I've taken a different path

Howdy. As you can see from the timestamp of the previous blog post, I don't blog here anymore. Feel free to read what's here, but also connect with me in these places:

twitter.com/christyrobinson
instagram.com/christyrobinson
facebook.com/christyrobinson
And other spots, found at about.me/christyrobinson.
You can see my (not-often-updated) running blog here, too.

Ta-ta,

C

Don't blame men because you shave your legs

I received an email forward from a friend and former co-worker that got me thinking about women's deflection tendencies. The email is a list of why men are never depressed. At least half, maybe more, of the bullet points are actually ways in which we make ourselves depressed, but acknowledging that would put the responsibility back on me and I've got a cut and color at 3 o'clock and a wedding to plan all by my lonesome, leaving no room to tend to my own happiness. (Mind you, the friend who sent this, Michelle, is quite a cool, independent chick with a better sense of humor than someone like me who over-thinks things like email forwards.) Take a look. The italics are me.

WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED:

Men Are Just Happier People — What do you expect from such simple creatures?

• His last name stays put.
— So did mine. And yours would have, too, if you hadn't changed it.

• The garage is all his.
— Probably because you haven't declared that you need to share that space. No room for two? Save up and build your own dang lady cave.

• Wedding plans take care of themselves.
— Planning a wedding is no fun and I wasn't any more stoked about planning our wedding than Brian was. After a year of engagement I informed him that we simply were never going to get married if I had to plan the thing alone. Brian ended up planning at least half of it and did a great job.

• Chocolate is just another snack.
— Eat the chocolate, sweetie. I guarantee you it's not him scrutinizing your extra roll of cush you've got underneath that trapeze top.

• He can be president.
— I also guarantee you that every time a woman has been up for the position, a deciding factor of women voters chose the male candidate. Check your own prejudices before blaming this one on the guys in this modern era.

• He can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
— So can you. What are you doing wearing a frilly bra to a (I take it they mean) amusement park, anyway? Throw a sports bra on under that white tee and go have, oh you know, fun.

• Car mechanics tell him the truth.
— Car mechanics only lie when it's obvious the customer has no clue about this really big, expensive thing she owns and is dependent on men to tell her things about. Don't know anything about cars? Ask your boyfriend to show you a few things. Ask your dad. Ask your cousin. Ask Google. Ask Auto Repair for Dummies. It's the exact same way men come to know about cars and not get lied to.

• The world is his urinal.
— I guess the world could be your urinal, too, if you dropped your drawers and popped a squat. We don't have the same external plumbing but we can pee in non-orthodox places if we have to. The men I know don't pee in the bushes just to crack themselves up; they have to go, and there isn't a reasonable alternative within driving or walking distance. Don't blame them because you'd rather risk a UTI.

• He never has to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky.
— I'm pretty sure I've done this before. And yes, it would have been because the men before me made the whole room their urinal, not just the toilet, and yes, that's gross. If traveling to the next gas station is not an option, just line the seat with toilet paper/hover, pee and get out of there. You're taking a bio break, not attending a spa appointment.

• He doesn't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
— Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty. I got that from a former boyfriend, because I asked.

• Same work, more pay.
— No one's going to ride in on a white horse and pay you more money.
— Find out what someone with your experience in your position in your geographic area should be making. Raise hell until you get it.
— Stop being a sweetie-pie at work, during interviews and during annual reviews.
— Millions of women before you have already done the hard work of making equal work/equal pay possible. You spit in their face when you struggle internally with a success fraud complex then passive-aggressively blame The Man for paying you unequally.
— Still having trouble with this? One of the reasons this country is great is we are a nation of laws. We have a court system. Use it.

• Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100.
— Brian's tux rental costs $150, my wedding dress cost $79 (Target Bridal) and and I have to say, I looked pretty darn cute. I got a hug from a friend who accidentally got lipstick on my dress. She freaked out; I just laughed and ate cake. Your wedding dress only costs $5,000 because you apparently insisted on having a $5K wedding dress. That's not your man's fault.

• People never stare at his chest when they're talking to him.
— Do you embarrass the jack-A who does this to you by calling him out, or do you sheepishly continue talking, hoping he magically becomes a gentleman before the conversation's over? Yeah, that's what I thought.

• He can never be pregnant.
— Don't want to become pregnant? Neither do I, so let's don't. Don't want to become pregnant but want children? There's a process called adoption.

• Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
— This is only a problem if you don't like long phone conversations yet find yourselves constantly entangled in them. Again, AT&T's not going to ride in on a white horse and magically drop the call for you.

• One mood all the time.
— Ok, I'll give you that one.

• He can open all his own jars.
— What, if there's no man around, the jar of pasta sauce simply isn't going to get opened? Lame. Whack at the side of the lid with the back of a butcher knife, get one of those rubber jar-opener dillies and. open. the. dang. jar.

• He gets extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
— Because instead of credit, you keep giving him extra credit, driving home the message that he's going above and beyond his duties as a human being. I guarantee it's not his buddies cooing and clapping when he changes his own baby's diaper or when he picks up his underwear.

• If someone forgets to invite him, they can still be friends.
— Are you that petty or just not grown up yet? Don't flay him for not bringing the wine to your petty-party just because you haven't learned how to keep friends yet.

• His underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.
— Girl, please. A 6-pack of Hanes Her Way string bikinis cost $8 at most. Trust me, if you're taking your clothes off in his line of sight, he's not going to care nor will he notice if you spent half a paycheck on something more expensive than that. If the underwear is just for you, 100 percent cotton is much, much nicer to your lady parts, anyway.

• He almost never has strap problems in public.
— Are we still worrying about this? I thought, along with pantyhose, we stopped obsessing whether or not it's "snowing up north" around 15 years ago.

• He can play with toys all his life.
— And you're not able to play with toys because ...??

• One wallet and one pair of shoes — one color for all seasons.
• Wrinkles add character.
• He only has to shave his face and neck.
• He is unable to see wrinkles in his clothes.
• Everything on his face stays its original color.
• The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
• Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
• A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
• New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle his feet. ...

My response to anything related to modern American beauty standards: These are ALL the fault of women, not men. These are the standards we've created because we keep trying to outdo each other for the attention of men, plain and simple. When we ran out of ideas on how to distinguish ourselves, the plastic surgery industry was invented. These time-consuming, expensive and often-painful standards won't stop until we stop. But it's like nuclear disarmament — we don't want to disarm until and unless we're absolutely positive everyone else is going to disarm, lest we get caught with armpit stubble and bare toenails while the inspectors overlooked another woman's secret stash of concealer and highlight foils. So if you're going to play these games, play and stop whining or go rogue and rock that unibrow.

