The difficulties facing LGBT couples as they approach retirement age:
The Gallup poll found that 15.9 percent of gay men over 65 were near or below the Federal poverty line, compared to 9.7 percent of heterosexual men in the same age group. While the Gallup poll showed poverty rates for straight and gay women to be statistically similar, other studies, including a 2009 report by the Williams Institute, showed lesbian couples over the age of 65 were twice as likely to live below the poverty line as opposite-sex couples, and were much more likely to be on public assistance programs such as food stamps.
Jia’s “Cheerleaders for Christ” is fantastic:
I got my first purity ring when I was eight years old. “I’m committed,” I said proudly to my mother, “to being pure.”
“Jesus,” she said. She grabbed my left hand, its fourth finger adorned with cheap fake silver that said TRUE LOVE WAITS. The ring looked like a heart, so I liked it.
“Take it off,” my mom said, shuddering.
I could not get enough of this long and terrifying and great New Yorker piece on the boys who will be the next generation of bull-riders (the most dangerous organized sport) and the parents that actually want them to do it:
The mothers sat in the bleachers taking videos and hollering advice—“Wyatt, just ride the way Daddy taught you!” The fathers straddled the chute, leaning over their sons to cinch the rope and shove the calf into position: “Are you ready?” “Yes, sir!” “You’ve got to take the fight to him.” “Yes, sir!” “You’ve got to want it.” When the gate blew open, they leaped up on the rail and watched their sons with clenched fists and narrowed eyes. They weren’t stage parents, for the most part. They just took following your bliss to its logical extreme. “I’d let my kid do whatever he has a passion for,” one mother told me, “even if he wanted to be a piano player.”
Guys, there are only, like, two episodes left of “The Newsroom,” the worst show ever, and it’s killing me because it is my favourite show to watch and yell at. I honestly thought my water was going to break on Sunday night bc I was railing against it so fiercely, and with such joy. I hate it so purely and richly, I shudder to think of the void its passing will leave in my life.
If you were too busy catching up with Actual Work yesterday to read Mallory’s Marx/Dune mashup, fix that.
A gentleman takes texts from Emily Dickinson to Grindr.
This Texas Monthly story about the Rev. Charles Moore’s self-immolation is haunting.
Lovely profile of P.D. James in the Globe and Mail, which gets at her great firmness and courage:
As for secrets and sacrifice, her life was circled by both. The product of an unhappy marriage (“of course it lasted; marriages, however unhappy, did in those days”), she was married herself at 21 to a doctor, Connor Bantry White, who was ruined by his service in the Second World War. For 20 years afterward, he was largely confined to psychiatric hospitals, and she would write while on the train to visit him. She raised their two daughters on her own, while working in public service, first as a hospital administrator and later in the criminal-justice bureaucracy. Her husband died in 1964, likely a suicide. All she said publicly on the subject, on a BBC Radio program years later, was: “I found him.” Sharing was not her generation’s coin.
My brother’s currently living with us part-time (he’s doing an internship in my town) and he’s making me watch the Newsroom – well, make not make me, but he proposed we watch it together – he likes the show – and I agreed because bonding and shit. We’re only 2 episodes in, but man, does that show make me angry. Will often has half of a point, and then he goes on about how much better it used to be and I’m like “well, maybe if you were a well-off straight white dude, dude”, and Emily Mortimer is terrible with computers (of course!) and Allison Pill, who I love in other things, is just basically dumb and angry all the time, and just gah!
I do want to keep watching though, because – as you point out – it can feel good to be so outrageously yelly about something.
My boyfriend loooves the Newsroom and I love that it gives me so many opportunities to point out how poorly written every. female. character. is on that show. At first he thought I was just being a Feminist Killjoy but now (after 2.5 seasons ugh) he’s finally starting to see my point.
The moment I fully gave up on The Newsroom was the moment MacKenzie McHale shrieked something about loving her shoes.
Boyfriend: “Mac is the boss! She’s a strong female character!”
Me: “…”
Yeppp this is why I quit the West Wing even though all my friends looooved it. I make a slight exception for SportsNight but that is just because Felicity is so good, she transcended the suck. Also Josh Charles, hellooo.
