Dear Ayn,
I’m dating a man who I think I love, but I’m afraid he’s having an affair. He comes home late, he acts suspiciously, and he even has red lipstick on his collar. Should I confront him or just hope for the best?
- County Af-fair
Dear County,
Red lipstick? Your husband is a…
But that desire is still out there. It’s the force behind a huge new movement we don’t even have a name for yet, a movement that’s not a left opposed to a right, but perhaps a below against above, little against big, local and decentralized against consolidated. If we could throw out the old definitions, we could recognize where the new alliances lie; and those alliances — of small farmers, of factory workers, of environmentalists, of the poor, of the indigenous, of the just, of the farseeing — could be extraordinarily powerful against the forces of corporate profit and institutional violence.
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| — | Rebecca Solnit, “Acts of Hope,” 2004 |
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch these videos without tearing up. Part 2, by Matt Wisniewski.
I am so thankful that I had the privilege to participate in these demonstrations on behalf of my mom, a 38-year veteran of Wisconsin’s public schools. Her entire life has been about sacrifice and dedication to the well-being of other people, whether for her family or for the thousands of students who have been fortunate enough to pass through her classroom throughout her career.
For my mom, teaching has never been just her “job.” It’s who she is. It’s her identity. It’s a calling, not just a career. So when Scott Walker and his supporters denigrate her profession and speak of teachers as though they aren’t worth the paper on which their contracts are written, it’s personal.
My mom can deal with financial struggles. We’ve always struggled, because (hello!) teaching is not an easy way to make a bunch of money. Nobody goes into teaching to get rich. What bothers her most is that she knows she is losing the support of the people in the community where she teaches, including the administrators, parents, students, and even PTA members. They look at her differently now. She’s questioning her own worth, which is not something you should have to do when you’ve kicked ass at your job for 38 years. And she cries. I call her on the phone and I ask how things are going. And she cries. And I’m out of state on the other end, absolutely powerless to do anything meaningful to help her.
So over the next five days leading up to the election, we’re going to hear a metric fuckton of bullshit about jobs and John Doe and deer hunting and balanced budgets and fiscal sanity. And I don’t give a shit about any of it. All I know is that Scott Walker made my mom cry. My beautiful, brilliant, devoted, talented mother, whose only crime has been doing what she was born to do, doing something Scott Walker could never do, and being vilified for it.
Vote for Tom Barrett on June 5. Please.
‘Saturday Night Live’ Shows Its Heart On Kristen Wiig’s Last Night : Monkey See : NPR
By Linda Holmes
May 21, 2012It was beautifully awkward at times — how she misses the kiss with Jay Pharoah because he’s bowing to her, how Bobby Moynihan ducks away in a hurry because he’s losing it, how seeing Bill Hader is the moment she starts to buckle and the first one where there’s no gag to the dance. And then how grateful she is that Kenan Thompson shows up and does a little “keep going” reset for her and makes her smile, how she and Seth Meyers boogie because that’s who they are, and how that moment with Sudeikis is obviously completely wrecking — he doesn’t look right for the rest of the number, honestly.
And of course, because it’s live television, Andy Samberg doesn’t realize he’s almost pulling her dress up. And of course, because she’s not made of stone over here, she sneaks in a hug with Jon Hamm as the credits are rolling.
The whole thing is really pretty perfect, and pretty perfectly human, right down to the fact that it’s so emotional that nobody is paying a lot of attention to the fact that they’re doing a “Ruby Tuesday” singalong with Mick Jagger. You can see, too, the miracle of people who can instantly make other people feel better — that’s what guest Amy Poehler is doing when it turns into that “Ruby Tuesday” singalong. She’s the one my eyes kept returning to when I watched it, because some part of me believes that she’s somebody who left, and who knows that it’s really, really sad to go, but that your life can also get really, really good when you leave something you love to do something else you also might love. And, of course, you can always come home.
Kristen Wiig’s SNL adieu was about as close as live, late night television gets to capturing the last night at summer camp.
