FIRST, the LDS Church releases some stuff they’d been keeping under wraps (I mean, if you Googled, you already knew about it, but there you are) and NOW Utahns want to get rid of the Zion Curtain! (RENDS GARMENTS, I don’t know what’s happening to my state!)
If you’re super confused about the “wait I thought it was pretty clear that Joseph Smith had a buncha wives” bit, the big change is that the Church has always acknowledged that Joseph Smith was sealed “for all eternity” to many women, not just The Sainted Emma, but has traditionally taught that it was just a way to protect widows and orphans and such from The Ravages of the West by giving them a husband, and they are now formally admitting that he was sealed “for time AND for all eternity” to many of them, for the same reasons that people usually get married (ahem), and also that some of them were already married to other dudes when he did so.
Anyway, the major essay in question is here, help yourself. And, SERIOUSLY, if you would like to read what is still the most excellent piece of scholarship on the early days of the LDS Church, Fawn Brodie‘s No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (for which she was excommunicated in 1946) is still richly worthwhile.
The horror of ballet shoes. Man, I’m so grateful I never showed any aptitude for ballet. It looks so gorgeous, and my little cousin is a FULL-ON BALLERINA OF NOTE, the next Karen Kain, no doubt, but the shoes alone, man, the shoes alone!
My friend Veronica shared this, the least helpful table of contents ever written, on her FB page. She also added that said book does not possess an index, so!
literally all i care about are joni’s old relationships, tbh
Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do
a great paragraph about a super boring thing:
It is not easy to solve a plant theft. Richmond police closed their investigation in a matter of weeks. In the UK, the only police agency devoted to such matters is the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which has a staff of 12. Their strategic priorities for this year include “Badger Persecution”, “Bat Persecution” and “Freshwater Pearl Mussels Poaching.” Plants don’t make the list.
If you are crafty and like writing, here is a new journal for you!
Here is a great Storify.
not a chance, learned league, not a chance:
OK I know it wasn’t in the roundup but I am still getting super weepy (at work! In meetings!) about Philae. It lives! It sent amazing images back! The scientists are all so happy! Here’s a link to the live broadcast (you can go back and watch it in DVR mode – just drag the little button at the bottom of the vid): http://new.livestream.com/ESA/cometlanding
Some really cool things:
1. The ESA sent a spacecraft on a 10-year, 4 BILLION MILE journey, and hit their target within just 100 meters!
2. The comet is actually not that dense – only about 0.5 on average.
3. Philae bounced three times before coming to rest
4. They have to be careful about using any instruments, as they could potentially launch the lander off of the comet if they move to fast.
I’m watching the live feed too. I love the final xkcd image from yesterday. Brave little Philae.
I landed! I’m on a comet. I’m OK and I’m on a comet.
The downside is that Philae’s landing has started the countdown to the inevitable xkcd Philae comic that will BREAK MY HEART, like the Spirit comic:
OH MY GOD. /crying
Well thanks, now I’m crying again. Rover as Laika 🙁
But… but… Philae…
=(
Well, I’m just a mess now, thanks.
I posted this on FB some time ago and an astrophysicist friend got (pretend) cross w/ me and my niece for getting emotional over a machine stranded alone on Mars, (pretend) raging that it’s not fair to empathize with its solitude when they’ve gone to the trouble of sending a machine.
“THEN YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN IT A FACE!” I said, to which he conceded that, yeah, maybe that’s a thing.
It is deeply fascinating to me how we (me included!) can sympathize with these objectively inanimate, unfeeling things in our universe. I even felt bad for Pluto when it got “demoted”! (I completely agreed with the demotion decision, but, aw, li’l buddy!)
Whatever man that dang robot gets to chill out on Mars for millennia, how many people do you know who get to chill out on Mars
This is like feeling sorry for someone(thing) for receiving too much chocolate
DAMN YOU RANDALL MUNROE.
When I got teary-eyed at the “what if Earth stopped spinning” link in the comments yesterday, I thought, “Well, at least nobody posted the Spirit comic! Then I would REALLY cry!”
THANKS
I prefer this version:
My favorite version of this is the one in which the last strip has Curiosity barreling toward Spirit shouting “WHAAAAT’S UUUUUUUP” but I can’t find it now 🙁
OMG THEY WOULD FIST BUMP (carefully) WITH THE INSTRUMENT ARM 😀
Aww 🙂
THE FEELS.
not-so-humble brag: I’ve worked with data from Spirit (and Opportunity), and I cried a little when Spirit shut down. Opportunity is STILL RUNNING, and the instrument that my (now ex-)research group is in charge of is the only instrument other than the camera still working, because no-one thought they’d live so long. Pluckiest damn robots ever.
Yay!
I’ve worked on the operations teams for various Mars spacecraft, though never Spirit nor Opportunity. Oppy is amazing!
😀 😀 😀 My work consisted mostly of poking at spreadsheets and squinting at scatter plots — based on what meagre things I know about mission operations work, your job sounds *much* snazzier than mine was.
Opportunity somehow always got overshadowed by Spirit, even though the science it did was just as excellent (results from it were a big part of choosing the landing spot for Curiosity!) and it’s managed to stay alive even longer. Oppy is indeed amazing!
Make this a one-two punch of SPACE EMOTIONS with Jonathan Coulton’s “I’m Your Moon”, about Pluto’s moon Charon saying that they still have each other, even if the planets have rejected them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3cDdGKqp8E
I spent yesterday telling everybody I talked to that WE LANDED ON A COMET. 10 years! I was in middle school when it launched! oh man, I’m still excited about this. I love everything.
Thank you for the ballet shoes link; I shall be watching it over and over all day. My pointe days are LONG behind me but my feet still bear the hallmarks (bumps, callouses, weirdly-growing toenails). Looking at other people’s ugly feet (and the lengths they go to protect those feet) brings me comfort.
Former ballerinas unite! I always sewed a new pair of shoes while watching The Turning Pointe or Center Stage. I have permanently ingrown toenails and some extra bumpy big and little toes, but once in a while I still grab an old pair of Chacotts and walk around in them a little.
Have you watched What’s in a Ballet Shoe? A great short doco (30 min) that shows them being made. IT’S FASCINATING.
Word. My bunions are still goin’ strong years after my pointe retirement!
Another thing I did to my shoes: because I was so Anti-Girly in high school, I insisted on dying all my pointe shoes black. UGHHH I KNOW MY POOR MOTHER
yep! over 10 years since i stopped dancing, and i only spent a few years on pointe…but my feet are still kind of weird looking.
i remember having to search high and low for capezio nicolinis because my darn feet are so narrow. and wearing holes through ouch pouches and taping each of your toes. i miss the routine of it, sometimes. i was never very good, but there was still something exhilarating about it.
I thought it said “Their strategic priorities for this year include Badger Prosecution” and thought, good, those guys have always seemed like jerks to me and I’m glad they won’t be evading justice any longer
Haha, I hear the European ones are much less jerky than their American cousins.
What a European badger might look like:
Yeah but
A friend of mine did Biology at university and did some coursework on badgers. There exists a photo of her holding a (sedated) baby badger, and it is the most fluffy and adorable thing in the world.
