0 Warm Day Randutiae

• In the category of It's All Relative, it's 41°F (5°C) and raining today, I was just outside, I was wearing a light long-sleeve shirt and jeans but no coat, no hat, no scarf, no longjohns, and it was GLORIOUS. It's not supposed to snow again until tomorrow. :D?

• It turns out I was wrong about two things about the event last night. First of all, it was totally snowing. Secondly, it was also snowing in New York, which meant that poor Marie spent an hour or so sitting on her plane on the runway before they finally canceled her flight. Marie was not able to make it to last night's event. Waaah! I did my best to read from The Winner's Crime and talk up her beautiful series. Happy book birthday, Marie. Here in Cambridge, we miss you. Thank you, everyone, for coming out on a snowy night!

• Via Rebecca Rabinowitz, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/CFIDS/ME has a new name: SEID, systemic exertion intolerance disease. It's also the focus of some new attention. This is wonderful news for an illness that's been badly and harmfully misnamed for some time, and has not received the research it should. Rebecca has SEID. Her brief post explains why the renaming is a good thing and provides some interesting links. Check it out, and start using the new name!

• Over at The Guardian, Jessica Valenti has written a short piece urging that we start teaching students about sexual assault, and about CONSENT, in high school. We should all be talking about this more.

• Behind this link is a twenty-five-second song that is not safe for work but contains a delightful and useful sentiment. You may find yourself needing to sing it the next time someone or something simply is not worth your precious time.... Thanks @amaditalks and B.

• One of the news apps I use, Flipboard, offers a Parting GIF every day. I consider it my reward for sitting through being depressed by the news. I like today's Parting GIF. I also like that the phrase "parting GIF" supports my preferred pronunciation of GIF, with a hard G. Sorry, Steve Wilhite, but sometimes you don't get to name your own babies.

• Is G your favorite letter?

Detail: Warm Day Randutiae

0 Rainy Randutiae for a Sunday

• As I'd hoped, a number of friends emailed me with suggestions of superhero role models for girls. So many, in fact, that I'm going to have to set aside some time to organize it all before I post it – but it will be forthcoming. Unfortunately, most of the suggestions were for teen readers and older, which leaves the youngest girls waiting, but it was encouraging. Many, many thanks to those of you who reached out :o)

• I'm listening to Peter Gabriel's more recent album Up – one of his darker albums. I love these lyrics, from "Darkness," which is a song that reminds me of early Peter Gabriel (the self-titled albums), mainly in the way he balances silence and sweetness with crashing noise – this sentence has gotten ridiculous, but here are the lyrics I love: "I have my fears / but they do not have me."

• I've gotten a few of my friends to start using Siri to dictate on their iPhones. (If you have an iPhone and there is a little microphone symbol on your keyboard, you can do this, too.) This means that now I get to enjoy other people's dictation frustrations. Recently, from codename: Cordelia: "So it looks like my phone can do FaceTime? Not sure though – I pressed FaceTime on your contact and it started raining. I have no idea what that means though. Actually, it did not start raining, though that would have been quite an omen." And from a friend who was giving me some personal advice: "Of course none of this is a moral issue or anything – I'm just thinking in terms of what would be most thanks traducing. Actually, thanks inducing is what I meant. Angst inducing!! My god, I'm beginning to think Siri doesn't have an exit stencil bone in her body. OMG! She can't even say exit stencil!"

• Rebecca Rabinowitz has a great article up at xoJane called "I have CFIDS, and I'm Probably Sicker Than You Think." I'm of the opinion that everyone should read it.

• While I'm at xoJane, I like Lesley Kinzel's article, "Dirty Dancing Is a Subversive Masterpiece and Here are Four Reasons Why." Probably the most touching moment for me in this movie, which I can recite practically from heart, is when Baby confronts her father after All the Stuff has happened. She tells him that she's sorry she lied to him – but he lied to her, too. "You told me everyone was alike and deserved a fair break," she says. "But you meant everyone who was like you. You told me you wanted me to change the world, to make it better. But you meant by becoming a lawyer or an economist and marrying someone from Harvard.... I'm sorry I let you down. I'm so sorry, Daddy. But you let me down too." They're both crying, and you can tell that he (played by the magnificent Jerry Orbach) is listening, and hearing what she's saying. Perhaps because I also have a father who listens and hears, I have always loved the father/daughter relationship in this movie. *sniff* Oh, and just so you don't get the wrong idea about my father, if he had ever suggested to young me that being rich or having social status mattered, I would've bundled him into the car and taken him to the hospital, convinced he'd developed a brain tumor.

Detail: Rainy Randutiae for a Sunday

0 Can you help with an issue of disability discrimination in Massachusetts?

Over at Rebecca Rabinowitz's blog, a woman who needs MA state licensure for the job for which she's qualified is having a terrible time getting that licensure, because the state is failing to provide her with the assistive technology she needs to take the licensure exam. According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Jeanette Beal is entitled to a fair chance at taking this exam, but she's not getting that fair chance. Beal has a master's in special education and specializes in assistive technology for disabled people. Any chance you can help? Please go read Jeanette's letter, repost (in full, please), link to my or Rebecca's post, offer to help if you can. Thanks.

ETA on Tuesday, April 9: Here's an update with a list of specific things people can do to help.

ETA on Friday, April 26: Jeanette Beal is now blogging updates to her situation at her own blog. Please follow and comment there. Thank you! 

Detail: Can you help with an issue of disability discrimination in Massachusetts?