ohio – Esther Bergdahl

Things I’m Verbing: Abrahamic problems, skyscraper farms and fake hillbilly pride

the comments on this J.D. Vance piece are more compelling than the piece itself, I think: https://t.co/Rargs679r5

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) March 18, 2017

You don’t often hear exhortations to read the comments, but Anne Helen Petersen is right: Hillbilly Elegy writer J.D. Vance is awfully proud of himself for moving to Columbus, Ohio, an incredibly wealthy town home to some of the nation’s biggest corporations and one of its largest state universities. It’s a bit hilarious to read, having grown up in Ohio’s poorest county. I was a privileged faculty brat, but I had to drive two hours to a decent mall and the airport just like everyone else. Live in Lancaster or Gloucester for a while and get back to us, friend.

Honestly, I want to put these links where no one can miss them. “It’s Time for Intersectionality to Include the Jews,” and if that makes you angry, think about why. Benjamin Gladstone’s op-ed takes the view that Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour claims there can be no overlap between feminism and Zionism; I urge you again to read David Schraub’s argument that that’s not actually clear. Related, please see the Nib asking five Jewish artists to take on Holocaust imagery in contemporary politics, particularly Leela Corman’s contribution.
If you want a really terrifying article about religion, see the New Republic’s “Amazing Disgrace: How Donald Trump Hijacked the Religious Right.” It’s less about Trump’s maneuvering (Republicans have been boosting their numbers with the evangelical Right for decades) than the roots of right-wing American evangelism in Southern nationalism and racism, and how the two are becoming married again.
Iranian-American writer Porochista Khakpour writes about the Persian New Year, and why this Nowruz is different. Pair with the Chicago Sun-Times’ report on MENA-Americans having second thoughts on the new census option for which they fought so hard.
I will always read stories about weird urban farming, whether it’s in abandoned shipping crates or hydroponic fish tanks in a garage. The New Food Economy has an interesting piece on the futurism of vertical farming, and why it won’t bring us to a techno utopia.
Oof, I’m sorry, this is all hard stuff. Luckily, the world still has Jenny Slate and Chris Evans, who are no longer a couple, but Slate makes me wish they were in this wonderful profile in Vulture. And of course, she’s the focus of the article, not him or her relationship; Jenny Slate is a literal piece of sunshine and I hope her life is brilliant.

LUKE EVANS HUGH JACKMAN AND TARON EGERTON IN A GASTON SING OFF IS WHAT THE INTERNET NEEDED AND DESERVED pic.twitter.com/gt3wDtIy6R

— ryan 🐾 (@whittingham96) March 19, 2017

Stay brave, friends.

Things I’m Verbing: Abortion, smugness and testimony

Oh my god, what has happened since Tuesday? I mean, there’s the Heartbeat Bill in my native Ohio, which criminalizes abortion at a point before most women even know they’re pregnant. There’s Trump getting the National Park Service to deny permits for weeks around the Lincoln Memorial to prevent the Million Woman March next month. Apparently Trump also just said that internment wasn’t bad because FDR?

Why yes, it does "look" like he's planning the dissolution of each dept of the government, and that he's surrounding himself with generals.

— Alexander Chee (@alexanderchee) December 7, 2016

What's the big deal? Trump's just coming for the trade unionists. I'm sure there's no need to speak out unless you're a trade unionist.

— Noël is Other People (@Doubting_Tom) December 8, 2016

Really sick of this cycle: Trump lies, lie is disproven, no press conference to ask him about it directly, surrogates lie about lie, repeat.

— Joe Berkowitz (@JoeBerkowitz) December 7, 2016

for 2017, it's fitting how pantone's colour of the year for 2017 is a dead-ringer for the family of green used in the mr. yuk poison seal pic.twitter.com/2eEx8NlEqw

— resist with patience (@patienceinbee) December 8, 2016

Since Clinton won the popular vote isn't most of the 'reasons she lost' punditry except 'bc the electoral college system' redundant?.

— Ben Aaronovitch (@Ben_Aaronovitch) December 7, 2016

People in their 30s are dangerous. We're old enough to remember a functional economy, but too young to have benefited from it.

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) March 1, 2015

For more on reproductive rights bullshit, the Order of the Good Death has a great guest post on what that new Texas law about burying fetal remains from miscarriages actually means from a legal standpoint.
Do not miss the New York Times Magazine’s “Life in Obamacare’s Dead Zone.” Get ready for a lot more of this.
“I always find it funny when city liberals are accused of living in a 10million strong bubble, but rurals in their town of 10,000 aren’t,” tweets TV writer Sophie Petzal. Exhibit A, from the New Republic: “The Myth of the Smug Liberal,” reminding us that “being a hillbilly” is no automatic trigger for being a conservative. Exhibit B, from the Atlantic: “The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class.” Fight this narrative.
Also not to be missed: “What It Was Like as a Muslim to Cover the Election,” from NPR’s Asma Khalid. Not only about what reporters faces during the campaign, but what she confronted as a native Indianan.
Do not look away: Dorothea Lange’s uncensored photos of Japanese-American families on their way to U.S. internment camps.

