Episode One: We’re on the air!

Hello and welcome to Radio H*, our family’s broadcast! Our first show covers a lot of ground including an introduction to the broadcast, a discussion of education models, parenting methodologies, pop culture and very fresh news, as well as a few social justice topics from around the world. Also, I’ve included a few readings and a first-time interview for both my daughter and myself.

All music is licensed under Creative Commons.

Disclosure: this podcast contains one incident of mild language.

Listen Now
 
[podcast]https://kelly.hogaboom.org/radio/20110410.mp3[/podcast]  
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Links, more or less in chronological order:

Introduction
My blog: kelly.hogaboom.org
My social justice project, Underbellie
My husband’s work: Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Washington

Featured podcast from Idzie Desmarias, “Unschoolers Are Us”. Also, Idzie’s blog: “I’m Unschooled. Yes I Can Write.”

News / Twitterfeed
“Worst Bullying PSA Ever” by Rosalind Wiseman

“Couple plead guilty in fatal Paradise child beating” at ChicoER.com

Child Training resources, at Michael and Debi Pearl’s site

“Anti-Childhood Obesity PSA Shames Fat Children” at Sociological Images

“Australian Ad Compares Junk Food to Heroin Abuse”

The Discourse, Dr. Samantha Thomas, award-winning Health Sociologist in Australia

“Nicole Richie shoots down pregnancy rumors” at NicoleRichie.org

Personal
The Conch Shell Deli, our subscriber-service home-gourmet restaurant

Readings
A passage read from the chapter “A Long-Expected Party” from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, purchased from (Jackson St) Books on Seventh.

Unplugged Mom Radio (the cited Wendy Priesnitz quote was from an interview featured April 9th, 2011)

From Wendy Priesnitz’s blog: “Devaluing the Currency of Education” (December 29, 2008)

Dan Savage and fat phobia, a Google search

Ben Hecht, American screenwriter

Music
Intro: “Velvet-Browned Brilliant” from the freely downloadable album Lucky & Wild by Ben Seretan
Break: “Computer… Enhance” by Ralph Hogaboom
Outro: rough cut (not mixed) of “Carve Away”, recorded today by Ralph Hogaboom of Liights. Mighty Kitten Records for more info.

***

Thank you so much to all the artisans, authors, blog writers, and social network contacts and friends who have been such a rich source of growth, challenge, and joy for me. Special thanks to my children and partner, who daily inspire me to live life to the fullest I know how. And finally: Ralph, sa my audio engineer, web master, techie, and coffee-brewer, you’re at least half this effort.

***

* Tentative title

remember this moment forever, from married to the sea

get your coffee, tea, or mad dog 20/20 & settle in for Friday’s linkage

We got some awesomeness here. But seriously.

1. Jill at I Blame The Patriarchy hits it out of the park with “Toronto activists take back the slut”. She asks: can a slur be re-appropriated? What, if anything, will that solve? Also: the Sexual Assault Prevention Checklist is priceless.

2. On slur reclamation (again), coupled with artistic license: “the slants vs. u.s. patent and trademark office” as posted by Angry Asian Man. “We deserve the right to protect our name,” [Simon] Tam[, the band’s manager and bass player,] says. “In the larger sense, minorities should have the right to label themselves.” More details here.

3. Mash-up! In 1990 I was as enamored as all mid-teen girls with Roxette’s ballad “Must Have Been Love” – you know, one of those songs you try to record off the radio onto a mixtape (yes, a real mixtape) and sing along with girlfriends from the back of mom’s 1981 Mercury Cougar while being driven to Denny’s after a YMCA dance. That said, I never liked the film Pretty Woman much (but I have been known to make a few “Big mistake. Big.” jokes, usually after my debit card bounces whilst buying tampons). Anyway: FunkyBeccaBecca’s trailer re-imagining seems far more apt for this creepy so-called Cinderella story.

4. Speaking of film: Tami Harris writes “Sucker punched by Sucker Punch– Girls and guns don’t equal female empowerment”. My caveats to some of these types of article are noted in the comments. As usual, a great piece by Tami, one of my favorite social justice and pop culture bloggers.

5. Female (super)(s)heros: musings on Wonder Woman, then and now, from a girlhood fan: “Here’s hoping for a superhero every girl can aspire to” by Morven Crumlish. Crumlish pens a warm tribute to WW and the real-life WWs we’ve known and still know today.