— I don't wear shoes that mangle my feet anymore — I'm either going to pay for the good stuff or wear flats, running shoes or flip-flops. No one is hiding in my closet with a shoe horn ready to force a ridiculous pair of shoes on me.
— We are the ones who insist on painting our faces like some daily indigenous tribal ceremony and shaving/lasering ourselves into hairless oblivion. Sometimes I lament to Brian that my legs are sooo hairy, I'm too disgusting to go into public like this with you, I'm sorry my legs are covered by the Black Forest, etc. He'll feel a leg, get a confused look on his face and grunt something of a "meh" that I translate as, "Sister, that's your own neurosis; don't look at me like it's my fault you regularly eradicate 80 percent of the hair on your person in a desperate attempt to infanticize yourself."
— Wonder how men seem to have more money than women? It's not because they're making vastly more money than you, although if you're a meek little mouse come pay-raise time, that probably contributes. It's because you're alloting so much more of your paycheck to all those clothes and all those shoes and all that hair color and all those creams and serums that, by the way, is what's making you pack so heavily, too.

===

I wear makeup, shave my legs (which I hate, but I'm the one swiping the razor up and down) and I keep Clairol's Natural Instincts in business. If these things are as much of an annoyance as we claim, let's place the blame for performing them where it belongs, the chica in the mirror. Accept responsibility for what you make of your life, because that's partly what equality is about.

I love all my ladies and desire the best for each and every one of you! Go forth and conquer your corner of the world! Mwah!!

Outtakes from my Oregon/Washington trip

Yes, it's been a while since I've graced these pages. Enough about that.

Ten days ago I returned from a six-day trip to the Portland, Oregon, area and Olympic National Park in Washington to the north. Here are my outtakes, thoughts and advice on Being Sacagawea for a week.

Photos, days 1-2

Portland, Oregon
• One of the coolest cities in the U.S. I've ever visited. Extremely walkable, great public transit options, slap-your-face scenery (even in the city), awesome eating, green-conscious. Except hardly anyone used umbrellas even though it was raining most of the time. This intrigued me.
• I'd never stayed in a hostel until this trip, but I received confirmation from others more seasoned than myself that the Northwest Portland hostel is a good one. It's, you know, a hostel, so don't expect Andes candies on your pillow or anything. Or non-disgusting shower curtains. I did pay the lowest rate, after all — a low-season $20 for a bed in an eight-person dorm. But the staff is very friendly, overall cleanliness isn't an issue, there are several lounge areas and kitchens, and the location can't be beat (hopelessly hip Nob Hill neighborhood, walkable to lots of stuff). If I have one piece of advice to pass along re: hostels from my one night of hosteling, it's this: Unless you sleep like the dead or own a high-end pair of earplugs, spring for a private room vs. a dorm bunk. People snore like the Second Coming.
• Visit
— Forest Park (it's the largest forested natural area within city limits in the U.S. and dadgum gorgeous)
— Powell's Books, Skyline Restaurant (best butterscotch milkshake AND chocolate malt ever)
— Pittock Mansion (didn't get to go but heard it's worth a look)
— World Cup Coffee & Tea (across the street from the hostel)

Coastal Oregon
• I took U.S. Route 26 west to the coast and caught U.S. Highway 101 north. Just north of that junction is adorable Seaside, Oregon. I stopped to check out the Pacific Ocean; first time I'd seen it that far north, and first time in a long time I'd seen it at all. Misty, dramatic, gorgeous. But, had I known at the time, I might have gone out of my way a bit to the south on 101 to Cannon Beach, Oregon. And not just because that's where the La Push beach scenes in Twilight were filmed, heh heh. It apparently sports some amazing sea stacks and the scenic Ecola State Park.
• Visit
— C by the Sea gifts in Seaside
— Pacific Way Bakery & Cafe in Gearhart

Southwest Washington
• My non-researched, drive-through observation of the difference between northwest Oregon and southwest Washington (and on up to Forks, Wa.): It seems that the towns in the SW Wa have allowed logging to solely define their existence. It would be different if a) logging didn't remove the pride-fostering visual cues of the region's best natural resource, or if b) logging created jobs that allowed families to live more than just a hair above the poverty line. But a drive around logging towns like Aberdeen and Hoquiam prove the detriment of placing all your eggs in one, big sad-making basket. You see shadows of cute-towns-that-could-be behind the code-iffy homes and boarded-up storefronts. Aberdeen and Hoquiam, for example, are located on the water (Grays Harbor, I believe). They could leverage that fact and other natural draws to bring in tourists, investors and permanent, monied residents. And where the actual logging takes place? Could the industry be any more aesthetically ham-handed? They leave the landscape looking like a mix of Beruit/shock-and-awe/Hiroshima/California-wildfire/Tank-Girl-apocolypse/Paul-Bunyun-vomits-napalm. Mountain sides either look like someone took a razor down the middle of a head of long, lustrous hair for a reverse-mohawk, or at best they look like a Disney-inspired Christmas tree farm with their eighth-growth, 20-year-old, uniform-height, perfectly-spaced trees. Visually, it's just sad, grotesque, and makes me wonder why people who would allow their surrounding natural beauty to become so unnaturally ugly. And please. Don't talk to me about the "jobs" the industry provides when your towns look like the Flint, Michigan, of the Northwest. The industry is giving you so much less to work with than what God originally provided. You're allowing the timber lobby to pick that nature gift clean in exchange for food stamp living. I don't know the exact answer. I don't exactly live in an area widely known for scenic beauty. But it's obvious that the blanaced answer isn't being lived out in southwest Washington.
• Visit: Keep driving.

Photos, days 3-4

Olympic National Park
• Once you're actually IN the park proper, you don't have to worry about shaking your head into a crick like you did through all the land-rape on your way up. It's gorgeous.
• I stayed near Quinault Rain Forest. The other rain forest is the Hoh Rain Forest, which seemed to be the more well-known. I asked a couple of locals, and they both claimed that you won't miss anything by seeing one over the other. I visited the Quinault Rain Forest and was terribly, terribly pleased.
• I recommend the place I stayed, Lake Quinault Lodge, but you MUST know two things that I did not before I settled into my room: 1. There are NO telephones in the rooms. You likely will have no cell phone coverage while you're there, so this amounts to being phoneless while in your room. Be ready to leave your room and walk to the front desk if you need to speak to a lodge employee. 2. There is no wifi in the rooms, only in the lobby (which is nice: tables, comfy chairs, couches, huge fireplace). BUT: I slept in one of the king-sized fireplace rooms, close to the main lodge where the lobby is located. I got one to two bars of connection most of the time. But don't depend on that.
• The restaurant attached to the restaurant, the Roosevelt Room, is yummy but somewhat pricey. I took a Seattle Times travel story's advice and had the sweet potato pancakes for breakfast, and they were great. I didn't have dinner there, however, so I can't speak for it.
• There is no room service here. I did carry a globe of Washington red (pinot noir?) from the Roosevelt to my room for a hot bath my first night, however.
• They serve Starbucks coffee. I mention this because I was pretty astounded at the lack of Starbucks on my trip, seeing as how this was the general birthplace of the chain. It was awesome to see so many independent coffee joints and, even more numerous, drive-through coffee stands instead. I guess that's just places like Dallas where independent = scarce.
• Please eat at least one meal across the street at the Mercantile. The pizza is amazing, but they serve just about anything else you're in the mood for if not that.

