Mixed-Race Pride

Very interesting article by Susan Saulny of the NYTimes about a student group in UMD called the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association. Very, very cool.

Becky Blanton

There's been a lot going on lately, but nothing that I especially cared to blog about, but then tonight, I read When My Car Was the Safest Place to Live, a Salon article by Becky Blanton about her personal relationship with homelessness. Then I watched her TED Talk, "The Year I Was Homeless."



Both made me slightly teary. I'm so impressed to see someone break out of that painful cycle and move on to educate people about homelessness. (Also, check out her blog!)

Quick Thoughts About the Shooting in Arizona

I've been in Florida for the past week without real internet access (checking my email and facebook a couple times a day doesn't count), so I haven't really been up to date on anything beyond basic cable news. I'm slowly catching up, but I'll probably have to be content with missing about three days worth of blogs, especially because I want to head to the pool in a couple of minutes to catch the last hour of today's sunshine. (I'm going home tomorrow night- I have to enjoy every minute I have in the only state in America that currently has no snow!)

So I'll just post some quick thoughts about the awful shooting this week and even though my quick skimming this afternoon has shown that many people have written smarter and more articulate thoughts than my own, here's what I have from the shooting in Arizona this week:

1. Inflammatory rhetoric is bad; blaming shooting sprees on inflammatory rhetoric is also pretty bad.

2. I keep imagining the situation of these parents, who have been holed up in their home, basically crying for days straight. Most parents don't know what they're doing when they raise kids, and especially ones with severe mental illnesses. Parents, cops, friends and the university didn't see this coming, but everyone besides the parents can move on.

3. Sarah Palin is just...I don't even have words. Josh Marshall from TPM put it best- "Today has been set aside to honor the victims of the Tucson massacre. And Sarah Palin has apparently decided she's one of them." (Ezra Klein had very good response, check it out.)

4. Pretty impressed with Boehner through all this. Make fun of his constant weeping all you want, but there's something to be said for emotional politicians when tragedies hit. It's good for America to remember that the most important part of this horrible event is the murder of innocent people.

New Study Takes on the Shidduch "Crisis"

Disclaimer: some of the language in this post may be new for readers not used to Modern Orthodox vocabulary. Comment anything you don't understand, or for you brave souls, feel free to google away.

There's a recently published YNet article about single, young religious women titled Study: What (Religious) Women Want.

Nothing in this article (or study) seems to be a fascinating chiddush, and I especially love the photo they chose (I'm telling you, it's like John Legend look-alikes haunt me) but I found some parts interesting. I found this quotation particularly good:

"An additional paradox is the conflict between the traditional views on marriage and relationships and the sector's modern views. Today most religious women have an equalitarian view yet at the same time, still have the traditional view with regards to a man's role – from the religious domain and through to the internal management of the household.

"Most religious women still hold with the traditional views that the man must be more than them – taller, more educated, earns more. The problem is that they themselves have advanced and hold key positions. Earn well, have masters and doctorate degrees. These two conflicting views must live together under one roof, and they don't have a clear message."

Definitely truth to that. Obviously, I'm neither saying that this correlates at all to the shidduch "crisis,"^[1] nor that this is only true to the Orthodox community. But there is truth in this. ^[2]

^[1] The fact that I use the term doesn't mean I actually think there is a crisis, in case the quotation marks don't make it clear.

^[2] Although I hate the xtranormal videos, some parts of this video shows this problem in the young, successful black community. (Feel free to stop watching at around 2:00 in; they use language some may find inappropriate.)