No, UK badgers are nocturnal, super peaceful, eat earthworms and try to avoid humans – which makes The Simpsons episode where they have a rabidly aggressive one living in their backyard unintentionally hilarious to me. I went on a badger watch once and, you guys, it was magical – we waited with the guide outside their sett for ages, and just at dusk, these stripy shapes emerged and started foraging, a few feet away from us. The danger they pose to cattle by accidentally infecting them with TB is another matter – farmers do say it’s a real threat, but it just seems instinctively wrong to cull such beautiful animals. The badgers I saw looked a bit like this picture: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/49110000/jp…
All this badger talk got me singing The Badger Song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AseOqerHcFg
IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT A BADGER?
“Badgers? We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers.”
(What I say to myself every time I hear/see that word. EVERY DANG TIME.)
That was actually the photo my DM used lo, these many years ago, when my D&D character was a dwarven Ranger with a badger animal companion. All of my fighting feats were badger-themed. Then the badger and I both leveled up to wolverine.
…shut up.
Oh man, that bit about plant theft makes me think of Rosemary & Thyme. LADIES SOLVING CRIMES THROUGH PLANTS I love that stuff. Anyone else have a favorite ridiculously premised mystery series? People solving murders through their knowledge of carpentry or something?
I love mysteries of all kinds!!!! Rosemary & Thyme is wonderful. I’m also partial to Poirot for classic mystery solving. There’s a whole crapload of Columbo up on Netflix now which I’m super excited about. I also enjoy Psych if we’re talking totally goofy premises.
JONATHAN CREEK!!!! Solving crimes through bad magic shows!
JONATHAN CREEK!!!!
God I love that show. And Maddy was the absolute best. I still miss her.
I love Jonathan Creek so much. I moved in with my partner just over a year ago, and we have spent that time watching the entirety of Jonathan Creek together (thanks, Netflix!). And Maddy is totally the best, and should never have gone.
Can we have a Maddy Magellan is My Hero piece on The Toast? She’s who I aspire to be when I grow up.
WOULD READ
I watched Rosemary & Thyme for a while, until the episode where the former cop took umbrage at a store security guy going after a girl who was clearly about to shoplift merchandise (“this unpaid merchandise she just stuffed in the bottom of her purse? You have no reason to suspect she was about to shoplift!”), but had no problems with the male teacher who was “in love” with his underage female student.
Priorities please, former cop.
The Gideon Oliver series by Aaron Elkins. He’s a forensic anthropologist, and usually the bodies are conveniently already stripped down to skeletons (like, one guy was eaten by piranhas, once a woman disappeared into a glacier and her bones were spit out like 20 years later), but once he got a new widow’s permission to dissolve her recently-departed husband’s flesh in acid, so he could examine the bones. And always, there is something unusual about the bones that solves the mystery.
Oh my goddddddd. The Goldy Shultz series by Diane Davidson–she’s a caterer detective and she makes FOOD PUNS throughout, tone nonwithstanding, and the back few pages have all the recipes of all the food she made while detecting. It’s horrible don’t read it, someone’s mom gave one (“Dark Tort”) to me. But the recipes are pretty great actually.
I think Smila’s Feeling For Snow kicks off because Smila is a rural Greenlander who realises that someone’s death was suspicious because the snow is subtly disturbed, or would have formed differently without foul play.
Three Bags Full! Sheep solving a murder mystery through their sheepy senses and knowledge of literature! Must go re-read right now.
“On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George has cared for the sheep, reading them a plethora of books every night. The daily exposure to literature has made them far savvier about the workings of the human mind than your average sheep. Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George’s killer.”
!!!!!
Miss Maple!!!
The Gourdmother and Gourdfellas by Maggie Bruce, in which Lili decorates gourds and solves murders. Rett MacPherson’s series, starting with Family Skeletons, in which Torie works as a genealogist and solves murders.
Murder in the key of gourds!
BAT PERSECUTION
:-O
HOW DARE ANYONE
I just read this op-ed by an angry parent, who is up in arms that their middle school student will have to opt-out of a Maryland state board of ed survey about sex, drug use, drinking, etc. (Seriously, this guy is enraged and it’s kind of hilarious.) “Based on the sample questions, 11-year-old me would have been kinda shocked – but I was also a very rigid rule follower and late bloomer in every way. There are loooooooots of middle schoolers who will have answers to these questions. And it’s good to know what the new middle school drug trend is or if middle schoolers don’t think you can get pregnant doing xyz, so that they can be taught the truth about those things. Did anyone have to take a survey like this when they were young? Or do your kids have to now?
I fucking hate the locution “still babies, all of them.” No. A twelve-year-old is not a baby. Your daughter may be YOUR baby, but a twelve-year-old is not A baby. Twelve-year-olds can be fully in swing of puberty, in middle school and reaching a ton of way different people, and generally starting to get their own opinions about Life and Choices. Twelve-year-olds are a lot closer to the legal age of majority than babyhood, and it drives me just insane when people are going “Oh, they’re just babies!” NOPE. Distinguish between your baby and A baby.
And that article is really pissing me off, because “Besides, and in all likelihood, normal 11 to 13 year olds have not had sex (apart from rare and unthinkable instances where sexual assault has occurred), downed alcohol, sniffed glue, smoked cigarettes or “taken prescription drugs without a doctor’s prescription.”
Oh, honey. I went to a lily-white upper-middle-class private elementary school, about as safe and pleasant as you can get, and there were STILL kids who smoked cigarettes, were huffing glue or spray paint fumes, popping their parents’ pills (even MORE common among wealthy kids, you twit!) and all the rest. Load your head on straight.
Yeah, exactly. It’s just willful ignorance on the parent’s part.
It can be so harmful to the kids too. Mr. Siniichulok and I just cut off ties with some problematic “friends” we lived with about ten years ago. The last straw was that they kept opening my mail that would get sent to them despite all the mail forwarding forms I’ve filled out over the years, and discussing the contents, and then MAYBE sending it to me or else emailing me referencing it, but they generally suck anyway. The last conversation I had with the guy (I told him that I’d send him postage if he needed it but what he was doing was illegal and he should never do it again and he was like “but we’re FAMILY, LOL.” No we’re not.), he was complaining that his daughter, who is eleven, wanted a bra and it was SO HORRIBLE for him. She’s an early-developing kid, and as a former one of those myself I tried to impress upon him that no matter how HE feels, it’ll be a lot harder and more painful for her to feel that she needs a bra and can’t get one. But nope, it’s all about him. “I’m not comfortable with her having a bra, she can’t have one, end of.” Dumbass. I knew her when she was little, and her parents are horrible, and if we lived closer I might have had some pause about cutting them out of my life because I’d want to be a saner, kinder presence in hers in case she needed one, but we live in another country anyway.
Okay this makes me SO MAD. You’re not -comfortable- with her wearing a bra? What about HER comfort, both socially and physically? What a piece of shit.
