***

A barrier-breaking generation gives context to contemporary female life.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Etan Patz: The Boy New Yorkers Never Forgot


From my current memoir-in-progress:

There must have been something too, about the child Etan Patz, or maybe about his plight. This was the six-year-old boy who disappeared in lower Manhattan, it was 1979, while walking to the school bus stop – on his own for the first time. He most certainly was kidnapped; his photo was in all the papers and on posters all over the city for weeks and months and then years. While I was working in New York at the Times, I was often on the subway on my way to an assignment, and in the rocking motion of the cars and this forced downtime, I would scan the faces of the people on the other side of the car and daydream a bit, as everyone must. And sometimes I would try to imagine if I would recognize Etan Patz, as an adolescent, as a teenager. Would I be able to spot that particular upturned smile? Could I recognize him and grab him and say, I know you; you are Etan Patz, you were taken away by a bad person, but your mother is still looking for you. Do you remember? And I’d pull him out of his bewilderment and restore him to his mother. It bothered all of us New Yorkers terribly, that story. 


Headline today:

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

"I Went to Princeton, Bitch" A Video For Smart Women Everywhere

Check out the hilarious video by Nikki (2k) Muller: "The Ivy League Hustle (I Went to Princeton, Bitch)"
A slogan for women everywhere who still feel like they have to somehow mask their smarts. If a man is intimidated, that's HIS problem.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Women in Their Place

This New York Times editorial quickly captures all the ways in which the Republicans have shown they want women back in their place -- by undermining equal pay efforts, domestic violence protection and reproductive health services, including cancer screening. As far as I know, we still have the vote.

From the editorial: Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.