Important Numbers
Topic: Editorializing

Okay.  It irks me that the cover of the Guttmacher Institute's recent report on the impact of publicly funded family planning services depicts an apparently single, middle-class/white-collar woman while the bulk of the statistics talk about the dire state of reproductive health services for poor women and families in the US.  This irritation is slightly mitigated by the fact that the woman on the cover is very young, and young people are highly likely to be uninsured or underinsured in their early jobs and need access to publicly funded health services.  But it bugs me that the report cover doesn't depict the wide range of people who access publicly funded family planning services.

Regardless of any irritation, however, there are some numbers here that need serious consideration:

• 60% of family planning center clients consider the center their primary source of medical care due to the package of services offered
• 1 in 6 women who obtain a Pap smear do so at a family planning center
• One third of women who receive HIV or other STI testing and counseling obtain it through a family planning center
  
• Number of women needing publicly-supported contraceptive services: 17.5 million
• Number of unintended pregnancies in the US each year: nearly 3 million
• Number of unintended pregnancies prevented by publicly-funded family planning services: nearly 2 million
• Savings to Medicaid of preventing unintended pregnancies: $4 for every $1 invested in publicly funded family planning services

With the president emphasizing healthcare reform, and the economy struggling, it seems to me that investing in family planning centers and making sure that they're safe spaces for women to access (maybe there's nothing to be done about protesters outside Planned Parenthood, but why should women going for a pelvic exam have to brave that gauntlet?) should be priorities for the government.  For an overview of the report findings and recommendations, see this press release. 

Resolutions

I'm not good at resolutions, either at keeping promises that I make to myself, or in wrapping things up neatly when they end and putting them aside or sending them on their way.  So I find myself in a strange place with this blog. On the one hand I've resolved to write more, in some capacity, and this is a helpful tool for writing, and I need all the help I can get.  On the other, I'm not certain that it isn't time to bring this blog to some sort of resolution, rather than having it sitting here, just sort of rotting away, waiting for a day when I'm bored enough or distracted enough to feel prompted to post.  

Like today, when I'm laid up in bed, groggy with congestion, looking at my new old bike, which I bought yesterday and want to play with, to see if I can adjust the seat and handlebars a bit --  but just can't summon up the energy to either do that, or move it downstairs to the bike room.  Neither can I quite summon up the energy to follow up my last post with a much belated chronicle of inauguration antics, which were indeed antic, involving threading the mass of my friends through the masses of people flooding the mall, dancing in the streets with polar bears, scoring parade tickets in the grandstands on Pennsylvania Avenue, and being absolutely certain that I was going to lose my toes to frostbite. So, in short, not much progress looks to be made on either resolution today. 

Let the fun begin
Topic: Events

If by "fun" one means "hours of standing in massive crowds in the bitter cold."  Fun! 

Official inauguration celebrations start today - at least for me.  There's a concert on the Mall, there are massive Sunday night parties because most folks are off tomorrow - there are an unusual number of options to pick from for a Sunday.  I assume last night was probably similar, but I elected to stay in and chill with a friend after having had a fairly intense Friday night packed in a club that was too small for the crowd - the kind of party where you're on the dance floor feeling it give beneath your feet and contemplating between the beats the likelihood that tonight is the night the building just gives way.  So low-key was very much the order of the day yesterday.

I'm laying out my layers and trying to plan what I'm going to bring, and hoping that I'm not going to freeze. There are some things that I handle with grace, but cold is not one of them. 

Just what I needed
Topic: Odds and ends

One more reason to love Brazil:  Shoe Throws of Vengeance!

The site is in Portuguese, but I don't think you should have any trouble figuring it out.  Extraordinarily satisfying in my current mood.

 

My kindom for a digital camera...
Topic: Catching up

It's a ridiculous complaint, I know, but I miss having a digital camera.  I have about 6 photos left on the disposable one I paid way too much money for in Stockholm, and no idea when I'm going to use them up.  So I am unable to find out whether or not any of my pictures from Stockholm and London are decent, let alone share them.  That, and the fact that it was colder in DC today than it was in either Stockholm or London, has made me just a little bit cranky.

I am the farthest north I have ever been
Topic: Catching up

Never having pulled a 24-hourish stint of travel with hair this short (chin length) before, I did not anticipate that it would look quite so bad getting off the first plane, let alone the bus between airports and the next plane. I’m writing this sitting on yet another bus, waiting to depart Skavsta airport for Stockholm, and at long last, a hotel where I can wash my hair – and the rest of me – free of the sticky film of travel.

It’s been nearly two years since I last used my passport, which – well, I would say that’s peculiar, but I didn’t leave Australia for two years, so that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. It is a bit strange to have spent such a long stretch of unbroken time in the States, though. Now I get a week out, in two European cities I’ve never been to before, and while I’m pleased, I do find myself wishing they weren’t northern European cities in November. I can only hope I’ve packed warmly enough.

