patriarchy at work

In honor of the Supreme Court's decision, let's all remember who was there when the 'partial-birth' abortion ban was signed.

incompetence is no barrier to achievement

Don't read the cover article of this week's NYT magazine. Or if you do, don't say I didn't warn you. To summarize: Thomas Friedman would like us all to know that he has a big dick, and it likes the environment. But not in a "sissy", "vaguely French" way. No, this is a "muscular and strategic" "Geo-Green" sort of dick that considers "the First Law of Petropolitics" in its quest to ravish the world.

Instead, you should read a review of Friedman's book. By the time the Mathemagician was done reading it to me, I was lying on my kitchen floor, convulsing with laughter, tears streaming down my cheeks, whimpering.

why hierarchy sucks

I had lots of time to think today. I spent most of it waiting 4.5 hours to talk to my principal. And what I thought about, in that time, is how extremely important it is for leaders of all sorts (principals, teachers, presidents) to be accessible. I used to be able to drop by the director's office at the outdoor ed program where I worked, and I talked to my direct boss in depth at least every other week. It was part of my job and his job, and it meant that I always knew where I stood. The other outdoor ed program was bigger, so we had forms to get signed and mandatory short check-ins every other week, but if you wanted to talk to someone they'd schedule you a time. You can have more formal systems too, like having office hours or a meeting every day or week that's reserved for employees or a secretary who'll make an appointment for you, but you gotta be able to get in touch with your boss. Especially if you're trying to set up some kind of special something for your organization that needs your boss's approval.

What does not work is asking people to stand outside your door at random times until you decide they're worth talking to.

What also does not work is telling them you'll meet with them at a specific time, then disappearing at that time with no explanation or apology.

And if you need a definition of adding insult to injury, it's having your boss finally meet with you, then interrupt the meeting every 30 seconds to talk to someone else.

I'm not saying I'm so important. But I'd feel better about my job and my work if I got treated like I mattered some. Even worse, this is moving up in the world compared to some.

rap is something you do,

hip-hop is something you live.¹

---

1. thanks, Chris Clarke.

time to look in the impossible places

There's a short article in the NYT magazine by Noah Feldman this week that purports to be about the lack of any political candidates with clear statements about how to get out of Iraq. While the article frames it as being about politicians' trying to negotiate conflicting electoral desires and paradigms for resolving the conflict, it's notable for what it lacks: a clear statement of the real options for dealing with Iraq. To my mind, this is because there aren't any. For most political problems (access to health care, the global AIDS crisis, global climate change, crime in the inner city, equal rights for queer people) there's some action the government should take, even if it's not enough to fully solve the problem. In Iraq, all of our possible options are hopelessly compromised: whatever action the US government takes, some unacceptable consequence will almost certainly ensue. Notably, these unacceptable consequences are unacceptable to Iraqis, Americans, politicians, academics, and the world community, meaning that politicians literally have nowhere to go to find a reasonable strategy for resolving US involvement in Iraq.

The conclusion of US involvement in Iraq will only happen once we accept one of the unacceptable consequences. Thus, while the article sets up the problem as one of political will, it's in fact a problem of available options. We're going to have to accept at least one, and maybe more, of the following consequences in order for the current unproductive muddle to end.

1. Genocidal civil war, coupled with a major refugee crisis, destabilization of the region as the various surrounding countries jockey for influence, massive loss of face for the US, and loss of access to Iraq's oil production. I should say, more of these things than we have now. This is the likely consequence of withdrawing all US troops on the timelines set out by the House and Senate bills. No one is willing to accept this consequence explicitly: it's a humanitarian and international-relations disaster. It is, however, very likely to be the consequence we accept by default.

2. A major increase in US troop commitment. Not a surge, not a small escalation, but overwhelming force. Despite Iraqi hostility to the US presence, I think a massive escalation that actually established security and helped rebuild infrastructure might be welcome. You'd need a draft and a complete change in the US political scene. The US wouldn't lose quite as much face, but Iraq would become our major effort for the next five or so years. Say goodbye to any other policy priorities that might compete with the war effort. Also to your male relatives.