6. From NYRA: “Taking any random childhood incident and pretending it made you successful!” What’s yours? What would yours be? I’m thinking, “I fell off my tire swing and ended up in a successful engineering career!”

7. Jasie alerts me my brother’s lady J. got Tumblr’d (J. later posted an update with the source image, which IMO all blogs/Tumblogs/etc. should do in the first place!). [ Frankenstein voice:] SO PRETTY

8. Make: sewing 101: oilcloth storage bin. Remedial-sewing-skills, expensive/designer fabric? Product = lovely, of course.

9. Reader and friend M. writes some bathtime brilliance: “French Jellyfish Icicle Party, Anyone?” After reading her ingenuity, I’m thinking anyone disinterested in baths could be persuaded to becoming a fan.

10. Tuesday Idzie asks people to weigh in with questions: I respond via email, and Idzie posits and answers: “Why is Unschooling so Fringe?” Idzie’s thoughts are on point, but in particular I enjoyed reading comments: such as Cathy who writes, “What I have seen, even in the unschooling world, is that parents don’t really ‘trust’ their children. They are often all for following the lead of their children, as long as their children follow the appropriate, known path.” Wendy Prieznitz makes a few brilliant points about the larger cultural picture. You know, all that stuff you’ll find me bitching about on a regular basis.

11. A fabulous interview regarding obesity, diet, health, and public cost: from 2009, “America’s Moral Panic Over Obesity” by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic and featuring an interview with author and statistician Paul Campos. I’m not sure how I missed it, but it’s golden.

“We’re in the midst of a moral panic over fat, which has transformed the heavier than average into folk devils, to whom all sorts of social ills are ascribed. […]

“[A]s Mary Douglas the anthropologist has pointed out, we focus on risks not on the basis of “rational” cost-benefit analysis, but because of the symbolic work focusing on those risks does – most particularly signalling disapproval of certain groups and behaviors. In this culture fatness is a metaphor for poverty, lack of self-control, and other stuff that freaks out the new Puritans all across the ideological spectrum, which is why the war on fat is so ferocious – it appeals very strongly to both the right and the left, for related if different reasons.”

You know, I kept copying and pasting quotations because it was just so good – so I finally just stuck with a couple pieces. The part about the upper West Side woman and social privilege and class… I got the chills. He owned it.

12. Natalie gives herself a zombie apocalypse manicure (using OPI Shatter which is somehow affiliated with Katy Perry but I don’t know much else because, guess what, I hardly give a fiddler’s fuck). And yeah, I got all up on eBay buying that stuff.

13. More consumerism, of a sort, via Angry Asian Man: The Morning Benders realease an EP with proceeds to Japan. This is a fabulous band and, since I “bought” the CD, I can confirm it’s a lovely listen.

14. Renee Martin posts a video; “tell us how you really feel”. Having a passionate, articulate, and strong-willed child of my own (with a retaliatory bent when things don’t go his way), I got quite a smile watching this.

15. So now “uterus” is a bad word. Fair points regarding deregulation and Republicans’ selective “big government” platform. But as for the author of this piece – I note liberals luuuurrrve to mock the GOP – in this case their “prudery”. Too bad misogyny is an American value that truly reaches across the aisle.

16. In the kitchen: Kung Pao Shrimp? HELL YES

17. Not Back To School Camp: WANT. For my daughter. No seriously, she wants to go to camp, but not the typical camps offered – specifically, an unschooling / life learning camp. I’m on the lookout. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

18. Ohmygoodness! How I love it when this happens. A reader tweeted me to say she enjoyed last week’s link to Anita Sarkeesian’s vlog “Tropes vs. Women: #1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. She also wrote her own piece, “confessions of a recovering manic pixie dream girl”. Inspired, I dug up and (re-)published my piece on the Will Ferrell/Man-Boy movies: “film feministe: the cinematic man-child and his perpetual harem of willing, nubile females”. Good stuff!

19. Last week a young Egyptian cobra escaped the Bronx Zoo. I kept up on it thru Twitter. / She’s since been recaptured. / Or has she?

20. The Hogakidlets were featured as the Gratuitous Cute Kid Pic last week at Love Isn’t Enough. By the way, I’m dying to write for this blog again. Because of all the awesomeness (at the blog, not necessarily in my writing).

