I got nuthin’. Except, maybe, my observation that getting up at 5 to do yoga or run at 6 a.m. is a great boon to my physical fitness, if only I can stay awake from 8:15 to 9 a.m. during my drive to work.
Posting will resume once my grades have been submitted and my overdue conference paper completed.
Historiann 
I’m here supporting you in spirit. But also in my sleep, because ‘nothin is making me get up at 5 a.m.
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Hey, nuthin’ here is better than a lot of sumpthin’ in a lot of other places! Enjoy a little sabbatical from posting, I’d say. There are plenty of threads down below that could be revived with a pertinent comment.
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Here are them “is our collegiates learning?” scholars, repackaging their findings in a handy Op-Ed, just in time for discussions during graduation dinners:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15arum.html
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Wishing you a speedy finish to the grading and paper writing, plus lots and lots of sleep when you’re actually in a position to sleep safely (not behind the wheel, eek!).
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Okay, I’ll offer something: I’ve just discovered the British version of Life on Mars, which has as one interesting sub-story the way women were treated in Britain in the 1970’s.
We writers need our yoga. Keep it up!
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This reminds me of the times I slept through our scheduled 7 a.m. runs. And now you throw in yoga! Getting stronger with the years.
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I wish I could get out of bed at 5 or 6….
I’m sort of shocked by finishing my grading.
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But we need you: The Gropinator; the Rich Dood rapist who thought it was his right to force an African-immigrant service worker into sex acts… fortunately the victim is, CNN tells me, a widowed mom “with a good employment record,” cause you know, if she’d been a shoddy worker or out-of-wedlock mother, she’d totally deserve it.
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It’s really hard keeping up with all of the Rape News of the Week, isn’t it? On top of the estimated 400,000 rapes a year in Congo, it’s really overwhelming.
I guess my only thoughts are 1) tell me about how much things have changed when the men of the world still see working class African women as objects to be raped and discarded, 2) good on Sofitel for immediately reporting the rape to the NYCPD, although I wonder what would have happened had the accused perp been a more recognizable celebrity to most U.S. Americans, and 3) Maria Shriver is yet another lesson in why it’s never a great idea to quit your day job to support a spouse’s political or professional ambitions. She had to quit her news job and by most reports was an exemplary first lady, and this is her “reward!” I think she knew what her husband was all about, and she still picked him, but she didn’t have to be such a complete sucker.
And, although the Shriver side of the extended Kennedy clan seem like they’re the nicest and cleanest of the lot, in that so far none of the male Shrivers have killed their wives (JFK Jr.), killed a girlfriend (Edward Kennedy), killed a classmate (Michael Skakel), raped someone (William Kennedy Smith, and others), or engaged in public, serial adultery (pretty much every man in that family) that we know of, the women in that family are all treated like $hit by their husbands, brothers, cousins, etc. Because of the resources at their command, I have to wonder: why do the women of that family consent to this now unto the third and fourth generations?
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Our newspaper today noted that in Shriver’s eulogy for her father — he died soon after she learned of Arnold’s escapade — she praised him for teaching her brothers to treat women well.
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Wow. I hope her sons were listening.
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I read that book about Rape during the early American period, and really, nothing about blaming the victim has changed. It all depends on the woman’s status, and the man’s, and the societal pressure for a woman to always protest, and a man to always start with an assault.
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I should clarify: A woman is blamed if she wants sex and does not protest, for chastity’s sake, and is blamed if she doesn’t want sex and yet does not give in to the “right” man. Of course, if she gives into the wrong man, to save her life, she still loses her honor, so she might as well die anyway.
There’s no way for women to win, in this system, and the brief window where crimes against women were taken seriously because *women* were taken seriously? Dying along with feminism.
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I think you’re talking about Sharon Block’s Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (2006), is that correct?
It’s a book that truly blurs the distance from the present to the past. I’ve had several rape survivors as students who had problems getting through the book because the eighteenth century as Block describes it is so sadly familiar to them.
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Yes, that’s the one — the people and laws and social pressures have not changed one whit. To wit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19schwarzenegger.html
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