West of Olympic National Park (including Forks!)
• Lake Quinault Lodge is managed by Aramark (yes, the company you most associate with Styrofoam cups and other concession-stand products), which also manages other lodges in the park, like Kalaloch Lodge (trivia: Kalaloch is pronounced "clay-lock"). It's located 33 miles northwest of Quinault and includes a main lodge and individual cabins located directly on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Take pictures in the white gazebo, but don't play too closely to the side or you'll meet your maker in a pile of drift logs.
• A few miles to the north, 101 takes you away from the coast a bit. That takes you to .... dum dum DUM! Forks, Washington!! TWIIII-LIIIIGHT!! If you like the Twilight saga, there are things to see and do here. If you don't, there's not. Warning: the Chamber of Commerce's Michael Gurling (shown here in a Today story) is enthusiastic about the Twilight-Forks connection and will tell you everything you ever or didn't want to know about the town, the books and the movies. He does know his stuff, however. Like how absolutely nothing in the Twilight movies was filmed in Forks. Not one little bitty frame. Crews came by to take a picture of the "welcome to Forks" sign, and that's it. At first I was surprised, but then it made sense. Forks, while home to many warm residents, isn't terribly photogenic (Forks scenes were filmed in Vernonia, Oregon), and then I realized that the movie version of town doesn't resemble the real thing in the least. Michael was nice enough to give me a list of Twilight scenes and where they were filmed. The majority of which? In the Portland area. Really? Well, looky looky. I had been debating in my head whether to drive up to the northwestern most tip of the continental U.S. (Neah Bay, Wa., on the Cape Flattery Trail) or just heading back to Portland for my last couple of days. Hmmm.
• Visit (all in Forks)
— The Chamber of Commerce-slash-Twlight-information-center
— Dazzled by Twilight memorabilia and gift shop
— JT's Sweet Stuffs for ice cream or old-fashioned candy
— Forks Outfitters, where Bella worked part-time (just drive by)
— Pacific Pizza, next door
— Gathering Grounds coffee stand for a cup of Bella Selva (product not related to our Bella of Twilight fame)

Photos, days 5-6

Portland, Oregon, area
• Without knowing it, Michael from the Forks Chamber pointed me in the right direction. Not because I saw a couple of Twilight film locations, but because I would have missed out on some of the most scenic highlights of my trip: the Columbia River Gorge (with sights along the Historic Columbia River Highway) and Multnomah Falls.
• Remember the prom scene at the end of Twlight? Michael's list says it was filmed at the Columbia River Gorge Vista House. While trying to find this place, I ended up turning around in the parking lot of a View Point Inn and thought, Wow, this looks a lot like where the prom scene took place; oh well. I found Vista House and spent some time there. They both offer gorgeous views, but I found out when I returned home that prom scene did in fact take place at View Point Inn.
• I spent the most time at Multnomah Falls. Remember the baseball scene in Twilight? It was filmed on the Washington side of the gorge, and the waterfall shown in the background as Bella and Edward are walking to meet his family to play is Multnomah, which is located on the Oregonian side. It looks majestic from the highway, but you have to experience it up close. You can even hike to the very top of the falls on Larch Mountain by a 1-mile trail (warning: it's steep and doesn't feel like a mere mile). Not only is the trek worth it when you arrive at the top, but the trail itself offers stunning views of the gorge.
• While I was purchasing my Multnomah magnet, coffee mug and earrings at the ground-level gift shop, I asked the cashier if she thought the attached Multnomah Falls Lodge restaurant was worth a stop. She gave me a wide-eyed, freaked-out look and whispered, "Nooo!" I didn't ask why, but that was enough to keep me away. Too bad because the atmosphere seemed amazing. But good thing I didn't eat there because that lead me instead to dine at ....
• Stone Cliff Inn in Carver, Oregon. I bumped into it while driving around, and it was a good bet. Nestled way up on a cliff overlooking the Clackamas River, it's fashioned like a log cabin, inside and out. I sat by the fireplace. I had an Oregon merlot, salmon, garlic mashed potatoes and a salad with a tomato-y vinaigrette. The waiter — no lie — looked like Jacob Black (and knew it). On my way out the door, I noticed a poster showing the "lion fell in love with the lamb/as if you could outrun me" scenes from Twilight. They were shot behind the Stone Cliff Inn's parking lot! The restaurant had set a spotlight on the big, mossy boulder that Edward crouched on. I visited another filming location, and I didn't even mean to this time ; )
• Visit
— The aforementioned Vista House, View Point Inn, Multnomah Falls and Stone Cliff Inn
— Portland Women's Forum State Scenic Viewpoint
— Carver Cafe in Damascus, Oregon, where the cafe scenes with Bella and her dad were filmed. Only open for breakfast and lunch, though. I drove by too late, but it looks adorable (and the menu, online, looks crazy-delicious).

Dead magazines I miss

The other day I said in my Facebook status that I missed George, and several FB friends commented with other great defunct magazines. Below is my homage to magazines discontinued in the past decade that I've subscribed to, have fond childhood memories of, remind me of good times or that I simply enjoyed reading.


Click on each name for its respective Wikipedia (or other info) page, and let me know in the comments if I missed any good titles!

Bon Appétit	Domino
Gourmet	Honey
Jane	Mademoiselle
McCall’s	Mode
More	PC Magazine
Radar	SI for Women
Sports & Fitness	Vibe
Weekly World News	WomenSport

Health care and the soul

What does my father's recent heart attack and a New York Times interactive have in common? Little, except that they both have me thinking about health care at the moment, framed in the context of morality.

First, dad. Mom drove him to Medical Center of Arlington a week and a half ago after pain struck him in the chest, the first time it had ever done so. The entire week of his stay, my family and I were dumbfounded at the cardiac doctors' coarseness, unprofessionalism, unavailability, lack of communication skills and patronization. My mother has spent time in [other] hospitals for surgeries and procedures, and her doctors had always been professional and sympathetic. The reason for dad's stay was inherently bad enough, but watching doctors treat our elderly father in such a harsh, uncaring manner all week (when they got around to seeing him at all) doubled our stress.