21. Appropos, as my husband did injure his back this last week. Unfortunately, we weren’t having a Montclair moment on the beach or otherwise at the time it happened.

remember this moment forever, from married to the sea

Have a lovely weekend!

America is for Americans

freaky friday

Quotable
Something I wrote last Friday was quoted at both The Life Learning (Unschooling) Happiness Project and Life Learning Magazine. I love it when I’m quoted without an accompanying descriptor, hee. And in the case of Life Learning I mean look who else is quoted there. Come on. Who wouldn’t feel just a teensy bit awesome about that?

Culture & Pop Culture
“A Decade of Fear” from Information is Beautiful
I wonder how many people think of the toll that obsessive fear plays on our own and others’ psyche.

Kanye’s new video got leaked, so they’ll be much this-and-that discussion. Right out of the gate PostBourgie and Ta-Nehisi Coates came forth with pieces I enjoyed.

Refiguring the Passive Girl Toy at SocImages (Yeah, that’s me that made the submission. SocImages has the readers do a lot of their legwork, I think they should work harder on the linky-love, but then what do I know. I have a tiny site with small readership).
The first commenter asserts girls won’t like having their toys chopped up (so I guess this person doesn’t understand the concept of a child owning his/her own toys and getting to make that decision on their own?). Never fear, many readers (several of which who were once, you know, actual girls) chime in with how very much they DID like hacking their toys. Yarp.

Health
The new issue of Squat! is available. If you’d like you can read last summer’s first issue gratis, which features a piece by reader and friend Kat (“Unassisted Birth Story of David Elijah Kirkwood”).

From The Unnecesarean: “Nitrous Oxide for Laboring Women in the United States”. I am truly gobsmacked with what women face in the hospital, this form of low-risk and near instantaneous assistance (which has the additional advantage of being in the mama’s control) is not available.

Some perspective on the obese monsters who are Ruining America (and the concern trolls who love them), brought to us by Idzie’s tumblog and from Fat Heffalump.

Work
“A Plentitude of Work” by WendyPriesnitz: “unjobbing”, not just for SNAGs anymore.

Race
Re: Huckleberry Finn – I read easily a half dozen pieces this week. I enjoyed the summation “Voices: The Huckleberry Finn Controversy” at Racialicious, Renee’s perspective, and The N-word belongs in “Huckleberry Finn”, by Elon James in “This Week in Blackness” at Salon

This isn’t a case of political correctness. This is a case of being racially uncomfortable [ … ] America, in its constant obsession with being seen as “awesome,” will actively try to Photoshop its own historical portrait. (Um… is this last sentence pretty much the best sentence I’ve read about America? Yeah. I think so)

“Nickelodeon Gets Diversity Points, But Still Overlooks Race” at Colorlines

Also from Colorlines: “Two Young Girls Climb U.S./Mexico Border Fence in 18 Seconds”; please do watch both videos.

“Racists Totally Freak Out Over Muslim ‘Batman of Paris'”; this came to me via Ralph. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen (white) fanboys froth at the mouth regarding the God-given imperative to cast white actors in supposedly white-sourced roles. Guess how many mainstream Hollywood films have featured black superheroes as title character? No, guess. (I’d cite non-black poc statistics but I actually don’t know the answer on that one).

Make/Craft
Milk Punch at smittenkitten (h/t Paige). We made a non-booze version and it was delicious; Ralph especially enjoyed it.

The Soul Roll by Emeril. Made this two days ago and? Yeah. Delicious. Do make the sweet cornbread with this meal. It perfectly balances the NOMNOMNOMness.

Environment
“It is the main topic along the border. And the strange thing is it’s very hard to find anyone for it.” Speaking of the U.S./Mexican border fence, as the largest country-dividing construction since the Great Wall of China (h/t reader and friend Jeanne), the levels of suckery are boundless: “The US-Mexico Wall, it’s Borderlands, Wildlife, and People” from triggerpit. Beautiful, amazing photos and a wonderful and informative perspective in the text.

“Nobody disagrees on how this is affecting the environment, the only disagreement is how important the environment is in the overall discussion.” Ana Cordova, Ph, D, Institute for Northern Border Studies. US-Mexico

Tweet Of The Week
Yeah, I totally agree.

Random Awesomeness
America is for Americans

No matter how mean the internet is sometimes, mashups #FTW: