This is the last of Alexis Coe’s wonderful dispatches from the Russian River. I had a hard time choosing a quote to pull because everything was so good, but this, I think, is the heart of it:
The work I did on the river did more than just keep me alive; it gave me a way to think about being alive. I practiced losing and I got better at it. I learned that I could continue getting better at it.
For the first time in my entire life, I can’t tell you where or how I want to live. But in the midst of losing so many things that were once so important, I’ve also lost something that, it turns out, isn’t that important to me: the need for certainty. I don’t know what comes next. That isn’t strength, but the source of it. I thank the creek for revealing it to me.
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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its report detailing the history of abuses carried out against Canada’s indigenous children and their families through government-led residential schools, and included sweeping recommendations for “a complete overhaul of the relationship between Aboriginal Peoples, the Crown and other Canadians”:
Through the testimony of residential school survivors, former staff, church and government officials and archival documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pieced together a horrifying history that, despite its ripple effects, has been repeatedly dismissed or ignored.
This includes 3,201 registered deaths of children in the care of residential schools — the cause of death, reported in just under 50 per cent of cases, was most frequently tuberculosis, but influenza, pneumonia, fires and suicide all took their toll.
We may never know the true number of deaths, but Sinclair estimates it to be at least 6,000.
“Consider what it means, what we’re talking about today: the enormity of it. Parents who had their children ripped out of their arms, taken to a distant and unknown place, never to be seen again, buried in an unmarked grave long ago forgotten and overgrown. Think of that. Bear that. Imagine that,” Wilson told the room Tuesday.
Arriving at residential school, children had their hair chopped off and their clothing removed — one survivor recalled having her beaded moccasins, made by her grandmother for her to wear to school, taken from her and thrown in the garbage.
Students were discouraged, and often outright forbidden, from speaking their aboriginal languages.
The quality of the education was often poor: in many of the schools, students spent only half a day in the classroom, the rest of their time devoted to cooking, cleaning and otherwise helping to keep the institutions running at a low cost.
Survivors and archives show that discipline at the schools could be harsh and cruel, and that physical and sexual abuse was rampant.
Lots more reading: #TRC2015 | #truthandreconciliation
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Stacia L. Brown on moms on TV: “there’s still the urge to present motherhood as narrative shorthand for empathy, particularly a crippling empathy.”
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In Baltimore schools, free meals for all
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THEY OPENED THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT TIME CAPSULE. (Not that Washington Monument, the other one.) I’ve been following this story very closely for an entire day and a half now and HERE is its riveting conclusion!!!
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On Patagonia’s attempts to address instances of forced labor, human trafficking, and exploitation within its supply chain:
Though it may seem shocking that a company so publicly committed to fair labor practices could have such violations in its production chain, the news is less surprising when taking into account how the apparel industry operates: with unwieldy, complicated supply chains that reach around the globe. And, considering this, the findings of Patagonia’s audits take on a different cast, a sign not of corporate hypocrisy, but of the near impossibility of treating workers well at every step in the production process, even when a company is genuine in its desire to do so.
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The Women’s Media Center‘s annual report is out, and TIME has a writeup here — it’s depressing but important reading. Related, BuzzFeed has found that women directed just 12% of the highest-rated television shows, even though women and men graduate from film school at about the same rate.
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I…huh. The latest dog grooming trend in Japan:
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Is ballet’s big diversity moment approaching?
In three to five years, no one will be talking about diversity in ballet.
That’s according to Virginia Johnson, a founding member and artistic director of New York City’s famed Dance Theatre of Harlem. In a few years, she thinks it will be a boring topic “because it will have happened,” she says in a light but commanding voice. Soon, she says, the largely white world of ballet will be populated with dancers of color.
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…what if you really MEAN IT, THOUGH
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Cameron Crowe hopes to tell stories “with more racial diversity, more truth in representation,” sometime “in the future.” SOMEDAY WE’LL FIND IT, THE RAINBOW CONNECTION, CAMERON.
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Tags: link roundup, the internet
I was JUST having a conversation about email signatures with a friend who’s become obsessed with the fact that every male scientist she’s emailed with ends his emails with “Cheers.” She maintains that the only people who can do that are British, and none of the people who use it are British.
Also, tbh, my TV mother role model is Jessica Huang. At this point, she’s pretty much just my role model in all things.
The annoying guy from my office does that. He alternates with “Danke” and is neither British nor German.
I like to make things old fashioned so we should definitely bring back “Yours, &c”, “Yours, etc.” or “Yours Sincerely, etc.”
The et cetera makes it fun!
Also acceptable is the way Hobbes signed the love note he wrote to Susie Derkins pretending to be Calvin: “muchas smooches.”
Realtalk: I do sometimes sign emails to friends “Yours, &c” so I definitely have a horse in this race.
Muchas smooches 5eva. I am going to start using that in personal correspondence from now on.
I’ll sign an email to someone I have a personal relationship with “yours”, but I wouldn’t sign a work email that way, because I am not theirs and it does not to do to encourage them to think of me as such.
I have an opposing counsel who signs his correspondence “I remain very truly yours.” It makes me smile and cringe simultaneously every time.
My director, who is yes male and yes a scientist, signs off with Cheers. He’s Canadian, does that count?
JESSICA HUANG FOR EVERYTHING. I cannot love her more.
Canadians are also excused from the blanket “Cheers” ban.
Australians too! I work with a ton of them and they often sign off with “cheers.” I find it…cheerful (ha).
My Aussie pal always uses ‘cheers’ – it’s adorable & cheerful.
I tend to go with ‘take care.’ Or ‘thanks.’
I wish I could get away with using “Ta,” but I doubt a semester abroad in Scotland is enough to justify that.
We have a plague of ending emails with “Thanks” in our office. Everyone does it.
I quite like “Thanks”. I would never use “Cheers”, though, as while I am English I am not a middle-aged man.
Me too! I think it’s really the only option (for me, personally) in ending office emails. Just ending them seems too curt to me.
Although, in a long, fast-moving email chain I don’t have a problem with leaving it off as those seem more like texts to me.
I have it in my automatic signature. I mean, what else are you supposed to say? I am usually asking for something, telling someone to do something, or giving someone something that they are paying me for. Best maybe works between friends, but certainly not for clients and consultants and such. Mine looks like this:
Thanks,
lemonadefish
Company Name
phone, address, etc
Also I have never actually received an email signed with best.
Also I don’t use a signature on my personal e-mail, not since college, when it was full of inspirational quotes (you know the ones). I usually just sign my name, with just a dash and no closing greeting.
Also I live in the south and we are all about fake cordiality and thanking people for no reason in all aspects of life, so maybe that makes a difference?
This is why I say “Regards”. I say “thanks” if it is appropriate (asking someone for their help, etc), but if I am just giving someone information, I say “regards”.
