Orange-Clove Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today at work girl scouts, those sugary little fairies disguised as elementary school kids, were selling cookies inside the store. Sweetly, they smiled, tempting each passing customer or employee to fall into nutritional sin. Needless to say, I bought two boxes. I think I was even a bit below average in this respect (2 customers bought 25 boxes each.) I shared the cookies with my coworkers (mostly out of fear that I might eat them all myself) and one friend declared that thin mints are "the best cookies ever". I was offended. Another coworker took up the fight, insisting that orange-chocolate-chip cookies are the best.

Not to be outdone by adorable little pixies in merit badges, I thought I'd take up the challenge:

Orange-Clove Chocolate Chip Cookies

I started with Smitten Kitchen's recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and added orange zest and juice. I love the combination of clove and orange, so I added a bit of cloves as well. Allowing the heat from the melted butter to caramelize the sugars is a tip I learned from Cook's Illustrated and it never lets me down. I've got environmental objections to brown sugar, so I substituted the brown sugar with raw cane sugar and added a little molasses. (Brown sugar is just the same high-processed, environmentally damaging white sugar with the added processing of making it brown. Using fair-trade, evaporated organic raw cane juice lends a more mellow sweetness and is friendlier to the planet and the people who harvest sugar cane.)

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 and 1/2 cup raw cane sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
zest of one large orange
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the warm melted butter, sugar, molasses, cloves, orange zest and juice. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Set aside in a warm place for 20-30 minutes to allow sugars to caramelize.

Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough one tablespoon at a time. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.

Bake cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

The end results are lovely, but mine are a little flat, so I upped the baking soda from the orignal recipe's 1/2 tsp. I also think they could go with a pinch more sea salt but I like my cookies on the saltier side.

If it's war they want

So if you've read the news lately, or even if you just have a facebook account, you probably know why The New York Times is calling Republicans out for declaring war on women.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning.

A declaration of war is an apt and amusing way to describe the right's recent obsession with de-funding Planned Parenthood, WIC and early childhood nutrition programs. These cuts, it seems, are made necessary by the literal wars declared on Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'd like to quote one the Republican's own back at them: Bring it on.

Fellow women (and those who would fight on our side) if Republican declare war on us and our bodies and our children, we must respond with our voices and with our votes. I don't know any women who would actually have sex with Republicans but I strongly encourage any who would to reconsider that, too. Not that sex should be considered a political act, but, given that a state of war has been declared, I just don't think fraternizing with the enemy is such a good idea.

My generation, especially, is often complacent, quick to forget that the rights we enjoy were hard-won by our mothers and their mothers. These rights were not always ours and they can be taken away if we allow them to be. Our political and personal power stems from the basic right to determine what happens to our bodies. Every woman, regardless of her economic situation, should have access to health care, contraceptives, and the proper nutrition for our babies before and after they are born.

They can say that women's health isn't a fiscal priority in a time of war, and what do we say in response? Bring. It. On.

Academic advice & secret societies

My dilemma about studying abroad may not appear to be a dilemma at all, on the surface. I understand that going abroad is a rare opportunity, one that will improve my language skills and practical understanding of the culture of Morocco, and that I am very, very lucky to even have the possibility of going. It's also the only way for me to earn my degree in 2011.

Here's the thing; I haven't been unemployed since I was 18. Even that was just for most of a summer. I work. It is what I do. It is how I survive, how I remain independent. Not having a job for 3 months (especially having to give up my current job which I love) and having no certainty of any job (or, for that matter, any money) when I come back is terrifying.

Other cons:

-The Moroccan dialect of Arabic is not widely spoken or understood outside of Morocco, and is not my first choice of dialects to learn.

-The program involves a 3-month home stay with a family. While I appreciate my previous homestay experiences, the idea of spending so long in one family's home seems overwhelming and frightening.

-It is expensive. Very expensive. Lotsa expensive. Plus airfare, plus travel expenses, plus no ability to work while I'm there. Eeeesh.


So what do you think, should I go?