I bet someone said to Sorkin once, “We love you, never change!” and he took this advice seriously. I AM NEVER CHANGING U GUYS <3<3<3
That’s what makes West Wing watchable for me: Alison Janney and Stockard Channing are just too powerfully magnificent to be held back by Sorkin’s subtly omnipresent sexism, and many of the dude actors also helped hold the balance. But I do have a harder time re-watching the show these days, since seeing so much of the TERRIBLE on full, surface-level display in The Newsroom.
Stockard Channing is desperately underappreciated.
(If this machine didn’t block youtube, this comment would be a link to Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee)
God, that “Cheerleaders for Christ” piece. I want to read it every day and make every other person in the world read it, it’s that good.
My work filter won’t let me view it 🙁
Yes it is. I grew up in a very similar kind of Christian-megachurch culture, and that piece is the best I’ve ever seen anyone describe the weird careless masochism that engendered.
It hit pretty close to home for me–especially denying ever “drinking the water” now that I am older–and I didn’t even go to a religious school.
jia is a treasure. honestly, every time she writes something i just want to share it with everyone.
this piece made me cry. i recognized so much of my own experience in it, despite growing up as a pretty secular jew in the bay area who went to public school—a far cry from mega-church texas.
Amazing. The last sentence – “Then, as now, fundamentally baffled by goodness; still trying somehow to be good.” This is, and was, me, and I grew up Unitarian in the DC suburbs.
Did anyone else read the National Geographic article about cowboys in Patagonia? I’m all for rough riding and tough living, but when it comes to nearly getting an orchiectomy courtesy of a pissed-off feral bull, I think it’s okay to tap out.
Yeah I just read that the other night! Yeesh.
PACKED HIS TORN SCROTUM WITH ROCK SALT agh agh agh. Between him and my friend who used duct tape to hold her busted ribs together for a week-long ride in the Arizona wilderness, I am forced to admit that there are some scary-tough sumbitches in the world and I am not one of them.
You (and Original Nicole) have THE BEST horsey links! Off to check it out!
That bullriding article is really fantastic. And it touches on, oh gosh, so many things–gender in how people raise their kids, societal differences between “country” and urban/suburban, inherent danger in children’s activities, selective breeding in animals, the role of religion in sports/entertainment, cash and money in children’s sports, class and race in different regions, and more and more.
There’s a tendency–however natural–for people to assume that everyone lives just like them, maybe with a little more or little less money, or a little different culture or skin colour or food–that everyone brings up their kids in the same way, give or take some. But there are so, so, so many different ways of living and different types of looking at the world, and it’s so dangerous to think your way is the only way. The families who live in Park Slope and are bewildered at big rocks on a playground would probably not see eye-to-eye with parents who allow their eight-year-olds to participate in monstrously dangerous organized sports. But if that tendency to think that Your Way is the Right Way shows its ugly head in one arena, what’s to stop it from popping up elsewhere? In judging the way other people eat and travel and play–and then the New York Times is writing an article on “Plastic Rocks–Keeping Danger At Bay For Preschoolers At Play” about Manhattan playgrounds installing plastic rocks that won’t cut up kids’ heads when they fall to make the world a safer place, and then the rest of the country is too busy rolling its eyes to look at any of the root issues, and rather than have an actual discussion about, say, children’s playing environments and safety that could be applied to your playground in Enid, Oklahoma as well as the playground in Central Park–once again, now everyone is griping at each other and making snarky remarks about Those People Far Away and nothing is really going to change.
That kind of got away from me there for a bit but man, go read that article.
It was fascinating. I’m always quite uncomfortable about animal sports where you have an antagonistic relationship with the animal rather than a partnership like mainstream horseriding, but the bit about the futurity did make me chuckle – we also have futurities for sports horses where they’re shown to breed society panel judges to assess them for the future, and I was laughing at the thought of one for rodeo bulls.
That article is giving me so many conflicting feelings. I’m halfway into it and the injuries they’ve described so far are already making me shudder uncontrollably. And the gender politics are pretty icky. But I really wish I had been allowed to do something really exciting and active as a kid. Girl Scouts turned out to me mostly about gluing macaroni to paper and collecting leaves. I was so disappointed.
I’m pretty sure all our troop leaders was hang out and play big sister in the community center. We did one single outing (a camping trip), and I don’t even remember any of the leaders talking directly to me, besides instructing me to march in a circle and organizing cookie sales. I am still so jealous of the people who got to do fun stuff.
