To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. - Le Guin.
Work
Pacific Tech ...
... Curriculum Vitae ...
It's midnight. I've been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not being paid. In fact, my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley, doing clandestine volunteer work for an eight-billion-dollar corporation. - The Graphing Calculator Story
"All human beings are practicing historians. We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." - from Why History Matters.
"It is the custom of the People that when a story has been told to you, you give the teller something of equal value; a story of your own."
"When I was coming of age - a process which is still far from over - no one ever spoke strong truths to me in a loving voice. When I was your age, I did not know what I needed to know in order to understand my life - anybody's life." From Letters to a Young Feminist.
"To stand against this plunder and face the drumbeat of such overwhelming certainty that What You Do Won't Make a Difference requires a radical leap of audacity, of imagination. It is essential to the project of empire that people cannot imagine another way, that the inevitability of peoples' powerlessness is overwhelming.
"This idea, then, is the ultimate subversion, this imaginative notion of popular efficacy. To act in the defense of humanity requires us to think, as the World Social Forum claims, that Another World is Possible. Indeed, Another World is Necessary."
Proper Dress Essential for First Felony Trial
Late one night, I happened to visit a military institution in order to destroy a particularly noxious element of the First Strike Weapons System. After all, dangerous weapons should not simply be left lying about where children or generals could get hold of them and perhaps injure someone.
"I have always had a big mouth. This has not, however, always been recognized as an art form. The Nuyorican Poets Cafe can take credit for that. Nice girl with rebel rising, I was raised in a conservative steel town. In ninth grade, I was sent to the principal's office for refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag. At the Nuyorican, I was sent to the National Poetry Slam Championship for tossing allegations at the flag in "America's on Sale." A good artist learns that what gets you in trouble in high school is worth paying attention to....
"Spoken word poetry is as innate to me as radical feminism, and in my career, they work side by side. Both give voice to the silenced, battling the elite to redistribute privilege; both are rooted in liberation, valuing the personal as political; both have an incredible sense of humor; both infight passionately-and often; both are an art form, a balancing act, a gold mine. And neither one throws stuff."
- Diary of a Slam Poet in Ms. Magazine December 2000
I like walking in the cemetery
its so beautiful in the winter
the cold contented tombstones
sing the praise of friends and strangers
I appreciate the company of the dead
I thank Mr. Don Juan who said
keep death upon your shoulder
it will remind you to love"Dublin, New Hampshire's Doris Haddock, 89, known to her great grandchildren as "Granny D," is walking across America from California to Washington, D. C. She left Los Angeles on Jan. 1, 1999, and walks ten miles per day. Her goal is to show Members of Congress that people do care about campaign finance reform. She is showing how much she cares by walking in spite of her arthritis and emphysema, and by talking to as many people as she can along her way. She hopes that her effort will encourage people to contact their representatives and demand campaign finance reform."
"for every dollar given to a candidate by a special interest group, over ten dollars in special tax breaks are given in return. This is nothing less than full public financing, but it is a poor system of public financing. By directly funding qualified campaigns with public funds, we can eliminate nine of the ten dollars paid by taxpayers --now paid in the form of tax loopholes for special interests.
Any true conservative would trade a corrupt system of public financing for a clean one that costs the taxpayers one-tenth as much."
"My activism - cultural, political, spiritual - is rooted in my love of nature and my delight in human beings. It is when people are at peace, content, full, that they are most likely to meet my expectation, selfish, no doubt, that they be a generous, joyous, even entertaining experience for me. I believe that people exist to be enjoyed, much as a restful or engaging view might be. As the ocean or drifting clouds might be. Or as if they were the human equivalent of melons, mangoes, or any other kind of attractive, seductive fruit. When I am in the presence of other human beings I want to revel in their creative and intellectual fullness, their uninhibited social warmth. I want their precious human radiance to wrap me in light." From Anything We Love Can Be Saved.
What is a sojourner but a walker? And what does the name Alice (from the Greek aletheia) mean but truth? ''I get a power from this name that Sojourner Truth and I share,'' Alice Walker writes in Living by the Word.
"I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all."
"Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid." From A Left-Handed Commencement Address in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places.
"Born in the dark shadow of power misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding and unattainable light." From Betrayals in Four Ways to Forgiveness.
Adrienne Rich - She recently turned down the National Medal for the Arts:
"I have a strong belief in the inseparability of art from society as a whole. Where growing numbers of people are being marginalized, impoverished, scapegoated and beleaguered, I don't feel I can accept an award from the government that is pursuing these policies. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored."
Emma Goldman - Feminist, Anarchist, and fearless.
Rebecca's Revenge - A place where bitterness and rage are paid their due.
"That's why it comes back to math. Math has no bias. It doesn't come from TV. It doesn't know what you're wearing. Math treats all people equally. Especially when you're in a hard class with all boys, when nobody's cheering you on from the sidelines, when it's not "cool" to be smart, math is a nice thing to have. When nothing else makes sense, math reaches an answer." - Rebecca L. Eisenberg from Girls Need Math in the Examiner.
Mary Schmich - A hypothetical commencement address not written by Kurt Vonnegut.
Adair Lara - The Old Woman We Want to Be ... Real Strength Isn't in the Muscles
"You couldn't see this woman in the fading light and feel afraid of getting old...."
Molly Ivins - The Fun's in the Fight
Jessica Mitford - "You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty."
Diane DiMassa - Hothead's my hero.
Donna Williams - " In a world without windows, in the company of shadows, ..."
Marilyn Wann - Creator of Fat! So? for people who don't apologize for their size.
Natalie, HBI - Unapologetic feminist rants. Abrasively forthright, intelligent and funny.
Andrea Dworkin - A writer of uncompromising integrity, compassion, brutal honesty, and strength.
"Let tenderness prevail in the blackest hour of cynicism, or there will be nothing left of my generation."