on the road

A lovely group of folks has organized a monthly Bitch-themed Think and Drink at the Florida Room, a local bar here in Portland. I had the pleasure of attending this month's meet-up, where we talked about everything from Hillary versus Obama, dogs versus cats, and cranky farm pigs and their geese friends (what can I say, I love me some animal stories?). They even fundraised for us! Apparently they heard the news that Briar likes her beer...

I'm going to start this post by admitting that, most mornings, I wake up and immediately turn on the Today show. Partly it's a kind of alarm supplement, to ensure that I don't fall back asleep. Partly it's because I like to know if anything was attacked or blown up or wiped out or otherwise disaster-fied in the previous 8 to 10 hours. And finally, I find Matt Lauer and Al Roker oddly soothing in the A.M.

I'd been looking forward to interviewing vegan author Isa Chandra Moskowitz all week. We met up at the Vox café in Brooklyn.

I started my day brunching with Tammy Oler, a contributing Bitch writer who recently moved from Denver to Brooklyn. We met at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Brooklyn, where we drank too much coffee and geeked out about nonprofit organizing and online versus print publishing.

After, we strolled through Fort Greene Park where we stumbled upon a bizarre looking beetle/bee of sorts that neither of us could identify. Eh?

We arrived back in New York in the early afternoon. Tonight's party was organized by the wonderful Deanna Zandt, a media tech smartie who works with many leftie media outlets. (She'll be presenting a workshop at the WAM! (Women, Action, and the Media) conference at the end of March called The Revolution will use Media Technology.) She also cuts a fine strawberry.

This morning we met up with Amy Hoffman, editor of the Women’s Review of Books and author of the soon-to-be-released An Army of Ex-Lovers. We met at Zaftig's, a Jewish deli, where we chatted over oatmeal and borscht about what's happening at the Women's Review and what it's like living in Boston.

After fetching tonight's food and drink, Lisa and I took the train out near Boston College to meet up with two of the folks at Our Bodies Ourselves, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective — Judy Norsigian, one of the founders and current executive director, and Wendy Brovold, who handles communications and outreach.

Last night's cranberry salsa was delicious, but after four days of party food, we both felt like an infusion of vegetables was in order. So we ate salads, kale soup, and carrot juice for breakfast. 

And I took one last pumpkin photo.

On the subway this morning, I sat next to a man reading, Why Men Marry Bitches. Somewhat comically, the woman sitting on the other side of me was reading Che Guevara's essays on How to Change the World.

We took a train back to New York this morning and headed to the grocery store for food and drink for tonight's fundraising party. Unbeknownst to us, a good chunk of the city's population had this, Indigenous People's Day, off. And a good chunk of them decided to spend it grocery shopping. I'd never seen such chaos at a grocery store. It even reigned in the restrooms— a long line of people snaked out the door and around the corner, while an exasperated security guard directed traffic into each restroom amidst people crying of toilet paper outages from the stalls.