A Picture-Perfect Week

Wednesday night at QTU, Angela Davis spoke to a huge, rapt audience on a range of topics, including the killing of Trayvon Martin, Americans' resistance to seeing racism as a structural problem, and the cause of prison abolition. (You can watch the whole event here.) The Moms were in the house and on the second row, which gave Moose a chance to snap this shot of the scholar-activist listening attentively to a question from the audience:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 4/18/12, College Park, MD)

Friday, as many of you know, was the day of the big gay spring carnival Moose's happy little program hosts every year on behalf of DC Queer Studies. This year's symposium was extra special, focused on honoring the life and legacy of writer/critic Samuel R. "Chip" Delany, who turned 70 on April 1. The day was drenched in sunshine, the papers were uniformly splendid, and the guest of honor was genial, generous, and wise. Moose snapped this shot of Delany getting ready to read from his new novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 4/20/12, College Park, MD)

What's the takeaway from this long, exhausting, yet deeply gratifying week? Maybe it's something as simple as the importance of finding work that feeds the soul and keeps one focused on a world larger than oneself. Both Davis and Delany have spent their lives as writers and scholars engaged with questions of race, sex, and justice, and both seem, at 70 or on the brink of it (Davis is 68), to radiate equanimity and an optimism that seems not naive but hard-won and fiercely guarded. At breakfast with a group of faculty women the morning after her lecture, Davis amiably entertained more than 90 minutes of questions on everything from prison reform to the politics of university catering. She was thoughtful, funny, generous, and sanguine about the prospect of continued, if slow, progress toward justice. She counseled patience and emphasized the importance of building movements from the ground up. She reminded listeners that the election of Barack Obama was a victory not for him but for those who voted him into office. She feels that the Occupy Wall Street movement, whatever else it did or did not accomplish, was a sign that citizens felt empowered by Obama's election to mobilize against rising inequalities of wealth and the rise of corporate power. In reply after reply, it was clear Davis refuses despair. She sees what's happening. She grasps the underlying problems with depth and nuance. And her years in the trenches tell her that it simply means we are all going to have to spend a few -- or many -- more years in the trenches. All right, then.

Look, darlings, I know it isn't always possible to find work that feeds your soul. Indeed, sometimes, to pay the rent and stay alive, you have to take jobs that make you worry you are selling or crushing your soul. You may find yourself in the devil's company, on your knees and on his payroll, but that doesn't make you a devil. Sometimes you do what you have to do -- but you do it without losing sight of what you want to do. You'll get there, my friend. Take the long view, as Davis and Delany have clearly done in the course of their own complex, amazing journeys. Keep your eyes and your heart open. You might have to do a little more than click your heels together three times, but you will get to where you want to go, even if it isn't on any map you've ever seen. Don't ask us how we know. We just do.

We'll end with what is perhaps Moose's favorite image from this picture-perfect week, because it celebrates not only longevity but clever design that tastes as good as it looks. Here is the cake she had made to honor Mr. Delany at the party after Friday's symposium. It's decorated with the image used on publicity for the event:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 4/19/12)

We offer a virtual piece of this pretty cake to one and all, as a way of saying, "Eat, laugh, never give into despair. That's the one thing we truly can't afford." Peace out.

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For Will Danger, who is working.

Support the VEA

We had sworn off doing any more vagina-related posts because the traffic they bring is just too weird, but when my overworked typist stumbled across the image above (provenance unknown, alas) on Facebook, she couldn't resist. Longtime readers know that the preferred description around here for lady people is vagina-equipped (which we're pretty sure we started using during the 2008 election). Nonetheless, we appreciate the appeal to natural law in the VEA's claim that women are endowed with their lady parts as all persons are endowed with rights to, you know, life, liberty, and blah de blah de blah. We are also totes on board with the slogan, Screw us and we multiply, and the hilarious reclaiming of the creepy Masonic emblem on the back of the dollar bill as a symbol of the might of a million vajayjays. We're down with that, obviously.