In only sort of related news, when I got home tonight I found a fancy envelope from the "Golden Key International Honour Society" letting me know that for only $80 I could become a member of their society, apparently something I qualified for due to "academic achievement". This is my standard response to any invitation to join a society:

To Whom It May Concern,

Thank you for your invitation to become a member of GKIHS. While GKIHS sounds like a prestigious and ancient society, I have to be selective about my society membership, due the volume of invitations I receive. Please answer the following questions about your society, and return by mail in the enclosed envelope before 3/15 for priority consideration.

1. How secret is your society?

a.) Top
b.) Less secret than before that hack pulp writer outed us
c.) What society?
d.) We literally admit any one who pays us $80

2. How much behind-the-scenes control do you have over global events?

a.) We control the weather
b.) We control international finance
c.) We control the media
d.) We control your mind

3. Who is the celebrity face of your society?

a.) A former President
b.) Tom Cruise
c.) Grand Dragon __________________ (Insert name here)
d.) The Pope

4. What is your society's beverage of choice?

a.) Blood
b.) Wine
c.) Kool-Aid
d.) All of the above.

5. How much animal sacrifice, in general, does your society require?

a.) Constant
b.) Every meeting
c.) Every full moon
d.) We require human sacrifice.

Thank you again for the invitation, and I look forward to hearing from you. Due to the volume of invitations to secret societies a personal response may not be possible if your society is not selected. Good luck!

Sincerely,

Kelsey

Ugly Oats and Star Wars cookies

Mark Bittman has a great column on McDonald's new oatmeal:

Read it before you eat.

When I read stuff like this (The "oatmeal" has 21 total ingredients and more sugar than a Snickers bar. No joke.) I think about all of those people who angrily post comments on the White House facebook photos of Michelle Obama. Usually these are along the line of "She needs to lose weight before she tells me what my kids can eat!" (Usually this is coupled with a livestock-based epithet.) As some one who has just woken up to the realization that I'll need to wear a bridesmaid's dress in about 2 months, I've decided to do a better job of watching what I eat. This means, for example, that instead of eating 5 of the Star Wars cookies I just baked (and several spoonfuls of dough) I get to have one. It means that, despite the recent realization that my history research paper (10 pages) my final English paper, my Arabic final, my Arabic portfolio and presentation, my applications for 3 different grants for study abroad and my Dear Mr. President book will all need to be finished up in the next 3 weeks, I'm probably going to make a better effort to get outside and jog a few miles a day. I'm tired just thinking about it. (If you don't hear from me until the 15th, I'm not dead, I'm just swamped.)

Anyway, I guess what I mean to say is that no one thinks it's easy to make the right food choices or to stay active. It isn't easy. The First Lady isn't trying to tell us what to eat or what to feed our kids, she trying to make it easier for Americans to make better choices. Why people are so threatened by that- especially when faced with the deceptive practices companies like McDonald's regarding their so-called "healthy" options- is beyond me.

And with that, I give you Star Wars cookies:



The recipe is straight from Smitten Kitchen and, sadly, they do not look so pretty frosted with my from-scratch vanilla mint butter-cream or (for the Darth Vaders) bittersweet chocolate.

Goodnight, all.

Love, too, is a thing with feathers

Any one from UBS knows I ripped off the title for this entry from the marketing slogan our store used for Valentine's day. But if there's a more appropriate source of Valentine's Day-related inspiration than an advertisement, I can't think of it. Anyway, this line was pasted around my store for the last few weeks (it's a reference to Emily Dickinson's "hope is a thing with feathers", but, hopefully, not intended as a dig at the poor old spinster.) I don't mean to be a complete cliche by choosing this to frame my rant about love, but I suppose it was this slogan, more than anything, that's had me thinking about the absence of romantic love in my life.

My life is good. I'm doing well in school, I've got a job I enjoy, I'm looking at only a few months until Africa and graduation. I am steady and sane and, other than the insomnia, pretty healthy. I have a lot to be thankful for. So when Valentine's Day rolled around, I really didn't feel so bad about not having a boyfriend. I looked up the other day and realized almost every one I know is in a couple. Sisters, roommates, friends, even those who are (forgive me) usually as bad as I am at love are not only in relationships, they're happy and making it all look as easy as breathing. And, much as it pains me to admit, just as necessary.

