A love letter to my new global family

Let me preface this with a bit of exposition: something I said on Twitter was, "it's a strange thing to feel your heart tugged across continents, but that's what I've felt this week." Over the course of the Three Dot Dash summit in downtown New York City, I had the chance to learn, eat, dance, cry, laugh, and fastwalk ;) with 29 amazing teens (and our incredible adult facilitators, summit leaders, and Global Teen Leader alumni).

Three Dot Dash (that's a V, for peace, in Morse code) is a weeklong program that brings in teen leaders from all around the world (everywhere from South America to Europe to Africa to Asia to here at home) for a summit dedicated to helping us tell our stories and ensuring that the message powerfully shared by the late poet and peacemaker Mattie Stepanek, that "peace is possible," is embodied through our lives and work. We were privileged enough to learn from Mattie's mom Jeni, aka "Mama Peace," whose persistence and quiet strength inspired us all.

So without further ado, here's my big post-summit thank you. I'm still reeling from the experience, but in the best way possible. I'm blogging this because I wanted everyone to see what can happen when we declare sincerely, "we are family."

Dear 3DD family,

Repeating the refrain of post-summit days: "I miss you guys."
"You guys" means moments as well as people. There are too many moments to count, but maybe one of the first was discovering the roof view with Sudarshan and Anjali, stepping closer perhaps than I've been for a while to the feeling of being on the top of the world. In the mist, the streamers on a fence below seemed to be figures writhing on the sidewalk. Standing on that roof I was eye-level with the stain-glass Jesus in the window of the church across the street, oddly appropriate considering a conversation we had in the freezing cold about religion.
Then came the news that our fellow GTLs--most of the rest of you--were waiting for us, and so came scrambling down ladders with the glee of dancing on the brink of troublemaking. (Yeah, that's what we were doing right before I apologized for going overboard on the "Dora the Explorin'" side.) How couldn't I miss Kim and her stern expression that left no room for error except in the most cleverly sneaky ways (wink wink. Just kidding.)

I miss the nights that followed, wandering arbitrarily around New York and coming back way too late for much-beleaguered Dana (I'm sorry for being such a crappy roommate!) to be awake. I miss conspiring with Jasel on fighting Ali for control of his phone, and the crazy high-pitched sound of Rameez getting tickled. I miss the sound of all of our laughter, standing in energizer circles, executing ill-planned dance moves. I miss Anjali being perhaps the best teacher of Hindi and Tamil the average white/Asian girl-who-sucks-at-languages has ever known; now every time I say "I can count to ten in Hindi!" (over the course of just a few days, more frequently than you might think) I do it with the bittersweetly nostalgic reminiscence of how I got there in the first place.

I miss the drowsy sincerity of our last night, sitting in a circle in the hangout suite on the 21st floor, and listening to the soothing sound of Gani's ukulele, Robert's improv singing, and all of us chanting chorus lines. I could go on and on and on--but those are just the nights.

Somewhere in a binder which (woe is me!) I lost at the summit venue, there are copious badly-written notes, some hurried poems in the margins, and an action plan which I filled out with the last-minute desperate passion of a girl who's waited till the last minute to determine which project she's actually going to talk about. I want to thank you all for making me feel courageous enough to float a project which I only started conceptualizing recently, and for teaching me a huge amount over the past week.

Indeed, when it came to peace, social media, photography, speaking, and interviewing, I learned a lot--but I also grew in a less pronounced area: humility. It may not be a definable lesson or a topic we covered in a clear-cut way, but having the chance to meet all of you--with your intense passions, mindblowing eloquence, Muslim Brother-from-the-Bronx or Malcolm X accents (Faisal and Sheila, respect), beautiful singing, kindness, inclusiveness, freakingly intimidating smartness--made me really truly see how un-special I am in the grand scheme of things, no matter how exaggerated a headline or how high someone's praise may be. And yet at the same time you embodied Jeni's message, that reaffirming "You matter."
Realizing that I matter not because of whatever sets me apart but rather because of what I share with you--the desire for just peace--was one of the most valuable things I walked away with.

Under my breath I sing "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" sometimes. Toward the end of the summit the prediction of nostalgia, the logical rationale that it's the only song I can mostly hit the right notes on, and some other feelings made me do that with increasing frequency. The lyrics--"Love of mine / Someday you will die / But I'll be close behind / To follow you into the dark"--capture, in a way, how I feel; because even though none of you, fellow GTLs, are dying, we have dispersed and I want to follow you. I'll admit that maybe I forgot the "it's nothing to cry about" line of the song the afternoon of our last day. Actually, as I was crossing the street with Dana back to the hotel I started straight-up bawling like I haven't done in public ever, but at least I was laughing uncontrollably too.

