Shannon Drury

Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon

mandy — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With the Spoon review, short version: If you have children, know children, or were ever a child yourself, you need this new coloring book by Jacinta Bunnell and Nathaniel Kusinitz.

Long version: As a child of the Free to Be...You and Me seventies, dressed androgynously by a pair of liberal-minded parents, I never dreamed that I would have difficulty recreating a gender-neutral environment for my first child, born at the turn of the new millennium. What I didn't know was that there was a counter-revolution afoot, and it believed that infants should only wear onesies of blue or pink. Despite great social and legal victories made for GLBTQ civil rights since I was a kid, gender nonconformity remains a huge threat to the status quo—and while grown-ups can get away with picking and choosing their participation in the Gender Games (I have not worn makeup in almost twenty years), the battle lines for children remain fixed. I daresay they've hardened, no thanks to the complete Disney Princessification of childhood culture, as any walk through the kids' aisles at Target will tell you.

What's a parent to do? Why, pick up a copy of Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With the Spoon, of course! While the title might lead a parent to believe that this is merely a gay re-imagining of old Mother Goose rhymes, the real theme of the book is freedom. A furry, sharp-toothed beast with accessorizes with sparkly gems that Paris Hilton might envy. A “breadwinner in the family” is a man who's the proud winner of a baking contest. A mermaid decides “I am making my way out of this fairy tale and starting a new life with two strong legs and a voice.”

In my favorite picture, an adorable kid in a dinosaur t-shirt holds a to-do list that reads: “1. plant garden 2. fix carburetor in truck 3. start presidential campaign 4. end war.” If either of my children presented such a list to me, I could quite happily drop dead on the spot, knowing that my life's purpose was fulfilled! Really.

My only complaint with the book is its price. I realize that this is an important, educational project from a morally noble, independent publisher, but come on—there is no parent in earth, radical or otherwise, who is going to lay down ten bucks for a coloring book. Coloring books get scribbled on, ripped up, scrunched into backpacks and quickly destroyed. I want to pay three bucks for it, tops. I may be a sellout for suggesting this, but I wouldn't mind if the Human Rights Campaign got behind Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With the Spoon and lent its considerable financial and political power to making copies available in libraries and classrooms. Every kid deserves to meet this great group of gender-fluid friends and to color outside of these pages' lines.

Written by: Shannon Drury, April 26th 2011

Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life: Achieving Optimal Health and Wellness through Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, and Western Science

barbara — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Claudia Welch

Da Capo Press

Though I enjoy a good yoga session as much as any middle-class white woman my age, my natural state is one of tooth-chattering anxiety. Anyone who knows me well could tell you that my yin and yang are not harmonious, but now I have the endocrine profile to prove it—a set of chromosome repeats in my DNA that has manifested itself in serious hormonal disruption, a.k.a. premature ovarian failure, a.k.a. early menopause. Luckily, my family is complete, so my problem is not infertility but the addition of hot flashes and potential bone loss to my list of daily worries.

Enter Claudia Welch's Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life, which promises I'll soon be “achieving optimal health and wellness through Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and Western science.” Welch applies the Chinese concepts of yin and yang to a woman's sex hormones and stress hormones, respectively. The typically revved-up Western woman's stress hormones tax her sex hormones, causing the Fred Astaire-like progesterone (Welch's analogy, not mine) to stumble, not waltz, with her Ginger Rogers-like estrogen. And once a woman's sex hormones get out of whack, she's dancing her way to ill health—or, to quote a chapter title, she's just “Feeling Crummy.”

To me, a woman whose hormonal problems are rooted in genetics and a not uniquely American malaise, the real balancing act in Welch's book is the eternal push-pull between Western science and Eastern wisdom. I know that Big Pharma has a vested interest in selling me hormone patches, yet there is evidence that hormone therapy is appropriate for women like me who are not undergoing the “change of life” as part of the natural aging process. Still, Welch's advice to adopt dietary and stress-reduction strategies as the first line of defense is rooted not only in Eastern philosophy but also in common sense. More quinoa, less coffee—I got it.

Things get really woolly in the chapters “Birth Control” and “Fertility and Conception,” making me extremely glad that my health concerns lay outside those areas. Asks Welch: “if older women increase their chances of breast cancer, heart attack, strokes, and dementia by consuming synthetic hormones for menopausal symptoms, why is it okay for younger women to take these drugs?” A good question, particularly in light of Welch's observation that hormonal contraceptive tests on men were halted when the subjects' testes shriveled up. “If women's ovaries were on the outside of our bodies, and the negative side effects were actually cosmetically visible,” Welch writes, “would we be less tolerant?”