When I was eleven I had to change (and occasionally even shower) for gym, and guess who was the ONLY girl in the locker room who was totally bare when she pulled her shirt off? Little flat-chested vesperer, that’s who. Mortifying! Not only did it (in my mind) signal to everyone that I was less “mature,” but it cost me a shred of modesty and dignity that everyone else was allowed. One of the many reasons that year was the WORST.
me too! Same traumatic memory! ugh middle school.
I started wearing a bra when I was 10, and I used to only wear it on days I DIDN’T have gym, so that no one would see me wearing it (this is entirely counter to the point of a bra, obviously). I think when I was 11, I was over it (which is good, because I had the new joy of trying to figure out how to deal with a period in elementary school).
This dude didn’t use the word “dirtypillows” at any point in the conversation, did he?
Nope, though that was probably only because he doesn’t know it.
So, dumb threadjacking question, but I always hear about how it’s illegal to tamper with another’s mail/mailbox, etc. but A) is that actually true? It seems like one of those things that “everybody knows” is true, but perhaps isn’t, you know?
But anyway my real question is if it is, then B) how do you go about accusing someone of such a crime? Like, ok, it’s illegal, but how does someone get prosecuted and punished?
I was in seventh grade (so, 12) when the first of my friends started being sexually active that I knew about. Two years later, a seventh-grader in my district got pregnant. So. This was literally twenty years ago, in a well-funded suburban district that had frankly really good sex ed, and STILL. I’m not sure why anyone thinks this stuff has changed any.
What gets me is it’s such a “sweep it under the rug” statement. Well, “normal” kids don’t do this so why ask? Well, because you don’t really know what “normal” is until you ask, and also you need to know how many “abnormal” kids out there need some serious freaking help ASAP.
Ugh dude, parent up. Talk to your daughter about the survey, ask her afterward if she has any questions. Like you said, she’s 12, not a baby. You have to start having uncomfortable conversations.
“Besides, and in all likelihood, normal 11 to 13 year olds have not had sex (apart from rare and unthinkable instances where sexual assault has occurred), downed alcohol, sniffed glue, smoked cigarettes or “taken prescription drugs without a doctor’s prescription.”
Has this guy completely forgotten when the movie Thirteen came out?
That “unthinkable” gets me, too. It’s not unthinkable; it’s not even undoable: it happens. And it would be useful to have confirmation that it’s happening in your district, because it is, and once that’s officially known, programs will have to include thoughtful, appropriate discussion of that painful reality.
I’m old enough to have a 13 year old, and when I WAS a 13 year old, it was the private school kids I knew who were drinking, smoking pot, etc. And there was a girl in my 8th grade class who got pregnant shortly thereafter, but I think she was 15 by then….
He thinks kids have’t sniffed glue by the age of eleven? Oh. Oh, honey.
And really, even if none of the kids have had sex, it’s best for them to learn about it before they start having it. You don’t wait to provide driver’s ed until after the students have already started zipping around on highways, so why would you insist on postponing sex ed until after you think they’ve started having sex?
I do think it’s a good idea to find out what kids that age know (or THINK they know) about those topics, but [hopefully someone with more knowledge than me on psychology/data gathering can shed some light here] I thought I’d read that kids and teens are notoriously inaccurate survey-takers?
It’s definitely an issue but less than you might think. It’s been a while since I was 100% up to date on this but basically there are two kinds of survey liars on these types of surveys: people who tell you they’ve done more than they have and people who tell you they’ve done less than they have. There’s always some of both but they do wash out to some extent. Both also become less and less of an issue the more anonymous it is, so there’s the most lying if it’s a face-to-face interview, less if it’s phone, and even less if it’s paper or internet (especially if it’s made clear that it’s going into a box for a stranger and not to the teacher or whatever). There’s also a data cleaning step where you can take out people who you think aren’t being truthful–big ways to do this are looking for contradicting answers, straight-lining (like just having the first answer for every single question), putting nonsense in open-ended answers, and finishing way too fast (that’s mostly if it’s online where you can have time stamps).
I have no actual psych/data-gathering learnings, but I know when we had these surveys in middle school, there were large numbers of my friends who flat-out lied for fun on these.
On the other side of things, I was hyper-honest (it was a survey For Science, so I had to be very serious and diligent), to the extent that the year I took this survey after a bout of walking pneumonia, I answered that yes, in the past 30 days I had used codeine. And then went home terrified I had unwittingly become a junkie who would, within the year, live on the streets eating cat food.
I was also hyper-honest on those surveys, and remember fretting over whether my weekly consumption of wine at communion should be counted as “drinking alcohol” on the survey.
I definitely took one survey like this while I was still in public school, though it was in high school–maybe 11th grade? Then I also took one during freshman orientation in college.
I actually do survey research so I LOVE shit like that. Captive audiences like that are basically the only time you get near-100% response rates.
I want to hear the results of that survey if only to confirm how much of a loser I was or was not in middle school.
I took that survey in public school! In my county in Virginia they gave it to kids in 7th, 9th, and 11th grade, I think? It’s all kinds of questions that are just like “have you ever done x, how many times in the last month, etc” and at the end of the survey the last question is “have you been honest in answering these questions?” which I guess is supposed to weed out the people just answering for shits and giggles, but I have my doubts.
I grew up in Maryland and I remember taking that survey many times. In high school we were paranoid that it wasn’t really anonymous, so most kids lied in their answers. I also remember that some of the questions were phrased in a frustrating manner, like:
How often do you drink alcohol?
a. Daily
b. Weekly
c. Monthly
d. Never
Like, those are not sufficient options!
I have vague memories of doing one in 9th grade (which was in Junior High), which would have been in 1995-96
I absolutely had to do this survey back in the early 80s when I was about 11 or 12. And this was in Montana. I also remember being confused by the survey because I didn’t think anyone was doing drugs. Which in Montana, admittedly, they probably weren’t. This guy is deluded if he thinks kids at that age aren’t having sex. I was definitely thinking about it and I had my first real sexual encounter with a boy around that time.
Pointe shoes are beautiful but horrifying in practice. I was a serious dancer for many years in high school and college, and my feet are still a mess, 20+ years later. And yes, it always hurt, whether or not you had actual blisters. To some degree all dancers are masochist perfectionists.
That “Carey” interview is wonderful. Of course you were in love with Joni! And of course the line “I’ll put on some silver” refers to jewelry, I’m entirely stumped as to what else it could mean, Cary.
That was my favorite line in a Joni Mitchell song growing up. Putting on a load of silver and going out with a man with a cane seemed so distantly romantic. I was never much of a Joni connoisseur but my mom loves her, as I imagine many mothers do.
I like that he says, “She was clearly a great musician with a great ear.” No duh, Cary, thank you for clarifying with your firsthand knowledge.
“ACTUALLY, she’s a pretty good musician you guys”
Joni is even more relatable to me now, we’ve both dated mansplainers!
Let’s not talk about fare thee wells now/ the night is a starry dome
Every line in the song is so evocative and rich. And that album.
Will you take me as I am/ strung out on another man
SO GOOD.
I met a redneck on a Grecian isle who did the goat dance very well, he gave me back my smile but he kept my camera to sell…
I could do this all day.