Adib, Alexia, Alhassan, Ali, Anjali, Anoop, Dana, Ellen, Faisal, Francis, Hector, Jack, Jake, Jasel, Karen, Khaoula, Morgan, Natalia, Natasha, Nick, Rameez, Saajan, Sheila, Sienna, Souhail, Sudarshan, Tharon, Victoria, Yash: thank you for making me feel countless emotions more powerfully than I have before. Sometimes I'm bad at being effusive out loud, but the following words are things I would say to your faces: at Three Dot Dash I got everything from my longest hug to the best of friends, and I only hope that in some small way I might have repaid you with a percentage of the happiness I felt last week.

Love you,

Adora

wrangling with Christmas trees

There's something beautiful about the scent of pine, all those terpines and phenols, as it fills the living room. It's a scent so distinctly Northwestern, fresh, rainy, and clean, that I think I'm going to miss it when I move for college, when I go and live someplace where these trees aren't ubiquitous.

Getting our Christmas tree into the house is always a bit more of a struggle for my family than most. My dad lops it down from our front yard, since we have an abundance of trees, and then tries to cut it down to size so it'll fit through the door without mimicking a medieval battering ram in function as well as form.

As I look at our bush-like tree, twinkling merrily in its garb of lights and ornaments, I realize I wouldn't have it any other way.

smells like school spirit

It's that time of year again, for school colors to come out, pompoms to wave, dress-up days, skits...a.k.a., the decadent pageantry during Homecoming Spirit Week. It occurred to me today that school spirit isn't all that different from patriotism. We have yells and chants, rousing music, we dress up in our school colors like people wear the flag on the 4th. And like patriotism, it's something almost everyone at least pretends to have. But I wonder if, like with patriotism, there's questioning underneath.

Because the thing is, at some point you realize that you ended up in your country not because of any awesome membership in the elect chosen to reside there, not because of some predestined fate, not because of anything that makes you uniquely American or Chinese or South African or what have you, but because of luck--because of accident of birth. And luck is something that is very difficult to be proud of.

To me, it makes little sense to have pride in such accidental membership. It justifies pride based not on the actions that should evoke it but rather because self-preservation dictates that you support your own group. Is this to say that we should disavow our allegiances because of what petty cause we have for them? Not at all.

Just, instead of rah-rah'ing for our mascot or our school's name or (in the case of patriotism) our country, we should celebrate ideals. And if in the process we find that our ideals may be more universal than our school spirit cheers or our patriotic sentiments, that's a good thing. (Guess what, it's easier to get someone to agree with "freedom, justice, and equality" than "I love America!") So why be divisive when we can unite around the things that really matter? I don't know about you, but I really care more about what we stand for than our name, our colors, or (sorry!) whether our football team won at the HC game tonight.

I think we should be proud of our schools. But I think we should have better reasons than, "because I go there." I'm proud because the amazing friends and classmates who performed at the Homecoming assembly today had creativity and drive. The folks who created clubs and rallied members to raise awareness and fundraise today inspire with their leadership and dedication. These kinds of strengths provide ideals we should celebrate.

Sure, it's hard to use face paint and pompoms to cheer on something as abstract as an ideal; but if we hope to give a glimpse of who we truly are, whether as the people of a nation or the students of a school, we will always have to go far deeper than a name.

Remarks at the National Press Club for the Women's Media Center Girls' State of the Union

Today I had the awesome opportunity to speak at the National Press Club in Washington DC to deliver remarks around girls and feminism, due to winning the Women's Media Center "Girls' State of the Union" contest earlier this year. Feminist icon (and tremendous role model) Gloria Steinem introduced me, and I delivered the following remarks.

I’d like to thank the Women’s Media Center for the tremendous opportunity to speak here today, and Ms. Steinem for the introduction—I’m honored. I’ve looked up to Ms. Steinem ever since I knew what feminism was. It’s not every day that you get introduced by an icon, so I may have to, at some point, pinch myself. I’m grateful for the introduction because, to be quite honest, it’s very hard for me to choose how to introduce myself sometimes—I feel like I have to choose somehow, because of the wide range of things I do, causes I support, or roles I embody—student, writer, teacher, activist. So a defining moment for me was when we were asked to introduce ourselves on the first day of my philosophy course at Stanford over the summer. I looked around the room, opened my mouth, and said: “I’m a feminist.”

