Dear friends,
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the Women's March; we have lived and resisted through nearly a full year of the Trump administration. This oral history of the Women's March, which I reviewed in late 2017, is a beautiful collaborative work of art. I highly recommend reading it and/or gifting it to the feminists in your life.
As I mentioned in my bonus photoletter, on January 1st I launched Persistent Stitches over at my #AmSewing website, an attempt to harness my self-care ritual of crafting in aid of the resistence. Three of the five pieces I have made so far have been claimed, and $100.00 raised for social justice organizations: Lamda Legal, Black Lives Matter, Boston, and the Massachusetts Bail Fund. And I'm currently working on three commissions that will raise a total of $145.00 more. And my dear friend Molly has joined me as a Persistent Stitcher as well! Her first contribution to the site is this little knitted friend, who can be adopted in exchange for a $25.00 donation to RECLAIM! an organization that supports LGBTQ youth in Minnepolis.
My goal in 2018 is to have at least one new work up on the site every Monday -- so think of Persistent Stitches when you're shopping for gifts this year!
I've been ejoying the rapid turnover of cross stitch projects in comparison to my months-long quilt project of last summer, and have acquired quite a stash of embroidery floss to play with. Hanna bought me Really Cross Stitch ("for when you just want to stab something a lot") for Christmas and I have been having fun with mixing and matching elements from that book for some of these projects. I also discovered the website Stitch Fiddle which allows you to create cross stitch charts from images or your own design (I use the freebie version, which allows up to 15 active charts at a time). I'm also experimenting with ombré floss from Sublime Stitching and for a couple of upcoming projects will be trying out sparkly floss to give things a bit of a shine -- stay tuned!
Over the winter holidays, our Twelvetide Drabbles fundraiser was also a success; the final result was $154.00 raised for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, thanks to 10 writers who contributed 77 "drabble" works (100-word stories) in 23 different fandoms. I look forward to using the fourth annual Twelvetide Drabbles challenge (beginning 23 December 2018) for a similar effort.
One of the best things that has happened in my reading life so far this year is Cat Sebastian's latest novel, It Takes Two to Tumble which is a regency romance about a widowed sea captain with three rambunctious children who falls in love with the village vicar -- and is fallen in love with, in return, naturally. Not only are the two lovers and the three children utterly beguiling, but the entire cast of secondary characters is wonderful as well. I particularly enjoyed the vicar's poet father and brother -- both of whom are shamelessly enabling.
Basically, Cat Sebastian has stolen my heart and refused to give it back. I have already pre-ordered book two.
The first two work weeks of 2018 were interrupted by snow days, paid holidays, and a sick day (thanks migraine!) but I still managed to finish Critical Race Theory: An Introduction and an excellent article "The Legacy of Lady Bountiful: White Women in the Library" by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (which you can download free here). I have also been trying to catch up on the last five-to-seven years worth of wrangling in the archives world about the place of social justice values in professional practice. I have been struck by how dominated by men that conversation remains (at least in the scholarly literature).
I received my first batch of 2018 advance review copies from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal last week and am excited to be digging in to: Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock by Amy Werbel; Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew; Tomorrow Will be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride; and Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice by Rebecca Todd Peters.
Over the past year I've been thinking a lot about white supremacy and sex, specifically I've been wondering how being a white supremacist shapes intimate relationships -- the question I think of as "how do racists fuck?" The books I've read about white supremacy in the twentieth century United States have grappled to some extent with gender -- with how white womanhood and white manhood are shaped by white supremacist beliefs and the material conditions of a white supremacist social order. But few of these titles have considered what a sexual and reproductive politics looks like within white supremacist families. Just this week, I began reading Carol Mason's Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics that I hope will speak to answer some of these questions. However, I have yet to find a book analogous to Christians Under Covers for the white supremacist subculture. I probably don't want to know, but I feel like it's important to reckon with how a belief in one's own racial superiority shapes sexual intimacy.
A few essays related to the #MeToo moment that have moved me:
I Started the Media Men List. My Name is Moira Donegan.
Why Does Dating Men Make Me Feel Like Shit? (This came out a year ago, but I can't stop thinking about it.)
In the Midst of #MeToo, What Type of Man Do You Want To Be?
...and everything in this thread from writer Rebecca Traister (click on the link to see the list of women-and-rage essays):
Fill my days with blessed unrest
And my nights with dreams of justice
Make me a vessel for the turning of the tide
In solidarity,
Anna
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the Women's March; we have lived and resisted through nearly a full year of the Trump administration. This oral history of the Women's March, which I reviewed in late 2017, is a beautiful collaborative work of art. I highly recommend reading it and/or gifting it to the feminists in your life.