Yes forever to mothers loving Joni. I have very clear memories of watching a PBS Joni documentary with my mom, who adores her. That’s why “Blue” is such comfort music for me.
And I love the inversion of the classic “interview with the beautiful Muse about her brief time with genius male artist.”
I always imagined Carey as a sort of redfaced colonial englishman, not a dirty hippie chef. In my head he’s in white linens, a bit sweaty but charming.
SAME. I was reading that going, “so he wasn’t this grumpy old Roger Allam type? Huh.”
Always saw him as a Rex Harrison in a fedora: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/files/2014/…
The thing that’s most striking to me about the ballet dancers’ tough-love breaking in of their shoes is that some of them are already ordering shoes from one specific artisan. Spitalfields Life talks with and about a shop of pointe shoe makers (almost all men) at Freed in Hackney. Each of the makers has a stamp by which he’s known, so dancers ordering shoes can specify taper, vamp, block, and maker. A dancer might not ever see the guy who makes her shoes, but if she’s a Crown dancer she’ll never ask for Triangle or Butterfly.
Most of the guys don’t seem to care about watching ballet. They’re focused on their jobs and they take pride in doing a difficult thing well, but the dancing itself? Werllll, not so much.
Neat article. Have you seen this video about making pointe shoes? It follows one of Freed’s makers.
That is marvelous and terrifying. All that speed! All that physical yanking and slamming! Rather like ballet in that you don’t see all the hard work that goes into making something that looks like it’s made out of sugar and angel hiccups.
Whoa. That is absolutely fascinating.
I am really into the idea of craftsman that make paraphenalia for activities that they otherwise don’t care about.
“Ballet? I don’t watch ballet. I’m a shoemaker.”
Reading the article about pointe shoes really hammered home how bitterly glad I am that my dance teacher told my mother I was “too fat for pointe” and stayed in regular shoes the whole nine years I danced.
I miss it, but not the studio, not one bit.
Aw man, I thought Zion Curtain was some sort of Iron Curtain pun but nope, it’s a literal curtain. Kinda disappointed tbh.
Also, since I will be traveling tomorrow and not around for the Open Thread (sobsobsob), I just wanted to say that I picked up a copy of Texts From Jane Eyre finally and it will be accompanying me on my flight tonight! That and the Ever After High story collection. Very much looking forward to both!
I will add an open thread note here that I’m getting knee surgery tomorrow and will miss all your witticisms!
Hope it goes well!
My copy is waiting for me at my parent’s, as shipping costs to Europe were just too much. So I’ll get to read it in about a month.
Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about Joni Mitchell’s life? Or Aretha Franklin’s? Oh wait, I think I know the answer.
On the recommendation of a couple of Toastfriends I read Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation. I recommend it highly.
This is a pretty great documentary about her, Woman of Heart and Mind.
http://vimeo.com/20279550
I maintain that “Blue” is one of the few truly perfect albums that exist in the world. Every single song is a treasure. It’s the music that I viscerally connect with my childhood, especially “River”, which is more or less the only Christmas song my mother would ever play in our house. Joni Mitchell is just the best.
Also, if you think plant theft is boring you clearly have not heard the episode of ‘Criminal’ about the venus flytrap crime ring. And you really should.
I second this entire comment.
Agreed about Blue. Love that album.
I had a tough day last week, and on my way home I checked my play count for “River”. I had listened to it 23 times on repeat.
Sounds reasonable.
Yes, Blue is perfection in album form.
Blue and my other one is Miles of Aisles. MILES OF AISLES. I can’t remember which song it is….I think either rainy night house or cold blue steel and sweet fire where she duets with the electric guitar until they become one inhuman song,…I die everytime. I have sung along to cactus tree and cried my stupid face off.
Come with me I know the way” she says
“It’s down, down, down the dark ladder
Do you want to contact somebody first
I mean what does it really matter
You’re going to come now
Or you’re going to come later”
I had no idea about the Zion Curtain, and I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur of bizarro liquor laws around the country! Fascinating! My only encounter with UT societal norms came during a solo layover in SLC when I ordered a shot and a beer at the airport lounge. My waitress gave me a disapproving look and said “…..are they both for you?” You bet your ass they are! She brought them both to me, but she was NOT happy about it!
Um. She wasn’t happy because technically, it’s against the law or was, before the Olympics. Might have changed since I finished my graduate work. But when I lived in SLC, it was illegal to have more than one drink per person on the table — hence, no pitchers of beer. So even if they changed it, if she came up under the old laws, she was probably just glad she didn’t have to argue/explain it to you.
Oh my gosh the ballet shoes videos are FASCINATING. I was talking to one of my dude friends about figure skaters/ballet dancers and he was all “that’s not REALLY a sport” and I was like ARE YOU KIDDING ME. You try jumping that high or putting your leg over your head or having that much control of your body — control and grace and strength! UGH ballerinas! They are so hardcore! I am so in awe of them!
Has he seen the Misty Copeland Under Armour video? Anyone that considers ballet “not a sport” after that needs their head examined.
The All Blacks (NZ national rugby team) seem to do random publicity training sessions with the Royal NZ Ballet Company every couple of years and it’s always SO COOL to see these big burly “real men” being awed by ballet dancers’ athleticism.
Aw! This…actually brought tears to my eyes?
They do a similar thing on a local level at a lot of rugby clubswith nearby dance studios, and one thing they tend to say is that you’d expect the biggest difference to be in flexibility, but actually all the huge burly men are most impressed by the dancers’ stamina. Which makes a lot of sense -keeping tight control over every tiny muscle in your body for about two hours vs short bursts of explosive, large-muscle activity for a similar time period.
ALSO, From this sentence alone and knowing absolutely nothing else about the man, Baryshnikov sounds like my kinda dude:
At the same time, some male ballet dancers, including Baryshnikov, have argued for the value of male dancers learning to dance en pointe, if only as a strength and balance exercise, and to foster greater empathy and understanding with their female counterparts.
All men should adopt this practice.
I feel way less bad about him being our commencement speaker for undergrad now.
Baryshnikov may’ve been thinking in part of how Georgian men dance en pointe without toe shoes. I’ve seen it live and it made my eyes water, especially when they landed en pointe from stag leaps. They also do terrible things to their knees, but it’s seeing someone dance basically on the metatarsals that drives home how high the human pain tolerance can go.
FUN FACT my aunt actually KNEW HIM and has lots of fun stories about him. None of which I can remember off the top of my head, of course, but I know they are fun.
Somewhat similarly, people are always insisting that horseback riding is not a sport because “you just sit there while the horse does all the work,” to which I laugh. Please. You have to use EVERY MUSCLE IN YOUR BODY. You try having such perfect control over your core muscles that you can get a THOUSAND POUND ANIMAL to change what it’s doing just by shifting your weight so slightly that an outsider can’t even see you did it. You try keeping your legs at a precise angle and your toes pointed up for hours on end. You try telling, I repeat, A THOUSAND POUND ANIMAL which direction to go in by using the pressure of your inner thigh muscles. Shut up. Tell it to 12-year-old me with muscles so sore she couldn’t bend over.
