Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20

Some good arguments for 20-somethings to start defining your life right now.

To JK Rowling from Cho Chang

THIS. THIS SO MANY TIMES OVER. We're grown up enough now to challenge Rowling on her racist and closeted writing. I love the story, but damnit we deserve better than caricatures and tokenism.

Poverty in the US

Poverty is more real than you think in the US. What's your perception of wealth distribution?

Worth watching

1 - For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall. From NY Times, an article describing how class differences are leading to greater gaps at college level for students. This is of course complicated by racial links, as more people of color are poorer than whites.

2 - Dear Liberal Allies, what your classes on oppression didn't tell you. A Wellesleyunderground article on the people of color perspective on oppression.

3 - LGBTQ People from India. "Often QPOC get ignored in favour of white people during conversations about gender and sexuality, so I guess this is my attempt to try and push for greater visibility of lesser known people of colour in the LGBTQ movement in other parts of the world and try to debunk the notion that LGBTQ movement is primarily a white one."

4 - Things not to say to Asians. Seriously. We're tired of this shit.



5 - China's Female Imams and Mosques

Last Call to Prayer; China's Female Mosques from sharron lovell on Vimeo.

Experiences of QPOC students at Smith College & Junot Diaz on decolonial love

This was just passed onto me. A great short documentary made by a senior at Smith College on the experiences of queer people of color (QPOC) students on campus. Check it out!!



While I'm at it, check out Junot Diaz's keynote speech at Colorlines' Facing Race 2012 convention. He speaks about decolonial love and the difficulties of facing the privileges that we each hold.



A quote from Diaz's Q&A session:

The funny thing about our privilege is that we all have a blind spot around our privilege, shaped exactly like us. Most of us will identify privileges that we know we could live without. So when it comes time to talk about our privileges, we’ll throw shit down like it’s an ace. And that shit is a three! I understand that. You grow up and you live a life where you feel like you haven’t had shit, the last thing you want to give up is the one thing, the couple of things that you’ve really held on to.

I’m telling you guys, we’re never going to fucking get anywhere—if you want to hear my apocalyptic proclamation which I would never repeat, but which I know you motherfuckers are going to tweet about—we are never going to get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble, more or less, the economy of attraction of white supremacy.

Awesome videos

1 - BONES: Season 8 Episode 6 was kickass for a number of reasons; heartwrenching murder mystery, stories of 9/11, real character development. My favorite part though was this: intern Arastoo Vaziri (Pej Vahdat) relaying an interesting and awesome speech about separating 9/11 from the Muslim religion as a whole.


2 & 3 - Brave New Voices Slam Poetry: Spoken word amazingness! Call out that racism and shadeism.



White hipsters who care about animals more than other human beings? Fuck that shit.


Shadeism of the light skinned brown folk

Notes from the garden: chicken raising

Hello, hello! Long time no write. There is much to write about with the garden, so I'm going to split up the posts by topic.

We got 4 chickens at my house in July. They're Isa Brown hybrid breed chickens, bred for egg laying. Each of the chickens had their own personality. The littlest chicken, whom I call Henrietta Lacks after the African American woman whose cancer cells became the first human cells to grow in-vitro, is the most curious and unafraid of people. The two alphas push everyone else out of their way to the food and occasionally like digging up the seedlings that I plant in the garden. The light colored one has the most distinctive personality - her name is Queen and she is by far the pickiest of the lot. She is last to emerge from the coop every morning, walking daintily on the board down while everyone else crashes out in search of food. When she eats sticky food like banana or apple, she'll wipe her beak against the ground or board. And she is always the least tempted by what I give her.

Chickens enjoying some food scraps

Within a week or two of arriving at their new coop, they started laying eggs of a lovely pink shade. It was really great to have fresh free range eggs on hand. Whatever you've heard about free range and organic food, trust me when I say that there's a HUGE difference between free range and non-free range eggs. Free range eggs are much yellower in color and firmer in shape, and when you cook up scrambled eggs, they actually fill you up.

Eggs, eggs, eggs!

Taking care of chickens is like taking care of any other pet. I wake up at 7:00am every morning because the chickens start making hungry noises and demand to be fed RIGHT THIS INSTANT. Sleepy eyed, I drag yourself out of bed to pour feed into their bowls and to watch them peck at their favorite seeds, leaving the ones they don't like at the bottom because of course every chicken has their favorite foods. After I've properly waken up and gotten breakfast, the chickens have finished eating what they will of the feed and start cooing for more food. So I go out to the garden again and start pulling some greens for them. Make sure to grab the broccoli leaves and not the comfrey, even though it's known as chicken fodder, because the ladies have a taste for vegetable leaves.

The chickens had early on associated the appearance of humans with food, so they always without fail run up to the fence and coo excessively anytime one of us returns home. I usually stop to wander through the garden and pull out some weeds to give to them to eat. Chickens also have a love of watermelon, bell pepper seeds, rice, bread, and chopped up garlic. Feeding them is a chore, but it's a fun chore (as opposed to cleaning up the coop, which is less than fun).

Chickens looking very hopefully for a sign of food

I've only had chickens for 5 months, but it's been a great experience to be a chicken farmer. Sadly, we have to give our chickens away because we're about to move house. But I'm looking forward to when I can own some land and start raising chickens again.

Goodbye, Queen! I'll miss you!