Living on next to nothing…while we shell out $6.2 billion to broke Walmart workers

By Caitlin Kelly

No travel…too expensive!

Have you lived in poverty?

A recent 150+ comment thread at, of all places, Apartment Therapy — a design blog usually devoted to featuring people’s fun, cool homes worldwide — offered a painful, insightful, timely conversation on how some of its readers survive(d) on low or minimum wage jobs.

A few of them:

Charities can only do so much for people, and frankly, when I was living below the poverty line, I chose not to take advantage of a lot of those programs, even though I likely could have, because there were other people who needed it more than I did, and I was getting by, if only just. I was lucky to have no car payment, and a car that was in good condition so the maintenance costs were relatively low. I did, however, end up with pneumonia, because although I had health insurance (I was paying out of pocket for it) I couldn’t afford the copay to go to the doctor and get my Prevacid (not OTC at the time) and as a result I got sick, because untreated acid reflux can do that to you.

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Even though I pared down to the absolute bare minimum and had a roommate, I was constantly worrying about my car (but couldn’t manage without it), and paying for food, heat, and health care. Any time I got a few dollars ahead, I had some money-sucking but necessary expense. Living on the edge of poverty wore me out. The kicker was that making minimum wage, I made too much to get food stamps and other “help for the poor”. (Adults with children could get help, and adults with disabilities, but the thinking was that if you could work, you didn’t need “hand-outs”.)

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For many years, I made more than enough money so I could comfortably afford a house, buy food & necessities, invest and have some fun, too. Approximately two years ago, my position was eliminated from a very reputable company in the area where I live. I can say that I have never fully “recovered”, financially and emotionally speaking. I’ve run the gamut from tearing through my 401k, applying for assistance, working my share of odd jobs and asking family for help. I’ve been forced to learn a new way of living and the bottom line is that living on minimum wage is DIFFICULT…period. Navigating assistance applications can be daunting and because of my assets (owning a home-by some miracle-still) it just wasn’t happening. I can tell you that I have learned to live simpler, though, w/less trips to the clothing store, no more manicures/pedicures every two weeks, etc. Is it such a bad thing? Not really, but “living simpler” ends up going hand in hand with “what do I do now” in reference to the next utility bill, grocery bill, financial emergency, etc. I do believe the sad thing is that individuals that “do the right thing” such as going to school, working hard, etc can still find themselves in this situation. It constantly makes me think “what did I do wrong” and “what do I do now?”

Having lived in five countries — my native Canada, Mexico, France, England and the U.S. (since 1988) — I’m never clear why Americans, some of whom protest that they have “played by the rules,” are so stunned to find their laissez-faire capitalist system has turned against them.

The rules are not made for their benefit!

People who sneer at the idea of accepting (or asking for) government assistance may never have struggled in utter desperation, saddled by illness, disability, injury and/or the collapse of their industry. And many people can never hope for a penny from their friends or relatives.

You can’t bootstrap without bootstraps.

Nor why some of them feel ashamed even asking for help when they have done everything possible to help themselves.

According to this National Geographic story, (August 2014), a staggering six percent of Americans are now “food insecure” and the number of those needing help paying for this food in the suburbs has doubled; here is a radio interview with the author, Tracie McMillan.

While some people can move in with a friend or relative, many don’t have that option and have to figure it out on their own. New York pays a maximum of $410/week in in unemployment benefits, taxable income. Yet in New York City, very few people of any age can find housing for less than $1,000/month. Do the math!

If you’re young, highly-educated, willing to move anywhere a job requires it, in excellent health and flexible — you’ll probably survive. But every one of those categories can shift, as does the labor market and the larger economy.

Nicaragua — the second-poorest nation after Haiti — where annual income is $1,080

I struggled financially for all four years of university, even though my annual tuition was only $600/year. I was living on $350/month and the rent on my studio apartment was $160. I still had to pay for food, phone, books, public transportation, dental work, clothing, etc. My family had too much money for me to get student aid, yet were uninterested in helping me.

So I started selling my photos and writing freelance at the end of my sophomore year — and missed a lot of classes and other cute/fun college activities — in order to bring in additional income. My GPA is a bad joke, one reason I’ve never even considered graduate education. I had to survive!