Welch backs off the patriarchy all too soon, however. Two pages later she's advocating for Natural Family Planning, which she claims lacks the “inconvenient to tragic side effects of most other forms of birth control.” Just ask Michelle Duggar! Her balance must be flawless, because as Welch writes, “establishing reproductive health consists of regulating the cycle and the hormones, having good quality and quantity of yin in the diet and lifestyle, and good quality and quantity of exercise and mental activity to support healthy yang.” I don't watch 19 Kids and Counting, but I can guess that neither yin nor yang come up much.

The takeaway? This book is full of sensible advice for generally healthy (and Quiverfull) women wanting to stave off crumminess. Women with more serious health concerns should probably skip it—reading this book would freak out their yang, which even Welch knows should be strenuously avoided.

Written by: Shannon Drury, March 9th 2011

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth

mandy — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Jeff Kinney

Amulet

My ten-year-old son, Elliott, has several distinct laughs in his repertoire, each precisely tuned to the subtleties of the situation. An under-the-breath snicker connotes mild amusement, like the punchline to a Laffy Taffy joke; a nasal, high-pitched giggle is a response to inspired silliness, like a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip; a deep, hiccuping guffaw from his lower belly signifies his highest level of appreciation, and is usually reserved for gags involving bodily functions. I heard all three laughs, and a few new ones, in the sixty minutes it took him to devour Jeff Kinney's The Ugly Truth, the fifth installment in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Elliott's speed in this case is due not only to his considerable reading talent but the fact that the book is half-text, half-cartoon. The latter are rendered in the kind of primitive stickfigures that one would expect in the diary of a less-than-macho middle-schooler like Greg Heffley, the series' titular hero. Though I enjoyed the book, it took me considerably longer to read, as the Wimpy Kid phenomenon is not one that holds great appeal for Gen X moms who were once uptight English majors. Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, yes—Twilight and Wimpy Kid, not so much. I spent the first third of the book trying to decipher which stickfigure was Greg, his older brother Rodrick, or his former best friend Rowley, and whether any of this information was actually pertinent to the book's thin plot, concerning Greg's struggle to accept the inevitability of growing up.

Author and artist Kinney nails many of the particular agonies of preteendom, especially the realization that the cute years are over. “When you're a little kid, nobody even warns you that you've got an expiration date,” he notes. “One day you're hot stuff and the next day you're a dirt sandwich.” Greg's mom doesn't help things when she gives him a book titled “What the Heck Just Happened to My Body?” Unfortunately for Greg, nothing has happened—even nerdy Rowley has had his first pimple. Eventually, his parents break the news that both were late bloomers. “That was REALLY bad news,” Greg says. “In this country they're always saying you can grow up and be anything you want, but now I realize that's not true.” Spoken like the original wimpy kid, that prep school dropout Holden Caulfield.

I asked my own decidedly prepubescent kid what he thought of the book. What follows is the complete transcript of our discussion.

Mom: I'm writing my review of new Wimpy Kid book. Can you tell me what you thought of it?
Elliott: It was really good.
(long pause)
Mom: Anything else?
Elliott: It was really funny.
Mom: What parts did you like the best?
Elliott: Well, duh. The funny parts.
Mom: Can you be more specific?

At this point he grabbed the book, curled up on the couch, and his cycles of laughter resumed. His endorsement was clear.

Written by: Shannon Drury, January 24th 2011

Pandora's Box

tina — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Nu Shooz Orchesta

Self-Released

Conventional wisdom says that every young popster or rocker, no matter how devoted, will one day grow into a consumer of smooth jazz. How else to explain Rod Stewart's resurgence as a tuxedo-clad, Bing-style crooner (aside from a mid-seventies deal with Beelzebub himself)? John Smith and Valerie Day, the duo behind '80s group Nu Shooz, are hardly stars of Stewart's caliber, but they did craft one of the finest American pop singles of all time: “I Can't Wait.” Over two decades later they've resurrected the song and themselves in predictable jazz fashion.

Pandora's Box is a new self-released album by Smith & Day's new project, Nu Shooz Orchestra. The album includes “I Can't Wait: 20th Anniversary Edition” and ten more tracks of over-baked coffeehouse pap that smears John Coltrane by association.