3. Giving other countries in the Middle East a lot of say in Iraq. It might work to have a federally partitioned Iraq - something along the lines of the former Yugoslavia - with large protector states for each section. There's precedent for major powers coming together to split up powerless states, and while I don't think it's so great, it might be better than door #1. It might also be possible just to have Saudi and Iranian involvement and protection without dividing up in the country. The downside risk is that, like in Yugoslavia, lots of people might end up having to leave their homes as the ethnic and religious borders got defined, and there would almost certainly be some serious violence and brutality. The US would have to explicitly provide Iran with influence in Shiite Iraq, and the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia would probably have to be the minimal guarantors of the peace. You'd also need assent from Syria, Jordan, and Turkey - Iraq's other neighbors - though Turkey is pretty likely to just accept whatever it is, since the Kurdish section along its border is relatively stable. There'd be a lot of arguing about oil and borders, Baghdad might have to be partitioned, and it has the potential to set up a major future war about oil, religion, and whatever violations of the peace are certain to happen periodically. This consequence is the least likely to happen, and is also the least defined right now. It carries enormous risks, and might be impossible anyway.

On the other hand, Juan Cole, who, as a professor of modern Middle East history, knows a smidge more than I do about these things, thinks it might work. His vision depends, though, on the US actively engaging with Iran, which is going to take a change of administration at a bare minimum.

The defining theme of these consequences is that Iraq needs some major force if we're not going through door #1. The US could provide it, or other countries could provide it, but I think we've seen that the Iraqi government is, at the moment, totally unable to provide it. Both sides of the American political fight present the canard that "The Iraqi political classes could deliver law and order and reconstruction if only they really wanted to, but their incentive to save their country is somehow reduced by the presence of the U.S.," but Feldman points out that "It is hard to overstate how absurd this view would sound to anyone who wasn’t looking for excuses to withdraw." Basically, putting total responsibility for stability and reconstruction on a brand-new government in an extremely unstable state in which being a member of the government at any level is likely to get you killed? Not reasonable. Not going to work, anyway. Choosing that means choosing door #1.

And what do I think? Well. I don't really know. But door #3 is the only one that might, possibly maybe, not be a human catastrophe. So I'll go with that.

---

1. The title comes from something my mom says. If you can't find your keys after you've looked in all the possible places, it's time to look in the impossible places.
2. Edited because I read Juan Cole.

best graffiti ever

On the toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom of a BP in Carlisle, PA:

I <3 buckwheat

collected notes

I had a dispiriting conversation with a co-worker the other day about what an awful environment my school is, especially for freshmen. I was saying that I didn't understand why certain students - the ones who end up in a lot of conflicts with teachers and are doing absolutely no school work, zero, not even moving towards getting a single credit - come to school. He said he thought that for some students, school is better than home. It's safer and less scary. To put this in context, in the three weeks since the head of the school district where I work announced a zero-tolerance policy for threats and assaults on teachers⁰¹ under which any threats or assaults get a mandatory 10-day suspension, one kid has been suspended for hitting me with a door and two more have been suspended for threatening me. Our bulletin boards get torn down within a week, and, in one hallway, there's at least one plexiglass window punched out of a door every week. There are fights between students every day, and constant casual violence that's not quite a fight. It's hard for me to imagine wanting to be there, but I think my colleague is right.

******

Today a girl asked if I was pregnant. No. Are you sure? YES.² I told her I had my period, and she said, "Oh, that must be why you look pregnant."

To her, there was nothing weird about her teacher talking about her period. I can't even imagine being that comfortable with menstruation or body stuff at that age. It's a great virtue of a cultural pocket where lots of people get pregnant at all sorts of ages.

******

A friend from high school called on Tuesday night. Let's call him Kermit, which is clearly not his real name, but I can't come up with a descriptive pseudonym for him. I think it's because I've known him too long and in too many ways. Conveniently, that's also why I wanted to write about him. We've been friends for something like ten years. He was my prom date, he and I started a surprisingly effective single-issue political organization, he sent me letters when I was at camp in Canada, and yesterday he called to let me know that a political thing I passed on to him is going to pass. I was so happy to hear from him. So happy. And surprised, some, but mostly just happy. He's always been a really good friend to me, and I'm always a little surprised at how good a friend. Surprised? Because when we became friends, I thought of myself as someone who didn't have a lot of friends, and I didn't trust the world that much. Kermit is a prime counter-example for that.