I have a friend who has often given me advice in this area of my life, and he would tell me it is because I care too much. This is his nice way of saying "don't act so desperate, silly". He's probably more right than I want to admit. There are days (like today) when I feel not just unwanted but unwantable. And then, just when I'm really starting to get excessive in the self-pity, I remember New Year's Eve.

Maybe it was the champagne. Maybe my friends put him up to it. Whatever the case a nice, good-looking, apparently sane man decided to spend a good part of the night kissing me. It was the first time in.. well.. longer than I'd care to admit.. and it was fun. A little scary, a little intense, but mostly fun. When we parted ways at the end of the night he didn't tell me he'd call me or try to act like any of it meant anything (he lives far away) but he did tell me that he wanted me to know I was attractive and sexy and totally desirable. (This is maybe the part that, especially after watching this week's episode of 30 Rock, makes me wonder if he was put up to it by my dear friends.) And yes, the independent, Elizabeth Cady Stanton-tattooed feminist in me knows that I don't need a man to tell me I'm sexy to feel sexy. I don't. But, especially when it has been years since a straight man who is not one of your married or taken brother figures who HAS to call you pretty because mom will ground him otherwise, it is really nice to hear.

So thank you, Stranger, for the fond (if hazy) memories that remind me on nights like tonight to put down the ice cream and stop feeling sorry for myself. I do believe that I will find love (or that it will find me) when the time is right. And there are nights like tonight (or weeks like this week) when the loneliness seems like it's bigger than all of the blessings I should be focusing on. But these nights (and weeks) will pass. I will sleep (or not) and tomorrow I'll drink coffee by myself and watch the other people in a coffee shop or walk home alone in the moonlight with my headphones on and remember that being alone has its upsides, too. I'm not sure what the marketing department at UBS was getting at with the whole feathers thing, but if they mean that love is fragile, flighty, impossible to catch, (and sometimes eats your small pets) well, I guess I agree.

Happy Valentine's Day, from Emily and I.

Have I mentioned that I love Paul Constant?

So, for those of you who don't live here, The Stranger is by far the only good alternative weekly in Seattle. Paul Constant writes their book reviews and he is going to be at my bookstore tonight (interviewing author Jonathan Evison about his new bookso if you live in the city and aren't busy tonight at 7, get to University Books.) Needless to say, I'm as nervous as a schoolgirl on prom night. I'm even (sort of) dressed up. Paul Constant may be more of a local celeb than the kind that require their own bodyguards to fend off paparazzi, but I'd take him over Brad Pitt any day of the week. Besides being a critical genius, Constant is also a surprisingly nice guy. A few years back he wrote a feature on shoplifting at bookstores that rubbed me the wrong way, prompting me to send a heated (and more than a little shrill) email. Not only did he respond to my email and apologize for what he'd said (even though he hadn't actually meant it the way that I'd taken it) he posted my email on Slog to let other readers weigh in. Super classy. I was especially impressed given that The Stranger often has a tone of somewhat snarky superiority. It wasn't that he just gave in and said I was right and he was wrong (we both were a little of each) but he demonstrated a willingness to listen to my objections, address them, and apologize for what he concluded were genuine mistakes. That, my friends, is a real man.

While we're on the subject of books, I thought I'd take a minute to eulogize the late great Borders bookstore. (My friend and former boss Peter does a much better job with this, here so you should read that, if you only have time for one sad lament about Borders.) While the final dying gasps may be yet to come, yesterdays announcement of chapter 11 and the attending closure of 200 stores (including store 50, my old DC store) seems to be the sad final throes of a company that started dying years ago. Finding out that store 50 is closing is like finding out the family now living in my childhood home is having it demolished. I applied online at Borders a few weeks before I moved to Washington, DC, and I remember the hiring manager called me the very next morning. He hadn't realized I was still in Seattle and so he called around 9am his time- 6 am for me- and was incredibly gracious in his apology once he realized this. He said I should call him to schedule an interview once I was in town, and then followed up with another call the day I arrived in DC, just to make sure I still wanted a job. One of the best choices I ever made was to accept that offer.