A sample of the interactive's topics

My sister and I couldn't help but wonder if his treatment had to do with the fact dad is a Medicare patient. We could have been wrong. We have no proof. But hospitals and doctors are reimbursed for only a fraction of their trouble when caring for Medicare patients, and we agreed it at least was a possibility. Toward the end of his stay, we were trying to get dad an appointment with his primary care physician. He'd had a Dr. Brandy Robinson (no relation) chosen as his PCP for quite some time, but he hadn't gone to see her yet. I called to make an appointment — and they wouldn't see him because they're not taking any new Medicare patients. I was reminded of a story I recently read about more and more doctors not taking Medicare patients because the government simply can't keep up with doctors' costs. I thought to myself, The profit motive of health care is rotting its soul.

Then today I clicked around through NYTimes.com's fabulous Health Care Conversations interactive. You click a specific health care topic (i.e. Medicare and the Elderly, Illegal Immigrants) to get to a conversation-starter question, then you include your comments on the question. I chose the health care topic Moral and Spiritual Considerations and scrolled through the comments (click here or play around with the embed, above). Timothy Shaw, M.D., of Madison, Wisconsin, did the best job of describing the connection I feel between my Christian faith and collective health care for all:

Our healthcare system is unjust because patients are discriminated against based on their ability to pay. Even though they attended public tax-payer funded medical and dental schools, some doctors and dentists will not see Medicaid patients or those without health insurance.

Our healthcare system is unjust because doctors and hospitals charge different patients different prices for the same service based on their insurance or employer. A patient without insurance may pay 70% more for the same operation or medical treatment as someone with insurance. If one would go to a gas station and be told that you have to pay $3.40 per gallon of gas but that your neighbor has to only pay $2.00 per gallon because of who you work for – there would be "civil" war.

Our healthcare system is unjust because it pits the doctor's fiduciary and moral obligation to the patient, against the fiscal obligation to the health insurer with whom the doctor has a contract. For example, in the mid 1980's, 32 states passed consumer protection laws, in the form of "drive-by delivery" laws to protect mothers and newborns from being discharged from the hospital by their doctors too soon.

Much of the medical research in our country is supported with public tax money through the National Institute of Health grants. Additionally, public tax money supports the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Library of Medicine; institutions which also supports private for-profit medical/insurance corporations. Although many of the discoveries of medicine were not the work of the American medical/insurance industry, past medical discoveries are used to create profit for our private medical/insurance system. For example, when the Austrian pathologist Karl Landsteiner won the Nobel Peace Prize for his 1901 discovery of the ABO blood groups which made blood transfusions safe, saving billions of lives, he gave his discovery to humanity, not a patent lawyer.

Our hospitals were built by the hard work of all citizens. In the late 1800's Catholic nuns from St. Louis hitched their horses to wagons and rode into the Northwest Territory armed with a mission statement from God and founded our first hospitals. They built these hospitals for all citizens, not just the patients with "good" insurance. Our healthcare system is unjust for the reason that people without health insurance or those who can't get health insurance just as likely had fathers and grandfathers who laid on the sands of Normandy and Iwo Jima, and who themselves or their sons and daughters are serving in the Armed Forces today.

Our health system is unjust because of huge profit taking. Health insurance executives don't worry about going bankrupt from getting sick. Forbes reports that two Healthcare Insurance Corporation CEO's made $121 million and $77 million respectively in the last five years. While the medical / health insurance and pharmaceutical industries make billions in private profits, our citizens are lining up at a county fair in western Kentucky, in neglected health, with their teeth rotting from their heads, just to be cared for at a free medical/dental clinic set up in animal stalls in a barn.

I've often wondered why educated people and our leaders cannot see the injustice of our healthcare system. In a historical context however, it is inconceivable to think that the man who wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", as he looked out his window he could see his slaves working in his fields.

To right the injustices perpetrated by the British against his countrymen, Thomas Jefferson would write the words which lent justification and strength to his fellow patriots to fight the world's most powerful army and navy. However, Jefferson's quill had not the power to convince his countrymen to right an injustice perpetrated by themselves against another people. This would be a conflagration for another time, another generation.

Let us encourage our congresswomen and men to have the moral courage to pass legislation long overdue, to create equality in health care. They should establish a national healthcare insurance plan as a civil right of American citizenship.

Some say that we don't want a Canadian or British style healthcare system. I say let's make America's healthcare system look like the United States space program compared to Britain's or Canada's! Ours would soar like an eagle!

Thomas Jefferson's last words in the Declaration of Independence now ring out as a living document for us today. "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

My dad isn't so poor that he's having to get care in an animal stall. But like those Western Kentuckians and insurance company CEOs, he's worked hard and paid his taxes. Expectedly, there will be a disparity in the houses they live in and the cars they drive. But as a Christian, I can't view one of their bodies as less valuable than the others. I value my soul too much.

About the "Women are Unhappy" study

I really appreciated this study (more on it here) when it came out, which essentially states that women are generally unhappier since the women's movement of the '70s (findings exception: black women).

Then I was bewildered by the response to it, most of which drew that women are unhappy because of the strides in equality we've made. Total Alice in Wonderland conclusion. A post by Judy Warner on New York Times' Domestic Disturbance blog explains the real reasons. A pull-out summary if you're not in the mood to read the whole thing, but I encourage you to read it-read it and decide what you think (a mixture others' quotes she uses in the post and her own):

"The opening up, diversifying and expanding of women’s sphere of existence may have given them more things to potentially be unhappy about ..."

"The wage gap persists, particularly for mothers, who now earn 73 cents for every man’s dollar. Our workforce and education system is still sex-segregated, operating along generations-old stereotypes that steer most women into low-paid, low-status, low-security professions. Women pay more for health insurance than men, have more extensive health needs than men, and suffer unique forms of discrimination in their coverage. (Women may be denied coverage because they had a Caesarean delivery or were victims of domestic violence — both 'preexisting conditions.') Regardless of the number of hours they work, they continue to do far more caretaking and housekeeping work at home than do their husbands. And discrimination against mothers (but not fathers) in the workplace is all but ubiquitous."

"Entering the world of men may very well have raised the bar of expectations ... greater equality may have led more women to compare their outcomes to those of the men around them. In turn, women might find their relative position lower than when their reference group included only women. ... In other words: if you expect less for yourself, you’re easier to please."