Yes, yes! a lot of the conversation about rodeo is in the context of animal cruelty, not human interaction. But the culture of rodeo is so interesting. I’m a lifelong rural westerner, a horse owner and a far-left liberal atheist. It isn’t impossible to be all three. I stopped going to rodeos because the atmosphere was so toxic: the announcer assumes that because I enjoy watching rodeo I am also interested in hearing about Jesus, trucks, the Tea Party and country music.
And the gender stuff. Ugh. Just… ugh.
The thing is, but not attending and by self-selecting myself out of their audience, I’m only further homogenizing it. I think that’s the real danger of little kids in rodeo culture (and christian schools like Jia’s)—they may never be exposed to more than one way of understanding the world. To me that’s a lot more dangerous than a few broken ribs.
Okay, but everyone needs to watch Terry Crews talk about masculinity and feminism.
I love him so much.
Seconding the love!
Good God I love this show. But man, if Jake and Amy get together I will be DISAPPOINTED in the writers in a BIG way.
Yeah, me too! I think them getting together isn’t a matter of if, but when. Although they’ve been a bit heavy-handed with that pairing, the “will they/won’t they” contrivances are going to get old fast (particularly if we get an endless stream of guest star/love interests). I’d rather them just put them together already, and hopefully find another point of storytelling tension. Depending on how long the show is on the air, we’ll see how they handle it.
This is exactly how I feel. The show is so different and exciting in so many other ways, but this whole “lead couple will they won’t they!” thing is just played out. I expect better from the writes who have given us so much other good stuff!
You know I thought I would love Jake because I don’t hate Andy Samberg but this show has made me hate both Jakes and Andy Samberg. But it has brought the goodness that is Terry Crews and Andre Braugher, so. Also, Rosa.
Oh no! I actually really like Jake, and am “meh” about Andy Samberg. Holt, Gina, Rosa, and Terry all tie for my favorite character.
Agreeing with you on the Terry Crews interview but also loving your Kate Bishop icon. Go Hawkeye!
Kate Bishop is pretty much #1 on my list of Fictional Characters I Wish To Emulate In Real Life.
I almost bought the issue of “Men’s Health” where Andy Samberg profiled Terry Crews. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t.
Were any other LGBToasties feeling really weird about the AIDS benefit concert yesterday? I mean, yay that the cause is getting so many text-to-this-number donations, and yay that presidents acknowledge that AIDs exists now, but straights basically ignored it before Ryan White, Rock Hudson, and that straight woman- you know, the demographic that didn’t have it coming. Nobody mentioned ACT UP or the memorial quilt that I can recall. There wasn’t even the token Freddie Mercury cover. It just feels like we’ve been completely forgotten in the rush to help every other victim.
I didn’t watch the concert but that’s basically exactly how I felt about Dallas Buyers Club. Like, really, straight people? You need THE AIDS CRISIS. All of history being about you isn’t good enough, you need to rewrite AIDS.
Um, all of classical Greek and Roman history is about being queer. Our origins as a civilization are queer.
And AIDs, particularly outside of the US affects people of all orientations, with women being a major category (and the children born to them not insignificant). 70% of the people living with HIV are in subsaharan Africa.
I didn’t see either of the pop culture things you’re talking about, so you may be totally right about those events, I don’t know, but let’s not misdirect anger here!
(from another queer voice)
The Dallas Buyers Club is a movie about the AIDS crisis of the late eighties/early nineties, with a focus on activists fighting for access to treatments that were available outside the US but not approved by the FDA.
The story is told from the POV of an asshole, homophobic straight dude who gets AIDS, starts fighting to get better treatment for himself, and slowly turns into a decent human being who gradually realizes that queer people are people too.
While it is absolutely true that people of all orientations and backgrounds live with HIV/AIDS, the late eighties/early nineties AIDS crisis in the US *was* centered in the queer community, and both the tragedies and the heroic stories that came out of that crisis are overwhelmingly about people from that community. Rather than tell one of those stories, DBC told yet another story about a straight dude.
and also, yes, greek and roman history is filled with lots of queer people. that’s sort of the point. there’s queers throughout history, but most people, when they think about the history of western civilization, think just about straight people. it’s our story too, but we’re sort of written out of it.
I wasn’t actually asking for more information about the Dallas Buyers Club.
I sympathize with grumblyqueer. Since the concert happened in the US, it would have been good to include more dimensions of the US AIDS crisis from the 80s in the event. But given that it is a benefit concert for people who currently have HIV or AIDs, and 70% of those people are in subsaharan Africa and just as likely to be heterosexual or women as gay or queer, t also don’t want to risk treating it like a zero-sum game where acknowledging one thing means forgetting another.