Luckily, I was able to feed, house, clothe and educate myself. I can still tell you exactly what was in my wardrobe during those years as there was so little of it. I lived in a rough neighborhood until I was attacked in my apartment and moved.

I never, ever want to feel that anxious about money again.

Low-wage or minimum-wage work offers wages so low and hours so few that some workers have to go on food stamps.

Walmart, reports Forbes, cost us $6.2 billion in public assistance to its struggling staff. They “can’t afford” to pay better, so it’s up to us to bail out a for-profit corporation. Don’t you love the irony of corporate welfare?

Have you struggled to survive financially? Are you now? How are you managing?

The freelance life: hustle or die!

By Caitlin Kelly

My story in July 2014 Cosmo!

A recent survey by the Freelancers Union is interesting — the New York-based group asked 1,100 people what they think of their freelance life — 88 percent said they would not even take a full-time job if it were offered to them.

How do we know? Our new report we’re releasing today, “How to Live the Freelance Life — Lessons from 1,000 Independents (PDF)” surveyed more than 1,100 freelancers nationwide about their work, money, lifestyle, and values.

The report offers a remarkably clear portrait of America’s fastest-growing workforce.

The biggest takeaway: Nearly 9 in 10 independent workers (88%) would keep freelancing even if they were offered a full-time job.

With that level of freelancer pride, no wonder freelancing is booming. Half the workforce may be independent by 2020. Freelancers Union’s own membership is up 410% since 2007 — and the number of millennial members has surged 3000% in that time.

Here’s a useful 11-point checklist for those hoping to try the freelance life, by writer Laura Shin.

One of the things I find intriguing about freelancing full-time is how differently we each do it.

The basics — earning reliable income every month — never change. We pay the same prices for gas and groceries and clothing as people with paychecks — who may also get raises, bonuses and commission.

But editors sometimes kill a story and sometimes for capricious reasons, which costs us income; it grabbed $3,000 out of my pocket in the past nine months. Not fun!

We only get what we  negotiate.

I read Laura’s list and I don’t do several things she does:

— My only time measurements are a calendar and the clock, not the cool and efficient apps she and others use to track their time and rates.

— I use a line of credit when people pay me late, or stiff me, instead of relying on short-term savings, (although I usually keep six months’ worth of expenses in the bank for emergencies.)

— I also have no regular monthly gigs, so I start most months with no idea what I’ll make. I have to pull in $2,000 just to meet each month’s expenses — anything after that buys haircuts, clothes, entertainment, vacations. Nor does it cover costly surprises like last month’s $500 car repair bill or last year’s $4,000 (yes) replacement of the head gasket.

It’s also very difficult now to pull $4,000+/month within journalism when most digital sites offer $300 to $500 for a reported story so I seek out print markets paying $1,500 per piece or more instead.

The ideal, for me, is a $4,000+ assignment I can lavish a few weeks’ attention on exclusively but which also allows me some time for marketing smarter, deeper stories just like it. I dislike jumping constantly from one thing to the next, even though maintaining cash-flow  — i.e. a steady supply of payment — demands it.

Unlike Laura, I have a husband with a good job and steady income; he will also have a defined benefit pension, which reduces our need to save quite as aggressively for retirement. (We still do it anyway!)

Here’s a powerful and depressing story from The Wall Street Journal (aka capitalism’s cheerleader) about why Americans are unhappy with work/life balance — as they have so little of it!

And another story about why so many employers are choosing to hire freelancers.

Ellen, a new Broadside follower, writes here about why she quit her job to go freelance — doing data entry — and is loving her new freedom.

And this, from The Guardian, about the absolutely desperate financial reality of being an author — only 11.5 percent of whom earned their living solely from writing. Their median income? A scary 11,000 pounds — or $18, 826 — which actually sounds high to me!

This New York Times piece — about how much freelance writers really make —  got a lot of traction:

That answer may be not be as much as some might hope, at least at the outset. Ms. Dieker, who also posts her monthly freelance income on her Tumblr, says that she’s hoping to make $40,000 gross this year, but that other freelancers routinely ask her how she manages to make that much when they’re bringing in much less. She also notes that she’s making a lot more than when she started out: “Like any other career, you grow it.”

I’ve had staff jobs and enjoyed them. I’ve had colleagues and enjoyed them. I do miss a steady, 100% reliable paycheck.

