calvin johnson's dancing is priceless

Max and I watched the K Records documentary, The Shield Around the K, while I was visiting. (Okay, it would be much more accurate to say that I fell asleep while Max watched it. But I instant-queued it on Netflix while I was working on some stuff at home this week and now I've seen it.) What struck me most about it was how Calvin Johnson dances like he's autistic. Observe and enjoy.

Beat Happening -- Crashing Through:

(sorry the volume is so low, that's how it was uploaded)

The Halo Benders -- Don't Touch My Bikini

I think my other favorite part of the Shield Around the K was when they all were marvelling about how Ian MacKaye did doors for the first International Pop Underground festival. This is a tie between my weird fascination with him and the fact that he is just absolutely that legit. Yes, I even enjoyed that more than the montage of people guessing how K Records got its name. Any thoughts on when Dischord will do one? I was surprised when they didn't make any sort of doc for the 20th anniversary box set. 

RUNDOWN: shana's guide to summer in dc

I typed this up for a friend who was doing a semester in DC and have sent it around to a few fols. It's a good wrap-up of why I loved my summer in DC with Andrea so damn much. 

1. Go to Amsterdam Falafel in Adam's Morgan (metro to Woodley Park/Adam's Morgan/National Zoo or walk from Dupont). Really cheap + toppings bar + SUPER DELICIOUS = worth it!! A-M has lots of somewhat gross nightlife (think: young professionals wishing they were still in college) but also the only really good record stores (Smash for punk/hardcore, Crooked Beat for Dischord early presses) and some bars that don't suck.

2. U St, the historically black neighborhood in DC, is awesome.... Ben's Chilli Bowl at 11th and U (right near the 10th St. exit for the U St. metro) is the only restaurant that serves indigenously DC food: the chilli half-smoke, a chilli hot dog. It is highly representative that the first time I went to BCB Marion Barry was also there. For real. U st. is also home to DC's Ethiopian community. Dukem is the touristy Ethiopian place -- I enjoyed Meskerem in Adam's Morgan more, I think. You MUST eat Ethiopian in DC; the diaspora population in DC is the largest group of Ethiopians outside of their native state. IN addition, U St. is home to Busboys and Poets, which hosts book readings, slam poetry, jazz bands, and serves great dessert.

3. Go to Mt Pleasant. Excellent cheap Hispanic foodz. In particular, Pupuseria San Miguel was a favorite of ours. (FYI pupusas are Salvadorean corn cakes with cheese, beans, and pork that are deep-fried quickly so the cheese is maaaad gooey. Very tasty.) Mt Pleasant is not as far along the gentrification process as U St but they just built a Target in neighboring Columbia Heights so it's progressing quite rapidly. Mt. Pleasant is my preferred locale if I ever move back to DC.

4. I strongly believe that ice cream is the only reason to go to Georgetown. Thomas Sweet aka TSWEETZ, Dolcezza (Argentine gelato) (both cira Wisconsin and P), and Max's (northern Georgetown, Wisconsin near Calvert) are three of the best ice cream places in DC and they're all so close to one another.

5. I know it's expensive but the Newseum is well worth its price. My parents and I spent 4 hours there and barely got through 3 floors. They have a huge and amazing exhibit on the photographs to win Pulitzer Prizes including interviews with the photographers and captions explaining their stories. The top floor, the history of news, was fascinating and contains original copies of Thomas Paine newsletters, the Dewey Defeats Truman Chicago Daily News, etc.

6. Go to Eastern Market to eat food (softshell crab sandwich with Old Bay Spice highly rec), walk around the barracks, then head to RFK for a DC United game and love your life. If you are brave and like jumping on your chairs -- recuerde que los que no saltan son hijos de puta! -- sit in the Barra Brava pit above the 130's section. Most fun you'll have all summer, I promise. I don't really care about soccer but I went to three (four?) games and loved every second of them.

7. Every Monday and Thursday (I think) there are free concerts from some of DC's best local bands at Ft Reno Park in Tenleytown. Meet some friends after work at Whole Foods near the metro stop, make a picnic dinner, then enjoy the sweet jamz, puppies, and babies that abound amongst the hipsters. Cheap and fun!

Cecile Richards was so great!

Cecile was really great. First, she clearly knew how to talk to college students. The auditorium was full -- even at 8:30 on a Friday night -- and they genuinely didn't seem distracted. Second, as explained by the Daily's editorial, Cecile really kept the focus on reproductive rights as part of a broader portfolio of women's health issues and, more importantly, health care issues. As says The Daily, 

While the lecture sparked debate between the pro-life and pro-choice members of the Tufts community, it also managed to somewhat detangle Planned Parenthood from the heated subject of abortion and place the issues in the larger context of fundamental health care.

