Link Round Up and Random Thoughts Before Scandal

My Luggage Saga with United Rainbow Book Fair in New York City

Link Round Up and Random Thoughts Before Scandal

Today, I accidentally published a post that storified my saga with United Airlines earlier this month. I was trying to make a feed work with Storify and WordPress and it did not really work and so a post was published that was a bunch of coded garbage. This happened in the middle of a busy day of work. I cleaned up the blog post but felt guilty all day and publishing garbage into the world. So this post is a bit of repentance. And a random assortment of links and thoughts.

I am speaking a bit publicly in the next week. First, I will be at Split This Rock in Washington, DC on Thursday. Do join me and more importantly come to the whole conference. It is a fantastic poetic touchstone that only happens every two years. You don’t want to miss it. (You also don’t want to miss my comments on my panel. I worked on them tonight and they are smart and provocative. I may post them here, but I may not have time given other commitments, so if you are local, come to the panel!)

Second, I will be speaking about lesbian separatism at the Women’s Liberation Conference at Boston University on Friday and Saturday. I have been writing and thinking a lot about lesbian separatism since I finished my dissertation and this paper will present some of that thinking which I am continuing to work on and shape into a journal article.

So those are the things on my calendar over the next week. Now, a few links of things on my mind.

Today, I was thrilled to see the excerpt from Martin Duberman’s new book Hold Tight Gently at the Advocate.com. This new dual biography examines the lives of Essex Hemphill and Michael Callen and is a gorgeous tribute to both men and an incisive rethinking of The history of AIDS. Look at the excerpt at the Advocate.com and pick up a copy of the book. You will not regret it.

I do not think that I have posted my most recent piece from the Huffington Post here, so click this link to read about Sinister Wisdom and the legacy of Adrienne Rich. While you are at Huffington Post, go ahead and follow me there. I have another column coming out at Huffington Post in the next few days.

While I am enjoying blogging at Huffington Post, I am thinking a lot about Yasmin Nair’s critique of this work as scab work. Read her very smart analysis here.

Finally, I am thinking a lot about happiness and it’s absence. I know that I want to have happiness and joy in my life. I do not have enough of either right now and so am thinking about why that is and what can be done to change that. I have no clear answers right now, but hope to find some. One fact I realized in the past few weeks is that while I was in my PhD program, I do not recall ever being told I am a good writer. I can recall a litany of moments where my thinking and my writing were found lacking. The only moment I can remember a professor telling me that I was a good writer–that I had “a gift”–was the person who convinced me to do a MFA. I cherish that moment, not because I think that I have a gift rather because it was a moment of extraordinary care for me as a person. I do not observe or experience many of those in the daily rigors of academia.

So I am on a pursuit of happiness and joy and understanding why it is absent. When was the last time you experienced a moment of extraordinary care? When was the last time you cared for someone in an extraordinary way?