I had a ridiculous amount of fun yesterday putting together a Lollapalooza playlist for my Aqua Bootcamp class. As I told the class, made up of mostly women and a few men ages 40+ to 80, “I don’t want you just to look good. I want you to be hip and cool, too!” I knew…
This is a true story…President Obama is going to trek through the Alaskan wilderness with survival expert Bear Grylls for a special edition of his Reality TV show Running Wild. After a moment’s gut reaction of ‘can he do that?’ (He’s the President…he can do anything), I realize it’s a brilliant way to talk about…
Found this movie, A Day Without a Mexican, in the ‘returns pile’ at the Library, and had to see it. What would happen if you woke up in the middle of a bustling US City (Los Angeles) and all of the Mexican’s were gone? That’s what happens in this great mock-documentary, directed by Sergio Arau. White…
On the way to dropping my son at school this morning we heard an ad for a fast-food restaurant that was boasting “hand-mashed” guacamole. “That’s sounds kind of gross,” I said. “Especially if it’s mashed by dirty hands,” my son added. “Ewww” we both shouted. Why would the advertiser think that was a desirable trait? …
I saw an ad on late nite TV last night for a pharmaceutical promoted as critical to help men’s health as they age. The patient was an older white man, and the doctor (also a man) was African American. According to a recent article by Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal Magazine, “The Gray…
I need to go take a shower. I just caught myself talking to my husband’s kindly Indian colleague over the phone like he was an idiot, plus I read this article by Tim Wise “Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black,” and realized I am guilty. (This is a must read!) One, because looking…
Have you heard the old joke that plays on the philosophical question about a tree falling in the forest? You know the one… “If you’re in the forest and you say something wrong and your spouse (of course I’m going with the gender neutral version!) doesn’t hear you, are you still wrong?” While seemingly innocuous,…
I find myself running around today singing “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree” and “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas”. And with 6 inches of snow on the ground in Chicago, Bing Crosby’s (above) White Christmas is at the top of my list, too. As my son says “you’re not even Christian.” But that doesn’t stop me…
In less than 30 seconds on the Internet I can find what Casanova’s job was in 1798, what Darwin had for dinner on January 3, 1834, 1,500 recipes for banana cake and how to add water to a sub-pump. What I can’t find is how two judges could “choos(e) to treat children as commodities…
The problem with stereotyping is that it presumes guilt before innocence, dictating that someone will behave a certain way because of their race or ethnicity. In the extreme, the results can be devastating, as they were for the late Timothy Cole, a young black man who was exonerated last week for a rape he didn’t…