In my mind, this was the goal in having reproductive health be central to our Issues of the Future symposium! 

Doug and I adored her, as is evident in this photo.

From Cecile Richards

To be more accurate, we all adored her. 

From Cecile Richards

The full photo album from the event and reception are here: 

Cecile Richards

For more, there is excellent coverage in the Tufts Daily.

the inauguration!

First, I should say that I just love DC. I miss it all of the time, seriously. I don't think that there is just one person out there for everyone or just one place that each person should live in but I do feel strongly that DC is the city for me right now. 

I loved it even though it was extaordinary and extremely crowded. I did not make it to U St, the gentrifying faster than one can say gentification historically black neighborhood (and one of my favorite areas in the city). In retrospect I definitely should have but I knew BCB would be packed-- I heard that lines were apparently three blocks long due to Mayor Fenty and PEOTUS Obama's appearance -- and although I thought it would have been jammin to hit up Busboys and Poets this week, I didn't really get a chance. But I did get to hang out in many of my old haunts while I was in town. That, needless to say, made me very happy. 

Sunday we came into Union Station and it was packed with people, mostly African-American tourists from out of town. Excitement permeated. We ran some errands (aka picked up ball tickets!) which brought me to Mount Vernon Sq for the first time. Previously in my mind it had just been the place where that British tourist was killed during a robbery when he thought it was the location of GW's house slash that stop on the green line that always seemed to extend the already irritatingly long trip out to U St. and Columbia Heights. Nothing is really there but the convention center but it was surprisingly pretty! 

Then my friends David and I had some dinner with Bobito at Good Stuff Eatery. OKAY, I totally undersell Capitol Hill. Because I lived in NW for the summer, I really didn't explore this area enough except for one actually very entertaining trip to the Hawk'n'Dove. (I should note that the first time I wrote that sentence, I said it was lame. Sorry Andrea, Helms, and Meems.) As for Good Stuff Eatery, it is Spike from Top Chef's new joint. I thought the roll was excellent and the burger's special sauce was pretty jammin' but it wasn't super special.

Monday morning David and I went to a breakfast at Ballou in Anacostia sponsored by Service Nation. Originally our two Ethiopian (aka haven't left NW) cab drivers didn't know how to get us there but we fortunately ended up bumping into some folks on the Metro and found the shuttle. I saw lots of Tufts people I had met over the summer there, including the ever-amazing Deb Jospin, and witnessed great speeches by MLK Jr III and John Lewis (my love for him knows no bounds). Toby McGuire went on after John Lewis and made a total fool of himself because he was tearing up, hadn't prepared remarks, etc., and it was pretty awkward. Then we went to RFK STADIUM where I proceeded to David to the point of annoying him about BEN-EE OLSEN, Luciano Emilio, Jaime Moreno, the Barra Brava, and DC UNITED info galore. (One of the things I happened to fall in love with about DC last summer was its MLS Soccer team DC United. Hat tip to Helmsy.) My enthusiasm was not contagious. We helped pack care packages to servicemembers in Iraq as part of the the president's call for service. 

Afterwards, we went to the Hill to pick up our tickets for the inauguration and no joke there were 1.5ish hour lines at all of the entrances to Cannon. There are four. Ugh. Rather than wait, we asked our respective MC's staff to meet us with the tickets, got some tacos at Taqueria Nacionale (yummmmm, another of my favorite things about DC), and saw the following people enter NBC's satallite studio for hits: PA Gov Ed Rendell, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, John Lewis, and Karl Rove. I seriously think we could have sat there for longer if it weren't so cold and if our excellent Tufts friends hadn't come to meet us. 

TUESDAY we woke up at CRAZY OCLOCK aka 4:15 to go to the inauguration. The day had a hilarious start which I will share on a person-to-person basis but not on the blog. The Metro was packed even that early, around 5:30, crazily enough. We got to Fed Center around 6:15, huddled in the cold until staking out an awesome spot on the front left corner of the reflecting pool where I could see his balcony (barely) and a giant teleprompter (hey-ooo). The speech was great and sharing it with such inspired people -- many middle aged African-Americans -- was just awesome. Definitely made all of those hours in the cold worth it. 

