Hello everyone. Welcome or welcome back to “In the key of E.” If you don’t know by now, I’m your … host? Can I call myself that? I put the “E” in the title, so I feel like I can give myself that name. Moving on. Let’s jump into this week.
Weekly recap
I’m sorry to report that I honestly don’t have a whole lot of things to say in terms of recapping the last week. Like I’ve said time and time again, due dates for projects and finals week are both creeping in. It’s stressful, but I’m managing for now.
Like always, The Spectator is good. I’m taking two or three stories a week. Is it healthy to add that to the load of things I do weekly? Probably not. But this will (hopefully) be my future job, so I need to get used to it at some point.
I did manage to finish laying the news pages for our print edition at an astonishing 10:15 p.m., so everyone should be standing up and clapping right now.
Blugold Radio was also good. As graduation approaches, I get more and more sad that I didn’t join radio till last September. I’ve always placed my focus on writing-based journalism, but having a podcast and doing live broadcasts has been one of the best parts of my final year here.
This weekend, I went home for Easter to see my family. In fact, I’m sitting on the couch in my basement as we speak, dreading the drive back to school tomorrow morning. Though I’ll be right back on Thursday. How will my family ever live without me for those three days?
Most of the weekend was spent working on homework. Today, though, we all went over to my grandma’s house.
I told my parents I would go to church with them this morning. The service was at a whopping 7 a.m. When I opened my eyes this morning, though, my clock read 7:15 a.m. I fell right back asleep after realizing they left without me. When my family got back, it was revealed that my mom did, in fact, try to wake me up; I just didn’t get the memo.
What can I say? I’m just a girl. A sleep-deprived, overworked girl.
From me to you
This week, I have spent a lot of my time unintentionally consuming content about women and women’s rights. You know, the whole nine yards. It started with historical videos, which you can read a little more about in the next section.
It’s always so interesting to learn about how women moved through the world at different periods of time. Whether it was during the Ice Age, in ancient Greece or Egypt, during the Salem Witch Trials or any other point in our long history, I love to learn about it.
I also watched “On the Basis of Sex” this weekend with my mom. Did I almost sob afterward? Yes. It tells the story of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (known to many as RBG), who was at the forefront of fighting gender inequality at a government level.
RBG was one of nine women in her class of 500 at Harvard Law School in 1956. In 1970, she and her husband Martin Ginsburg were the lawyers on Moritz v. Commissioner. Charles Moritz, an unmarried man, was denied a caregiver’s tax cut despite caring for his mother.
A tax deduction for caregiver expenses, as written in Section 214 of the Internal Revenue Code, was only available to women, widowers and husbands with incapacitated wives. As an unmarried man, Moritz was not eligible for the tax deduction.
RBG recognized that this instance showed gender discrimination not only against women, as it was so often seen, but also against men. By explaining how the systems created by gender roles negatively affected men, RBG was able to lay the foundation for her later work challenging sex-based discrimination.
As the credits for the movie rolled, I couldn’t help but wonder how different things would have been had RBG lost that case. I think that, while I am nowhere near satisfied with where we’re at in achieving social equality in any capacity, I am nevertheless appreciative of how far we’ve come. And more than that, who helped us get here.
Weekly R.E.P.O.R.T.
Reading: For class, I’m reading “Tomboyland” by Melissa Faliveno and “Body Work” by Melissa Febos. For fun, “Weyward” by Emilia Hart and “My Life With Words” by Barbara F. Luebke.
I’m only about 60 pages into “Weyward” and it’s so good. I highly recommend it.
Eating: Typical holiday foods.
It’s Easter weekend, so I ate what I feel like are the typical holiday foods like ham, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, etc.
Playing: A lot of Radiohead.
I feel like every time someone says they listen to Radiohead unironically, people assume they do it because they want to be “different.” In fact, I listened to it as I drove to the live hour for radio, and when we were on air, someone made a comment about how nobody actually listens to Radiohead. I was shocked at the coincidence.
Obsessing: Random history videos on YouTube.
Today, I watched a bunch of videos by WIRED. They have a series called Tech Support. A lot of it is having experts in a specific field talk about a certain area of history. I most recently watched one about the Ice Age and cavemen. I’ve also been watching random segments of the show “60 Minutes.” I fear I’m falling back into my history buff phase.
Recommending: Watch “Yellowjackets.”
I think “Yellowjackets” might be my favorite show. Season three premiered in February, but I waited until all 10 episodes were out to start watching it. I’m on episode seven and I’m really invested.
Treating: Time with family.
I’m writing this on Easter, following a day with my family. Being at home for only a few days at a time when I visit from school, it’s hard to see everyone. But holidays make it easier to see everyone at once.
Thank you so much for joining me once again. Take care of yourselves. Sending lots of love.
-E.
Braun can be reached at [email protected].