They bleed after both practices and events. I feel like if you bleed and blister in pursuit of your athletic goal, it counts.
I actually got far enough in ballet to get into pointe classes, but I am a tall, sturdy woman with weak ankles. It didn’t work out.
Wow, I read that BGD storify, and it was goddamn horrifying. She is a much kinder person than me to hold it together and go through the talk. I am sad that this happened to her, but I am glad she told the tale. It must have been hard to do so. 🙁
It was so horrifying! I’m glad I read it but that is all fucked up.
My goodness but I think I need to see a TV sitcom about the British Wildlife Crime Unit exactly this second.
I think it would be best if tough London cop Ray Stevenson was trasnferred out to the midlands or something, and had to start doing wildlife crime with the WCU, which is two old ladies, an old man, and a couple of young stoners who are just in it to hassle the badgers. Ray keeps wanting all the crimes to be connected to some larger, organized corruption, but for the most part it’s stuff like some lady gets a bunch of bats in her trees and doesn’t know how to get rid of them, or some developer somewhere is illegally poisoning badgers.
Except then in the season 1 finale, it turns out there IS a conspiracy of corruption, and Ray Stevenson finally gets to cut loose and start putting peoples’ heads through windows in his brutal search for the truth.
Well, now you need make this show happen. Maybe some British Wildlife Crime Unit fanfic in the meantime?
SCENE:
Junior Detective RYAN is yelling at billionaire industrialist Ian MAY. MAY is unimpressed.
RYAN
What happened to the badgers? What happened to the badgers?
MAY
Don’t know what you’re talking about, lad. Why don’t you go and find me a lawyer.
RAY STEVENSON enters.
RAY STEVENSON
What’s all this then?
MAY
Your boy here is stepping well outside the bounds of his authority–
RYAN
It’s the badgers, chief inspector! He’s done something! This goes all the way to the top!
RAY
Are you trying to intimidate a suspect?
MAY
He is, and I should let you know I intend to file a civil action suit–
RAY
He don’t look very intimidated.
MAY
–just as soon as I get in touch with my lawyer–
RAY
Maybe you’re not doing it right.
CUT TO:
The precinct room. MAY crashes through the window that RAY STEVENSON has just thrown him through.
<3
Oh, wait, you know, maybe I’m thinking of Ray Winstone.
Either one of those guys is good, though.
So you want Hot Fuzz, but with more badgers.
Well, and more Ray Stevenson.
I guess like Parks and Recreation, if it was also Hot Fuzz, and Ron Swanson was also The Sweeney.
It sounds weirdly similar to the law enforcement agencies in the Thursday Next series. Control of Cloned Pets, Literary Crimes, all that.
Nicole, did you read this NPR article about the new book by Carine McCandless? I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about Christopher McCandless (mostly negative), but this makes me re-think a lot of them.
Oh man, this is fascinating and does change things. I still think Chris McCandless was a fucking moron and I hate the weird cult of weekend warrior outdoorsmen who have to get rescued constantly from the Alaskan wilderness, but this definitely clears up his motivation.
I’ve been seeing a sidebar ad for this book on The Toast today. It jumped out at me because disapproving of Christopher McCandless is a well-known Toast stance (although, idk if it’s an Official Toast Stance).
Personally, I have a soft spot for the lil fella. I think he was mentally ill and he did give away all of his money and possessions before going and left a note and I think money the one time he broke into a cabin, he does not annoy me like the Maine Hermit.
I agree with you about the mental illness. The first time I read that book, I was convinced he was schizophrenic, because there are a lot of moments in that book where he reminds me of my schizophrenic cousins. The symptoms classically start in your early twenties, too.
I have never understood people who lionize him. To me, he always seemed like a kid in a huge amount of pain (for reasons that Krakauer left unsaid, but which we now have an idea of) who was looking for some peace. I hope he found it.
I’ve been having a discussion with a male friend who has done plenty of wilderness traveling and surviving himself, who also has a soft spot for Mr. McCandless. I don’t, but during the course of our conversation, it occurred to me that one of the reasons McCandless holds such a polarized spot in certain circles is that he died. (Well, that, and he had a book written about him.) There are many people who successfully go out into the wilderness and turn their back on modern society to one degree or another, but they tend to be politely called eccentric, and not so politely, cranks. And they usually do have some trauma in their life history that makes them need/want to go to such extremes, so McCandless isn’t quite the outlier that people assume him to be. I was not surprised to find out that his family was abusive, that’s for sure.
But McCandless died and was memorialized in a book, so he remains young and romantic and a lovely symbol for whatever role people want him to fulfill, without the messy realities of his current state of mental health and/or opinions on life.
Also, I suspect it is our (Western) cultural obsession with romantic failure–another example is the long history of comparing Scott vs. Amundsen.
Personally, I know I place on McCandless many of my opinions formed by interacting with guys like him, so I am sorry he died, but I can’t make him out to be a romantic or tragic figure.
Sorry, random digression, but I saw the Scott & Amundsen exhibit at the BC Museum last summer and walked out of it in an absolute rage over how much Scott has been glorified. I mean. Basically throwing out any and all reasonable safety recommendations on the assumption that British manliness would see them through, and getting everyone on his team killed? And he’s the hero? What the ever-loving fuck.
Exactly! It’s that romantic doom thing, when, really it was just a very mismanaged expedition. To me, both the situations are very similar.
Another random digression, but if nothing else, my distaste and disgust for Scott would rest solely on the ponies. He took ponies! Ponies! to the Antarctic. Animals that no one else, before or after, considered suitable for polar exploration. Animals that were certain to die horrible deaths once their fodder ran out, etc. I’m not comfortable with the use and disposal of sled dogs, but at least that was a proven, successful strategy for transport in polar conditions.
I think it’s part of a tendency to conflate bravery with heroism without looking at its context. I don’t doubt Scott had courage, especially when it came to facing the end, and his team certainly did (look at Oates); but they wouldn’t have needed to be courageous in the face of certain death if Scott hadn’t mismanaged them INTO the face of certain death in the first place.
As Antarctic explorers go I like Tom Crean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Crean_(explorer) There was an exhibition about him a few years ago now at the Greenwich Maritime Museum – eminently well deserved, and with particular focus on the lives Crean managed to save; a nice change from the Scott thing.
I think it’s part of a tendency to conflate bravery with heroism without looking at its context.
This is such an infuriating thing. I was at the Imperial War Museum recently and was looking at its Extraordinary Heroes gallery (http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/iwm-london/the-lord-ashcroft-gallery-extraordinary-heroes) – lots of Victoria Crosses and George Crosses, and explanations of why they were awarded. They’re divided into sections, one of which is Aggression – the medal-holders there all were awarded them for being really aggressive. (“So-and-so shot loads of people when putting down a mutiny in India!” etc.) It made me really uncomfortable. Context matters when you’re talking about heroism.
I am working my way through the back catalog of Snap Judgement podcasts, and I just listened to a really great one called “The Great Outdoors” and one of the stories was from one of those guys who went off to live in the woods in Alaska and did survive and live happily for years and years until he got kicked of the land and had to find a city job- it was really interesting because he and his wife both talked about both parts of their lives as though both options were totally normal. It’s a good listen if you’re so inclined.