After the inauguration, getting around the city made me want to die. It was packed, you couldn't cross Constitution because of the parade route, and it was nearly impossible to get to and then around in NW. It took 2.5 hrs to get from 3rd and Constitution NW to 15th and G NW because we kept getting sent in different directions. Finally we made it to the party at NDN where I met the Tufts provost (?) and saw a bunch of Tufts people. Later we went to the youth ball. KANYE PLAYED and the Obamas came, made kissyface (oh man I know!), and were just generally awesome. It was otherwise not that great, though I did laugh a lot at Fall Out Boy who also played. Pete Wentz is officially no more than 5'8, I think probably more like 5'6. He sucks a lot.

On my last day in DC Bobby and I went to Amsterdam Falafel where I participated in another of my favorite DC traditions, french fries with Old Bay Spice, and then I saw Stella, and we talked about religion for hours. This is a subject I am interested in discussing if you catch me on the telephone.  

because I wrote such heady stuff

Gordon, our trip coordinator, kept a travel blog for our Taglit group. My reflection was clearly not really a summary of our trip or anything. For that I will refer you to Gordon's blog.

Also, because they serve as a good (and captioned!) representation of our trip, I'll also direct you to my photo album of pictures from Israel. First, some samples.

From Israel

From Israel

From Israel

A slideshow of all of the photos I took in Israel can be found HERE. 

eric berman - hagshama

While we were in Israel, one of my favorite nights was when the drummer and songwriter for the Israeli pop star featured below played for us in the basement of our hotel. I ended up with this song absolutely stuck in my head and haven't stopped listening to it since I came home. 

Isn't it catchy? Most of the Israeli music we were exposed to was not really my jam but I am digging this a lot!

Tufts Daily op-ed

In preparation for Cecile Richards coming on Friday, Doug and I penned a little op-ed for the Tufts Daily.  They, rather inaccurately, called it "An Appeal for Choice." I thought I would post it here. 

We were reminded of history this week when we honored the birthday of civil rights leader and American hero Martin Luther King, Jr. and as we watched the inauguration of our first African-American president, Barack Obama. But there is another historical occasion worthy of note this week that might be flying under your radar: Jan. 22 marks 36 years since the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
    Roe, as it is often called, is one of the most politically charged cases in Supreme Court history. Ruling that most state laws regarding abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy, the Supreme Court declared that a woman, with the assistance of her physician, could choose to terminate a pregnancy up until the “point at which the fetus becomes viable” and with certain restrictions after that point. An imperfect ruling, Roe v. Wade is legally contentious because of the ambiguity of the term “viable” and its disputed basis of a constitutional right to privacy. The contentious decision has inspired vigorous debate over the function of the judiciary, the role of religion and morality in public life and who should determine the legality of an abortion.
    With the swearing-in of a new administration and the decision’s anniversary, now is a salient time to contemplate the future of Roe, to consider women’s health in the United States and around the world, and to think about how President Obama may shape the Supreme Court. It is a time to reflect upon how this administration will impact a host of life-altering decisions, from the right to choose to marriage equality. 
    The alignment of these two historical moments begs a dialogue on these issues, one such which will begin here and continue with an address and Q&A session Friday, Jan. 23 at 7 p.m. with one of America’s foremost experts on women’s health and its accompanying political issues: Cecile Ann Richards. As President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Ms. Richards is one of the most influential women in America. As the headline speaker for this first installment of the Tufts Democrats’ “Issues of the Future Symposium” this weekend, we hope that Ms. Richards can shed some light on the future of the Supreme Court and on the shockwaves that Roe has sent through our society since 1973. The presentation, entitled “Cecile Ann Richards: Roe v. Wade and Future of the Supreme Court,” is co-sponsored by VOX.
    First, what is the future of the Roe decision? Let’s briefly consider its past. Until the retirements and new appointments of the Bush administration, the Supreme Court maintained a 6-to-3 majority in favor of upholding a woman’s right to choose. However, with the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Court’s margin dwindled to one vote, a vote that made supporters of abortion rights nervous, given that it hinged upon Justice John Paul Stevens — all of 88 years old — and the inconsistent Justice Anthony Kennedy. While this margin may seem irrelevant with the exit of the conservative Bush administration and the entrance of the pro-choice Obama, it certainly remains important. In the next four years, anywhere from one to three Supreme Court justices may step down. However, it is expected that all will come from the liberal end of the court; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 75 years old, and Stevens, in particular, are no spring chickens. Compounded by the likely postponement of retirement for conservative ringleader Justice Antonin Scalia, who is 72 years old, that tenuous one-vote majority is likely to remain throughout Obama’s tenure. Reflecting on its future, even with the new administration, does not provide an overwhelming sense of security.
    In addition, at this important time, we ought to think about women’s health more generally. It is a new moment for women’s health in this country. In the wake of last year’s Center for Disease Control study indicating that one in four teen girls has a sexually transmitted infection and many studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only instruction, the necessity of comprehensive education could not be more apparent. Over the past couple of years, 15 states independently rejected abstinence-only funding from the federal government in order to teach comprehensive sex education. Obama is likely to strike abstinence-only-dependent policies and thereby improve women’s health at home.
    It’s also a new moment for women’s health issues around the world. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton has long been a champion of the rights of women and children. We hope she will lead the charge to repeal the global gag rule, a damaging policy which requires all non-governmental organizations that receive federal funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries. We also hope she will reinstate the funding of the U.N. Family Planning Program.
    Yet, in a bigger way, we are optimistic that Secretary-designate Clinton will put her own words into action, noted by Cecile Richards in the Huffington Post: “Women’s reproductive health and empowerment are critical to a nation’s sustainability and growth ... we now know that no nation can hope to succeed in the global economy of the 21st century if half of its people lack the opportunity and the right to make the most of their God-given potential. No nation can move forward when its women and children are trapped in endless cycles of poverty; when they have inadequate health care, poor access to family planning, limited education.” Although we honor the excellent work of the George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, we anticipate more successes when one-third of prevention spending is no longer required to fund failing abstinence-only programs. Now is an exciting time for proponents of women’s health issues.
    Every year, the Tufts Democrats host the “Issues of the Future Symposium” to address pertinent political issues and to stimulate dialogue on campus. With our annual symposium, we strive to look to the future of a certain issue, using indicators of today to draw conclusions about the potential of an issue tomorrow. We hope that our past topics, ranging from immigration reform to civil-military relations, have opened up public discourse and contributed to a dynamic conversation on the Tufts campus. This year we are looking to the “Future of the Supreme Court” and how it will affect wedge issues like the right to choose and gay rights. We invite you to join us on Friday to consider the likelihood of the proposals outlined here, and to ask politely whatever question you would like of Ms. Richards, a woman who understands this issue better than anyone else in America. 
    On Saturday, we will continue our discussion with local leaders and professionals, this time focusing on the future of gay rights and marriage equality, in the second installment of the “Issues of the Future Symposium,” entitled “The Supreme Court and Gay Rights,” at 11:30 a.m. in the Crane Room.