Let’s just step out of the US-centric viewpoint on this. You would see what I mean if you met families in Lusaka or Lagos with an HIV problem in the family. One of my best friends has a cousin being raised in Lusaka by her parents as her sibling because both the cousin’s parents both died of AIDs. This is not uncommon. And it is important too.
By the way, the importance of classical Greek and Roman same-sex coupling is hardly written out of history books. It’s just not part of pop culture. I don’t know what “most people” think, but if they think the history of western civilization is made by straight people, they aren’t thinking about history at all. This isn’t coming from a history where anything is “written out” anymore, it’s coming from living in the presentism of pop culture.
I’m straight, but I work for an AIDS Service Organization & totally agree. So much of the focus (and funding) is now on women, minorities, etc. and/or people in Africa (and I’m not saying that’s not a good cause, I was also a Peace Corps Volunteer doing HIV prevention work in East Africa before I started working here.) My caseload, meanwhile, is 99% gay men, most of them white, but even working in the field you rarely hear about new funding or projects focusing on the gay community. I don’t get it.
Man, I don’t want to fight with strangers on the internet about HIV/AIDS when we all support research and just want to stop the epidemic. But “I don’t get it?” That is a really flippant way to dismiss the fact that whatever the American history of HIV/AIDS, currently in all parts of the world it is a Black disease.
Look, I do research at a university and never get to talk to any actual real people, so your work experience is more relevant. My research is also on vaginal microbicides to prevent HIV infection in African women, so I’m pretty biased. However, I do read a lot of statistics. HIV/AIDS and related complications is the number one killer in sub-Saharan Africa, and over 50% are women. I admit I care about global health more than problems facing the US because access to healthcare, preventive treatments, and therapies for the infected are so much harder to get in the developing world. However even in the US Black Americans suffer disproportionately. They are about 12% of the overall population, but about 41% of those living with HIV. So yes, technically White MSM are just barely the largest group of new infections, but when you take population demographics into consideration minorities are at a higher risk of infection and death. I’m obsessed with those CDC statistics about leading causes of death by gender, age, and race. For reproductive age women, HIV/AIDS is a top ten killer for Black women but not White women. For reproductive age men, HIV/AIDS is barely a top ten killer for White men, but a much higher top ten killer, and over a greater age range, for Black men.
So maybe most of your cases are White men, but because of all the work done in the 80s and early 90s they are more likely to be better educated to seek healthcare and face less of a stigma then Black and other minority communities who tend to be less affluent and have less access.
Furthermore, yes MSM is by far the primary method of contracting HIV/AIDS, but heterosexuals do get and spread HIV and because of reproductive anatomy women are at such a higher risk of infection compared to men, and they don’t always have the best options to protect themselves. I will say I periodically nag my advisors about how anal sex is more risky for both heterosexual and homosexual couples and we should really focus on anal microbicides, but the politics of that to get funding is basically a non-starter.
Also, it is totally gross when straight White people try to make HIV/AIDS about them; I hope we can at least all agree about that.
Two years ago I went to my first and only rodeo in Wyoming, and they had Mutton Bustin’, and oh my god it was horrifying. As was watching all the grown men get thrown off horses and bulls, and that time the announcer was like “we are all lucky to live in a country where we can worship how we want and when we want,” and then immediately led a prayer to ‘father God,” because “where we want and when we want” means right here and right now.
Aw, you didn’t like the little kids riding the sheep? I’m in total agreement with you on the rest of rodeos (except the cowgirls doing barrel racing, I’ll admit, but it’s less senseless and cruel than grown men throwing themselves on calves, etc.), but I don’t think the sheep (or kids) come to much harm.
Little kids riding sheep would have been one thing. I saw much trampling.
Oh dear! Not very good Mutton Bustin’, then.
I went to one rodeo when I was twelve and was like, “OKAY, that was enough for me, how about I stick to ice hockey as my Wyoming public sporting event of choice, it is less brutal.
I feel the exact same re: The Newsroom. Good god, I hate it SO MUCH, Jim in particular this season is a sanctimonious, self-righteous HORROR of a character and I want to throttle him, but man, I sure do watch every single minute of every episode! Best show to hate-watch. I’m going to miss it.
The Newsroom is soooooooo bad! Spoilers ahead.