"In public opinion surveys, women consistently rank their own inequality, at work and at home, among their most urgent concerns. ... If the women’s movement raised women’s expectations faster than society was able to meet them, they would be more likely to be disappointed by their actual experienced lives."

In other words, June Cleaver wasn't happy because she got to cook and clean. She was happy because she succeeded within that limited sphere.

On a happier note: "The happiest marriages ... are those in which a couple shares egalitarian values. Men in today's world who have gone with the flow of changing roles and mores ... are healthier, closer to their wives and children, happier and … having more sex."

Try this in your morning coffee

The weather here in Texas has been overcast and downright mild, making me excited about the change of season. One of my favorite ways to celebrate the change? Peppermint coffee.

When the weather is cooler, I'm able to find peppermint-flavored coffee beans at the store, or I'll drink peppermint-flavored mochas at Starbucks when I have to. In warmer weather (read: most of the year), the combination is hard to find. Then I thought, What if that useless bottle of peppermint extract I have in the cabinet would work?

It does! Just put a couple of drops right into your brew, and there you have it folks. A yummy, steamy juxtaposition of hot and cool, right in your morning cup.

Find peppermint extract at the grocery store on the baking aisle, alongside the vanilla extract and other flavors.

Jimmy Carter is the man

No rocking chair for this senior citizen. Love this man. When most ex-presidents reach his age (especially of the defeated, one-term variety), they're not hauling their passion for peace and human rights around the globe to his particular intensity.

For me personally, it's heartening to see a powerful, fellow Christian taking stances on sexism, racism and the death penalty because his relationship with Christ compels him to, even though it won't boost his stock in the evangelical Christian world.

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As detailed in the video above, Pres. Carter is not content to pretend the South doesn't have the problems with which it's still plagued — it's an elder's job to chastise the younger generations' errant ways, is it not? He doesn't neglect the duty. He points out what most of us already know but are too timid and in denial to admit. The South is still mired in latent racism. Anyone who a) lives in Texas/the South, and b) doesn't operate in a state of willful blindness knows this.

You know when you're in Wal-Mart, and there's a toddler in the same aisle who's pitching a wild-eyed fit, but all the mom does is silently detach or, to the most, lamely request, "Now, now, Breanna; please try to be quiet for mommy"? That's not Jimmy Carter. But he's not the opposite, either — we've already seen how much change the take-no-prisoners cowboy routine actually affects. It's his sound, gentle, yet unapologetic rebuke of the world's pink elephants that makes him such a national treasure.

The man is 84 years old. 84. Still sharp as a blade, crazily articulate, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, AND he's a deacon and life-long Baptist Sunday school teacher. (Totally irrelevant trivia: He's Elvis Presley's fifth cousin and is related to Motown founder Barry Gordy, Jr. on his mom's side.) And let's talk about this man's IQ. He's one of the top five most intelligent U.S. presidents, just below John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and just above the smart likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. For perspective, George W. Bush's IQ, based on his highest score, is in the bottom two, just above Grant. Just sayin'.

He's thought to be one of only two U.S. presidents (along with Nixon) who's been faithful to his wife (I think that came from the book White House Confidential; let me know if I'm wrong). He's simply one of the most respectable statesmen this country has.

Yet he continually endures insults of "irrelevant," even though he's made it his life's purpose to do nothing but work on the most relevant issues of our time. Instead of his detractors attempting to reach his intellectual plane and form legit counters to his views, you're likely to hear that "Jimmy Carter's officially senile!" from too many of them. He's constantly chided to quietly fade into the past like a good, elderly ex-president should.

Well, not this grandpa.

I hope to be half as fearless and active when I reach his age.

Viva las old folks who refuse to diminish!!

Jimmy Carter primer:
• Jimmy Carter topic page on NYT
• Losing my religion for equality: Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God
• An ex-president like no other: Jimmy Carter, the passionate feminist
• Carter sees racism in Wilson outburst
• The Carter Center
• His wiki page
• An Amazon list of his books

Year One: Marriage

Yesterday Brian and I marked one year of marriage. I have many things to learn yet, but I've gathered a few gems along the way.

• Men are better at housekeeping than women give them credit for.
• The storied "honeymoon phase" is fiction. The whole first six months, if not the whole year, is an extended adjustment period. I went through plenty of negative but necessary emotions: fear, grief over the loss my former self as I knew her, anger, confusion. It was all part of transforming from a single individual to a married team member.
• The change that I didn't expect to have such an impact: sleeping in the same bed with another person every night. It seems so insignificant. But after 32 years of sleeping alone, it was quite a shock to my mind and body.
• It's frighteningly easy to forgo all social life in lieu of just slumming it at home with your spouse in front of the TV.
• Getting married does not, in fact, cause a supernatural mind meld that seamlessly merges your two sets of ideas, hopes, tastes and values. Intellectually, I knew this. But in my subconscious, where all the world's subtle suggestions about what women should expect from life are buried, I felt we would automatically snap to the same page beginning Aug. 23, 2008. Not so.
• It's cliche because it's true: If both spouses don't actively participate in frequent, open, honest communication, the marriage is either doomed for misery or for failure.
  

And that's why I'm glad Brian is willing more than any man on earth to work against the grain of his sex: he tries his blessed best to communicate, and he does the dishes. While we still battle the realness of marriage from time to time, these two qualities let me know everything's going to be all right.

Love you, babe.

Dallas restaurants, please don't listen to the new restaurant critic

The Dallas Morning News' restaurant critic, Leslie Brenner, has been here all of six months. And she's got our dining scene all figured out.

She came from L.A., and I agree with parts of her assessment about how Dallas can become a better restaurant city, like using more local produce and offering more fruit desserts alongside all the chocolate. She says a few nice things about our scene and starts off by ticking off the main Dallas hoods — "Uptown, downtown, Oak Lawn, the Arts District, the Park Cities, Bishop Arts District" — to show that she knows us, complimenting our "vibrancy" because we eat out for lunch.

I am not a critic and I am not a foodie. But I laughed while I read this column, because it screams, "Why isn't Dallas doing things the way I'm used to?" It's all the funnier because it's written by a fresh-from-the-airport transplant from L.A. Her big gripe, that our chefs and restaurateurs are giving Dallasites what they want.

Counter: Dallas restaurateurs, do not listen to her; please continue giving me what I want: good food, not high art. I will simply stop visiting you if this changes.

I want to believe she only means that we should look to other cities to emulate how they've carved out a reputation for themselves. But the column reads like she's suggesting we actually de-Dallas ourselves. I don't know why in the world we'd want to do that.

Leslie sounds like a bad American tourist in a foreign city, wondering why everyone's doing things differently and upsetting her comfort cart. I've never heard a critic come out and say quite as straight as she does that a city should, essentially, study other large cities' restaurants and copy them. That wouldn't make us better; that would make us lame.

