LINK: For Vote

By on October 9, 2012  Politics
Oct 092012
 

True story.

The deadline for voter registration in New York State is this Friday, October 12. We want to make sure you vote this year. Step 1 is making sure you’re registered, and we’re going to keep hammering away at that theme this week. Because we want all of you to vote. See our article from yesterday for registration information.

A few days after we first started plugging this message, Rita Meade – a member of Community Board 10 and the Salem Press winner for Quirky Library Blog for her work on Screwy Decimal – wrote an extensive piece on what the right to vote meant to her. We’ve excerpted it article below, and really encourage you to read the entire post on Screwy Decimal.

…So simple, yet so freaking beautiful: he wanted a voter registration form. Now, I don’t consider myself a blindly patriotic person. I know there are major flaws in our current political system. However, I’m involved in local politics in various ways and I know that there ARE good people working hard out there to better our communities. And I’ve always considered voting to be important, so this kind of thing, a man who cares enough about his new country to want to have a say in what goes on, gets me all choked-up-feeling. I just want to run to the top of the Statue of Liberty wearing a dress made of flags and shoot flags out of a flag cannon while singing “God Bless America.”

And honestly, the same thing happens when I step into a voting booth (the choked-up feeling, not the flag cannon stuff).

It’s the feeling of being a part of something bigger than yourself. It’s letting your voice be heard, in whatever small way it can be heard when you feed your ballot through the new weird scantron ballot machine. It’s knowing that my great-grandma wasn’t allowed to vote when she was a young woman because she was a woman, but my grandma could and my mother could – and did. When we were kids, my mom would take my sister and me into the voting machine with her and let us watch as she clicked the little knobs down. Then my sister and I would fight over who got to slide the curtain open and we’d all go get ice cream. OH SAY CAN YOU SEE…

Please keep reading at Screwy Decimal…

Seven things I thought after finally watching part of a Brooklyn 11223 episode

By on April 25, 2012  Arts & Entertainment, Featured story
Apr 252012
 

Joey Lynn Tekulve, apparent antagonist in Oxygen's Brooklyn 11223. Photo: EJ Camp/Oxygen Media

1) I watched 20 minutes of an hour-long episode. I was just as uninterested as I thought I would be. I was far more captivated by the Chicago Blackhawks getting soundly beat in their playoff elimination game.

2) As you’re probably aware, Brooklyn 11223 revolves around two feuding women and their competing groups of friends. I think, as part of my emotional investment in the series, I was supposed to pick sides. And so I have: Joey Lynn stuck me as the ever-so-slightly less self-absorbed and manipulative wreck than Christine.

3) Of course, the whole concept is contrived and manufactured. It’s widely accepted that Joey Lynn and Christine are playing caricatures of themselves. Not like Jon And Kate Plus Eight – we weren’t supposed to take sides, but we did anyway when it turned out that both Jon and Kate were genuinely unlikable people.

4) As a non-viewer of reality TV, the only reason I watched any of this show was because of the Bay Ridge/Gravesend connection. And since most of the 20 minutes I watched took place at a bar in Manhattan, I can’t even comment on that. Continue reading »