I was so upset at the beginning of the season because I couldn’t believe Mac would ever plan a large society wedding featuring an 18 person wedding party. I saw her as a small courthouse ceremony type. When I said as much on tumblr, some uberfan called me a bad feminist. BUT I WAS RIGHT!!! She was totally gung ho for the quickie ceremony given the extenuating circumstances.
Also, NO COMPANY WOULD ALLOW A FORMER EMPLOYEE TO KEEP AN ACTIVE SECURITY BADGE. That is like security 101.
I am currently watching The West Wing. There is not as much to shout about.
You clearly have not yet reached Season 5 of The West Wing. Or some of the episodes where Sorkin gets particularly sanctimonious. It’s my favorite show, but there is plenty to shout about. Especially Sam Seaborn.
Sorkin can be super sanctimonious, but anything in seasons 5-7 (UGH TOBY’S STORYLINE UGH) can’t be blamed on him… more people to rail at, woo! At least those later-seasons people gave Donna and CJ things to do that weren’t just “bolster the men’s storylines.”
We Do Not Speak of Toby’s storyline. As far as I’m concerned, it Did Not Happen. But season 7 Donna is my favorite Donna. Which is saying something, because Donna is second only to CJ in my rankings of favorite WW characters (any CJ is my favorite CJ).
Yeah, West Wing is pretty much my favorite, even though it makes me cringe so much. I actually think they managed to turn things around for season 7 with the Vinick/Santos campaign. I re-watched the show recently, and I found myself just watching the campaign episodes, and skipping the DC ones altogether, particularly that awful Toby storyline (although, Toby was my least favorite character; what a sanctimonious jerk).
Right, this. There was a lot of terrible things in seasons 5-6, but a not-small amount definitely stemmed from other writers trying to ape Sorkin’s “Everything Is a Super-Important Battle Between Good and Evil” style, without his admittedly strong ability to bounce along a conversation with both density and nonsense. The strength of the campaign season was that it forced the new team to actually abandon the old formula and make a new show, which turned out to actually be quite enjoyable.
But I will still turnout for the government shutdown episodes. Especially on the first day of the furlough last fall.
Real quick: In stunning news, the St. Louis Police Department lied some more-
http://deadspin.com/rams-apologize-to-st-louis-co…
(and, as was noted at the end of the post, from twitter: “if STLPD can do that [to] the Rams statement imagine what they can do to YOURS???”
lol at the dictionary definition of an apology given by STLPD.
Did you see this new parody account? It made my night last night: https://twitter.com/stIcountypd
Are we sure it’s a parody?
Poe’s law in action.
I’m about halfway through season 2. There have been plenty of eyerolls.
Aravis already mentioned a whole lot of the issues tackled in that rodeo article, but the main thing I come away with is… I don’t know why “man vs. animal” is so attractive to these people? Like, the animal doesn’t think bullriding is fun. It’s probably in pain, it’s scared, and if it doesn’t do what you want you’ll make it into a hamburger? It just seems to be such a weird vestige of America’s whole “manifest destiny defeat nature be capitalist and kill Native Americans” attitude. I have got a case of the sads about that.
I dunno. As a rider, I can appreciate the skill the rodeo sports take. By and large, roughstock (bucking bulls and horses) live a pretty good life. For horses that are too wild to be ridden, being sold into a bucking string is often thing that keeps them from going to slaughter. The only rodeo events that give me the serious heebies are roping and steer wrestling, where the cattle are really at the mercy of the humans yanking them around by the neck. Yuck.
I’m glad they have a good life! It certainly sounds like some of them do if they’re worth half a million dollars. But I guess I just come at this from my horseback riding background, where a lot of emphasis is put on having a positive partnership with the animal rather than the two of you working against each other. Like you said, I can definitely appreciate the skill it takes to stay with the bull and everything, it just kinda upsets me to think about the fact that the people and the bulls/horses have a relationship essentially built around violence.
And the roping and steer wrestling…ugh! My poor heart! Cutting feels like it’s maybe OK – it’s really the horse and the cow communicating there, from what I’ve seen of it. But once you start to rope them by the neck and pull them around and stuff. Oomph – I have the heebies as well!
Same here, although you said it better than I did upthread! Wha’ts really good fun is rounding up cows on horseback without any ropes, which I’ve done in the New Forest. Well, I say I’ve done it, I’ve sat on the horse who was totally in charge and she brought the cows in with me sat on her.