My convictions didn’t start with finding a way to introduce myself, of course; they started gradually, and in some unlikely places. You see, growing up, like probably a lot of you, I loved princesses. I loved their fancy tiaras and elaborate dresses, convoluted names and inherited power. Now, this could have easily gone in the other direction—the influence of too many princesses getting rescued by Prince Charmings on white horses could have made me buy into this image of feminine as weak—except for the fact that I loved history, too. So in the pages of books, I did find my role models, just maybe not the role models most people would expect. I found Elizabeth the First infinitely cooler than Cinderella, because being imprisoned in the Tower of London while evading the possibility of your sister calling for your execution seems a lot tougher than throwing down a glass slipper. The lesson that being a bookworm taught me was that for every Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, there was a Catherine the Great or Joan of Arc or Eleanor Roosevelt. And when I starting writing my own stories, I determined that there had to be some characters who didn’t fit the stereotype of the “good little girl.” That came naturally to me, because that was around the same time I decided I was a feminist.

But I wonder why those three little words, “I’m a feminist,” can be so hard for girls and guys to say. When it is said, it’s often followed by some sort of apologetic qualifier—“…but, I still like when guys hold doors for me” and the like. Or it’s used in a pick-and-choose way, like “I’m a feminist when it comes to this,” or disavowed entirely “I wouldn’t call myself a feminist,” but then followed by an acknowledgement of current wrongs in society and a belief in equality for women that basically makes the speaker a feminist in all but name.
Be honest—you’ve probably done it, or you’ve seen it done.

We shouldn’t ever feel like we have to qualify, deny, or apologize for our belief in what’s right: equality. We can stop being scared of feminism. We need to make it cool, not scary or weird, to say, “I’m a feminist.” In Iowa during the Republican primaries there was a pledge going around, asking the candidates to affirm their family values. I would love for a feminism pledge to go around Congress. That might sound radical to some people. “Aren’t feminists those scary man-hating ladies in giant shoulder-padded power suits?” they might think. Not quite. According to the dictionary, feminism is just advocating “social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.” Definitions have power, because when you tell people that’s what a feminist is they sit up and say, “Well I guess then I’m a feminist.”

If we all take this step, of affirming the importance of feminism, it will have a huge impact. But the people who will ultimately be able to make the most change--the people who should speak up the most--the people who will ultimately carry the feminist movement onwards--are today’s young people. Us. We need to make sure that today’s boys and girls know at least as much about the lives of Susan B. Anthony or Gloria Steinem as they do about Kim Kardashian or Snooki. That’s a vision of the girls’ state of the union that I as a teenage girl, hope to see. One where equality, respect, and fairness for all are more than ideals for the nation, but words embodied each and every day. Yet this vision may seem elusive in the present day. Talking to my peers, opinion seems to be split; some are well-informed and know that the work of feminism isn’t over; others point to how far we’ve come and question the necessity of the movement’s modern continuance.

And society has, in many ways, conditioned us to think that way, with artificial constructions of token “girl power” yet excessive segregation and limitation in the merchandise we’re offered, media we consume, and more. If we go on a shopping trip, a simple jaunt down the toys aisle can tell you that something is wrong. It’s easy to see what’s for girls and what’s for boys. The boys get star wars figurines and superheroes, and the girls get Barbies with feet made for high heels or Disney princesses sitting pretty and waiting for Prince Charming to rescue them.

Now you wander down to the magazine section and start looking at the selection for teenage girls: Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Teen Vogue, Girl’s Life. Relationships, celebrities, gossip, hair and makeup advice, “how to get flat abs” on every cover—what more could a teen girl want?

Now you’ve come to the clothing and shoes section. The high heels get higher and higher. In the juniors’ clothing section, almost every bra’s a pushup. You wonder why.
This department store experience might be virtual, but the merchandise within it isn’t. As a five-year-old, I had proportionally incorrect dolls; as a teenager, I see magazines marketed to girls that seem to value beauty over brains, and I see clothes that sell too much on the basis of “less is more,” especially if it’s lacy and pink.

I don’t think that the women I look up to got to where they are now because of Barbiesque figures; I think it took smarts and persistence and hard work. These aren’t the traits that are emphasized on store shelves with merchandise for girls. And misrepresentation of girls continues through adulthood. On TV we see the exploits of the Real Housewives of *insert city here*--stereotypical catfighting—and on Jersey Shore, the drunken adventures of Nicole Polizzi, aka Snooki. Is it right that Snooki, who I hope will never be an influence in government and policy, has significantly more name recognition than Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior advisor? Who would you rather have your daughters looking up to?