So, who'll be the Mockingjay for this fiery band of vulvalogocentrists? Who are we prepared to declare as the VEA's Soldier of the Week? Who is endowed with or schooled in the perfect combination of media-savviness and sistah-hood to deserve this honor? So many sheroes, so little time to blog them.

We might have given the nod to the official go-to gal of Roxie's World, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had a brilliant week this week, achieving "late-breaking adoration" and "pop cultural ascendancy" -- in addition to the global domination she has enjoyed for the past few years -- by being cool enough to catch the wave of the Hill-arious Texts From Hillary meme launched by Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe. (That's the final image in the series there on the left, with Mme Secretary's actual texts to the site's creators. Here's the concluding "thanks for the meme-eries" message from Smith and Lambe.) How good was Clinton's week? WaPo declared her the Internet's "new queen of cool." Jezebel gushed that she had managed to "make herself seem even more badass than she already was. Well played, Hillz." Shoot, even the execrable Maureen Dowd, whose psychotic anti-Clinton ravings during the 2008 primary battle earned her this blog's undying enmity, had a nearly nice column on Clinton's "newly cool image," though she couldn't resist tossing off a couple of gratuitous digs -- e.g., saying that the pictures that launched the meme make Clinton look, "as Raymond Chandler would say, . . . 'as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.'" Ah, MoDo, you never disappoint.

Anyhoo, we take nothing away from Hillz's glorious achievement in opting instead to name actress and activist Ashley Judd the first (and perhaps only -- you know how lax we are about these things) Soldier of the Week for Vaginally Endowed Americans. Judd had a pretty awesome week, too, and not just because Becca Winstone, the character she plays on her new ABC series, Missing, added bank robbery to the impressive set of kick-a$$ skills the retired CIA agent has at her command. (Shoot, in the first episode alone, Becca garrots a guy, breaks into a jewelry store and a warehouse, gets through a couple of high-speed chases while wearing wildly inappropriate footwear, reconnects with a sultry, torch-carrying ex-lover, and does a decent job of speaking several languages. Also: She gets shot, falls into a river, and survives for episode two. Quel surprise, oui?)

Don't get us wrong. The Vaginally Equipped Americans of Roxie's World are devoted fans of Missing. It is totally formulaic and often gobsmackingly implausible, but it is utterly delightful to watch Judd's Winstone haul a$$ all over Europe in an effort to find her kidnapped son and solve the mystery of her late husband Paul's life and death. (Paul was also CIA and was killed by a car bomb ten years earlier.) The plot may not be believable, but Becca is, thanks to Judd's steely eyes and razor-sharp maternal instincts. What can we say? We think the world could use a few more vengeance-seeking soccer moms who can fight like a ninja and hack into a computer.

But that's not why Judd is our VEA Soldier of the Week. Nope, she gets the nod and perhaps a mockingjay pin of her very own for her righteous response to a flood of snarky commentary and speculation about the state of her face, which has been puffed up recently by steroids she took for a nasty sinus infection. Judd used the occasion to offer up an indignant yet nuanced reply that took on the whole machinery of patriarchy and the way that public as well as private conversations about women's bodies are used to rob them of their power and dignity by reducing their personhood "to simple physical objectification." It's a smart, fiery piece that acknowledges women's complicity in the problem. "Patriarchy is not men," Judd explains. "Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. . . .It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it." Sing it, sister!

Judd didn't just write her little diatribe and go back to the business of being famous -- and beautiful. She followed up by doing a powerful interview with NBC's Brian Williams in which she talks about the experience, contextualizes it through deft comments on the hypersexualization of girls and women, and invites others, men included, to share their own "puffy-face" or "big-butt" moments, stories of being shamed or hurt by judgments about their bodies. She's also continued to bang the drum on Twitter, with a steady stream of affirmations and links to other posts (by far less famous people) on the subject. You don't follow @AshleyJudd? Well, sucks for you, sweetheart. Melissa McEwan does, and so do we, as of this week.

