Greetings, Stories for Change Community Members!



With more than 200 stories (and more being uploaded every week) and forum discussions on everything from microphone recommendations to tips for recruiting youth for workshops, Stories for Change has become a dynamic community of digital storytellers from around the world! If you haven’t visited in awhile, please take a moment to stop by, check out some of our latest additions, share some tips and/or questions on the forum, or even upload a new story.



As a member of the Stories for Change community, we wanted to take the opportunity to let you know about some other exciting things that you will see happening on the site over the next couple of months.



Celebrate International Women's Day: Watch Women's Stories From Around The World!



We are proud to announce our International Women's Day celebration, which features digital stories by women from around the world. Stories this month include the voices of a Ugandan woman, Kyomuhangi Marym, who has lived with obstetric fistula for more than twenty years, and Nicky, a young lesbian who survived abuse within her own family (and later the foster system) because of her sexual orientation. These and more than thirty other featured stories span continents and various life experiences to explore the struggles and joys of being a woman in our world.



These stories are currently featured on the website's main page and will continue to be featured through March 12th, but will remain on the site permanently in their own section. We also encourage members to consider uploading their own stories on this theme and including the “women’s day” tag so they can be added to our growing collection.



This celebration is a part of a new initiative at Stories for Change of sharing stories on particular themes, to coincide with various international days and celebrations. The goal of this initiative is to highlight both the diversity of voices on the site and the common social justice threads going on in the world of digital storytelling today. Through the initiative, we will be working to connect with other organization's doing work on specific social justice issues and encourage their involvement in Stories for Change Stories for Change. For more information, please email laura@storycenter.org.



Save The Date: International Day for Sharing Life Stories, May 16th



Stories for Change is also excited to announce our sponsorship of the first annual International Day for Sharing Life Stories on May 16, 2008. The goal of the campaign is to gain broad recognition of May 16 as an annual day for sharing, listening to, and gathering the stories of people’s lives.



Along with The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA, and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling, Stories for Change is encouraging various community organizations to host events, collect stories, and/or share them online. For more information, including a list of events happening around the world and information on how to put together your own event, please visit the International Day’s website at: http://www.ausculti.org/



If you have ideas, concerns, or comments about Stories for Change, feel free to drop us a line at info@storycenter.org or visit one of our forums – we’d love to hear from you.



Hope to see you around!



Yours,



Stories for Change Team
http://storiesforchange.net

Gloria's Still Got It

After attending Smith graduations for my sister in 2005 and my mama in 2006, I have to say that I am a little bummed that I missed Gloria Steinem's address to the Class of 2007. Lucky for me, my mom forwarded me a copy of the address. I've got to say it's as dead-on as ever as well as an inspirational meditation for the work that my generation of feminist rebels has in front of us based on the lessons and progress of the past. Take a look.

Facebook v. MySpace: Class Warfare Enters the Digital Age

Check out this article by danah boyd (courtesy of Meagan - hello, Meags, I know you are reading, if the only person reading) about how class divisions transcend social networking on the internet. The whole article is incredibly interesting (if informally written) and a worthy read. An interesting anecdote follows.

"A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook. Facebook is extremely popular in the military, but it's not the SNS of choice for 18-year old soldiers, a group that is primarily from poorer, less educated communities. They are using MySpace. The officers, many of whom have already received college training, are using Facebook. The military ban appears to replicate the class divisions that exist throughout the military."

Looking forward to more research in this field.

Wondering where all my blogs have gone?

Well, there's a simple answer: school.

I've been doing a decent job chronicling the progress and development of my documentary and other projects on my class blog which you can find here: http://www2.evergreen.edu/blogs/students/hadlau02/


I've got to say, I've always been a little skeptical about journaling for class, but it's absolutely bizarre how keeping a blog instead has changed my attitude toward the whole process.

Not sure what the relationship between the two blogs will shape up to be, but for now, check the other one for more frequent updates.

I think I still have 14.9999 seconds of fame left...

Alright, so every once in awhile someone tells me that they've seen me in the background of Da Ali G Show during the March for Women's Lives. Thanks to the amazing technology of YouTube, however, I just found the clip today and am surprised that so many people could identity my little ol' head in the quarter of a second it's on the screen. It's also a relatively entertaining clip (especially the end, if you're into that sort of thing) so check it out and see if you can spot yours truly (right after the interview with the priest).

40% of Your Taxes Heading to War

Yep, you heard me. Just to make the sting of paying misspent taxes a little more painful, Democracy Now! reports that out of the $2 trillion the IRS expects to collect this year, 40% of those will go to military related expenses.

In a time of underfunded, well, everything and an increasingly unjust tax system... sending your money to be spent on something you are fundamentally opposed to can be a little much to take. Organizations such as the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee are organizing to educate and support people in resisting these taxes, but not without controversy from both sides of the party lines.

