Definitely worth making a user account (for free) to read Scratch’s roundtable on publishing while black (you could also subscribe, it’s a great magazine):
Do publishers just not think there’s an audience for work by writers of color?
Jackson: No, I don’t think that’s true. I would say what’s happening in some of the larger publishing companies is that they’re publishing fewer books generally than they have in the past, and so they’re trying to publish those to audiences that they think they have mastered, they’ve already identified. And there’s a lot of data now in the way there wasn’t in the past, which can cut two ways. The olden days of “gut feelings” is passing away, and that’s not such a bad thing—gut feelings are often laced with implicit and untested biases. But my fear about more data-driven publishing is that it leads to companies engineered to sell books to people they’ve already identified.
Julia Carrie Wong on conflict between public spaces and the tech industry in San Francisco:
Kai told me that he had heard over the summer that pickup-soccer players were regularly being kicked off the field in the evening by adults who had paid to reserve the field through the city’s Recreation and Park Department. Having grown up playing soccer on that field, Kai decided to try to help the neighborhood kids make a stand for the existing rules. “I’ve also felt kind of exiled from the community, because of my eviction, and I didn’t want to see the same thing happening,” he said.
go fuck yourself, u are a repulsive monster:
I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more “modest” streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what’s the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?
On the victim of Wednesday’s shooting in Ottawa, Corporal Nathan Cirillo:
Because the role is considered a ceremonial, albeit prestigious one, he said, Mr. Cirillo’s gun likely would not have been loaded.
“He was not responsible for protecting the memorial – the RCMP, the Ottawa police would’ve still been responsible for that,” he said.
Luvvie on Renee Zellweger:
Apparently, we are all servants of the patriarchy by talking about how odd it is that Renee Zellweger pulled a FACE/OFF and now looks like Claire Underwood’s cousin twice removed. But these are the same people who write pieces about whether Beyonce’s a feminist just because she chooses to wear onesies. I don’t have time.
But we shouldn’t say nothing about Renee. We should ignore the giant pink elephant that is throwing glitter in the middle of the room. OK, girl. Thankfully, I’m an equal opportunity roaster. So it makes you feel better, I also think Kenny Rogers looks like the Ghost of You Should Have Left Your Face Alone Present.
On the men and women working in the content moderation trenches:
Given that content moderators might very well comprise as much as half the total workforce for social media sites, it’s worth pondering just what the long-term psychological toll of this work can be. Jane Stevenson was head of the occupational health and welfare department for Britain’s National Crime Squad—the UK equivalent of the FBI—in the early 2000s, when the first wave of international anti-child-pornography operations was launched. She saw investigators become overwhelmed by the images; even after she left her post, agencies and private organizations continued to ask for her help dealing with the fallout, so she started an occupational health consultancy, Workplace Wellbeing, focused on high-pressure industries. She has since advised social media companies in the UK and found that the challenges facing their content moderators echo those of child-pornography and anti-terrorism investigators in law enforcement.
“From the moment you see the first image, you will change for good,” Stevenson says. But where law enforcement has developed specialized programs and hires experienced mental health professionals, Stevenson says that many technology companies have yet to grasp the seriousness of the problem.
Oh MAN, that Dear Prudence. How awful do you have to be? The coolest part of Halloween is giving out candy! It makes people happy and you can eat like eighty mini Butterfingers while you do it. I am now, for only the second time in my life, living in a big suburban neighborhood for Halloween and I’m so excited.
I’m not even going to be home on Halloween but I am very tempted to put a big bowl out on my porch so that neighborhood kids can get candy (if there are any. I live by a bunch of old people) because let’s face it, HALLOWEEN IS BEST HOLIDAY and if I can give some kids a metric fuckload of peanut butter cups, I’M GONNA DO IT.
Yep, absolutely. I’m buying all the best stuff this year. All chocolate, no lollipops. And I always thought it was so nice as a kid for people to leave out the buckets!
The only hesitation I have is that, knowing the girls I used to trick or treat with, they would empty whole bowls into their treat bags. And I’m like dude, take one or two, leave some for the rest of us and don’t be douches! But I guess that’s asking too much and I’m just hoping that kids in my apartment complex will be more reasonable. 🙁
I did that last year (I also live in a neighbourhood full of old people). When we came home the bowl was empty, so I’m pretty sure someone just dumped the whole thing in their bag (no way we get enough kids for it to be empty if everyone just took 1 or 2). I just hope it wasn’t one of the first people who came!
I almost felt like this letter had to be fake, I mean so UNAWARE of what they are saying? But then I reminded myself, yes, there are people this out of touch.