I also stick with good ol’ fashioned “regards.” It’s a classic because it works!
I use either cheers, (because I live in Canada and we have a cheers-epidemic) or “with best regards” (for more formal emails to people I do not actually know/journal editors)
Thanks culprit here!! Though I work in a small independent retail establishment, so we are pretty in the habit of saying thanks all the time (the subtext basically being thanks for not going to wal-mart and giving us your money instead).
As an adjunct prof in my other life, can I please have a moment to say how much it enrages me to get emails from students without either an address or a closing? Especially when they are asking for something annoying and/or special treatment? Raaaaaaaage. Don’t act like you’re shooting me a text when you are begging for something you don’t deserve.
I end my work emails in “thanks” often, but it’s as part of the body of the email, not the signature line.
There is someone who works at a place where I volunteer who ends all their emails with “with joy and gratitude” It drives me nuts and gives me neither joy or gratitude.
I use thanks, but only when I’m, asking a favor? Otherwise I always only sign off with my first name, if that. But my workplace is also super informal.
Our office does the “thanks” too. Makes total sense when they’re asking you for something, makes no sense whatsoever when you’re replying with what they wanted.
“Here’s that file you asked for!
Thanks,
Sarita”
I’ve started either leaving it off and just letting my name/phone number signature stand alone, or using a final line that says something like “Let me know if you need anything else.” which looks like a valediction but isn’t, quite, and ends in a period, not a comma.
Interestingly, my colleague has her signature set to “Best regards,” which I thought was an interesting mishmash of two of the valedictions talked about in that piece.
My signature has only my contact information, but 9/10 of the time I’ll preface it with a
Thank you,
Elyse
(contact info blahblah)
I do, for some bizarre reason, list my phone number the international way, so it’s +1800XXXXXXX xXXXX. Is that weird?
Depends; do you get a lot of international callers? Like, mostly international callers? If not, it’s probably a little confusing.
ETA: wait, I just looked more closely – I thought at first you were listing your country code. But it is more difficult to read a long string of numbers with no spaces or dashes between them. (I am old and can’t accept periods between phone number parts – it’s not an IP address FFS!)
One of the marketing guys that I have to communicate with regularly signs off with Cheers, but he works for a local brewery, so it makes more sense.
When I’m starting an email chain I’ll sign off with “Thanks,” if it’s more casual, or “Thank you,” if it’s a little more formal. From there I don’t sign, or just use my first initial. My boss will insist on every. single. email being structured as
[Recipient],
[email body]
Thank you,
[Boss]
no matter HOW far into the chain of emails she gets. This could be her fifth reply, and still.
I don’t know why that bugs me, but it certainly does.
Ugh, I can see why. Maybe overuse makes it seem insincere? Also “thank you” reads more like the prior text is a command (which: boss, so, yeah). I once read an interesting snippet of a guidebook to America that had been published in France and one of the things it talked about was to treat people working in shops and restaurants as if they had a choice to serve you because that tiny bit of deference is important in American culture. I reckon it might be the same with boss-emails.
Usually my work emails sound like:
“Here’s the thing I did for you: […]
Thank you,
Emily”
Overthinking why I am thanking them for the favor I did only leads to overthinking everything.
i do the exact same thing. if i think about it enough, i guess i feel like i’m thanking them in advance for like, reading the document i provided, or noticing that i completed the task, or something like that? eh.
It could be just the way she has her signature set up. I do the exact same thing as I have my signature set up to automatically populate
At your service,
Flammablespam
[contact info ]
So all I type in is name of whoever I’m talking to and what I need to say. If I’m feeling formal I’ll put a line break between the name and body but casual is name comma body. All the spacing at the bottom is automatic and I don’t have to think about it. Lazy formality foe the win. 🙂
Oh no, it’s not the signature. It’s that she specifically addresses and specifically signs off, by name, every single email that she sends. I know it’s to me and from her. She doesn’t need to go to that level of formality, especially when we’re just discussing, like, where a file is.
So if I send her an email that’s just,
“Hey, where did you last see [donor file]?”
she will reply
Houblonchouffe,
Said file is [wherever said file is]. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Boss.
Oh yeah, I can see how that would get super old very quickly! My bad.
I hate the [recipient’s name,] at the beginning of an email. It sounds like you’re being chastised, like when my mom uses my middle name.
That’s EXACTLY what it is.
Same. And everyone at my workplace does it. EVERYONE. So I’m the one who looks like an asshole when I don’t do it. Ugh. UGH.
Only acceptable use of cheers as an e-mail signature.
(Or possibly when planning some sort of drinking event?)
“Cheers” makes me so mad for reasons I can’t even really explain.
I don’t really like the article’s suggestion that we not use sign-off lines though. I mean, for personal emails I don’t use them but it just looks unprofessional to send a business email without one. Or maybe I’m just a grandma. Who knows! I use “Best Regards” and it suits me just fine.
Yeah, for an email that isn’t super informal I ALWAYS use a sign-off (usually just “thanks” or its equivalent). For my PI who I email like ten times a day, I just do a little “~ppyajunebug” type thing for the first email and then just stop after that.
About 80% of my job is emailing scientists, and I can confirm that they love “cheers.” What are you going to do though, now that even “best” draws ire?? (I use best, unless I’m getting super-fancy and then it’s “all best.” I don’t feel bad one bit!)
Yeah, I don’t get the hand-wringing about “best” at all! I thought that article was going to give me a real reason for why we shouldn’t use it, but it was pretty much just like “the COOL KIDS aren’t even USING sign-offs anymore, LOSER,” which is fine and all but I work for a UK-based publishing company and one of my coworkers recently got scolded by our British boss for starting an email to an author with “Hello So-and-so” instead of “Dear Professor So-and-so,” so I’m not about to start dropping sign-offs from my emails.
THANK YOU.
If I am responding to someone I haven’t corresponded to previously, I always, ALWAYS put “All the best, PJ” at the end. Because I wish prospective job candidates the best! I really do!!! If I’m asking for something, I say, “Thank you” or “Thanks” depending on how well I know them, and if I am the one doing the initial correspondence, I use “Sincerely.” I don’t understand NOT using sign-offs. Oh god my old brain would go into a panicky meltdown if I stopped using them…
Yup, I like best! It’s short for best wishes, which is how I sign most emails to people who are not in my office/institution (at least the first ones). I always default to “Dear Ms/Prof/Dr So-and-so” and end with “Best wishes.” After that I take their lead if they get less formal. Intra-office I start a new email chain with “Hi firstname” and end that email with “best” or “thanks” depending on whether I’m asking for something or telling people something (as a young ladytype in a support position, I try to monitor my “thanks” and “sorry” usage…even making a monumental effort, I tend to overuse).
Bottom line, though, is that every workplace is different and the most important thing is doing what’s appropriate for the culture. (begin cranky) Or is being appropriate a grandma thing, and just doing what’s cool for the young-and-hip crowd? (/cranky)
I use best too!