As I mentioned in my bonus photoletter, on January 1st I launched Persistent Stitches over at my #AmSewing website, an attempt to harness my self-care ritual of crafting in aid of the resistence. Three of the five pieces I have made so far have been claimed, and $100.00 raised for social justice organizations: Lamda Legal, Black Lives Matter, Boston, and the Massachusetts Bail Fund. And I'm currently working on three commissions that will raise a total of $145.00 more. And my dear friend Molly has joined me as a Persistent Stitcher as well! Her first contribution to the site is this little knitted friend, who can be adopted in exchange for a $25.00 donation to RECLAIM! an organization that supports LGBTQ youth in Minnepolis.
My goal in 2018 is to have at least one new work up on the site every Monday -- so think of Persistent Stitches when you're shopping for gifts this year!
I've been ejoying the rapid turnover of cross stitch projects in comparison to my months-long quilt project of last summer, and have acquired quite a stash of embroidery floss to play with. Hanna bought me Really Cross Stitch ("for when you just want to stab something a lot") for Christmas and I have been having fun with mixing and matching elements from that book for some of these projects. I also discovered the website Stitch Fiddle which allows you to create cross stitch charts from images or your own design (I use the freebie version, which allows up to 15 active charts at a time). I'm also experimenting with ombré floss from Sublime Stitching and for a couple of upcoming projects will be trying out sparkly floss to give things a bit of a shine -- stay tuned!
Over the winter holidays, our Twelvetide Drabbles fundraiser was also a success; the final result was $154.00 raised for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, thanks to 10 writers who contributed 77 "drabble" works (100-word stories) in 23 different fandoms. I look forward to using the fourth annual Twelvetide Drabbles challenge (beginning 23 December 2018) for a similar effort.
One of the best things that has happened in my reading life so far this year is Cat Sebastian's latest novel, It Takes Two to Tumble which is a regency romance about a widowed sea captain with three rambunctious children who falls in love with the village vicar -- and is fallen in love with, in return, naturally. Not only are the two lovers and the three children utterly beguiling, but the entire cast of secondary characters is wonderful as well. I particularly enjoyed the vicar's poet father and brother -- both of whom are shamelessly enabling.
Basically, Cat Sebastian has stolen my heart and refused to give it back. I have already pre-ordered book two.
The first two work weeks of 2018 were interrupted by snow days, paid holidays, and a sick day (thanks migraine!) but I still managed to finish Critical Race Theory: An Introduction and an excellent article "The Legacy of Lady Bountiful: White Women in the Library" by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (which you can download free here). I have also been trying to catch up on the last five-to-seven years worth of wrangling in the archives world about the place of social justice values in professional practice. I have been struck by how dominated by men that conversation remains (at least in the scholarly literature).
I received my first batch of 2018 advance review copies from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal last week and am excited to be digging in to: Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock by Amy Werbel; Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew; Tomorrow Will be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride; and Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice by Rebecca Todd Peters.
Over the past year I've been thinking a lot about white supremacy and sex, specifically I've been wondering how being a white supremacist shapes intimate relationships -- the question I think of as "how do racists fuck?" The books I've read about white supremacy in the twentieth century United States have grappled to some extent with gender -- with how white womanhood and white manhood are shaped by white supremacist beliefs and the material conditions of a white supremacist social order. But few of these titles have considered what a sexual and reproductive politics looks like within white supremacist families. Just this week, I began reading Carol Mason's Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics that I hope will speak to answer some of these questions. However, I have yet to find a book analogous to Christians Under Covers for the white supremacist subculture. I probably don't want to know, but I feel like it's important to reckon with how a belief in one's own racial superiority shapes sexual intimacy.
A few essays related to the #MeToo moment that have moved me:
I Started the Media Men List. My Name is Moira Donegan.
Why Does Dating Men Make Me Feel Like Shit? (This came out a year ago, but I can't stop thinking about it.)
In the Midst of #MeToo, What Type of Man Do You Want To Be?
...and everything in this thread from writer Rebecca Traister (click on the link to see the list of women-and-rage essays):
The worship team at Arlington St. Church uses the work of musician Zo Tobi quite frequently and as the year turned I couldn't stop thinking about his song "Blessed Unrest," which is what I will leave you all with on this anniversary of the Women's March. Let us go forward in struggle.I'm writing a book about women and anger, so the topic is close to my heart, and I just want to say that the pieces being published right now on this topic are so smart and thrilling they make my heart beat faster. This week alone...
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) January 17, 2018
Fill my days with blessed unrest
And my nights with dreams of justice
Make me a vessel for the turning of the tide
In solidarity,
Anna