I beat choooo ass!

A few cups of wine to let me writing flow,
A few cups of tea to keep warm,
A scarf and jacket to keep warmer,
A hefty charger to power this baby,
A notebook that looks like a medicine bottle,
A kick-ass outline,
And
A cabinet full of snacks to keep my mind from drifting:

---------------------------------------

Dear Final Number One,

    I beat choooo ass!

Sincerely,

    A girl that gets to go to sleep

PostSecret

Perhaps one of the best ideas: Post Secrets is a community built on secrets. Now in our own lil' Stevenson Cafe for the time being, there is a wall where you can post your secret on a homemade post card. The original project formed out of a dream when a traveler bought some posts cards  to send home, but before he had the chance imagined them to be something a bit different than three simple postcards.

I met with Flora yesterday;

  go ahead and add me to the wall. 

Word of the Day

serry \SER-ee\, verb:

To crowd closely together.

Serry means to crowd and is spelled serry.
-- Mildred Colvin, Missouri Brides

To keep unsettled the questions upon which these united with the Liberation Society, —accustom a powerful contingent to work together with “political Dissenters,”—to serryfriends and foes into hostile phalanx, —to accept battle on a week ground where it is only possible to rally half the forces...
-- S. Wellington, The Spectator, Vol. 6

Serry is from the Middle Frenceh serré which was the past participle of serrer meaning “to press tightly together.”

I subconsciously wrote "medical brigades come into communities for one day and distribute money to those that request it" instead of "MEDICINE"!

and the days keep coming.

"Classes will dull your mind, destroy the potential for authentic creativity." - A Beautiful Mind

A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stomp on it and really mess it up, but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty it was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now even though they said............


They were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bully's another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.

On the contrary, the bike adds to the view.

the bird tweeted, and I rolled my eyes.
monday morning bliss; a precursor to a week of hellish nights + a grumpy me.

the man asked as I was locking up my bike,
if I wouldn't, as it "blocks the view"
me: fuck you, it adds to the view. the closest bike rack is over five hundred feet away up the series of stairs.
actual response (still passive aggressive, what else..):
and where would you suppose I do that?
the man: well, I believe there is a bike rack over in the woods up the stairs behind the building
me: need I say more. . .

I quickly biked away before I would have the chance to yell at his face.

my 69 yr. old father has better eye sight then I do. 

Now, because I lost the bet I must kiss his feet and praise him: 

"I shall never doubt you again"

"Sneak a Sleep"

That is my new nickname. Apparently it is rude to doze off on a car ride.

I went to LA this past week, what should be a 6 - 7 hour ride depending on traffic...instead it took 8 1/2 hours with my dad. Why so long? Because my dad was adamant about stopping every two hours, and leaving 150 in between each car. Great road trip guys, and you got mad at me for taking a quick nap..the new nickname was uncalled for guys..

> dog as a companion politically correct to dog's owner?

mensch
	Jewish connotation of being a gentleman. Look at that mensch over there helping that lady.

"she is almost my new favorite because she said I look like Kim (Kardashian)"

BREAKING: Occupy Protesters Walk 230 Miles From New York To DC

On November 23, the so-called “Super Committee” in Congress will decide on the future of America’s middle class – and whether it will stand with the 99% or the 1%. So a group of everyday heroes from Occupy Wall Street embarked on an incredible journey.

"Teaching Good Sex" Sex Ed. in Public Schools

I would highly suggest to read the whole article from New York Times, but to highlight some; the introduction of pleasure to the peril of sex education: 


Pubic Hair: 
“Grass,” a girl, a cheerleader, offered.

“If there’s grass on the field, play ball, right, right,” Vernacchio (the teacher) agreed, “which is interesting in this rather hair-phobic society where a lot of people are shaving their pubic hair — ”
“You know there’s grass, and then it got mowed, a landing strip,” one boy deadpanned, instigating a round of laughter. 

First Base - Implications of sex being a game:

Vernacchio explains that sex as baseball implies that it’s a game; that one party is the aggressor (almost always the boy), while the other is defending (herself); that there is a strict order of play, and you can’t stop until you finish. “If you’re playing baseball,” he continues to note, “you can’t just say, ‘I’m really happy at second base.’ ”

Sex education in the US:

“There is abstinence-only sex education, and there’s abstinence-based sex ed,” said Leslie Kantor, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “There’s almost nothing else left in public schools.”

