I am WILDLY joyful to finally be able to talk about the sweeping Toast redesign that a dream team of geniuses has been working on for several months now, and will launch in early October. If you were one of the many, many readers we reached out to for feedback during this process, thank you so much for your time and energy on our behalf.
The idea of a redesign was something I always kept kicking into the future, but Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte (recently described on Twitter as the Lennon/McCartney of responsive web design) and their colleagues at Bond Art & Science emailed me with the most persuasive pitch of all time, which included the words “dream job” and “passion project” and “steep discount” and I couldn’t say no.
There will obviously be changes (great ones, I think!) to how the site looks, but MAINLY this redesign will transform the functionality of the site, and your ability to read it on all devices and browsers and not get weird video ads or be randomly sent to the App Store. So, I know change is hard, but I hope that your improved user experience will make this a wonderful moment in Toast history.
We are sticking with IntenseDebate, so your comments will not be deleted, and the faster load times should fix a LOT of the bugs with that system.
Let there be rejoicing.
I have always liked Biden (he has made plenty of mistakes in his career and had bad ideas like anyone else, for the record) and watching him talk about his grief and his faith with Stephen Colbert DESTROYED ME EMOTIONALLY, and you should watch it. I cannot bear for him to run for president, honestly, because people will say mean things to and about him, and he is GRIEVING and FRAGILE and whereas I feel that Hillary is a pretty resilient demon-beast of a politician (I think she is likely not the most ethical person but would CHEERFULLY vote for her if she got the nomination, were I a citizen) who can handle that process, I don’t think that Biden can. But I like him so much! Also, a friend of mine worked on VAWA with him, and said that she’d never seen a politician who cared so much and asked so many sharp questions about the content and process, and it made her really respect him as a person.
This is the closest thing to a firm political preference I have ever stated, and it is still full of mud.
This piece by a friend of Chris Hurst (the fiance of Alison Parker, the murdered journalist) trying to deal with the new crop of “truthers” is devastating:
In the minds—and YouTube videos—of some conspiracy theorists, Chris is not a news anchor at WDBJ in Virginia. Chris, the videos say, is a “crisis actor” invented less than a month ago by the United States government as part of a false flag operation that will eventually allow the New World Order to take away every American citizen’s guns and force them into a life of subjugation and tyranny.
Every day now, Chris wakes up to find strangers’ hate on his Facebook wall that he has to personally delete. Or he’ll Google Alison to find the people he has to thank for donating to her scholarships and he’ll see, instead, another conspiracy theory YouTube video, viewed 800,000 times over, that says Alison was in on it all along, and that she’s been given a new life and maybe plastic surgery by the government.
My friend Carrie’s new puppy has a STICK:
The most misread poem in America:
This is the most remarkable thing about “The Road Not Taken”—not its immense popularity (which is remarkable enough), but the fact that it is popular for what seem to be the wrong reasons. It’s worth pausing here to underscore a truth so obvious that it is often taken for granted: Most widely celebrated artistic projects are known for being essentially what they purport to be. When we play “White Christmas” in December, we correctly assume that it’s a song about memory and longing centered around the image of snow falling at Christmas. When we read Joyce’sUlysses, we correctly assume that it’s a complex story about a journey around Dublin as filtered through many voices and styles. A cultural offering may be simple or complex, cooked or raw, but its audience nearly always knows what kind of dish is being served.
Frost’s poem turns this expectation on its head. Most readers consider “The Road Not Taken” to be a paean to triumphant self-assertion (“I took the one less traveled by”), but the literal meaning of the poem’s own lines seems completely at odds with this interpretation. The poem’s speaker tells us he “shall be telling,” at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled by, yet he has already admitted that the two paths “equally lay / In leaves” and “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable.
Just something to think about before talking about “Big Pharma” on social media:
I am not saying that the pharmaceutical companies in America aren’t corrupt. I have a disease 1 in 100,000 people get. There is no approved treatment. There is no cure. I will never in my lifetime see either of these things, because it’s a rare disease that won’t make money for the pharmaceutical company if they spent tons developing it. Trust me, I have a very vested interest health and medical reform.
But I depend on medication to live and function in a relatively normal manner (most days). I take a diuretic to keep my brain from being crushed by my cerebral spinal fluid. I take a beta blocker to keep my heart from going into tachycardia just because I sat up or, Gods help me, stood up instead of laying flat on my back constantly, but also to make sure that my aorta doesn’t get any bigger than it already is by keeping my blood pressure down. If it does, I run the risk of it dissecting from my heart. I take an old school antidepressant to try to prevent a constant headache instead of just wanting to die from horrific head pain and various other symptoms any time a storm comes through.
Our resident linguist just asked if I wanted a column on the linguistics of shipping (Johnlock/Faberry/OTP) and I was just…girl, yes.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) September 14, 2015
GREATEST DELETED COMMENT TO DATE:
TOASTIES. I finally saw Mad Max: Fury Road
…
OMG.
Also Carrie’s new puppy looks a lot like my childhood pup who died when I was in middle school so seeing these pictures every day gives me all the feels.
I love that people are still discovering it! OMG indeed 🙂
It was so incredible. I saw it after having gone to Rosh Hashanah services alone for the first time ever and I was feeling really homesick/in a somewhat fragile state so I was not at ALL prepared for the sheer brutality of the dystopia. Like the physical and emotional stakes felt SO REAL my pulse was speeding up the whole time. It was so violent but so stylized and fast-paced and so good at establishing an emotional center for the audience that I was okay with the violence. I was basically bawling at (spoilers!!!!!) Nux’s sacrifice and Furiosa’s almost-death and at the surgery scene I wanted to leap up and throw something in Immortan Joe’s face. It was just so intense and so feminist and AMAZING but I don’t know when I will have the strength to watch it again. Everyone should see it.
Yaaaaay welcome to the fan club! I’m still riding heroic on that Fury Road – Bought the MM anthology and am looking forward to inflecting it on friends.
There are some amazing fanfic recs here in past link round-ups and Friday open threads. And some really great discussion!
Me too!!! I waaay missed the boat on it!
For once I actually enjoyed a movie that is a 2 hour car chase (although being me, I would have like a more in depth analysis of the socio-political environment and historical context of the culture that has emerged, like how and why do they milk women? do they just live on it, do they sell it?)
Fandom has all this and more. Come to Tumblr! Look up bonehandledknife in particular.
Seconded! (Am not on Tumblr, but just read and lurk.)
I know this isn’t quite the spot for movie recommendations, but I saw and loved Mad Max earlier this summer, and then just this weekend saw another incredible, female-driven action movie, the Korean historical action-drama, Assassins! It is so good, I had trouble sleeping last night because I kept running over different scenes in my head, so I highly recommend it for people who want to discover another movie similar to Mad Max, though in the past, not future. (Also, very violent, of course).
aaaaaahhhhh I’ve been DYING to see Assassains! Because Choi Dong-Hoon (I loved The Thieves, and so glad it’s on Netflix so that I can send people to go see it) and Jeon Ji-Hyun! So glad to hear it’s good.
Was it at a theater near you? I’m psyched for it to finally somehow eventually come to Dramafever.
I’ve never seen The Thieves, so I’m headed to that next, then – thanks! I was just randomly browsing movies available this weekend, and saw the preview for this (Assassinations, not Assassins – my bad!), and knew I had to see it! It was at a single theater in Fairfax, VA, but well worth the half hour drive for me. It was so, so good, and now I’m all happy to have other similar dramas to look forward to, as well!
Hurrah! Have you accepted Imperator Furiosa as your lord and saviour?
(P.S. Enjoy all the great fic and meta floating about on the internet! There is a lot of excellent stuff, and it makes me very happy.)
So did I!!! I blew out my ACL about 10 days ago and so have been basically immobilized, and spent Saturday (I feel like it was raining; I don’t know if it was raining because I couldn’t get outside and I live in a near-basement apartment with windows that look out onto…a solid wall of shrubbery – it is my witch-cave) watching All The Movies, and this one….
