Natalie Gomez Dunker

When illustrator Emily McDowell created this hilariously awkward Valentine’s Day card last year, she couldn’t have imagined the attention it would receive…

After Etsy posted McDowell’s Valentine’s card on their Facebook page, it went viral, enabling her to expand her business to include more greeting cards and other products.

She also added to her Valentine’s card with this hilarious line of cards called Awkward Cards. We can only hope this is the beginning of many more of these fantastic awkward cards…

Awkward birthday card

Awkward love card

Awkward Mother’s Day card

Awkward sympathy card

Awkward “thinking of you” card

(via My Modern Met)

Now, head over to Emily McDowell’s site and buy a few of these cards, and check out her other fantastic work while you’re there!

The NSA and Israeli ISNU cooperate to share and analyze data on governments throughout the Middle East.

Las reglas son sencillas. No se hacen preguntas personales, toda indicación se hace en tercera persona y la idea es recitar el protocolo completo, ojalá antes de que la persona que está llamando empiece con las pertinentes consultas. De esta forma se cumple con advertir que la información es para personas mayores de 18 años y que el Misoprostol debe administrarse sólo en casos de hasta doce semanas de embarazo. No se devuelven llamadas ni se responden mensajes de texto, y siempre hay que dejar bien en claro que la línea no distribuye el medicamento ni cuenta con información sobre dónde obtenerlo. “Para nosotros, el aborto no es una discusión moral o valórica. No vamos a entrar en el debate de cuándo empieza y cuándo termina la vida. Quizás hasta puede haber distintas apreciaciones entre nosotras. Pero esto es un tema de salud y una mujer que quiere abortar debiese tener toda la información disponible para hacerlo”, explica Carolina, 33 años, feminista, socióloga, iquiqueña, una de las telefonistas que atienden la Línea Aborto Libre.

Son quince telefonistas, repartidas entre Iquique y Valdivia, y un celular de prepago, de esos de antaño que aún conservan sus teclas. Los turnos duran una semana y el aparato debe estar encendido como mínimo tres horas diarias, desde las ocho hasta las once de la noche, horario en que la voluntaria a cargo ya ha concluido la jornada laboral y se encuentra lista y resguardada al interior de su hogar. Normalmente, los llamados se atienden de lunes a viernes, pero si alguna telefonista de buena voluntad quisiera contestar también durante los fines de semana, puede sentirse libre de hacerlo. A menudo, un solo llamado puede terminar prologándose hasta pasadas las doce de la noche. Y es que hay mujeres que llevan a cabo el procedimiento mientras se encuentran al teléfono.

A diario, la Línea Aborto Libre recibe entre 6 y 15 llamadas que son contestadas. Muchas otras se pierden cuando la línea está ocupada. También ocurre que una sola mujer llama varias veces en la semana o incluso en un mismo día. Cada una de las conversaciones deberá quedar consignada en la bitácora de registro con la que se calculan más tarde cifras y tendencias oficiales. Como ocurre con cualquier otro servicio, hay períodos más intensos: después de las vacaciones de invierno, de las Fiestas Patrias o a la vuelta de las vacaciones de verano. A mediados de semana, también se intensifica la frecuencia de los llamados. En otras fechas, como el 30 de diciembre, no llama nadie.

APROVECHANDO AGUAS INTERNACIONALES

La Línea Aborto Libre nace en Concepción, cuando la ONG holandesa Mujeres Sobre las Olas arribó a Chile en el marco de una serie de visitas que contemplaba varios destinos latinoamericanos. Mujeres Sobre las Olas es una agrupación fundada en 1990 pionera en el tema del aborto y los derechos reproductivos de la mujer. Sus activistas –entre cuyas filas se encuentran doctoras y especialistas, militantes de derechos humanos y otras profesionales– recorren el mundo ofreciendo anticonceptivos, talleres e información, a bordo de un pequeño barco donde se realizan además abortos (hasta las seis y media semanas de embarazo), aprovechando la figura de las aguas internacionales, donde la ley de aborto no tiene alcance.

