spiders across the stars

ckritz: the red house is Pablo Nerudas’

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:27:08 -0400

the red house is Pablo Nerudas’

"But our leadership does not really get what is at stake. Even in my relatively enlightened corner of..."

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:22:17 -0400

“

But our leadership does not really get what is at stake. Even in my relatively enlightened corner of the aid business, people are busy just simply being busy. Defending their little corner. Stuck building systems that are not for people but for abstracted automatons.

Our leaders are not serious about scanning the horizon, about admitting that the public is right to scrutinize aid. I hear none of the kind of serious soul-searching that the moment requires.

We repeat transcendent values like dignity and justice as mantras yet we are blinded by bureaucracy and relentless self-interest. We keep running into the breach and doing the work that governments must do for their own citizens. As much as Dambisa Moyo annoys me, why can’t we set a date for when this should be over? What would it look like if INGO staff actually dedicated themselves to the sensible cliché of “putting themselves out of a job”?

People all over the world want to feel good, or even maybe just more ok. Even though most know humanity is screwed in the long run, people yearn to go where the energy is. Yet INGOs keep appealing to them with the same negative images, and collecting cold data for their institutional donor patrons. Individuals, and I would venture even taxpayers, do not need experts to spew evaluation data at them. They want to feel a stake in what is generative, what is life affirming. Statistics have a role, but their role is a backstop. People in the US and Europe want to support others in their struggles to make things better, and they want to see the connections between here and there.

”

#inspiration

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:02:28 -0400

#inspiration

Harvard and Class

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:44:14 -0400

Harvard and Class

"His nipples peeped at Rahel over the top of the boundary wall like a sad St. Bernard’s eyes."

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:13:00 -0400

“His nipples peeped at Rahel over the top of the boundary wall like a sad St. Bernard’s eyes.”

- Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

newsweek: Note to self: add surname-stenciled moose antlers to...

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:16:28 -0400

newsweek:

Note to self: add surname-stenciled moose antlers to this tumblr’s Christmas list this year. A fantastic outtake from this issue’s cover shoot.

Photo

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:45:10 -0400

TOMS was in the process of setting up a partnership with Focus on the Family as an international...

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:48:41 -0400

TOMS was in the process of setting up a partnership with Focus on the Family as an international distributor. This is an organization known for its anti-gay rhetoric/actions, etc. While there was some debate regarding whether this is a problem - i.e. some argue that donating shoes shouldn’t have anything to do with a “political” agenda and so there’s really no problem - I find that working with an organization - regardless of the number of lives it claims to save in the developing world - with a fundamentally flawed approach to human rights to be incredibly problematic. Quiet partnerships such as these not only legitimate anti-gay attitudes (which, for the record, is a human rights issue, not a political one), but also foist those views, by association and networks, on the people of the developing world. It’s still a noblesse-oblige-y-type of imperialism, however you slice it.

Anyways, TOMs issued an apology/retraction today, saying that there was and would be no partnership, but I found this quote on Jezebel to be particularly telling:

Perhaps another explanation is simpler: Mycoskie and TOMS knew what they were getting on board with, but didn’t think anyone would notice or care. Now they know.

Photo

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:33:12 -0400

"We moved to Indonesia in 2007 to help develop a school that was based around a curriculum of..."

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:06:55 -0400

“

We moved to Indonesia in 2007 to help develop a school that was based around a curriculum of sustainability. It was a fantasy that strongly appealed to me. Growing my own lettuce in volcanic soil. Creating a community of teachers and students. Having my children learn another language and experience a vibrant part of the world. Hiring someone to give me a hand with the children so I could find more time to write.

It called on the spirit of “Walden,” an intentionality of living, blended with a darker dose of the colonial: I could hire help for very little and not spend all day attached to a sponge. Anything freighted with that much desire and contradiction is bound to fail, and my dream soon did. What’s consoling is that even though I gained little of what I’d hoped for, I was happily changed in ways that I had neither planned nor expected.

”

- Charlotte Bacon

Photo

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:59:24 -0400

kiss-painting!

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:41:30 -0400

kiss-painting!

Sign that I am growing up: snack time today consisted of prosciutto on sea-salt crackers garnished...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:25:12 -0400

Sign that I am growing up: snack time today consisted of prosciutto on sea-salt crackers garnished with spiced fig and red wine confit.

Photo

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:58:01 -0400

ack obama-adorbs

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:45:15 -0400

ack obama-adorbs

What I need

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:38:58 -0400

What I need

"$20 billion! Indian Temple's secret vaults yield treasure"

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 10:18:38 -0400

"$20 billion! Indian Temple's secret vaults yield treasure":

And that would be more than India’s education budget…

"IN an essay published in 1895 called “How to Tell a Story,” Mark Twain chastised writers who use..."

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:43:25 -0400

“IN an essay published in 1895 called “How to Tell a Story,” Mark Twain chastised writers who use “whooping exclamation-points” that reveal them laughing at their own humor, “all of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.””

- Dear Mark Twain, you and i, we would be besties

cool lady

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:39:26 -0400

cool lady

Video

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:15:18 -0400