TB PSA

Tess explores her options after learning that she has been exposed to TB. With Victoria Spivey "TB blues" and a poem from Regina D. Bess from CDC's Division of Tuberculosis Elimination. And a slide show with lots of facts and answers to all your TB questions!


Because of her work and domestic situation, Tess was unable to get a TB test at this time. Tess is no longer worried that she has TB, however. She had the good fortune to get tested in a dream that she had one night, and in the dream the test came up negative. Strictly as a precaution, Tess still plans to get tested. She's waiting to conclude her employment contract and thus regain the freedom to be in one town for three consecutive days (the duration needed to stay put in order to get a TB test). In the meantime, she is enjoying her new peace of mind.

How many Americans resort to intuition, prayer, or denial when faced with potentially life-threatening health problems because of difficulties with accessing health care?

We had planned to work on and post a few items yesterday, but instead we spent the evening on the side of the road by an Iowa soybean field 20 miles west of Dubuque, waiting for a service truck to come and diagnose the sudden high decibel hissing noise/check engine light condition of our truck.
We worried and wondered if we'd have to stay up all night to transfer all of our inventory into a new rental truck.
We ate pickled herring and crackers and watched the sunset and then the deep deep clouds of midwestern stars.
The mechanic re-clamped an air hose that had popped off, and we're back on the road. No big tragedy. Only a few hours of our precious, rare, delicious free time lost forever.....
In a week we'll be wrapping up the travelling saleswomen gig. We'll rejoin the masses of the unemployed. We'll trade an income for priceless productive (and lazy) free time.
For a little while, anyway.
I'm already scheming about how to earn my next paycheck without getting tied down to a permanent job. The money I made at this job isn't going to carry me too far down the road. I thought I'd be able to figure all this out while I was a travelling saleswoman, bored in a hotel room. But I haven't had an ounce of boredom. Working 60+ hours a week, then all the driving time. And all the interesting things the road presents to us (on Sunday, before the truck broke down, we stopped at Frank Lloyd Wright's Cedar Rock Usonian home in Quasqueton on the Wapsin, IA).
Tess told me yesterday that she's accepted that there will always be people who get more than her, who have it easier. It's no joke that as women and artists and bottom feeders we're destined for a life of struggle. Constant problem solving, breakdowns. Very little rest. Sometimes I get tired, but I'm learning to accept it, too. It's a choice I'm making because I think it pays off. Not in money or time, but something else.

18 wheels, a dozen roses & a box of tampons

We are freaking out the world in the truck. Nearly every time we swing down out of the cab, a (male) passerby will cat call something along the lines of "you little ladies are driving that big thing?"
When only one of us gets out of the truck, gas station attendants and hotel clerks assume the one still in the truck is male."There is no man in that truck," we correct them.
This is a pattern that is repeating itself with no-longer-alarming predictability. Like, daily. Like, several times a day. Even though we've come to expect it, it's still a strange feeling to have the world react with surprise to something that is not really a big deal. It is not challenging to drive our truck. Sure it is designed to fit a man's proportions, but so much of our world is that I can easily adapt. My feet reach the pedals and my hands reach the steering wheel. The truck has power steering and cruise control. No big deal.
The big deal, we've decided, is that women aren't supposed to take up so much space. Racing down the highway in a big fat truck is not so ladylike. And when we pop out of the cab wearing dresses and looking so feminine it freaks people out. It's a novelty. Culture (women shouldn't take up so much space) is misinterpreted as nature (women can't physically do things that take up a lot of space like drive trucks) and confusion results.
I'm used to causing this kind of confusion. I've driven tractors, played guitar in punk rock bands, and basically bucked gender expectations ever since I hit puberty. I know it draws attention and comment. I guess I'm still, after all this time, still surprised that it's 2009 and I'm a woman doing something that men do.
I can't just be a person doing a thing that people do?

never go home

a story of a tattoo

accompanied by footage from the global discovery village at habitat for humanity's international headquarters in americus, ga. ( the global discovery village includes a tour through an elaborate reproduction slum town followed by models of homes that for humanity has built around the world.)

what do you do, hoboe?

Our first stop on the bum tour brought us into a major hoboe hub.
Expecting to merely be checking into our next place of employment, and undergoing the mandatory training, we found much more: Rosasharn and I were only a small member of a large gathering of hundreds migrant workers from all over the nation!
Staggered by the disorienting experience of seeing yourself multiplied many many times over all around you,
realizing you're not alone,
--in fact there's a lot of you,
all over the place!
We wanted to figure out what this mass effect was all about so we took to interviewing the other hoboes we found there.

bonus question