Continue reading (& for the love of god, discuss!) at the YP4 blog.

Global Feminisms at The Brooklyn Museum

Photo: Static Drift, Ingrid Mwangi, images created by stencil & exposure to the sun

So yesterday my stir-craziness got the best of me so I started walking down Eastern Parkway until I reached The Brooklyn Museum that has an amazing exhibit on Global Feminisms until July. It is also featuring Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party - perhaps the most famous piece of feminist art of all time - which in particular is powerful in its sheer grandeur and intricacy to see in person. At any rate, it's absolutely amazing. I gave myself three hours to check out the exhibit and ended up getting kicked out at closing with about a third left to go even after abbreviated visits to the video art installations -- so make sure to give yourself plenty of time to give the exhibit justice. My personal favourite video art highlights included Mary Coble's gut-wrenching Binding Ritual and Emily Jacir's Crossing Surda in which she videotapes her feet crossing the checkpoints between the Palestinian territories and Israel. Also, Miwa Yanagi's My Grandmothers Series was also particularly innovative, featuring young women performing their fantasies about growing older and defying stereotypes. I've always thought I'd only be interested in documentary photography, but lately when presented with works like these I've begun to change my mind. Although technically fictional, they speak to a larger truth.

I was particularly struck by what one artist included in her statement (and regret that I didn't write down her name and exact wording) which was something to the effect of "if my art is about gender, it's only a reflection of the extent to which gender influences and affects the very core of my existence". I also found it interesting and somewhat arbitrary that they divided the exhibit into four themes: identity, politics, life cycles & emotion. Although I understand the challenges surrounding curating an exhibit like this and trying to fashion some sort of understandable order, if I've come to understand about gender it is that you can't separate gender or any of these aspects from one another -- they are intrinsically and inseparably linked.

Adventures at the Dog Park

Today was my first day in Manhattan since I arrived nearly two weeks ago... yes, I'm officially not a biohazard anymore, rather I simply appear to be an unfortunately acne-infested young woman. It's not fun, but I am crossing my fingers that nothing will scar... or at least whatever does scar will be somewhere I will never noticed (or at least not on my face... please?).

At any rate, I am waiting for Lars to finish up at the gym so I do one of my favourite things to do in the village when you don't want to spend any money (perhaps because you had to cancel $250 worth of plane tickets home only to spend another $175 to reschedule them) which is to watch the dogs at the dog park at Washington Square Park. Not to get too poetic, but it just strikes me as a beautiful metaphor for this damn city itself -- everyone is either trying to get it on or establish a pecking order. At any rate, the benches are faced away from the dog park which, judging by the number of people who also find watching other people's dogs shit and jump all over one another, is a major flaw.

So I am sitting, minding my own business when two young folks sit next to me. They seem pleasant enough. Before I know it, they've got me in a conversation about the dogs and then introduce themselves. One is a theater student who dreams of being a singer the other is... well, just plain awkward. At any rate, they ask me a little about myself and what I'm up to and I am purposefully vague because it's not like I'm expecting to make these two fine young folks my new best friends, but hey, whatever.

"So, have you ever heard of Jesus?" the young woman eventually asks me after ten minutes of small talk.

Really? That's your opening line. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh. As unjustifiably cold as I find the majority of New Yorkers, I have to say, I almost understand the skepticism. Being physically surrounded by people all day every day can be emotionally exhausting - the last thing you want to do is let a stranger into your emotional space. And that's the thing - I don't so much mind people passing out literature or approaching me directly asking me if I know about my lord, but when social conversation is, unbeknownst to me, coated in a desire to save my soul which is only revealed to me ten minutes into our conversation - I feel tricked. I feel like an idiot. I need a second to recover, to put my walls back up and shuffle on, avoiding eye contact like everyone else in this city.

Not to romanticize Olympia or anything, but I really appreciate living in a place where conversations with strangers are almost always amicable and interesting. Sure, you get your wackos or religious zealots once in a blue moon, but they're straightforward about their shit - none of this subversive conversation bullshit. Maybe there should have been some red flags, and maybe there would have been if I had lived here longer, but here is the thing, I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt. To a fault. And honestly... I sort of like that about me. And I'm not ready for New York to take that away from me.

Images of War

Take a look at this photograph by Nina Berman - a portrait of an Iraq War veteran Sgt. Ty Ziegel and his childhood sweetheart on their wedding day. It's one of the most haunting photographs I have ever seen. Berman says the photograph "shows how war has crept its way into the most common phase of daily life." Originally a part of an assignment for People magazine, the photograph was never published. This fact alone is telling of how our society responds to war and turns away from showing the human costs and effects that linger after the political banter subsides and the soldiers come home - home to a country that is not prepared to deal with the consequences. The expression on the bride's face tells it all. A compelling photograph, indeed.

Check out more of this year's most compelling photography at http://digitaljournalist.org/.