In the spirit of sharing what I’m learning while on furlough at Starbucks, here’s some wisdom from the book I’m lapping up faster than my latte, called Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide (published by the Nieman Foundation):

• “The most mundane tale, imparted by an inspired storyteller, captivates….Readers will gladly follow a voice they trust almost anywhere” – Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, TTS

• “Structure is the deliberate and purposeful sequence of the reader’s experience.” Mark Kramer, TTS

• “Every narrative tale—from The Iliad to the latest Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper serial—has the same underlying structure…: A central character encounters a problem, struggles with it, and, in the end, overcomes it or is defeated by it or is changed in some way. If the story, as it unfolds in life, lacks one of these elements, you should not attempt to write it as a narrative.” –Bruce DeSilva, TTS

• “The narrative nonfiction equivalent of the film sound track is an idea plot: an ordered succession of arguments that moves forward in sync with the narrative plot….The more the writer thinks about the movement of the idea track in the narrative while reporting, the less clunky the execution.” – Nicholas Lemann, TTS

• “Beginning to read a story should feel like embarking on a journey, starting toward a destination. The writer must decide what larger meaning the story represents and lead the reader to that. Is it about fear? Is it about shame? Pain? Love? Betrayal? Hate? Faith?” – DeNeen L. Brown, TTS

• “To report and write good narrative it is important to develop a clear process that takes you from beginning to end: exhaustive researching, choosing a strong main character, thinking the story through, and reporting the story, scene, and theme. I have found that if I stick to that process and don’t take shortcuts, I always end up with what I need for the story. It might not be the story that I started out looking for, but it will be a story.” –Walt Harrington, TTS

And my personal favorite:

• “The story is in the dark. That is why inspiration is thought of as coming in flashes. Going into a narrative—into the narrative process—is a dark road. You can’t see your way ahead….The well of inspiration is a hole that leads downward.” –Margaret Atwood

Well, here I am visiting Marco’s folks in a town where there are more churches than gas stations. We are feeling a bit the fish out of water. To ground ourselves, we’ve made our way to the nearest dread Starbucks (a godsend!), where I am reading about writing and Marco is reading Salon. We are hopeless. Alas.

Some amazing things down here: Spanish moss, a sign for a horse ranch called “Ocala Stud,” a bar called “No Where?”, and Marco’s mom’s yucca pasteles.

Right about now, I’m wishing I had far deeper pockets and could give oodles to all my favorite orgs, all of which have sent me beautiful, moving appeal letters, some of which actually make me teary (clearly, I’m a mush). These orgs are all incredibly worthy and deserving and doing amazing things to make this world a more hospitable place for women and girls. What I can do, however, is spread the love by posting links to the orgs on my A-list that have donation pages, in case anyone is looking for a place to send a gift of impact.

Girls Write Now
Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership
Women and Media (WAM!)
National Council for Research on Women
Center for the Education of Women
National Women’s Studies Association
Wellesley Centers for Women
Girls Incorporated
New York Women’s Foundation

Happy, merry, joy, peace, light, and love to all!
(Image cred)

Herbert Allen has an interesting op-ed up over at the New York Times today, in case you missed it. Allen makes a case for a form of revenue sharing among colleges and universities that would allow the poor schools back into the competition for the best teachers and students. Writes Allen,

Our graduated income tax system sets varying tax rates based on income levels. Similarly, we could establish standards for the endowments of colleges and universities.

An example: Harvard or Williams (my alma mater) have endowments that are well over $500,000 per student. Why not take the colleges whose endowments exceed that per student amount and tax their capital gains? The tax revenue could then be put into a designated pool and distributed pro rata to colleges under the base level. The college with the lowest per student endowment would get the highest share.

…I know it won’t be easy to convince well-off schools to share their wealth. But they should. They should see this act as part of a down payment on their professed mission: to create a stronger, smarter and ultimately more stable society.

And on a slightly related note, for an interesting look at the pursuit of Ivy gold by a stellar emerging author, Joie Jager-Hyman, keep your eyes peeled this March for a book called Fat Evelope Frenzy:One Year, Five Promising Students, and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize.

I’m often asked what blogs I read regularly–especially by writer friends who find the blogosphere a) overwhelming (it is!) and b) easier to ignore (which I’m against!). Instead of going dark next week, I thought I’d try the autopost option and introduce GWP readers to some of the blogs in my RSS reader. Stay tuned…!

