person

Regarding "The Personhood Amendment" of Mississippi. 

UPDATE: also appearing at the Huffington Post, here.

Oscarina's Sunday comics: the Evolution of Ape-Face Johnson

Some of you may already have seen this piece in TheHairpin.com, but for those of you who haven't, here's an edifying story of the transformation of an ugly duckling into... a decent duck. 

other girls

It's true. But there's hope.

imaginary

pray

Oscarina's Sunday comics: Hildegarde to the rescue!

From time to time, Oscarina will share the comics and other reading material that interests her. This week, she's reading about Hildegarde of Bingen, in "Hildegarde to the rescue!" by Carolita Johnson at her favorite women's (by women) website, The Hairpin. (Other stuff by Carolita on The Hairpin can be found by clicking on her name in the article header.)

Read it, here:

PMS

witches

the future

 

thin and beautiful

If I could wear these two articles (this one, and this one) as Halloween costumes, I would. They are just plain scary.

marriageable

Recommended reading, Kate Bolick's "All the single ladies," in The Atlantic this week.

Columbus Day

Pedro de Cordoba wrote a letter to King Ferdinand in 1517 describing the Haiti that Christopher Columbus had created: "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth . . . Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery."

"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system. Ferdinand Columbus described how it worked: "(The Indians) all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished."" With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold. Columbus's son neglected to mention how the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands. 

All of these gruesome facts are available in primary source material—-letters by Columbus and by other members of his expeditions—and in the work of Las Casas, the first great historian of the Americas, who relied on primary materials and helped preserve them."

(Both paragraphs excerpted from "Lies my teachers told me," by James Loewen. You won't regret reading it. Many many things will begin to make much more sense.)

role model

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

dogs

occupied

 UPDATE: also published at the Huffington Post, here! 

presidents

Oscarina is reading "Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World," by Lisa Bloom, on my recommendation. Very informative.

sweater

pest

 

prince

(My apologies to anyone who noticed this post earlier as "someday": that link broke, so I had to rename it and repost.)

someone like you