I need to find out from my neighbors how many trick or treaters we usually get, because I will buy LOTS OF CANDY
Okay, I admit it: I live in a high-traffic Halloween neighborhood, and I hate giving out candy. We have a loud storm door and long mudroom, so it feels like people are walking all the way into our house; our dog barks every time someone walks up; and, yes, I get irritated when big kids shove their bags in my face without saying anything. One year I tried leaving candy out, but a group of teenagers quickly put an end to that by taking all the candy for themselves.
However, I don’t write letters about it. Instead, I stand outside with a small bowl of candy for a little while and then turn off the lights when it’s all gone. .
That’s what I don’t get: if you don’t want to give out candy, don’t give out candy. Who cares. Why bother whining about it when you know all it will accomplish is making you look like a dick?
I live in a stable, safe, middle-class neighborhood in a high-poverty urban area, that has two neighborhoods bordering it that are high poverty and relatively dangerous. We get around two hundred (that’s right – 200) trick-or-treaters in an average year; if it’s raining or frigid we get around 150. Many of these children are neighborhood children, but a large number of them come from the “bad” neighborhoods across the dividing-line street, or even are even driven by their parents from some REALLY bad neighborhoods up to our neighborhood. You know what this makes me feel like?
IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE FUCKING SANTA CLAUS. Because I get to do my tiny little part in preserving the magic of childhood for children whose childhoods are far too UNmagical, who have drug dealers on their corners and shootings in their neighborhoods and whose parks are too dangerous to play in. They get to dress up in a cute costume, come to my neighborhood, and knock on every door and be greeted by smiling adults who coo over their costumes and give them candy, and they will remember that SUPER-TINY KINDNESS for the rest of their lives.
It’s true I always quail a little bit when laying out $80 for candy to hand out, and there have been cold and wet years when I just wanted Halloween to be OVER so I could go be warm, and, yes, there are always a few teenagers who can’t even be bothered with a costume who are clearly just “taking advantage,” but so fucking what? Does Santa Claus bitch and moan about production costs, or delivering toys in a blizzard, or those ungrateful jerks who don’t even leave him cookies? NO HE DOES NOT. So I put on my happy face and my warm coat and shiver and drop two pieces of candy in every bag. It is literally the LEAST POSSIBLE THING YOU CAN DO to make a child’s life a little brighter.
Because it bears repeating:
Hey, Dear Prudence letter writer-
YOU ARE THE WORST.
That meme is my new gmail avatar.
The “Poor teeth…” link seems to be broken, here’s a working one: http://aeon.co/magazine/health/the-shame-of-poor-…
Seconded!
Oof, don’t read the comments on it, though. It was such a thoughtful article, but all the commenters took away from it was: “How come this person is whining about not being able to pay bills? Poors, amirite?”
Thanks for sharing the working link! That is such an eloquent piece. At the age of 34, I still consider getting the braces that my family couldn’t afford when I was a teen. But then I look at the price tag and the time committment and I convince myself that my crooked teeth are charming.
Speaking of shitty gut feelings, I got five calls yesterday from a guy who was absolutely positive that my name was Emily. After I told him my actual name. Twice. I can only picture him sitting on the floor of a lonely post-date apartment, staring at the wrong number Emily must have written on a cocktail napkin, hoping against hope that this dial will be correct.
(Play on, Emily.)
There is apparently someone a few towns over that gives out my sister’s number instead of her own, and as a result, my sister gets misdirected phone calls and texts way more than I would expect. Like…if you’re gonna give out a fake number, at least switch it up, yeah?
Good on Emily, though.
I got a text yesterday from a guy who said ‘Hey (Name One Letter off From My Name), that sounds great. See you at 8:15.’ I got worried someone was giving out my number and my almost name before I realized that I’d been on one date with this guy back in, like, January and he clearly needs to clean out his contacts list, because he meant to text the girl whose name is one letter off from mine and was probably in his contact list directly above me.
Ceremonial weapons (like those used by guards of tombs, etc) are not loaded. You can see they’re not loaded during the ceremonial inspection (no rounds in the chamber). So for all intents and purposes, he was as unarmed as an ordinary civilian.
I am very heartened to see how much of the reaction has been a refusal to barricade Parliament and turn Canada into a police state. Even given how scary it has been, the response has been amazing.
It really has been.
*nods* I think it’s easier to have such a measured and reasonable response (my dude said downtown Ottawa felt no different than usual yesterday) when it’s clear that the shooter was an isolated individual, and not part of a larger organization.
But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services
Oh, the battle cry of someone who definitely deserves to be paying more in taxes. Fuuuuuuck yooooooouuuuuu
Yes, my tax system involves taxes levied in proportion to how much they think they “already pay more than enough in taxes”, along with a couple other tough but fair rules.
I always like to think of myself as the person who’d develop a fair and equitable tax system, but whenever I read things like this I start to think, “you know, maybe those Bolsheviks had the right idea.”
If I ruled the world, it would be an even chance whether I was deposed over the architectural reforms or the ‘self-absorbed asshole with too much money’ tax.