Let’s back up a couple of decades to a great song from a band with a silly name. “I Can't Wait” was a single so phenomenal that I have yet to tire of it. In fact, I'm listening to an MP3 of it right now, though it lacks the warm crackle of old 12” vinyl. The track's bassline is addictively slinky and powerful enough to support countless layers of snappy percussion, synths, twinkly guitars, a stealth horn section, and Day's coolly vibrato-free voice. The idea of a jazzy “I Can't Wait” has no appeal—in fact, it's antithetical to what makes the song work so well. Funk-influenced dance pop is propelled by deep grooves, the kind that power “I Can't Wait” and that depth can only be created on a vintage Roland synthesizer. Individual notes will transpose to the stand-up bass, of course, but if I wanted to hear stand-up bass, I'd listen to Jimmy Garrison on A Love Supreme. I wouldn't listen to Nu Shooz, with or without its orchestra.

Therein lies the artist's curse of doing one thing extraordinarily well. Musicians are vulnerable to fans' fickleness. If I want to hear a pop song that sounds like “I Can't Wait,” I can quite easily listen to “I Can't Wait” (and I did, three more times). The name Nu Shooz, however ridiculous, means classic '80s dance pop. The last thing this world needs is mediocrity, no matter what the genre.

Everyone needs to earn a living, so I don't fault Smith or Day for dipping into the seemingly bottomless wallets of our nation's latte-sippers. The harsh reality is that if these tracks were released under a completely different name (Old Sneakers?), this album wouldn't even be reviewed, much less panned for not sounding like one snotty critic wanted it to. But all is not lost! In my research for this review, I discovered that 50 Cent remixed the original “I Can't Wait” into his song “Buzzin',” and it's really good. I hope the residuals afford Smith and Day the chance to tune up the old Roland. The world—and its shoes—are waiting.

Written by: Shannon Drury, December 15th 2010

Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists

farhana — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Courtney E. Martin

Beacon Press

Though editor Courtney E. Martin’s new book means to school baby boomer types who mock the millennial generation for their perceived apathy, Do it Anyway: The New Generation of Activists is a balm for burned out justice advocates of any age. Even its title acknowledges the enormous gap that lies between the fervent desires for “that hopey-changey thing” (as Sarah Palin joked) and the hard work needed to make it happen.

Do it Anyway shares the stories of eight young American activists, beginning with Rachel Corrie, the twenty-year-old crushed to death in 2003 by Israeli tanks when she attempted to defend Palestinian homes on the Gaza Strip. While Martin sympathizes with Corrie's idealism, she is blunt in her appraisal: “I am reminded,” Martin writes, “of how irresistible and yet how deeply false the romance of young death really is.” Corrie's death ought to be seen as a waste of unrealized talent, not as a paragon of youthful heroism. Martin implores her readers to consider, as she puts it, “'live people' for our inspiration.”

And what “live people” they are. The rose-colored outlook of a middle-class white girl like Corrie contrasts sharply with that of Maricela Guzman, a daughter of illegal immigrants who joined the military to climb out of poverty. Instead, her brutal rape at the hands of a superior officer sparked a new mission: advocating for survivors of sexual violence as co-founder of the Service Women's Action Network. Philanthropist Tyrone Boucher and filmmaker Emily Abt both renounce material privilege in their justice work; actress Rosario Dawson leverages her celebrity to draw attention to little-served causes.

All seven “live people” in the book open their mouths, hearts, and lives to Martin, granting her access to public schools in the Bronx and gang-riddled streets in Los Angeles (Martin, as learned as any Third Waver on the messiness of identity politics, is careful to balance her subjects’ races, genders, social classes, and areas of activist expertise).

Martin's concluding chapter is her masterstroke: called “Good Failure,” it offers practical lessons learned in the field and on the ground that, while not claiming to be lifesaving (Martin is uncertain that Rachel Corrie was interested in anyone's advice), will go a long way towards avoiding the burnout that can derail any activist's career. “I was repeatedly shattered,” Martin writes, “at how much emotional pain all of these people have had to endure in order to do their work.” Ultimately, a greater truth was revealed: “our charge is not to 'save the world' after all; it is to live in it, flawed and fierce, loving and humble.”

For anyone already committed to or just beginning to enter the world of social justice, Do it Anyway is a must-read.

Written by: Shannon Drury, November 29th 2010

Big Citizenship: How Pragmatic Idealism Can Bring Out the Best in America

jenna — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Alan Khazei

PublicAffairs Books

Alan Khazei is a heckuva guy. In 1988, he co-founded City Year, a privately funded domestic service organization that lead directly to the establishment of AmeriCorps. When AmeriCorps was threatened out of existence by budget cuts in 2003, Khazei spearheaded the drive to save it. Today he runs Be the Change, Inc., a group that “creates national public awareness campaigns to build momentum for citizen service as a practical solution to problems facing our communities and our country.” A better-intentioned guy would be hard to find.