THe DC Borders was where I learned almost every job skill I have. I made friends who still feel like family. I had a boss who pushed me to go back to school at a critical time in my life, when I otherwise might have remained stagnant. I took on my first shoplifters in this store. I learned about books in a city that demands more of its booksellers than probably any other place in the country. I learned more in my year at that store and in that city than I have in any single year of college. We are scattered now, the old crew of that store, some still in the district, others following families and opportunities across the country. Right now, I would give anything to have a few hours back there, at the bar across the street, raising our glasses to the good old days and to absent friends. To my Borders family, past and present, thanks for the memories.

I suppose a big chain store closing isn't as tragic to most people as, say, the death of the lovely local shop Twice Sold Tales. While I agree that the independent bookshop has a personality and community roots that a big box just can't rival, Borders was so much more, to me, than the suits who ran the company and placed so much importance on store-to-store uniformity. Borders will always be about the friends I met there, and about the great books and even greater love of books that brought us together. RIP Borders.

I guess I ought to spend the rest of the day working on homework. Hopefully that will be enough to distract me from the twin threats of overwhelming nostalgia and intense anxiety about maybe meeting Paul tonight.

Dalal al-Sabagh

She was 23 years old when they shot her. By some accounts she was on her rooftop, hanging her wash. When CNN ran the story, they mistook her surname as "Shihadeh", and I had to wonder if the reporter was confusing her name with the word "شهيدة", which is the feminized version of the word for "martyr".

Dalal al-Sabagh's story gets translated into English only at the end, and, even then, poorly. She lived in Jenin with her three children. Her oldest child, Ahmed, was 4 when his mother was killed. Mumen was 3. Hiba, her daughter, was 40 days old. On March 9th, 2004, she was shot and killed by "random" fire by Israeli troops. Initially the IDF denied responsibility, and by the time the truth was known the media had moved on to the death of Islamic Jihad and Hamas leaders. A search of LexisNexus for all major news outlets for the entire month of March brings up only two articles, BBC transcripts of Israeli and Palestinian radio broadcasts. A few lefty, pro-Palestine blogs spoke of her, but, by and large, her life and death went without notice by much of America.

If you look at the article on CNN.com, a few things should stand out. The article's subject (right above the headline) is "Palestinian militants". While this might initially have been due to the denial of responsibility by the IDF and the accusations made, it was 7 years ago, and neither her name nor the cause of her death was ever corrected by CNN. The New York Times mentions a raid on militants in Jenin from the 9th of March, but only in the context of how it will negatively affect peace talks.

Does it matter how the media remembers Dalal al-Sabagh, or, more accurately, how they forget her? I think, as I read so much about Wafa Idris, as I sift through the pages and pages of intimate details reported about her, I can't help but notice that Palestinians who take up arms (or strap on explosives) are spoken of in English-language news, while those who die hanging their wash, or riding their bikes, or even protesting peacefully, are rarely mentioned.

So while I study Wafa Idris, while I try to understand the desperation and the anger that led to her death, I will also remember Dalal al-Sabagh. It won't bring her back, or help her three children who have to grow up without her, but it feels like the least any of us can do.

Re: Hello I am Fat

For the sake of fairness, I thought I'd post Dan Savage's defense, which is well-witten and for the most part fair, though I think he overlooks some things. I don't have hard evidence I can point to or a single smoking-gun example but, as a reader (and fan) of Dan's writing, I have felt that there is an undercurrent of antipathy toward the overweight. Maybe this is entirely in my own mind, but, as Lindy West and others on Slog have noted it, as well, I don't think he can so easily dismiss the charge that he (consciously or otherwise) contributes in his own way to the shame society heaps on the overweight.

But check out his response and tell me what you think.

Agenda Fiction

Ok, so I'm on a bit of a Chimamanda Adichie kick this week. Last week was Chris Abani. Next week will probably be Dave Eggers, a guess based largely upon the reading schedule for my Lit class.