I want to know about the architectural reforms?
I used to live on the edge of a baddish neighborhood, and I got a lot of trick-or-treaters (few in costume, but whatever). I always let them help themselves to the bowl, and that often blew their tiny child minds – I don’t think many of them had a lot of experience in being told to take whatever they wanted. There would be one or two who wandered by by chance early in the evening, and then there would be several waves later (I assume as they went home and told their friends there was candy over there (these were kids on foot, generally without their parents)). Now I’ve moved farther into that neighborhood, and I get zero trick-or-treaters, and it saddens me. I am on kind of a weird corner (there is one house next door; otherwise my immediate neighbors are a business, a church, a vacant business, a mostly-vacant restaurant, a Christian outreach center, and another church, but there are more houses on the other sides of all those things) so maybe the kids were just on different blocks. IN ANY CASE, yes Halloween is exactly a social service, wherein anyone with the means to provide candy (and any sort of holiday spirit) does so, and takes extra joy in giving candy to children whose parents can’t afford any.
Signed,
Someone who grew up in the woods and obviously was driven into town to trick-or-treat (and might as well go to the nice neighborhoods), because squirrels don’t share their hoards (maybe that letter writer is a squirrel)
The “nice” neighborhood in my town does it right: all of the doctors and lawyers stock up, the roads are essentially closed to traffic, and a guy with a food truck sets up to hand out pizza to the adults.
Seriously, if you can’t handle giving candy to not-rich kids, shut your damn light off and hide in the back of the house like everyone else. I’m sure you’ll still have a whole wing to yourself although you might have to use the butler pantry instead of the full kitchen. You can hire someone from Handybook* to clean up the eggs and TP the next day.
*THIS IS A JOKE DO NOT HIRE
FREEEEE JOOOOSH
I got stuck on “guy with a food truck sets up to hand out pizza to the adults.” What a GREAT idea and what a kind thing to do. If a pizza truck came to my neighborhood, I would 100% buy pizza on halloween as I ate more and more sweet things and needed more saltiness.
we’ve been spending most our lives
living in a stoner’s paradise
Pay your fair share of taxes, maybe volunteer at the local schools, you miser. Also lean on your state and local governments and representatives for better job policies so their parents can have better jobs. Then the poorer kids won’t be poor any more and you can keep your candy. Problem solved.
I like this solution, A+
I read that dear prudie letter yesterday and am still consumed with rage about it.
It’s candy, lady. It’s not like you’re giving out gold bars and stock options to eight year olds. Get over yourself.
But [The ACA’s] omission of dental coverage, a result of political compromise, is a dangerous, absurd compartmentalisation of health care, as though teeth are apart from and less important than the rest of the body.
Even though I was on medicaid through the ACA for a few months, I did not know this. My state must have been especially generous in its coverage, which is….not ok. Medical coverage for your whole body should be the default, not an extra special generous bonus. Fuck compromise.
*resumes burning down everything ever*
Seriously! The link was broken for me so I haven’t read the article, but there are teeth and gum conditions that can cause bacteria to circulate in your bloodstream that will give you a heart attack. My s.o. was in danger of this, and the bacteria ate away a lot of his jaw bone, because of a genetic susceptibility to gum conditions — it can be really serious stuff. The teeth are not magically separate from the rest of your body!
(He had dental coverage but it had much higher deductibles than the rest of his healthcare, which was shitty since preventing a heart attack is obviously not non-essential or negotiable care! These things make me angry.)
Take care of your gums, everyone! 🙂
Someone put a working link a few comments up – or you can just take delete everything before aeon.co in your address bar. It’s an interesting article, and touches on the points you made.
And yeah, the implicit idea that some parts of a person’s health are nonessential or unworthy of professional attention – or that health care in general is a privilege instead of a right – whoever is propagating that needs to stop.
oh, thanks! I found it now, and it is a good article. Though almost more about status and judgment than teeth – but fascinating on that count too.
(I do slightly wish it had focused on teeth-as-health more, in addition to the whole teeth-as-status-or-shame; shame involves major psychic suffering, after all, but death as a result of teeth and gum problems involves being dead! but that’s all right).
Indeed! Dental is optional at the state level in Medicaid, which means that the whim of state legislators/budget influencers can determine whether it exists and for whom, sometimes on an annual basis. Which is obviously not how it should be. Nor should Medicaid expansion be optional, thank you for that though Supreme Court.
Ugh, I know. I’ve spent close to $10,000 on my teeth in the last few years, and it was all completely medically necessary. I had tooth infections several times, which would have definitely caused me all kinds of major health problems had I not gotten the root canals, extractions and other procedures that were necessary to treat them. In all of this, the only thing my (otherwise quite good) health insurance covered was the cost of antibiotics, which are mostly super cheap anyway. I went into a lot of debt because of all this, but I know I’m very fortunate and I can’t imagine what I’d have done if I was not privileged enough to have decent credit and a steady job. I’d probably have just done what the grandmother in the article did and had all my teeth pulled and just gotten false ones.