Across the country, the approach ranges from abstinence until marriage is the only acceptable choice, contraceptives don’t work and premarital sex is physically and emotionally harmful, to abstinence is usually best, but if you must have sex, here are some ways to protect yourself from pregnancy and disease. The latter has been called “disaster prevention” education by sex educators who wish they could teach more; a dramatic example of the former comes in a video called “No Second Chances,” which has been used in abstinence-only courses. In it, a student asks a school nurse, “What if I want to have sex before I get married?” To which the nurse replies, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.”

It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that the pill, feminism and generational rebellion smashed the cultural consensus that sex should be confined to marriage.

Quote of the Week: Perry’s Latest Oops!

Did you hear that bumbling Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry challenged Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to a debate this Monday in DC? Leader Pelosi’s response:

“Monday, I’m going to be in Portland in the morning. I’m going to be visiting some of our labs in California in the afternoon. That’s two. I can’t remember what the third thing is.”

While Perry tries to remember what that 3rd agency he wants to cut is and Herman Cain tries to find Libya on a map...

Close Enough

Thanks to House Republicans, pizza is now a vegetable. That’s right: House Republicans actually voted this week to classify watered-down tomato sauce as a vegetable when it’s served on pizza to America’s school children. It’s enough to warm Herman Cain’s heart.

In their latest attempt to block anything and everything suggested by President Obama, Republicans have chosen to ignore the childhood obesity epidemic and undermine the President’s initiative on physical fitness and healthy eating.

I am actually going to make pizza tonight, but this is kinda ridiculous. As joked, could restoring Ronald Reagan’s declaration that ketchup is a vegetable be next?! In conclusion, it's close enough.

I love re-learning about your own family when it is actually within your capacity.

Great Grandma Kathleen had two children.
Went to high school but they aren't sure if she finished since she married at 17.
She was a stay at home mom, but then took up a job at the supermarket during the war so she should get a first crack at things that were rationed.
She was married to the same man till she died at age 54.

Great Grandma Aileen, had only one child.
Went to second grade and then stopped because she was being bullied for something that her brother did. 

She had many jobs during her years. She started at 17 when she came to the US from Newfoundland and was a nanny and housekeeper. She worked in NYC factories during my grandma's childhood and then became a bookkeeper later on for Chase Bank. When she was about 60 she was again a housekeeper in Catholic church rectories. She was married twice, and her first husband dying when he was 42 and the second one when she was in her eighties, she was widowed for 30 years. 

Simply put, staff shenanigan (Summer 2011)

Occupy Wall Street Decamped.

Today two of my housemates got arrested for occupying B of America in SF. 

You two make me proud, and I am happy that you are done being processed and on your way home already..To highlight some of the intense energy from this week in media (since I am too chicken-shit to go protest myself):

• Colbert is the shit, and his 'decamped' piece is pretty priceless
• Bogotá- Colombia o movimento se espalha! Student protesters!
• Occupony!
• Channel 7 news with coverage of the B of America hold up, yes people actually pitched a tent inside of the building..Toots, I hope u were one of those inside of that!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Occupy Wall Street Decamped
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Movimento Gota D'água

O Movimento Gota D’ Água surgiu da necessidade de transformar indignação em ação. Queremos mostrar que o bem é um bom negócio e envolver a sociedade brasileira na discussão de grandes causas que impactam o nosso país. Utilizamos nossa experiência em comunicação para dar voz aqueles que se dedicam a estudar o impacto que as decisões de hoje terão no amanhã. O Movimento apoia soluções inteligentes, responsáveis, conscientes e motivadas pelo bem comum. O Gota D’Água é uma ponte entre o corpo técnico das organizações dedicadas às causas socioambientais e os artistas ativistas.

What a Sav(Age)

I was featured in a blog post, pretty darn cute if u ask me..

Jai Uttal - "Down on My Knees"

This is my madrinha, paidrinho e Ezra. Love!

Tradition

Every year, (this is the second year) my mom and sister come down to Santa Cruz for my birthday (which was last week 11/7). 

Each year they make the same delicious cake: a carrot cake filled with citrus and coconut..

And each year it just gets better and better. 

The first photo is from last year, and the second one was less than a week ago!

Love u Mamãe + Goo

It's a Bunny!

This is my cut from last week when I fell. 

Yesterday I discovered that it looks like a bunny rabbit..

Now, I'm just proud. 

