An Atheist at Prayer

Karin L. Burke

I am not mature enough to be a Christian. I don’t have the moral flexibility necessary to embrace a thing so dangerous. Nor do I have the capacity to align myself to some other creed; there is attraction to other myths, and other stories, but ultimately similar difficulties come up. All this difficulty between language and practice, love and violence, power and corruption. No matter how attracted I am, I remain with a sense of being inauthentic, a kind of cultural predator. Someone suggested – since it does seem to be a monastic, embodied and mindful life I’m trying to find – that I become a Buddhist. “Acknowledge the fact that you are” a Buddhist said. But I am too aware of culture to think I could do such a thing without coming dangerously close to racism.

The Wrong Lessons to Teach Your Child 101

Some Michiganders and Ohioans are on the front lines of living lessons we shouldn’t be teaching our children, namely that physical violence is the proper response to not getting your own way.

Within the last month, a mother-daughter team attacked a discount department store greeter in Ohio, and a mother-father team attacked a school crossing guard in Michigan. Both attacks occurred with children of the attackers present, and both attacks occurred in public places with witnesses present.

Victim-Blaming Part 2: The Reasons We Do It

In Victim-Blaming Part 1: Texas Gang Rape of a Child, we discussed the facts around the case of a gang-raped 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, TX.  We touched upon the victim-blaming of the 11-year-old victim that is occurring in the press and among the local populace, and we reminded readers of the case of Samantha Kelly, who died by suicide Nov. 8, 2010 after being terrorized by her town and schoolmates.  The Kelly case is pertinent to this discussion of victim-blame because that assault, victim-blame, and suicide occurred between the Cleveland girl's first and final assaults.

Victim-Blaming Part 1: Texas Gang-Rape of a Child

In Cleveland, Texas, 19 suspects have been charged in the sexual assault of an 11-year-old child. While heartbreaking, this is not earth-shattering news. All too often, we hear of things like this and shake our heads, and maybe some of us say a prayer for the victim.

The details of this particular case are particularly noteworthy.

This child was assaulted repeatedly over the course of six weeks in late 2010 by different individuals/groups at different times in different locations. The perpetrators ranged in age from 14 to 27. Cell-phone-recorded video and photographs were widely disseminated to non-participants.

Broadband Research = Free Wireless Router!

Techies wanting to play a part in research that will provide US consumers with accurate broadband statistics (and maybe receive a free wireless router in the process!) should consider joining the Test My ISP project.

The Federal Communications Commision (FCC) and SamKnows are joining forces to test, measure, and provide reliable US home broadband connection statistics by placing 10,000 routers in homes across the country. They're actually distributing 10,000 free Netgear WNR3500L wireless-N routers pre-loaded with testing firmware to participants.

Alcoholic Insanity (Different than you probably think)

Karin L. Burke

Karin L. Burke is a woman at large, full-time unemployed, writing a book, and sleeping on other people’s couches.  She started writing a blog that deals with domestic violence, alcoholism and recovery, and yoga as healing when a friend said she needed to publish her letters. 

"You have to give this away," the friend said, "This is what you needed to hear when you were getting sober.  This is what you needed when you were trying to leave that abusive *****.  This is what I've needed, at so many points in my life.  You have to give this away.  It isn't yours to keep."   

(More of Karen's bio at the end of post, after the jump.)

We are flattered that she has chosed to share some of her experience with the special insanity of alchoholism with us.

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"The only thing there is to say," said another recovering drunk, "Is that alcoholic insanity is the mistaken belief that ‘this time it will be different’; it doesn’t have anything to do with ‘insanity’ in the way most people would use the word. It’s just that one simple thing: we keep drinking, thinking this time we’ll stay in control."

The word ‘insanity’ as used by Bill Wilson was supposed to mimic Einstein’s definition, or doing the same thing expecting different results.

If You Would Only Like Me

I don't read much mainstream fiction, but on the advice of a close friend, I'm currently reading Boy's Life by Robert McCammon.  Here's a single paragraph from it . . .

I had been in the presence of Chile Willow only a short time, but what is time when a heart speaks?  My heart was speaking to Chile Willow in that moment, as she bathed my cuts and gave me a smile. My heart was saying If you were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass jar, so you could always see your way.  I would give you a meadow full of wildflowers, where no two blossoms would ever be alike. I would give you my bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you, and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle.  If you would only like me, I would give you magic.  If you would only like me.

The innocence of youth combined with the first stirrings of love . . . This paragraph takes my breath away!

~Riot.Jane 

Unveiling The Jane Project 2.6

Hello, Constant Reader!

We're proud to unveil the latest generation of The Jane Project.  After the last six months of hacking up our template to obtain desired functionality, the post-truncation (i.e. the "Continue >>" links) function was inoperable and our many-layered tinkerings had simply killed the blog's load-time. The logo was ugly, and the template was difficult to read for any length of time. 

Since Blogger finally  released its own widgets that provide the functionality intended by our hacks, we gleefully ditched those hacks in favor of Blogger's tools.  Now we have a modern, easily-read template that we only had to customize with Blogger's integrated tools.  All the functionality works without hack-ups, and the blog loads so much faster !

Do tell us what you think and what you'd like to see! 

~Admin.Jane

“Love is an Attacker in the Dark”

One of my work spouses (in this sense I am polygamous) recently made this statement to me openly, in front of other co-workers. He simply walked up to us and said that, without apparent provocation “love is like an attacker in the dark”.

“Tell me more,” I said.

He went on to tell me that, when you’re walking down a dark alley, trying to get from here to there, just going along your merry way . . . BAM! Around the corner it swoops . . . An attacker in the dark . . . A blur of motion and limbs and shock that overtakes you before you can blink, before you can register the occurrence . . . Knocking you down and taking control of you.

“Are you seriously equating romantic love with a high-speed mugging?” I asked.

Response Posted for 15-Year-Old "Anonymous"

To the 15-year-old female who asked a question in the comments section of How to Wash Your Vulva - For Real! on 3/21/2011 . . .

Please note that we've addressed your question in a follow-up comment on that post-page.  Your question was very important, and we are not only flattered that you asked us, but also rather concerned that you might not have anyone else of whom you can ask these things.  We are humbled to answer your question to the best of our ability, and we are also overwhelmed with gratitude  to have the opportunity to address it to a greater depth than you might have otherwise had access.