And I have yet to earn the equivalent of my last staff salary. I’m not sure I ever will, much as I try.

But you also get used to making your own schedule. You get used to seeking out clients you enjoy, not tolerating and sucking up to your coworkers or bosses, at worst, just to stay employed.

And watching so many journalism staffers lose their jobs? Not cool! When freelancers lose a client, and it happens, we just go find another one, or several.

Freelancers, as the survey proves, cherish our freedom to manage our time; while writing this blog post I also had time to make soup, marinate salmon for dinner and do a little light housework. My husband was working from home that day, so we also had some time to chat and enjoy lunch together.

I started my workday at 7:30 a.m., wrote and filed one story; started work on another and cold-called an editor I’d pitched last month. We had a great chat and — cha-ching! — she may actually have a $4,000 assignment for me sometime later this year.

I’ve already nailed down an assignment in England for January 2015 and am discussing one in Argentina. Few staff jobs offer that kind of range.

But you must hustle! As business guru Seth Godin writes here, on his blog, if you can’t sell what you do, you’ll never make a penny at it — no matter your education, hard work or talent.

Would you prefer to be freelance?

Or do you like working for someone more?

Freelancers can attend a mid-week matinee!

 

I get paid to do this? When work is joy

By Caitlin Kelly

A print on polyester — I had a long convo with the designer!

Sometimes work is sheer drudgery, the thing we can’t wait to flee at day’s, week’s or career’s end.

But sometimes, when we’re lucky, it’s pure joy.

A young friend of mine is traveling throughout SouthEast Asia for three months leading tours and photographing it all. She — yes, really! — fell off an elephant, and into the Mekong River in Laos recently. I awoke in suburban New York to her panicked email from the other side of world asking for my husband’s email; (he’s her mentor and a photographer.)

Here’s her blog.

Aside from a water-logged camera and lens, she is both working hard and impossibly happy, especially sweet after a New Jersey internship that was exhausting and often formulaic.

Two fabrics from a Montreal distributor

Last week was like this for me.

As a full-time freelance journalist, I work on a wide variety of stories and assignments, from coaching fellow writers to writing personal essays for The New York Times. I also do less glamorous stuff like covering trade shows.

A booth filled with vintage clothing, used for inspiration

This week I covered three, all held in New York City, where I live — (and my feet are sore!) — interviewing their organizers and some of their many vendors.

The first show, Premiere Vision, brings together 300+ textile, lace, button and zipper manufacturers to meet the people who need their goods to make the clothes we will buy in a year from places like Marc Jacobs or Diesel or Tommy Hilfiger.

Isn’t this gorgeous!? Even the sequins are wrapped in mesh

However unlikely, I spent 45 minutes at another show discussing…pockets.

As in: the fabric used to line pockets, specifically of jeans and jackets. I loved this pair of shorts, showing how creatively one can use these fabrics.

Love these!

 

At PV, there’s a whole section of people selling their designs, some of which I now realize adorn my workout clothing — for $500 or $700 you buy their design outright and can use it in whatever way suits your needs. Another few vendors sell scraps of vintage wallpaper and fabric that end up used for pillows by Crate & Barrel and other major retailers.

Yes, it’s fabric! Stretch cotton with a wood-grain surface print

As someone obsessed with textiles and a student of design, this is the most paid fun imaginable — getting to see and touch gorgeous fabrics, meet smart, cool designers and see how it all comes together.

How was your week at work?

 

A bit hard to see — tiny gray crystals attached to pale gray wool, an award-winning Japanese-designed jacket

Men telling women what to do with their bodies, from FGM to lunch

By Caitlin Kelly

Al Araibya reports that women in Iraq now face the prospect of FGM — female genital mutilation:

The al-Qaeda-Inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ordered all girls and women between the ages of 11 and 46 in and around Iraq’s northern city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation, the United Nations said on Thursday.

“It is a fatwa (or religious edict) of ISIS, we learnt this this morning,” said Jacqueline Badcock, the number two U.N. official in Iraq.

The “fatwa” would potentially affect 4 million women and girls, Badcock told reporters in Geneva by videolink from Arbil.

“This is something very new for Iraq, particularly in this area, and is of grave concern and does need to be addressed,” she said, according to Reuters.

Tired of feeling trapped by sexist, misogynist assholes!

