Coffee Break: RBG Mask

81 Comments

1. If you’re feeling like spending as a reaction to RBG’s passing, can I suggest dissentpins on etsy, who donate a whopping 50% of their profits to organizations whose causes match RBG’s ideals. I would hesitate to put $$$ in the pockets of organizations who dont do that kind of good- in that case I’d rather put my money toward Get Mitch or Die Trying

   1. I love my dissent pin.

      1. Some time ago, my 77 yo mother bought my sister, herself and me the jabot necklaces. Wearing proudly.

   2. It would be so cool if we could quantify how much readers on this site have donated/spent. I think it could really be motivating or inspiring. Maybe in the next few weeks, we can start a thread where people can post their totals (judgment-free).

      1. 22k today to swing left.

         Bc are you kidding me (former libertarian, current moderate).

         1. Wow! Good for you.

      2. I’ve been doing it in pieces so I don’t have an exact number but I think I’ve donated about $500 to Biden-Harris so far and $200-300 cumulatively to candidates in competitive Senate races. I gave Hillary some money in 2016 but otherwise I’ve never donated to politicians before.

2. So about 2 weeks ago, my husband puts an Orvis catalog on the kitchen table with some pages dogeared. It sits there for a few days until I get around to cleaning off the table and ask him if he’s done with it and I can recycle it. “Oh, I put it there for you to look through in case you wanted to get me some things.” I’m thinking, that’s random, especially since we’re not going anywhere these days where he needs new clothes. I just let the catalog sit there.

   Last night, my husband hollers down the hall to ask me when my birthday is. (Late December.) We’re not big celebration people, so it was a legit question. I figured he was looking at his work calendar, something he often does on Sunday nights, though I couldn’t figure why he’d be looking ahead to December.

   Then it hits me: his birthday is October 4.

   That dogeared Orvis catalog is my shopping list.

   ??????

   I appreciate his persistence in the face of my mindlessness!

   1. Hahah too funny. Good on your husband for knowing what he wants and for making your shopping a little easier.

      My fiancé and I are NOT surprise gift people. We talk about and plan our gifts in advance, as well as any birthday celebration activities. It’s a good thing, too, because I am FAR too forgetful to remember these things on my own!

   2. Heh that’s awesome.

   3. I seriously wish my husband would do that for me. He works on old cars as a hobby and will go on and on about certain obscure parts. Sometimes when they’re expensive he won’t buy them for himself and will hope he gets them for a birthday or Christmas or even Father’s Day gift. After his last birthday there was a small amount of moping that he didn’t get the gift he really wanted. It was like a side panel or something. A very specific link would have been helpful. But just mentioning it in one of his many long monologues about car parts wasn’t really specific enough.

      1. For something really specific, we used to include website and SKU in our Christmas present wish lists. Very helpful.

3. I want to thank the ‘rettes that recommended ways to make political donations in the AM thread. I donated $1000 to Biden/Harris and $1000 to the split contribution to various close Senate races. Fingers crossed that it makes a difference!

4. Q for Chicagoans – are the public parks/lakefront excessively crowded on weekends? I live a couple hours away and am thinking of coming up for the day. Pre-covid we did weekend trips to the city a few times a year and I miss it SO MUCH. But we haven’t really ventured far from our suburban area since lockdown began and my husband especially is concerned the city will be very crowded.

   1. Hi! I’m a suburbanite but have family living near the lakeshore. Beaches are closed but the adjacent parks/lakefront are open and can be pretty busy on good weather days. Technically you could probably still socially distance, but it’s a lot of people for my personal tastes while others seem to be totally OK with it. Depending on your tolerance for people, it may still be enjoyable, but mask up and be prepared that it may be a lot to take in.

   2. I live near Millennium Park/Maggie Daley/Grant Park and those all seem fine to me. However, this past Saturday I was further north and the park near North Avenue Beach was quite crowded.

   3. If you’re still reading: former Chicagoan here, and I’d go to the South Side. The view of the city is the best from there (shhhhhh! Best kept secret) and I’m guessing it’ll be much less busy.

5. Any recs for a 20-ish minute barre workout I can find on YouTube? I want to do something after work but the thought of tracking down a specific workout (out of the millions of options) is overwhelming today. Would love a rec for something decent.

   1. I’d use the Down Dog barre app! It is the least possible commitment to having to choose. You set how long and what you want the focus to be (full body, etc) and it makes a workout for you. I really like it!

   2. Check out Bailey Brown videos…they’re more pilates / floor exercises but they’re 7 – 20 minutes each on YouTube, no equipment needed, and you can easily mix and match them to find a combo you like!

