Honestly, it's just that 'hippie' has come to mean one is rather lazy or has questionable judgement. So the folks who still adhere to a more open and questioning place have gone to ... Higher? Ground.

You are so right in your no-ness.

We prefer 'Earth Mama'. ;)

This is why I've always said that if some crazy powerful entity told me I had to be Christian right now, I would go catholic. Somehow, through 2,000 years, this faith has maintained it's knowledge of the fundamental truth of humanity. There is a love and acceptance there I've never been able to quite square with the…

As someone who has worked for non-profits most of their life, I am deeply conflicted. We pander to the wealthy for their crumbs. Sometimes I wonder if every non-profit worker put their passion and effort into lobbying the government to get this shit done ... would that be better? It feels, in a way, that the whole…

Happy wife, happy life!

Waaaaaaaah? I have a feeling that once we have dismantled patriarchy completely (which will also take down the extreme right) and we're all allowed to just be people, this sort of thing will happen much less frequently.

This reminds me of my mother's reaction when my father complained about her cooking for the third time. She stopped cooking and never started again. He cleaned.

As long as he's helping out equally on the weekends and evenings that seems equitable to me.

That's the question, isn't it? There are a few white folks out there who are actively trying to spread this message, that it's up to white people to clean our own damned house. I like the work of Tim Wise, he recently did a documentary on this: http://www.mediaed.org/whitelikeme/in…

Yup. Racism ends when white people stop tolerating it. I do not understand why some (most?) white people get defensive when the history of white people wreaking havoc on other societies is referenced. It happened, there's no changing it. Not talking about it just makes a person seem complicit, you know? Like if you…

You don't expect him to have a relationship with a Black girl, now do you?

This is my favorite white tears gif. And yes, white people really need to get over it (as a white person). I'm not wounded or offended or frustrated or tired of listening to people speak of their lives. I know it's. Not. About. Me. Most white folks are delicate flowers because they've never had to be anything else.

That's a very good point, and it is also something that I find terribly interesting. I was thinking of the Holocaust more for the trajectory of her recovery as opposed to the actual experience itself. There are too many differences to draw any meaningful parallels beyond that both situations where acts of extreme…

Because I am an odd duck, I have studied the Holocaust for decades now and I wonder if she'll follow a similar trajectory that a lot of the Survivors did. Some of them wanted, needed to talk about what had happened to them. Almost to the point of obsession, as if they were purging it. Then as people tired of it, they…

I was 190 when I first went on the pill, never heard that from anyone.

Part of why they aren't two sides of the same coin. Some Asian women prefer white men because they believe they are more likely to be treated well, if not precisely equally. Western sexism includes chivalry, which is destructive but if you must pick between sexism that reduces you to only servant and uterus or sexism…

I was raised in an agnostic home, and we always celebrated Christmas with gusto! It's absolutely the most important holiday to my family. For example, even though my youngest sibling is 23 and there is only one grandchild (who generally can't be with us because of custody issues) stays over at my house on Christmas…

Yup! Sometimes I just have to escape to the guest room. Unfortunately, Mr. Downing Does. Not. Like. It. when he doesn't know where I am in the middle of the night, so that usually results in me waking up to a looming figure in the dark startling me awake. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay" He'll say. And it's…

Oh yeah, we have three cats and in the winter Mr. Downing, Nephew Downing, and all of the cats seem to need to all be as close as possible to me. My nephew doesn't crawl into bed any longer, but there were nights where I think I was actually sleeping on a thin sliver of bed, approximately four square inches. That much…