gidget

whatever you are, be a good one. -abe lincoln

[tinydancergabs]

Joe's new bee-ff.

[tinydancergabs]

The struggle is real. In happier news, two cubes' worth are for reading and then possibly giving to a different loving home. #toomanybooks

[tinydancergabs]

Sisters are the best at advice. #nom #nomnom #suppertime

[tinydancergabs]

Conversations with my boyfriend never cease to be exciting!

[tinydancergabs]

Day 3 of this. Relaxing is not one of my talents, especially when it is "forced relaxation." I have a meeting tomorrow. It is extremely important, because education, y'all. I am missing yoga for "getting better."

[tinydancergabs]

🎶 The world I love, the trains I've hopped, to be part of the wave, can't stop 🎶

[tinydancergabs]

Foggy, pretty, and bright. #tgif

[tastefullyoffensive]

[oliviacirce]

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she Did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used— She stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and Would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and Found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering Questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag— And was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers— Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands— Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped —has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via oliviacirce)

When I lose hope in the world, I remember this poem.

(via bookoisseur)

I’m really glad I read that.

(via selfesteampunk)

[tinydancergabs]

It is time to go to sleep when... you are listening to White Rabbit because it is stuck in your head, not the other way around.

[trashkingisgonenow]

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who love the movie “Labyrinth”, and dirty rotten fucking liars.

[k-pagination]

We were grabbing a bite of lunch at a small cafe, in a mall, right across from a booth that sold jewelry and where ears could be pierced for a fee. A mother approaches with a little girl of six or seven years old. The little girl is clearly stating that she doesn’t want her ears pierced, that’s she’s afraid of how much it will hurt, that she doesn’t like earrings much in the first place. Her protests, her clear ‘no’ is simply not heard. The mother and two other women, who work the booth, begin chatting and trying to engage the little girl in picking out a pair of earrings. She has to wear a particular kind when the piercing is first done but she could pick out a fun pair for later. "I don’t want my ears pierced." "I don’t want any earrings." The three adults glance at each other conspiratorially and now the pressure really begins. She will look so nice, all the other girls she knows wear earrings, the pain isn’t bad. She, the child, sees what’s coming and starts crying. As the adults up the volume so does she, she’s crying and emitting a low wail at the same time. “I DON’T WANT MY EARS PIERCED.” Her mother leans down and speaks to her, quietly but strongly, the only words we could hear were ‘… embarrassing me.’ We heard, then, two small screams, when the ears were pierced. Little children learn early and often that ‘no doesn’t mean no.’ Little children learn early that no one will stand with them, even the two old men looking horrified at the events from the cafeteria. Little girls learn early and often that their will is not their own. No means no, yeah, right. Most often, for kids and others without power, ”no means force.”

from "No Means Force" at Dave Hingsburger’s blog.

This is important. It doesn’t just apply to little girls and other children, though it often begins there.

For the marginalized, our “no’s” are discounted as frivolous protests, rebelliousness, or anger issues, or we don’t know what we’re talking about, or we don’t understand what’s happening.

When “no means force” we become afraid to say no.

(via k-pagination)

[rupelover]

[bbcone]

Filming is underway on our adaptation of JK Rowling’s bestseller The Casual Vacancy, in association with HBO.

[tinydancergabs]

So @lesserjoke probably won't come to the movies with me to see this.

[thebloggerbloggerfun]

Just tried Turkish Delight for the first time. 

It was good, but not “Sell out my family to the White Queen” good. 

[chinuplittlepup]

[reynaderoma]

actual 10 year old

[fullpraxisnow]

American Foreign Policy 

[fullpraxisnow]

“The absurdity runs deep: America is using American military equipment to bomb other pieces of American military equipment halfway around the world. The reason the American military equipment got there in the first place was because, in 2003, the US had to use its military to rebuild the Iraqi army, which it just finished destroying with the American military. The American weapons the US gave the Iraqi army totally failed at making Iraq secure and have become tools of terror used by an offshoot of al-Qaeda to terrorize the Iraqis that the US supposedly liberated a decade ago. And so now the US has to use American weaponry to destroy the American weaponry it gave Iraqis to make Iraqis safer, in order to make Iraqis safer.”

— Max Fisher | The US bombing its own guns perfectly sums up America’s total failure in Iraq