WHOA.
YAAAAAASSS
Fury Road is basically one of the best movies ever. I have seen it multiple times in theater, and now have been watching it on Blu-Ray. SO AMAZING.
also, sad puppy feels!
bless the heart of the deleted commenter!
And how does that puppy give so much mischievous FACE while playing w a stick?!
I’m really struggling to believe that comment was sincere. It certainly seems it but…are there really people THAT obtuse out there?
I think they have to be. Every time I see a comment like that, I’m reminded of Dave Barry’s “Closed Captioned for the Humor Impaired” column… http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-06-11/fea…
absolutely; without question
What a scary thought for a Monday. Well, for any day, really.
I thought the Dresses for all link was a discount at ModCloth or Lindy Bop
Still, I wasnt disappointed. #mystrippernameisequality
Hi Toast! I have been too busy to be around much last week and probably this week as well! But that article on clothing is amazing and hits on everything related to media, which is why is it that boy stuff is for everyone but girl stuff is not? Why are sewing kits and Rainbow Looms for girls only but superhero stuff is for everyone? Superheroes are cool but so are Rainbow Looms, why can they both not be for everyone? Anyway, because my blog is YA focused I think about this all the time, because why is it that girls stories are not good enough for boys to read too? When I was in grade school not that long ago, we had separate books and projects for boys and girls! Why? Why are girls coded as Not Cool but boys are Everyone? Oh wait, right, patriarchy.
One of my most gender-conforming male colleagues has three sons, one of whom is into knitting and Rainbow looms and just got a sewing machine for his birthday. It gives me hope for humanity that while the dad clearly just does not get it, he isn’t being too rigid with it and is letting the boy explore what he likes.
I have long been proud of my parents for giving my brother a My Size Barbie for Christmas when he was three because he desperately wanted one. …after I stopped being resentful that he got one and I didn’t because that seemed pretty rude to my five-year-old self.
My boyfriend (who’s 52) is still sad about not getting the dollhouse he really wanted as a kid, because it was For Girls. (Though he did have a lot of fun decorating an actual house as a grown-up).
My husband loves to decorate and he is never happier when he can redo a room. Once a guest complimented me on the Christmas meal and decorations and I said, “Jim did it all! I was just a bystander” and he refused to believe me. I reminded him that historically men were INTO design and decorating- Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis XIV, and many others. Liking to make spaces attractive and useful is a human skill, not a gendered one.
Yes!! Totally agree.
Also, my boyfriend is a collector of many things (e.g., early phonographs, player piano rolls, etc.), so he likes having nice places to display them.
When we got married, several people complimented me on my beautiful handwriting, displayed on their invitations. “Oh,” I’d say, “[The Fella] must have addressed yours. He has lovely handwriting.” They always, always scoffed and told me they were sure it was mine.
Really, folks, NO. I promise if the handwriting was pretty enough to remark upon, it’s my (male) partner’s, not mine.
I have so many feelings about kid clothes. Current rage: Masculinity as taught by baby onesies
Gah! That’s just wrong on so many levels. And here I thought the Dutch brand selling girl onesies that say “sweet” and boy onesies that say “tough” was bad.
*shudder* That’s awful.
I’m far from pregnant, but I’ve already decided that when I do have kids, even if I find out the sex before they’re born, I’m not going to tell anyone so that they’re forced to buy me gender neutral presents only. Nothing with “Born to Shop” or “Future Wingman” on it for me, thanks.
Sister-in-law is really into the band Heart, so I found a detailed picture of a barracuda, teeth bared, paired it with the words “Ooooh! Barracuda!,” and printed it onto an iron-on patch, and slapped it on a onesie. The result has been worn by all three kids, regardless of gender.
That “BROS BEFORE BOWS” one seriously makes me want to cry. Those poor boys. Yes, misogyny is part of your gender identity (which has been definitively decided for you) and your belonging in an important family relationship!
My cousin had an extremely gendered baby shower last year, with marine stuff given a male gender inflection (commemorating the unborn child’s recently deceased grandfather’s love of spending time on the water with his family) and, for whatever reason, a pervasive mustache theme. Which kind of weirded me out. She regularly posts baby pictures in gendered onesies on Facebook now.
I may just have to share one of your Pinterest posts. Because ijdgaf. (Because I really, really do give a fuck.)
That interview with Colbert was not at ALL what I expected, and it was so beautiful and painful. If his take on the late night genre is to get that deep with even 1% of his guests, then goddamn do we need Stephen Colbert in this world (not that we didn’t before).
Hear, hear!
“You know you’ve been a success as a parent when you look at your kid and he turned out better than you.”
No, YOU’RE crying. Incredible interview.
I’m still not sure if most of his shows will be like that interview — I’m dubious of the standard “late night talk show” format as compared to what he and Jon Stewart used to do on Comedy Central, where they went all-out on the top political issues of the day — but I do know that he could not have had that interview as his old character, so I am thankful for this change for that reason alone.
Yes! I was not expecting to get sniffly and tearful.
And–while I normally try to be at least a bit cynical about what entertainers are “really” like, I think every interview/anecdote/comment I’ve ever seen is that Stephen Colbert is a genuinely caring and compassionate person. That interview was just. . .so much more graciously and compassionately done than all the fake soft-focus specials I’ve ever seen.
Deleted comment is everything.
>> Most widely celebrated artistic projects are known for being essentially what they purport to be.
Wait, is that true? I would have thought most widely-celebrated artistic projects are celebrated as an over-simplified version of what they actually are? Pride and Prejudice is not really a cheery romance about how delightful it is to marry money, Jerusalem is definitely not a happy patriotic anthem about how great England is. I would have thought the point of art is that there’s more to it than appears on first glance?
Dresses for all: isn’t the entire Pinkett-Smith family just the best people ever, tho?
On the subject of the Pinkett-Smiths: can we talk about this weird ass shit? Because I have spent too many hours puzzling over it and trying to decide if I should let Jada do her own damn thing that she does so well or if this is startlingly regressive bullshit dressed up in faux empowerment.
wtf
Oh. Well.
I thought they were shills for Scientology?
They are. It’s always so disappointing. Why, Elisabeth Moss? WHY?!?
I’m willing to give her more of a pass, because her parents apparently brought her up in it as a child and (as far as I know) she’s not publicly promoting it. She just keeps kind of quiet about it.
Kanye West also wears non-kilt skirts a lot, I don’t think it suits him, but good on him.
Like Ronald Reagan using “Born in the USA” as if it were a patriotic anthem.
Best link roundup ever, and that’s saying something.
I’m especially excited to see the post about my Johnlock/Faberry OTP.
To further elaborate, I’m not at all nervous about the redesign – I’m really excited about it, in fact – because I think you’re actually going to give a shit about retaining the aspects of the user experience your readers value, unlike literally every other site on the internet.
Good point! I feel better now.
I’ll be able to install Flash on my phone now (soon) without fear I’ll be sacrificing my trouble-free Toasting. So that’s nice.
I am so excited about everything in this link roundup. I am also really excited about not randomly going to the app store anymore!
YOU’LL GET MY ATTENTION ONLY WHEN I DIRECT IT TO YOU, APPLE.
But what about the vast array of Apple products and services, Rae?! Are you saying you have better things to spend your money on?!
I can’t answer this on account of too many family members work for Apple. THEY’LL FIND ME.
(She types, on her MacBook Pro, with her iPhone 5c directly to hand).
Robert Frost is a poet I probably (definitely) put aside unfairly as an adolescent. His poems are in a lot of anthologies for children/K-12 poetry curricula, so I’d come across his work presented as atmospheric/evocative (which it is) but not much beyond that. The Road Not Taken was one of the few that was taught to have a “moral,” but it was of course the smarmy misinterpretation mentioned in the linked piece. I hadn’t gone back until today to reassess. Now I feel a bit sheepish.