Stay brave, friends.

Things I’m Verbing: Hometown datelines, apocalyptic morality and art as subtweet

I love Pocket — I really do. Being able to save longer stories for later, especially in the stripped-down, no-ads version that lets you best concentrate on the ideas and images, is great. But I have outdone myself in much the same way I have outdone myself rediscovering how much I love the public library system: I just have too many things I want to read or share right now. This week has been a good week for big stories! That book review about Hitler that’s a deadpan subtweet of Donald Trump; that gorgeous Michael Chabon piece about his high fashion–loving son, with that perfect, perfect ending; that profile of Maryland state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, which a friend was raving about on Facebook, so I saved it.

I’m a bit overwhelmed. So we’ll get to those after the weekend. For now, glad as I am for an embarrassment of riches, here are some other good, important stories that have popped up over the last week.

I already linked NPR’s live transcript and fact-check of the first presidential debate on Monday, but it’s an invaluable resource. Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker has surely written the most straightforward, punch-to-the-heart commentary about what that proved, in an ongoing way, about Donald Trump and his fundamental badness.
Although the Chicago Tribune endorsed Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson for president today (a poor choice even aside from his stance on the issues), the paper can still publish good opinion pieces when presented with the opportunity. I suspect I’m a little bit older than Charles Johnson, but I recognize what he describes in “What millennials know: We can’t return to Rockwell’s America.”
My parents never let me play video games, although I did have a computer I spent endless hours on, out of the fresh air and sunlight, writing epics about the American teenaged girl whom all four Beatles fall in love with. However, the BioShock games have always intrigued me, not least for their amazing visual language and use of mid-century popular music. David Sims, writing for the Atlantic, talks about how BioShock “mocked video game morality.” Pair this with Imaginary Worlds’ episode earlier this year on Undertale, which takes a totally different approach.
My love of baseball pretty much starts and stops with A League of Their Own, but I can’t help but be heartsick at the news of Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez’s death this week in a boating accident. Ryan Cortes, writing for the Undefeated, puts who and what we’ve lost into context.
There’s a journalism school at the state university in my hometown, so I’ve seen a lot of poverty porn, especially from photojournalism students, about Athens, Ohio. Little did I expect this week to hear WNYC travel to the poorest county in Ohio to see what all the media attention has done for Appalachians most in need. (Spoiler alert, straight from the mouth of the dad of childhood friends: not much.) This is an ongoing series, so I’m excited to see what the On the Media crew will tell us about the rest of the state — even if Ohio is no longer the bellwether it’s cracked up to be.

Things I’m Verbing: The goal of terrorism, Ohio in distress and identities we don’t discuss

26 dead in Brussels: "Close the borders, it could happen here!"
26 dead in Newtown: "That's just how it is in America, get used to it."

— Bobby Big Wheel (@BobbyBigWheel) March 22, 2016

The goal of terrorism is to terrorize – to make people fearful, their minds closed, their lives smaller. Don't let it work.

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) March 22, 2016

Solidarité et fraternité avec nos amis belges qui subissent à leur tour une vague de terrorisme. #Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/GgJ0asXvuA

— Ronan Loas (@RonanLoas) March 22, 2016

If you missed “33 and Never Been Kissed” at the Establishment last week, you’re in store for an amazing and very brave piece of writing.
An interactive from the Cleveland Plain Dealer shows that 8 out of 10 of Ohio’s largest cities are in economic distress. Most of the rest of the state is too — my home county, Athens, always among the very poorest, scores at nearly 79 out of 100. Just in case Gov. John Kasich is still looking like any kind of good option at all as president. See also: “The Violent Remaking of Appalachia,” which destroyed large portions of the areas around me growing up, even before you get into fracking.
Jackie Robinson versus the Donald Trump of his day. Key quote: “No Republican candidate since Goldwater has earned support from more than 15 percent of black voters.”
“Does simply engaging in a Jewish space render one unfit to do justice work?” This was a real question posed after transgender activist Janet Mock was persuaded not to appear at a non-Jewish, non-Israel-related event co-sponsored and hosted by Brown University’s Hillel last week. If you want a conversation we’re not really having (outside of Jewish activist social media, at least), consider what it means to be Jewish within social justice spaces.
If all this is too real on an already difficult day, consider Atlas Obscura‘s great “The Linguistic Appeal of ‘Garbage Person,’ The Internet’s Favorite Insult.”