Alan Khazei is also a politician. In 2009, he lost the Democratic primary for the Senate seat made vacant by the death of Khazei’s colleague and hero, Ted Kennedy. Everyone knows that the winner of that primary, Martha Coakley, lost in the general election to former Cosmo model Scott Brown. Had Coakley won by a clear margin, I doubt that Khazei’s Big Citizenship would exist. The book’s lines announce that Alan Khazei really loves his country; between them, the reader understands that Khazei plans to run for office again, with this sunny, confident book as part of his pitch.

Big Citizenship is ostensibly the tale of how Khazei cooked up the idea to send idealistic seventeen- to twenty-four-year-olds into urban communities for a year of full-time service and what transpired afterwards. The book tells this story well, but it does little more than that: we’re not shown, in the creative nonfiction sense, what motivated Khazei. Guilt? Ego? Existential despair? All we’re told of Khazei’s early life is how dearly he loved his immigrant relatives, all of whom loved America so much that Khazei had no choice but to love it, too. We’re led to believe that City Year emerged from this overwhelming love of country (and love for the older Kennedy brothers, John and Robert).

Before you toss a used tea bag my way, let me assure you that I’m also fond of my homeland, including its ability to learn from its troubled history. Unfortunately, Khazei fails to unpack any of the root causes of persistent poverty and inequality, preferring instead to direct his considerable energy towards his many service organizations.

The birth of City Year smacks so much of Ivy League elitism (we, the Upper Class, shall help you, the Lower Class) that it’s easy to forget that Khazei, son of an Iranian immigrant, must have endured taunts of “Ayatollah Assa-holah” as a St. Paul’s prepster in 1979. But Khazei avoids introspection at every turn. His consistent emotional distance, perhaps born of his bruising Senate campaign, quells any desire in the reader to use Khazei’s methods to “bring out the best in America.”

Nitpicking the founder of a program that has done so much good for so many feels singularly shameful, but here it is: Big Citizenship is boring. Reading it is as much a chore as eating a plateful of steamed vegetables: good for you, yes, but in desperate need of salt. Were Khazei not planning a future campaign, I suspect he’d have shared a more complex portrait of City Year, including the inevitable ugliness and frustration, perhaps even acknowledging his own class privilege more deeply than expressing a vague desire to “give back.”

Written by: Shannon Drury, November 9th 2010

Tattoo Flash Print Dishtowels

brittany — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

By Sin in Linen

Sin in Linen, purveyor of retro and punk rock patterned household goods, sent Elevate Difference and this feminist reviewer a pair of their new Tattoo Flash Print Dishtowels. I’m not sure what to review: their utility? As Courtney Love once sang, “I don’t do the dishes, I throw them in the crib.” Do I test them for feminist purity? Included among the sacred hearts, horseshoes, and flames are bikini-clad pinup girls, one of whom strikes a squatting-at-the-strip-club-in-platforms pose that is less Bettie Page than Jenna Jameson. Ew.

Lest you accuse me of typically second wave prudery, I assure you that I do like vintage pin-ups. My husband knows that Playboy is verboten in my house not because naked ladies are bad, but because naked ladies who are shaved, starved, and siliconed into looking like pneumatic twelve-year-olds are bad. My husband, incidentally, is our household’s usual dishwasher, and he approved of the Tattoo Dishtowels. “More absorbent than the crap we got at Ikea,” was his take. Unfortunately, when he draped the towels over the oven door to dry, my five-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son got an eyeful. She liked the mermaids and butterflies; he wondered why on earth there would be women in bathing suits on the new dishtowels. I told him I didn’t know.

I see the appeal of applying tattoos to household products instead of human bodies; the consumer remains au courant while avoiding the inconvenience of a lifetime commitment. What I fail to understand, continually, is the use of voluptuous pin-up girl as shorthand for “I am different. I am alternative.” When I gaze at the designs on the Tattoo Dishtowels, I think of an aging Korean War vet’s meaty forearms. A dishtowel of tattoos for the new millennium might feature Japanese kanji, Celtic knots, or Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s name in Sanskrit.

But the purpose of these towels is not to celebrate the history of tattooing; it is to send the following message to the neighbors on laundry day: I am no ordinary housewife. This is precisely what I conveyed last week when I attended both kids’ school open houses in rumpled jeans and a pair of maroon Chuck Taylors, so I understand this impulse completely. I just don’t agree that a half-naked babe, however luscious, is the best way to do it.

Now if that bikini babe were in the company of the shirtless Old Spice Guy, then we’d really be cooking (pun totally intended). Equal opportunity objectification could be all that’s needed to unite feminism’s many waves—even if it’s only over the kitchen sink.

Written by: Shannon Drury, September 16th 2010