Roping is a practical skill for ranchers, and heeling and bulldogging (though calf-dogging is more common) are still very much in use. I’ve worked–worked, hah, “been tolerated at”–a couple of roundups at a small ranch. The roundup and separation of mamas from babies was done without ropes, but getting individual calves down for their shots, brands, tags, and, for the boy calves, banding, all in one go meant our boss roping a calf’s hind ankle so that the animal could be pulled away from its bawling fellows, while the rest of the crew took it to the ground and held it in place for the rest of the work. When the calves get to be around 200 pounds, that’s no small endeavor, and balancing speed with the animal’s safety (the crew’s well-being takes second place to that of the saleable critter) meant that we were basically tackling the calves to get them off-balance and down. It’s not pretty, but it can be done skillfully and quickly, and rodeo was originally a chance to show off that ability.
These days, the owner I rode with has a chute and a rotating table–cows and calves go in one at a time, then are pinned and flipped on a mechanical table for the whole routine. It’s much faster, but buying that equipment costs money, and if it breaks? Someone’s back in the corral.
Excellent points. I think “practical skill” is exactly where the disconnect is for most people. If you don’t live in a part of the country where those skills are still being exercised as an essential part of food production, it is hard to imagine them being necessary at all. That said, I still feel uneasy about taking that skill and turning it into entertainment, doing it when it isn’t really necessary and has the potential for harm.
This👆! In a working ranch situation, the livestock’s safety is paramount because healthy equals income. The calmer you can be roping, dragging, etc. the better for everyone; no-one wants a wreck. (I read an interesting article awhile back that highlighted this: ranch was bought by wealthy person, new owner didn’t like the number of rider accidents because it affected his bottom line, hired a natural horsemanship horseman to teach his staff how to be better riders/handlers, accidents go down, ranch income goes up, everybody’s happy.)
Rodeo takes this activity to the extreme and that’s where I have a problem with the steer roping & tying. Broken necks, fear & terror don’t belong in “family friendly” entertainment.
That sounds like a great article. I’m going to look for it.
Absolutely. If you’re doing it because it needs doing, you get on with it and it’s efficient and done with minimal alarm to the animal and not done showily or spectacularly to pander to an audience that wants to go ooh and aah and get their money’s worth. It reminds me of the showboater ‘natural horsemanship’ people who give me rage by taking an unhandled horse and riding it in half an hour in an arena in front of an audience, which is massively floody and stressful for the animal both mentally and physically, to go from nothing to having an adult predator on its back with no preparation, no choice and a massive audience. Makes me feel a bit ill. I used to start horses for a living and I can actually do it with the minimum of stress, no fuss, no bucking and not for show.
I’ve also done the pony roundups on the New Forest, seen them herded into chutes to be branded, wormed, have reflective collars put on and let go again, and it’s done quietly and efficiently and I’ve been massively surprised at how un-stressful it seems for them, it’s done quickly and over in a flash and they’re done.
Oooh, and how about those “colt starting competitions”? Those really REALLY get my goat, so to speak; I did see, though, a really fair and thoughtful Australian horseman who, naturally, came in last because he didn’t push or rush his colt over the 3 day event. Sadly, I can’t say the same for the other two competitors.
Sent from my iPad
Mmmm yes, give me all the stories about fundamentalist Baptist church-schools in Texas. That was most of my upbringing, and it calls home to me. My junior high experience (in a K-12 school) was so tiny, with literally four girls to about twenty boys, and we were wise beyond our years in sixth grade. I’ve never known such camaraderie anywhere else, because we were united against the adults, circumventing all the rules.
I’m surprised the author’s school allowed short miniskirts, for cheerleaders. The cheerleaders at mine had pleats that reached the knee.
Don’t worry, Nicole, another terrible TV show will arise and fill the gap. True, it may not have all the things Newsroom has to make you shouty, but it’ll be a distraction, at least.
Welp, that rodeo article was not only amazing, but it sent me down a YouTube hole of Bodacious videos so there goes my productivity.
I’ve typed a bunch of different comments and none of them have been fully right. I grew up country. Multiple boys I graduated with (including an exboyfriend) went to college on rodeo scholarships. A few of them are on the circuit now. When you grow up in the country, your parents have to have a different expectation of control and protection. A brooklyn parent takes their kids to the park to play outside. My brother and I had the run of 600 acres when we played outside. It’s just too different to compare.