The Colbert Report
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METHODOLOGY

Sampling

This field research was conducted to determine the alterations in women’s work comparing time allocation sampling (Bernard, R.H and Killworth, P.D, 1993) in three age-sets: 20-29 (pre child-bearing), 30-39 (child-bearing) and 40-69, (post child-bearing). The study specifically aims to note the differences in women’s’ value in response to globalization, personal achievement, and value held within the family unit. Collecting instantaneous spot-checking (Mulder M.B., 1985) in four communities, a total of ten households were sampled on a weekly basis collecting data of activities and whereabouts of all members of the family. The data collection spanned a period of ten weeks for an average of ten samples per household for a total of forty samples per week, and four hundred time allocations in total.

Instantaneous spot-checking research sampling attempts to assess the full range of daily human activities. From the data gathered, it is the role of the researcher to analyze and further infer individual time allocation from day to day, family to family. By doing this, the researcher can assess the role of leisure time and division of labor by sex (Scaglion, 1986) in order to understand the livelihoods of the subjects.

Typically, using this method of data collection, the researcher selects the unit of analysis; in this case I used the household (vs. the individual). The idea is that with the ethnographer using randomly chosen times, when they approach the subjects, there is no prior acknowledgement. Accordingly, if the ethnographer is unannounced, the data will be less biased, as the subject has less time to alter their behavior based on embarrassment, or simply sub-consciously. Using a coding for the various activities, sex, age and time of day, the categories of work range from: social, work, and domestic work, et cetera.

Using an ethnographic approach, each house was selected in a convenience sampling using the elementary school as the nuclei (a landmark that is present in all four communities). Ranging the travel time from one household sample to another, there was an average of fifteen minutes travel in-between one house and the next, the farthest from the nuclei being an hour walking. Sampling hours were randomly drawn on a span from 7:00 and 19:00, a twelve-hour period during daylight.

Interviews

In addition to the time allocation data collection, I performed one-on-one interviews and three interviews with mother and kin throughout the four communities sampled for a total of forty interviews. The interviewees were selected based on each individual’s role within the community. In the department of Intibucá, there has been a major shift in trainings given by outside agencies such as Save the Children and PLAN Honduras since the early 1990s (how do I source this, it was said in one of the interviews), of which contributed to increased leadership seen in men, women and youth. Because of the outside agency trainings in all four communities, and their alleged impact, I also held interviews with some of these organizations that are common in the communities, and based in the department of Intibucá, Honduras.

Using a semi-structured interview, I used set questions that were asked of all interviewees and allowed the interviewee to expand, share personal experiences and stories, in a dialogue-format. The interviewees ranged in age, by age-set and by gender in order to compare answers of each accordingly. The interviews were informal and often were held while doing other daily activities such that the interviewee felt comfortable and was not taken away from their duties and other daily activities.

Because the research is aimed to diagnose the determinants of women’s time allocation within this rural setting, as often as possible, interviews would be held with multiple members of the same family, varying in generation. My questions varied from life goals, family relations, current working life in comparison to that of their parents and conditions of the community and value changes throughout the generations.

Interviewees were selected based on request and their role within the community. On survey (the first visit to the communities), I created an asset map with help from the older school children. Asset mapping is where you draw out the boundaries of the community and write down who lives in which house, more or less gaining an idea of what people do (size of farm land), and family size et cetera. Some community members heard that I was doing interviews with other community members, and requested to have an interview as well, which I did for a total of five interviews (all of which were in the same community, Community C).

In order to conduct this research, I applied for the exemption claim number two, which was granted in spring of 2011 by the Institutional Review Board at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Additionally, permission for this research was requested and granted by an international non-profit, non-governmental and non-religious organization Amigos de las Américas where I was employed (do I mention that I was employed as a Project Supervisor?) for the duration of the research.

Subjects (what would I title this, and/or would this part go here?)

            The subjects are considered all members of the four communities: which are referred to as A, B, C, and D based on the days that they were visited. Because I was working as a Project Supervisor for Amigos de las Américas in these four communities, my observation time was limited to set days of the week. Accordingly, Monday was spent in A, Tuesday, B, Wednesday, C and Thursday was spent in D. The communities were selected at random from a cohort of twenty-eight communities and population size ranged in each from two hundred to eight hundred community members. Comparatively the other communities ranged in size from two hundred to over a thousand. The four communities are located in mountainous regions of the department of Intibucá, Honduras. Communities A, B and C are within the municipality of Yamaranguila, which Community D lies within the municipality of La Esperanza, (also the capital of the department). 

BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING.

Feminist Ryan Gosling

Hey girl.

Feminist theory flashcards from your favorite sensitive movie dude-turned-meme.