From The Other Side of the Sidewalk

A while back I asked people who had been affected by anti-choice protesters to share their stories with me for a project I was working on. That project was put on the shelf, but I am posting this story as a standalone piece because it is unique; it comes from someone who had an experience on the other side of the sidewalk – as a protester.

This story comes from a reader who was raised Catholic, although her mother was pro-choice. She was surrounded by anti-choice propaganda in church. Once, at the age of 14, she was peer-pressured into attending a sidewalk protest at an abortion clinic by a friend and the friend’s mother.

This interview was conducted by email.

Introduction

I didn’t plan on going–I was 14, and one of my Catholic friend’s mothers decided it would be a good morning-after-a-sleepover activity. My friend AGREED, but didn’t bother to tell me until late the night of the sleepover. I was given the option to stay home, but it would have meant revealing my uncertainty about where I stood on abortion, and therefore coming out as NOT A GOOD CATHOLIC to a very Catholic friend and family.

Continue reading “From The Other Side of the Sidewalk”

From The Other Side of the Sidewalk
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Christmas Is Not Your Birthday

Today’s photo was submitted by Louise Kellar.

In a message designed to speak out against the crass commercialism of the holiday season, Smith Valley United Methodist Church in Indiana would like to remind you that Christmas is not your birthday. It would have added an extra layer of meaningfulismness if they had written “Christmas is not your birthday”, but maybe they couldn’t find italicized sign letters. That’s cool. No judgment. We work with what we have, as I and Sigourney Weaver always say.

But if they had italicized “your”, they’d be implying that Christmas is Jesus’s birthday, which would, of course, be taking HUGE historical license because everyone knows that if Jesus existed he was not born on December 25th, which is – I’m going to assume – the date that Smith Valley United Methodist Church assigns to Christmas.

I do have two mortal, non-supernatural entity friends who were born on December 25th and who both bitch about having their birthdays on Christmas, so I hope they never see this sign because I’d hate for them to get confused.

Christmas Is Not Your Birthday

Cross-Country Connections: Lunch

Cross-Country Connections is a Biodork weekly blog entry dedicated to telling stories in pictures of three family members – me, my sister and Mom – living in very different locations across the country. Every week we choose a different theme and then take or contribute a personal photo that fits the theme. This week’s theme is Lunch.

From Erin in Takoma Park, Maryland:

Nom nom nom. Lunchtime treat for Ivan.

From Mom in Carbondale, Illinois:

Lunch at Burano which was about 40 minutes by water taxi from Venice.  Great food – very strange company.

From me in Minneapolis, Minnesota:

Sunday’s sushi lunch. Yummmmm.

Cross-Country Connections: Lunch

JT and JTs Videogameathonapalooza!

The first game system I played was the Atari 2600. I have memories of playing E.T., Berzerk, Pitfall, Asteroid, Space-Invaders, Frogger and DigDug.  I still remember the pain of Atari Thumb.

Breakout was my favorite game for a long time.

Remember this bad boy? And unlike some of the other games, this one used the paddle rather than the joystick controller.

After Atari my parents picked us up a Nintendo (NES), and then we upgraded to Super Nintendo when I was in Junior High. I was a HUGE Mario fan. We conquered Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 and 3. I even got the cheat guide for Super Mario 3 so I could find all of the hidden flutes, learn the trick behind scoring five 1-ups at the end of every three levels, and memorize the grids of the memory cards bonus levels.

My other favorite game was Trog! Frickin’ green Trogs were the worst. This was the heyday of my video gaming; we played Duck Hunt, California Games, TMNT, Contra Force, Legend of Zelda, MegaMan, Kid Icarus, Paperboy, Donkey Kong, Tennis and Q*bert. My mom kicked all of our asses in Dr. Mario and Tetris, and my dad and I liked to play one of the casino games, Bases Loaded and Black Bass. The Nintendo was downstairs in our unfinished basement, so often times we would drag over the space heater and play Nintendo while we did laundry.

I completely missed Sega and didn’t pick up a console again until Thanksgiving 2011 when I bought a WII. I rock the new Mario Kart, the Hubby and I like to hunt each other down in Goldeneye 007, and I’m smitten with this one diving game called Endless Ocean. But one of the first things I did when I plugged in the system was download the old SNES Super Mario Bros and Dr. Mario.

Ah memories.

And do you know what starts in, like, NOW? Jason Thibeault and JT Eberhard’s 24 hour Gamers For Godlessness Gameathonapalooza! They’re going to be playing all sorts of retro videogames. For CHARITY.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

GO HERE TO START WATCHING THE LIVESTREAM

What’s a gameathonapalooza? I’ll let JT explain:

Jason Thibeault from the Lousy Canuck blog and I are going to be playing retro games for 24 straight freaking hours on Saturday!  We’ll be live-streaming our lovely faces along with our games.  We’ll be talking about all kinds of interesting stuff from atheism to politics to gaming history, and we’ll be taking call-ins, email questions, etc.  We’re doing this to raise money for Camp Quest and theWomen in Secularism conference.

 They’ve got all sorts of crazy challenges, stunts and guests – including me at 10pm EST – set up for today and tomorrow.12PM EST today through 12pm EST tomorrow (Sunday). Check out this post by JT for some last minute updates. It’s also the thread for comments, questions and challenges at Chez WWJTD. Click that link/visit that blog post at lot, because JT’s donating all of the money from hits to that post to the cause.

The hashtag for the event is #GDLS

See you over there!

JT and JTs Videogameathonapalooza!