Otra vía de acción de la agrupación es precisamente incentivar la creación de líneas telefónicas que entreguen información sobre cómo utilizar el Misoprostol para interrumpir un embarazo, sobre todo en países donde el aborto está penalizado. Esta labor ha logrado congregar telefonistas en Chile, Ecuador, Perú, Venezuela, Argentina, Pakistán, Indonesia, Kenya, Tailandia, y otros.

Así, en 2009, el hoy difunto Colectivo Feministas Bío Bío, asesorado por las activistas holandesas, da a luz a la que entonces llaman Línea Aborto Chile. A partir de ahí, y con el fin de fortalecer la labor de informar, se crea el Colectivo Lesbianas y Feministas por el Derecho a la Información. Rápidamente se van sumando compañeras de Temuco, Linares, Antofagasta, Valdivia, Valparaíso, Iquique y Santiago, y a medida que la línea va teniendo más y más éxito –en 2010 se recibieron alrededor de dos mil llamadas–, la gama de líneas de acción se diversifica. Surgen nuevas iniciativas, como el Manual de la Línea Aborto Chile y la realización de talleres informativos en centros comunitarios, universidades, etc.

El manual es un instructivo en formato pregunta y respuesta que reúne datos sobre el uso del Misoprostol, información sobre el marco legal que regula el aborto en Chile y una colección de casos de mujeres que narran sus experiencias con el medicamento. Está inspirado en su homólogo argentino Todo lo que querés saber sobre cómo hacerse un aborto con pastillas y en su primera edición, financiada mediante autogestión y el aporte de un fondo internacional, se imprimieron mil ejemplares. El lanzamiento oficial se llevó a cabo en 2010, con eventos paralelos a lo largo del país. En Santiago, en el Centro Cultural Manuel Rojas, las activistas desplegaron una presentación artística en la que de fondo sonaba la música de la cantautora argentina Liliana Felipe, lesbiana y feminista cuyas letras se han convertido en estandarte de la lucha y la liberación de la mujer contemporánea. Actualmente, el manual está disponible, a la venta, en librerías y también puede ser bajado de forma gratuita desde la página web de Línea Aborto Libre. En los últimos 19 meses ha acumulado alrededor de 8 mil descargas.

El libro fue un punto de quiebre respecto a cómo las mujeres chilenas se relacionaban con la línea telefónica, cuenta Isabel, trabajadora social de 29 años, miembro del colectivo. “Después del manual hubo un cambio rotundo en la pregunta que formula la persona en la llamada. Las mujeres ahora están mucho más informadas. Saben cómo conseguir el manual, lo descargan, lo leen y después llaman con la consulta específica”, asegura la telefonista. Con ello, cada vez llegan a la línea casos más puntuales. Esta situación ha obligado a las activistas a capacitarse permanentemente en el tema, actualizando sus conocimientos y también compartiendo entre ellas la información. Sin embargo, cuando la telefonista no sabe cómo responder a una pregunta, se recurre sobre la materia a una de las especialistas que colaboran con la iniciativa a modo de fuente consultiva.

En 2013, el colectivo detrás de la línea telefónica decidió dividirse, naciendo así la Línea Aborto Libre, por un lado, y quedando la Línea Aborto Chile en manos de las activistas en Concepción.

QUIÉN LLAMA, QUIÉN CONTESTA

Pese a su corta vida, la línea ya ha debido enfrentar tres denuncias en su contra. La más reciente fue un recurso judicial presentado por un grupo de abogados pro vida que imputó al colectivo por el delito de asociación ilícita y de ejercicio ilegal de la profesión, acusando a las activistas de jugar a ser doctoras. Otros que han emprendido campañas en su contra son algunos grupos evangélicos. Sin embargo, hasta el momento no existe ninguna querella que haya sido presentada por el Estado, recalcan orgullosas.

