My favorite poet has a piece, "Albanian Virgin," in poemeleon's "Gender" issue. The poem (if I may defile it with Wikipedia links) concerns the "sworn virgin" custom in Albania in which a woman (for instance, a family's only child) lives her life with the social privileges of men in exchange for foreswearing sex. Checking my tags I find I've linked to this piece on the practice in the New York Times before.

With the [Undisclosed Location]quinox behind us, we move into the Back Nine of my period of extremely intense summer employment. Here are a few links to properly mark this monumental occasion:

* Deconstructing Barry: an English professor reads Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father at TNR.

* History's most elaborate rick roll. Or was it this one at Shea Stadium?

* For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

* And once more, with feeling, the end of suburbia.