Oh, I cannot see this at work, so I apologize if I’m being redunant, but did you all see this New Yorkrer artcle by Jon Krakauer, about how maybe Christopher McCandless died of Wild Sweat Pea poisoning?
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-ch…
thanks for the link. I have a soft spot for McCandless, mostly cause of Jon Krakaeur being a writer who I really like, flaws and all.
I’ve worked with the data from some of these surveys and it can be kind of eye opening. Your Baby may not do these things, but somebodies Baby does. The differences by state/urban/rural/income/race/gender are all pretty striking and highlight some major failings in how we treat adolescents. While the majority of 13 year olds have not been sexually active, some of them have. Among those who have, it was, for the most part, not their choice or not what they wanted at that time.
Of course, the accuracy of the assertions teens make on surveys can be questionable. I think what is even more questionable is the decision, in many schools, to do the surveys in home room, where the teachers have a lot of interest in what is happening with the students and it is so easy– and surprisingly common– for teachers to look at the answers a student gives. Or kids are afraid of their neighbor seeing their answers and try to make themselves look much more “experienced”. But we can still get good and useful information from these surveys.
This is completely unrelated to today’s links, but I felt you guys would appreciate the spam email I just received, from someone named “MysteryFem”. In its entirety:
She was in a very bad mood Harry and Hermione thought it best to accept their chocolate
Madame Pomfrey, third book! Right after Dumbledore visits them in the hospital wing, after they finish time-turning to save Sirius. And they’re listening for Snape’s howl of rage that the dementors can’t kiss Sirius.
I knew someone would know what book it was from!
That’s my claim to fame — being able to identify the book and context for any quote in any of the HP books. 😛 The next word to that quote is “quietly,” by the way.
I can do that fairly well with Terry Pratchett books. It’s not so much a marketable skill, alas.
Haha I can do it with Buffy quotes, right down to character intonation. Hurrah for nerdery!
Definitely The Simpsons for me! Well, only until season 9 or so, but really, that’s all I need to know.
Me too! I can also a) name all 144 episodes in order and b) match a number between 1 and 144 with the corresponding episode title, and vice versa. Nerdery’s the best.
I thought that I was skilled in identifying the context for any Harry Potter quote. But I am in awe. Well done.
Thank you! Admittedly, it took me a couple minutes to place it, but I didn’t cheat with google. And I am better at the first few books than the last few.
It’s not even placing it so much as it is the fact that you knew what the next word was. I think I could have gotten it narrowed down to “hospital wing at the end of the third book, sometime after the time travel,” but knowing that it’s missing an adverb? My metaphorical hat is off to you.
It must be HP spam day, another FB friend just got two of them (different quotes than this)!
I love the Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do article, and it got me thinking a lot about the “awfulization” of abortion. So many of the women I know who’ve had abortions speak of them as heartbreaking and sad and this sort of necessary evil at the time. And yes, if I can avoid getting an abortion in my life, I’ll do that, because I’m in the business of not getting surgery unless I have to. But I wonder how much of that weighty, emotional pain is there because they actually feel it, or because they feel they’re not allowed to admit feeling anything else. I don’t doubt that for many it’s a loaded, difficult decision, but personally, I think I’d feel nothing but relief.
I think the awfulization of abortion (great phrasing) is also responsible for the “horror” of finding out you weren’t a planned pregnancy, and therefore “wasn’t wanted”. I wasn’t planned, but I guess I always knew that if my parents hadn’t wanted a child, my Mum would have had an abortion. I remember reading/watching (mostly American, but that might not be relevant) characters finding out they weren’t planned, and having it be this big deal, and just not understanding at all. But if abortion is this big scary awful thing, (let alone hard to access – that’s a different, though related issue), then being accidentally pregnant can result in an unwanted child.
I don’t know if I was planned or not; I have an older brother and my mom said they always wanted to have another child and she was hoping for a girl, but I’m not sure the specific pregnancy that resulted in me was deliberate. But I’ve never felt anything even close to horror at the thought that I was an accident – my parents have always been very loving and I know they’re glad they did have me. At worst, I was a happy surprise!
Yeah, it’s just this weird trope that seems to come up fairly often in fiction.
“I found out I was an accident!” *shock* *horror*
My mom was the youngest of 4, and her older sister would sometimes try to torment her by saying, nastily, “you were an accident! Mom and Dad didn’t even want you!”
Which has nothing to do with abortion, but my mom is sharing more and more of these stories with me as I get older, and I have to pass on the pain.
My first kid was a surprise (I have PCOS and was pretty sure I couldn’t get pregnant; oops), and born on January 22, the anniversary of the ratification of Roe v. Wade. He’s Mama’s Little Choice!
I agree, I think we’ve so loaded the concept with dangerous amounts of emotion and “meaning” that we are actually stifling women’s stories.
I was talking with my parents about one of the cases recently (maybe not that recently, unsure) about a woman who was forced to carry a dead fetus to term. And I said, essentially, that no one should ever have to go through that, or should feel that they have to go through it, and it was awful that we force women to go through experiences with their own body that are so life-changing anyway against their wishes. And my dad agreed whole-heartedly, and as he was talking, you could see the little light bulb go on as he realized that what he was saying in agreement was basically a pro-choice argument. I don’t think he had ever thought about any of it in those terms, but it was kind of amazing to watch it all sink in.
Aww, good for your dad!
Recently, a friend of a friend of mine found out 13 weeks into her (planned) pregnancy that the fetus was grossly malformed and would probably die in the next couple of weeks, and definitely not live to term. She was given the choice to terminate the pregnancy or carry the fetus to term, and of course she chose to terminate. My friends and I talked about how fortunate we are to live in a state where she was able to get an abortion quickly and easily. I can’t even imagine the horror of being forced to carry a dead fetus around in your body.
Especially if you were far enough along to be visibly pregnant. All of the bullshit pregnant women already have to put up with from strangers — I can’t even imagine the pain of that happening when the fetus is actually dead.
I agree. And I think, also, the “awfulization” makes it difficult to speak about abortions with any kind of nuance. Most experiences aren’t wholly bad or wholly good, and if you do fall somewhere in the middle, it’s tough to express that in a world that says it has to be this huge defining emotional experience.
Speaking solely for myself, when I had one, I felt relief, yes. But there was also shame, because I felt like I should have known better, and because I had friends who I knew wouldn’t approve (who I still haven’t told). And there was physical pain (I had a medical abortion with RU-486). And there was sadness, because I did (and still do) want to be a mother, but it wasn’t the right time. And I was lonely, because my partner was away at school and I didn’t really have any friends in my city at the time, and didn’t feel like I could confide in any of my friends from college or my parents. I don’t regret it; it was the right choice for me (and for my partner), but it did suck.
I think I would have had different feelings if it had been a different point in my life, if I had had a different support network, etc. But I think a lot of the emotional pain is because it is an emotional decision for many women (I imagine there may also be some hormonal effects as well).