La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) reconoce el uso del Misoprostol –ya sea solo o en conjunto con la Mifepristona– como uno de los métodos abortivos más seguro durante el primer trimestre de gestación. En Chile, aunque es posible encontrarlo con facilidad a través de anuncios en Internet e incluso vía grupos en Facebook, su venta en farmacias se encuentra prohibida desde el primer gobierno de Michelle Bachelet. De ahí que las voluntarias de Línea Aborto Libre hayan optado por asesorarse de forma permanente por un grupo de abogadas colaboradoras y sean estrictamente rigurosas en sus protocolos, en el tipo de información que proveen y en no involucrarse en la entrega del medicamento. “Es absolutamente legal y además es constitucional. Delito sería si nos vieran entregando la pastilla. Nosotras sólo entregamos la información, no entregamos datos del medicamento porque no lo tenemos, no lo circulamos y tampoco es nuestra labor”, explica Carolina. No es fácil, la pregunta más común suele ser cómo obtener el Misoprostol y hay quienes se molestan ante la negativa.

Los requerimientos a la hora de decidir quién ingresa como telefonista también son rigurosos. Declararse feminista es un requisito mínimo. Haber participado en algún colectivo o tener experiencia en algún activismo comunitario también suma puntos. Pero lo más importante de todo es ganarse la confianza de las otras integrantes de la agrupación. Y es que –dado el compromiso que requiere, el acecho de grupos conservadores y la permanente amenaza de una legislación que condena y persigue el aborto– el colectivo no puede ser una escuela para la formación de feministas. A esas alturas, las que participan son las más experimentadas en el tema.

Además, cada nueva telefonista tiene que someterse a un proceso de capacitación. Una vez concluido, durante los primeros llamados que atienda, deberá ser vigilada por una compañera con mayor experiencia. Pero estar al teléfono no es la única responsabilidad que este compromiso implica. Entre quienes participan en el colectivo se dividen tareas, como estar a cargo del sitio web, el correo institucional, la fan page, etc.

“La mujer que aborta no es la típica que todos creen que aborta; esa loca que sale todos los fines de semana y se agarra a todos. Abortan todas las mujeres. Las casadas, las solteras, las separadas, las que no tienen la autorización de las parejas y llaman hablando despacito para que no las escuchen. Incluso llaman mamás y abuelas preguntando por sus hijas y nietas”, cuenta Carolina, quien participa en todo esto desde 2010. Porque, aunque no está permitido hacer preguntas personales, las mujeres que se contactan con la línea pueden arrojar luces sobre el contexto que las rodea o el tipo de vida que llevan. “Se puede percibir un poco. Llaman harto chiquillas del barrio alto, mucha estudiante de clase media empobrecida y también inmigrantes con muy poca información. Colombianas, peruanas, dominicanas. Es difícil, porque se nota que es la inmigrante que está en las peores condiciones, para la que cien mil pesos en medicamentos es una suma imposible”, agrega la telefonista.

Puede pasar también que la voluntaria se encuentre con una voz masculina al otro lado del teléfono. Cuando esto ocurre, lo que se hace es pedirle que sea una mujer la que haga el llamado. Y es que la idea es que sea ella quien se empodere a través de la información. Además, de esta forma se busca evitar cualquier tipo de presión o influencia masculina en la decisión de la mujer.

BANDERAS FEMINISTAS

Así como lo son los derechos reproductivos, el aborto es una de las principales banderas de lucha de los colectivos feministas. Para estos, combatir su penalización tiene que ver con decirle a un sistema, dominado por la figura masculina, que la mujer defiende su derecho a hacer lo que quiera con su cuerpo. Además, con ello rompe con las cadenas que la atan a conflictos culturales derivados de la maternidad, como, por ejemplo, la discriminación en el ámbito laboral. En ese sentido, para las integrantes de Línea Aborto Libre, esta es una acción concreta en contra del sistema, una línea más interesante que la mera consigna. De ahí también que suelan rechazar invitaciones a foros y debates en los que se mida el aborto en términos valóricos y morales.