I always do “best “, I had no idea it was controversial. It seemed more professional/less personal than “sincerely”, and my first office had a lot of religious types who signed everything “Blessed”, and I just couldn’t do that, so I imprinted like a duck in my office manager’s “best” and never regretted it.
I usually reserve “best” for passive agressive emails, ala:
Hi so-and-so,
I wanted to check in with you regarding [this thing i asked you to do five millioin times]. Please let me know if you have any questions about this request, or if I can do anything to help.
Best,
PaigePoo
When someone is not doing that thing I asked them to do or even acknowledging that I sent them an email, I write “Thank you so much!!” with anticipatory gratitude, so they understand just how much I WILL appreciate them and how much goodwill is at stake.
(I hate myself and need to stop doing this)
The bubbliness can be a powerful tool, especially for disarming jerkfaces, but it can also make us look like pushovers. My Eternal Battle is to try to remain true to my (hyperfeminine and oh-so-well-socialized) self while also being professional and firm when need be.
Sometimes your last name is Best, and then every time someone signs an e-mail with “Best, firstname” you think they’re related to you, or addressing you directly by your last name, or something equally strange. College e-mails were weird for me…
I don’t like “best” at all! To me it says “I want to sign off this email formally, but am too lazy to write best regards or even with best regards, so here you go: Best, and please take me seriously.”
NO
“Cheers” was the favorite signoff of all of my college professors. “Cheers, pm” or “Cheers, jb” or “Cheers, t.” I wish I were educated and brilliant enough to pull off the signoff initials, but I only have a Master’s degree and I feel that is insufficient. Maybe you actually need to be tenured somewhere to sign off w/ just your initials.
There is absolutely some inverse correlation between the height of your degrees and the use of both initials and capitalization. Higher degrees = lower case.
Also there’s an age thing….my students are 100% sure that someone my age and gender should be called “Floridagal”, definitely never “Dr. Floridagal” or anything, women never get Ph.Ds or if they do they don’t actually expect to be called by the title they have earned, you know, the way men do! amirite????
UGH
NO
Is this the place for a “would you rather” scenario?
Always getting emails signed “cheers”
vs.
No sign off, but every single bit of every person’s academic credentials are in their automatic title block.
Personally, I would rather claw my own eyes out than read another “Mr. So-and-so, PhD JD CPA”
My (male, scientist) colleague uses “cheers”, but in conversation, like to mean “I agree” or “good point”, and I think it’s weird. He’s also American, but pretends to be Commonwealth, which I also think is weird. This makes normal conversations infuriating:
Me: “I’m going to break for lunch”.
Him: “Cheers!” (Meaning he’s coming with me).
??
Americans using Anglicisms are just weird. My sister did that a whole lot in high school. Just… no, you’re not from there, you’ve never been out of the country, no one thinks you just “picked it up” from all the time you spend being British, we can tell it’s disingenuous. I dunno, pet peeve? Usually I don’t hate other people’s vocal quirks so much, but unwarranted imitation of other types of slang, especially British and French slang, just irks me.
I agree, though I think the occasional goofy usage is funny. This dude, however, is not. What really bugs me about his use of “cheers” is that not only is he not British, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how that word is to be used (descriptive not prescriptive etc etc).
He also says “sod this” and “bugger that” for pretty mild annoyances, which I find a bit much.
I am British and have never heard anyone use “cheers” like that.
There are a few Britishisms I’ve genuinely picked up accidentally from consuming a lot of UK media and I have to remember not to use them. (especially “elasticated”) So it’s possible, but not usual (especially for HS students)
I will first need to kill all my feelings, but by the time I’m 60 or 70 or so I hope to be full-on Lucille Bluth, with 8 AM vodka rocks. And a piece of toast.
Lawyers use “Regards” a lot. As you’d expect for so formal a signoff, it’s usually deployed on emails to the other side.
oof, my old boss (who was a lawyer, yes) used regards for everything, including in-house emails. I was his paralegal, and he’d use it in emails to me only if they were also copied to one of the company officers. But he was also let go after about ten months of working there, so probably things were also a lot more tense than I’d realized.
Hmm, I use best because one of my (young) law professors used it and I thought it was better than regards. It seems like a generational thing.
But who knows, after the bar I might start using regards due to my change in professional status. 🙂
I work with a lot of third-party contractors, many of whom I have not met in person and may never, despite working together for several years on projects. I use “Regards” because “Best Regards” and “Kind Regards” both make me shudder like nails on a chalkboard, alternating with “Thanks” when I’m asking for something (which is often). Going without a closer seems too abrupt, and “Cheers”-types endings seem kind of twee in this particular professional setting – though I have no problem with either in personal use.
Oh no, I have been using ‘cheers’ since college and I had no idea that people found it irritating!
I use “Cheers” to end my emails all* the time! But I am American! I didn’t know this was wrong? Should I stop?
*Not actually ALL the time, but frequently, when it’s a friendly email constructed formally enough to seem to need a greeting, but not intimate enough for Hugs or including a request to warrant a Thanks.
I wouldn’t worry about it. With the internet and increased globalization, it’s pretty much an inevitability that anglophones will start to adopt each other’s slang and expressions.
I’ve personally appropriated ‘faffing’ (the excessive use of time for nonsense activities) from my British relatives. Because it’s perfect. And because said relations do an awful lot of faffing about.
This is very true for me with the phrase “I feel like…”
I picked it up when I studied in the US and it is an inextricable part of my vernacular now, as well as Mr Robinn’s.
I learned “Best regards” from a former boss, with “Best” as a shortened version for follow up emails. I use “Thanks” or “Thanks so much” if I’m asking for something. If and when I see any better options I will switch, but my workplace is too formal to leave them off entirely unless it’s a rapid-fire internal conversation in which case it’s usually IM anyway. Meh.
I go old-fashioned and use “Sincerely.” I kinda like it.
Me too, this is what I learned when I was taught how to write a formal letter in elementary school and I have been using it pretty much 100% consistently ever since.
I have a hierarchy (and I am job searching in law). I use Best Regards for a cover letter to fancy places. I use Best for almost all emails and cover letters to less stodgy places. If I am trying to reconnect with an old connection, which I’m doing a lot these days as the job search heats up, I’ll use Warmly. I had heard that using Thanks or Thank You as your sign off was bad ettiquette, but so many people use it, I guess that’s not the case.
At an old firm I worked at the letter template used “Very Truly Yours” as the sign off. Which always seemed like an odd choice, considering we were often righting demand letters.
I use “Best” all the time, because I suspect that my clients, especially that uptight VP at the major manufacturer, would give major side-eye to “Muchas Smoochies.”
However, sometimes when I’m typing really fast, “Best” comes out “Beset” which is often much truer to life.
