Today is the day.
My last day in California for 5 weeks. I’m sitting on my bed looking out my window and around my room imagining what it’s going to be like to be gone for so long. I also wonder what it’s going to be like to come back.
I can’t wait to be on the road absorbing new things and seeing different people and the feeling of passing over space and earth and seeing stars I’ve never seen and hearing accents I’ve never heard.
I can’t wait to see the Grand Canyon and the feeling of how vast the earth is.
I can’t wait to climb the Rocky Mountains and drive through the Great Plains and see the lightening storms and smell Colorado again.
I can’t wait to drive through the high desert and see the great divide in Taos. I can’t wait to see all my familiar faces in Santa Fe and breathe the thinnest air.
I can’t wait to drive all through the night in the heat of the desert and make it up to 130 mph and howl to the moon because we’re kids alone on the highway and we have no bedtime or obligations in the morning and were still kids, just kids so fuck it lets howl and scream in the night.
I can’t wait to get to Austin and see the bat bridge and all the art and the heat and the accents.
I can’t wait to get to New Orleans and break in to the graveyards at night and walk around bourbon street again and see the ancient houses in the French quarter and oh god most of all eat the food and drink the wine.
I can’t wait to drive through the south and stop at little country stores and talk about life on opposite sides of a huge country.
I can’t wait to get to dc and feel the importance of everyday life there. I can’t wait to see our country’s monuments and walk the streets that some of the most powerful people walked for change and equality.
New York. Whatever could I say about New York that hasn’t already been regurgitated. New York, I just want to make sure you exist. I just want to make sure that you aren’t the figment of a starved culture. New York, New York, we’re coming.
The drive east. Indiana, Chicago, Detroit, South Dakota. It’s not that I don’t want to see you. I do! It’s just the drive that matters to me. You’re the only thing standing in between me and my west coast. That’s a dangerous place to be.
Seattle. I’m finally coming back. We didn’t have much to say to each other last time I saw you. I was young and sad and you were unapologetic. But you’ve always been in my heart. A damp place that looks like the sound when the sun just breaks the clouds for a second on a windy day. I can’t wait to see you again.
Portland, you sneaky bastard. You just have a way of claiming people. They arrive, fully prepared to love or hate you, and then you get them lost for hours and show them your deepest corners full of people with easy, witty smiles and then you send them on their way, feeling like they can’t be anywhere else and enjoy themselves near as much.

Twenty-six hours and thirty-one minutes left.
Good bye California.

1:15 PM
My tree and rocks (at my tiny cave)
REBLOG

My tree and rocks (at my tiny cave)

" I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. "
by Stephen Jay Gould (via likeafieldmouse)

(Source: pisumsativa, via quantumspork)

8:33 AM
" This is what I don’t get - Women are impure because males have touched them. Who’s the dirty one here? "
by Comment on Jezebel article “Female ‘Purity’ Is Bullshit”   (via jececilia)

(Source: lunarynth, via thevanishing-act)

8:30 AM
fuckyeahfeminists: rhrealitycheck: Know Your IX aims to educate every college student in the U.S. about his or her rights under Title IX by the start of the next academic term. In 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools, guaranteeing students essential and extensive rights to freedom from sexual violence necessary for equal access to education. In 2011, Vice President Biden clarified the standards to which higher education institutions must adhere, including specific guidelines for addressing reports of sexual misconduct. Yet too many colleges today are failing to fulfill their legal and ethical obligations. In the past year, sexual violence survivors have shared their experiences of administrative neglect, disregard, and abuse at institutions including Amherst College, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Yale University, Occidental College, Northwestern University, and Rice University. Their experiences are not unique but representative of sexually hostile campus environments across the country. We believe it is time for change. Let’s make next semester better than this one. They just have a few days to reach their goal! Please contribute and signal boost! This is so important.
885 notes • REBLOG

fuckyeahfeminists:

rhrealitycheck:

Know Your IX aims to educate every college student in the U.S. about his or her rights under Title IX by the start of the next academic term.

In 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools, guaranteeing students essential and extensive rights to freedom from sexual violence necessary for equal access to education. In 2011, Vice President Biden clarified the standards to which higher education institutions must adhere, including specific guidelines for addressing reports of sexual misconduct.

Yet too many colleges today are failing to fulfill their legal and ethical obligations. In the past year, sexual violence survivors have shared their experiences of administrative neglect, disregard, and abuse at institutions including Amherst College, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Yale University, Occidental College, Northwestern University, and Rice University. Their experiences are not unique but representative of sexually hostile campus environments across the country.

We believe it is time for change. Let’s make next semester better than this one.

They just have a few days to reach their goal! Please contribute and signal boost! This is so important.

(via evrydayfeminism)

" Wearing a hijab isn’t inherently liberating – but neither is baring one’s breasts. What is liberating is being able to choose either of these things. It’s pretty ludicrous to think that oppression is somehow proportional to how covered or uncovered someone’s body is. Both sides of this argument present a shallow understanding of women’s empowerment, which only drowns out the substantive challenges facing all women – issues that cannot be encapsulated in a debate about a piece of fabric. "
by

Sara Yasin, Is the Hijab Worth Fighting Over?

(via rcabbasi)

(via evrydayfeminism)

8:27 AM

nextyearsgirl:

“Agree to disagree” is white guy speak for “I understand you have an opinion but unfortunately, me.”