Además, hay quienes le atribuyen a esta causa un carácter de lucha social. Y es que es sabido que las mujeres, jóvenes y adolescentes con más recursos, pese a su ilegalidad, pueden acceder a estos procedimientos más fácilmente. En cambio, las mujeres de estratos socioeconómicos más bajos deben sortear, además del factor económico, el problema del acceso a la información. Cuenta Carolina que con esta realidad se han encontrado a través de los talleres informativos que el colectivo ha empezado a impartir. “Sobre todo en las poblaciones, donde para una mujer la maternidad es como sagrada. Y con una guagua en brazos es mucho más fácil ir a pedir beneficios a la municipalidad, hay todo un círculo. Las grandes políticas públicas proponen la maternidad, tanto de forma intrínseca como explícita. Los discursos del Día de la Madre son aberrantes: ‘¡Mujer, sacrifícate por tus hijos!’”, sostiene la socióloga.

En medio de este panorama, nuevas ideas han comenzado a aparecer en el horizonte. Una de ellas, y que late con más fuerza, es la de contar con un espacio físico donde operar una oficina de atención sobre salud sexual. De esta forma, buscan capacitar a la población, especialmente a mujeres, sobre enfermedades sexuales, métodos anticonceptivos y otros temas que consideran urgentes discutir en el Chile de hoy.

If you can afford a Maserati, you can also afford to diminish the value of your Maserati by painting it any way you choose. And if the paint job you choose is a silly prank that lands you in court, you’ll probably still be fine. Which is good for at least one anonymous Massachusetts man, because that’s exactly what is happening to him.

He recently turned his $100,000 car into a Transformer, but police in the town of Braintree didn’t find his stunt very funny…unsurprisingly.

His car doesn’t have a light bar across the top and it says “DECEPTICONS” in bold print across the side, but that didn’t set it apart from a real cop car enough for one ill-humored policeman. Noting that none of the local law enforcement agencies had a Maserati in their fleet of squad cars, an officer pulled the man over. He then proceeded to cite him for impersonating an officer.

While the courts will have to sort out the legality of the paint job, the car’s owner makes a good point, observing that, since everyone around him slows down, he’s actually helping the cops.

As the case is being decided, we can at least admire what’s been created. The impressive work was done by Boston Dip and Detail, who posted these photos of the transformation on their Instagram account…

(via CBS News, MTV)

After the court makes its decision, we’ll be eager to know whether this Maserati will be allowed to stay on the road and continue its mission “to punish and enslave.”

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. The following passages are excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s history of humanity, Mirrors (Nation Books).

Stalin

He learned to write in the language of Georgia, his homeland, but in the seminary the monks made him speak Russian.

Years later in Moscow, his south Caucasus accent still gave him away.

So he decided to become more Russian than the Russians. Was not Napoleon, who hailed from Corsica, more French than the French? And was not Catherine the Great, who was German, more Russian than the Russians?

The Georgian, Iosif Dzhugashvili, chose a Russian name. He called himself Stalin, which means “steel.”

The man of steel expected his son to be made of steel too: from childhood, Stalin’s son Yakov was tempered in fire and ice and shaped by hammer blows.

It did not work. He was his mother’s child. At the age of 19, Yakov wanted no more of it, could bear no more.

He pulled the trigger.

The gunshot did not kill him.

He awoke in the hospital. At the foot of the bed, his father commented:

“You can’t even get that right.”

The Ages of Josephine

At nine years old, she works cleaning houses in St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi.

At 10, she starts dancing for coins in the street. At 13, she marries.

At 15, once again. Of the first husband she retains not even a bad memory. Of the second, his last name, because she likes how it sounds.

At 17, Josephine Baker dances the Charleston on Broadway. At 18, she crosses the Atlantic and conquers Paris. The “Bronze Venus” performs in the nude, with no more clothing than a belt of bananas.

At 21, her outlandish combination of clown and femme fatale makes her the most popular and highest-paid performer in Europe.

At 24, she is the most photographed woman on the planet. Pablo Picasso, on his knees, paints her. To look like her, the pallid young damsels of Paris rub themselves with walnut cream, which darkens the skin.

At 30, she has problems in some hotels because she travels with a chimpanzee, a snake, a goat, two parrots, several fish, three cats, seven dogs, a cheetah named Chiquita who wears a diamond-studded collar, and a little pig named Albert, whom she bathes in Je Reviens perfume by Worth.