And here’s a story from The Guardian about how men feel completely comfortable telling women they do not know personally what or how to eat:

That so many women have reported this frankly quite incredibly patronising experience, is testament to the strength of the myth that a woman’s physical form exists, above all else, to titillate men. It’s the same mistaken assumption that lies behind the command to “give us a smile”, or the belief that a woman in a low-cut top must be looking for male attention.

As incredible as it seems, some women actually experience moments in their lives when their entire sentient being isn’t focused exclusively on providing men pleasure. They might wear a strappy top because they are hot, for example; eat a burger because they are hungry; or drink a diet soda because they quite like the taste. Explosive revelations, I know.

You might laugh, but for some, the belief that a man has an automatic “right” over the body of any woman he encounters in a public space is worryingly ingrained.

Should we laugh, cry, get angry — or start an MGM movement in reply?

Seriously.

 

 

Dumping the past, boxes and boxes of it…

By Caitlin Kelly

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

Holy hell, people!

Have you ever gone through all your stuff: in the attic, in the basement, in the garage, in your storage locker(s)?

Jose and I have ruined spent the past few weekends, for two to four hours each time, cleaning out the dozens of boxes containing the detritus memorabilia of our shared and separate lives.

We live in, and I work in, a one-bedroom apartment with few closets, so we need additional storage space for out-of-season clothing, sports and camping gear, luggage.

But you know the deal — when you don’t know quite what to do with something, you tend to postpone a decision, instead tossing it (if you have space) into the attic, basement, garage or extra bedroom(s.)

Then one day you actually notice how many boxes and tubs there are — enough! Time to sort through it it all.

It’s exhausting, both physically and mentally: sort, decide, dump, donate, sell, keep, give away. Then photograph, measure and list it on Craigslist, Freecycle or Ebay, or drive it to the thrift store or consignment shop.

Or, if it really has potential monetary value, calling in an appraiser and/or dealer.

It’s hard to let go of things if, as many do, they also carry strong, happy emotional memories — your baby’s clothes, your wedding dress, notes for your thesis. It’s who we are, or once were.

It felt very weird to throw my hard-won early New York magazine clips into the garbage, (none of them on-line), but I’m not that person anymore. And no one is going to look at a story from 1995 or 1997!

We were dealing with/deciding about stuff like:

The box filled with all the gorgeous textiles my mother collected in her solo world travels: silk saris, embroidered cotton molas, exquisite woven wool mantas from Peru, all of which have value to a collector or dealer. (Kept them.)

All the wedding photos from my first wedding, filled with a blond, naive, hopeful 35-year-old pretending it was all going to be OK when I knew I was not. (Kept them.)

Huge, heavy piles of yellowed newsprint and tattered magazine pages, some of the hundreds of articles I’ve produced since I began working as a writer 30+ years ago. (Tossed them all. Gulp.)

The research notes for my two books. (Tossed.)

But we also made some happy re-discoveries, like my very first professional business card from the journalism job I loved most, as a feature writer for The Globe and Mail, Canada’s then only national newspaper.

And my sketches, paintings and journals from my trips to Kenya and Tanzania and New Zealand and Australia.

Jose found a signed note on heavy white card stock — The President — from George HW Bush, whom he photographed many times while in the White House Press Corps. I found a signed thank-you letter from the late great American choreographer Bob Fosse, to whom I had written a fan letter.

I still have the small, battered trunk I first took to summer camp when I was eight years old. Yes, I do, dammit!

Have you been cleaning out/tossing stuff?

Yours or someone else’s?

 

 

Why maps beat GPS every time

 

Just a few of our large collection…looking forward to re-using my maps of Paris and London this year!

 By Caitlin Kelly

Call me old-fashioned, but how I love a paper map!

Laminated or not, a map offers so many specific details about where I’m headed, from elevation to campsites to the width of the road to the locations of airports, hospitals — even windmills!

I love the anticipation of reading a map and wondering how the landscape will resemble its contours.

On long road trips, I like having a sense of progression — yup, we passed that exit!

I treasure my battered paper map of Corsica, scene of one of the happiest weeks of my life, anywhere, ever. I had been fired from one magazine job and found a new one a week later, with a healthy raise. Score!