(via evrydayfeminism)

8:26 AM
" We stand helpless before the corporate onslaught. There is no way to vote against corporate power. Citizens have no way to bring about the prosecution of Wall Street bankers and financiers for fraud, military and intelligence officials for torture and war crimes, or security and surveillance officers for human rights abuses. The Federal Reserve is reduced to printing money for banks and financiers and lending it to them at almost zero percent interest; corporate officers then lend it to us at usurious rates as high as 30 percent. I do not know what to call this system. It is certainly not capitalism. Extortion might be a better word. The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, relentlessly trashes the ecosystem for profit. The melting of 40 percent of the summer Arctic sea ice is, to corporations, a business opportunity. Companies rush to the Arctic and extract the last vestiges of oil, natural gas, minerals and fish stocks, indifferent to the death pangs of the planet. The same corporate forces that give us endless soap operas that pass for news, from the latest court proceedings surrounding O.J. Simpson to the tawdry details of the Jodi Arias murder trial, also give us atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide that surpass 400 parts per million. They entrance us with their electronic hallucinations as we waiver, as paralyzed with fear as Odysseus’ sailors, between Scylla and Charybdis. "
by Chris Hedges (via azspot)

(via liberalsarecool)

8:26 AM
" We must be very careful to avoid the use of the term “tribe” to describe these ethnic groups. “Tribe,” Ukpo points out, is largely a racist term. The Ibo and Hausa-Fulani of Nigeria are each made up of five to ten million people, a figure comparable to the number of, say, Scots, Welsh, Armenians, Serbs or Croats. Yet we do not refer to the latter groups as “tribes.” The term “tribe” is almost exclusively, and very indifferently, applied to peoples of Native American or African origin. It is a label which emerged with imperialism in its application to those who were non-European and lived in a “colonial or semi-colonial dependency…in Asia, Africa and Latin America” (14). As we are attempting to discard the prejudices of imperialism it is in our best interests to discard the use of the term “tribe” when referring to the ethnic groups of Nigeria. "
by

Ethnicity in Nigeria

Why people should not even think of using the word “tribe”.

(via cosmicyoruba)

I’ve always hated this word.

(via zorascreation)

ya the word tribe is a no

(via l-angston)

try “nation” or “people” instead

(via callingoutbigotry)

(Source: thefemaletyrant, via evrydayfeminism)

8:26 AM
1,202 notes • REBLOG

(Source: americanfeminist, via fuckyeahfeminists)

Things I want to tell people, that I wish people had told me:

wifwolf:

  • You don’t have to achieve great things by the time you’re 25
  • You have intrinsic value above and beyond your perceived utility to other people and society at large. 
  • You don’t have to have sex, or have sex in any way that you find uncomfortable or unpleasant, to keep anyone’s love or good opinion of you. They didn’t love you or think very well of you to start with if they demand it. 
  • You don’t have to stay with someone who isn’t meeting your emotional or sexual needs because they need you, or you’ve been with them for awhile, or you need to be in a relationship. You need you. Your time is your own and it is finite. 
  • It’s ok to work at a job you enjoy that doesn’t make you miserable even if it’s not a career and it won’t “lead to anything.” 
  • Your life is not a narrative. It is not leading to anything, there is no overarching thesis, it does not have themes beyond the usual shared cultural experiences of your time and place. This is ok. It does not mean that your life is without purpose or meaning. 
  • It’s ok not to like or get along with the vast majority of people you encounter, so long as you afford them the same respect, courtesy and dignity that they afford you. 
  • Expensive is not always better. 
  • Failure is temporary if you’re still alive. 
  • People are both much better and much worse than you’d suspect, but usually not all at once. 
  • Stop thinking of your future self as a different person and it will be easier to prevent money and health problems. 
  • Let people help you, lean on them when you need to, and be available to help, but don’t swing too far in either direction. Try to carry your half of the life basket as evenly as you can. 
  • Set boundaries, and do not be afraid to kick people out of your life who disregard them. You will not end up alone and unloved. People who love you will be ok with your boundaries. 
  • Your power does not come from money or beauty, but from seeing life steadily and wholly, from a curious and thoughtful mind, and from your ability to say no when you want to, and yes when you want to, and I don’t know when you don’t know. 
  • There will be bad times, maybe lots of bad times, but not only bad times. 
  • Love will not heal the wounds in your soul, but love can give you the impetus to begin the work of healing yourself. 
  • Life might be a long series of starting over, and that’s alright. 
  • You’re really cool, you’re really beautiful, you’re really special. Really. Not to everyone, but to a lot of someones sometimes.

This is lovely.

(Source: sehnsuchttraum, via joyinmudville)

8:21 AM
Women don’t have to:
  • be thin
  • give birth
  • cook for you
  • have long hair
  • wear makeup
  • have sex with you
  • be feminine
  • be graceful
  • shave
  • have a vagina
  • diet
  • be fashionable
  • wear pink
  • love men
  • be the media’s idea of perfection
  • listen to your bullshit

(via evrydayfeminism)

2:25 AM
Social Justice Problems
on tumblr:guys we need to have a serious discussion about the erasure of nonbinary trans* people
in real life:ok, I guess I have to explain to my entire class how "feminist" is not an insult
2:25 AM
29,058 notes • 2:24 AM
REBLOG

historicalheroines:

 I’ve created these flyers for a school activist project where I bring more attention to the women in history that have been forgotten or ignored. This blog will be an extension of those flyers where I post longer biographies of these women and other bad-ass women like them. Too often women’s achievements have been pushed aside, either by others in their lives, or else by the historians who choose to ignore them. This tumblr is dedicated to celebrating them and bringing their achievements to light!

(via evrydayfeminism)

important

sombersombrero:

don’t tell me “consent is sexy”

don’t you dare fetishize my inherent rights

i don’t care if it’s “sexy” or not, it is, above all, vital and necessary

there is nothing about my sexual freedom that needs to be made more appealing to you, my partners, or anyone by a catchy-ass slogan

goodbye

(Source: rashlife, via evrydayfeminism)

2:22 AM