Five Star Friday's 185th Edition Is Brought to You By Adrienne Rich and Our Fourth Anniversary!

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by alcoholism, antepartum depression, female genital mutilation, a deeply meaningful life, coming out, the death of a poet, sexism, a husband's death, lupus, and Adrienne Rich:


left to right: Audre Lorde, Meridel Lesueur, and Adrienne Rich

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
     — Adrienne Rich

The first Five Star Friday happened four years ago this week. FOUR YEARS AGO. It just seems crazy that that much time has passed since I invented this space.

There are always people out there in internet-land who are ready to declare that blogging is dead or that blogging is killing good writing, but almost every week for four years running, people have continually nominated superior weblog entries written by everyone from the small fish to the hugely famous whales among us, proving again and again that the medium is alive, well, and occasionally pretty damn fine.

Thank you all, nominators and writers alike, who have contributed to this space over the last four years. You may not realize it, but you have inspired a lot of good work and restored the faith. Here's to you and I keeping the home fires burning.

Have some cake!



Happy Friday!

"Day Fourteen" from Whiskey In My Sippy Cup:

And this is how I ended up with an alcoholic, though neither of my parents ever really drank. I actually hate drunk people, and hate being drunk myself, and yet I worked in bars for 16 years and married an alcoholic because I learned before I was old enough to read a standard clock that what you love and cherish with all of your being is also what is guaranteed to hurt you in ways you could never fathom, no matter what you do to stop it.

"Losing Adrienne Rich / I dreamed you were a poem" from Deb On the Rocks

"A Postpartum Look At Antepartum Depression" from Me and Mine

"Tahara: Circumcision" from Sheesha Wa Shai:

I felt my stomach turn. The image of Yasmeen panicking flashed through my mind, I remembered telling her to calm down. My fingers trembled. I had just tried to comfort a young girl being faced with FGM. I wanted them to come back, I wanted to stop this.

"A Young Widow's Dilemma" by Leeda at Afghan Women's Writing Project

"A Slant of Sun" from Flux Capacitor

"Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her 'Puffy' Appearance" by Ashley Judd at The Daily Beast:

News outlets with whom I do serious work, such as publishing op-eds about preventing HIV, empowering poor youth worldwide, and conflict mineral mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, all ran this "story" without checking with my office first for verification, or offering me the dignity of the opportunity to comment. Its an indictment of them that they would even consider the content printable, and that they, too, without using time-honored journalistic standards, would perpetuate with un-edifying delight such blatantly gendered, ageist, and mean-spirited content.

"Ashley Judd, THANK YOU" from Queen of Spain

"And Then We Had Hamburgers" by DidacticPirate at DadCentric

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. If you have read a really good piece on someone else's weblog, submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

And because you are a fan of finding good new writing on the internet:

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Comments

[Laurie]

The words of some of my most favorite people in the world are in this post, yours included, Schmutzie. Thank you for all that you do to keep the blog home fires burning. You are a master of the medium.

A lot of people like to talk about community online. You just get it, and you never stop going above and beyond to build it. Those of us who keep coming back are very lucky that you're here, and that you continue to do this. Happy anniversary.

[sarah piazza]

happy anniversary.

you deserve all the rainbows and unicorns for this, my friend.

[Deb Rox]

Happy anniversary!!! Which is to say thank you for all of the amazing blogs you've highlighted. You are the very best. Grabbing a badge in celebration! Also--cake!

[Allison Zapata]

I am so so honored to be grouped with such amazing writers (and I spy a favorite friend)!! Thank you for sharing something so important to me!! xoxoxo

[Ben]

Happy anniversary!

[kyla earle]

Thanks for this realm in the universe of Schmutzie. Happy Birthday!