Ms. Judd, paws up to you, for talking back to patriarchy rather than being shamed or silenced by it. You recognized a teachable moment and used the power of your celebrity to make the most of it. Vaginally Endowed Americans and fair-minded individuals everywhere salute you for your honesty and your astuteness. You are our VEA Solider of the Week. Peace out.

(Photo Credit: Richard Drew, via)

Remembering Adrienne Rich

As you have no doubt heard by now, another shero has left the building. The poet Adrienne Rich, whom Moose has lovingly described as the fairy godmother of lesbian feminism, died last Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, California. Tuesday, you may recall, was Moose's birthday, which adds an extra bit of poignance to the loss here in Roxie's World. Rich was only 82 years old. Only -- Yes, children, 82 sounds kinda young to the ornery 50-somethings who hang out here. Someday, you'll feel the same way. Swear to dog.

What can we say about Rich that others haven't already said in the outpouring of praise and sorrow that quickly followed news of her death? Simply that her poetry was and is, like certain pieces of music, part of the soundtrack of our lives. It is lodged deep in our heads and hearts. Lines come to us unbidden, in sleep, in crisis, in moments of intimacy. Whatever happens with us, your body will haunt mine. . . .I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail. . . .With whom do you believe your lot is cast?

The collage above features the autographed title page of Moose's well-worn copy of the book dykes of a certain age all had on their shelves in the 70s and 80s alongside their well-worn copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves and The Moosewood Cookbook. You couldn't get dates back in those days if you couldn't quote most of the "Twenty-One Love Poems" from memory. While changing the oil of your girlfriend's car. Or holding a mirror up to your vajayjay in a circle of your closest friends. (Closest friends: That's lesbian-speak for ex with whom I am still complexly entangled or chick I am hoping to sleep with next.) Just kidding, kinda.

Moose isn't quite sure when she got Rich's autograph on the sacred text. She thinks it must have been at a reading at Womanbooks in New York (which is discussed in this totes excellent Signs article by Kristen Hogan on women's studies and feminist bookstores), when Rich was promoting her next book, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far. Yeah: Fall 1981. Moose was the scraggly grad student standing in line clutching the poet's previous book, which she had gotten as a gift from one of her closest friends. She eventually got around to purchasing A Wild Patience and writing a paper comparing it to Dream, because she took a course called Theories of Female Creativity and you could get by with that sort of thing as long as you threw in a dollop or two of French theory to make it all look legit.

Did you really expect this post to be about Rich? Here, let's try again.

We needed a fairy godmother, someone whose words had the power of incantation and a wisdom that seemed ancient. We needed that to counter all the voices in and out of our heads shouting "No!" to our every desire, our dreams, our ambitions, our longings for another kind of world. Rich was important because she gave voice to those dreams, even as she demanded that her readers attend to the world 

as it is     not as we wish it
as it is     not as we work for it
to be 

("The Spirit of Place")

For all the dreamy feminist utopianism of her lush lyricism, Rich always had a foot firmly on the ground of the world "as it is." Yes, she gave us permission to revel in the joys of erotic pleasure and outlaw love, but she also reminded us that the world was always with us and those private pleasures couldn't command all our energy and attention. In the nineteenth of the twenty-one love poems, the speaker reminds her beloved, "I told you from the first I wanted daily life, / this island of Manhattan was island enough for me." The remark is in parentheses, a graphic emblem of the tensions between separateness and connection that are the subject of the final poems in the sequence.