We teenage girls hear a lot of mixed messages. We hear things like inside beauty is more important than outside beauty, love who you are, be yourself; and then we hear things like a quote from Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, discouraging Michelle Obama’s healthy eating campaign by saying, “She has a large posterior herself.” Is this an appropriate comment for anyone, man or woman, Democrat or Republican, to make? Hillary Clinton once said, “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.” Michelle Obama’s outfits are headline news items. Is this how you would want to be evaluated all the time, by your outward appearance? Step out the door and everything you wear, how you look, whether you’re wearing makeup or not, is scrutinized?

If there is any silver lining to growing up in an environment that tells us appearance is everything, it’s this: we should know from reading enough issues of CosmoGirl or Seventeen how to make something look good. But instead of lipstick or foundation on our skin, we can use feminism to give society a makeover. Making over society is what the Women’s Media Center is doing. Girls are taking action. The SPARK Summit petition asking that Seventeen Magazine provide girls with images of real girls, unaltered by Photoshopping, led to Seventeen vowing to change their ways. High school students Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel, and Elena Tsemberis successfully pushed for a female moderator in the presidential debates. Emma is a graduate of the Women’s Media Center Progressive Girls’ Voices training.

This kind of action is grassroots, it’s effective, and it’s needed. You see, by staying silent, apologizing for speaking up, or criticizing those who do, we’re falling into a waiting-for-Prince-Charming trap: the idea that someone else will come along and do the heavy lifting to rescue us.

But by fighting for ourselves, not being afraid to speak up, and using media to amplify our voices, we can do the rescuing ourselves—because progress doesn’t work the way of fairytales. Progress is a story we ourselves get to write. There are girls who aren’t waiting to write this story. They are taking action now, and it’s worth remembering on this International Day of the Girl that in some other countries, girls are risking their very lives to do so. Fourteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai, an activist for girls’ education in Pakistan, was shot and grievously injured by the Taliban for her courageous work. Malala is still fighting for her life in a hospital. But what is uplifting in this story—aside from the tremendous bravery of one girl—is the solidarity of her community. Men, women, and children condemned the hateful, cowardly action of her attacker. And this quote stuck with me, as I watched the nightly news last night—a girl from Malala’s hometown, saying something along the lines of, “For every girl they try to silence, there will be thousands of us angry and ready to speak up.”

Are we angry?

Yes we are.

Are we ready to speak up?

Yes we are.

Thank you.

Music tastes and summer

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
- "Dog Days are Over," Florence + the Machine

What better way to start a post about my music tastes--and summer, or what's left of it--than with the refrain of "Dog Days are Over," from Florence + the Machine's first album, Lungs. You can probably already tell that I'm going through a serious fan phase right now. :) I personally prefer Ceremonials, though. Its haunting, ethereal quality has a way of surrounding you. I've had "No Light, No Light" stuck in my head more often than not, ever since I first heard it. ("No light, no light in your bright blue eyes / I never knew daylight could be so violent" and onwards.) "Never Let Me Go" is hands-down my favorite from Ceremonials ("Looking out from underneath, / Fractured moonlight on the sea / Reflections still look the same to me, / As before I went under"). These are lines that stick with you and rise up from memory at moments as passing, yet haunting, as the songs themselves. 

The Beatles, the Who, and Simon and Garfunkel round out the oldies music likes (a.k.a., soundtrack to my childhood, since my dad has always pretty much stuck to the radio station that plays 60s music). Mumford and Sons, Regina Spektor, Lily Allen, Lana del Rey, Gorillaz, Natalie Merchant, and This Is Your Captain Speaking (a local band, actually--they're really good) are current likes. So there. An unexpected consequence of all my Spotify-ing this summer: I finally have a solid answer for when people ask me "What kind of music do you like?" that doesn't rely on process of elimination.

So the discovery of the magic of earphones/listening to music that isn't necessarily what the rest of the family listens to (those two things are totally connected, by the way) aside, this summer has been pretty amazing. I like to say that ephemerality makes everything sweeter, and this summer felt so exceptionally short. One of my favorite quotes is this one, from Kate Chopin (this is the ending of her short story, "A Pair of Silk Stockings"):

"The play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed out. It was like a dream ended. People scattered in all directions. Mrs Sommers went to the corner and waited for the cable car.