Hmm. For Business I use “sincerely,” but otherwise I use “Cheers” a lot because a mentor from my youth who died used it in his correspondence with me. It was only a few years ago that I learned it was a particularly English thing. Oh well, not stopping now, so everyone can suck it. Cheers!
I’m partial to inanities like “I <3 butts” or whatever. Depending on my audience, obviously…
You can pry “Best” out of my cold dead hands if you can get them off the keyboard where I will be rigor mortis’d in the midst of typing “Best.” It’s fine. I don’t like “Regards” or “Kind regards” because that implies I have any sort of regard, kind or not, for them. I like “Best” because it’s relative and I don’t wish them any specific harm. I only do that for people outside my company; co-workers just get my name. I always include “Thanks!” at the end of the email in the body.
Replying without expanding 83(!) replies, but I am Australian and we use cheers all the time in my office, so perhaps it could extend to the Commonwealth?
I haven’t seen ‘best’ used at all, really.
Usual PSA to Not Read the Comments, Heartbreaking TRC Article Edition:
“We did what we could to enable them to function in this new society. In turn they demand compensation.“
I can’t even read the article itself yet; I’m already crying at the capsule quote in Nicole’s roundup.
What an utterly garbage thing to say. On the Globe and Mail, there was the usual racists blowhards spouting how “they killed each other way more than we ever killed them!” which makes me want to SCREAM. It’s like the Canadian 1700s equivalent of “black-on-black crime.”
GARBAGE PEOPLE.
Didn’t you know that white Christian morality excuses attempted genocide as long as the people you’re systematically murdering haven’t been perfect.
if you don’t already have it, Shut Up is a freakin lifesaver.
The twitter hashtag I recommend is: #myreconcilationincludes https://twitter.com/hashtag/myreconciliationinclu…
What I want you to know; having been present for the release of the report – is that I have no words for how much hope and strength and courage I saw.
Justice Sinclair names this as an unprecedented 2nd chance for Canadians to choose a path of reconciliation. To honour our treaty obligations, and read the TRC report, and advocate for the policy changes.
I read the summary report the day it was released. Yes, it’s heartbreaking, and long – but it is also hopeful. It’s a map for us, and an invitation on the journey.
If you are a Canadian Toastie, please, please add the TRC report to your summer reading.
don’t read comments and NEVER READ THE NATIONAL POST.
Solid advice regardless of subject.
Matt Galloway tweeted the “half-truths” thing, with context that made it clear how horrible it was, yet I could not stop myself from clicking. Why do I do these things, why? Fucking genocide apologists, fucking “not ALL residential schools”, fucking fuck fuck I’m still enraged.
Right, but Canada’s not got a race problem. Jesus H. Christ.
Also don’t read the comments of the Baltimore school lunches article. “How dare we FEED CHILDREN on our dime!”.
As if there’s a long list of better uses for our money.
OH MY GOD THE TIME CAPSULE!!!!!! As a historian I am *dying* of glee, seeing new things unearthed!
Best,
Scandyhoovian
That took me on a mental trail to the Nickelodeon time capsule they buried in 1992 which was apparently saved and rescued before they demolished Nick Studios in Orlando, so phew.
Yup, they saved it! This reminds me that I was tasked in finding the broll from this project, which sounds like a perfect project for a Summer Friday.
The Stuff You Missed In History Class podcast just did an episode on time capsules, apparently people get REALLY bent out of shape over how long things should be placed in a capsule for. It’s either too short of a period or too long, and you just can’t win.
well time capsules are like presents, history presents, and i’m pretty sure just like with actual gifts the unwrap is really the high point. so…post excitement sour history grapes?
i’ll need to listen to that episode, i am dedinitely a time capsule fan.
When I sign an email “best,” I don’t mean “all the best.” I mean “fuck you, I’M the best.”
I think Buzzfeed reported about this dog craze in Taiwan a couple of months ago and used that exact same picture? // too early to think about the srrrrrious things.
“The problem with best is that it doesn’t signal anything at all. ‘Best is benign,” says Judith Kallos, an e-mail etiquette consultant. “It works when you apparently don’t know what else to use.'”
Yes, and that’s just fine. God save us from the impulse to inject meaning into brief social conventions. Are we all oppressed by the nanosecond it takes to scan a benignly positive monosyllable? No.
For real! It reminds me of that garbage scene in 500 Days of Summer (kind of a garbage movie in the first place, tbh) where Joseph Gordon-Levitt is going on this rant about how people don’t know how to communicate with each other so they need companies to make greeting cards for them and how we should all just tell each other how we feel, man! Fuck off, Joseph Gordon-Levitt!
Or the many rants about how people say “how are you?” and expect “Fine,” rather than a real answer. Social wheel grease doesn’t take away from your actual friendships where you CAN talk about that stuff, people!
Also it’s not like you HAVE to say “fine.” If you’re not fine you can say that you can’t wait for this week to end, or that you’re having a really busy day, or that you have a cold. It’s mostly that you shouldn’t start giving people details about your upcoming hernia surgery first thing in the morning, which is really something that anyone with basic social skills should be able to grasp.
Wait, are we supposed to be *cheering* for JGL, or is the whole movie a takedown of the Nice Guy trope? I always thought we were *supposed* to groan and shake our heads at him.
(At least that’s what I assumed based on that classic Tumblr post:
on a scale of one to (500) days of summer how much do people completely misinterpret what you’re trying to say
>romeo & juliet
>>Fight Club
>>>The Great Gatsby
>>>>The Bible
>>>>>And we have a winner.)
I am pretty sure that it’s supposed to be obvious from the beginning that he’s interpreting the relationship the wrong way, but maybe I am giving the filmmaker too much credit.
I thought it was satire?
Anyhow, my grandma spends a really long time choosing the perfect card because that is how she shows her love. My grandma > Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Yes. I sign off with “All best.” Two short little words creating just a little bit of social lubrication, signifying that you view both yourself and the recipient as actual human beings. Not too hard. Much easier than this–
In recognition that you took the time to read this and we are both actual human beings,
sorrycassandra
“Here’s my latest update on the project [attached]. Please let me know your revisions by Thursday.
All the best, and on the way to work today I saw the most amazing tiny droplet of dew glistening on an autumn leaf and it reminded me how fragile everything is, particularly the beautiful things that make this world bearable,
Emily
Assistant Project Manager, BigCorp
555-5555×321″
“Just confirming that the large conference room is available on Tuesday at 10:00 for the team meeting and I’ve booked it on the calendar.
I know your dad is proud of you, even though he’s not always good at showing it.
sorrycassandra”
That would be a perfect way to get me to sit in shock and amazement for several minutes before moving forward with meeting preparations.
Real and Better Email Signatures: A #toastpitch
“Thanks for the update! And I mean that sincerely, even though you and I don’t always get along well and you could interpret that as sarcasm, but no, I’m really trying to be nicer to you, Mittens.”