I’d thought something similar, but rediscovered him as an adult. This one is my favorite, and it should help put aside any idea of him as a poet for children. Man, I’m still trying to figure this one out, and I look at it every day on my office bulletin board.
The author of this article has a whole book about “The Road Not Taken” and he talks directly about the connections between it and “Directive”! And how literary editors, when they’re making anthologies, tend to consider “Road Not Taken” a disposable work and “Directive” mature and accomplished, but they address some deeply interrelated concerns. I keep resisting buying this book, but on multiple occasions I’ve picked it up in a shop and been really compelled by whatever page I randomly turned to; maybe I should get it from the library.
Yeah, I thoroughly love “Directive” and “The Oven Bird.” (A guide who has at heart my only getting lost? Sign me up.) But then there’s “The Gift Outright,” which really is pretty terrible.
I had a similar experience, and then came across ” the span of life.” Two lines, devastating. He is not for children.
BE WARNED: This poem is about an old dog, so it’s extra sad
Frost is WAY better than most Americans know, because of this exact reason. “The Road Not Taken”: actually the opposite of what you thought! “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening!”: possibly about suicidal impulses! “Mending Wall”: good fences DON’T make good neighbors, nothing can stop the savage impulses of humanity! And so on.
My personal favorites:
For Once, Then, Something
Range-Finding
The Oven Bird
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Design *** one of my all-time favorite poems
Just imagine all of them as being spoken by someone who is on the verge of suicide because everything in nature points to either a) the non-existence of God/gods, or b) the absolute, deliberate malice of God toward humanity. It will blow your mind.
signed, poetry professor who is very very angry about the mistreatment of Frost by high school teachers
Yes, I hate talking about Frost because I always felt like, “No, that cannot be what this poem is about” when we read him in high school!
Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening may be the first poem that made me really and truly contemplate death and my own issues with depression. Much more evocative and thought-provoking and heartrending than Dylan Thomas raging against the dying of the light (though I still wrote Thomas quotes all over my jeans and arms because I was a teenage dirtbag).
Yes!!!
Randall Thompson’s setting of “Stopping By Woods” foregrounds the poem’s existential chilliness, and its moment of decision, for the moment!, against self-extinction. It’s equal parts gorgeous and creepy, and if I ever teach Frost again, I will be using it to show what high school readings of the poem missed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSbjCzESpA&f…
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening is so good – it definitely makes me think of suicidal impulses and depression. His poems so often have this air of austere, calm despair, and I love it. I just discovered Desert Places (https://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/Desert_Places), which is so gorgeous. (And, in line with the comment thread about Mad Max: Fury Road above, the last stanza evokes the film so strongly for me.)
First. Oh god, conspiracy theorists. I somehow took an entire college class about that kind of thing. It’s crazy all the way down.
Second. Help me name aged, sober, calming influence cat. He enjoys headbutts, belly rubs, plaintive meowing and watching tv. He is currently a Childermass. I don’t think it’ll stick. Cateusz Kosciuszko?
Benjamew Franklin?
Such pretty blues! My cat had gorgeous blue eyes as a baby but, like most cats, they switched to yellow/green at 6-7 weeks. I generally go for standard human names for pets so I would have gone with George or Sam but on the cat-punny front Cateusz Kosciuszko is a great name. Very strong name for a strong cat.
Cats-mir Purr-laski
Oh, I’ve already got you there.
Brigadier General Casimir Pulaskitty
VERY GOOD YES
His eyes are mostly green? Sort of teal? But more so when he poses strategically next to blue things.
Oh wow; they look so blue in that photo. What dynamic eyes.
He needs a name befitting his dignity, sooooo something like “Mr Fluff-face McSnackums Loveheart Kittykittykitty who-has-beautiful-black-ears-is-it-you-yes-it-is!!!!”
First of all, whatever college class that is, I want to take it. It sounds awesome if frustrating.
Second of all, Alexander Hamewlton? since the toast is so Hamilton crazy, and rightfully so.
I think he’s a bit too calm to be a Hamilton. Need more chill Rev War figures. Greene? He seems pretty zen.
Washington has always struck me as a calm dude. George Pawshington?
CHILDERMASS! Although I actually think John Segundus or Mr. Honeyfoot would also be very good cat names.
!!! Mr Honeyfoot as a cat name is purrfect
I tried so hard to repress that pun but it WOULD BE HEARD
Now I want to name a future cat Mr. Honeyfoot. [gets out notebook labeled “Future Cat Names”]
He is dark and inscrutable and his origins are shrouded in mystery and he does not give a damn. Should be great Childermass material. But this doesn’t seem very Childermass-y behavior.
A good old man name is called for here: Herbert? Reg? I love a good Reg.
I considered Hodge briefly.
I was going to say “Eddard Bark” then realized it’s a cat.
I want to name my next cat Wiggins after the street urchin in Sherlock Holmes stories and you can have that if you want!
He seems too dignified to be an urchin. Though Wiggins sounds a bit like a butler type name and that might fit. Though a certain someone already stole the best one. *cough* Jeeves *cough*
Psmith?
Willikins?
I never took a class like that, but I did used to read all the incoming mail when I worked at the ACLU. A good 20% of it was multi-page, handwritten screeds by conspiracy theorists. I’d guess that a lot of them probably had some kind of schizoaffective disorder, which is sad.
(We also got a lot of mail from schizophrenics asking for help because the government was reading their thoughts, etc., which I found both sad and kind of touching because they trusted us).
It was a great class. So much weirdness. A lot of it apparently sent in directly to the professor by individuals who somehow found he was teaching the class and wanted him to teach ‘the truth.’
Do any of the readings from your class come immediately to mind as must-reads? I’d love to be pointed in the direction of one. No worries if it was a long time ago or you can’t remember – I’m just fascinated by these folks (especially now that I work for the federal government). Also, I have no guidance on cat names, but he’s very handsome indeed.
I have always wanted to give a cat a title instead of a name, like “The Chairman” or “The Brigadier General” but it has never worked with my cats’ personalities.
Casimir is sometimes referred to by his proper rank. But he might need some time to grow into being a Brigadier.
Captain is definitely a Captain.
My Captain is definitely a Captain as well. (Although it is short for Captain Cook, so his name is not just a title.)
Mine’s Captain Stripeypants.
My dearly departed cat was regularly called General No-Regard by a former roommate. It was a good nickname!
My husband is actively campaigning to name a cat Mr or Madame President, should we get one someday.
My senior cat is the Baroness. She is a grouchy, imperious old thing.
I always wanted to name a black cat Pluto, after the cat in Poe’s “The Black Cat.”
A friend who lived in Turkey loved the idea of naming a cat “Mustafah Kamal Cataturk”. If you’re into naming your cat after a benevlovent(?) despot, that’s a good one.
Best cat-themed name ever? Cat. Branagan. Or Chairman Meow. I am undecided.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
I’ve always named my cats after cities or generals, and this guy looks either like an Alexander, a Scipio, or an Acapulco. yymv.
The most chill and calming male I can think of is Mr. Rogers. But I can’t make his name into a cat pun, so maybe that’s no good. Maybe Mr. McPetme as a play on Mr. McFeely?
My cat’s full name is Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, so I endorse naming your cat after an athlete, and use the full name. If I had a calm dignified cat like that it would be hard to not name it Clarence Seedorf or Per Mertesacker,
I went to the Animals Inside Out exhibit at the Museum of Nature yesterday (like Body Worlds, but the animals version, with a couple of human specimens thrown in) and it was SO COOL. Like being at the Hannibal Lecter Memorial Zoo. The many small children running around added greatly to my experience because I overheard so many great comments:
– Little boy, happily: “I can see the butthole!”
– Little boy, sadly: “Why isn’t it moving?”
– Little girl, disdainfully: “Why do men have re-pro-duc-tive organs?”
– Little boy, wearily: “At the beginning I thought everything was really cool, but now it’s kind of gross,” which is my favourite because it applies not only to the exhibit but to life itself.
Ha! Kids are the best.
Little girl, disdainfully: “Why do men have re-pro-duc-tive organs?”