Anyway, one of the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck, called "Jumping Monkey Hill", is about a writers workshop for African writers. The protagonist of the story writes about her experience being sexually harassed in the workplace and has it dismissed, by the workshop's director, as "Agenda fiction." Adichie often discusses the strange relationships between fact, fiction, biography, memory and truth, so it has been on my mind lately. I think this is why I couldn't help but see a moment I had today as an irony so heavy-handed I could hear my lit professor reading it aloud and then mocking it.

To set the scene a bit: I'm writing a paper for my history class about Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber. Actually I'm writing about the way the American media covered her, because that's what you do when you can't read the language of the best primary sources. Anyway, a classmate and I walked from class in Smith Hall to Red Square talking about our respective papers. He's Palestinian. Or maybe Arab-Israeli. Or maybe Palestinian-American. I'm not sure how he would identify himself, but he asked me, as though it would be a personal favor, to tell Wafa's whole story.

"I'm not saying suicide bombers are good. But people think they are irrational, they don't even think there might be a reason behind what they do," he said.

I nodded emphatically, rushing to assure him that we were of the same mind about this issue. (My privileged white girl arrogance sometimes allows me to forget that Palestine is more his than mine, no matter how much it matters to me.) We agreed to exchange papers at the end of the quarter, each excited to read what the other is writing (his is on soccer in Palestine) and said we'd try to write well for the sake of the other. It was one of those moments of connection that left me smiling, because I have had them so rarely while at UW. With very few exceptions my classmates and I have spoken almost exclusively within the classroom. To have such a personal (if short) exchange with a guy who had been a stranger mere moments before was reassuring in a way.

Distracted as I was by this bonding experience, I neglected to notice that on the tower above our heads a banner entreated "FREE TIRP TO ISRAEL".

When I passed back through Red Square and saw this banner, my first thought was the oddly detached realization that this moment would never pass for fiction. Too contrived, my lit prof would call it, too heavy-handed. "Wink wink, nudge nudge" is his catchphrase for moments of too-obvious symbolism, irony or foreshadowing.

Free trip to Israel. The words loom larger-than-life. Larger, it seemed, than our insignificant papers, our shared hope, larger than either of us. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. I won't turn this into a rant against Birthright trips but any system that says American college kids have more right to visit a place than the people (and their families) who owned houses and populated the villages of that place just 60 years ago.. well.. to put it frankly, I shouldn't have to explain how fucked up that is.

Which, I suppose, is a very small part of what led to the death of Wafa Idris. I think that my research about her life, the sheer amount of personal detail I've collected and sifted through in trying to form my own picture of her and her choices, is a darker and more emotional experience than most of my academic endeavors. I worry, at times, that spending too much time reading about her and reading the way the media discusses her will make me too angry, too upset, too consumed by my frustration to be objective.

But I promised my classmate I'd do my best. I will try to tell the whole story, or, at least, as much of it as can ever be understood this far removed from the time and the place.

And, should the story of my life ever be told, (by me or by any one else,) this incident will surely be cut from the final draft by a discerning editor, dismissed as too contrived to ever pass for the kind of truth we expect from memory or from fiction.

Wink wink, nudge nudge.

The danger of a single story

A great TED talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:




I just finished her collection of short stories called The Thing Around Your Neck. Purple Hibiscus is the only one of her novel's I've read but I loved it. Her TED talk is a fascinating look at the power dynamics of ascribing a "single story" to a place or a people.

Check it out.

Hello, I am fat

Most of you who live in the Seattle area have heard of Stranger writer Lindy West. She's great, in that ridiculous, hilarious kind of way that makes her writing so addictive. I'm sure there are people in the world who don't like her writing, but I have encountered few of them.