******

He said, as have my parents, that he's proud or impressed or something about me teaching this year. I would feel better about that if I were doing something useful, not just baby-sitting my students through one more year of not learning any math.

******

Someone needs to leave a comment here.

---

1. As opposed to before, when they were tolerated. I wish I were joking.
2. Do you have any idea how not pregnant I am? I only sleep with my girlfriend who can't get me pregnant, I have my period, and, just in case, I got a pregnancy test last Wednesday so I could get vaccinated against HPV.

ill-fated advice

I'm writing from class, which is kind of ridiculous. Then again, so is class.

The people facilitating a 3-hour workshop on working with English language learners for my grad school class are currently off on a tangent about how important constructivist learning and teaching are. Constructivist educational philosophy essentially is about people constructing and developing their own knowledge and integrating real-world situations with learning. It's great. It's how I'd like to teach. But there are two problems, both of them recently voiced by people in this gigantic lecture hall, both of them worse for people who are first-year teachers in disastrous schools.

1. I teach math, and there are specific mathematical concepts I need to teach. While math is everywhere, and I completely, 100% believe that students learn math much better if they see it as a formal way of writing the math that they already do in their lives, it's hard to come up with concrete applications that make everything make sense. Now, if I teach math for 5 years, I'll have a lot more; and there's no excuse for the crappiness of my area and perimeter lessons. But when people say, "Yeah, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it," you have to ask, "For whom? On what time scale?" For me, this week, it's not. I promise. Next week, maybe. Next year, definitely. In the long term, no question at all. But for my own sanity, I need to accept that this year I will teach many crappy lessons that don't fully lead to understanding. I wish I had fewer lessons focused on why it's important for me to teach that way, and more help figuring out exactly how to do that.

2. Another teacher pointed out that our students are mostly used to a mode of teaching that's all about direct instruction and transmitting information. When we try to have them construct their own knowledge, they're like, "You're not teaching!" Martin Haberman wrote about the pedagogy of poverty as a set of teaching methods that rewards rote compliance, but he also pointed out that it has benefits (in terms of safety and ease) for students, and that students often push teachers to use it by complying with the pedagogy of poverty and rebelling against anything else. It takes a while to dissolve this. In an environment in which other teachers are also asking students to question, challenge, and solve problems, that resistance goes away a lot faster. The whole school environment needs to be oriented around learning and problem-solving, not just one classroom. And not just because I'm lazy.

Also. Can I just say. Next person who says "frontloading", "scaffolding", or "differentiation" as if I'd never heard the words before gets a plastic fork in the eye.

things that have been said to me today

bad:
"Are you confused? one plus one equals two! two plus two equals four! pussy plus pussy equals dyke!"

"you alien-looking motherfucker"

"bitch" (x50)

good:
"Freedom Writers"

"you want to teach here?"

"you's a boss"

roll call

Declared candidacies for US president, with high-school yearbook style awards:

Democrats
Tom Vilsack: Most Boring Candidate.
Hillary Clinton: Most Polarizing Candidate.
Barack Obama: Best Smile.
Chris Dodd: Most Pointless Candidacy.
John Edwards: Best Hair.
Dennis Kucinich: Biggest Nerd.
Mike Gravel: Who the hell is that?

Republicans
Sam Brownback: Attila the Hun Memorial Senator.
Mike Smith/John Cox: Who the hell is that?

miracles are not a policy

I don't know where Tom Moore teaches, or what kind of teacher he is, but he's right on.

One thing I've realized this year is that teaching is full of lovely little moments. I've had a pretty hellacious year so far, I'm not a great teacher, and I still have those moments. And those moments - that's what's in the movies. To string them together into an incredible year, where your work fundamentally changes your students' lives, is an extraordinary achievement. Jaime Escalante and Erin Gruwell and the many, many others who aren't in movies are extraordinary. But the movies - at least if Tom Moore's article and the trailers I watched are to be believed - seriously underestimate the challenges they face, maybe because it's hard to make a moving and comprehensible movie scene out of 30 kids screaming at each other at the same time, or the process of trying to track down bathroom, elevator, and classroom keys, or an activity in which your students refuse to participate pretty much at all.