“Aware of your uniquely beautiful soul, which is unique and beautiful in the way that each human life and each human soul is beautiful and worthy of recognition and respect,
Unreadaethel”
But a quick search through your work account will quickly clear up two things: 1) No one says regards anymore; 2) everyone says best.
I use “Regards” when I don’t know a person well/want an explicitly businesslike tone and “Best” when I do know them. Am I out of date?
I always use “regards.” Am I REALLY out of date?
Nope, that’s my strategy too. Short, sweet, works just fine.
regards is very common in legal still as is best
I used regards in email and was subtweeted on twitter about it. 🙁
I get and have sent “Regards,” “Kind Regards,” “Best,” and “Best Wishes,” depending on context. All within the past few months. “Regards” is more British business usage and I suspect it’s actually RISING in use with the Internet.
If these comments and my Facebook wall are to be credited, there is no consensus on this matter even among left-leaning middle class college educated women with large vocabularies who read a certain kind of book.
I use “regards” in general work emails, “thanks” if I’m asking for a favor, and “with kind regards” when I’m writing postcards thanking people for an office visit.
That dog’s head looks like a piece of toast with a face in the middle. I approve.
#toastfacekillah
There is a toasted sandwich cafe in my city that is called ‘Toast-faced Grillah’ and it is a good sandwich cafe too, so.
My email sign-off strategy at work:
Most cases: Best + my automatic signature with name, title, office number, phone number, etc.
If I have made a specific request of the receiver, or they’ve done something for me: Thanks, or Thanks! + full signature
If the conversation has been going on for a little while and/or I know the person particularly well: no sign-off
But work conversations are always started with a formal sign-off. Personal emails are weirder. Depends on how I know that person.
So, whatever on “best”, but I have a deep affection for “best wishes”.
I was at an event where Neil Gaiman was signing, and he signed my copy of Marvel 1602 with “best wishes”, and I only noticed that later, and I figured that it must just be a coincidence, and then a couple days later he showed up at Carnegie Hall with John Green and suddenly the “best wishes” made a lot of sense.
In related news, I read Marvel 1602 for the first time prior to Iron Man being released, and I, swear to god, got about 75% through the book before I realized that these were not original characters. Like, I had a feeling that at least a couple of them were supposed to be nods to existing marvel characters, but it took me that far to realize, no, everyone, EVERYONE is some sort of existing character.
OH MAN, really? For me like 80% of the fun of 1602 was figuring out who everyone was (but I already knew that that was the premise when I read it, so I was sort of cheating).
I am SO EXCITED for the Angela: Witch Hunter miniseries. Also, the adventures of 1602!Kate Bishop, who is MY FAVORITE NOW.
I had nearly no familiarity with the universe. I had a particularly bad association with Spiderman and X-Men, as I’d seen the early 2000s movies with a rapist ex, so I avoided the superhero genre entirely for about a decade, and it’s not like I’d been super knowledgeable in the first place.
That totally makes sense. Most of the characters wouldn’t have been familiar to anyone other than big comic book fans before the MCU started.
I was also a latecomer to MCU, because of my associations with superheroes. It took me about a year after Avengers was released to see it, grudgingly. And even then, I only watched it because I knew it was wildly popular AND Whedon (and I enjoy Whedon projects, even ones I don’t expect to (Cabin In The Woods), even if I enjoy pulling apart certain aspects as Not Good).
It was sort of A Moment. It turns out, it’s not that I don’t like superheroes. It’s that my terrible rapist ex was, actually, terrible, and a rapist, and now I have one more thing to blame him for. I could have been enjoying this stuff for YEARS. *Angry Fist*
But you’re here now! And your terrible horrible rapist ex didn’t ruin the awesome for you forever. I’m just glad you do love the MCU/Marvel because so much of it is wonderful and now we can squee at it at each other.
(I enjoy Whedon projects too, even when they’re problematic and Not Great (I adore Much Ado it makes me so happy)).
Much Ado storytime: I saw an early-ish screening in a local arthouse theatre. Unexpectedly, Fran Kranz came out after to answer some questions. {friend} and I squee that we’re in the same room as him, even though we’re about 2 balconies away from the stage. {friend} and I text her brother, who also likes Whedon stuff, and lives in NYC and dates {minor web series celebrity}. We get back response that {friend}’s brother had drinks* with Fran Kranz a few months prior. {friend} and I shake angry fists at sky that we are not attractive outgoing gay men in NYC who seem to make friends effortlessly and get to do fun things like go out for drinks with Fran Kranz.
*implication was that the drinks were non-sexual and in a large group, rather than some sort of euphemism for “had sex with”. He probably would have actually just told us that if that’s what he’d meant. Probably.
oh my god, Colin Firth signed his autograph to me “Best, Colin Firth x” and maybe THAT is at the root of my attachment to “Best”
I’m going to sign everything with “I remain Your Humble Obedient Servant” just as if I’m the Prime Minister writing to the Queen from now on
One of my Board members signs off MANY MANY of his emails with “VTY” to friends or “Very truly yours” if he isn’t on first-name terms with someone. It’s adorably old-school.
I actually do sign off with something like that in my mass emails to the grad students in our department. “Your ever-faithful secretary,” “Your constant servant,” “I live to serve,” etc. I think it’s hilarious and (fortunately) most of them do, too. Grad students are so much more enjoyable to work with than faculty.
My history professor in college used to sign emails with a variation on this and thinking about it still brings me joy to this day.
My grandpa’s standard snail mail and e-mail sign-off was, “Thanking you kindly, I remain sincerely yours, [Name].”
If he was feeling cheeky, he’d sign something like, “Your graciousness is exceeded only by your acumen. Your acumen is exceeded only by your perspicacity. Your perspicacity is exceeded only by your good humor.”
At some point, I asked, “But doesn’t that mean my graciousness exceeded by my acumen, perspicacity, and good humor?,” and he told me I was being over-literal.
The only email signatures I see in my professional life are ones that have the sender’s name, company, and contact info. I can’t recall the last time I saw an email with a closing salutation; I didn’t even know they were a thing. Do I just work in an unfriendly industry or something?
Me too, I guess no one wishes the best for me.
Mine is mostly “Thanks so much!” In Europe, though, a salutation and closing are standard – I always have to remind myself to add those when I’m emailing those colleagues. Otherwise I come off as barking orders.
(Which I am.)
I see them (and use them) pretty rarely, just sign my name. So you are not alone. And I work at University, so not really unfriendly or formal.
My work has a limited list of what you can use for your email sign-off and they get pissy if you ignore it all together. The complete unimaginative list is:
At your service
Cordially
Happy holidays
Happy birthday
Kindly yours
Respectfully
Sincerely
Thank you,
Thank you!
Aloha (we have clients in Hawaii)
These are the ones that made it through compliance and we are not allowed to divert on email or printed letter. Here is my automaton writing box, let me show you it.