   3. Lauren Hefez or Jake Dupree

6. Suggestions for a small birthday gift for our new afternoon nanny? She’ll only be in her first month with us but we really like her and hope to keep her long term. Overall budget is $100 – I’m thinking at least $50 cash (and can be persuaded to do more cash) but I would like to give her something physical as well. She is in her 50’s, doesn’t drink, is vegan, and enjoys outdoor activities (has mentioned hikes/walks a lot). She seems very crunchy granola so I don’t think nail polish/candles/skincare would be a great idea (which is probably why I’m at a loss as those are my normal go-tos). Help?!?

   1. More cash.

   2. Lol I would also do more cash. This is not a gift for her, but if you still have a baby it may be nice to get a hiking backpack so she can take the baby hiking as a fun activity they do together. My kid loves his.

   3. Cash. If you just can’t do that, a Visa gift card is the equivalent. For the gift part, what about a nice water bottle?

   4. Cash + a homemade card from your kids if they are old enough (ie scribbles on front with a nice note inside).

   5. What about some pricey wool socks? They might be something she can’t quite bring herself to buy herself.

      1. I wouldn’t do wool anything. Many vegans don’t do any animal products period.

   6. REI gift card?

7. I’d love to hear Senior Attorney’s thoughts on RBG – memories, how you’re feeling, past moments of inspiration, etc. If you are so willing!

   1. OMG I’m afraid I don’t have much to contribute that is very helpful. I am just so sad and angry and scared. I remember when she was appointed and we all thought, I think, that this was the beginning (or the confirmation, after Sandra Day O’Connor) of real equality for women in the law and otherwise. At least I did. She was so great, with her supportive husband and all. And I’m so mad that she ended up pretty much carrying the weight of all of it on her little shoulders there at the end. I’m mad that she had to work up until her dying day, and I’m so mad that she had to worry about her successor on her deathbed. I’m petrified about what’s going to happen next although I have a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe four R senators might do the right thing.

      Probably not the inspirational thoughts you wanted to hear, but there it is.

      1. SA – you are the best! Would love a “Daily (or weekly) thoughts from SA” post, lol!

         1. Newsletter? Haha

      2. Thank you for responding! I’ve read a lot about her, but nothing could compare to living through her appointment and confirmation. I have a glimmer of hope as well, especially with the Arizona race. I appreciate you sharing.

      3. I really don’t feel like there’s a snowball’s chance 4 republican senators will do the right thing. I only hope an attempt at confirming a nominee either before or after the election (if lame duck) will hurt the Republicans at the voting booths. Also, Chuck Grassley is in a very tight senate race. he does not want to be wasting time holding hearings while he needs to be campaigning. I have a feeling Trump will make him do it just to troll him, because he is not a nice person. Of course, Grassley isn’t a nice person either. That’s why I hope there’s a small chance they will destroy each other.

         1. Chuck Grassley’s seat is up in 2022, and he may not run for re-election on account of already being 86 years old.

            1. He’s 87 currently and he’ll be 89 in 2022. I agree he likely won’t run again, and certainly isn’t running now. I don’t understand the comment above about him needing to take time for campaigning.

         2. I think it would hurt them to ram someone through, both because it will outrage and galvanzie Democrats and because they want an open seat on election day to increase turnout among the traditional pro-life Republicans who aren’t enthusiastic about Trump (which is a very large voting bloc). I think they’ll confirm someone in the lame duck session.

      4. Where do you think women have had the most progress over your career? And what would your wishlist be for things to change?

         I am struck by how lucky she was to have found Marty Ginsburg. My guess is that many other husbands would have clipped her wings or not followed her to DC even though she was always the lower-earning spouse.

         1. No offense, but a man does not “clip a woman’s wings.” You’re taking away a lot of agency from grown women who can make choices. If a woman puts her career on the back burner because her husband asks, she makes a choice to do that. Her other choices are to tell him to GTFO or to laugh in his face and do it anyway. I did not know RBG but I doubt she would have assented if her husband had asked her to downplay her career. Even women in RBG’s day still had choices. They were limited, but they were there (and thank God for RGB so we have better choices). Women are not automatic victims. Insinuating that is insulting.

            1. It was still more difficult then to get a divorce. Things like childcare were complicated then too (even still are today) and she already had children at that point.

            2. What? So often women unload here about their unsupportive husbands. I doubt anyone intentionally chooses a bad one. And yet, here we are. In 2020.