Worse, just as Moore says, is the idea that teachers can, should, must be heroes. Jaime Escalante and Erin Gruwell and all the other people who change their students' lives are extraordinary. There are 3.8 million teachers in the US. Asking them all to be superheroes and miracle workers is just another way to avoid the real problems of public education.

so, what do I think? #2

In that last post about changing public education I talked a lot about money, and I did something that annoys me when other people do it - namely, I bad-mouthed teachers at schools 'like mine.' This annoys me because, hey, you think teachers don't teach well? Here. You try it. Try teaching four periods a day with no office to send kids to, no curriculum for two of those periods, your personal safety in danger, fights on a regular basis, and your students 5 or 6 grade levels behind. Not so easy now, is it? There are a million things I know I should do and just don't, for all sorts of essentially personal reasons about needing time and energy spent away from school.

Last night, I was talking to a friend about her school, where there have been no fights since October 26, 2005, and where the principal mentions that at each Thursday's all-school meeting and there are three full-time deans who deal with anyone who's disruptive in class or talking about thinking about maybe fighting. This is what we like to call a 'support system.' I said that I had realized that at my school, with no support system, it is actually possible to create the support system yourself. I can't do it, but it can be done. She said, yes, but you shouldn't have to, and you can't as a first-year teacher. Which about sums it up.

Basically, being an excellent teacher at a failing school is an almost superhuman endeavor. I think. There are a few teachers who may be counter-examples, but I suspect they pull at least a few superhuman stunts. This is why I have so little patience with people who talk smack about teachers as if we're THE reason public education is so messed up. So why did I talk smack?

Well, mostly because it seems like the math teacher my students had last year just gave them a B+ for showing up. Because my brightest, most motivated students are still mostly behind - and I know it's not their fault because they catch up so damn fast. So. There are at least some really bad teachers out there.

sparks

I have to remember the good moments, because the bad ones are measured in hours.

Today, in the half hour before lunch, I offered my room to four junior girls who needed a place to work on math for a test prep class. One of them is the smartest most articulate wundermonkey in any of my classes, who's frustrated in my class because it's too slow: she was tutoring the others (which, by the way, she does amazingly, because she's also a natural at that part of teaching). When we got to the room, another girl was waiting - she spent the next twenty minutes writing down the homework she needed to make up. Twenty minutes in, it was lunch time. An 11-th grade girl who's way, way, way behind (in a class that averages 6 grade levels behind) and trying furiously to catch up (partly so she can be a good mom to her daughter) came in, got a calculator, and sat down with the girls working on test prep. A guy who's constantly trying to improve his grade from, say, a 92 to a 97 (which, at my school, is endearing rather than irritating) came in to catch up on back homework - I told him I'd give him extra credit if he taught inverse functions to the other girl who was working on homework and she did well on a quiz. A 9th-grader started working on a diagnostic test. Meanwhile, four people formed a line to talk to me about why they were suspended and what their grades were.

That was when the principal walked in. She said, "What class is this?"

It's not class. They're here because they want to be.

so, what do I think? #1

I teach high school math in a very poor, very violent neighborhood in a major US city with a really bad school system. I'm a first-year teacher, and it's a mess. My background is intellectual, upper middle class, focused on social responsibility, politically active, and liberal: that describes my parents and grandparents, and the parents of many of my friends. Almost none are teachers. Periodically, people ask what policies I think would improve the public schools. Recently, a stranger on a plane asked. This is the first of what I hope will be an occasional series exploring some possibilities. I'm interested in seeing how my thinking changes over the next year and a half.

To put one of my premises out there: I imagine, as I say these things, a conservative (like one I recently met on a plane) saying that parents should be responsible for these changes; that expectation is not reasonable or realistic, for reasons I might write about later, and really I think it's irrelevant. Do you want students in low-income districts to have the same educational opportunities as students in wealthy districts? Yes or no. If yes, saying parents should be responsible is a cop-out, unless you have a plan to make or help parents be responsible. Without further ado, the proposals.