Recently she and slightly-more-famous sex-columnist/gay-rights activist/all-around genius Dan Savage (West's boss at The Stranger) have had a public discussion (fight? argument? conversation? it's hard to say) on Slog, The Stranger's blog. Lindy accused Dan of stigmatizing fat people, Dan denied it, slog readers took up the debate. And then Lindy won. I'm sorry, Dan Savage, I think you're great, but Lindy delivered this roundhouse kick of a manifesto that simply cannot be topped. I get the impression that Savage, for all of his faults, is the type of boss who can be called out like this and still be a big enough man to admit defeat, so here's to hoping that West doesn't regret firing back this way.

Please check out West's post in it's entirety, as it is brilliant and well worth a complete read. The highlight for me, though, comes right at the opening:

This is my body (over there—see it?). I have lived in this body my whole life. I have wanted to change this body my whole life. I have never wanted anything as much as I have wanted a new body. I am aware every day that other people find my body disgusting. I always thought that some day—when I finally stop failing—I will become smaller, and when I become smaller literally everything will get better (I've heard It Gets Better)! My life can begin! I will get the clothes that I want, the job that I want, the love that I want. It will be great! Think how great it will be to buy some pants or whatever at J. Crew. Oh, man. Pants. Instead, my body stays the same.

I'm sure there are others out there (male, female, heavy, thin, whatever) who know exactly what this feels like. Who can hear these words in their own voices. Because we have always believed that once we reach that summit- of thinness, or beauty, or wealth, or success, or whatever- our Real Life can begin. I have been thinner than I am now. As an adolescent cross-country runner there were times in junior high when I was very, very thin, perhaps even unhealthily so. I have also been very heavy, (unsurprisingly these times were also when I was the most poor and the most depressed.) These days I am somewhere between where I want to be and where I am afraid I'll end up. And there are things I will NEVER be, no matter how much I diet. I will never be a small person, I will never have feminine hands or an hourglass figure. I will never have beautiful skin. I don't imagine that I will ever be a contestant for America's Next Top Model (even in the plus-sized edition) and I am not that concerned about it, to tell you the truth. (Maybe that's why I'm a blogger.)

This does not mean that I don't think I'm pretty or that I don't think I'm lovable or that I don't think men will find me attractive. I have friends with the kind of hurts-just-to-look-straight-at-it kind of beauty, the kind of billboards and magazines and celebrities, and I understand that comes with its own kind of self-doubt, its own set of challenges. What I think Lindy West does so well in her post is what Elizabeth Cady Stanton did. After Frederick Douglass delivered an eloquent rant about how women's rights needed to wait until after black men had secured the right to vote, describing the horror and brutality of slavery and its legacy, Stanton rose to her feet and said "What about black women?"

Now, to be perfectly clear, I think Stanton and Dougalss each had their failings, and each was quick to abandon the rights of the other's constituency for the sake of their own. I think that Stanton would have taken voting rights for women even if it meant only white women, and Douglass certainly demonstrated his own willingness to accept the vote for black men alone. Lindy West and Dan Savage- both of whom I admire greatly- are, like Stanton and Douglass, more ally than enemy. Like Stanton and Douglass, I suspect they would find more success united than divided. The point that Savage has missed is that his campaign against bullying gay teens speaks to exactly the kind of bullying fat (or just unconventional) girls (and boys) have experienced, too. How many gay teens are also fat? Are they supposed to believe that It Gets Better, but only if they lose enough weight to measure up to the standards of beauty assigned by people like Dan Savage?

The thing I have admired most about the It Gets Better campaign is the honest-to-goodness kindness of it all. In a world where being ironic, aloof, cynical and sarcastic is almost as necessary as being beautiful, it was so moving to see so many people take to their webcams to just say something nice. I'd really like to believe that the sentiments might be applied, not just to gay or lesbian teens, but to all of us still waiting for perfection, still waiting for our Real Lives to begin. It does get better- but not until you stop waiting for yourself to change.

Anyway, read Lindy's post. It's brilliant and beautiful and funny.


.. you know.. these posts get much more difficult to end when I'm not signing off as a letter.

حرية بمصر

The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people -- of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.