The eternal question.
This is why I refuse to donate my body to science. My greatest fear is ending up on display in a museum, having children gawk at my butthole for all eternity.
And being contemptuous of your reproductive organs.
Growing up in Massachusetts, I read me plenty of Robert Frost. I honestly can’t remember when someone pointed out to me the poem’s “real” meaning, but it was probably not until grad school, when I found out everything I thought I knew was wrong. (Incidentally, another Frost poem that’s consistently misread is “Mending Wall.”)
I’ve found that “Mending Wall” is much better understood after that episode of the West Wing where Josh is dismissive of people who don’t understand it.
I have actually taught The Road Not Taken and I was pleased to read that I didn’t send my students out in the world with a misinterpretation. One of my students wrote:
“Wake up sheeple! It’s really a poem about cognitive bias.”
And I gave her an A
It’s impossible to argue with any point that addresses sheeple. Good for your student! I personally had a wonderful AP Lit teacher who imparted the true meaning of that poem to my class in high school. It has given me great pleasure over the years to smugly drop the TRUTH BOMB about this poem to everyone I meet!
good work!
I am heartbroken and so so so angry at all of this “false flag” bullshit that people have been manipulated into believing is going on. What is it in someone’s life that makes them so desperate/gullible to believe that these tragedies have been stages, and to make such gargantuan logical leaps to believe the conspiracy theories?
Goddammit. I just want to go back to bed and hide under the covers.
“What is it in someone’s life that makes them so desperate/gullible”
Mental illness, most likely (e.g., schizoaffective disorder).
Not necessarily. Cognitive biases and fear play a large part. If the given explanation doesn’t jibe with how you already think or if it makes you uncomfortable with how you identify yourself, then conspiracy theories look far more appealing. Only you don’t think it’s a conspiracy, it’s the truth and people who aren’t you are stupidly, willingly blind.
This article by Donte Stallworth (former NFL player who was a bit of a truther at one point) laid out how this works, including in his own life, really well, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/donte-st…
Great link- thank you!
I mean, wouldn’t you rather believe that all of these tragedies were planned and manipulated by some unseen force than that they are random and sometimes inexplicable? I think it gives people a sense of security and order and logic. It helps them put random acts into a narrative that they can understand, it gives each of those actions a purpose and a meaning they don’t have otherwise, etc. For these people, the idea that the government is secretly orchestrating shootings and other tragedies in order to push an agenda is less frightening than the reality of our world.
Yeah, I guess I can see how that might be comforting to people. I don’t know. I think mostly I’m just so angry that people who have just suffered the tragic and traumatic loss of a loved one are then also being bombarded with nonsense and hatred from people who have been so spectacularly misled.
i don’t know if people get Frost totally totally wrong; what about the “And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear”? I suppose in the recollection he may pretend that it was “the one less traveled by” but I’m not sure that changes the point taught in middle school re trying to take risks and chances. In any case, I found this very comforting as a reminder that we control nothing and should just merrily get on with our lives hoping for the best.
The “perhaps” is important here, as is what comes next:
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Every time he seems to find a difference between them, he qualifies it, revises it, or reverses it. He *wants* to find them different, but ultimately he can’t. It “wanted wear” but actually it was “worn… about the same” as the other path.
absolutely! both are the less traveled since it’s a new journey for the narrator and it is in recollection that all the difference has been made because no other option really existed. either would have been the greener with the leaves still uncrushed. ultimately, every road is the road less traveled. at least that’s how i recall thinking about it when i read it last (sadly, decades ago), and it still seems to make sense to me in that way?
The commenter is NOT SURE if the child remark was a joke! NOT SURE!
Thinking about what Joe Biden has been through legit makes me want to cry on the regular. He’s had some bumps, politically and professionally, but he’s my favorite, always. (Also, Dr. Jill just ROCKS.)
She visited my school in Germany and was just so kickass at all times. Second lady in the White House, first in my heart.
i read this as “mumps, politically and professionally” and tbqh i really enjoy it as a metaphor
I once saw a man here in Austin wearing a khaki cargo kilt and it was, at once, the best and most ridiculous item of clothing I have seen. What I am trying to say is, maybe the kilt is the best way to start getting men to wear skirt like clothing.
Was gonna post the Utili-kilt, but I see someone beat me to it! My husband has seriously considered getting one of these.
Doooooo eeeeeeeeet. The haters calling it a dad garment have clearly never seen men at the punk show rocking one.
Well, maybe, but around here there’s a lot of love for Dad-stuff.
The only way I can get on board with kilts is if dudes wear underwear with them. I KNOW that’s not tradition but dudes aren’t necessarily used to being mindful of their skirts and I don’t need to see junk.
But the whole reason to wear a kilt is to free one of “the restraints of trousers”. You can read more about it here: http://www.your-kilt.com/under-kilts.html
Having said that, I agree, one should always wear underpants.
My first exposure to the leisure kilt was almost 2 decades ago, and it was worn by the 30-something year old who kept showing up at the high school parties, and I’ve distrusted them (kilts, and also men) ever since. It’s not the kilt’s fault PROBABLY but I’m going to need a lot more convincing.
this guy, right?
HA HE ABSOLUTELY OWNED A UNICYCLE. Ugh.
sad but true: 16-year-old Inkwashed had a tragic (tragic!) love affair with a Leather Golf Hat guy (who was, unsurprisingly, a complete asshole). Ugh.
oh, I still think of this article sometimes and cringe so. hard.
I would very much like to see a Venn diagram of guys who wear utili-kilts & guys who wear fedoras with an added notation about what portion of the overlap wear them at the same time
OK I guess my experience with the Utilikilt is different than most people because all the Utiliklt dudes I have known were assholes.
We went round at group recently sharing what we would do if we had total confidence, if we didn’t care what other people thought. One guy said, wear a kilt. 🙁 Wish he felt he could.
I went to grad school with a guy who routinely wore sarongs. Of course, he was totally buff and had long, luxurious hair, so I tend to think he neither attracted nor took shit about it.
Oh no, I’m afraid of change!! (rocks back and forth hugging knees)
Ha! Yes. (Well, I’m not exactly afraid of change, but…I really really really really really like a lot hate the redesigns of the Billfold/Awl/Hairpin that were, I think, ostensibly done at least in part to make them better for people using phones/tablets, and basically every website in the past year or so that has done a redesign for that reason is now a website I tend to avoid on a semi-regular basis because I really hate how it looks/acts. So I’m seriously hoping the redesign here is…not like any of those.)
Sorry but everyone who “likes” Biden, listen: he’s made more than mistakes, among other deeply fucked up things he’s largely responsible for Clarence Thomas being on the Supreme Court (have people seen “Anita” the documentary on Anita Hill? If not, do that). Biden is the apotheosis of white male affirmative action in this country: people “like” him in spite of his record, which when it’s not downright terrible, is, at best, mediocre.
I’m generally of the opinion that there is slim-to-no-one in high-level politics who “deserves” to be there in some deep moral sense (maybe John Lewis?) and there are even fewer who have some kind of clear-cut, headline-friendly legacy. Often the best we can hope for in the voting booth is somebody who demonstrates a basic sense of empathy and is willing to put in some work behind the scenes. I doubt any of Biden’s “fans” are thinking “I’ve looked over his career papers and I’ve come to the conclusion that everything he ever did is very good.”
Yes, I grew up in Delaware and Biden was the genial uncle senator who got us good infrastructure, etc. He is a flawed person, absolutely – I remember listening to the Anita Hill hearings on the radio at work when I was in my 20s. He’s also plagiarized a couple of times. He was on the wrong side of feminism with Clarence Thomas, and of course plagiarism is never okay.
But we are not always who we were at any given time. The way he handled marriage equality was perfect – he forced the issue. His statements over the last 10 years or so have been nothing but compassionate and common-sensical. I’m not making excuses for his record; I’m just saying it’s quite possible that his outlook on things has evolved beyond the self-entitled ciswhitemale that he clearly used to be.