1. More money. Schools in impoverished areas shouldn't get funding parity with wealthier districts - they should get double the per student funding. Among other things, parents in wealthy districts provide a vast number of resources that poor parents simply cannot provide: graphing calculators that students can use at home, buying college reference books, making sure their students get therapy or medications if they have mental illness, dental care, computers and internet at home - the list goes on. Money is not the only thing my students need, and more could certainly be done with the current budget, but let's be real: many of the people who refuse to throw money at the education of poor children are the same ones who throw money at their own children's education. They're not doing that for nothing.

2. More staff. See #1. Having someone constantly available to manage a student who's out of control (e.g. an office to send that student to) would free up a lot of my time to actually teach. Instead, what happens is that if a student disrupts or endangers the class, I write up a disciplinary referral and it gets dealt with later; if I'm really lucky, someone will be available to take that student, but those people all teach their own classes and are pretty overworked; they also don't have anywhere to put the student where the student will be supervised. In better-functioning schools, you can just send a kid to the office for cursing at you; in my school, no way.

More staff also means smaller class sizes, which, wow. That would be awesome. Thirty-three kids is a lot. Maybe even having two preps be standard - I have that this year, and it's great, and I don't know how I functioned without it for 2 months.

3. Better staff. The quality of most teachers is, well, not stellar. (I include myself in this, though I think one way in which I am unlike many of the other teachers at my school is that I really want to get better.) The recent NYT magazine article about the achievement gap and the KIPP schools casually mentioned that KIPP teachers work 15-16 hour days. That's great for the students, but it's not a national policy solution. You can get a few more smart, motivated, ambitious, etc, people into teaching by upping the mystique, and a lot more by making public schools better work environments, but to do this on a national scale you'll have to up the salaries. That kind of time commitment is what people do in I-banking, where they are making boatloads of money. I'd suggest making teacher schools something like law or MBA programs, where you worry about whether you'll get in and have to be intensely devoted to it for at least a year or two; I'd also suggest having teacher salaries start at $60,000 and go up to $150,000. You could even start lower if you were willing to make the ramp pretty steep. Teaching will never fully compete with Wall Street - that's not the idea. But you want a lot of talented people who have other options? You're going to have to pay for them.

I am not sure if doing that would produce a system where I wanted to work right now. For me, teaching was a step up financially, and I was fine with that. But realistically, money is a great way to attract people to a particular job, and while that kind of environment might make me less interested in teaching now, the money (and the doubtless improved work environment) might also make me more interested in teaching long-term.

4. Better management. See #3 and #1. Management at most public schools is abysmal. I have this fantasy of having professional development that's not a complete waste of my time, seeing the teaching schedules for half-days and special events before the day of, and getting feedback from observations. This, again, you have to pay for.

5. Better staff/management development. I'm going to write more about this another time.

6. For the luvva Pete, can I please just have a curriculum for every class? And maybe a computer in my classroom? And while I'm wishing for the impossible, how about paper for the flippin' copy machine?

Idlewild

What's most interesting about Idlewild (OutKast's gorgeous movie set in a semi-mythical Prohibition-era Georgia) is not what it owes to the past, but to the present. The score, of course - there's no way those songs would have existed 'then' - but also the dance scenes, floating somewhere between musicals and music videos, and the characters.

It's simple, really. Before there were gangstas, there were gangsters; before there was crack, there was hootch; before there was the club, there was the club. More complicated things, too: the role of women as simultaneous seduction and salvation, the dream of getting out, the fear and reality of violence, having to choose between being cool and having a future. Idlewild is about now, dressed up as then. Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street is about the same subjects, but it's not half as pretty.

home is....