In short, I think that the Obama admin will definitely be a big step up for women's health and reproductive rights but I am doubtful that we've gotten ourselves out of the muddy waters. Not a happy thought to mull over.

Hope to see you on Friday!

some thoughts on returning from Israel

I went to with a million questions and left with a few answers and many more questions. 

Most fundamentally, I feel like it’s hard to retain a sense of emotional distance from your intellectual perspective after you’ve been there. Intellectually, I think I’ve been able to be critical of the policies of the state of Israel because I hadn’t really been extremely emotionally invested. I had considered myself a Zionist, a believer in the existential right of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, but I think I always had some intellectual doubts about that. I used to joke that we should have given Montana or North Dakota to the Jewish people – a feat I now know was tried when the British offered Uganda to Herzl and he seriosuly considered it – because the importance of the holy land itself was lost on someone as secular as I. Our Taglit group visited the Syrian border in the Golan where an attempt to imbue us with a secular sense that the Golan is land that has been rightfully won and it did not impress me really. However, visiting the Kotel and exiting Yad Vashem to the skyline of Jerusalem really challenged my ability to keep that emotional-intellectual distance. Until now, I desired to separate the state of Israel from Judaism itself and, as much as possible, the Jewish people. I now can’t do that anymore. Taglit, as I know it tries to do, succeeded in connecting the state of Israel to my individual Jewish identity.

All of these questions were made more pressing in light of the war that was occurring in Gaza. We flew from JFK on the day the airstrikes in Gaza started. More importantly, we visited Rabin’s memorial in Tel Aviv the day Israel launched its ground invasion. I felt really exhausted thinking about the lack of prospects for peace. We had five young Israeli soldiers and two former IDF members traveling with us. It was devastating to hear their certitude that peace would not occur neither in their lifetime nor that of their children. After a couple of pretty wrenching conversations with several of my new Israeli friends, representing both ends of the Israeli political spectrum, I had to ask myself at what point the endless cycle of violence really seemed worthwhile. (Obviously this was meant as an intellectual exercise. It wouldn’t be possible to remove all of the Jews from Israel, nor would I ever intend for that to happen… But this intellectual dialog was an important step for me personally in reconciling my conflicting thoughts.) My conclusion was if I truly believe that the state of Israel ought to and must exist, the state of Israel ought to and must fight to defend itself. However, I couldn’t have addressed any other political questions until reconciling that important initial question -- what was fundamentally a determination of my comfort level with Israel's essential right to nationhood. 

