this is how my brain works and thinks

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Rebecca

MLK Day

16
January

   “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.  It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” -MLK, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?   In high school and college, I participated in many a service activity, but they left me dissatisfied.  I was interested [...]

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Rebecca

the interrupters

19
October

“You can judge, but that’s not what we do in science.” -Gary Slutkin, M.D., CeaseFire Executive Director, Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health   A few weeks ago I saw the documentary The Interrupters (trailer below) at Nashville’s independent movie theater, The Belcourt.  The documentary [...]

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Rebecca

350

22
September

Today I was minding my own business on Facebook when I accidentally found out that Bill McKibben was to speak at Vanderbilt this evening at 5pm.  I was pretty sure I’d heard him on NPR and liked what he had to say, so I shot an email to my resident environmental activist expert for more [...]

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Rebecca

filosofia

31
August

Last week, Feministing posted this article about women studying and working in academic philosophy, and it struck a chord in me.   I had to forward the link to a few high school friends, see, because at our high school we were lucky enough to have access to a logic course and a philosophy course [...]

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Rebecca

“pro-life state” failure

30
May

Last Tuesday, May 24, the Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee voted 10-2 to pass HB 587, Rep. “Johnny” LaBruzzo’s abortion ban bill, out of committee.  This is completely unsurprising, though the vote could have been a little closer if a couple of absent representatives sympathetic to the opposition’s cause had shown up.   GROSS [...]

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Rebecca

national seashore

20
April

On April 15, 2010, I sent DB the following email: This beach campground has been closed since Ivan in 2004, and now it’s open.  We must go there this spring/summer!! Five days later, exactly one year ago, well, you know what happened.  Two months later, oil hit that same beach. I didn’t fly in an [...]

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Rebecca

why it is about abortion

8
April

True, legislators and reporters should be clear and correct in what they say and report. But here’s why the women’s health care argument is about abortion: lots of us believe women’s health care includes family planning services that must include access to safe and legal abortion. Even considering the facts, for many people, the 3% [...]

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Rebecca

so (pro)choice

28
February

I walked for choice on Saturday.  Because the organizers had prepared lots of extra signs for the event, almost everyone had one to wave.  Mine said in big, blue block letters: SAFE LEGAL RARE (Classic.)  At one point I walked next to a guy about my age, also a Vandy grad student.  From San Diego, [...]

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Rebecca

mardi gras ballers

17
February

As I was working on my hat for last weekend’s Spanish Town ball, I sat at the bar sipping on some Saturday morning orange juice.  I was constructing an oil derrick replica to sit atop my handmade hat, while pink cutouts of a pelican, a magnolia and the state of Louisiana sat to the side [...]

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Rebecca

hardly education

17
January

Last semester, while discussing culture wars in American education, my professor told the story of her NYU professor friend who spent a few years teaching middle school social studies prior to pursuing his doctorate.  During a lesson on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a student brought up that King had been unfaithful to his wife [...]

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