Patti Smith Inducted

Long overdue-Patti Smith has finally been inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

Plan B. Where's Yours?

Did you know that you can actually prevent unintended pregnancy if your primary birth control fails?

I want to make sure you have the facts about the emergency contraception Plan B®, also called the "morning-after" pill.

If every woman across the country knew about this option - what it does, how it works, and where they can get it - and used it correctly and consistently, then we could cut in half the three million unintended pregnancies in this country every year, and greatly reduce the need for abortion.

A little prevention goes a long way. Here are the facts:
Emergency contraception can prevent an unintended pregnancy after sex. It can even work up to five days after sex, but it's most effective if taken in the first 24-72 hours.

Emergency contraception does not cause abortion; rather, it prevents pregnancy by inhibiting ovulation, fertilization, or implantation before a pregnancy occurs. If a woman is already pregnant when she takes it, the medication won't harm the pregnancy.

Emergency contraception is a safe, effective birth-control option: that's why the FDA's scientific and medical experts said it should be available to women over the counter.

Plan B®, a brand of emergency contraception, is now available for sale at pharmacies without a prescription for women and men 18 and older. Just bring your ID to the pharmacist. If you are under 18, in most states you will need to get a prescription from a doctor. Nine states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington) have laws in place that allow specially trained pharmacists to dispense Plan B® to women without a prescription regardless of a woman's age. If you live in one of these states, ask your pharmacist for more information. You can visit www.not-2-late.com for more information about emergency contraception.
It's really that safe and that effective. If you are ever in a situation when you might need Plan B®, remember these important facts - and if you want to take them with you, download a Plan B® flyer here-http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/choice-action-center/take-action/plan-b/

With My Back to City Hall, On Yom Kippur

With My Back to City Hall, On Yom Kippur
by Jordan Davis

The gnats love the highway dividers,
the freelance pickup artists love the softness of the hands
of the women who love their friends
for walking with them laughing at the situation,
lost people love that I am sitting here looking likely to know,
I love it when I know, knowledge in the form of radar
loves the cloud cover which resembles my headache
in its topography and its effect on my mood,
the path which connects Park Row with Broadway
loves the paranoia which has closed off all the paths closer than this to City Hall,
Jesus loves the balding man in the striped windbreaker
who looks at my small script and remarks, "Jesus loves you,"
I love the silk suit and the hard candy curl hair
of the middle-aged black woman going by with her dry cleaning,
I love the sock the bundled baby recumbent in an Aprica stroller kicks out,
I love from a distance the speck this woman in the tight clothes
reaches to brush from her shoe, I love the effect it has on her distraction, I love
the ties tucked into the short sleeve shirts of the men returning from lunch,
I love the men and women my age strolling
with purpose in their Pumas, the feather tumbling by,
the drift of the hulking red haired woman with psoriatic elbows,
the opal in the hairbow of the Hindi woman in white robes
and the tuck of her husband's shirt into his jeans,
the ticking of the wheel of the bicycle rolled along
by a backpack-wearing man on foot,
the acceleration of an open-roof double-decker tour bus,
the ignition cough of the not-in-service kneeling bus,
the change clod and leaf-shuffle of the lower torsos
and the carry-out conveyor sound of a closed up shopping cart,
I love the downturned glance of the woman carrying the Borzoi College Reader crossing against the light and going into Pace,

may all these people have rent-stabilized leases,
and may they be registered to vote, in their unions,
and in the next election.


Poem from Million Poem Journal, reprinted with permission of Faux Press Books

One More Reason to Love Autumn

Mallomars are back!

Women's Equality Day

Join the Nation in Celebrating Women's Equality Day, August 26, 2006

Voting is the foundation of our democracy. In this election year with the Voting Rights Act stalled in Congress, we are reminded that barriers to voting can still exist.

Women's Equality Day, August 26th is an opportunity to celebrate the vote and also an opportunity to remind others, especially our children, about the importance of voting.

Women's Equality Day, August 26, 2006, honors the 86th anniversary of women in the United States winning the right to vote.
To win the right to vote, women conducted a 72-year political campaign.
This political campaign began at the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 and ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920.
When you vote, you are taking action to support this democracy and to recognize the unrelenting tenacity and spirit of women who worked to secure the vote for women in the United States

Dorothy Parker

Belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOROTHY PARKER (8/22/1893- 6/7/1967)

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

And my favorite:

The Flaw in Paganism

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

Epitaphe D'Un Chat

From Epitaphe D'Un Chat

For three days now I have lost
My well-being, my pleasure, all my love.
My heart is almost breaking in me
When I speak or when I write
For Belaud my small grey cat
Belaud who was, by chance,
Nature's most beautiful work
Thus made, as cats are made,
Belaud whose beauty was such
That she is worthy to be immortal.

-Joachim Du Bellay

What Do Teachers Make?

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing
life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with
education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from
someone who decided his best option in life was to become a
teacher?"

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about
teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a
teacher. Be honest. What do you make?"

Having a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You
want to know what I make?

"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I make a C+ feel like the winner of the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute
silence.

"You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them show all their work in math and perfect their final
drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you have the brains, and follow
your heart, and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you
make, you must pay no attention because they just didn't
learn."

I paused and continued.
"You want to know what I make?
'I MAKE A DIFFERENCE.'
What do you make?"

