El Nombre del Viento, and Vlogging ftw

Hello all.

Well, I’ve prepared my first vlog for your viewing pleasure.  Understand that there is a thick layer of sarcasm coating it.  As in I don’t actually feel left out or anything.  The rest of it is pretty accurate.  Get ready for magic.

(UPDATE: Try watching it below, if it still doesn't work follow this link.  Sorry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apMaaaNXtR4)

I apologize for the awkward hand-raise at the end there, hahaha.  Not sure where that came from.  And the accidental bad word.  Oops.  P.S. I picked one of my earlier takes because soon after this everything started to sound a little scripted.  It’s harder than it looks, people.  As someone who has no camera presence, it was the best I could do.

So Devin and I have begun our journey into The Name of the Wind, which is the namesake of this post, only in Spanish.  It was Devin’s idea; he checked it out from the library on his own accord.  I understand I sound like a proud mother, but I was pretty impressed with him coming up with that on his own, because I have only briefly acknowledged my desire to read it in order to avoid the whole “murder in my sleep” thing.

We are enjoying it.  I have theories that are all probably wrong, but I’m definitely enjoying it and will update you on that as time progresses.

I don’t think I’ll do a full weekly update, because I don’t do those very well.  But the big event for me this week was Take Back the Night, which was totally cool.  It was also a totally feminist event and I can already feel the ridicule coming from the male half of our blog.  But just slow down here.  In 1995 at a UN Conference on Women, Hillary Clinton got it right when she said, “it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”  And that was almost twenty years ago.

I’m not going to go on a rant about why you guys should care, because I get it.  You’re not a girl and you don’t see the same stuff I do, being a girl and all.

The epic Brazilian drum core ladies.

Anyway, this event was about eliminating the pervasive rape culture that exists here and around the world.  It started with a performance by an all-female Brazilian-style drum core called Batala.  Then we marched around campus, following their loud drummer-ness, and then we gathered in the church for testimonials.  Where basically a lot of female students went up and talked about being sexually assaulted.  Rape, for me, is not a women’s rights issue, as many people seemed to think it was (since almost everyone there was a girl, and, while I didn’t stay until the end, all of the survivors of sexual assault were female as well).  It is a human rights issue, and one that guys should care about.  I’m not saying that this event is going to stop all rape and let’s all go save the world (I mean, yes, let’s all go save the world), but I do think it’s important for a community that says “this is not okay” to form.  Because most rape testimonials started off either at parties, where there are a lot of bystanders that could step in, or when the survivor was a child.  Making this issue a priority to both men and women now means that in the future, we can be better at protecting our children from this horrendous stuff.

People outside during a brief candlelight vigil.

Because it is horrendous stuff, and I think it is as pertinent to guys as it is to girls.  Because guys have a lot of friends, and if instead of joking about women making them sandwiches, people had serious conversations about this stuff, I think lives could be drastically improved.  Bottom line, every guy has a mother, a sister or aunt or grandma, a girlfriend, or a female friend, that they would want to protect from rape.  And I’m not encouraging patriarchy, because that’s how we got into this mess anyway.  I’m saying, even if only 10% of rape victims are male (which is a lot, I don’t mean ‘only’ as in it’s not a significant portion), it’s a guy issue, too, dammit.  And there I go sounding preachy and that’s not what I’m trying to do.  But if you aren’t going to make it better by standing up and doing the training and keeping an eye out and all, at least don’t make it worse.  Don’t make it okay for stuff like that to happen.  Because more people have been sexually abused, violated, or assaulted, than you think.  And that’s a fat problem in my opinion.

Anyway, I left the event feeling totally moved and bummed out because I think we should be past the point where rape is so commonplace.  I got a pamphlet there, so I have no idea where they got these statistics, but it said “1 in 5 women will experience some form of sexual assault or rape during their college years”, and 1 in 3 in her lifetime and “1 in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime”.  Again, I think those stats are national, and I think that they are accurate, but even if they are a little high, it’s still too high.  Sorry about the lack of guarantee here.  Haha.  That’s as close as I can get.

Anyway, not to end the blog on such a dismal note.  Rape is bad but we can all reduce instances of sexual violence by keeping an eye out at parties and just in general.  I don’t mean to be Debby Downer, because I just want to be me.  I just occasionally have to use this blog as a venting place because the world is a big imperfect blob and where better to talk about that than somewhere where smart people will read it and find ways to make these problems better?  Nowhere.

Definitely didn't talk about Harper's Ferry.  That's another blog for another Friday.  It was epic though.  Majorly epic.  History went down.

Good night, and be proud of your vlogging, Name-of-the-Wind-reading friend.

-Rachael (& Devin because he’s also reading it.  Always gotta rep my boy. <3)