Yeah, for me it was the most non-decision-y thing I’ve ever done. I mean, there was absolutely no question that I would ever for even part of a second consider being pregnant or having an actual baby. (But then, I have known I didn’t want children since I was a child myself.) But that makes it almost harder to talk about, with certain people, because man, do people want to think that it is awful, at least in some way. (I mean, it wasn’t a fun afternoon, but actually it was way less physical discomfort than getting my Essure permanent sterilization doohickeys implanted five years ago.) Definitely not in any way painful for me, emotionally, mentally, or physically — and I did have an actual in-the-office D&C, but I wasn’t knocked out or anything. ( I think they gave me an extra-strength tylenol and a xanax, maybe?) Nobody really wants to hear that — even super progressive people tend to not want to hear that, unfortunately. (I got the Essure just before I turned 30 because though I live in a pretty abortion-friendly part of the country, I lived in fear of the political/societal machine making them impossible to acquire, and it was something I never wanted to have to worry about again.)
Tried to say this, but it may have been moved elsewhere by intensedebate.
These surveys are less about what kids think they know and more about what they are doing. Kids don’t always give the best information but a lot of that is because either they are afraid the teachers who collect these surveys will look at their answers and call them out or tell their parents, or that the kids sitting next to them will see what they said and judge them. I am thinking of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) that is typically done in classrooms at middle and high schools. There are also some checks they might include in this survey, like asking about fake drugs or rephrasing questions and then flagging inconsistent results.
Things like the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which is interview based, seem to have pretty consistent answers. Smaller surveys of youth and other studies of adolescents at the time of pregnancy, like the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which is given to teens in some states, have found similar things to the YRBSS in relation to contraceptive use.
In my experience working with teenagers, for the most part they don’t want to deceive you and they often want to make a connection with the people around them. But many of the teens we would be most interested in hearing from about drug use, sex, etc. have not had good experiences with adults or authority figures and aren’t very trusting that you won’t take this information to the police or something. When you have a group of teenagers the social dynamic and trying to look cool trumps a lot of other things, like interest in a topic or the desire to build a relationship with adults.
Wow, that was long. I think adolescents are fascinating and that we don’t do enough as a society to support them or encourage them at a critical time in their development.
I love that it is “Utahns” and not “Utahans.” That is all!
Ugh, exmormon feels. I left the church when there was still a lot of covering up going on, and that was one of (MANY) reasons. I have such mixed feelings about the publication of these essays. The fact that they’re buried on the website just feels so MORMON and it makes me want to tear my hair out, but it’s good that they’re published? I have some real problems with the squeaky clean tone of it though, like poor Joseph Smith was just trying to bravely follow the commandments, it was like, SUPER HARD for him to HAVE TO have sex with all these women. No, seriously, an angel threatened him WITH A SWORD!
Sigh. And then I sort of miss how easy it all was, if you just kept smiling.
As a former Mormon I can say that even when I was a small child, that whole “he married all those young pretty women to protect them!!” thing made me do a side eye. Like a sassy 9 year old side eye. Of course at the time, I figured it was actually so he never had to do any housework buuuut.
Also this! “And there’s no single fact that’s more unsettling than Joseph Smith’s marriage to other men’s wives.” I mean, I get that the ladies are their husbands’ property and all, but I feel like the marriage to a 14-year-old is more upsetting? Apparently that’s just me.
Oh yes I think that ranks up there in UnsettlingVille!
As one of my friends put it when she saw Book of Mormon: “Don’t be silly, he never fucked a baby! He fucked a preteen. Big difference!”
This comment in conjunction with the one further up about the survey and “these preteens are still babies!!!!”
A+ pairing.
Joni loving ladies! You all must read Girls Like Us by Sheila weller. Tons of stuff about Cary, James Taylor, graham Nash talking about how Joni was like a queen… It makes you want to find a bearded man with a guitar and go live in the laurel canyon, if you didn’t want to already. Carly Simon and Carole king are in there too. Skip the (finely reported and interesting but inherently less juicy) non-romance parts if you want.
I love how Warren Beatty drifts in and out of the narrative like the ghost of bad relationship choices.
LOL! He’s so vain.
FUCKING YES to the Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do essay. I will always matter more to me than anyone else in my life. That’s just my brain/personality and if that offends, Fine and Fuck You. And the fact that I cannot fathom a single entity or being more important than me in my life is exactly why I had zero desire to be a parent and why I would have gone through great lengths if necessary to obtain an abortion.
You think babies are more important than adults? That’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. But your opinion is not relevant to my life and I refuse to let it have more than a passing and slightly annoying affect on me.
Also, my body matters more than anybody else who may be using it as a life support system at any given time. Like, I’m glad my mom chose to have me, but if she had chosen to abort me, that would have been her choice to make (and I would have never developed an opinion on the matter).
Oh! Also 50 in hex is 32.
ETA: This is in response to Robot_Dinosaur
The Cat Who… Series by Lilian Jackson Braun! A middle-aged reporter and his two Siamese cats who solve murders and crimes! The reporter, Qwill, stumbles onto cases and the cats provide additional evidence through their cat ways (such as reading backwards, apparently).
I read as many Cat Who books as I could get my hands on in high school. They were just very easy/fun/not challenging reads.
Also, can an expert in Mormon theology clarify for me: is the essential difference that when you’re sealed “for all eternity” that means that you are sort of spiritual spouses in heaven, but if you are also sealed “for time,” that means that you are also literal spouses in the temporal world? Is the Mormon conception of heaven atemporal? Are other vows made that distinguish between “for time” and “for eternity”?
I am very curious about Mormon cosmology, but am hesitant to believe things I find on the internet, since a lot of it is…probably not real accurate.
I have a related question, instead of an answer (sorry)…
Christian theology teaches that Jesus said “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”
If Mormons generally accept the teachings of Jesus as a major prophet, how does this jive with the idea of sealing in eternity? Is it just thrown out altogether? Or is there some complicated set of semantics that works everything out?
I always figured you were grandfathered in if you were ALREADY married, but, like, you cannot be in Heaven swiping on Tinder looking for a husband.
Hm, also an interesting question! Though related to it, I wonder about the details of that specific theology — I get the impression that the personal beliefs of a lot of Christians does not necessarily include…are angels sexless in heaven? Or are they all just doing one big orgy?
Like what Nicole said, the explanation is that Jesus meant you have to be married/sealed (sealed=married for eternity) *before* the resurrection or you are out of luck.
I am far from an expert in LDS or any other theology, but my understanding (from being sealed as a kid to my mother and stepfather, and from hearing my stepfather talk–and I would consider him an expert) is that “time and all eternity” covers both the physical realm of you-while-you-are-living and the hereafter. It is (or was?) very difficult to obtain a “spiritual divorce” if for instance you were married and sealed in the temple and then later divorced. Theoretically you would still be sealed to your former husband.
Again as I understand it, men may be sealed to more than one woman in the case of a divorce and remarry, but for a woman to be divorced and then remarried and sealed to her new husband takes some doing.
(it has been awhile since I checked in with temple doings. if anyone has an update or more correct info, I would welcome it!)