Quiz-No's

Quizno's claims that nutritional info is "not available." They only provide nutritional info for 2 sandwiches. Just 2 items on their entire menu. How hard is to calculate the nutritional value of tuna on bread? Boycott Quizno's and eat someplace that does have nutritional info available.

Here's the reply I received in response to my request for nutritional info:

I appreciate your interest in our menu here at Quizno's. I would like to point out that there is a list of selected sandwiches available on the website. The others are still being changed due to vendor changes and the data is not available as of yet. Please keep checking back for more information at www.quiznos.com

Sincerely,

Quizno's Customer Service Department

contact Quizno's and demand that they provide nutritional info:
http://www.quiznos.com/contactus0.asp?id=1&sid=9999

Parental Notification

Cartoon by Jack Ohman at Slate.com

More cartoons at: http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?topicid=74&image=0

Martina Newberry - Outlook

"If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"
—Tyler Durdin, Fight Club

I’ve been ripe all my life; it is my
mother’s gift to me along with her
madness—but “ripe" doesn’t make it now.

I want to see my taut flesh pulled down
over my frame, no softness, no place
that gives. I want to be pared down to

the bone, no places left to pinch. I
want to find birds with beaks like straws to
suck the fat from my fat places and

fly away with it. I want to be
an abstraction, a wraith, a nymph. I
want to be unreachable, remote

as the eye of a needle. I want
to leave sweat out of the equation
that is my body and put sylph in

its place. I want my bones to be
remarkable, my face chiseled marble.
If I am to return to the same

darkness from which I rose, I want to
do it with fingers like twigs, ankles—
impossible, hummingbird ankles.

This is the way to perfection, this
longing to be going, going, gone—
pushing hard against the adversity

of silken chocolates, sweet plums, red wine,
roasted chicken, buttered bread—things that
stay and will not be replaced by ice

water and grape skins. All this will come
back to haunt me. At some point, I will
not remember the difference between

shadows and radiance. I will only
be aware that light will shine through me,
ignoring flesh, headed toward paradise.


Martina Newberry’s most recent books are Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Arabesques Press 2006) and Running Like a Woman with Her Hair on Fire (Red Hen Press 2005). She was the winner of i.e. magazine’s Editor’s Choice Poetry Chapbook Prize for 1998: An Apparent, Approachable Light. She is also the author of Lima Beans and City Chicken: Memories of the Open Hearth, a memoir of her father (E.P. Dutton and Company 1989). Her work was included in the Ascent Aspirations anthology and has been widely published in many literary magazines. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Brian, and their cat, Gato.

thepedestalmagazine.com

For Shame, Nana!

iVillage - solutions for women

Good Housekeeping
Diet Central

Dieting Nutrition

Calorie Counts You Can't Trust

Calorie Counts You Can't Trust
Nana's all-natural oatmeal-raisin and sunflower cookies are yummy and huge. Both treats claim to have less than 300 calories. Since these babies are almost CD-size and more than half an inch thick, that count struck us as too good to be true. An independent laboratory confirmed that the oatmeal-raisin cookie, listed on the label as having only 264 calories, actually has 460! The sunflower flavor, labeled as 240, has 436. What's more, the sunflower cookie has twice as much fat as the label claims; the oatmeal flavor is almost as bad. Both are sold nationwide at Whole Foods Market and health food stores, so buyer, beware, unless you want to splurge.
—Delia A. Hammock, M.S., R.D.

© iVillage Inc. 1995-2005.

Contact Nana to complain at:
http://www.healthycrowd.com/default.asp?pageid=4209

Creatures From The Far Right

Creatures from the Far Right are out to win this November. But you can stop them.

Forget imaginary monsters under your bed... the real creatures are lurking in your government.

• Starring South Dakota Governor Rounds as Ban-a-thor!
• Featuring U.S. Senate candidate from Florida, Katherine Harris, as Swamp Thing!
• And many more of your most feared right-wing extremists...
Click here to watch our new movie:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/elections/creatures2/

Decisions, Decisions, What's a Girl to Do?

http://minimumsecurity.net/toons2006/6034.htm

Cartoon by Stehanie McMillan. Those really are/were the Senator's phone numbers.

A Partial History of My Stupidity-Edward Hirsch

A Partial History of My Stupidity

Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge
and I took the road to the right, the wrong one,
and got stuck in the car for hours.

Most nights I rushed out into the evening
without paying attention to the trees,
whose names I didn't know,
or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.

I couldn't relinquish my desires
or accept them, and so I strolled along
like a tiger that wanted to spring,
but was still afraid of the wildness within.

The iron bars seemed invisible to others,
but I carried a cage around inside me.

I cared too much what other people thought
and made remarks I shouldn't have made.
I was slient when I should have spoken.

Forgive me, philosophers,
I read the Stoics but never understood them.

I felt that I was living the wrong life,
spiritually speaking,
while halfway around the world
thousands of people were being slaughtered,
some of them by my countrymen.

So I walked on--distracted, lost in thought--
and forgot to attend to those who suffered
far away, nearby.

Forgive me, faith, for never having any.

I did not believe in God,
who eluded me.

-- Edward Hirsch

Hirsch on poetry:
I do believe that lyric poetry puts us in touch with something deep and mysterious within ourselves. It also evoke the grandeur of large mysteries beyond us. The earliest roots of poetry are in religion, and I suppose that poetry has never entirely lost its sense of the sacred. It still trembles with a holy air.

More at:
www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/hirsch/poetsonpoetry.html