You hear in that "I told you from the first" something of the moral rectitude that could make Rich both annoying and bracing. She was capable of a prescriptivism that could be damaging to both politics and poetry -- and wrote about that risk in poems like "North American Time":

When my dreams showed signs
of becoming
politically correct
no unruly images
escaping beyond borders
when walking in the street I found my
themes cut out for me
knew what I would not report
for fear of enemies' usage
then I began to wonder

What felt like righteousness, though, was also a consciousness of privilege and of the duties Rich obviously felt as a white, North American, middle-class woman to make use of the power she had to try to effect change. You could say she exaggerated the amount of control women had over their lives, as she seems to do in a line like, "Only she who says / she did not choose, is the loser in the end" (XV, "Twenty-One Love Poems") -- Or you could say she recognized that no amount of oppression ever let one off the hook. We are all to some degree responsible for our lives and accountable to our moment in history -- "the life of your tribe / the breath of your planet," as she puts it in "North American Time."

Adrienne Rich gave voice to our dreams, and she demanded that we work to make those dreams real. Rich has moved on, too soon, alas, but the work, of course, continues. We realize now it isn't just women's work, as we might have supposed in earlier, separatist moments. It's all our work, and we'd better get to it. Because somewhere, we might imagine, Rich and her friend and sister/warrior Audre Lorde are impatiently waiting for us "to perform the needed acts" ("Toward the Solstice"). Let's get started, shall we?

* * *

For other remembrances of Rich, see Katha Pollitt in The New Yorker, our pal Margaret Swedish on her writing blog, another pal over on Gukira, and a poem by Marge Piercy on the Ms. blog.

Excellence Without Money: Jersey Style

Today is my typist's birthday, so we've given her the day off and offer for your edification a very special guest post from someone we'll call Old Jersey Professor. S/he's got the scoop on some higher educational news of interest and import from the Moms' old stomping grounds, the Garden State. There's a storm raging on the Turnpike over a proposal to break up Rutgers University and merge the Camden campus with Rowan University. How controversial is the proposal? The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg is calling for a federal investigation into whether the deal "had been 'crafted to benefit powerful political interests without regard for the impact on students.'" We're grateful for this eyewitness report straight from the heart of Jersey. Pay attention, kids -- Your school could be next.

Take it away, "Old Jersey Professor!"

* * *

Excellence without money? That’s so 2011. In 2012 in New Jersey we have a new slogan: “To save education you have to destroy it.” That is the goal of Governor Chris Christie. In January his hand-picked commission came up with a proposal to hand over Rutgers Camden, part of Rutgers, one of 61 AAU universities in North America, to Rowan University, a comprehensive university over 20 miles away from the Camden campus. Why? Well, it has nothing to do with education and everything to do with, yep, money.

Rowan University, at the behest of New Jersey political boss George Norcross, absorbed Cooper Medical School and turned it from a 2-year part of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey into a 4-year medical school starting in the fall of 2012. (For more about George Norcross watch our former governor explain him to some Girl Scouts.) There is a reason some folks refer to New Jersey as Swamp Land.

And guess what? Cooper is broke. It relies on the state for funding and has bonds one step above junk grade.

The solution, according to the political bosses, is to take over Rutgers Camden so that Rowan-Cooper can use its cash flow to borrow money at better rates. And yes, of course, the governor and his political cronies are covering up this naked cash grab with talk of creating a bigger and better university in southern New Jersey. When politicians talk about improving education, lock up your wallet, and your children.

When folks object to us calling this move a “hostile takeover” we just switch to Anschluss. And when our friends say, "Well, that’s just New Jersey," we say, “Have you been paying attention to what is happening to public education in this country?” Your bond rating or your endowment just might be bait for some of your own political “leaders.” On March 22 Rowan released what it called a plan and we call a fantasy. It is “take the money and run” and not of the Woody Allen variety. The proposal is to grab the money (all of Rutgers Camden and its assets) fourteen months after a legislated takeover and then it promises to figure out how to create a research university -- there are no details, there is no budget, it is the land of hope and dreams . . . and not of the Bruce variety.