Three full-time residents, three cars. Looking around a roomful of friends and realizing I've known everyone in it for over 10 years, except for the little siblings (I met them 8 years ago). Bonjovi on the radio. "You only bought two and a half pounds of green beans? That might be enough for your little brother.... by himself!" Constantly being interrupted. An orange and a penny in my Christmas stocking; also contact solution. At least two glasses of wine a night. The promise of the interstate. New bars with exciting beer lists and murals - what's happening to this place? My grandmother's artwork on the walls. Scraping the frost off my car before I can go anywhere. Buying rounds at the bar. My dad making cappuccino. Watching most of the first season of Big Love on DVD. My little brother at the computer. Being the only one up at 2 am. Borrowing cash from my mom to go out for a beer. Drinking cream soda and root beer. Apple pie. A golden retriever sleeping sprawled between the top of the stairs and the door. Strip malls. When the cop who breaks up the [very quiet] party is my high school biology teacher's son. Sleeping until noon. Homemade granola. Tonight's dinner question: what would you do about Iraq? They let you smoke in the bars. Almost certainly being safe to drive. My sister napping on the couch. Mexican wedding cookies, molasses-ginger drops, sugar cookies, and lebkuchen. Emmy Lou Harris singing "Light of the Stable." Knowing how to get everywhere. Do you want to talk to someone on the other side of the house? No need to go anywhere - just shout! Knowing that Git'n'Go used to be a QuikTrip. Winter grasses at the edge of the garden. The lieutenant governor coming over for brunch. Frustrating and comfortable. Drinking beer in an outdoor gear outlet store at 3 am because my friend is the manager, and the cops broke up the party at her house. Dancing to Journey. My friends' parents. Hearing about Catholic Worker houses. Hypothetical karaoke. More prosciutto than you could possibly eat. Drinking champagne. The dishwasher running constantly. Driveways with basketball hoops. Someone has to go to the grocery store every day. New kittens. Two dogs. Trading Christmas cookie plates with my friends' families. The gold dome of the Capitol building. Being surprised by how white everyone is. Driving past my high school. Reading articles aloud to each other. My mom asking what I think of the garden. Red pepper pasta sauce. Adriatic pita bread. Blessings for the road. Never wanting to stay. Never wanting to leave.

sex-neutral

In 2005, I borrowed a book called A Return to Modesty¹ and got kind of annoyed with it.

Conveniently, someone else has written the same book again, so I don't have to come up with new ways to be irritated. Dawn Eden² is older, and she became an observant Catholic instead of an observant Jew, but it's basically the same old same old. Some woman becomes religious, stops having sex, and realizes how much happier and more fulfilled she is when she's chaste (or celibate or modest or whatever) and religious. Next step: publish a book so all the rest of us can learn how to be just as satisfied with our lives.³

The arguments are oddly similar to the way polyamory advocates sound sometimes: "Why didn't I know about this before? I spent all that time trying to be [monogamous/promiscuous]! I never realized that I actually could sleep with [lots of people/no one] without being [skeevy/lame]!"

The most noticeable aspect of this interview with Eden is that the focus of her romantic life, both before and after she was celibate, was primarily on finding a husband and secondarily on relieving her insecurities about being good enough and lovable enough. Note that when she talks about her pleasure in sex, she says:

There were times when I would count how many men I had had sex with in one two-week period and thought, "I must be this really hot, attractive chick to attract so many men."

Also:

I used to believe that, if I knew that I would never get married, I would kill myself.

Not anymore, but now,

as I was writing, I didn't want to think of what would become of me if I didn't get married. It was too frightening to imagine.

It gives you a sense of how central the idea of marriage was and is to her life. Also of what she sees as the alternative.

If you desperately want one kind of relationship, and start pursuing something completely different, you'll be unsatisfied. No real surprise, then, that when she stopped sleeping around and started looking for something she actually wanted, she got happier. Chastity, in Eden's view, is about not pursuing sex, but instead pursuing serious relationships with people whose values you share.

Instead of following the pop-culture prescription, to single-mindedly pursue a man who's going to make you happy, I am suggesting women should be singular and concentrate on being the best people they can be and displaying grace as individuals and as women. In doing that they will become more giving, more appreciative of everyone around them, so not only will they be better able to have meaningful friendships and relationships, but they will also be able to enjoy this time they have as singular women.

Similarly, she says chastity made her a better friend: before, her romantic life and friendships were about activities, and now both are about values and intense personal connections.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this transformation happened in Eden's life. But check it out: fundamentally, none of this is about who you have sex with. It's about caring, respect, connection with other people. For her, that happens through her relationship with sex. FOR HER. But she, like a lot of conservatives, conflates values with sex; like Wendy Shalit, she assumes that because she fundamentally wanted marriage and preferred chastity to promiscuity, all other women want that too.