Exactly. He also called trans rights the “civil rights issue of our time,” in recent years.
If he decides to run (why would he?) I wonder if he’ll talk about fixing bankruptcy, particularly around student debt, considering how instrumental he was to helping credit card companies at everyone else’s expense, http://www.propublica.org/article/bidens-cozy-rel…
You can disagree on Biden, of course, but others (including myself) still do like him sincerely, without quotes. The same way we love that racist old person in our lives, even when they make us terribly sad at times. Biden’s record is complicated, like any politician’s, but he’s done many things that are far better than mediocre. Please give everyone the respect of allowing that we’ve reasoned and judged for ourselves where we stand and how we feel about him, just as you have.
You know, I was a tomboy kid who would have died before I let my mom put a dress on me. And I still believe that there are big swaths of “femininity” that are mostly oppression baggage and we could rightly do away with those things. But I have come around to the idea that dresses are among the good parts. It has been approximately ninety billion degrees outside every day for the past 4 months where I live, and not once this summer have I put on pants. Everyone deserves to be as cool and free as I am. Abolish pants!
I only discovered the joy of dresses about 5 years ago (when I was 25). Mostly by discovering the bike-shorts-to-avoid-thigh-friction trick. And now I love them! They’re an entire outfit by themselves.
Always bike shorts! That way I don’t have to “sit like a lady,” for one.
It is my personal opinion that a lightly structured (or very structured) knee-length skirt is among the most universally flattering articles of clothing possible. It’s true that dresses are generally comfier than skirts, but men already know about kilts, so maybe skirts are a better way of sidling up to sartorial gender neutrality.
(abolish pants!)
I discovered skirts with POCKETS this summer, as the person who lived in my apartment before me left a ton of amazing clothing behind. They’re super simple short cotton skirts with the soft scrunchy waistband. I don’t think I’ve ever been more comfortable in summer ever before!
Yup, I’m a cis woman but I’m inclined against a lot of feminine clothing due to some swirly combination of principled opposition, internalized misogyny, and authentic aesthetic response. A few years ago I Decided to Wear Dresses on the grounds of comfort and convenience. It took a while for me to reprogram my brain to not feel intensely self-conscious about it, but eventually I pushed past that, and it’s totally worth it. Although now I am on a constant search for dresses that fit my narrow bounds of design acceptability AND have pockets. (I would love it if unisex dresses caught on because I bet that would increase the supply of dresses I like.)
Dresses on boys seems to be taking off in London at least (well they’re more like long jumpers, worn with skinny jeans or leggings and shoes with no socks). I’m vehemently against this style, nothing to do with the dresses, I just don’t understand how they can not wear socks. Yick.
I am not a fan of this ankle cleavage trend. Its disgusting and a-moral and shows just how far we have slipped, what next, bare knees?!!! These boys need Jesus. And socks.
closed-toed shoes sans socks are one of my biggest pet peeves. This is mostly because my feet get so sweaty that any closed shoes I wear without socks get quite gross, and also because I often find the inside of shoes to be quite uncomfortable without a barrier. I know they make no-show socks that some women wear with flats (I have done this myself), but I am pretty sure most of the men are just sliding their bare feet into dress shoes and even just typing that made my face scrunch up in disgust.
ew ew ew. Just imagine the smell!
Its an instant turn off for me with guys, which is stupid and weird, but I can’t help it. If only they’d wear socks!
I also suffer from finding shoes unbearable without socks. Its so sweaty and gross. Ick. ick. ick. (and no-show socks don’t work, I wear the ankle sports type all the time and you can always see them, and those shoe liner things that don’t cover the top of your foot are unbearbly uncomfortable and are always visible anyway, so whats the point? Wear your socks with pride.)
you guys are both wrong because socks are horriblehorrible things that are only bearable in the very depths of winter when your feet are too cold to notice how incredibly uncomfortable they are.
sorry to break it to you
(on the other hand, i guess maybe it’s a regional thing? i just realized yesterday that the reason my stepmom always used to nag me about wearing tights with my dresses even when I was 28 was because she was from Up North and that’s what she grew up with, but women stopped wearing hose here in Florida absolutely ages ago, and even when i was little, hardly anyone i knew wore socks unless they were wearing sneakers or dress/school shoes – most dudes wore boat shoes in the 90s, no socks needed)
Another option (which these dudes are probably not using) is these things. I have a pair and they work pretty well.
foot petals are nice. They are little cotton inserts into the shoes that make the sole softer and more cushiony and delightful, and then you take them out and launder them in the regular wash once a week or so. And then you still have no-sock happiness.
i am a fan of the no-sock look and i am glad to report there are teeny tiny socks that one can wear to maintain sock integrity and a bare ankle.
bare knees is a stretch too far, though.
The heels of those always slide down the backs of my feet when I walk, since women’s hosiery isn’t designed to accommodate a decisive stride.
i like the ones with the sticky goo in a patch on the inside back of the heel. they manage to cling on, somehow.
someone told me in a negative tone the other day that i “walked fast, for a girl” (what era do we live in again??) and i just stared blankly at them. it was really tempting to be like, WATCH ME and sprint away.
my mom was driving me to work today (ah, luxuries of living 5 minutes away and my mom wanting to borrow my car!) and we passed a group of middle school kids waiting for the bus. one of them was wearing long shorts and ankle-sneakers and a tunic under a hoodie, and also what looked like black tights? while he skateboarded and momma was so confused “what is that boy wearing??? don’t those tights make his junk uncomfortable???”
anyway your comment reminded me of that, and i had laughed and laughed. i think the kid was just wearing tall socks for a punk-goth look, tbh.
I remember when Toms were a huge thing and everyone my age had a pair. Socklets weren’t really widely distributed until the very end of the trend, so for almost 2 years we’d buy a new pair of Toms every six months and wear them until they reeked, then throw them away. It was more embarrassing to be seen with socks peeking out of your Toms than to wear flare jeans over Uggs. Teenagers are gross.
The ring of mosquito bites around their ankles ought to take care of that I’d think.
My hatred for conspiracy theorists & their theories is VAST & CRUSHING. My mental power point presentation with which to CRUSH them is always up-to-date and ready to be UNROLLED onto their (*$^*_(&@$%^& Fearpinions.
There is an article out in Investors Business Daily that allegedly provides a “nuanced view” of 9/11 truthers. I say “allegedly” because I got through about 3 paragraphs in and had to x out for my mental health.
Seeing who is doing the redesign has made me SO SO SO EXCITED OMG. That is all.
Right!??? KAREN MCGRANE and ETHAN MARCOTTE!! I need to go back up and actually read the links now, but they are two GIANTS and my biggest heroes (especially Karen McGrane, tbh, but I work with content strategy a lot so.) Clearly I had to break my lurker status to come down and celebrate.
“The point of life is that time goes on”
wait, there’s a point to life??
Also “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”. It was about having no Christmas presents for his kids. (At work, on my phone, later I’ll try to find some evidence other than my professor’s notes from a lecture years ago ).
Once, my best friend and my-now-fiancé-but-then-our-other-friend were talking about that poem, and my best friend said when she was a kid, it reminded her of Santa Claus. My now-fiancé said it had always sounded to him like someone contemplating suicide.
So now the three of us have occasionally referred to it as “you know, that poem about Santa killing himself.”
This is not an accepted reading of the text in academic circles, I suspect.
Here it is!! http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/fr…
The review by Karen L. Kilcup is that one that talks about his being broke at Christmas. But hey, there are suicidal, dark, death themes in these reviews, too. So it IS about suicidal Santa!
You know, if nothing else, you’d think false flag conspiracy theorists would be swayed by the fact that even the most tentative attempts to curtail their access to guns have FAILED UTTERLY.
Ha. Access to precious precious guns is constantly under shadowy, ill-defined threat. If there are any Democrats in elected office, then that’s your threat right there. (Democrats, in NRA-land, are way better at politics in general and gun control in particular than they are in real life.)
