Barbara Ehrenreich, an always-powerful voice for feminism and social justice, has put out an excellent-looking book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America [review by NY Times]. Ehrenreich spent three months trying to make ends meet in low-paid unskilled labor, the kind of situations faced by millions since the obliteration of welfare (it’s 6 years after the 1995 welfare reform, meaning that the first wave of people booted off the rolls by the five year restriction are now facing the increasingly troubled job market without anything resembling a safety net, without any chance to go to school to better their chances (since that doesn’t count as working for the purposes of TANF), and generally just in a pretty shitty situation. Ehrenreich’s time spent living in a trailer, so exhausted and in a neighborhood so desperate that she could only describe herself and her neighbors as canned labor, is a frighteningly real response to those feel-good liberals who proclaim the virtues of voluntarily living in poverty and complain about how frustrated they feel with their Palm Pilots and SUVs.

If you’re a fan of retro marriage manuals — and who isn’t? — you’ll enjoy this review of the genre and its modern-day incarnations [Salon.com]

The House International Relations Committee has approved a Democratic measure to amend the State Department authorization bill for 2002 which will overturn Bush’s re-imposition of the global gag rule. Thank God for Congressional Democrats finally getting something done against Bush’s Napoleonic Hundred Days.

Teen crime down, but more girls are going to jail [Salon], often for no clear reason other than overt gender bias. As it turns out, young women are much more likely to be arrested than young men if they are committing public disturbance or other behavior that cops can attribute to boys being boys. The message: Shut up, girls, and be good! Go on out there and have some fun, boys.

Today I was delighted to find the www.ourbodiesourselves.org, the online home of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, women’s liberation pioneers and the force behind the classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (including multiple new editions since the original publication in 1970).