Starshine Roshell

Bliss by Pavement Pounding

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 13, 2019

Lessons from Door-to-Door, Get-Out-the-Vote Canvassing

For two years, I’ve been suffering from a strange, specific feeling: I’m in a hole in the ground and steamy manure is being shoveled on top of me as I lie there holding my breath.

I’d been counting on the midterm elections to offer sweet relief from this slow-death-by-dung sensation. But donating $10 to distant campaigns and sharing social media posts about voter rights weren’t helping me shake that feeling of being powerless over my own fate — of having to shut my eyes tight and just … acclimate to the aroma of excrement.

So when a friend asked if I would canvass door-to-door for a Democratic candidate in a tight congressional race two days before the election, I jumped at the chance to do something that might actually have an impact. I’ve never canvassed before, and in fact I loathe anyone coming to my door uninvited. But if I’ve learned anything since Election Day 2016, it’s that democracy is a full-contact sport. So I suited up in sunscreen and sneakers and got out the gosh-dang vote.

How Not to Raise a Sexual Assaulter

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 13, 2019

You Never Really Know If You’re Raising Good Kids … Until You’re Long Done

The political pandemonium of the past two years has left me extremely confused about a lot of things. But of one thing I’m now certain: It’s an assaulty world out there, ladies.

Since #MeToo erupted, the number of women who’ve come forward with accounts of handsy, tonguey, thrusty dates, bosses, strangers, and celebs is shocking. We saw our favorite sitcom dad and pudding peddler sent to jail over such accusations, and a volatile frat boy sent to the Supreme Court despite them.

So I wasn’t surprised when, in response to these reports, parents began expressing dire concern about the world their kids will inherit. However — I was surprised it was their sons they were worried about.

Beer Meets Brains at Quiz Night

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 19, 2018

“Baby Got Back” blares. The Guinness tap flows. And 50-some bar patrons flex their gray matter to deduce the unit of measurement named after an Italian scientist who invented the electrical battery and discovered methane.

Fourteen small teams huddle in tufted booths, at the polished bar, and around the Pac-Man table in back, nervously crunching on Spicy Lime & Chile™ potato chips and a white-chocolate-drizzled popcorn called Unicorn Crunch. It’s Pub Quiz Night at Old Kings Road, the jackpot is $250, and these beer-swilling brainiacs are not effing around.

Giddy for ‘Your Loss’

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 15, 2018

Hometown Girl Kit Steinkellner Creates, Writes New Facebook Watch Series

You wake up in the middle of the night to pounding rain and realize you’re alone in bed. Your husband never came home — and now he’s not answering his phone. Panicked, you jump in your car and plow into the storm, scouring the slippery streets for his car. What if you don’t find him? you wonder. What if he’s …?

This scenario, or one like it, happened to Class of 2004 Dos Pueblos High School grad Kit Steinkellner a few years back. But it had an exceptionally happy ending: Not only was her spouse okay, but Kit turned the idea into a new web TV series called Sorry for Your Loss.

Premiering on Facebook Watch in September, the show stars Elizabeth Olsen as a young woman struggling to recover from the sudden death of her husband. It has a 94 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the first episode had 2.8 million views in the first week — and it was all inspired by that one horrific night of worry.

Congresswoman Reflects on Struggles in New Book

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 15, 2018

Lois Capps Reveals Work Was Never as Easy as She Made It Look

During the two decades she represented California’s Central Coast, Congressmember Lois Capps was voted the Nicest Member of the House of Representatives four times by Washingtonian magazine.

Through three presidents, an impeachment, 9/11, the second Iraq War, and democratic majorities and minorities, she was known for her compassion, grace, and efforts to reach across the aisle.

But her new memoir, Keeping Faith in Congress, reveals the work was never as easy for her as she made it look.

The Day the Journalists Vanished

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 26, 2018

Camping Sucks; There, I Said It

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 26, 2018

Done Apologizing for Detesting the Great Outdoors

I’m sitting 5,400 feet high in the Sierra Nevada mountains at the edge of a glassy lake that’s rimmed with fluffy pines pointing emphatically at the sky. I’m keenly aware that I’m supposed to feel blissish and perspectivey. But my legs brandish 13 bug bites of various dimensions and shades, there is dirt in my nostrils, and I’m dreading another torturous night on a foam pad punctuated by the random swish-swish of my son flopping around in his nylon sleeping bag.

I loathe camping, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. I’m comfy admitting that I hate other things I’m supposed to like: Green drinks. Michael Moore. Black Mirror. When you say you detest camping, though, people look at you like you’re broken, like you’re missing a crucial piece (the way your tent always is).

But I’m tired of being ashamed of my repugnance for roughing it. For the soggy whole-world-wetness of mornings in a tent. For the swarm of spastic mosquitoes around a fluorescent light in a camp shower at night. For the inevitable stench of raw sewage seeping from a septic tank when you were promised lungs full of alpine oxygen.

Rage Is My Super Power

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 26, 2018

A Cart … Apart

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 14, 2018

Debate over Returning Shopping Carts Mirrors Political Divide

I love a good story, well told. A powerful narrative can puncture our cynical veneers and inspire us to imagine, to empathize, even to act.

But in these polarized political times, I’m noticing how the stories we tell ourselves — or were told once upon a time and never bothered to fact-check — can have a profound impact on the way we carry ourselves through the world. And the assumptions we make about others.

You see it in the current immigration debate, as otherwise reasonable Americans shriek at one another, “They’re here to take our jobs!” “No, they’re criminals in the drug- and sex-trade!” “Nonsense, they’re asylum seekers escaping treacherous lands!” Surely the folks knocking at our borders include all of these archetypes and more — but our inner narratives, once written, resist editing. So the shrieking persists.

I saw this Story Scenario play out in another fascinating fracas recently. I happened upon a friend in the always-perilous Trader Joe’s parking lot. Having loaded groceries into her car and loath to lug her shopping cart all the way back to the store, she asked my opinion on the Age-Old Grocery Store Debate: Must we always return the cart? Like … every single time??

Oh, Say, Can You C-Word?

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 26, 2018

Notes on a feckless country

The word couldn’t have gotten more buzz if Trump’s stubby thumbs had tweeted it from his golden toilet.

The once-verboten, inarguably vulgar C-word has been on everyone’s whispered lips after funny gal/political commentator Samantha Bee hurled it at Ivanka Trump. The First Daughter earned the ire for tweeting a tender and utterly tone-deaf photo of herself snuggling her son during a week when migrant children were being torn from their parents at U.S. borders per her dad’s new “zero tolerance” immigrant policy.

Predictable reactions followed: 45 feigned offense, though we’ve all heard him refer with equal crudeness to the same body part and saw him welcome Ted Nugent to the White House after that courtly gentleman used the same epithet on Hillary Clinton. Bee apologized. A couple of companies pulled their ads from Bee’s aptly named Full Frontal show. And even liberal women who applauded her message mumbled to one another that the jab was uncouth.

But as the entire incident erupted at the intersection of my three favorite things — debating over language, insulting a Trump, and alluding to vaginas — I rather enjoyed it.

Starshine Roshell Posts

Lessons from Door-to-Door, Get-Out-the-Vote Canvassing

You Never Really Know If You’re Raising Good Kids … Until You’re Long Done

Hometown Girl Kit Steinkellner Creates, Writes New Facebook Watch Series

Lois Capps Reveals Work Was Never as Easy as She Made It Look

Done Apologizing for Detesting the Great Outdoors

Debate over Returning Shopping Carts Mirrors Political Divide

Notes on a feckless country