I had one week to enjoy, and knew exactly where I wanted to go, this island off of the southern coast of France, known for its rugged, hilly terrain. I decided to travel by mo-ped, with a top speed of 45 mph, making a circle tour through the Balagne, the northern bit. I used a Frommer’s or Fodor’s guidebook and booked my hotels in advance so all I had to do was get from one to the next.

Heaven!

Imagine driving through the maquis, that scrubby brush filled with sun-warmed herbs, your nostrils filled with its aroma, the sun on your back, winding down hairpin turns to the sea.

I love the details that maps offer — like all the ferry routes marked here. My solo week in Corsica, July 1995, was one of the best of my life!

 

While out there alone, I drove past the Deserts Des Agriates, one of the most eerie and desolate landscapes I’ve ever seen. I had no camera, but will never forget it.

I also love the physicality of maps, how they link us to every explorer before us, from Magellan to Lawrence of Arabia.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve used Mapquest for directions that somehow didn’t work; without a map, I’d have been toast as we don’t have or use GPS.

Imagine one of the Jason Bourne films, (my favorites!), with a robo-voiced GPS instead of him, as he always does in the car chase scenes, driving at top speed through a foreign city while trying to unfold and read an unwieldy map:

— Turn right, assassin to your immediate left!

— Duck!

— Now, duck again!

— Are you still alive?

Here’s a lovely piece about why one man also prefers maps to GPS:

Consider this, though: Using printed maps requires travelers to work together. You become a team. Driver and navigator. Your ability to get along and solve problems is tested in valuable, revealing ways. GPS removes that entire interpersonal dynamic. It encourages a passive form of journeying: sit back and drift, because the vaguely Australian-sounding computer lady will tell you to turn left in a quarter mile.

Driving by map, on the other hand, engages you actively with your surroundings. It makes you observe road signs, be in the moment. And that closer engagement, I’ve found, imprints the landscape more vividly and permanently on your mind. When I return home, I can unfold my maps and take myself back to a town or a stretch of highway.

Often I’ll buy a map months before the trip, and by studying it try to pull the opposite trick — to transport myself into the place I intend to visit. It builds anticipation. Eric Riback, a map publisher in upstate New York who writes a blog called Mapville, described this to me poetically as the “seeking, dreaming part of travel that you can do with a map.”

 

Do you still ever use paper maps?

 

One of the eeriest and most memorable sights of my life — a lunar landscape I saw, alone in the rain, while traveling alone by mo-ped

Why “I hated it” doesn’t count as cultural criticism

By Caitlin Kelly

Early this week, a Broadside reader — thank you!! — generously gave me a ticket to see Elena’s Aria, a work from 1984 by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at the Lincoln Center Festival, an annual event.

The auditorium was packed and I saw many dancers sitting around me, some leaning forward in their seats. The piece was an hour and 45 minutes in length, with no intermission and if you left, you would not be re-admitted.

Commit or else!

I didn’t hate it, but it was a challenging piece in a number of ways:

— It was really long

— It was very repetitive

— Much of it was performed in silence

— Much of it seemed to focus more on movement than pure dance

— It included black and white vintage film footage of buildings being dynamited to shards

I was very curious to read the New York Times’ review:

Made in 1984, it was her first dance to use spoken text and film. The program note describes it as a result of self-questioning, a search for a way forward. And on Sunday at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, when it was performed in New York for the first time since 1987, that’s what it looked like: the work of a young artist who has hit an aesthetic wall and hasn’t yet discovered how to get past it…the overall impression of the work is less of emotional implosion than of expanding boredom. At the end, the women, seated in chairs, cross their legs and run their hands through their hair as part of a Mozart piano sonata plays…As drama, the dance cuts off empathy, but as these women fidget, you know exactly how they feel.

I’m glad I saw it, even if I didn’t love it. I was around the same as the choreographer in 1984 and, like her, had had some terrific early professional success. I remembered what that felt like.

I remember 1984.

I’ve only walked out of one play, as its themes were simply too painful for me personally. And I walked out of the terrifying film The Exorcist as I couldn’t take it.

Generally, I stick around. (Not a boring or poorly-done book. That takes up too much time!)

One reason is that I know what it takes to create a work of art or literature or dance or theater — usually years of training and rehearsal and guts and time and money and ideas and financial backing. Even if the result is atrocious, and it can be, it’s also the result, in many cases, of tremendous effort.