So could you theoretically sign every email with “Happy birthday”?
Theoretically, yes.
…
…
brb, updating email sign-off.
OMG, what? That is bizarre.
I don’t know anybody in Hawaii and i for sure don’t have clients there, but i’m going to sign off all my emails with ‘aloha’ in perpetuity, because why the hell not.
Clearly, you should start signing off all emails with “Happy birthday”.
Oh I actually like “Kindly yours”. It seems much better than “Warmly,” which I exclusively get at the end of particularly passive-aggressive emails from one of the people I’m working with right now. Stop saying Warmly, you superficial goober, you don’t mean it. Bah and Humbug I say.
The director of my MA course signs off emails with “Kindest and best”, which I like.
I kind of like Cordially, maybe I’ll mix that in with my Bests and Thanks
I’m imagining someone typing out “Happy birthday!” as a sign-off, then sadly deleting the forbidden exclamation point.
Inadvertent snort-laughing out loud in open plan office, thank you <3
I get a weekly e-mail newsletter about literary magazines, and the editor always signs off with a paragraph of playful, creative praise of her readers and then “Fondly, [her name].” I love it. Sometimes I read the newsletter just for the sign-off.
Back in the day, I subscribed to a crafts group newsletter that always ended with “You look great today.” in the sign off. I knew it was coming but it still made me feel good each time I saw it.
I can see the surreal appeal of a perpetual “happy birthday,” but I think I would go with a perpetual “happy holidays” and leave the recipients trying to figure out what holiday it was. “Wait, it’s the Festival of Gungkanawaaali in Republic of Registatibloopistan! Wow, I didn’t realize she was Registatibloopese….”
Wait, what about “Yours faithfully” for when contacting people whose name you don’t know (such as anything you address as “To whom it may concern” or “Dear Sir/Madam”)?
Pssht. Forget square dogs, can we talk poodle bunny? http://www.flipopular.com/wally-the-angora-rabbit…
HE IS MY DESKTOP RIGHT NOW. My recently-determined goal in life is to be an angora bunny farmer and my cousin sent this to me. Wally is making me happier than I should be. I also talk to him occasionally. I mean, no I don’t, that’d be weird.
That link was everything I hoped for and more. Thank you for posting it!
Also can I just say that I love those silly cube dogs, and I want to get a big puffy dog so I can trim it into cubes.
(I cannot have a dog, any sort of dog, especially one that requires frequent cube-trimming. Maybe I will get a pet rock and chisel it into a cube.)
(Opening a pet rock grooming salon, brb!)
Now I’m thinking of marble sculpture, gem cutting, and lapidary art generally as “pet rock grooming salon”, and it makes me v v happy.
I love it! Now drumming up support for an official Movement to Make All Rocks Pet Rocks.
this belongs on a t-shirt with a sweet illustration of a person with a mountain on a leash!
yes i want this t shirt. if everyone leaves me alone at work i will draw one this afternoon!
I would love to see a few etsy stores frame themselves this way!
Would love to see more trixies’ faces when I refer to their engagement ring as a pet rock.
doing this forever now
I am totally referring to my engagement ring–the only pet rock I regularly carry with me at all times–as my pet rock.
I always include at a minimum my name as my work email signature. Mostly because when you’re reading back through email chains, it’s much easier to follow the conversation if the person has at least included their name at the bottom. I usually use Thanks, Alyssa. Because I’m usually requesting data or information from people. If it’s the first email, I always include my contact info. If it’s a reply, I don’t. Personal emails I usually just have my name, or some random sign-off I find entertaining.
Although Brits have devolved to the anodyne “Cheers,” historical fiction of questionable rigor has convinced me that they used to do it up, closing-letters-wise.
I remain sir,
with kindest wishes to your family,
and with prayerful intercession for their health and your own,
your most humble and obd’t servant,
and a loyal subject to His Most Britannic Majesty
Reginald Fitzhugh III
God Save the King.
But the nice thing was that if you were in a hurry, you could abbreviate expeditiously, turning the above into “I remain &c &c &c &c &c Reg. Fit. &c &c.”
Someone needs to bring that back.
Just “I remain” without any of the &c would be a pretty awesome email signature.
For the longest time I wondered whether people actually put “&c” this way, or if novelists just did that because they didn’t feel like including a whole closing salutation once the plot-significant portion of the letter was finished. This was when I was reading Jane Austen as a teenager and didn’t have Google (though it’s also a tricky question to Google), and asking my parents and English teachers about it didn’t get me very far.
My friend and I used to write snail mail to each other in college, and we’d often sign off with “Yours, &c” just because we were huge Austen nerds and thought it was the best thing.
ugh JUST sent emails to all my coworkers individually and signed them ALL “best”
I am a *huge* fan of the perfunctory “how are you?” as well as weather-talk. There’s a reason these are standards! They show that you can follow social norms. Deviation can occur after or as necessary, but I’m not going to ask that middle-aged dude in the coffee room about his deepest feelings while filling my waterbottle.
Weather talk is GREAT. It’s a good way to signal whether you want to talk more (“I hope it stays this nice, I have a picnic planned this weekend!”) or not (“Finally feels like spring, right? Here’s that file you asked for.”).
And here in the midwest there’s ALWAYS something to talk about, re: the weather.
see also: Canada
I am Canadian, and therefore can spend the better part of an hour going over current weather, past weather, predicted weather, weather stories, and weather preferences and actually be interested the whole time.
Yeah, I have had to have long talks with a few of my less, uh, friendly friends about how people aren’t trying to ~oppress you~ into saying inane shit, they’re just trying to acknowledge your presence and signal some kind of good will in a way that isn’t going to turn up any conversational wild cards.
heh, I am reading an old Ask A Manager post in another tab, about post-interview thank you notes (trying to mentally draft one, mildly freaking out about eensy issues) and I’m having this super visceral yuk reaction to some of the comments there. “Why would you THANK them? They don’t send YOU a thank you note for your time! Are you some kind of brown-noser trying to get into their favor with a nice note???”
…and those folks are doing a better job than Allison at convincing me that sending one is a good thing!
“Acknowledge your presence and signal some kind of good will” YES. YES! Social conventions can be lovely and comforting and they are there for a lot of good reasons.
Or alternately, trick you into revealing painful details. There was a Captain Awkward exchange about “What do you do?” that went in that direction. DON’T ASK UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING.
It reminds me a little of the friend zone wars and the feeling of certain guys that friendliness from someone attractive is a fraudulent offer meant to ensnare the unwary, and that flirting should be required to be contractual.
I also firmly believe that saying things like this actually helps you develop your habitus in generally positive directions. The more I hear myself saying “thank you” to servers and “how’s it going?” to my coworkers, the more I feel the words coming out of my mouth in my own voice, the more courtesy becomes part of my mental and emotional makeup. We inhabit what we say and do on a regular basis. Is it possible to be polite mechanically and disingenuously? Sure, but that’s better over the long term than being genuinely and authentically rude and selfish.