She seems to be experiencing a bit of lost-in-translation culture confusion. She says servers at sushi restaurants here are confused when she wants to order directly from the chef. Perhaps they're confused because that's not a thing here. The chef wouldn't have conveyed to your server which fish is good? Maybe that's customary in sushi restaurants elsewhere, but from a local's perspective, it's seems like a big waste of everyone's time. We can be pretty pretentious here, but I can't imagine my boring question of "What fish is good today?" as being so important that I would need to drag the chef away from his or her work of conjuring up the exciting, New York-flavored dishes you admonish them to provide us, when I could simply ask my waiter.

She also gets offended when she's left food on her plate and the server doesn't ask her what's up with that. Maybe I can lend a regional lesson here as well. Sure, some servers will subtly inquire, but generally they don't ask why you've left food on your plate because it's none of their business. Maybe you became full before finishing, maybe you're trying to lose weight, maybe you get gas if you consume too much wheat flour, maybe the portions are simply too large to prudently complete. Consider it regional manners that they're not asking. We tend to be a little more independent here, so if a meal is that bad, don't be a wallflower about it. Leslie does remind us that diners have a responsibility to say something if the food isn't working for them, but she says this right after boo-hooing that servers don't do the asking. She advises servers, "Pay attention to what diners are silently telling you." Honey, we don't silently tell anyone anything. Restaurateurs know this.

She also says our chefs should travel (could she be more condescending. Why does she assume they don't travel? Because we're in Texas and Texans don't travel?) and that creme brulee is so 1994 (if we enjoy a dessert and it works, we're not going to care if it's from 1884 or 3004).

My gripe about the Dallas dining (and nightlife) scene is that it wants to be L.A. and New York so badly. It takes itself a little too seriously and behaves like a wealthy yet self-conscious teenager at NorthPark, constantly wondering who's looking at her and trying too hard. Dallas needs to do Dallas and stop trying so desperately to be somewhere else. It's not charming and erodes regional identity. Let's explore (the so 1980s) Southwestern cuisine further. Let's make ourselves known for the Dallas flavor we blend with other styles, too, like vegan, Asian, Brazilian, Italian.

When my mother made spaghetti and other pasta growing up, the sauce contained ground hamburger meat and jalapenos with a side of garlic Texas toast and salad with Ranch dressing. Borrow from a region's ratatouille, and the people will love you. Borrowing too heavily from another region only further prevents Dallas from forming a unique identity outside of that dang-blasted TV show we're known for. Being innovative means exploring regional spins on established cuisines. I imagine that travelers visiting with us would like to experience how Dallas does Korean, not how another city does Korean.

Along with regional spins, I'm down with classic, authentic flavors of French, Italian, etc., and I'm not going to fault a restaurant that doesn't get freaky with the tapas and paella. When I eat Spanish, that's what I want.

But mostly you're going to find me at very North Texas eateries, like El Ranchito, Manny's Tex-Mex, Joe T.'s and Spiral Diner. They give me what I want, which is a mix of comfort and new experiences.

A life geography lesson for us wanderlusters

On a spiritual tip ...

Lately I've been dealing with an issue that I've struggled with off and on since I was very young. It's not an issue unique to me. Depression slyly tricks someone into thinking that THIS particular bout of melancholy affects only me, magnifying the suckiness. But many of you have wrestled with this.

I'm talking about spiritual wanderlust. That feeling that you've missed the bus of your life's calling. You'd be more than glad to get on, but you have no idea when the bus is coming back around, what other part of town to run to so you can catch it there, or if there's an alternate bus you can take that will route you to your heaven-prescribed destination.

So this post on one of my favorite blogs, Stuff Christians Like, was a balm to read today.

I grew up in a faith tradition that taught God has a divine purpose for each and every person on earth, partly based on Jeremiah 1:5 and 29:11:
• Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart, I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.
• "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

God was speaking specifically to Jeremiah and to Israel here, yes. But we were taught that God's plans extend to the individual, and that he has a special mission for anyone who believes. Words and phrases from the keyword cloud of my religious upbringing include "pursue God's will for your life," "purpose," "your calling," "divine appointment." What has God called you to do with your life?

The filters on my young ears picked up these messages as a direct message from God: "Christy, you're kind of a big deal. One day you're going to do something so spectacular, so significant, there's not even going to be room for your awesomeness on this planet. I'll have to move you to another planet just to fit all of your crazy-massive works of ending hunger, stopping deforestation, discovering unknown tribes through your jungle adventures and providing them medical care and clean water. I'll name the planet 'St. Christicus,' because you'll have the LEAD ROLE in my grand, eternal scheme. Big plans, Christy — BIG PLANS."

I wanted my divine itinerary, stat! Move out of the way — me and God are going to do things! But as the years passed, I never discovered God's specific will for my life or or heard from him in the miraculous, direct way I imagined about what, exactly, I should be doing with this existence he gave me.

Fast-forward to now. I've since decided that God uses you where you are and that our contributions can, in fact, be small and impactful at the same time. God isn't a giant project manager in the sky handing out assignments and deadlines, writing you up for missing meetings that he never put on your Outlook calendar. We don't have to actually do anything, in the sense that we control God's calling on our lives. Just serve him, be open and he will direct the show.

Still. My mom and dad used to be foreign missionaries and pastors, and my mom just recently retired from 25+ years of being an elementary teacher at Christian schools. My sister works in the field of social work, heading the mental health division of a local children's home. My brother and sister-in-law have pastored the same church for 25 years and have touched countless of lives in their community.

My upbringing, my relationship with God today, my family, and maybe even my temperament, to an extent, have all conspired to "set eternity in my heart." This is a wonderful thing — if I knew what to do with it. Don't get me wrong; I've done good things in my life, but nothing compared with the "big deal" dream of my adolescence. Recurring residual tugs in my heart periodically whisper, "There's something else you should be doing, you trite web producer, you."

When I'm sorting through this over-eternalizing invasion of the mind, I focus on training my perspective back to street-level instead of constantly viewing the world from a spiritual perch somewhere in outerspace, like I'm trying to do now. That's why what Prodigal John said today over on Stuff Christians Like grabbed my attention:

The idea of "place" has been something I've been wrestling with a lot lately. I've got this overwhelming feeling that God wants me somewhere else. Whether that's a product of immaturity or selfishness, there's a part of me that loves to focus on there instead of here. ... It's always sexier to think your mission in life is going to involve some sort of adventure with a rope ladder over a ranging river full of piranha as you carry a vaccine and the hope of the gospel to a lost tribe of people that will eventually give you a wicked cool village nickname (mine would be Rik-Rok) and perhaps your own machete. It's a lot less fun to think that maybe you're already in a mission field and the annoying guy who you pass TPS reports to, the guy who sits near you in a sea of cubicles, the sniffler, yeah that guy, he needs to know about the love of God.