Yes, I think it’s important not to condemn outright the rodeo culture. I really liked the comment in the thread above explaining the practical uses for calf-tying and stuff. What’s crucial is that we not underestimate the gap between different cultures, nor write it off as “too much religion” or whatnot. The culture described would not work for me in a million years, but it works for some.
All the same, the article highlights a terrible crisis as bulls are bred to be more and more murderous, while incredibly vulnerable and young bodies don’t have nearly enough protection. And I’m worried about parents who start to depend on their children for income and prestige. I’d like to see an organization advocating for the riders.
So this is kind of a random link, but I wanted to share it anyways. Dante Stallworth (former NFL player) wrote a fascinating, interesting piece about conspiracy theories and why he used to and other people believe in conspiracy theories.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/01/donte-st…
I was watching Newsroom while in labor with my second kid (yeah I dunno), when the epidural failed. So I’ll forever associate the show with excruciating pain. Which is actually kind of annoying as its mediocrity does not warrant such depth of emotion.
Did everyone see this Buzzfeed gift guide? Feel free to buy me anything off of it. Especially icebergmama’s print! http://www.buzzfeed.com/alannaokun/chestnuts-roas…
Oh man, I wish I could get that Man on the Moon design on something else. Maybe I’ll just have to make my own embroidery sampler of it. But that would be missing her gorgeous expression.
Bergie’s on Buzzfeed!! <3 It is a truly excellent gift guide.
Shitshitshit, scrolled too far and accidentally read some comments. Noooo…
So many angry comments.
Man, I so want to read that “Cheerleaders for Christ” link, but I’mm not going to even TEST a URL called adult-mag.com here on my work computer.
Ha, I didn’t see the URL before testing it. I think the filter here is too trigger-happy on all sorts of LGBT-related sites, but then I saw the URL on this one and didn’t blame it.
Sigh, good point. I’d like to see it reposted somewhere… Save it for later, though, it’s definitely worth the read.
Yoinks – thanks for pointing that out. I’ll save that one for reading at home, since I already push the boundaries of what is and is not an acceptable website for me to be reading at my law firm job.
Yuuup. Going to try to remember to read it when I get home. I feel like I already test the boundaries enough with all the legitimate journalism (!) on the Buzzfeed URL…
I clicked first and got blocked and now I’m terrified IT will notice. I’M SORRY, IT.
OK you guys so this part of the article on P.D. James only made me love her more:
During that interview, she wanted to correct a misconception: She had chosen the initials P.D. for her publication name because she thought they looked “dashing” on a book spine, and not because she was trying to hide her female identity. In fact, she chose to publish under her maiden name: “I didn’t want to use my married name because I thought, as a woman, these are my genes.”
This is lovely! I always thought PD James was a man but now I’m going to have to investigate and read some of her books.
Perhaps predictably, my state employer's IT overlords are not paid enough to be that crafty. So sorry!
New Sleater-Kinney song is up, you guys! https://soundcloud.com/sleater-kinney/surface-env…
I work with clergy and there is someone deeply unsettling about that article and his dissatisfaction with his lifelong vocation.
A piece of it, I suspect, is how unhealthy it can be for clergy to have no life outside the church. (The quote from one of his wives: She was married to him, and he was married to the church) And unrealistic expectations of what ministry should look like, and how much of the world we should expect to be able to transform.
I'm feeling particularly grateful for all the vocational talks that included reminders that ministry is about seed planting, rather than harvesting. That the work is of preparing ground with people, planting seeds of faith and possibility; but that we rarely see those seeds come to fruition.
Yes, that's a good point about ministry. My priest said recently that her role is to help us, the congregation, in our own ministries – to help us figure out our individual callings and do what she can to encourage and help us. Not to do everything herself.I want to be very careful not to sound as if I'm condemning Charles Moore for committing suicide, because that's not my intention, but as I said upthread, I find it impossible to believe that God would want one of his children to set himself on fire.
I clicked first and got blocked and now I'm terrified IT will notice. I'M SORRY, IT.
We got a call at work today, and the caller I.D. brought up “Dalgliesh, J.M.” I felt a small pang of sadness.
‘Sharing was not her generation’s coin’ perfectly sums up the succinct, private way my grandmother was taught to speak about her life. She’s opening up more now, but it’s still there.
Epidurals can *fail*? Oh goodness.