I don’t need to love everything I read, hear, see or listen to as long as there are some useful or intriguing ideas within it. Nor does it have to be quick or short.

It just has to make me think.

How about you?

How do you respond to art or cultural works that make you uneasy, uncomfortable or bored?

The curse of binary thinking

By Caitlin Kelly

When we started dating 14 years ago my now-husband drove me nuts with the phrase he still uses, (and which I now just laugh at):

“We could do one of two things”…

I’m sure — Broadside readers being a smart, educated bunch — some of you surely know, and can explain to me, the underpinnings of such a narrow worldview.

It feels these days as though everyone has joined one side of another. Our worldview is binary:

All or nothing.

Black or white.

Right or wrong.

Gay or straight.

Liberal or conservative.

Pro-choice or pro-life.

Gun control advocate or “gun nut” (not my phrase!)

It feels absurdly and, to me increasingly, stupidly, American.

Hello…Congress?

When most of us know, or realize, that life is a hell of a lot more complicated than that. It is shaded and nuanced. And our most firmly and fixed beliefs can change over time.

I had two moments of this recently, both within an hour, one on-line arguing, (and quickly withdrawing from useless online arguments), with some woman I don’t know in a on-line forum, and the other at my local hardware store.

I was struck, hard, by the realization how easy it is to fall into a habit of thinking (why?) in terms of either/or, not both. Exclusion, not inclusion. Narrowing, not expanding, our notions of the possible.

People who speak several languages and/or have lived for long periods outside of their home culture and/or are married to or partnered with someone of a very different background often move beyond this limited thinking because it is challenged every day.

What we consider “normal” is simply normal for us.

The first argument was over work and its relative importance in our lives.

Americans — especially those who have never lived beyond their borders — often feel that working really hard all the time is the single most useful thing to do with one’s life. Being “successful” materially is the classic goal. And a very skimpy social safety net ensures that few can stray far from the grindstone because unless you’re debt-free, rich and/or have a shit-ton of savings, you will soon be broke and homeless and then, missy, you’ll be sorry!

The woman I was arguing with, a manager within my industry, kept positing two poles — marathoner/ambitious/admirable or useless/annoying/slacker. For fucks’ sake.

Very few people love their work every day until they die. If they do, awesome! But making anyone who doesn’t agree feel the same way somehow less than, or imputing slackerdom to their ambivalence, is bullshit.

Some people actually work for the money. Not passion.

For many people — and not simply “slackers” — their true passions and joys lie beyond the workplace: faith, family, travel, volunteer work, pets, and/or creative projects that simply make them, and others, happy.

My second “Duh!” moment happened while trying to buy gray matte-finish paint for our balcony railings. There was only white and black on offer. The sales clerk and I stood there staring at the cans, my frustration growing, his boredom blossoming.

I was pissed there wasn’t exactly what I wanted — when it was right there in front of me for the seeing of it, and making it myself.

Black plus white = gray.

How embarrassing that it took us so long to figure that out. I felt like an utter fool for not noticing that right away. It was a great wake-up call.

Do you find yourself trapped into this way of thinking?

What would it take for you to even consider the value of the other side of an argument?

When “the authorities” fail you, campus rapists go free

By Caitlin Kelly

 

Colleges look so serious and authoritative. They can fail you in life-altering ways

Powerful story  about one female student’s attempt to get justice at a pair of upstate New York colleges, Hobart and William Smith, after being raped, from the front page of The New York Times:

Later, records show, a sexual-assault nurse offered this preliminary assessment: blunt force trauma within the last 24 hours indicating “intercourse with either multiple partners, multiple times or that the intercourse was very forceful.” The student said she could not recall the pool table encounter, but did remember being raped earlier in a fraternity-house bedroom.

The football player at the pool table had also been at the fraternity house — in both places with his pants down — but denied raping her, saying he was too tired after a football game to get an erection. Two other players, also accused of sexually assaulting the woman, denied the charge as well. Even so, tests later found sperm or semen in her vagina, in her rectum and on her underwear.

It took the college just 12 days to investigate the rape report, hold a hearing and clear the football players. The football team went on to finish undefeated in its conference, while the woman was left, she said, to face the consequences — threats and harassment for accusing members of the most popular sports team on campus.