And if you DO get dental insurance, it doesn’t necessarily include anesthesia if you are unable to handle cleanings without it. That would require regular medical insurance. Which doesn’t always apply to dental work anesthesia.
(I pray that I’m wrong, but my phobia is so huge that even thinking about MAYBE doing research to find out has panic adrenalin building up in me. I haven’t been to the dentist in 5 or 6 years because even with heavy sedatives the last time, I ended up panicking and crying in the chair and remembered it super clearly. But a decade ago, when I first learned that it’s possible to be completely anesthetized for routine cleanings, I also learned that it often gets paid for out of pocket. And anesthesiologists aren’t cheap.)
Oh, Halloween! I get so sick of the complaints about it from people who evidently grew up inside Norman Rockwell paintings.
I am your psychic friend, and I am here to tell you that uncostumed 15 year olds, adults with their own bags, kids who openly complain about your offerings, and kids who try to sneak back in for extra are all going to show up at your door if you live in a trick or treating neighborhood. Welcome to the planet earth, everybody! Did you know that there are also ungrateful patrons at soup kitchens? And poor people sometimes buy expensive electronic devices?
Life itself, I tell you what. Sorry I ruined the surprise.
I’m excited, because I’ll be home in the daytime this year, and the kids from the school down the street from me start as soon as school’s out. The first year I was randomly home that early, I was caught unprepared and just let kids dig into the change jar.
oh, change jar – good idea! I ran out of candy once and gave away all my boyfriend’s pop tarts and sodas and then had to turn the light off…
Kids started yelling, “She’s giving out money!” It got lively.
“Giving away all my boyfriend’s poptarts” = being a Halloween HERO.
AND while I’m bitching I’m going to re-tell my story from the comments yesterday of my horrid landlady who “didn’t celebrate Halloween” because once ten years before she’d had a miscarriage on Halloween and it brought up painful memories. But her non-celebration seemed to have an awful lot of Halloween things, like: getting her son a costume, taking him trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, DECORATING HER HOUSE, etc. Her non-Halloween celebration extended only to the part where she had to give away candy.
She was just cheap.
Who DECORATES their house and doesn’t give away candy??
Rude, cheap people.
Seriously, that’s the Law of Halloween. Decorations/lights on= Giving out candy in person; Decorations/lights off = bowl of candy on the porch/steps or at least a note saying “sorry, we’re out of town”; No decorations = no candy.
That attitude baffles me. Taxes are not charity! No one thinks taxes count as charity!
Though I guess Halloween candy isn’t a ~*tax-deductible*~ charity sooo
Oh, no, rich people definitely think that taxes are charity. The whole point of being rich is that it eliminates responsibility, so rich pepole definitely have to think that paying their taxes is them doing the rest of us a favor.
I’m pretty sure our nation’s rich consider their taxes charity, actually. Why else would they think raising taxes is tantamount to class warfare?
Taxes are CROWDFUNDING. Taxes are part of the SHARING ECONOMY.
…disrupt *that*, motherfuckers!
We never get trick-or-treaters, but two years ago some kids came to our door and we had no candy because we’d lived in that house for seven years and no kiddos on Halloween. I FELT HORRIBLE. I begged them to all come back tomorrow and I would have full-size candy bars for all of them and I DID but they didn’t come back and thinking about it still makes me sad.
Now I buy candy just in case and bring it all to the office the next day. Because those kids never came back.
That Dear Prudie letter writer can STFU FOR REAL. I would love to give out candy to kids and I DON’T EVEN LIKE CANDY.
MY HEART IS BREAKING. OH MY GOD.
I think I talked about this briefly on the Dad Magazine post earlier this week, but when my dad retired he decided that the only candy worth giving out anymore were full-sized “nickel bars” and I saw this year’s Costco stash and honestly, any child that goes to my parents’ house is going to be handsomely rewarded.
This is my nightmare, so I always buy a bag of candy despite never having lived anywhere were we get trick-or-treaters. And then I eat it. OH WELL.
I sneered so hard at the sack of human detritus who doesn’t want to give poorer kids sweeties that my top lip is now stuck in my nostrils. Right up in there.
Yeah, Zellweger’s new face is just strange. I take the point generally that society places unrealistic expectations on women, abhors the sight of natural female aging, and imposes a ridiculous double standard on female celebrities, but none of that makes getting a whole new face like you’re Gully Foyle on the lam from Gouffre Martel a non-weird thing to do.
Gully Foyle is my name,
And Terra is my nation;
Deep space is my dwelling place,
and–hey, aren’t you Kevin Bacon?
I was about to post the original, read yours, and laughed like a drain. Well played, sir or madam!