And hey, speaking of “the Boss,” yes, he’s a Jersey guy and the students have reached out to him with this wonderful video:

We are organized! Our wonderful students created an online petition and a fabulous website. The alumni are raising money and running advertisements, and our union Rutgers AAUP/AFT helped everyone get organized and on message and provided funds for the leaflets and the lawn signs. We’ve got faculty from four schools -- business, law, nursing, and arts and sciences -- on the job, writing briefs, digging into budgets, organizing the community, and putting out statements to the press. Our administration stood up and said “No,” hosting two town hall meetings preceded by demonstrations. The media gave us good coverage, and everyone spoke up at meetings of the Rutgers Board of Governors and Board of Trustees. Two Facebook support groups keep everyone informed. Our information page is updated several times a day (though it has been hacked, so you might not get there), and we’ve created our own not-for-profit group to raise money for our ad buys, lobbying, and, if need be, litigation.

All this has helped to bridge a bit of a generation gap. Turning to a younger colleague, I said, “This is so much easier than sixties organizing when we didn’t have cell phones or computers.” He replied, “I was born in 1970!” Wow -- where did the time go? A student asked me about my Twitter feed and I had to confess that no, I don’t tweet. Younger folks are all over social media, but everyone can give interviews, write press releases, lobby, share hugs, raise money and attend legislative hearings. Damn we are good!

But will we prevail? I think so. We don’t have lawyers, guns, and money, as the late Warren Zevon put it, but we do have lawyers, smarts, and damn good fundraising skills. Roxie -- I’ll update you on this. In the meantime, please go sign our petition. We hope to hit 13,000 signatures soon!

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(Image Credit: Via)

Thanks again, Old Jersey Prof. And remember, kids, as the Boss says, "Nobody wins unless everybody wins."  This fight is our fight, too. Hang in there, Jersey boys, girls, and critters. We are with you!

Things We Learned Over Break

1. An early spring means early spring detritus. Moose likes to take pictures of all kinds of detritus, but she's especially fond of photos of spring detritus because she thinks they evoke the poignance of the season's sublime yet fleeting beauty. Wevs, Moose. They're pretty.

Those are the remnants of this year's bloom on our neighbor's tulip magnolia tree. The shot was taken on March 17, which has to be some kind of record. Yes, kids, global warming has come to Roxie's World.

And that's a blossom off some pretty bush in our ridiculously large backyard that squirrels or deer or other marauding critters have been systematically deflowering. Moose snapped that this morning when she and Ruby were having a little romp in the yard. No, we do not know the name of the pretty bush, though our research assistant Wik I. Pedia suggests it might be a camellia. There are no botanists in Roxie's World.

2. The old version of Quicken does not work on Lion, so you can spend your entire spring break upgrading and updating and when you are finally, proudly finished discover that the past several years of your financial history are suddenly, entirely inaccessible. Oops! Truthfully? No biggie. Moose has always hated Quicken and is old-fashioned enough to still get paper bank statements. Quicken has just released a compatible version, but the CFO of RW Enterprises, LLC is thinking we might take our data elsewhere. Suggestions? We imagine nicoleandmaggie might have some good advice on this question, but you are all welcome to weigh in.

3. There are lots and lots of people trolling the Interwebs looking for information on vaginas. And surprisingly few of them know how to spell the word. (One more reason to be grateful Google is tracking our every move and is so much smarter than we are, yes?) Our vagina-related posts are here and here, though I doubt seriously you will find them very useful or, uh, exciting. Nonetheless, to the searcher who wants to know how to tell if your vagina is loose, we cannot resist replying: If you see it running across the yard?

4. You can win pretty or you can win ugly, but a win, as they say, is still a win. Yes, our Lady Terps prevailed Monday evening in their grudge match against the Cardinals of Louisville in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. It was a close, hard-fought game that could have gone either way. The atmosphere inside the Comcastle was electric, and the audience was very different from the sort of subdued, family-friendly crowds one typically sees at women's games. Fans lustily booed Louisville Coach Jeff Walz when he was introduced, loudly protested the officiating all night long, and spent most of the game's last few minutes on their feet trying to will the Terps to victory. The Moms were so amped up by the effort that they stayed up way past their bedtime wishing that middle-aged broads could roam the streets drinking beer and setting bonfires after a big win. Next up for the Terps? Oh, just defending national champs Texas A&M on Sunday in Raleigh. The Moms can't be there, but they are planning to catch the game on a big teevee in a sports bar. Go, Terps!