            3. I don’t think you have a full appreciation for how a man was able to assert legal dominance over his spouse.

            4. I think you’re overreacting. Women have agency, but men can be held responsible for their actions. A man who doesn’t support his wife’s career is absolutely clipping her wings. You’re really verging into victim blaming territory by saying we can’t hold a man responsible for his actions just because his wife stayed with him.
               Also, yes, divorce was harder then. My ex boss couldn’t get a no fault divorce in NY in 2005 and that was a half century after the women of RBG’s generation got married.

            5. And speaking of childcare being complicated, this isn’t RBG-specific but back around that time a number of very qualified candidates for big jobs were derailed by child care issues. We called it the “Zoe Baird problem” after Bill Clinton’s first nominee for Attorney General, who had to withdraw from consideration because she had hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny and failed to pay proper payroll taxes. The next nominee, Kimba Wood, also had to withdraw because although it was not illegal to hire undocumented workers and she had in fact paid the appropriate taxes, it didn’t matter. The job finally went to childless, single Janet Reno.

               I guar. an. tee. you that there were many, many men whose confirmations sailed through around that time and before because (in the unlikely event their wives had careers) nobody thought to ask about their child care arrangements.

            6. Omg you have no idea how it was to live through the 1960s-1970s as an adult woman. She couldn’t get birth control without her husband’s signature. It was perfectly legal to fire her if she got pregnant. It was legal and usual to deny her college admission or employment because she’d be taking a job from a man who needed to support his family. She couldn’t establish credit in her own name. The list goes on.

               If she had married a brute of a man, he had legal rights to her body whenever he wished to have s3x with her. He could not be prosecuted for rape as her husband. Beating a wife for such a thing wasn’t prosecutable unless he nearly killed her.

               It’s not taking “agency” from women to talk about what life was like for women just a few decades ago.

            7. God I am so not a liberal feminist – it’s not about “agency,” it’s about fundamental human rights being violently denied to a class of citizens based on their sex. Give me second-wave feminism any day. It was so much more valuable.

            8. The fuq?! The amount of woman-blaming in this post is mindboggling.

            9. “Her other choices are to tell him to GTFO or to laugh in his face and do it anyway. ”

               Oh I didn’t realize that society treated women the same way when RBG was starting her career as it does now. The logical implication of your position is that all women whose careers *were* truncated because of their husbands should shoulder all of that blame because it was their “choice.” Which–some how–results in us blaming women for men’s bad behavior. While this is obviously a favorite national past time, it is illogical and morally wrong. Man, I guess many women just really didn’t want careers in her day, now did they!? What weaklings.

            10. My great aunt was about RBG’s age, and she had a terrible husband who wouldn’t leave and wouldn’t give her any money to pay the mortgage or buy milk for the kids. Sure, it was her choice to stay with him, but he sure as hell “clipped her wings.” She was really, really lucky she had gotten an education and could (sort of) support herself.

            11. Honestly this is so offensive. You benefit from the crap generations of women before you went through. Try some appreciation, and read a little history.

            12. I was born in the mid 1960s. You have no idea how few child care options there were for women. You have no idea how unusual the notion was that a young woman might want to be a doctor or lawyer versus secretary / nurse / teacher. You have no idea how a woman could be propositioned at work and no one would do anything. Please just stop.

         2. I think you’re right, which is sad. I noticed the RBG documentary made a big deal of this too.

            It shouldn’t be striking or “lucky” when a man supports and works around his superstar wife’s career, but obviously it still very much is.

         3. This explains why my most successful female friends are generally both single and childless. My successful male friends are of all stripes (but mostly married and mostly parents).

8. Does anyone have recommendations for a wireless headset? I have one of those Jabra USB headsets but I’m teaching some zoom classes and I feel tethered down too closely to my desk. The microphone on my laptop does not work well enough to use on its own.

   1. I have a wireless Jabra one that I’ve been really happy with. I believe it is the Jabra Evolve 75.

   2. I have heard really good things about the Jabra Elite 75T

      1. +1 I have these (the “active” version) and have been really pleased with them. I’ve had them for over a year now and they work great.

   3. I bought the Cowin E7 from Amazon and have been using them for a few months now. I haven’t had any issues with the sound or microphone quality.

   4. Honestly, AirPod Pros. My colleagues say I am much clearer on them than I was on my work-provided headset.

      1. +1, they are great, though the connectivity is far better to my iPhone than it is to my PC laptop. I can meander at least 10-20 feet from my phone with no issues but if I’m more than 3 feet from my laptop they break up. (Blaming the laptop here, not the earbuds.)

      2. Maybe my ears are too small or weirdly shaped but the regular ipod earbuds would never stay in my ears for more than 30 seconds. Are the AirPod Pros any better?