Yeah, she looked like she was in a spy movie or witness protection or something. It’s bizarre more than “bad plastic surgery.” Are we sure she didn’t just pay someone else to go to that event as “Renee Zellweger” to see the reactions?
Right! The reactions I saw were not “Oh, she had some bad work done, how pathetic,” they were “There’s no way that’s Renee Zellweger. Wait, you’re serious?” The small spate of articles defending Zellweger and connecting this to the real issues with female celebrities aging and the “don’t look older, do look natural” double bind were well-intentioned but beside the point.
So, what did she have done?
I don’t know, she just has a completely different face. Luvvie’s piece from the link roundup has a before-and-after shot, and she’s just barely recognizable. Probably a plastic surgeon could give some specific insight.
not a plastic surgeon, but it looks like she may have had eyelid surgery. other stuff, sure, but almost definitely eyelid surgery. it was part of her signature “look” (which people taunted her about for a decade…) and with it changed, she looks very different.
Major props for the Alfred Bester allusion! You made my day.
I’m still digesting the article about the people that do real time moderation of graphic images/videos, and just…all of my respect.
The animal and child torture would put me down in under a second; I just can’t even imagine it without bursting into tears. GAH, even talking about it makes me weepy. There are not enough circles of Hell for those giant bags of human garbage who take pleasure in the pain of others, two or four footed.
Additionally, for any Ontarians, Cpl. Cirillo will be going home this afternoon to Hamilton along the 401 in procession. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/ottaw…
brb weeping
I will be watching that from here in Calgary. What a horrible week.
If you haven’t had a chance to see Bruce MacKinnon’s memorial cartoon for Cpl Cirillo, I highly recommend it: http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1245912-b…
That cartoon. Oof.
Oh, damn, that’s a punch to the heart.
someone played The Trews “Highway of Heroes” earlier this morning and I was like HOW DARE YOU and then i had to hide in the bathroom because being a sobbing mess at work is not a good look.
Oh man, I saw the standing ovation for Sgt. Vickers on our office TV yesterday, and my heart got bigger and my eyes welled up. Thinking of Cpl. Cirillo and his family today.
Last year was my first Halloween in a while in a neighborhood with lots of kids; we ran out of candy (two giant bags!) in about 45 minutes, and it was awesome. Because our doorbell is the most annoying doorbell, I bundled up and sat on our stoop with a soup pot full of candy and watched everyone go by. Highlights included:
* The small girl dressed as a flower, who, when she stopped in front of my door, said HIIIIII and made jazz hands at me
* Good-naturedly heckling the slouchy uncostumed teens trying to decide if I’d let them have candy (I did)
* Iron Man running down the street toward his friends, hollering “There’s a white lady giving out candy over there, you gotta go!”
* Tiny Ben Franklin
Basically, Candy Scrooge doesn’t know what they’re missing, Halloween (and trick-or-treaters) is awesome.
A friend does a variant on this, except that he dresses up as a convincing scarecrow and sits with the bowl of candy in his lap and slouches back so that it looks like the bowl’s unattended. When kids reach over to take a piece, though, he sits up and grabs the bowl, taking great delight in the startled shrieking (and eventually yielding up the good stuff before setting up to scare the next batch of future therapy-goers). He is, of course, A Dad.
Oh man. I have had this done to me a few times as a trick-or-treater. The first was the most memorable, as I was 5 and did not expect it at all. That guy sent a gaggle of screaming 5-year-olds back to their parents. I’m betting it was hilarious.
Oh noooo there was A Dad on my block who used to do this and it was the worst (for me, a lifelong scaredy person). Like, I trick-or-treated at his house the first year he did it, when I was about 7… and then NEVER AGAIN. Even in years where he obviously wasn’t doing it, I refused to be suckered in. CAN’T FOOL ME TWICE, MR. LAMANUZZI.
There was a guy in my parents’ neighborhood that did basically the same thing, though he’d cut a hole in the bottom of the bowl so when you went to take a piece of candy his hand would lunge up and try to grab you. It sent my sister into hysterics one year, and she refused to trick-or-treat at his house ever again.
Awesome Halloween Dads for the win!
My dad used to just straight-up hide in the bushes. DADS!
God, mine too. Dressed in a cape, with plastic fangs. One year he terrified this little 2 year old Tweety Bird AND FELT SO BAD he stopped doing it altogether.
There was a house that did something like this. They had a bit of a longer con going though. They had a lawn chair with a fake scare crow sitting on their lawn for a couple weeks before Halloween, but then on actual Halloween they put an actual human in the scarecrow’s costume and then jumped out at people!
OHOHOHO brb suggesting this to my friend. “Just a bit of fun.”
As an individual who (slightly) blew out my pancreas in early adulthood with excessive binge sweets eating, and is now dealing with borderline insulin issues, and is a little vehemently anti-sweets, does anyone have any suggestions for viable, healthier alternatives for halloween gifting? Granola bars? I don’t want people to egg my house :-/ maybe I just shouldn’t give at all.
