~ Our Take ~
The Blog: Our Take is about immigration, sexual assault, war, and other topics that have been historically important and continue to be relevant today.
# MeToo-1: Memories Still Haunt
Are we reaping the unintended consequences of advances in birth control, coupled half a century ago with new freedoms spawned by Women’s Liberation and the Sexual Revolution? Ann muses on this question and recounts her own # MeToo moment at the hands of the then-President of the Medical University of South Carolina.
El Filibusterismo: a long-tailed route to Soda Springs
Jose Rizal isn’t an author you run into every day. Nor is his 1891 novel, El Filibusterismo, at the top of today’s best seller lists. But there he was, in sepia grandeur, on this book review site, Bookingly Yours How could I not be intrigued? The bogger, Jenai, is a...
How both The Help and Soda Springs honor Medgar Evers
The Help -- Jackson, Mississippi, Tuesday, June 11, 1963: In The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s acclaimed novel, this has been a long, tough day for Aibileen, a maid and the book’s primary protagonist. She’s kept late at work. She catches the last bus, but it stops...
In The Help, the stories of hard-working women take center stage
I seem to be obsessing over The Help. I can’t help it. What intrigues me today are these arrows and brickbats (as well as worn-out shoes and busted sinks) that keep getting hurled over the fence at The Help . . . both the novel and the movie. What puzzles me is why...
The Help: Why I’m in love with the novel and its author, Kathryn Stockett
Let’s toast The Help and author Kathryn Stockett’s success. OK . . . now let’s drink to Skeeter, Aibileen, Minny, Celia and the whole cast of the movie for bringing Kathryn’s creations visually to life. As a chaser, let’s down a grand old sherry for all these winners,...
Up against The Wall in Calexico
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out. ~ Robert Frost, Mending Wall Calexico is an afterthought. My wife and I are on our way home to Las Vegas from San Diego and we want to see the Salton Sea from its western shores. But we got...
The Wall: Something there is that doesn’t love a wall
~ Robert Frost, Mending Wall
Glory be, I finally saw The Wall: you know, the one that keeps the Mexicans out of America, thus keeping us safe from the cartels and their hit men. Or more to the point, the one that prevents all those shiftless Mexicans from coming here to take our jobs get on...
Mass transit, race, and inequality
More than half a century after Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, prompting an 11-month boycott that led to integration of that city's bus system, African Americans and Latinos are still struggling with an unequal transit system....
Rape: it’s too, too common
Rape is a nasty word . . . and a despicable act. But it’s all the news these days . . . what with the allegation that Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape a maid in a fancy New York hotel. (Before this incident, this guy was a big-time hot-shot: head of the...
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