Rita Arens's Blog, page 19
August 14, 2014
Amplify
I had some hard conversations at BlogHer '14 with white women who thought the women of color at Voices of the Year were exaggerating their feelings of otherness. It's true, world: White people still think people of color are making this stuff up.
The events of this week in Ferguson, Missouri, once again magnify the truth: My friends of color are not exaggerating. White people may not see it because we are not treated this way, but stigma/skepticism/suspicion is still their reality in 2014.
We...
August 12, 2014
That Facebook Conversation
Last night I made my best friend meet me twenty miles closer to my house than she originally intended because on Saturday, I broke my ass. Okay, I don't know if I broke it, because I can't get in to my doctor until Thursday, but I fell backwards on tile and bounced, so let's just say it together: OW OW OW OW OW. Also, I really hate driving right now.
I tell you this partly in an obvious bid for sympathy (hello, I'm supposed to be training for another half-marathon, not trying to type with my...
August 5, 2014
When Talk Gets Cheap
When I was a kid, my uncles and aunts and my gran would call from far-away places and all action in the house would cease as we passed the phone from person to person, sometimes picking up a second extension that rendered the first person mouse-voiced for the remainder of the call. Time morphed from bulbous drops of homework hell to the fast lane where every minute cost thirty-five cents.
We couldn't get enough of that long-distance.
When I was a senior in high school, my boyfriend went off t...
July 30, 2014
On Intrusive Thoughts
When the little angel was a baby, we lived in This Old House. If you're new here, you may not know that This Old House was a beautiful Arts & Crafts with a screened-in porch in the Waldo neighborhood of Kansas City. It was built in 1921. It had push-button light switches that sometimes threw sparks, it was not ducted for air conditioning (making my home office nearly unbearable in the summer) and it had decorative metal grates with holes big enough to pass my fist through, lovely as they were...
July 28, 2014
Gone PhotoBlog: BlogHer 2014
Y'all, I am so tired. I got home around seven last night, dumped my stuff out of my suitcase and handed it to my husband, who left for his third week-long business trip of the month this morning. But I had a great time moderating the Getting Your (First) Great Book Deal panel and the leading the Grammar Clinic with the amazing Arnebya.
Why didn't I get her looking at the camera? Or better yet, with me? I don't know, either.
I ran into my friends Maria Niles and Katherine Stone.
July 16, 2014
Watching 'THIN'
I'm watching a documentary about eating disorder treatment called THIN. I think I understand better why so much in-patient treatment doesn't work.
I don't see staff showing compassion. They refer to the patients as antidepressant junkies, even the suicidal ones. The parents seem clueless. I'm angry, watching this.
I get 3-4 emails a week from people who have read my ED posts. I can't believe there is so little out there that is real. I want to wrap my arms around these women and girls (and so...
July 10, 2014
In Celebration of Katherine Stone
In preparing to write this post honoring my friend and activist/entrepreneur, Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress, I searched my gmail, which has also archived my old hotmail account, to see when we first found each other. I dug up an email from Katherine dated April 15, 2009, which would've been a few weeks after my daughter's fifth birthday and about a year after I started getting help and taking medication for my anxiety disorder. Katherine wrote:
This Mother's Day - Sunday, May 10 --...
July 8, 2014
The Incredible Thickness of Summer Nights
I can't resist going outside on summer nights.
It seems untenable to me that these flowers I planted six years ago can grow now as tall as I am, choking off the space around them with their stretching blooms. I didn't know what I had done.
No matter how old I grow, on summer nights, I am seventeen again, pressing my face to the thick air, listening to the tree frogs and the owls and the cacophony of insects that create a din where in winter there is only silence and cold. The cold sometimes c...
July 6, 2014
It Comes, the Rain
I arrived back from my aunt's funeral around six. We'd planned to rent a pontoon all day, enjoy the lake before camping. That didn't happen, but death comes when it comes, nothing to be done about that. My aunt was a wonderful woman, and despite the Pick's disease that robbed her of her speech, what I remember most from her was conversation.
I returned from the airport still in my funeral dress and immediately changed to camping gear. We managed to pitch the tent and get down burgers and s'mo...
July 1, 2014
Four Answers About My Writing Process
On Writing
I recently did a Skype author interview with my niece's English class. They asked when I started writing, and I realized I was younger than their 14-year-old selves when my fingers started itching. I began with poetry heavily influenced by Shel Silverstein and progressed to thinly veiled plagiarism short stories in the style of Ray Bradbury. After being published in a chapbook that I th...
