Happy #Flyday everyone!! Saturday is Global Big Day!! I hope we have as much luck as we did last weekend with this GORGEOUS Hooded Warbler! Let’s GOOOO! #hoodedwarbler #warbler #lucky #lifer #globalbigday #letsgo #birdwatching #nycaudubon #nycnature #nycparks #nycbirds #bird #birding #brooklynbirding #brooklyn #greenwoodcemetery #floweringtree #spring #migration #urbanbirding #urbanwildlife #nycwildlife #audubon #wildnyc #myfavoriteseason (at Green-Wood Cemetery)
seven costume theater moments; lydia!mr. bennet/lizzie/jane and ricky!mrs. bennet/darcy/bing – episode 37 “Rule number one about Lizzie’s diaries, they’re Lizzie’s diaries. She sees what she wants to see, now stay in character!”
“The OMB outline for the Commerce Department for fiscal 2018 proposed sharp reductions in specific areas within NOAA such as spending on education, grants and research. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would lose $126 million, or 26 percent, of the funds it has under the current budget. Its satellite data division would lose $513 million, or 22 percent, of its current funding under the proposal. The National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service would be fortunate by comparison, facing only 5 percent cuts…. The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, known as the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, which includes a key repository of climate and environmental information, the National Centers for Environmental Information. Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress. Another proposed cut would eliminate a $73 million program called Sea Grant, which supports coastal research conducted through 33 university programs across the country. That includes institutions in many swing states that went for President Trump, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, the University of Florida and North Carolina State University.”
I’m about to be more sexually explicit than I normally am on Twitter …
This NYT story about girls and sex made me wish I’d put masturbation scenes into all my YA books. Normally my authorial lens doesn’t focus on sex, and I don’t think it HAS to or SHOULD – but girls need women to talk about sex more.
In a review for Eleanor & Park, some guy wrote that Park wasn’t a convincing 16-year-old boy because he doesn’t think about his penis enough. And I thought, one: I’m pretty sure male authors aren’t required to make male characters talk constantly about the D just to prove something. And two: It didn’t bother this guy (or the guys in the comments) AT ALL that Eleanor never thinks/talks about her CLITORIS. (Like, maybe these guys don’t know about the clitoris?) (It’s possible.) I mean, also, I think 16-year-old boys do lots of thinking/feeling above the belt. But the assumption that girls do NOTHING below theirs …
People frequently ask me whether Eleanor and Park, or Cath and Levi, or Simon and Baz have sex within their books – and the answer is no. I really want all three of those couples to be mature and ready and emotionally safe with each other before they have sex. (My headcanon.) But I also want all of those characters to feel great about sex and themselves, and to masturbate and know their own bodies … I’m really not sure how much of that I’ll ever get into a book, or what my responsibility is.