Keep Tarin Towers Local

Tarin Towers is a writer living in San Francisco. She's been out of a permanent place since May. Housesitting and REALLY cheap housing leads appreciated: Email displacementblues at gmail.

[tarintowers]

Here are a few of the pictures published today by Ratter in “This is My First Gun,” a story about gun laws, mental health, and responsibility in an age of gun violence. This is my first piece of reported journalism in probably 20 years, and I’ve been working on it for the last few months. I’m really happy with how it turned out. 

[displacementblues]

Shouting into the cavernous Tumblr mines: I finally went live with my brand-new author page on Facebook. I created one back in 2008 and never quite felt like there was quite enough new material make it worth the work. That’s starting to change—and I’m looking forward to having more things to post. Give it a “Like” if you “feel” “like” “it,” “friends.”

[tarintowers]

Always a Mission girl. Give my new page a Like. 

[tarintowers]

Here’s my Planned Parenthood story. 

I was 21 years old and had just moved halfway across the country to Iowa City. This was pre-Affordable Care Act, so I didn’t have health insurance. 

I had been on the birth control pill since I was 15 because, without it, I had terrible, debilitating periods that lasted ten days and recurred every three weeks. 

So, I was running out of pills, and I didn’t know how to find a doctor or how to navigate health insurance, never mind having the money to pay for it. To get a prescription for birth control, I’d also need a pelvic exam, and the thought of finding a doctor that was both affordable and trustworthy was boggling. In case  you didn’t know, pap smears and the rest are no fun. Not knowing where to go for one can be an excuse to not go to the doctor and not get examinations we’re supposed to get regularly.

I head heard of Planned Parenthood, and figured a family planning clinic would have birth control, so I looked them up in the phone book and drove down there.

Not only did I get the exam and the prescription I needed, the nurse and the doctor were empathetic and patient and happy to answer all the questions I had about my health, not just about my reproductive health. 

Without Planned Parenthood, and before Google and Yelp, I don’t know how I would have found a doctor. I might have just let the prescription lapse and put up with the symptoms just to avoid having to find one. Even today, with all the resources of the Web at a young woman’s fingertips, finding a clinic that you can afford with a doctor you can trust can be daunting and take a lot of effort. 

My visit was pretty straightforward, but mostly because I already knew what I needed! Women who have even more serious concerns about their reproductive health need to have a safe and easy place to go to get pelvic exams, breast cancer screenings—and yes, safe and legal access to birth control and abortions. 

[austinkleon]

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix

[medievalpoc]

Link to Article

Link to British Library Flickr

Link to Album View (shown above)

Selected Links by Subject:

musical instruments | fashion & costumes | ships | dancing |decorative papers | curator selection | highlights | portraits | space and science fiction | children’s book illustrations | technology | flora |advertisements | decorative illustrations | castles | heraldry | diagrams| comic art | illustrated letters & typography | wildlife

[austinkleon]

From Open Culture:

We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.

(via maudnewton​)

[tarintowers]

August 4, 2015 - Burrito Justice Radio - BFF.fm

Like Twitter for the Radio! Interviews, music, history, SF, science and more!

Yesterday I was on BFF.FM’s Burrito Justice radio, with writer Andrew Dalton and Chronicle Reporter Kale Williams. We talked about, in rough chronological order, sea lions, whales, the Mission, Twitter, @uppityfag, @samstecky, journalism, housing, evictions, Displacement Blues, writing the Displacement Blues newsletter, face blindness, and coffee. It was hella fun, and people said it was pretty entertaining to listen to. 

[tarintowers]

My second issue of "Displacement Blues" just shipped! This is my new TinyLetter, with stories and pictures and links about my glamorous life as a rent-controlled Mission dweller dealing with eviction.

This week, I talk about jury duty and the surprises I found in literal Easter eggs. I also added a recommended links section this week.

I also posted a new piece on Medium this week, "Vertigo and Overwhelm," as well as a few photos over on the Displacement Blues tumblr. Thanks for reading!

[tarintowers]

Big week here at Tarin Towers HQ. I launched my new TinyLetter Friday morning (sign up!). I revamped my other main tumblr and renamed it "Displacement Blues" as well. I also updated my About Tarin Towers page. And I posted my first major dispatch about my already-yearlong housing drama on Medium. 

In the middle of the most stressful move of my life, yes, I have found time to write!

[tarintowers]

In "The 100 top things you honestly don't need to do before you die," Richard Osman of the Guardian divvies up the available hours you have left in your life and shows what percentage you'd spend using on the Top 100 TV shows, books, and so forth. Hilarious look at "shoulds" and pop culture. 

[tarintowers]

"One thing that surprises me is how much closer a current 90-year-old's birth is to Lincoln's assassination than it is to the current day. To me, Lincoln's presidency seems ancient, but it's actually not all that long ago. [...] The T-Rex is closer in time to seeing a Justin Bieber concert than seeing a live stegosaurus."