I think, honestly, that it's a failure of imagination on her part that makes this happen: for her, relationships are either permanent or superficial; either no sex until marriage, or promiscuity. It's a false dichotomy, not just because there are possibilities between those two extremes, but because there are possibilities that combine those qualities, or have neither of them. It's also a way of trying to get people to be less obsessed with sex that is, itself, incredibly obsessed with sex.⁴ Really, the most telling line in the whole interview is her summary of her message:

It's about having substance as a person, seeking out friends who have depth and substance.

But why exactly does that have to be about sex?

---

1. By Wendy Shalit.
2. The Thrill of the Chaste.
3. Start following the Amazon links for those two books to find a few more. Their covers even look similar - part of a woman's face in some kind of old-fashioned painting.
4. The most extreme example of this I know is Westboro Baptist, who protest 'gay-friendly' organizations like the U.S. military with signs that depict sodomy using stick figures. That shit is weird.

whoa

"This unconstitutional darkness, we will stab at it with our dagger until we kill it."

what to eat, #4

Those who know me (and if you don't know me, why are you reading my tiny-ass blog?) know that about three quarters of my cooking is slapped together by remembering what someone once said was the right way to do something. The other quarter involves obsessively reading every recipe on the subject and calling my mom at least twice. This is the first kind of recipe.

Roasted Root Vegetables with Basted Eggs¹
What to buy
a buncha root vegetables. potatoes - yellow, purple, white, mixed fingerlings, who cares? but let me know how it goes if you try new potatoes or the big Idaho bakers; sweet potatoes; parsnips; beets; celeriac; salsify; carrots if you want, but I don't think they're much of an enhancement.

eggs. spring for happy local ones if you can, and goggle at the deep gold of the yolk.

a box of chicken broth. completely optional - you can also use veggie bouillon or water, but I really like the organic free range chicken broth at Trader Joe's, and think it makes the eggs better. you only use maybe a tablespoon for this recipe, so make sure you'll use it for something else.

What you should already have on hand
some olive oil
a little butter
salt
pepper
garlic
maybe some rosemary or chives or something, but don't stress

What you do
1. Roast the veggies. Turn the oven up to 450, then wash 'em, peel the skins if you don't want to eat them, and chop them up into half to one inch chunks. Put them in an ovensafe pan, toss in enough olive oil to coat them very lightly, and sprinkle the salt on (also lightly). Peel a few cloves of garlic and put them in the pan whole. They're gonna turn into practically spreadable, unbelievably delicious little nubbins of roast garlic. Stick the pan in the oven. Start checking on them after 20 minutes, and pull them out when they're all cooked through (soft, but not custardy).

2. When the veggies are done, make the basted eggs. (Side note: I have no idea if this is how you're supposed to make basted eggs, but it's working for me right now. This was my big revolution in egg frying - before, I was really bad at it, and always broke at least one of the yolks. This way? It works.) Melt a little butter in a small pan on low. Keep the heat really low! Otherwise the eggs will be too tough! Crack your two eggs in there when the butter's all foamy. Once the bottom of the clear white has turned actual white all the way around the egg (while most of the depth of the white is still totally clear) slide your spatula under the eggs so they don't stick. Salt and pepper the eggs, and put a little rosemary on them if you want. I love eggs with rosemary. Now add a slug of chicken broth (or water, or veggie broth, or whatever) to the pan, and cover it. What's a slug? Who knows.² Let it cook for a few minutes, or til almost all of the white is cooked. Flip the eggs over carefully, cook another few seconds, and slide them out onto a plate. Serve yourself some veggies, too. Yum.

3. Got buttered toast? You just made yourself an upscale diner breakfast for dinner.

I ate this 3 times this week - once fresh, twice with the left-over veggies reheated in a pan. I'm still not sick of it.

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1. Hat tip to the Gardener, who made the first batch of roasted root vegetables this is based on.
2. I feel like people laugh about 19th century (and earlier) recipes that tell you to put in a handful of this or a pinch of that, but seriously? That's what my recipes, and my mom's recipes, and most of my friends' recipes tell you too.

how you know parents are on your side

"I think you owe her an apology."¹

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1. Especially when closely followed by "Ain't no 'sorry.' What are you sorry for?"