So, that's some of what we learned over break, though Moose's proudest accomplishment is getting all of her gadgets to play happily together in the iCloud. Thanks to all the geeky, patient hand-holders who helped to make that possible. You know who you are, and we are grateful to you. Stay tuned, kids, for dog knows what kind of 21st-century blogalicious developments might result from my typist's move into this brave new world of mobility and hyperconnectivity. Meanwhile, here's hoping the early spring is lovely in your neck of the woods. Peace out.

Gearing Up for a Grudge Match

Game-Day Update Below

ESPN is billing tomorrow night's second-round matchup between Maryland and Louisville in the women's NCAA tournament as a grudge match. That sounds about right to the rabid Terp fans of Roxie's World, who have never gotten over the beat down Maryland suffered at the hands of Coach Jeff Walz's Cardinals in the 2009 Elite Eight. It isn't just the score -- 77-60 -- that still stings, painful as it was to watch the glorious collegiate careers of Marissa Coleman and Kristi Toliver end on such a sour note. What rankles even more is what Walz did when the final whistle blew and Coleman and Toliver sat stunned and disconsolate on the Maryland bench. Walz is a former Maryland assistant coach who was with the team when Brenda Frese guided a group of upstart freshmen, including Coleman and Toliver, to a national championship in 2006. He relied on his intimate knowledge of Maryland's players and its system to formulate a game plan that exploited its weaknesses. His team executed the plan brilliantly -- and when the dismantling was over Walz made a beeline for Coleman and Toliver and tried to comfort the women he had just defeated. Here's what we wrote about the gesture the day after the game:

At that moment when cameras were focused on the devastated stars, Walz, engineer of their disappointment, went over to each of them, got down on his knees, and put his arms around them. Moose thought there was something jarring about it at the time. It seemed disingenuous of him to take on the role of comforting them for a loss he and his team would be boasting about in a matter of seconds. Word of friction between Walz and Frese makes the gesture even harder to take. If Walz sincerely wished to express sympathy to Coleman and Toliver or admiration for their brilliant careers, he should have done so out of the limelight and only after Coleman and Toliver had had a chance to compose themselves. To insert himself into that moment was to take on a role that rightly belonged to his old boss and, apparently, his new foe. He beat her team, handily. He didn't need to try to usurp her role.  

We don't know anything about the rumors of bad blood between Frese and her former assistant (pictured at left in a slightly altered photo from 2006 [via]), which surfaced in the wake of the 2009 contest, but we have a hunch we're not the only ones hungering for a little revenge tomorrow night. When the brackets for this year's tournament were announced and it was clear the Terps and Cardinals could meet again, Marissa Coleman immediately tweeted (yes, Moose follows her -- don't judge) of the matchup: "TERPS get some payback for @KristiToliver and I, would ya?!" (Love you, Shoulders, always will, but that should read, "for @KristiToliver and me.") During first-round action Saturday at the Comcastle, some fans might have greeted Walz with warm fuzzies when he took the floor for his team's game against Michigan State, but there was no love lost for Louisville's head coach up where the Moms sit in section 114. When the short-fused Walz loudly berated a player for throwing up a bad shot (when the Cards already had a comfortable lead), a fan/friend mockingly repeated the coach's rebuke, adding in his own booming voice, "We could hear you all the way up here, Walz!" After that, we spent the rest of the not very entertaining game dissecting Walz's issues -- "He's got an Auriemma complex," one Freudian averred -- and concocting elaborate plots to guarantee a Terp victory tomorrow night, most of which involved sending spoiled seafood to the Louisville team's hotel.