My mom always gave out these animal crackers and I loved them. They’re really great for kids because of the shapes and the little box, which is fun to open and play with. They are sweet, but they are not nearly as sugary as a candy bar. Alternatively, if that’s too sweet for you, there are less sugary kinds of animal crackers you can buy in packs. Or you could go far away from sweet and do temporary tattoos or stickers, which would be really fun.
Those are GREAT suggestions! Off to The Dollar Store for tattoos and stickers…!
I don’t know if there’s anything like this where you are, but here, the City is selling child rec centre admissions in books of 10 for five bucks each – so I think we might get a bunch of those and hand out basically a day at the indoor pool.
I would say oatmeal cookies, except apparently you aren’t supposed to give out stuff that isn’t wrapped anymore??
You could give out those flavored honey straws that they sell at natural foods stores. They actually are delicious (and very sweet), but pretty healthy (honey has a lot of health benefits and is processed differently by the body than sugar).
Or maybe little bags of trail mix / dried strawberries? Or, dark chocolate? (You could also do chocolate nibs, but I think that is too bitter for children).
guys! these are such great suggestions! I think I’m totally going to go the stickers/temp tattoos route, because I can TOTALLY get behind children pretending to give themselves permanent body modifications that their parents will probably despise. Not even joking.
Stickers and tats all the way! The parents of food-allergic kids will love you.
Stickers/tattoos are a good bet! I’d go with “fun non-food treat” rather than “non-candy (which to kids is the same as non-fun) food,” for sure — so stickers, tattoos, little party-favor-type cheap toys like those plastic spider rings or vampire fangs or whatever. If you go to a party supply store or one of those temporary Halloween stores, you’ll probably find some good Halloween-themed stuff that you can buy in bulk.
Every Halloween, the comic shop I go to sells packs of mini-comics specifically for handing out on Halloween. This might be an option as well.
CHICK TRACTS.
They do Halloween-themed bags of pretzles here. And my step-kids’ favorite non-candy treat are mini-bags of microwave popcorn.
As a kid I LOVED getting wee bags of Lays or Cheetos or whatever – I loved candy like any red-blooded American kid but even then my salt tooth was more developed than my sweet tooth and I welcomed the salty respite from my Sugar Mama binge.
Lots of people used to give out little bags of chips or pretzels when I was a kid. Not *healthy* per se, but not specifically sugar-related.
My almost four year-old hates candy, so I’m very appreciative of houses that offer non-sweet treats in addition to the usual.
STICKERS
Super-bouncy balls! They’re popular with everyone but wee toddlers and you can buy them by the gross online.
If you’re going the non-food route you should look into the teal pumpkin project, which is a way to alert families with allergies to houses giving out allergy-safe treats. http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project
Do you have an Aldi nearby? They have bags of tiny little Play-Doh containers for trick or treating! (I bought them to keep for myself.)
I just moved to an actual house and I’m super psyched to give out candy again
After seeing the photos of Cpl Cirillo’s dogs peeking out at all the photographers, I decided to make a donation to the Hamilton Ontario SPCA.
Can I just say how incredibly giddy I was to read on twitter that Mallory has started reading Barbara Pym! There are so many hours of joy in your future! (And I suspect in ours too, if this starts generating posts.)
ohmigod ohmigod I spend half my life stealth-foisting Barbara Pym novels on people. We should start a creepy club.
I have no words for how amazing that Luvvie article is, or at least no words better than the original commenters, so I’m going to borrow some from commentor gemsmom and say: “*waving my funeral home church fan at everything you said”
My younger sister lived in San Francisco till last year and I listened over the years with growing horror to her stories about being a non-techie living there. The parks article definitely supports my nasty suspicion that San Francisco has gone from being a good example to a bad warning against allowing the centralization and consolidation of too much wealth.
You guys think that just because you have money you can buy the field and play.
San Francisco and everywhere else needs more kids, and grownups, for that matter, pushing back.
Plus what kind of assholes kick kids off their neighbourhood soccer field?
Okay yes but. I play in an organized adult league in NYC, where there are very few full-size soccer fields. One of them is in my neighborhood, and my league pays for permits to play there. Some of us live in the neighborhood; some don’t. At every game, there are about 40 teenagers playing at the end line, kicking ball after ball into the middle of our game. Little kids run onto the field chasing balls. Teenagers purposely take wild shots and expect us to stop our game and retrieve their balls. It’s super annoying and semi-dangerous. We regularly ask them to stop/leave/wait til we’re done.
I absolutely think there should be times (even most of the time!) when the field is open for free play and can’t be reserved. Those times should be publicized! That would be great. I also think, though, that a group should be able to reserve the field and expect to use it, even if that requires a fee (to the state park, in our case). Like, just give us our two hours and we will be out of your hair.