I get caught up in that attitude and when I do, I eventually start peppering God with geography questions. ... Where do you want me? This doesn't feel like where I'm supposed to be God, can you please give me a sign? Can you tell me where you want me to go? Is this job, is this relationship, is this church, is this city where you want me to be?

.. Do you know the first answer God always gives when we say, "God where do you want me to go?"

"In my presence. ... I've got other destinations planned for you, far off places and close to home addresses that you can't even imagine, but every destination, every adventure begins with the same starting location, in my presence."

- end -

Good Dallas jernts to take the laptop + work

Since starting to work from "home" in July, I've discovered some good spots suitable for working, with free wifi that fulfills the "gotta get out of this kitchen chair or my butt is going to fall off" objective. Notice that Starbucks is nowhere on this list ($10 to fire up my laptop each time? I'm trying to make money here).

• Beckley Brewhouse
1111 N. Beckley Ave (Beckley at Zang Blvd), N. Oak Cliff. Next door to Sprial Diner.

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One of the Cliff's best gems, and it's not even in the Bishop Arts District. Very neighborhood. The small converted crack house is now an adorable restaurant, coffee bar and regular (alkie) bar, all in a space the size of your living room. Best cheese fries, good burgers. A motley mix of normal folks. Heavy on post-shift nurses and doctors from nearby Methodist hospital. Great patio. Short story — I came in this evening for a coffee and to get some work done. No dice. Sitting in the cushy chairs across from me were two older black men who just got off work, Arthur and Bernie. Surrounded by piles of Miller Lite bottles. They immediately started talking to me like we all go way back. I'm always initially shy in situations like this, plus I was, um, trying to work. This did not deter them. I heard all about their world travels together throughout the decades, about growing up in separate but equal days of East Texas, about chasing women in the '60s, about the prostate cancer Arthur's been beating for the past 30 years. People coming in said hi and asked where they'd been lately. That kind of place.

• The Pearl Cup Espresso Bar
North Henderson and McMillan
Off Central Expressway, exit Knox/Henderson and go east. Keep going til you reach McMillan; you'll see it on the left.

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This is a hot spot for coffee right now in an area that used to be considered the grittier cousin of chichi Knox Street but is slowly becoming just as Knoxy as the west side of Central. Thankfully, "hot spot" in this case doesn't mean "filled with that famous, loathesome, Uptown douchebag vibe." The owners, workers and clientele are a mixture of urban, soccer-dad, unpretentious and friendly. Can't beat that combo in these here parts. They're really friendly to the laptop crowd; there's like 15 electrical outlets per customer. Supposedly they've got a latte that'll freak you out, but I haven't had it yet (I'm a black coffee or Americano girl). Right now a small construction crew is doing something to the patio (expanding, hopefully), so it appears like there's no parking. Just go around back, where there's plenty.

• It's a Grind Coffee House
2901 Indiana Blvd, Deep Ellum. It's located on the ground level of the Ambrose apartment buidling. Just park inside.

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It's a chain, but this one's in Deep Ellum. Now hold up, chain snobs; this ain't no Buck Star Inc. It's a Grind is part of the Demeter Project. That essentially means it treats its employees well — livable pay, benefits. As the Observer puts it in this story from July, it employs "asylum seekers, immigrants, victims of domestic violence, ex-convicts, reformed prostitutes, former drug users, pretty much anyone in dire need of a second chance." Totally worthy, even if the coffee isn't great, which it's not. Atmosphere is better: large paintings of jazz greats decorate the wall, like Ella Fitzgerald and others I can't remember the name of in spite of wanting to be cool for knowing them. Fireplace. Coffee refills are 50 cents, but that's ok. Smart placement: It's located directly on the about-to-blow-up DART Green Line.

There are other places, like Murray Street Coffee in Deep Ellum. But I haven't been there recently enough to comment on it. Any other suggestions?

My Mayborn weekend

I'm talking about the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine, sponsored by UNT's Mayborn Graduate School of Journalism. I attended Friday and Saturday's events, but I decided to skip Sunday for a variety of reasons, among which were not because the conference itself lacked gems and good times.

The conference came at a great time in my professional life. I quit my web production job at a magazine about two weeks ago to venture back into writing, and the 31 hours of lectures, literary ambiance, old friends, new contacts and an always-available supply of coffee and cheeses gave me a needed shot in my writing hand (and my brain's motivation lobe).

Highlights. This is from memory — my personal notes are over there in the dining room.

Friday night's Southwest Soiree kicked things off. Well, for most of us it did — friends Marissa and Joanna spent the day at writing workshops getting feedback on their contest entries, and friend Stella traveled to Archer City with a Mayborn entourage to spend time with Larry McMurtry. Later at the soiree, the opening comments of "Welcome to Texas!" clued me in that this conference now drew writers from a much wider geographic boundary than last time I attended, back when it was still a little North Texas gathering.

The night's keynote: Paul Theroux, a big deal in travel writing and author of books like Mosquito Coast (I vaguely remember the '80s movie made of it starring Harrison Ford). Things he said about himself, his travels and writing-in-general that grabbed me:

• Growing up as a Boy Scout in rural Massachusetts made him as much of a writer as reading books did.
• His father taking him and his six siblings to places of local historical interest gave him a sense of place and belonging.
  
• Spending most of the '60s in Africa with the Peace Corps gave him an extraordinary view of the U.S. during that tumultuous decade.
• When people don't travel, they can end up with a perverse idea of what is normal.
• Writers are deeply-affected people. Conferences like the Mayborn are often like "Mental Illness Theater."
• Writing the truth is prophetic. When he was in China, he simply wrote about the feelings, effects, and the players in the scenes of what he experienced. The truth. A year later, Tiananmen Square happened. Looking back, it reads as if he was writing the opening chapter of this time in Chinese history. In a way, he was. Truth will do that.

Time with the girls — Marissa, Stella, Beth, Joanna, Leila — at the Hilton's Bonnie & Clyde bar. We tried to get the DJ to play "Smooth Criminal" but apparently it was against Bonnie & Clyde policy. Split a big, comfy room with Beth.