THIS IS SO TRUE. I am fairly awkward around strangers or people I don’t know well, but I feel more awkward not speaking at all. Getting into the habit of small talk and training myself to tell a cashier, “have a good one” when I leave or “good morning” to a coworker has helped a lot. I have standbys that I don’t have to think about. And when someone responds in kind, you feel good!
If the point of Alison Ng’s casting is that she’s biracial but looks white and feels angsty about it, then man am I sympathetic to her. It’s a weird position to be in.
Emma Stone was cast as a character named Allison Ng. Allison Ng the character is multiracial, Emma Stone is not. I blame Cameron Crowe far more than Emma Stone! But still, taking the part of a person of color when you are white — that’s kind of weird too.
Right, but what I understood from the article is that the character is supposed to be a biracial person looks completely white. So I kind of get why Crowe cast a white actress, but is there really no white-looking biracial actress anywhere in the country?
I meant I was sympathetic to Alison Ng the character–sorry if that was unclear.
Hmm I don’t think there’s a real Allison Ng, I think her character is based on “a real-life red-headed local” as Crowe said, who may or may not have been part Hawaiian. I think what he meant is, we wanted to cast Emma Stone, a white actress, in this role, AND we wanted to be seen attempting to pander to “diversity.” Are there multiracial people who could pass for white out there whose stories and struggles re: identity/belonging would make good film fodder? Sure, but then I still wouldn’t cast a lily-white actress in the role. I’ve met plenty of multiracial Asians who have light hair and light eyes, and to other people maybe their Asian background wouldn’t be as obvious, but that doesn’t make them white.
Yes, I agree with you. It is pretty dumb.
*high five*
It is fun calling out racist remarks with the “y’know, I’m half _________” thing, though.
This is true.
On the flip side, I once mentioned my Chinese grandma in passing and someone said, “Wait, you’re part Asian? REALLY?” but then seemed to think this was rude and tried to make up for it with “I KNEW there was something exotic about your eyes!” *exotic eye-roll*
*bursts into the room* GO, BALLET, GO! I love ballet and I am forever pissed that there was a time when ballet was moving toward diversity & basically chickened out (and also became stuck in the mold of “what gives Balanchine a boner”). I want to see more diversity of dancers, I want to see more diversity of ballets. Janelle Monae once performed “Sincerely, Jane” onstage at the Harlem ballet with dancers and TO THIS DAY I will annoy people with my theory that someone needs to hire her to create an entire scifi ballet because that would be the most epic shit.
*huff puff* So, uh, yeah. I like ballet.
OMG YES. I would see that many times over!
I would watch the hell out of a Janelle Monae created scifi ballet!
speaking of sign offs – what is up with “very truly yours” as a sign-off for legal letters
Good question! It’s such a cliche that you don’t even process it, but if you take it literally, it’s a weird mix between formal and familiar.
The true answer is probably that the first letter to make it into the first document management system happened to use that, and lawyers have been copying it from the template ever since, as we are wont to do.
“very truly yours” is illogical. It’s either true or it isn’t.
You’d think lawyers would know this
It definitely sounds like code for “Fuck you.”
Is anyone else working in a place where “v/r” is the standard email signoff? Military and military-adjacent jobs mostly, I think, but it’s a weirdly handy one, since I don’t have to worry too much about whether I’m showing the correct level of affection/respect for whoever I’m emailing.
I had to Google this. So “v/r” is “Virtual Regards”? THIS SEEMS WORSE THAN “BEST” TO ME
oh no is it “very respectfully” or “virtual regards”
either way, people should type it out or stop knocking on “BEST”
I think the general consensus among the military folks is that they mean it as “very respectfully,” or at least that’s what they’ve always said it means.
You get some folks whose email signatures actually say “very respectfully,” but the “v/r” folks are the larger slice in the pie chart. (Actually, the largest slice in my office are the people who say nothing at all.)
My school’s ROTC instructors do this. I think I heard somewhere that you put v/r when writing to subordinates and V/R for superiors, but I might be making that up.
What does v/r mean, though?
Virtual Reality
Very Real
Vandalay Realty
Vexatious Rodents
Vibronic Rumbles
Actually, sending off an email signed “Vibronic Rumbles, Kaiko,” sounds mighty appealing.
Haha, I think I like most of those better than what it really stands for . . . It’s “very respectfully,” but I think there’s a thing with military-type folks where they need to take the maximum number of letters out of a thing as possible and make it into an acronym. Like, you’re not going on foreign travel with the Deputy Director. You’re on OCONUS TDY with the DDIR.
It’s ridiculous.
And because I answer about a million emails a day, I know there have been times when I’ve accidentally emailed friends and family and had my work email habits autopilot themselves over. I’m sure my family really feels the warmth and affection of me signing off with “v/r” . . .
I have never seen it. I rarely correspond with anyone military, but I do on occasion – perhaps they use regular words for civilians?
I used to work with an ex-military person who would begin all her emails with ALCON. I spent months wondering why she was talking about contact lens solution until I finally googled it.
(it’s short for “all concerned”)
So I should NOT be signing off on my work emails with “love always” ? Hmm. This would explain some awkward encounters I’ve had.
Actually since I work with LEO and retired LEO, we get a lot of “10-4” with no greetings or signoffs whatsoever. Great at work, not so great when texting relatives in the hospital. I found out recently.
Oh Cameron Crowe. This is a tough one for me because Almost Famous is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I definitely have soft spot for Say Anything. If Jerry Maguire pops up on TNT when I’m in the right mood, I usually end up watching part of it (though I’m not going to lie, I kinda hate that kid). Since Almost Famous, I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that A, his films are increasingly terrible, and B, that although I am not white, my two favorites are as lily white as white can be.
This same thing came up with Boyhood, which was similar to Almost Famous in that it was a coming of age story centered around a white male experience. I don’t question why I like these films or the ways that they resonate with me, but it does make me stop and think about how little progress we’ve made in terms of representation in film, tv, and other mediums. I think the issue is two-fold. One, directors need to make an effort to not whitewash characters and to include a diverse range of stories in their films (e.g. Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire).But we also need to do more to support filmmakers of color. Both Boyhood and Almost Famous were semi autobiographical, and I wouldn’t want to see a version of the film centered around the story of a black woman that was directed by either Crowe or Linklater, if that makes sense.
I think it would be really great if Cameron Crowe could actually help promote work done by filmmakers of color. I don’t really know how that would concretely play out because I’m not terribly familiar with the film industry, but I would much rather see that than to see him try to tell stories about people of color and potentially (likely) fuck it up.
Yes, exactly.