         1. I thought they were pretty much the same fit.

         2. I find regular plastic Apple earbuds wildly uncomfortable but the Pros are pretty good.

            1. Pros have the foam things. The normal AirPods don’t. The pros hurt for the first few days but they are now totally comfortable.

9. Big Svaha fan here! My SIL introduced me to Svaha a couple years back when I was lamenting the messaging of so many clothes for girls. Their clothes were her go to gift for my daughter (now eight) for the past three years or so. The prints are so cool (bugs, dinosaurs, lines of code, pi, etc.). And the dresses almost all have pockets!

10. Does anyone have any favorite phone/iPad games that have a storyline but aren’t too involved (and aren’t just Candy Crush)? I generally like GameHouse ones… just wondering if there are others.

    1. I like Murder in the Alps – it’s mostly a hidden object game, but it has a mystery storyline. It’s fun!

       1. And also some of the Haiku games are fun – they’re more escape/puzzle games. Starstruck, Murder Inn, Christmas Killer, Midnight Carnival, Framed for Murder, Cult Mystery, and Murder Manor are all good. All of those have the same main character (Kate, the detective you play) – the rest of their games all have different characters, and I don’t enjoy them as much.

    2. I enjoyed the story of Helix Waltz, which was not too involved for me.

11. Thank you for recommending NDRC, (Eric Holder’s redistricting PAC)! I had been looking to to support this cause, but didn’t know about this organization. I made my contribution.

12. A close friend recently broke off her engagement. Her ex-fiance was emotionally and mentally abusive, she told me after a year of therapy that she “treats him like he is sober, but he is an actively drinking alcoholic.”They don’t have kids but they do have beloved pets and she has been worried in the past about him hurting the pets. I am so proud of her, and happy for her, but admittedly nervous as they still live together and she is making plans to move out effective 10/1.

    I live several states away, so can’t physically be there for her very often, especially during COVID. I really don’t want her to go back to this guy, but I’m also trying hard to not bash him and just listen, tell her I’m proud of her for making decisions for herself, etc. This isn’t about me but I want her to feel loved during this tough time. I’ve asked her and she usually says she doesn’t know what she needs right now (although she has asked for some ideas, budget help, etc., so she is asking at times). Are there things I can do, give her, say, avoid doing/saying that would help her know that I’m in her corner?

    1. Let her talk. I know when I ran away from home some years ago I just needed to talk about it, and man — I’m sure it was the most boring thing in the world (second only to my complaints about the marriage while I was in it), but I had a close friend or two who would let me talk and that meant a lot.

    2. I’d try to find previous posts on this board from women who have been in your friend’s situation. I know there have been several and I learned a lot of smart advice from the comments each time. You don’t have to dump all of that advice on her at once, but it’s nice to have for when she needs it.

       1. Spoiler alert: No 1: Make sure you have a war chest of as much cash as you can get your hands on.

    3. I was in this situation with a friend and posted about it here. The practical concerns were the most urgent: where she could go with her belongings and pets. If possible, offer to host them and/or her belongings until 10-1 (unless the guy knows where you live and might show up). I also checked whether she thought her ex had access to weapons. She didn’t want to report anything (and never has) because she was afraid of retaliation from him, which I understand is common.

       1. Thank you! I will do some searching.

    4. Sounds very familiar. Especially the part “treats him like he is sober, but he is an actively drinking alcoholic.” I was finally able to get out and wow did it feel good. I also instituted some very firm boundaries, and I initiated dissolution proceedings. Then he killed himself. I had even discussed his guns with my lawyer, and he dissuaded me from calling the police about them to have him checked.

       One thing she might want for reinforcement: his drinking is not her responsibility. His sobriety is not her responsibility. Her safety and her sanity are her responsibility. She might try some Al-Anon meetings.

       1. I’m so sorry you dealt with that. I know you know this but I’m saying it anyway, his suicide was not your fault.

          1. I never thought for one moment that it was. His brother said it was (they were very alike after all), but he hadn’t lived with his brother since they were teen-agers, so he had no idea. Yeah, it was rough. Awful. I have skills I never thought I’d have to acquire and that I don’t wish on anyone.

             And thank you for the kind words.

13. I purchased a RBG mask that I absolutely love from a local (to me) seller on eBay and wanted to share – https://www.etsy.com/listing/803635967/rbg-face-mask-ruth-bader-ginsburg-face?ref=yr_purchases

    It’s breathable, has adjustable elastic ear loops and a pocket to insert a polypropolene filter, and it’s large enough to cover most of my face, which ticks nearly all of my requirements for a solid mask.

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