It’s a crazy article. I know “scarred for life” is sometimes taken as hyperbole, but I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen something on the internet that has scarred us for life. I can’t imagine doing it for a living.
Not to play into the prison-industrial complex, but could we make crimes like online harassment (cough*gamergate*cough) punishable by community service in content moderation?
“Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person…”
OBVIOUSLY
It’s like some people think that as long as they acknowledge that OBVIOUSLY THIS MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A BAD PERSON, the thing they are doing suddenly becomes not-bad? “I feel like a terrible person but I don’t want to do the tough emotional work of not thinking of poor people as garbage humans, so can you absolve me, Prudie?” Barf. Barfing in my hat.
Also, I suspect it is a lie. LW does not feel like a terrible person; LW feels like an awesome person who is unfairly put-upon by less-awesome people and wants to make it very clear that any Halloween candy s/he does give is FAR ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY, because s/he owes these strangers nothing. “This makes me feel like a terrible person” without a doubt means “I am forced to acknowledge that this makes me *sound* like a terrible person, BUT STILL, I’M TOTALLY RIGHT, AREN’T I?”
I sit on the porch too and love seeing the cute little kids and heckling the uncostumed teens. I like to ask them what they are and when they say ‘nothing’, I assign them a costume. “You are an astronaut on her day off. You are a puppy dressed as a human. You are a very tall baby who has to wear teenager clothes. You are an undercover spy passing as a high-schooler.”
Needless to say, everyone gets candy.
(Edit: meant to be a reply to gripyfish).
I may have to steal this idea.
Also, yes, candy for all!
That’s super adorable. I moved last winter to a neighborhood that seems to have a lot more young children than where I lived before, so HERE’S HOPING.
That content moderation article (and some of the comments) bummed me out so hard. Just reading the descriptions of some of the stuff they saw made me nauseous, I feel so bad for people who have to do this day in day out.
I grew up in a neighbourhood that was (a) wealthy and (b) got into the decorating craze early, so we always got a lot of visitors. By a lot, I mean we’d buy many, many thousands of individual candies, give out one per person, and STILL run out. I am not joking about the numbers.
Not that we resented them — or I didn’t, but it wasn’t my budget — but at the same time, it added up, and it meant that when we would go trick-or-treating, all we ever got was cheap stuff because no one is into buying 8000 mini chocolate bars to give away. (Some people would have two levels of candy, the good stuff for people you knew or kids with really clever costumes or who were charming or cute somehow and to trade with when you came home with 7 billion packs of rockets and the cheaper stuff for the hordes.)
Mostly what I am saying is, if you want to trick or treat somewhere else — which is great! you should do that! — be sure not to go somewhere TOO popular or you get crappy candy.
Handful of Bit O’Honey, I’m looking at you.
When I was a kid, I was kind of in love with Kenny Rogers and would often lie to people and say he was my grandpa or uncle. Seeing what my former fake grandpa/uncle/crush has done to his face has given me the sads.
How does everyone in NYC do Halloween? When I lived in a huge high-rise, it was great because kids would just ride the elevators around every floor all night … but now I live in a building that only has one other apartment in it and have no idea how to give kids candy… just hang a bucket on the front door?
I would also like to know the answer. My building has 5 or so other apartments in it, and we haven’t been here long, so I honestly don’t even know if there are any kids. All the other buildings in the neighborhood are about the same size or smaller – how does anybody trick or treat around here?
All the NYC neighborhoods I’ve lived in have been mostly small- to medium-sized apartment buildings (like 3-8 apts per building) and the kids have just trick or treated at the businesses. It’s too bad, I’d like to give out candy!
My building puts a sign up in the elevator and you can write down your name/apt number if you’re giving out candy. When I lived in a smaller building there wasn’t anything to do. A lot of NYC kids seem to do the store-to-store version of trick or treating.
Random Halloween question – I’m planning on throwing an adults (aka boozy) Halloween party. It will run later than trick-or-treating, so I want to leave the porch light on for the attendees. However, I also think there is a reasonable window for trick-or-treaters, and I don’t really want un-costumed teens showing up at 10pm asking for candy – or accidentally thinking they’re invited to the festivities. Anybody got any witty ideas for a sign to put on the door? So far all I can think of is “21+ only after 10/No candy after 10.”
Why don’t you just put a huge bucket of candy out on the porch after 10? That way, if any young hooligans come by and see the light on, they’ll just take what they want, won’t egg your house, and your party guests will all presumably know that they’re allowed in and will be the only ones knocking.
I used to rent an apartment above a funeral home. You should have seen how my landlord decorated at Hallowe’en. He was a very nice man, A Dad, loved children. His favorite holiday. Neighborhood kids knew him and were not scared to ring the bell at the funeral home.