The trip out to Stockholm has been a bit grueling – while it’s a professional trip, it’s on a pretty limited budget, so instead of flying reasonably directly from DC to Stockholm, I ended up leaving DC for London last night, arriving at Heathrow this morning, transferring to Stanstead airport, well outside the city, this afternoon, to fly Ryanair to “Stockholm” – and now I’ve got another hour+ bus ride ahead of me. Not to mention a conference that starts at 8:30 tomorrow that I have to figure out how to get to. And all I want to do is shower and sleep. Sleep, like I did briefly just now, and came to myself to find six rows of “mmmmmmmmmmmm” marching across my screen.

The bus ride from Heathrow to Stansted might have been a good way to see a bit of the English landscape, but I’ll never know, because I have vague recollections of pulling out of the station, and then I was out like a light, with only a couple brief “huh . . . wha . . . should wake u. . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” moments before we got to the airport. I almost never sleep well on planes, but the hum and sway of a vehicle on the road rock me off to sleep almost against my will. I’m struggling now, but I really don’t want to doze off because I’m afraid I’ll wreck my chances of getting to sleep tonight. And I dearly want to sleep, and hopefully lessen the jet lag.

I can't believe how easily the trip out has gone. Both flights actually came in a bit early, there was next to no wait at immigration, practically no customs, and impressively little delay in securing my checked luggage.  I am not accustomed to this state of affairs. Tiny little Skavsta airport though, with it’s formerly blond finishes greyed and dimmed by time and hardly shown off to their advantage under greasy florescent lights, that felt vaguely familiar from my days schlepping around Eastern Europe.

I am losing the battle to the rocking of the bus. I keep yanking myself awake, trying to focus on the screen, to force my brain to string thoughts together while the landscape rolls by in anonymous darkness, and I wonder whether Sweden would look familiar under sunlight or not. I may never know – my return flight to London is a late one, and I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be dark when I reverse this trip on Friday.

I'm not voting for Obama

I can't vote for anybody, I haven't gotten my absentee ballot yet.  Grrrr.  Hopefully it arrives Monday.

Chello has a really lovely reflection on who he's voting for Tuesday over at Diary of a Black Male Feminist.  I'm not exactly Obama's biggest cheerleader, but he has certainly inspired an outpouring of creativity in prose, music, and art the likes of which I've never seen in a political campaign before.

When the system breaks
With elections looming, I certainly hope that voter intimidation and deception, problems with voter registration, issues of polling place accessibility and voting machine error do not arise in your district.  If they do, Election Protection 365 has a toll-free hotline you can call to report any voting problems you witness or experience: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683).

When life hits like a ton of bricks
Topic: Quotidiana

I moved in the nick of time.  The story of the move itself is something of a saga - things did not go as planned.  But I got here, no one was injured, and no irreparable property damage was done.  But, as I said, I moved in the nick of time, because work went insane as soon as I hit DC.  I haven't even had time to finish unpacking and the walls of my room are distressingly bare.

Then last week I found out that a friend of mine has cancer.  I feel like I've barely stopped to think about it, really, because my days have become a blur of e-mails and checking on the next deadline and trying to find out what's going on with her so I can tell all our friends. Nights have been taken up with meeting my friends here so I don't have to think about what I was doing all day.

I'm learning all kinds of things, some of which may find their way here, because I can't stand not to share information.  Like support groups for young people with cancer, and children's books about dealing with cancer in the family, and ... well, I have to feel like I'm doing something.  Even if it's something that might possibly help someone who ends up here randomly via Google and never comes back again.

Mercifully, it's not all stress and gloom.  Moments like these are what friends square off for, and so many people are stepping up.  Its wonderful to see all the concern for my friend from our college crowd - I'm getting back in touch with people I haven't heard from in years as the news works its way down the lines.  It does me good to know that there's so much support for her.  And my friends here, some of whom barely know me, are looking out for me, too.  I wish there was an easier way than major life crises to be reminded how many generous people I've been fortunate enough to have in my life.

Laugh or you might cry
Topic: Editorializing

I have to say this for Sarah Palin - her nomination has done a world of good for at least one woman.  Tina Fey's Palin impression should end up in SNL history alongside Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford and Dana Carvey's George H.W. Bush.  And I'm pleased that in their send-up of the Vice-Presidential debate the writers went after both VP candidates for the absurdity of their statements about same-sex marriage during Thursday's debate (at about 8 minutes in to the video, which I'm sending you to Diary of an Anxious Black Woman to watch because that's where I saw it, and I can't figure out how to embed the video, and she's an awesome writer who should have more traffic, even if it's only the three people who still read here, what with my repeated month-long hiatuses.  Hiati?  Whatever.  I'm trying to get back to writing, really I am, but work is a bit nuts right now).  Not that the double-speak on same-sex marriage wasn't an easy target to hit, but I'm glad they took a shot at it.  It truly was surreal to hear Biden talking about how there should be no difference in the rights of straight and gay couples and then say 5 seconds later that he opposes same-sex marriage.  This is what makes me nuts about elections - moral courage and consistency apparently render candidates unelectable.