-President Barack Obama, 2/11/2011


This is one of those speeches by the President that makes me so proud to have voted for him. The situation in Egypt has pulled me back into a semi-regular state of engagement with the outside world, something I'd been avoiding since the end of 2010. Don't get me wrong, I loved Dear Mr President and I loved writing it, but some days the constant drone of talking points, talking heads, the Huffington Post making an INSANELY LARGE HEADLINE and reading the same story as told by the left, the right, the White House, the mainstream media and the blogosphere... well... it got kind of exhausting. I certainly began suffering the delusion that I was a more active participant rather than just a little person watching from the sidelines. So I took a break.

On New Year's Eve I drank a little too much and had just slightly more fun than I should have (and maybe just slightly less fun than others present would have liked.) I felt 24 again instead of ancient. The new quarter started at UW and instead of continuing my really embarrassing streak of oversleeping/skipping class, I attended each and every one. My classes right now are amazing. And then, 18 days ago, I came to history after an all-night-paper-writing session, exhausted but thrilled to have my paper done on time, and my professor asked who else had heard what was happening in Egypt.

No one said anything.

"God, you guys, would it kill you to LOOK at the front page of a newspaper once in a while?" I tried to explain it- I'd just spent a year doing nothing but read the news, see, I wasn't one of those willfully misinformed kinds. If it sounded half as bad out loud as it does in my memory, well, it's amazing I can still face the rest of that class.

Anyway, I tuned back in. Opened the paper, surfed the internet, hit refresh on the news sites obsessively and silently thanked Dr. Marcy Newman for adding me as her facebook friend every time she posted another twitter update. (Dr. Newman is second only to Al-Jazeera, I think.)

At work, in school, in the cafe seating on my lunch break, I started talking to people. "What have you heard? What do you think? What do you hope?" Information, slogans, rumors, predictions, opinions passed and retold and carried from one friend or stranger to the next.

The Revolution was happening and we could do nothing but wait and watch.

Today Hosni Mubarak stepped down. I've never been so awed. The Egyptian people are inspiring. They dared to dream of a better country and lived (and died) to see it done.

What, my friends, what the hell, have we been waiting for?


I want to vent a little anger, now, about every idiot suggesting that Egyptian Democracy is something we ought to fear or try to prevent. Maybe we should fear it, we who have paid so much to see them so oppressed for so long, but they have earned this in decades of martial law, spent in dark, secret cells, never to be heard from again. They have earned this in 18 days of resistance, of peace, in the face of bullets and chaos and fear and doubt. They have earned a Democracy with their dignity and their courage. Who are we to question that?

I believe that every nation should be ruled by a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Considering what we have allowed our own government to become, I'm not sure American Democracy shouldn't be the greater nightmare.

!مبارك, يا مصر

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Welcome to the Ugly Blog.

If you've read Chris Abani's The Virgin of Flames you're familiar with the kind of "ugly" I meant when I named this blog. But the story if its name starts in September, in a class called "Water and Security in the Middle East." The professor, one of my favorites at the University of Washington, opened the class by talking about young people and our cynicism, sitting at home writing our "ugly blogs" saying the sky is falling.

As I was, at that time, 9 months into my Dear Mr President project, I couldn't help but take this comment a little personally. I would write my ugly blog, I thought, and the ugly blogs of my generation would change the world in ways this newspaper-worshipping dinosaur couldn't imagine.

Oh, youthful anger. *head pat*

Long after deciding on this name, long after taking a break from blogging at the end of 2010, I was assigned The Virgin of Flames for another class. In Abani's LA, the misfits and circus freaks of the city find community in a psychic tatto parlor/bar/coffee shop/music venue where scars are required for admission. It is called "The Ugly Store" and my professor (rather affectionately, I like to think) pointed to me and said I'd feel right at home there.

And so this shall be the Ugly Blog. I don't know if the sky is falling, but most days I think it might be. It might be because I write from Seattle, or because cynicism is my default expression. Most days I try to challenge that. If you read this because you read Dear Mr. President, please be warned, this will likely be a stranger, more emotional, less political place. That being said I am a person who believes all politics are personal, so I'm not going to drop the leftist bent of my ranting, even if those rants occur in something that isn't always straightforward prose.

So, as I was saying, welcome. This is the Ugly Blog.