At 40, she receives the Legion of Honor for service to the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation.

At 41 and on her fourth husband, she adopts 12 children of many colors and many origins, whom she calls “my rainbow tribe.”

At 45, she returns to the United States. She insists that everyone, whites and blacks, sit together at her shows. If not, she will not perform. At 57, she shares the stage with Martin Luther King and speaks against racial discrimination before an immense crowd at the March on Washington.

At 68, she recovers from a calamitous bankruptcy and at the Bobino Theater in Paris she celebrates a half-century on the stage.

And she departs.

Photograph: Saddest Eye in the World

Princeton, New Jersey, May 1947.

Photographer Philippe Halsman asks him: “Do you think there will be peace?”

And while the shutter clicks, Albert Einstein says, or rather mutters: “No.”

People believe that Einstein got the Nobel Prize for his theory of relativity, that he was the originator of the saying “Everything is relative,” and that he was the inventor of the atom bomb.

The truth is they did not give him a Nobel for his theory of relativity and he never uttered those words. Neither did he invent the bomb, although Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been possible if he had not discovered what he did.

He knew all too well that his findings, born of a celebration of life, had been used to annihilate it.

Father of the Computer

Alan Turing was sneered at for not being a tough guy, a he-man with hair on his chest.

He whined, croaked, stuttered. He used an old necktie for a belt. He rarely slept and went without shaving for days. And he raced from one end of the city to the other all the while concocting complicated mathematical formulas in his mind.

Working for British intelligence, he helped shorten the Second World War by inventing a machine that cracked the impenetrable military codes used by Germany’s high command.

At that point he had already dreamed up a prototype for an electronic computer and had laid out the theoretical foundations of today’s information systems. Later on, he led the team that built the first computer to operate with integrated programs. He played interminable chess games with it and asked it questions that drove it nuts. He insisted that it write him love letters. The machine responded by emitting messages that were rather incoherent.

But it was flesh-and-blood Manchester police who arrested him in 1952 for gross indecency.

At the trial, Turing pled guilty to being a homosexual.

To stay out of jail, he agreed to undergo medical treatment to cure him of the affliction. The bombardment of drugs left him impotent. He grew breasts. He stayed indoors, no longer went to the university. He heard whispers, felt stares drilling into his back.

He had the habit of eating an apple before going to bed.

One night, he injected the apple with cyanide.

Red Emperor

I was in China three years after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. No one talked about it. It was a state secret.

I saw Mao paying homage to Mao. In Tiananmen Square, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Mao presided over an immense parade led by an immense statue of Mao. The plaster Mao held his hand high, and the flesh-and-blood Mao answered the greeting. From an ocean of flowers and colored balloons, the crowd cheered both.

Mao was China and China was his shrine. Mao exhorted all to follow the example set by Lei Feng and Lei Feng exhorted all to follow the example set by Mao. Lei Feng, a young Communist apostle of dubious existence, spent his days consoling the sick, helping widows, and giving his food away to orphans. His nights he spent reading the complete works of Mao. When he slept, he dreamed of Mao, his guide for every step. Lei Feng had no girlfriend or boyfriend because he did not waste time on frivolities, and it never occurred to him that life could be contradictory or reality diverse.

Fidel

His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who confused unity with unanimity.

And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper like Granma, no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at Waterloo.

And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that he exercised power by talking a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than voices.

And in that his enemies are right.

But some things his enemies do not say: it was not to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders’ bullets,

he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to hurricane,

he survived 637 attempts on his life,

his contagious energy was decisive in making a country out of a colony,

and it was not by Lucifer’s curse or God’s miracle that the new country managed to outlive 10 U.S. presidents, their napkins spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork.

And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup.

And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.

And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America.

And his enemies do not say that this feat was the outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.

Ali

He was butterfly and bee. In the ring, he floated and stung.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, refused to put on a uniform.

“Got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said. “Ain’t no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”

They called him a traitor. They sentenced him to a five-year jail term, and barred him from boxing. They stripped him of his title as champion of the world.