My dad’s a life member of the NRA; once I picked up an NRA newsletter he had lying around, in which Obama’s failure to and/or lack of interest in taking away their guns was IPSO FACTO PROOF that he INTENDED to do so in his second term. That devious rascal…!
Oh, and l’shanah tovah to my fellow Toasties celebrating Rosh Hashanah! May your new year be sweet and joyful!!!
shanah tovah umetukah!
A few weeks into my new library job and I just experienced my first instance of “crying because someone was rude” (he phoned up, I tried to answer his question but wasn’t sure and may have said the wrong thing; when I apologised for making an error, he called me a liar). I ended up in tears, with a colleague having to take the phone off me to end the call, and was sent off to have a cup of tea and calm down. Which I failed to do, because once I get upset and start crying I find it really hard to stop, and ended up crying again when my boss tried to talk to me about it after lunch. I just feel really unprofessional and embarrassed; I don’t want my co-workers to see me as someone who just cries uncontrollably.
Work-crying is one of the worst things. I have so been there – for many reasons, from PMS-style emotional destruction, to pure panic attacks, to stressful performance reviews (nothing like crying while you’re trying to get a raise), to bipolar-fueled rage tears, and the worst of all: because someone was an asshole. Of all the bad things, having someone be mean or rude and not being able to do anything about it but take the abuse is one of the worst experiences.
What I’m saying is: that is shit. It is shit and I’m sorry you had to go through that. 🙁 It is unfortunately a thing that happens, and good employers and bosses will be okay about it. It’s still hard. Much love!
Oh also, a suggestion for calming down and destressing – check YouTube for the “Fuck That Relaxation” video. It’s all audio, it’s only like 3 minutes, and it’s audio is NSFW (just swears), but holy crap. It’s amazingly soothing.
Oh gosh. I have this a bit too — if I’m hurt and on the verge of crying, someone being kind to me about whatever just happened will 100% send me over the edge into actual crying (because? I am moved that they are being kind? not sure why, but it does work that way 100% of the time). I also sometimes have tears run down my face uncontrollably when I am otherwise keeping it together, in control of my voice, etc. It’s physiological — it’s just how my body responds to certain kinds of mental and physical pain.
If that’s the case for you too, it might help to just say explicitly to the boss (or whoever) that it’s physiological — an involuntary bodily response — but that you are completely fine and you are not prevented from doing your job while it happens. I’ve done that and people do understand usually.
In any case, I am sure it is just a small moment, a single tale, in what will be a much longer successful library career!
Oh man, we have ALL been there trust me! I hope things get better for you at your new job!
That essay on the subtext behind the phrase “Big Pharma” and privilege is amazing.
yeah, i initially read it when it was posted yesterday in a queer mental health facebook group i am in, and so many of us were just like ya know capitalism sucks, being coerced in to meds that actually don’t help you or make you feel worse is evil, none of us can afford our meds, and the current health care system needs to be completely destroyed and re-built. But also we need our meds to function as humans in the world in a really basic way. I could not have a job or leave my room (or shower regularly, or feed myself appropriately, or pick the trash up off my floor, or wash my clothes, or get dressed, and so on) without abilify and the other psych meds I take.
Yeah. My issues are comparatively mild (ADHD, sometimes depression) but my life has been improved 100% by drugs. I am as thankful for adderall as I am for glasses.
I loved all of that article. My favorite (“favorite”) line is “western medicine treats the symptoms, not the cause”. Like, thanks for telling me I’m not actually helping to control my disease. It’s especially annoying bc I have ALOT of hippie tendencies. I’m already taking herbs and stuff, I just also trust my doctor!
And really, treating the symptoms is a good start. I can work on underlying emotional issues once I’ve gotten up the energy to get out of bed.
I’m both grateful to have my meds and unhappy with the problems in the system that have made them available to me. It’s not an either/or.
I can’t wait to see the redesign! The Toast is of course a beautiful and perfect gem but I also loooooove UX and all that good stuff so I am always down for improvements!!
Toasties, talk to me of Robert Frost. Because my hackles come up when I hear anything that resembles “THIS is what this poem means and look at all the silly pleebs who get it wrong.”
The claim seems to go like this: The poem alternately describes the two paths as A) different, and B) the same. People who interpret the poem “wrong” see the roads as being ultimately, importantly, different. People who interpret the poem “right” see the roads as being ultimately the same, and the claims of difference are just the narrator (and the silly other readers) deceiving themselves. And the people in the latter group tend to say that because the B descriptions exist then the A descriptions must be false.
But I don’t feel like the existence of contradiction *proves* the second claim. I think the first claim could be the true one, and the second claim the doubt and second-guessing. I can see the poem ALSO being about how making a small decision between two things that look mostly the same can also be a decision that makes “all the difference” ages and ages hence?
The article says, “Certainly it’s wrong to say that “The Road Not Taken” is a straightforward and sentimental celebration of individualism: this interpretation is contradicted by the poem’s own lines. Yet it’s also not quite right to say that the poem is merely a knowing literary joke disguised as shopworn magazine verse that has somehow managed to fool millions of readers for a hundred years.”
I feel like there are ways to interpret the poem in a way that sees the choice of road as being meaningful that AREN’T reading the poem as “straightforward and sentimental.”
But… I can feel myself acting defensively, which means I might be rationalizing because I want to disagree.
I am in a similar position! First of all, there is little that annoys me more than being in the middle of a nice calm discussion about a poem and having someone smugly interject, “Most people don’t know what that poem is REALLY about,” like, thanks, asshole, I’m glad to know you have a direct line to Robert Frost’s brain and can tell me exactly what he thought he meant while he was writing. Secondly, I think that it is very rarely productive to entirely discard your first reading of a poem. In my experience, your reading gets deeper and richer when you put your kneejerk reaction into dialogue with a longer, more considered reaction and understand how the two reactions work together to generate poetic meaning. When you smugly congratulate yourself for seeing through the “trick” of the first reading, you’re usually doing a glib and superficial reading.
Thanks for articulating that, because I often feel like the first gut reaction I have when I read a poem is the most striking, and every subsequent reread is less emotionally effective, even if I understand the nuances more (unless there’s a huge bomb I missed the first time – like Mark Twain’s “Warm Summer Sun”; that is definitely a poem to be read twice). So in discussions of what poetry “really” means, I find myself generally agreeing with the “real” interpretation as an afterthought just because that’s what I’ve been told (I don’t do poetry a lot, haha) but the emotions and impression from the first reading linger, even when they’re supposedly “wrong”.. and that seems important.
Yeah, the article is pretty annoying. My understanding of the poem was pretty close to yours.
Also, his choices of what other poets he thought might be popular seem odd. I’d have expected “In Flanders Fields” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee” to be much better candidates than any of the poems he looked at. That’s probably because I’m Canadian and have never taken a college poetry course, but I’d still think that there would be better American candidates. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the point of the comparison, because he does mention it’s to “modernist” poems specifically, and I don’t actually know what makes a poem “modernist.”
I’ve tried quoting “The Cremation of Sam McGee” to people and met with totally blank stares in situations where “The Road Less Traveled” would have been immediately recognized. “In Flanders Fields” isn’t all that commonly read in America, either, since WWI is a much less significant part of the USA’s cultural memory than it is to Europe and the Commonwealth–November 11 is celebrated as generic Veterans’ Day, not Armistice Day, and we don’t do the red poppies thing. I think the comparison to other modernist poetry is simply meant to show how Frost did compared to other poets publishing in similar venues around the same time as he was.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned that I’m Canadian, because I know those are both Canadian poems that might not be common in the US. But surely they must have some other poems that are more recognizable than the ones this guy picked.
Choosing poets for comparison based on the time and venues where they were published really weakens the point, I think. For example, if we made a similar comparison with Shakespeare, we could certainly find that he’s much more popular than other poets who were publishing in similar venues at around the same time, but that wouldn’t really tell us anything about how popular his work is now. If we want to know that, we need to compare to other poets whose work is popular now, such as Robert Frost.