Things to consider:

–– this student’s naievete, about fraternity behavior, getting drunk, trusting her own judgment to get the hell out when she began (as she did) to feel scared

— the boys’ crime, shrugged off by the college and D.A.

— the school’s inept approach to adjudicating serious crime

— larger questions about how much a college is “in loco parentis”, responsible for students’ behavior

— the extremely un-PC point that women should keep their damn wits about them if they’re going to hang out with a bunch of men anywhere in the world they do not know well. Even those they think they do know well. Getting so drunk you cannot remember your actions is pure insanity, as is trusting everyone else around you to take responsibility for your sobriety and sexuality. If you would no sooner stand in the middle of  a six-lane highway and just kinda hope people would — you know — swerve around you, why endanger yourself by drinking to mindless oblivion?

I went to a few fraternity parties when I was a student at the University of Toronto. They were always crowded and noisy, filled with young men I didn’t know in another circumstances. The preppy crowd was really never a great fit for me.

Luckily, I was never assaulted.

But nor did I ever attend them, or while there choose to become, blind drunk.

I never want to be out of control to that degree, anywhere, ever.

Later in my life, I made the disastrous error in judgment of dating a con man, a man who had been convicted of that crime in another state. My interactions with my local police and district attorney were appalling, eye-opening and life-changing.

The authorities, in whom I’d placed my middle-class tax-paying home-owning trust —  simply didn’t give a shit.

I have never looked at “the authorities” with the same naive respect since then, and that was 16 years ago.

This stupid school also later had male students walk around campus in high heels — for fucks’ sake — to show their empathy and solidarity with female vulnerability.

Better they should have borrowed a vagina and gone to a party full of entitled jocks.

And here is just one of 1,700+ (!) comments on the story, from a reader in L.A. (This might be the most comments I’ve ever seen on a NYT story.)

How many more stories of hallowed institutions misusing their authority to protect athlete rapists and either silence and/or denigrate rape victims must we hear about before victims just automatically eschew campus governance entirely and go directly to law enforcement? When will matriculating students and their parents confront head on that basketball and football are not the only long standing team sports woven deep into the cultural fabric of their chosen college? I am so tired of hearing about rape and rapist protection culture built in to religious and academic institutions. I would tell any entering freshman who experiences sexual assault to rush themselves to the hospital for a comprehensive rape examination and then go straight to the police. Only then would I report the incident to the school.

 What — if anything — can or should colleges and universities be doing better to stop campus rape?

What — if anything — should young men and women be taught (or punished for not knowing/acting on) about how to conduct themselves in situations like this one?

Summer pleasures

By Caitlin Kelly

Cold slices of watermelon

Juicy peaches dripping down your chin

Eating in a restaurant’s backyard patio; here’s a list of Toronto’s best

Almost anything grilled

Cherries!

Corn on the cob — round food!

Eating dinner in your (wet) bathing suit

Making sand castles at the beach

Sleeping in a tent and waking up to sunshine poking through the mesh

Air-conditioning on the most of humid of days, a gently-whirring fan for the rest

A temperate climate — while friends in the desert are baking, and not in a good way

Showing off your fresh pedicure

Swinging in the hammock

Teaching your kids to swim

Driving a convertible

Sundresses!

My handsome hubby, Jose

A seersucker suit, preferably with white suede bucks

Teaching your sweetie to swim/kayak/canoe/sail

Plunging into a secluded swimming hole

Making pina colada kulfi popsicles; recipe here

Watching fireflies spark the landscape at dusk

The call of a loon across still waters

Running through the sprinkler

The gurgle of a paddle pushing cold lake water

The clang of a halyard against a metal mast

Plucking gorgeous flowers or sun-warmed vegetables and herbs from your garden

A frosty cold beer

Fresh gimlets, (possibly accompanied by very good potato chips)

Snoozing in the sun

Going Garbo-esque behind fab sunglasses

Sitting in a crowded beer garden or outdoor movie or concert, surrounded by hundreds of happy strangers

Playing with your pals until sunset — as late as 10:30 p.m. or later for lucky people in the North

When getting dressed takes five minutes and one layer

Sexy sandals (see: fresh pedicure)

Wearing crisp summer fragrances like L’Eau de L’Artisan, Cristalle, O de Lancome or White Linen, classics all; for men, Eau Sauvage or Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet

What are some of yours?