A man with keen eyes, who sat opposite to her, seemed to like the study of her small, pale face. It puzzled him to decipher what he saw there. In truth, he saw nothing – unless he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever."
- Kate Chopin, "A Pair of Silk Stockings"

That quote (the story, in some ways) captures me; it'd be easy to make that cable car the metaphor for this summer, too. Much as I'm sure school is going to be fun, much as I look forward to various projects I'll be staring, journeys to embark on, TEDxRedmond hectic final planning to do, I've loved this summer and the people in it and I'll miss the cable car moments--those enthralling type that make me want to stay frozen in a memory forever. 

But...
Leave all your love and your longing behind you
Can't carry love with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses
'Cause here they come
- "Dog Days are Over," Florence + the Machine

TEDxRedmond announcement

from TxR committee member Rosalyn Leban--http://alwaysseventhbest.tumblr.com/post/30286248076

"So, if you’re under 20 and you live in Seattle, there’s this really cool conference called TEDxRedmond. And you can come even if you’re like 120 but your ticket is FREE if you’re under 20.
But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that we’re having a youth art gallery, and if you’re an artist, you should email christinmd@gmail.com for more information. But, if you don’t have finished works that you want to display, there’s another opportunity to get your name out there: puzzle pieces! On the set! Where everyone can see them!
We’re giving out 1sqft puzzle pieces to the first 72 people to contact us.
How to get your puzzle piece on the set (and your free ticket):

1. Sign up to attend the conference here.
2. Email rosalynleban@gmail.com to request your puzzle piece
3. Recieve and design your puzzle piece
4. Send the piece back by September 10th
5. Come to the conference on September 15th and see your work on the set!

How to showcase your art in the gallery:

1. Sign up to attend the conference here.
2. Email christinmd@gmail.com for more information
3. Deliver your artwork
4. Come to the conference on September 15th and see your work in the gallery!"

Blogs worth reading, my music tastes, and summer. And TEDxRedmond. And polysyndeton, apparently.

I'm not sure what it is with teenage girls in Washington State, but we have a thing for blog writing. So much so that I have three recommendations of thoughtful, lyrically-written, far-more-frequently-updated-than-mine blogs. By...you guessed it. Girls in Washington State.

Is it the water here?

Delitescency, by Niyathi
The first is a new find: "Delitescency," with the not unambitious tagline of "A teenager's view on human nature," is quietly beautiful; its sentiments, those both grave and whimsical, remind me of myself at odd moments. A quote: "This blog sets me free." Liberation is one of my favorite words, so this blog speaks to a kindred spirit. I highly recommend the post "Doll Dilemmas." Oh, that's one more thing: Niyathi and I both beheaded our Barbies. I promise, less disturbing than it sounds. Indeed, reading the blog gives one a sense of deepness and remove (in its consideration of issues of human nature, for instance) and immediate relatability, a rare gift. - http://delitescency.blogspot.com/

Merry Go Round, by Christina
I know Christina from our work together on the TEDxRedmond committee, but seeing the depth of her writing finesse provoked the same reaction from me as seeing a video of her singing: "What have you been hiding from us all this time?" :) The description--"a ride through the optimistic side of life and all its wonders" provides a clear introduction to the tone and mood of the site. From happy tidbits of all sorts--pictures, quotes, life updates--to moving poems (one of my favorites is "Noir," with lines like "Yesterday's tea was the color of deception" and "praying to the deep blues on the wallpaper to take us in"), Christina's blog is an enchanting merry-go-round indeed - http://christina-merry-go-round.blogspot.com/

Allegro, by Maya
Maya is a friend, TEDxRedmond colleague, and fellow poet of mine (I fondly recall our work together on the City of Redmond Centennial Poetry project). She truly brings the best of all her many strengths to her blog: clarity, dedication, and serious consideration of every issue. Though her non-fiction writing is indubitably excellent, her poetry is the most magnetic aspect of her blog; I consistently envy her ease in creating poems of ethereal, wistful images with clear precision. Maya has the skill of bringing an image close enough that you can grasp it--before it slips through your fingers like so many grains of precious sand. My favorite stanza, the last, of her poem "Fireflies":
"Laugh.
Open your hands
and watch dancing lights
fade into fluorescence."
Her blog is many dancing lights. - http://mayaganesan.blogspot.com/

Since I like polysyndeton I'm keeping the ridiculous title of this blog, but I'm actually going to write about all those things in my next post.