If the question is “what other American poems might be as famous as Frost’s poems,” I’m hard-pressed to think of any. “Prufrock” is like…text number one in a lot of American high school lit courses; “This Is Just to Say” is endlessly quoted and endlessly spoofed. Dr. Seuss sells more books (I’m assuming) but he was really working in a different medium. Emily Dickinson is probably more famous as a name than Eliot and Williams, but she doesn’t have one greatest-hit poem. The two most popular American poets working now have to be Mary Oliver and Billy Collins, and Oliver’s line “What do you plan to do, tell me, with your one wild and precious life?” gets quoted and played with reasonably often, but it has a loooong way to go to match “I took the one less traveled by” for sheer cultural saturation. For me, the persuasive part of that analysis in the article is the comparison to The Great Gatsby and Psycho and “Like a Rolling Stone.” Basically, Frost is so much more popular than almost everybody you might compare him to that all comparisons seem uneven.
Fair enough! The second comparison seemed much more convincing to me, too.
Whitman? Song of Myself? O Captain! My Captain! ?
Dickenson – I’m sure most are familiar with Because I could not stop for Death or Hope is the thing with feathers ?
Please? I want these things to be true, so much.
Maybe! I don’t really know. I didn’t read Whitman in school, myself, for whatever reason. I think my teachers just weren’t particular fans of his. I went to the same college as Emily Dickinson so I feel ill-equipped to evaluate her popularity–I may have heard professors tell us to “dwell in possibility” every year at convocation, but I assume others did not. But yeah, those are probably America’s Greatest 19th-Century Hits.
Elizabeth Bishop, especially “One Art,” deserves to be added to the twentieth-century list, if this is a list.
Every time I read “In Flanders Fields” it is like a punch in the gut. I love that poem.
I see a certain class bias in the claim that “most people misinterpret the poem,” on two grounds. One is just what you point out, the essayist’s claim to know better based on…what exactly? Apparently, some combination of natural superiority and greater facility with literary language–i.e., class attributes, and not novel insight. The other reason is that the supposedly ‘naive’ reading involves the assumption that poems are vessels for spiritual values, which in my experience is something that people less acculturated to UMC concepts of culture tend to believe–i.e., predominantly working-class people.
NB–I know nothing about the essayist’s own class. I just think the reading is mechanical, and insofar as it mandates that people be trained to read poetry ‘properly,’ kinda authoritarian.
‘natural superiority’ ought to include scare quotes
I, too, wasn’t entirely convinced that the poem was about people making too much of their own choices. Sure, maybe the paths looked very similar from the vantage point of the fork, but that doesn’t mean that they *didn’t* lead to wildly different places. The poem itself is very clear that the poet can’t see very far down the paths.
And my hackles get up every time someone dismisses a poem/book/work of fiction as “sentimental,” as if sentimentality is automatically a negative quality and not worth serious consideration or academic discussion.
I think that once you read the poem as undercutting the “less traveled” claim–once you see and think about how both roads are “really about the same”–it’s hard to go back to reading it as an anthem to individual choice. Whether it actually disproves that reading is hard to say without defining terms (what do we take to be a correct reading of a poem?). I think a lot of people do take it to disprove that first meaning, hence the “Booyah, I have it right and you have it wrong!” crowd. But Orr wants to argue for a way to understand the poem without falling into one of those two camps, because the thing the poem initially appears to be saying–the popular interpretation used in ads and such–can’t just be discarded as if it weren’t part of the poem. I think that’s the point of the quote from Richard Poirier: “there is no point trying to explain the popularity away, as if it were a misconception prompted by a pose.”
Still, all of that is essentially intro matter. The excerpt posted at Paris Review Daily doesn’t really get to Orr’s own reading of the poem, and I suspect you’d have to read his book for that.
I hope your shipping linguist appreciates the beauty of Tibette. It truly is the shipping name to rule them all.
Is anyone else watching Bernie Sanders talk at Liberty University? It is fascinating.
WAIT. He’s talking at LIBERTY?????
Yeah, he finished up an hour or so ago. It was really, really interesting to hear the interactions. He got a fair number of cheers, not many/any negative responses that I heard. Mostly centered around–hey, we’re at odds on a lot of things but that doesn’t mean we can’t have civil discourse about them, and my economic priorities are pretty darn in-line with the moral imperative of Christianity but maybe you haven’t really thought of it this way so here are some examples. It was great. And he specifically said, you know, it’s great to talk to people who already agree with you on everything, but I know we’re on opposite sides and it’s really important for me to talk to you and hear what you have to say.
Here’s a recap from CNN.
Thanks for that! I’m just amazed that they arranged to have him speak there- that would NEVER have happened during Jerry Falwell’s lifetime.
No, probably not. My uncle got his master’s at Liberty earlier this year, and it is UNREAL how much they are able to revolve around a very very specific worldview.
Highlights: During the Q&A, Sanders started really talking about wealth distribution and how illogical and immoral it really is to protect the wealthiest and most powerful among us while leaving the weakest and most vulnerable without any help, and of course dude is like, BUT ABORTION, and Bernie comes back with a solid: look, if I understand your positions on things correctly, you’re really into the idea that The Government shouldn’t be able to tell you what to do, so why are you trying to make a blanket statement about what every woman should do in every situation? And if we really want to lower abortion rates, it might help JUST MAYBE if we could, as a society, assure every woman that she’s got the support of her society to take time away from work and the assurance that she and her kid won’t starve or end up on the street, so there’s your Christian messaging, folks, and it was SPECTACULAR.
Ah! Here’s that part.
I do not like Liberty. I do not like Bernie. I’m afraid that watching would just make my head explode.
Can I ask what your thoughts are about Bernie? I saw in another thread that you’re in Vermont. Everyone I know who has a problem with him is like “he’s cool but I don’t understand his campaign.” I’m always curious to hear what locals have to say about their representatives though.
Some of my thoughts about him are, for better or worse, personal. The few times I’ve met/seen/interacted with him he did not exactly inspire confidence. (I don’t know, maybe he’s better when there are people grooming him and his responses beforehand. Literally grooming. Two out of three times his fly was undone.)
I live in Vermont and not in a ‘cool’ part. The Bernie stickers are concentrated in places with money. Burlington, Montpelier, Stowe, Warren. And there’s a reason for that. The state is constantly latching onto Sandersesque schemes and policies and it is getting more and more difficult to live here as just a baseline human being with constant taxes and restrictions, crumbling infrastructure and inefficient systems. And the grand ideas never really come into fruition or achieve anything. Watching the way that this state is run and operated and what a struggle living is makes it difficult for me to endorse anyone associated with the running of it. Even if my socially liberal (the rest is almost aggressively moderate) heart agrees with many things, I simply personally have no faith in him whatsoever as a politician, the same as many of the lower socioeconomic masses here apparently.
So some of it may be my issues with the state transferring to him. But I think what kinds of Vermonters seem to support him is telling. Money talks.
And that’s all I’ll say. Now please don’t ask me about religion or the Great Pumpkin.
That’s fascinating, thanks for the thoughtful response. It’s amazing how hard it is to get a really good understanding about a politician who isn’t local to you– I remember friends in Cleveland rolling their eyes forever over Kucinich.
And I will mention that I spent a little time in Vermont a few years ago and I got a whole boatload of smug from a handful of people– not everyone by any means! I also met a lot of wonderful people!– who assumed that a hick like me must be in culture shock to visit such an enlightened utopia. Well of course you love it here if you’re one of the rich kids!
Yeah. I moved back up here after spending a lot of time in Texas and Oklahoma in the Air Force and I was unprepared for it after being away for so long. There are certain enclaves of Vermont that can do smug like no other. I sometimes think the fog of pretension floating over Burlington must be visible from the other side of Lake Champlain.
whaaaat LIBERTY university??? the super conservative religious school? Bernie Sanders is there?!?!?
