Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

The Susan G. Komen Foundation has stopped funding Planned Parenthood because it’s under a Senate investigation. The investigation is spurious, another attempt to kneecap women’s reproductive rights, and all evidence points to a political motivation on the part of the foundation. I’m not happy with all the complaints about “Christians trying to keep women from having abortions.” For one thing, I’m a Christian and I’m all for reproductive rights. For another, PP does a lot more than abortions (only 3% of their funding goes to that), although for women in need that service can be crucial. It’s also too reductive to say, “Conservatives are trying to take away women’s right to their own bodies.” True conservatives want government out of people’s lives, not interfering with their choices. This comes down to one group of people trying to make it difficult for another group, mostly poor women, to not only make their own choices but to get free birth control and breast care. Poor women should not be put at risk because some political fathead has decided there’s a moral high ground he’d like to occupy to get votes.

But there is an upside to this: this decision has permanently damaged the foundation, and donations are pouring into Planned Parenthood. I think Planned Parenthood is always a good place to send your money, but right now, donating is voting, it’s a very public and tangible way to say, “I do not agree with what’s happening and I want to make sure the work Planned Parenthood does continues.” You don’t have to give a lot; Planned Parenthood is reporting not only the monetary amounts but the number of donors, so any gift is a vote. If you can’t afford to give (and believe me, I sympathize) sign a letter of support so your voice will still be heard.

I usually try to keep Argh from being political, although it’s no secret I’m an independent liberal. But I think this goes beyond politics. It’s time we took our country back from that 1% who seem to be running it and go back to taking care of those less fortunate who can’t buy political favor. Five or ten bucks to Planned Parenthood is one fine way of saying, “This stops here. This is not who we are.”

Argh will return to its usual frivolity tomorrow. Tonight, I feel the need to fight the good fight.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips just cleaned out her office and sent me a picture of it to show that she is once again superior to me in every way. I love her, but I fail to understand why she thinks a clean office is a good thing. She’s never going to find a rough draft on there that she suddenly knows how to fix because she lost it at exactly the right time. She’s never going to have everything she wants right under her fingertips (and elbows and keyboards) because she’s put it all away. She’s never going to have the delight of finding a half-eaten Snickers bar just when she needs it most. Really, is there any point in working in a place like this?

I think not.

Cross-Post Note: One of the many benefits of ReFab is that I don’t do personal whines here on Argh any more. OTOH, you are my people, and as Lani said when I waited to give her some information about what was happening in my life, “YOU TELL PEOPLE THESE THINGS.” So there’s a whine over on ReFab, which is also where I’ll continue to talk about stuff like health and houses and shampoo so as to keep Argh safe for posts about couches and obscene inns and–what was that other thing? Right–books. You can go anywhere you want in the comments, but I’m restricting my post whining to ReFab. Feel free to ignore the Very Bad Weekend post. It’s not very interesting.

Coming tomorrow on Argh: Susan Elizabeth Phillips gloats about her clean office once again. Other people send me pictures of their grandchildren, but not Susan . . .

I was looking for something in the Argh archives and found this from 2009. It’s amazing how much this is EXACTLY WHERE I AM NOW. I never learn. Although I’m grateful because it reminded me of the notecards in Scrivener which is where I’m going now. So here’s a draft from three years ago that I never published. No idea why. I’m not deep. But you can pretty much substitute Lavender’s Blue for Maybe This Time and get exactly the post I’d have written if I’d written it today.

So I have about fifty thousand words on Always Kiss Me Goodnight and probably twice that much in notes and diagrams and research, and I’m looking at massive amounts of information and false starts and raw dialogue, plus two collages and a stack of books on ghosts, and I start to panic because I am definitely [expletive deleted] because this book has to get done. read more >>

I realize I’m probably the last person here to find this, but in case there are more of you like me, have you seen Instapaper? It’s genius. You do have to sign up but no salesmen will call. Once you’ve logged in, you can drag a bookmark called “Read Later” to your browser bar. Then when you’re running around on the net and you find something you’d like to spend more time with but don’t really have the time right then, you click that button and it saves the page to a list on Instapaper. Such a simple thing, but boy howdy has it cleaned up my bookmarks.

And if you’re looking for a good place to find a variety of long non-fiction, try Longform. And then bookmark what you’ve found with Instapaper’s “Read Later” button.

Because you really needed more stuff to read.