This morning I’m thrilled to bring you one of the amazing women from this fall’s “Making It Pop” bloginar: Jill Moffett. Jill, a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of Iowa, has just completed her MPH and is currently working at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She’s hard at work on a very important book about how women are reforming the U.S. healthcare system. Here’s Jill:

Even though I have two graduate degrees and a full time job at a major research university, I have am one of the millions of Americans who has no medical insurance. I’m trying to be patient and to not worry obsessively, since I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting benefits sometime in 2008. But being uninsured does make me extra careful to look both ways before I cross the street.

My fear of getting hit by a bus is only one reason why I am excited about the upcoming Raising Women’s Voices for Healthcare Reform Conference to be held in Boston in April 2007. The conference, put on by the Avery Institute for Social Change, the National Women’s Health Network, and Mergerwatch will provide a unique opportunity for women’s health activists to come together as a group and brainstorm about how to make women’s voices heard in the public debate about healthcare reform.

This gathering comes on the heels of a series of Webinars sponsored by the same coalition, which provided an overview of some of the critical issues in the debate and provided a forum for discussing how to address them. This type of hands-on, practical educational effort is an excellent example of feminism in action. As Byllye Avery – founder of the National Black Women’s Health Project noted during the first Webinar, it is crucial that women and women’s organizations get involved in this discussion, because if we don’t, our issues won’t be addressed by policymakers, politicians or the media.

The mainstream media would have us think that the only woman who has anything important to say about healthcare reform is Hilary Clinton, whose plan would have me legally required to purchase healthcare, an option which is hardly appealing given my meager salary and substantial student loans. As women’s studies professor Susan Feiner argued in her October article on Alternet, subsidizing health insurance purchase with tax credits is a plan which will still leave many women out in the cold.

Not only do women have much to gain from healthcare reform – after all, women visit doctors far more often than men do –but we also have some great ideas about what healthcare in America could look like. Breast cancer activists rallied together and not only managed to make doctors abandon the practice of the “one-step radical mastectomy,” but also succeeded in having breast and cervical cancer screening and treatment covered under Medicaid. Planned Parenthood clinics have long offered sliding scale prices and preventative care, and breastfeeding activists note that workplace lactation promotion programs will save corporations and the medical insurance system money.

This is why the Raising Women’s Voices Conference is so important. Although the mainstream media hasn’t paid much attention to the hard work that women are doing to reform the healthcare system, these efforts need to be highlighted. The conference won’t ensure that my medical bills are paid if I do get hit by a bus, but at least it might generate some awareness that Hilary’s isn’t the only woman’s voice that’s being raised in the discussion about how to fix this broken healthcare system.

Interested in guest posting on GWP? Email me (Deborah) at the address at the bottom of the page with your idea and I’ll send you some brief guidelines.

Just when you were craving another book that pits “bad girls” (ie, feminists, and those who have nonmonogamous sex) against “good girls” (the ones who don’t) comes Carol Platt Liebau’s Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!). While I’m guessing the parens and exclamation point are for earnest emphasis, I can’t help but think of Steven Colbert’s recent title, I Am America (and So Can You!) whenever I see this now. And so, I confess to taking the tone of it all a little tongue-in-cheek. That is not, however, the author’s intention.

The prolific and ever-savvy sex writer Rachel Kramer Bussel has written about the book over at AlterNet. Charges Rachel,

Liebau is not simply bemoaning the fact that it’s easier, and more socially acceptable, for young girls to be sexually active, but also that adult women dare to act this way as well.

…She makes the same tired mistake that so many do, assuming that “sexual freedom” means living in a world where sex doesn’t matter, to anyone. Whether we call that “do-me” or “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am,” there is so much more to true sexual freedom. But in her world, you’re either in a committed, monogamous relationship, or out there screwing anything that moves.

While I’m not all that interested in reading this book (and am grateful to Rachel for doing so for me), I am interested in the chapter titled “Do-Me Feminists and Doom-Me Feminism,” if only for the sake of seeing how recent feminist history, once again, gets played.

For more on this exciting trend, of course, see Wendy Shalit’s Girls Gone Mild.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist, after that last post about Glamocracy. It’s just too much fun, the neologisms this season.

Following on that last one, on the historical memory side of things, here’s another Carol weighing in today–Caryl, actually, over at Women’s eNews. Caryl Rivers advises Hillary at this point in her campaign (when the inevitable no longer is) to remember JFK:

People worried that, as the first Catholic president, he’d build a tunnel to the Vatican.