The punishment became his trophy. By taking away his crown, they anointed him king.

Years later, a few college students asked him to recite something. And for them he improvised the shortest poem in world literature:

“Me, we.”

Walls

The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From morning till night we read, saw, heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain...

In the end, a wall which deserved to fall fell. But other walls sprouted and continue sprouting across the world. Though they are much larger than the one in Berlin, we rarely hear of them.

Little is said about the wall the United States is building along the Mexican border, and less is said about the barbed-wire barriers surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.

Practically nothing is said about the West Bank Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will be 15 times longer than the Berlin Wall. And nothing, nothing at all, is said about the Morocco Wall, which perpetuates the seizure of the Saharan homeland by the kingdom of Morocco, and is 60 times the length of the Berlin Wall.

Why are some walls so loud and others mute?

Barbie Goes to War 

There are more than a billion Barbies. Only the Chinese outnumber them.

The most beloved woman on the planet would never let us down. In the war of good against evil, Barbie enlisted, saluted, and marched off to Iraq.

She arrived at the front wearing made-to-measure land, sea, and air uniforms reviewed and approved by the Pentagon.

Barbie is accustomed to changing professions, hairdos, and clothes. She has been a singer, an athlete, a paleontologist, an orthodontist, an astronaut, a firewoman, a ballerina, and who knows what else. Every new job entails a new look and a complete new wardrobe that every girl in the world is obliged to buy.

In February 2004, Barbie wanted to change boyfriends too. For nearly half a century she had been going steady with Ken, whose nose is the only protuberance on his body, when an Australian surfer seduced her and invited her to commit the sin of plastic.

Mattel, the manufacturer, announced an official separation.

It was a catastrophe. Sales plummeted. Barbie could change occupations and outfits, but she had no right to set a bad example.

Mattel announced an official reconciliation.

Lied-About Wars

Advertising campaigns, marketing schemes. The target is public opinion. Wars are sold the same way cars are, by lying.

In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson accused the Vietnamese of attacking two U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf.

Then the president invaded Vietnam, sending planes and troops. He was acclaimed by journalists and by politicians, and his popularity skyrocketed. The Democrats in power and the Republicans out of power became a single party united against Communist aggression.

After the war had slaughtered Vietnamese in vast numbers, most of them women and children, Johnson’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, confessed that the Tonkin Gulf attack had never occurred.

The dead did not revive.

In March 2003, President George W. Bush accused Iraq of being on the verge of destroying the world with its weapons of mass destruction, “the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

Then the president invaded Iraq, sending planes and troops. He was acclaimed by journalists and by politicians, and his popularity skyrocketed. The Republicans in power and the Democrats out of power became a single party united against terrorist aggression.

After the war had slaughtered Iraqis in vast numbers, most of them women and children, Bush confessed that the weapons of mass destruction never existed. “The most lethal weapons ever devised” were his own speeches.

In the following elections, he won a second term.

In my childhood, my mother used to tell me that a lie has no feet. She was misinformed.

Riddle

They are the most important members of our family.

They are gluttons, devouring gas, oil, corn, sugarcane, and anything else that comes their way.

They own our time: bathing them, feeding and sheltering them, talking about them, and opening the way for them.

They reproduce faster than we do, and are 10 times as numerous as they were half a century ago.

They kill more people than do wars, but no one condemns the murders, least of all the newspapers and television channels that live off their advertisements.

They steal our streets. They steal our air. They laugh when they hear us say: “I drive.”

Lost and Found

The twentieth century, which was born proclaiming peace and justice, died bathed in blood. It passed on a world much more unjust than the one it inherited.

The twenty-first century, which also arrived heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessor’s footsteps.

In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon.

But the astronauts found no sign of dangerous dreams or broken promises or hopes betrayed.

If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps they were never misplaced.
Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting.

 

 

Related Stories

• A Pregnant, Suicidal Rape Victim Fought Ireland's New Abortion Law—The Law Won
• Iraq Vet: Ferguson Police Have Better Armor and Weaponry than We Had in War
• Important Lessons from the Vietnam Anti-War Movement