Yes, darlings, that's why they call it Madness, this seasonal affective disorder college basketball fans experience every year come tournament time. We love the game, adore our team, and live for the drama of the major upset or the thrilling comeback. Or, you know, the sweet revenge.

We'll be in the stands tomorrow night, maybe with a special sign imploring the Terps to win it for Marissa and K. T. or to remember 2009. On the other hand, why should we burden these splendid young women with the bitter residue of someone else's past? Their talents and accomplishments are impressive in and of themselves, and they deserve their own shot at glory. It would be hard to fit our sentiments onto even the most carefully painted sign, but perhaps we'll show up at the Comcastle tomorrow with the hope in our hearts that these dazzling young Terps will win on Monday so that we will have the joy of knowing we will get to see them play together again -- at least once more before this special season, like all seasons, ends, in triumph or its opposite.

Sleep well, women. You've got your work cut out for you, and we can't wait to cheer you on in your efforts. Peace out.

(Photo Credit: Toni L. Sandys, Washington Post. Maryland forward Alyssa Thomas shoots over Navy's Alix Membreno in a first-round game, 3/17/12.)

Update: WaPo's Gene Wang has a story this morning on the Frese/Walz "subplot" in the looming rematch between Maryland and Louisville. According to Wang, Walz's departure from College Park in 2008 was "acrimonious," though Frese refused to comment on the matter, saying it was not important to the upcoming game. Reading between the lines, one might infer that Walz took a little too much credit for the national championship, including orchestrating the play that sent the title game into overtime. In this YouTube video of Marissa Coleman and other former players talking about that game, Coleman makes it clear that Toliver's sublime shot over Duke center Alison Bales was not the play coaches had drawn up. After the 2009 loss to Louisville, Coleman also publicly took issue with Walz's suggestion that Maryland's body language suggested the team was taking Louisville lightly as it focused on getting back to the Final Four. "Well, Coach Walz was wrong," Coleman commented when told what Walz had said.

Like we said, dude's got an Auriemma complex. We don't care what motivates the Terps to go out and get the W tonight. We just want them to win, but if it turns out the victory is fueled by a collective gynocentric urge to smack down an arrogant, bullying mansplainer, well, that's all right by us. We are women, hear us roar. Go, Terps!

New Tools, Old Rules

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Moose's new iPad, which she got today, not because she camped out for three days but because she quite uncharacteristically planned ahead. She even got the taxpayers of Maryland to buy it for her as an early birthday present. Yep, no money for raises, but plenty for toys essential research tools. We'll let you know soon what she really thinks of it, though so far she's pretty impressed. She's been fiddling around while watching hoops this evening during the Night of a Thousand Upsets. (Poor Duke. Not!)

The Moms head over to the Comcastle early in the a.m. to catch the red hot Lady Terps in first-round action against Navy in the women's tournament. Maybe we'll do some b-ball posting over the weekend, on a machine that's really built for blogging. (Full disclosure: This post was drafted on the iPad but finished on the computer, because Moose couldn't figure out how to embed links or upload photos to Blogger on her fancy new toy tool.) Meantime, here's a sample of what the highly touted camera on the new iPad can do, even in crummy light:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 3/16/12)

Not bad for a stale shamrock cookie from the co-op, eh? Remember, Goose is only half Irish-ish, so we don't really celebrate. If you do, we hope you have a swell, safe time. Peace out, my little leprechauns, and don't cry if your brackets are busted. Everybody's are, but all that matters is Duke is out (of the non-lady tournament), which means all is half-right in the world. We'll see what happens to the Blue Devils in the women's tournament, though we have a hard time seeing them get past Stanford in the Elite 8. Just remember House Rule #1 of Roxie's World, sports fans: We hate Duke so much that if Duke were playing the Taliban, we would root for the Taliban. Therefore, any team playing Duke is known as the Taliban, and we sit on the couch screaming, "Go, Taliban, go!"

Got it? Go forth and cheer.