women, as well as searching them and otherwise interacting with them. Such war-zone pragmatism is at odds with Army rules intended to bar women from units that engage in direct combat or collocate with combat forces.
Women As Catalysts For Change: New Organization Starts Micro-Lending Fund
Fairfield University Mirror: Nine students and their professor have direct micro-lending to women entrepreneurs a reality by creating the Sustainable Equity for Women (SEW) Fund. The SEW Fund lends money to female entrepreneurs in developing countries to aid their business ventures.
Iranian Feminist Faces Lashings, Jail
Australian News: Iran has handed a feminist a suspended sentence of 10 lashes and six months in prison, the Kargozaran newspaper has reported, in the fourth such punishment for a women’s rights activist in Iran within weeks.
The Folly of McCain-Care
The New Republic: In just the last few weeks, this issue has started to become a political liability for McCain, thanks mostly to Elizabeth Edwards, who–in addition to being a well-known cancer patient–is also a well-known policy wonk.
As MOMocrats aptly notes, the most recent debate between the Democratic candidates was disappointing to most of us, with questions again directed more towards mud slinging between the candidates rather than substantive issues about domestic and foreign policy. So the MOMocrats and their readers came up with a list of “Questions We Wish ABC Had Asked.” Then they submitted them to the candidates.
In a MOMocrats exclusive, Barack Obama answers the questions that should have been asked during the last debate. Click here to read the interview, in which “he finally gets to discuss the issues, not his apparel or acquaintances.”
Did HRC respond, does anyone know?
I may be late to the party on this one, but I just came across a blog called The Frisky, a sexy site–or, in their words, a “Venuszine”–for women highlighting women in music, art, film fashion, and DIY culture. The Frisky sent me an email (target marketing to feminist bloggers, and hey, it worked!) with links to some awfully misogynistic and creepy sexist ads, with their critique attached: “First we seriously question the Disney Push Bra. Does this fall under “soft” kiddie porn? And well we are speechless about this one.”
Do check em out–The Frisky.
Lots of people have been asking me about last weekend’s Council on Contemporary Families conference, which I blogged about here. For more coverage, check out the Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. Veronica blogged a bit about our blogging workshop here. And if other GWP readers who attended happened to blog about the conference, please do post your links in comments, to share!
Veronica Arreola, blogger and blog mentor, alerts us over at Viva la Feminista to the way NARAL Pro-Choice America successfully launched a blog with integration on Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. For all your orgs out there, do check out the way they’ve navigated all three. It’s IMPRESSIVE! And inspiring too, for all of us still trying to figure out the ins and outs of Web 2.0. In Veronica’s words, “[G]o check out how NARAL Pro-Choice America is using blogging + social networking to = one kick ass feminist network.” What she said.
A hearty welcome to the blogosphere to Dr. Television, aka Elana Levine, a supersmart colleague of mine from my graduate school days at the University of Wisconsin. I blogged here earlier about Elana’s book, and I’m THRILLED that she’s thrown her voice into the blogpool, because this gal has got it going on.