You face the concern that, as a female, you will either collapse in a crisis (the weak woman myth) or run roughshod over everyone (the dragon lady myth). Either way, you can’t be trusted with power.

…[P]lay the “change” card. Don’t let your critics get away with saying you echo the past, and represent the establishment. What would be a bigger change than the first female president in history? Your instinct is to be bold; remember, as a Wellesley student you challenged Sen. Ed Brooke–who had become a hawk on Vietnam–to his face and told him he was dead wrong about that war.

Sometimes, forget the lawyer part of you and channel the young rebel.

Another thing: Ignore the well-meaning advice of your sisters who say you are not feminist enough. We’d all love for the first female president to be Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul all rolled up into one. It’s not going to happen. Maybe someday, but not now.

No “first president” emerges from identity politics. JFK was as far from the familiar Irish Catholic pol as he could get; he talked Harvard and dressed Brahmin.

It’s not surprising that the first black candidate who is seen as having a real chance, Barak Obama, does not come from civil rights struggles but is seen as transcending race. His father was from Africa, not Selma. Let your feminism emerge in those policy initiatives you support after you get elected.

You don’t need to croon “I am woman, hear me roar.” At least, not yet.

Thoughts?

As those who know me know, I’m all for the innovative intersection of politics and glam, if it helps engage more women in a worthy cause. Like voting. And campaigning. And just the other week, Glamour magazine launched a blog with promise: Glamocracy.

As Broadsheet’s Carol Lloyd notes, “it’s a clever move when an estimated 25 percent of the voters are 18-29 and an increasing number of those younger voters are actively following the presidential elections.” Here’s Lloyd’s assessment:

The idea behind Glamocracy is simple but deft. Five women from different backgrounds (but all within the youngish Glamour demographic) blog weekly on the 2008 elections. Amanda Carpenter, a 25-year-old reporter for conservative Web site TownHall.com, and Asma Hasan, a 33-year-old Muslim-American who describes herself as a moderate and currently registered Republican, fill out the right flank, while Fernanda Diaz, a student from Columbia University and first-time voter, and Caille Millner, a 28-year-old African-American editorialist for the San Francisco Chronicle and unabashed Barack Obama booster, make up the left. Only Rebecca Roberts, a 37-year-old journalist (and daughter of pundit Cokie Roberts), claims journalist’s license and resists showing her political undergarments….Diaz’s post — about the candidates acting as if the youngest voters are “exotic animals” requiring full-time youth-outreach specialists and MTV-style events while regularly ignoring the international issues — taught me something I didn’t know. As might be expected, though, there’s plenty about candidates’ wives and daughters. So far, mercifully, there’s not a single fashion do or don’t.

Personally, I think it’s brilliant. I’ll look forward to watching it maintain its integrity, which, with these five writers behind it, should not be hard to do. They’re off to a great start.

As a follow up to Courseconnections’s comment the other day here about a correlation between the rise in teenage pregnancy and the Bush administration’s support of abstinence-only education, here’s Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reminding us that the recent rise in teen births stands in stark contrast to more than a decade of decline:

[T]hat stunning drop was by no means mere coincidence. Activists and community volunteers who genuinely wanted to curb adolescent pregnancy — as opposed to those who just wanted to rail against abortion and inflict their rigid moral codes on others — worked hard to find programs that actually worked. They formed clubs for teen girls. They wrote scripts for role-playing, teaching teenagers how to say “no” to sex. (Those activists, too, believe in abstinence, but they’re not naive about its utility.)

High school teachers assigned homework in which students spent a week caring for crying, fidgeting, diaper-wetting baby dolls, so adolescents would learn how difficult and demanding infants can be. They handed out contraceptives, including Depo-Provera, an injection that proved effective with teenaged girls who were unlikely to remember daily pills.

Through the 1990s, that overlapping network of programs was supported and partially funded by the Clinton White House, which believed in a pragmatic response to social problems. While President Clinton supported a woman’s right to choose, he also said abortions should be “safe, legal and rare.” The same pragmatism brought federal support for crime prevention efforts, including federal funds for hiring police officers.

By contrast, the Bush White House has turned back to a conservative ideology that mocks government as the source of problems — unless taxpayer funds can be used to further far-right objectives. So Depo-Provera is out, but abstinence pledges are in.

Maybe it’s just coincidence that more adolescent girls are having babies. More likely, it’s the inevitable result of a raft of foolish policies.

I’ll say. A raft that sure don’t float.