Hm, interesting. Do you know if the LDS theology has an atemporal afterlife?
Like, in Catholic theology, technically (for example), because heaven is in an eternal place outside of time, all the of souls of the dead who go to heaven are actually already there, because eternity necessarily exists coterminous with all temporal points simultaneously.
(This, in my opinion, leads to a lot of paradoxes that I don’t know are sufficiently resolved — I’m not Catholic, so I haven’t studied it that deeply — like how can anybody DO anything in heaven if there’s no passage of time? I’m sure they’ve got someone working on it, but still.)
The LDS afterlife is…fleshly. I don’t know the right word for it, probably because most of my churchgoing life was spent thinking that Mormon “doctrine” is somehow different from Catholic “theology.” One of the major points is that when Christ reigns again, the souls of all people will be reunited with their bodies, and their bodies perfected (resurrection, made possible by Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection).
Another point is that the hereafter is divided into “degrees of glory”: celestial, telestial, terrestrial. So, like, a strata of death. The most worthy Saints go to the celestial kingdom. Really terrible people head to the fourth degree, Outer Darkness.
There’s also a thing about the very worthiest souls becoming gods themselves. The whole shebang is nested under “the plan of salvation,” which is the search phrase I would use on lds.org or whatever if you want to read what the scholars have to say.
Hm, interesting, thank you! I had heard that LDS teleology was uniquely material, but I did not know about the plan of salvation.
Also, hahah, I misread your name at first as “Hurlbat”, which is a kind of medieval hurling-club/axe/something, and I was very surprised! Your regular name is interesting, too, though.
And Ontarians like to complain about the draconianness of our liquor laws!
Joni Mitchell’s Dirtbag Boyfriend! To whit:
“She showed me a piece of driftwood and said it looked like a mermaid, asking me what I thought. I said it looked like a piece of driftwood.”
“…she knew people wouldn’t dare come up to my cave without permission, so it was a haven for her of sorts.”
“When she sang the song… I wasn’t blown away. It sounded like a ditty, something she had tossed off.”
“We often went to Heraklion to visit or so I could buy leather there for my business. We drove there in the VW Joni had rented weeks earlier.”
GAH! Can’t you just see it? “Yo, babe, hang out in MY cave because I’m such a fucking tough guy.” “Yo, babe, gotta do MY business using your VW, let’s go” “Yo, babe, I can’t deal with your whimsy, it’s, like, fucking wood” “Yo, babe, gotta take some pics of some nude sunbathing hot chicks because ART, gimme your camera I’ll give it back right after I’m done, swear to God”
But at the end he admits he was in love with her and couldn’t hold a candle to her awesomeness. JONI.
So true! I was coming here to post that myself. This guy sounds like a jerk til the end of the interview, when he admits what a jerk he was and kind of out of his depth.
Dude! If you’re not blown away by Joni singing ANYTHING, even Happy Birthday, I’ve gotta question your humanity…
Heeeey Bay Areaans, is anyone going to the Texts From Jane Eyre event tonight at Booksmith? I will be there! I hope to see some of y’all there, if it’s not too jam packed, and maybe if anyone wants to grab a drink after we can grab a drink after? There are many fine bars in that ‘hood.
Ha! I didn’t realize that CliffeN is a fellow Llama! I missed that bloody question, too. I loved the Math part of it, but Games/Sport is my LL kryptonite.
So, what happened to Fanny Alger? Is she presumably married to Joseph Smith in the afterlife even though they “separated” and she went on to marry a non-Mormon?
I sort of thought of my terminated pregnancy as being with the right person at the wrong time, later when it turned out to be the wrong person anyway, I was like, well shit, maybe I should have just had my baby then. (No! But also ?) In fact making that choice was what made confront the reality of how much I do want to do the marriage and kids thing, and then I spent 2 years with that dude and now that relationship is over, so now I am farther away from what I want, and now I want it more than I did, and my eggs are older!
I do think we could maybe not talk about it like some huge trauma, but no one is ever going to be jazzed aout this particular procedure: “I really like getting my IUD put in! It was super great!” or “My appendectomy/wisdom tooth removal was awesome!” And an abortion is more complex than that- it can really shove you face to face with your life path- its like getting into a college and deciding to defer acceptance (all my friends are going to college! If you don’t go now will you really get the chance to go later?! People will think you are selfish). A friend of mine got out of a relationship, discovered her pregnancy and kept it, and is a single mom now. My close friends had a baby whose gestation dates pretty closely follow what mine would have been. Sometimes it’s not easy to witness those other paths spooling out, the other things I could have done. I’m not sure now, if I got pregnant again that I WOULD make the same choice. I’m really not.
Being pregnant was HARD on me (and I didn’t even know for the first month). I felt completely panicked for the entire time. It’s amazing how your body just transforms itself. I was tired, emotional, pukey, gas pains. I couldn’t walk up hills without gasping for air. And I couldnt’ tell anyone. They’d all be like, “lets go get some sushi at lunch” and I would just want to retch and retch. That was crazy stressful. Certainly the procedure itself was less horrible than that panicky “body snatchers” feeling. But I had the pill and that induces a miscarriage, and that was a really intense, painful and draining thing.
Anyway, for me it was a pivotal moment. You could argue it’s our culture that made it that for me…but I don’t know. I don’t walk around all day crying and traumatized or anything, but it isn’t a happy time for me to look back on. I support abortion without limits absolutely, and I do not regret my choice MOST of the time. I think there’s a middle ground between “hey man it’s totally cool and I hummed a happy aborting song” and “this is devastating and ruins lives.” We need to look at abortion as a sucky necessity that is not rare. Break-ups are awful but necessary, and its not like we go around telling people that if they jsut stayed out of relationships the trauma of breakups could be avoided, or that having a breakup will destroy your life forever, but on the other hand no one ever says, “look man a breakup is lots of fun and no big deal.”
Continuing my theme of articles about politics within church groups, here’s an article that gives a pretty good rundown of Pope Francis’s recent demotion of the very conservative former Cardinal of St. Louis, MO, Raymond Burke.
I have worked in the Vatican, and deal with Catholic seminarians on a regular basis. Two years ago, if told me anything like this would happen in my lifetime, I would have laughed bitterly and disbelievingly in your face. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp…
My favorite part of this article is the commenter who is trying to convert people to the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutheran_Church&… ) if only for the sheer cluelessness of it all.
My feet never bled or bruised in point shoes, oddly enough. Perhaps it’s because I have very “flat” toenails that I’m able to keep extremely short without them giving me problems. I’m almost 50 now and I still clip them super-short out of habit. HM. this might be the most TMI comment I’ve ever written.
this belongs in the toe shoe thread!
When you've said Wiiiiiiiiiiiiisconsin…
…you've said it all.
In my ballet days, I used to love monkeying with my shoes til they were just right. I do that with my skates now – spent a very happy hour the other evening with a tennis ball rammed into a chafing bit of my 495s aiming a hairdryer at it. I think lots of people find these kinds of rituals very calming – one of my team mates dismantles her whole skate before every game and kind of just sits meditating surrounded by bearings and skate tools.