I continue to have a hard time with the death of 1000 Gazans on a mission that seems to have an ill-defined goal, and perhaps even more of a problem of the unspoken goal of regime change. However, in some ways the ferocity of the response seems inevitable and even appropriate. What else is Israel supposed to do? Not because I think the western media is biased but because the death of 1000 people in just three weeks is more comprehensible than three years of sustained attacks, it wasn’t until I was in Israel that I truly understood the importance of the mortar fire on Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. It wasn't until I was in Israel that I could appreciate how important the reality of rockets hitting Beersheba truly is. Less consequential action just doesn’t seem to be an sufficient response for a battered people whose existence is constantly in question and threatened. While I still have my questions about the casualty levels in Gaza, it doesn't seem unfathomably inappropriate to me anymore.

Most of all, being in Israel made me to understand how integral each individual Israeli life is in the eyes of the Israeli people, in both an absolute and a relative way. As an American steeped in the values of multiculturalism and who has been raised in a period of peace, excepting 9/11, this concept seems foreign and wrong. What I mean to say, and Israelis may object to this, is that each Israeli (and Jewish) life is valued more than human life absolutely and generally speaking. All around Israel hang banners for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped during the Second Lebanon War. This summer's prisoner exchange for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev speak also to this concept, as did Rabin's heroic rescue of the Israelis and Jews on the hijacked Flight 163. Israel is meant to be an asylum for Jews. It is the home of all Jewish people. Its existence, for philosophical and purely demographic reasons, depends on the arrival of diaspora Jews and the propagation of the Jews in Israel. (I can't help but think of Nietzsche's criticism in Beyond Good and Evil that the Jews had the potential for greatness but stymied it due to their near-obsession with self-propagation.) On this point, many many questions remain.

To conclude and to clarify my probably difficult-to-understand thought process here, what I am saying is that I think what happened in Gaza was acceptable to Israelis in large part because Israelis value Israeli and Jewish lives more than they value a human life absolutely. Again, for someone from the culture that brought you John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, whose Halocaust museum celebrates coexistence, and who sees itself as "an empire for liberty" and "an asylum for mankind," this is difficult to reconcile. But Israel is very small and each individual is connected and affected. So, to bring this full circle, after going to Har Herzl with people my age who have lost relatives and friends, it is impossible not to have a changed perspective. 

 

oh, hello

HEY. This is a new project to keep myself writing and thinking while I am in Argentina. I will post about my trips to Israel, to DC for the inauguration, and maybe even the Boston plans ahead as well.

Although this blog - which I will affectionately dub "che boluda" to myself for the lunfardo slang -- is new, I had previously been blogging at NDN Blog and Red, Brown, and Blue. NDN is a Washington, DC progressive think tank and advocacy group and the amazing organization at which I interned this past summer. RBB was a project of the Tufts admission office to demonstrate the activism occurring on campus, especially during this election cycle. I will just quickly link to my favorite of those blog posts here in case you want to read them. Clearly, they tended to be more political in nature.

NDN Blog

• 07/29: Millennials, Suit Up
• 08/07: Voter Rolls Forecast Bad News for Conservatives

Red, Brown, and Blue

• 10/03: Media, Politics at Tufts, and VP Debate Reflections
  
• 10/06: In which I disagree with Mike on the bailout, Pt. I
  
• 10/07: In which I disagree with Mike on the bailout, Pt. I
• 10/14: the critical importance of ground game
  
• 10/23: Gen Petraeus is the jam
• 11/07: how organizing on campus reflected the real thing
• 11/07: Susan Rice and the Obama security paradigm

As for the old posts liked here, they're good for a taste of my writing and also I just appreciate having these on hand as I might link back to them at some point. I will spice up my blog posts for this much more, reflecting on my travels and politics but also on other things I love like music and food. I will also be linking pictures.

As always, I can be reached via email at shana (dot) hurley (at) gmail.com and, in the same manner, via gchat. Be in touch!