On Saturday I only woke up in time to be late to the third of 10 lectures of the day. DMN's Alfredo Corchado and Dianne Solis. Their beats render fiction completely unnecessary. Notable:

• Alfredo and photog Erich Schlegel had a bet about who could find the most interesting story from the Texas/Mexico border. Erich later called Alfredo on the phone, trying to communicate against loud singing in the background. Alfredo told Erich to turn the radio down. Erich replied, "Man, that's the damn story!" Story: Nov. 2007, The Dallas Morning News — Mexican balladeer sings to save vanishing village
• Alfredo talked a lot about the drug trade between Mexico and the U.S. He showed a photo of a man in one village kneeling at a shrine to Santa Muerte, which communicated everything about the danger and death Mexican drug culture has created.
• He told about being in a village eatery and hearing what sounded like two men discussing their next murder, in Spanish. It dawned on him that it was someone's cell phone. He thought it was someone's sick, isolated idea of a funny ringtone. The next time he went to Mexico City, he heard the exact same ringtone on another person's phone. Drugs are affecting Mexican life and culture in some unexpected ways.
• The headline to a similarly-themed story he wrote for DMN read "Wasting Away in Margaritaville," which one attendee pointed out during the Q&A as evidence that the media still isn't taking this topic seriously, and that it's even evidence of latent racism.
• Alfredo said about a half-dozen sources for his stories have been assassinated. That weighs heavily on him.

A lighter respite: Houston Chronicle's beauty and fashion writer, Joy Sewing. She talked about how fashion is a decision everyone makes every day, and how newspaper journalists have gone from feeling like we're selling out to advertisers to giving up and just selling out. Documentary filmmakers Allen and Cynthia Mondell showed footage from a doc that tells the story of how Dallas, despite of its lackluster contribution to state history, scored the Texas State Fair, thanks to the Lone Star can-do (and money) of Mayor R.L. Thornton. The doc also reminds us of another state mystery: The fond place deep in our hearts for the Creepiest Texan Ever — Big Tex.

Skip Hollandsworth and Mike Hall of Texas Monthly. They were entertaining, but really only one nugget jumped out at me. Mike, a music writer, told how someone asked him why he also writes about ex-cons and other stories from the criminal justice system. His answer made sense: As a music writer, he enjoys doing stories about lost causes, like DJ Screw and Townes Van Zandt. It was natural to be interested in lost-cause people caught up in the criminal justice system, too.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest — what a trip. She's a gorgeous vagabond memoirist (with a journalist's standards, JAMES FREY) who's excitable by nature, smiles freely and has traveled and written more in her young life more than most people — shoot, writers — will during their entire lives. Bullets:

• Being a memoirist means you'll lose friends.
• It also means you'll lose your privacy. You're bearing your life to the world, so readers think they know you. Like, really know-know you.
• As a memorist, you become a really good expert at ... you. It's hard to specialize in any one topic like most other writers/journalists.
• "All writers need to do their 'New York' time."
• She always jumps on an opportunity. Fodder for memoirs comes from the stuff of life. She's always thinking in terms of "this would be great for a memoir."
  
• She ended with a really funny, high-strung story that involved her naked, the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, a fire, her laptop, a stairwell, Ira Glass, her copious hair going berserk right along with her, and her assessment in a robe that this was "going to make a really great story."

Next was the sleeper of the conference, I think: Roger Thurow, foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Wrote the book Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. His lecture was called "Consumed by Hunger" — and he is. A fairly subdued temperament couldn't suppress the missionary spirit inside this author. I'll have to do a whole post alone on this lecture and the ways in which it struck me. He didn't talk much about the mechanics of writing but about the conviction he felt to reverse the injustice of hunger. The desire to change the world for the better through writing — we as journalists get that. He's bleeding-heart + hard-core — a powerful combination. His mission to expose the causes of world hunger is an example of what this journalism thing is all about. It's exactly what earned him the only standing ovation of the day.

Vogue/Newsweek contributing editor Julia Reed and Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Roy Blount Jr. — folksy, fun, insightful lectures.

• She said that all disasters in the South happen to guys named either Donnie or Dwayne. She keeps a "Dwayne" file for literary anecdotes in her Southern writing.
• It's ok to digress. Sometimes you have to. Once she had to write about iceberg lettuce, and it would have been boring as all get-out if she hadn't included an old funny anecdote that had only slightly something to do with iceberg lettuce.
• Southerners have an interesting penchant for accepting life as a mysterious force that doles out unexplained happenings. Like, instead of a man having a heart attack because he didn't take care of himself, it's because "His blood just up-and-backed-up on him." It's a subtle, almost charming evasion of responsibility. (She could say these things. She's from Mississippi and has the drawl to prove it.)
• Roy Blount was a riot. Heavy accent, too, ("we were standing there in our tux-ee-duhs"), but paired with a heady subject: give your readers' mental tongues something pleasant to caress, to play with. Something with texture.
• He gave the word "piss" as a good example of how a word's phonetic sound and the sound of the word's active experience feel interrelated. The physicality of words — give readers something mentally crunchy, something to wrestle with. That was fine and well, but then the point devolved from there. The adorable elderly man with the thick accent went on and on with it — "piss" this and "piss" that and vividly describing orifices and sphincters and the audience cracking up into giggles and me wondering "OMG are we really talking about this?" He didn't bore while making his point, for sure.

Then a trip to the hotel room for a quick rinse and change for the Literary Lights Dinner. Sleeveless black satin cocktail dress with slight boat neck that shortened when I sat down (forgot to do the sit-down test in the dressing room, ugh). Good thing I paired it with flats. Heels would have turned me into the Literary Tramp Fest.

Squealing-, screaming-girl moment of the night: the announcement that Marissa won first place in the writing competition's research and reporting category for her Blue Angels story. I'm really proud of her.

The keynote: Ira Glass of "This American Life" fame. Yes, he's a radio guy, but we didn't care. We love his show. Hearing that famous voice in person was so ... pleasantly weird. He told some great stories, gave some great insight.

Later during the author book signing, I stood in line with Leila so she could get his sig (latest book, The New Kings of Nonfiction). I was struck by how warm he was with each and every person, chatting them up, offering a story, writing lengthy, personal ditties in every book. And I was surprised about how hot he is, too. Don't tell Brian I said that.

We spent the rest of the evening at Bonnie & Clyde's. I talked with DMN arts/lifestyles editor Mike Merschel about the paper, family, adoption. Marissa and I got upside-down outside, trying to find her cell phone underneath the driver's side seat of her car. I resisted calls to share a bottle of champagne with the girls (I needed to leave!). I announced to the table on multiple occasions that "Yes, I'm coming back tomorrow — I'm saying this out loud, so I have to do it."

It's been a great weekend, even if I did cut it short. Looking forward to reading the two books I bought: Mosquito Coast and Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

Shoutout to my sweet husband for driving my new business cards that just came in all the way to Grapevine for me Saturday. Mwah.