For work, my wife was chatting with someone who attended some of the Canadian TRC hearings. He recounted hearing a parent describe how the villages were often so quiet at night that you could hear what other people were doing in their houses. Village parents would hear someone in the next house weeping over a stolen child and, turning their thoughts to their own stolen children, would start weeping as well.
Before long, the only sound in the village would be parents crying.
That is absolutely heartbreaking.
Bring down the government.
Ooooof, that is beyond heartbreaking.
Oh my god…
Heartbreaking
D:
Which looks flippant, but I can’t think of words that would be any more adequate than that.
I started using “thanks” as a sign-off when emailing professors in college (when what I really meant was “alsdkgadjgf here’s this paper a week and a half late I’m so sorry my life is a failure but I hope you accept it anyways, thank you so much for understanding or at least pretending to”) and I haven’t broken myself of the habit of using it even in situations where it doesn’t make sense. But I don’t even have an email account at my current job, so that helps.
Around the early 2000s, I read some snotty blog post that said the only acceptable sign-off from a student to a professor was “thanks,” because students should 1) be eternally grateful 2) know their place.
Now I use “thanks” universally.
It’s stuff like that that makes me perpetually paranoid about e-mailing professors. Well, that and the section that shows up in all the syllabi of my current program talking about showing proper respect when writing your e-mails, but mostly just my profound fear that I’ll turn up in one of those blog posts about terrible students.
Meanwhile, when I was in the UK for another grad program, a friend of mine told me that her supervisor/the head of my program thinks it’s hilarious to get e-mails from his American students because they’re always super formal.
I know someone who signs off with “bestest” and I find it utterly endearing. I also once received an apologetic email ending “dolefully, [name].”
Speaking of the TRC, the screengrab (courtesy of my gentleman friend) of Mulcair side-eyeing Valcourt (Minister of Aboriginal Affairs) for refusing to stand and applaud a call for an inquiry into MMIW at the TRC is amazing:
(Also, what a dick move on Valcourt’s part.)
Really, does Bernard Valcourt have any other moves besides dick moves?
Fair point.
The look on Valcourt’s face is truly amazing. I have never seen a grown man so fully embody the image of a recalcitrant toddler before.
And he’s the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs??? Holy shit, he needs to be out of a job pronto.
He is doing precisely the job of a Minister of Aboriginal Affairs: trying to keep a lid on the whole genocide thing, clearing native people out of the way for more mining, making sure they continue having nothing. His department is the current incarnation of the one responsible for the residential schools in the first place.
It’s good that the TRC has finally released this report and hopefully the government will act on its recommendations. I hope everyone abused by this system both personally and by its psychic aftermath gets justice from this process.
http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org has firsthand accounts from survivors of the residential schools. When I was in school I got to see Kevin Annet, who runs the site and collected the testimony, speak about trying to get the Canadian government to form the TRC and to gain access to documents proving its complicity. The evidence they’ve uncovered is appalling: there were residential schools deliberately infecting children with tuberculosis, with 50% mortality rates, thousands of documented deaths with certainly more since the government saw fit to destroy many of their records.
This is all really rambling, I do wish more people really understood the gravity of what really is continuing to happen to indigenous people across the whole western hemisphere, but at least the part where we tried to exterminate a whole group of people and succeeded with the vast majority.
And suddenly, a wild grumpy white man appears!
He can GTFO.
Throw that shade Mulcair, throw it all over Valcourt’s ugly mug.
In a better world the Ministers of Aboriginal Affairs (federal & provincial) would actually be First Nations people.
I usually sign my emails with ‘Thanks” and only I know that it is usually a passive-aggressive ‘I’ve asked you for this 3 times already, just do your damn job’ thanks.
I get a lot of emails from current and retired military and they always sign ‘V/r” for ‘very respectfully’ which I like.
Seconding.
Also: “Pls hndl, thx.”
To whom it may concern,
You can pry “best” from my cold, dead hands.
Best,
Just_a_Dinosaur
Can we just be glad that we’ve finally convinced most people to cut it out with the signatures on forums and comments??
(I say this, knowing that at least a dozen of you will pipe up with sites where it’s like a forest of comment signatures.)
.oO♡ Love ♡Oo.,
★★★ keri ★★★
~kittenmommy~
Not on any baby-related forums I’ve ever seen.
You should also look at the Twitter hashtag #myreconciliationincludes, started last week by Christi Belcourt. (Some non-Indigenous people of colour outside Canada have contributed to the hashtag, too, but it’s mainly centring Indigenous Canadian voices.)
That pup reminds me more than anything of a SNES-ear Thwomp.
#nerdcred
I signed off on a recent work email thuswise:
I love running this survey so much rainbows are exploding from my eyes,
B
my boss called it an “interesting visual”
also this survey fucking sucks. it was sarcasm. he has threatened me with a sarcasm bucket.
I really do hope the TRC gets more people understanding even a part of the horror of the residential school system on a more emotional level, less “yeah, yeah, having your kid taken away is sad.” My grandfather (who was First Nations) was a logger in coastal BC and he told my dad that sometimes they’d find the graves of residential school kids hidden away in the middle of woods. The idea that the land we build our parks and trails and rich people build their Gulf Island homes on contains the dead bodies of stolen children is something gets to me in the way that numbers and abstract ideas about the suppression of culture don’t.
It always surprises me when people don’t know about the horror of the residential school system, that all they have are, as you say “numbers and abstract ideas”. But as someone growing up in a family of readers (and theatre people) I read Kiss Of The Fur Queen when it was first published and I was, I think, 19, and it affected me deeply. This story of your grandfather’s is profoundly moving as well.
That is heartbreaking and I had absolutely no idea. Not sure if this is the place to ask, but I’m going to be in BC to do some reporting on First Nations and TRC, do you know where I can find more information about that?
Yes, http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org. There are firsthand accounts as well as a broad overview.
To be honest, I have no idea. I know the TRC had a Missing Children project that was looking into that, but I don’t know of any sources in particular.
I mean, honestly. How are you gonna call the most-used email signoff the worst, and then not offer an alternative other than “don’t do sign-offs”?? I mean, RUDE!! **one million stop sign emojis**
Perhaps it is inappropriate to mention when the links also include heartbreaking info on one of my country’s most shameful periods, but… I looked at that time capsule link, and excuse me, the Americans had “just defeated the British” in the War of 1812? Excuuuuse me? WE BURNED DOWN YOUR WHITE HOUSE ONCE AND WE WILL DO IT AGAIN.
No but seriously, in Canada we were taught that we won that war, and I won’t hear any different. Even though cursory googling tells me that basically both sides just got bored and gave up.
But Dolly Madison saved all the paintings (by which I mean she organized and directed slave labor to save all the paintings)! So really, we won that one.
Mr Robinn works in a bookshop and gets ARCs all the time, which they leave lying around the back room for staff to take or give to customers as they see fit.
No one has taken the Franzen yet.