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[cblj_backup]

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday! It's spring, and do-gooding is in the air.

Ways To Give:

megaleena's friend Rebecca is running four charity races this year for a range of cancer-related causes, inspired by a friend's 3-year-old son who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. You can learn more about her races and help support her fundraising here.

taerowyn linked to a couple of terrible stories about the intrusive and oppressive anti-woman laws cropping up around the US, and wanted to let people know about ways they can help, like the We Are Women March, the Feminist Humor Defense project, and the The Snatchel Project (for you knitters/crocheters out there).

jennielf linked to a fundraiser page for The Wild Hunt, a pagan news journal. The editor has more information here but essentially is raising funds to help him go to religious studies and media conventions to better serve pagan journalism.

Help For Free:

If you think the phrase "intrusive and oppressive anti-woman laws" I just used is too strong, cluegirl linked to the "Ultrasound Opportunity Act" requiring Illinois women to have invasive and unnecessary internal ultrasounds before receiving an abortion. It's being put forward by the Illinois House Agricultural Committee, 'cause apparently women are livestock. You can send an email to your local representative at the site linked.

deepfishy let me know that the Australian House of Representatives currently has an anonymous online survey to gather community views on two new bills on same-sex marriage, which would legalise same sex marriage in Australia and recognise same sex marriages performed in foreign countries. The survey is short but has two sections to explain your reasons for your responses and comment on the legal implications. This is a great opportunity to speak out and support a good cause at the request of the government! Closing date for responses is April 20th.

News To Know:

Womanthology, the amazing book of comics by female artists and writers, is going to be a series! IDW Comics is awesome for picking them up, and if you haven't gone to your local comic book store to at least flip through the giant, gorgeous Womanthology book, you should do that ASAP. We have at least one Cafe member that I know of who's in the book, and possibly a few.

Saira let me know that there is a workshop at the end of March in Cambridge, MA, for women who are new to programming, the Boston Python Workshop! More info here.

One of our own Cafe members, imaginarycircus, has a book which has made it to the quarter-final for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest! She's in the top 250 out of 5,000 entries, and while there's no public voting this time around, there is an excerpt available here for your reading pleasure!

jjhunter runs a poetry discussion community, POETREE and the group is looking for poets and poetry enthusiasts to sign up to Host for a week. The commitment is a brief intro post, at least three poems (the poster's own, others' with their permission or permissive copyright, or some mix thereof), and an optional meta post or question for the audience. The community is hosted on Dreamwidth but Hosts do not have to be Dreamwidth users.

keestone saw last week's discussion of e-reader conversion and wanted to suggest a few other ways to convert journal-hosted fic: the dotEPUB bookmarklet, which can convert to either epub or mobi formats for shorter stories, and the GrabMyBooks Firefox extension for stuff spread over multiple pages.

amy_vic has downloads of the reading of "8" (a film about Prop 8 in California), which I linked to a stream of last week, available here!

There was an amazing article this week at Angry Black Lady Chronicles entitled "Clicktivism vs. 'Real' Activism -- Everybody Needs To Just Sit Down" that discusses the false idea that awareness-raising and non-brickspace activism somehow isn't legitimate. It's a fantastic breakdown of assumptions and I can't speak highly enough of it.

Just For Fun:

Travel Posters For Lazy People -- for when you just want to vacation on The Internet.

If you still lol at the memory of "I am syck unto death of typefetting" from Good Omens, you will surely enjoy Cheeky Complaints, an article about things monks wrote in the margins of manuscripts. I think "This page has not been written very slowly" is my new favourite beta comment. :D

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help (or ask for help!). Remember, brevity is the soul of RFM.

Comments

[frith]

Sweet! And I had an idea! Snapshots from Sam's worldwide café! It's actually pretty much the same idea, except people in your global café take a snapshot of something that represents their favorite fannish thing, with in the background an identifiable monument, location or "local flavor". Why should ponies have all the fun? Take Doctor Who out to tea! Take Iron Man for a walk! Get those white flannel trousers out of the closet and lay them on the beach!

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Sounds fun, but a bit too much work for me these days :)