Someone keeps farting in the library, and they must be serious death farts, because there isn’t anyone that I can see within 15 feet of me. :/
I first read your last sentence as “barfing in my heart” which made me think “Barfheart” would be a good insult to call people who resent giving fun-sized Snickers bars to poor kids.
Let’s make that a thing, please.
I don’t — what — CHARITY? This person thinks Halloween is some kind of corn syrup redistribution program? Come the fuck on. Your itty bitty pack of M&Ms is not the only candy these children will see all year long, I don’t care what kind of neighborhood you think they live in. You want a pass on Halloween because *social services exist?* You are an idiot.
It’s not to make sure “less fortunate” children (any child not raised by the LW is *super* fortunate in at least one respect…) are granted access to America’s scarce candy resources. Candy is cheap and it is everywhere in the US. Halloween is about *giving,* goddammit. It’s about getting out and having fun and getting crap you don’t need because it’s a special, fun day and childhood memories are being made here, jeez louise. Don’t turn it into some kind of bean-counting exercise where you tote up how much you owe and how much they’ve earned and the minimum payment you can make to keep everyone from hating you. It’s a fucking holiday; take the stick out of your ass and show some Halloween spirit.
I do agree that trick-or-treating should be a time to connect with your neighbors and create some community bonds. I probably have a slightly more expansive definition of “neighbor” and “community” than the LW does. If starving children are being flown in from Sierra Leone to bogart all your Smarties, then you may have a point, but if these are kids from your city, then stfu, they’re allowed to ride in cars to get where they’re going.
Yeah, plus if you live in a neighbourhood with all highrises, it’s often not een possible for trick or treaters to get in them unless they live there. (I’ve never had trick or treaters ever since living in a building, they all go elsewhere.)
Last Halloween there was a homeless guy trick or treating on my block, wearing a pirate hat (his regular clothes were already pretty pirate-y) and I was thinking, “Y’know what man? Props. Way to get into costume and take this holiday back to its intended origins– an affirmation of community where you retrace the shape of your village on foot and meet the eyes of all your neighbors before being separated by a long dark winter. You deserve all the candy.”
I was talking with someone at work recently (not related to this article though) about how completely bonkers it is that (from an insurance standpoint) dental and vision are treated like these special add-ons, while the health of your eyes and mouth are extremely important to the health of your whole person!!!
Your username is SO apt omg. Also yes, vision too!!! What is UP with these optional areas that poor people apparently aren’t allowed to access. Ugh.
[IntenseDebate seems to have misposted this at first]
Yes, I was talking about this yesterday with my brother. Look: I am only insured from the neck down!
OK, I like Luvvie’s piece and think it’s important, but I also feel like I’m the only one who thinks it’s possible RZ didn’t actually have work done. There’s nothing different about her face shape. She’s 45 and not wearing makeup. This comment on io9 explains it pretty well.
No, you are not the only one. I don’t think she’s had any work done, so it kind of baffles me that people think that she has. That’s why I was irritated by the talk about it online; she’s older! People are freaking out about another actress whose become older!
Also, thank you for posting that comment. I wrote a blog post about it and was kind of scared (yes, seriously) by how little discussion* it generated. Like, NO ONE said anything about the idea that she’s older and that’s why she looks different. So reading those comments on i09 was reassuring that I am not going crazy/totally out of touch with society/have no idea what I’m talking about.
Spaghetti Monster bless us, every last, old one.
*ETA “how little discussion” in reference to the topic of her aging being the main issue, not my blog post 😉
Handful of Bit O'Honey, I'm looking at you.
All right, letter writer, zip it and stock up on some candy, because clearly you can afford it! You’re lucky you live in a neighborhood that kids can even safely Trick or Treat in!
Oh god! That's worse than that episode of Futurama, because they're REAL DOGS with SAD EYES.
Same! On first glance I thought it was pretty obvious that the difference was just that her eyebrows are now a lot lighter/less visible.
Same age, same issue. It sucks to be in a position where people think they know all about you just from looking at your smile, but that same money-insecure background makes it difficult for me to commit to the cost of getting braces now. Mostly I just rant inwardly about how ridiculous Americans are about beauty standards for teeth.
“Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person” yes, listen to that feeling. I have enjoyed reading about everyone’s Halloween traditions, and would like to add that when I was little my parents who were confusing British hippies that liked to do upbringing experiments would not let me carve a pumpkin as that was not traditionally difficult and Lancastrian enough, so I had to do a turnip, and one year decided it’d be a good idea to give out parched peas (a traditional Lancashire dish of mushy black peas with salt and vinegar on) we were not popular.
Oh and Halloween Dad: one year my Dad took great glee in opening the door and yelling “I EAT BABIES”…”Jelly Babies” at the swiftly retreating children.
This year I’ve just moved to a quant and spooky town in the country side full of families and am in charge of my own vegetables!