Ms. Magazine Blog

Cyborg Mommy makes the blogroll at Ms. Magazine!

From the Village Voice – Cyborg Liberation Front

(via Brushstroke TV)

From the BBC News – Artist seeks internet-enabled third ear

(via PLSJ)

Beach Glass

Authentic Oslo Fjord beach glass, tumbled smooth using a combination of water, sand, rocks, and time. Processed by the artist into a variety ornaments.

Natural History

Gull skulls, fish bones, and wasp nests.

mamamusings: what's wrong with courseware

I'm in the middle of building some course websites (you thought I was on vacation...) and this discussion really hits the nail you know where...

Tide Pool

More on Domain Errors

�Real life isn't above reproach. In one of the stranger design decisions in the game, for some reason you have no choice in determining your character's initial starting location, appearance, or gender, which are chosen for you seemingly at random.� From the game review at Game Spot via PLSJ.

Why? Because I am snowed under (in no particular order) laundry, reading, research, site construction, beta testing, beaching, cooking, child care, and everything else. The Blues left quickly – turns out that it was all mostly premenstrual and I despise my husband for suggesting that to be the cause and then turning out to be right. Damn him.

The Hub found a blueberry picker in the basement and we now have enough blueberries for pancakes, ice cream, jam, cobbler, dumplings, yogurt, cereal, pie... and now the raspberries are beginning to ripen... mmmmm.

“c. 1860 boxed Lawrence’s / Improved / Nipple Shield/ N0. 2 / New York.  The shield and two attachment nursing nipples are made of natural rubber which has now indurated.” from Alex Peck Medical Antiques

More Medical Antiques
See section called “Instruments for the Postpartum Period” –
silver and lead nipple shields

Starfish

I need to get some snorkeling gear...

Last Summer we made friends with a family that lives down the hill. Their hut is on a cliff right above the fjord, which makes the view from the house appear as if the hut itself is on floating right on the water. (Envy.) Kristin and Karl-Jacob have two daughters, one of which is a year younger than our kid. It's a good fit. They live in Oslo, don't mind speaking in English, and are VERY interesting people. Karl-Jacob’s vacation began Friday, so they have moved down here for the next few weeks.

Yesterday they took us out on their boat. What a great day. Here are some pics:

The Coastline — It takes about 5 minutes from the boat dock to Drøbak. (10-15 by car)

Drøbak — It’s easier to find a parking space on the weekend if you are driving a boat.

In the meantime I am thrilled to have a few hours in the design studio by myself... maybe a cook out at the beach tomorrow night...

I’m still way behind on photo processing and not having much luck finding nuggets in my research on the antique silver nipple shields used by wet nurses...

The Robot festival started in New York this past weekend. Wish I could be there.

“Eyebeam will host ROBOT, a four-day festival featuring a robotic talent show, exhibition, workshops, presentations, party and massage parlor. ROBOT will take place from July 12 – 15, 12-6pm daily at Eyebeam's Chelsea facility located at 540 West 21st Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. The four-day event will examine current applications of robotic technologies on creative practices, activism, consumerism and physical intimacy. Eyebeam will conclude the event July 15 with a party from 6-10pm featuring music by DJ-I ROBOT, the first random-access, fully analog robotic DJ. All events are open to the public free of charge with a suggested donation.”

Building materials being delivered by helicopter.

A seaplane practicing landing and take off.

Star fish – dead and alive.

Large orange stinging jelly fish.

Purple non-stinging jelly fish.

The cruise ship Costa Romantica heading out of Oslo Fjord.

Cars the size of a motorcycle.

DOMAIN ERRORS! CYBERFEMINIST PRACTICES
A subRosa Project.
A new anthology edited by Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding and Michelle M. Wright.
Published by Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY, 2003.

Part performative intervention, part radical polemic and activist manual, Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices introduces a diverse international group of feminist writers, artists, theorists, and activists engaged in formulating a contestational politics for tactical cyberfeminism. This recombinant book highlights productive intersections of feminist and postcolonial discourses through critical analyses of the embodied politics of digital culture. Opening areas repressed in previous cyberfeminist discourses, the authors map contemporary social relations between women as they are mediated and transformed by digital and bio-technologies.

Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, Rhadika Gajjala, Emily de Araujo, Maria Fernandez, Christina Hung, Pattie Belle Hastings, Amelia Jones, Terri Kapsalis, Tania Kupczak, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Lisa Nakamura, Susanna Paasonen, Claire Pentecost, Lucia Sommer, subRosa, Nell Tenhaaf, Faith Wilding, Hyla Willis, Michelle M. Wright.