These diagrams of time, which fit timelines of recent history inside timelines of ever-longer epochs, are an amazing demonstration of relativity and perspective and that whole "speck of dust" thing. 

(via wait but why: Putting Time In Perspective)

[tarintowers]

One of the most influential modern art exhibits of the Twentieth Century, "The New American Painting," featuring such abstract expressionist greats as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell, was funded by the CIA as part of its anti-Soviet Cold War propaganda movement, says the Independent. A cultural bureau within the CIA was charged with demonstrating that freedom of expression was one way that Democracy trumped Communism, and the American Abstract Expressionist movement was championed by the CIA and its millions of secret funds as a way of showing American intellectual prowess and adventurousness. 

If this meant playing pope to this century's Michelangelos, well, all the better: "It takes a pope or somebody with a lot of money to recognise art and to support it," Mr Braden said. "And after many centuries people say, 'Oh look! the Sistine Chapel, the most beautiful creation on Earth!' It's a problem that civilisation has faced ever since the first artist and the first millionaire or pope who supported him. And yet if it hadn't been for the multi-millionaires or the popes, we wouldn't have had the art."

[tarintowers]

I felt all nostalgic about things I'd completely forgotten I will never do again but liked doing at the time. I wonder if people get as attached to music now that they don't actually do the following:

1. Get excited about going to the mall to buy the tape. (ANTICIPATION)

2. Ride home in the car with the tape in the shopping bag because you have to preview it before you play it on the car stereo so you don't ruin your first listening experience, although maybe if your mom was different, anyway... (ANTICIPATION)

3. Running up to your room with the tape and UNWRAPPING IT as you ran up the stairs (ANTICIPATION)

4. Waiting for the tape to spool after you push play, that little wait of wash of white noise (ANTICIPATION)

5. Here comes the song! Here come all the songs no one will hear unless THEY BUY THIS TAPE!

6. Making room for this tape on the shelf. Owning this object. Under a certain age, are there any objects of recorded music other than the phone?

Anyway, thank you, Buzzfeed. This made me feel things. 

(via 35 Music Experiences You'll Never Have Again)

[tarintowers]

Take this quiz (in the form of a flowchart) to find out if you're really a real writer for real!

(via Are You A Real Writer? A Handy (And Hasty) Flowchart! « terribleminds: chuck wendig)

[tarintowers]

If you talk, tweet, think or write about writing more than you actually write: doin’ it wrong. If you always find an excuse why you’re not writing, then UR DOIN’ IT RONG. If you’re a writer who doesn’t read, ooh, holy shitkittens, you’re super-mega-ultra-wrong. If you’re a writer who only reads for pleasure, who never reads non-fiction, who refuses to read outside a single beloved genre or medium, yeah, you’re probably pretty wrong over there. If you hate bookstores, you’re Mayor Wrongdong of Wronglesburg, Population: YOU.

The moral of the story: Quit complaining, stop theorizing, and get to work, bub. 

Writers: You Might Be Doing It Wrong If… « terribleminds: chuck wendig

[roxanegay]

I don’t know when I started having empathy, even for terrible people. Or it’s that I’ve suffered enough that I’ve lost my tolerance for cruelty even when cruelty comes by way of humor. It surprises me when I have moments, like today, when I think, “Why are we laughing?" I wish it would stop. I miss being hard and cold and steel. I was, for years and it was as great as it was awful. I wish I could laugh at the things I used to laugh at. I wish I could be mean again. I mean, I can still be mean, don’t get me wrong, but now I feel guilty when it happens. When I was younger, I didn’t.

[tarintowers]

Writer Roxane Gay finds herself unexpectedly disturbed by the media's guffawing treatment of Geraldo Rivera's shirtless self-portrait, which he tweeted with the line "70 is the new 50." (Unfortunately, he has since deleted the tweet.)

Not only does he look great for his age, but why is it that we need to make fun of someone's body, ever, even if they're capable of being a capital-D D-bag?

[tarintowers]

Photographer Tom Hussey put together a breathtaking, emotional portfolio of portraits of elderly people gazing into the mirror and seeing reflections of themselves as they were as younger humans. File this under "I'm a sucker, and this made me cry."

Extra kudos to Hussey for selecting a diverse variety of subjects—ethnically as well as professionally diverse, the photos include a scientist, a nurse, and a firefighter.

(via Reflections: Portraits of the Elderly as They Once Were | Fstoppers)

[tarintowers]

Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life.

I admit I've been feeling a little guilty over how much time I've spent reading instead of writing this week. On the other hand, is that a humblebrag? I don't know, but this lovely article (which is mostly quotes from Annie Dillard's latest book) makes the case that workaholism from a writer as much as from anyone else is not necessarily the life one wants to live. 

How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Presence Over Productivity | Brain Pickings

[tarintowers]

I have four poems in the newest issue of. That online poetry magazine features only tanka, a short form Japanese poem similar to haiku, but with five lines. 

These poems are about the trees of my youth in the Appalachians and of my current adult life in San Francisco.