Advance readers say:
If you want another e-feminist volume rehashing Lacan, weaving as metaphor, or icon as on-line identity, don't buy this book. These cyberfeminists take no prisoners as they march through the virtual territories of postcolonial power vectors in an attempt to establish living models of resistance. Lock and load, ladies! – Critical Art Ensemble

This exceptional collection of writings and artist projects PERFORMS a resistant feminist politics. Charting new strategies and practices, the authors imagine liberatory possibilities for our bodies, identities, and social relations in the era of digitized networks and genetic engineering. – Miwon Kwon, editor, Documents

This provocative book makes it perfectly clear that feminism is not dead—it's a critical weapon…a must read for all becoming cyberfeminists and autonomous agents! – Elizabeth Hess, writer/critic

Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices.
subRosa: http://www.cyberfeminism.net
Paper, $15 USD, 6"x9", 288 pages, ISBN 1-57027-141-0
Information:
Individual orders and course adoptions:
Autonomedia, Phone/FAX (718)963-2603; email:
Regular Mail orders: PO Box 568, Brooklyn, NY. 11211-0568

UN ranks Norway as the best country to live in.

Aside from that, I have been facing a few demons of my own creation this week. I have never been away from “home” for this long. I am feeling disconnected and lonely, which I have mentioned before. This week it worsened and I have really had to look more deeply at my patterns, desires, habits, etc. and figure out how to counteract the darkness. I am trying to stay busy, I let myself have a couple a really good cries, and I am still looking into the darkness to see what is really there.

I have taken lots of pics, but haven’t had time to edit, process, and prep them for posting them – I’ll try to do that in the next few days before I am online again.

It began as an overcast day and slowly transformed into a warm cloudless day. After puttering around the house all morning. Daddy & Daughter left for a hike on the nature trail that strings together the beaches in this area. I stayed here so we wouldn't have to stash all the valuables and lock everything up – also to have some much needed time alone.

I sunned for a while with a tall glass of iced mint tea and read some Cyborg Theory texts. Then, amazingly enough, I did some yoga and meditated on the deck. (My goal is to begin doing this every day.) It felt marvelous. My body and mind were so grateful. I then reclined on the day bed in the little hut and read some more. It is my favorite spot, which puzzles Cyborg Daddy. I explained that there are many reasons for this: the position of the windows and sunlight, the cozy smallness of the space, and the location allows me to hear when they return. Most of all, I described the sort of creative “get-away” that I have heard and read about for decades. It is my own private retreat, art residency, etc.

Little known Norwegian factoids:

� Norway officially closed June 30th at midnight and will not reopen until 12 am August 1st. (A good friend who lives here says he got a t-shirt on his first visit to Norway twenty years ago. It read something like this “I went to Norway, but it was closed.”)

� Oslo is one of the top three most expensive cities in the world (the other two are in Japan). A visit to the coin laundry with 3 loads of wash costs 180 Kroner ($25 – and that includes using the dryers).

� It is a bad year for Norwegian strawberries – a cold, wet May & June have impacted the crop and they are importing strawberries from other countries. Bummer.

Today is the most gorgeous beach day. Bestamor and Bestafar have driven down from Oslo with lots of plantings for the garden including a large rose bush for me. We went to the beach for a couple of hours and the water felt so good in the heat. I actually enjoyed the coldness and had to MAKE the kid come in with me. We collected more beach glass and now have a large brandy snifter half full of the multicolored bits.

Reke Kabaret

It will be ten years ago in August that I married my husband and ten years ago that I first traveled to Oslo, Norway. Since that time people always ask us about the food and we enter long comparisons of cultural food products in both countries. There is a list of American food items that always come up with the Norwegians – root beer, pumpkin anything, etc. On the Norwegian side, the big joke always seems to be Lutefisk, but that is only because no one really knows about Kabaret.

Flash back ten years and imagine my horror when my dear sweet mother-in-law presented the most amazing gelatin concoction in the center of the dinner table and handed me the serving spoon. It was large semi-spherical shape of a light golden color. Suspended in this sculpture were bits of vegetables, eggs, and shrimp – among other things. It was quite something to look at, but I really didn't want to put it in my mouth and I really didn't want to hurt my new mother's feelings. My husband of a few days proceeded to take a slice of bread, pile the Kabaret on top of it, and then smother it in remoulade. He devoured it in such a way that can only be triggered by a long lost food of youth.

Fast forward ten years – he walks out of the grocery store a couple of days ago with a bag and I look in it. There is small clear plastic container with a reproduction in miniature of this substance. Oh, my god, it has gone into mass production – or perhaps it has been all along...

Is there some childhood food of mine that conjures the same horror for him? Yes, Fried Green Tomatoes, to name just one.

July 3, 2003

I am reading a PDF of Purse Lips Square Jaw (that I made quickly yesterday while online) and watching a Norwegian game show based on crossword puzzles and word games. I have had a lot going through my mind, but haven’t been capturing the words. I have finished reading Leaving a Trace and Edison’s Eve. I am starting two other books and trying to prioritize and organize my projects.

Cyborg Daddy and I are both suffering from kid care overload. I can’t wait until she starts to read and becomes more “activity” independent. Next year we may try to enroll her in some kind of Summer camp or Summer day care here. She is missing her friends and her busy New Haven social life of play dates and birthday parties.

We started picking blueberries today. My fingers are stained with blotches of red, purple, and blue. Wild strawberries are everywhere and the property is covered in blueberries. There are also lots of raspberries, but they are far from ripe at the moment.