The very one. With emphasis on reaching out to populations who expressly do not share opinions.
OH MAN i just read the recap you posted above, and it is so wonderful!
I’ve been secretly a little nervous because the Bernie Sanders support from young people reminds me a lot of the Ron Paul thing back in 2008, and that was kind of wrong-headed (it was based mostly on his anti-war and pro-pot platforms, iirc?), but this kind of thing from Bernie, and the way he listened to BlackLivesMatter (albeit belatedly and not necessarily in the best, most visible way) is very promising.
The one where Ted Cruz launched his campaign, no less!
It’s like the greatest troll except it’s completely sincere and I can’t help but love the man.
I wish all the local volunteer efforts/meetings for his campaign didn’t always occur when I’m at work 🙁
Some day, the Men will realize how insanely easy dresses are to wear (it is one article of clothing! often without zippers or buttons or fasteners of any kind!) and how nice it is in the summer to be able to wave your skirt and get some air circulating around your bits.
Like the old wizard at the Quidditch World Cup in the beginning of Goblet of Fire who said he was wearing a nightdress because he liked a bit of a breeze round his privates!
A kilt is not a dress, but I do own more kilts than sportcoats, blazers, and suits put together.
But the thigh chafing! (Wearing shorts underneath is hot and uncomfortable, and tights slip down and still allow some chafing to occur.)
Yes, this is why I often just wear pants instead (I really wish they would make proper women’s-cut boxer briefs, ones that came down as far as men’s do but without the extra room for external genitalia).
BUT I will say that Bandelettes work as advertised, and come in both the lacy and non-lacy variety. They don’t have the heat retention problem of shorts or tights, but do prevent you from rubbing your thighs raw.
The trick with tights (one that works for me, anyway) is: buy them one size bigger than you think you need, and wear a second pair of underpants (preferably something reasonably sturdy, like boxer briefs) over them to stop them from sagging.
Can someone for real explain to me what and how and why with conspiracy theories/theorists? Like I truly can not comprehend what is going on there. Especially when the conspiracy theory doesn’t have anything to do with wacky aliens and is actively emotionally cruel or harmful to real human beings.
I don’t remember where I read this theory (tumblr maybe?) but I’ve thought it interesting. Basically, it posited that conspiracy theorists, who are usually old white men, don’t actually experience material or ideological oppression but still (want to) feel like they’re victims of something, so they invent these wild theories about some shadow corporation/religion/whatever the NWO even is, in order to satisfy this need to feel like they’re victims. Basically they don’t believe that racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. are real influences on our culture and world, so they come up with these wacked out theories instead. Whereas people who actually experience oppression don’t need to make up theories about some global cabal of bad guys controlling everything because they’re already experiencing it from the state, society, etc. Gah, I wish I remembered better, it was suuuper interesting.
a little late, but also, many of those old white guys (and some old white women) would really love a repressive society, as long it was the other way around–where they kept their guns and did whatever they wanted to do with minimal to no consequences. So they do fear what would happen if their conspiracy theories were true, because it is what they would like to do to other people.
Very similar to the idea that homophobia is the fear that other men would treat them the way they treat women.
Ooh, that is a very interesting theory!! I work in news & journalism, so I get being skeptical and keeping an open mind to a certain extent, but….come on. I actually have a friend who went to journalism school with me, worked at the same station as I did, and who has the same exact news job as I do (which requires cutting through a lot of bullshit,) and she still believes in chemtrails….
Toasties, I gotta tell you guys something awesome.
Last week I went to the doctor and put in place a Plan for changing my head-meds so that the Fellow and I can try and have a baby next year.
I am a little nervous about the mechanics (well not of the trying part, heh) and jumping into what may be a long and convoluted process but mostly I am really excited.
I am grinning like a loon over hear and thinking all sorts of good thoughts for you.
Wishing you all the best!
Toasties, I was dealing with the news from the fire zone pretty well until I started seeing horses in the back of pickup trucks and calves sitting with children in busted up Broncos. Those people had no time to work out any better way to evacuate, and their homes are likely gone now. It’s really hitting me in the heart right now.
Wait, which fire zone this time? 🙁
oh dear, wild guess, but are you in Amador or Lake county? It’s so awful.
My friends in Ukiah (Mendocino) and Nice (Lake County) have been updating Twitter like crazy to help people find places to sleep, food, showers, housing for animals. And some of the churches that opened to take donations are turning people away because stuff came in such great volume they can’t sort it fast enough. It is AWFUL out there, and around the Butte disaster as well, but you can sure see people’s best work on display in terms of how they’re reacting. Fingers crossed for a little got-damned rain, though.
FYI, in response to me retweeting this photo a friend of mine wrote: “maybe he just wanted his truck to have more horsepower.” I sent him a link to Dad Magazine.
I recently saw someone try and argue that someone should consider holistic health options and organic foods instead of gender reassignment surgery. So, yeah.
While it’s awfully unhelpful to someone contemplating that in the reality where most of us live, I have to admit I love this idea and want to start foisting it off on everyone I know regardless of the issue at hand. “Oh, your Chromebook won’t allow you to Skype? Have you tried chia seeds? Leg caught in a wheat thresher? Don’t settle for just any broccoli and apple salad, you need to hold out for certified organic!”
I have been given like ten quarts of Concord grapes. Anybody have any ideas for what to do with them other than jam/jelly?
Pie? I had some unexpectedly good grape pie at a farmer’s market once.
I’ve never had grape pie, but I have a friend who swears by it. It is on my culinary must-try list.
Yes to grape pie! It’s a pain in the butt because you have to cook the grapes, then remove the seeds, but it freezes really well so making a few of them and having them later is sheer bliss.
Innnteresting.
I like roasting chicken with grapes and a mustard sauce. They end up tasting like tomatoes. Also grape chutney might be nice or you can pickle the grapes and put them in chicken salad. Unfortunately each of these recipes only use about a cup. Food52 has a recipe for a Concord grape and lemon soda which uses up a pound of grapes for six drinks so maybe the best idea is to invite some friends or neighbors over and toast to the end of summer then send them home with their own goody bag of grapes and spread the grape joy around!
PICKLING. Of course. All these ideas sound great.
Crush them and add them to liquid for poached (or bottled) pears. They look so pretty and the flavors really go well together.
Bon Appetit just did a recipe roundup for Concord grapes! http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/grape…
Perfect! Thank you!
I would never even get to the jam/jelly stage because all those grapes would disappear right into my gaping maw. I love Concord grapes and they’re only in stores/the farmers’ market like 2 weeks a year.
Yes. Throw them straight into your face hole.
Grape focaccia!! http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/grape-focaccia
I made this last year with muscadine grapes and it was to die for. I had never made bread before, but it was really easy. Spread some goat cheese on it and you will be happy forever.
ACTUAL MATRIARCHY! http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/…
I hope men can soon embrace dresses on a wider level.
The thing that makes me sad is that even if/when they do, it will still be no more acceptable for me to go without shaving my legs in a dress, both by society’s standards and my own anxieties. Boo.
Also, I have only ever heard the phrases associated with the Frost poem, I’ve never read it until today. Huh.
men should shave their legs anyway, it should be universal, but i mostly say that because they deserve to be judged for it, too.
also they should start wearing shoes with taller heels (at least 1inch!) so that their calves look their best when wearing knee-length skirts, so to not offend everyone else.
Haha! Yes. I agree.
I am also VERY EXCITED about the redesign prospect! And wow, early October is not far away at all! Man, the inexorable passage of time strikes again.
I am excited about the redesign! And tote bags by cool artists. When shall there be a Book of The Toast so that my bookshelf may at last know true glory?
On a completely unrelated noted, I am trying to find an Ortberg or Ortberg-esque post from here or the Hairpin that was making fun of guys who think they’re super eclectic or edgy and “prove” this by listing their completely run of the mill musical or book faves. I feel like it may have specifically been making fun of the way this pops up in online dating profiles. Of course I could be conflating a few different articles, but if this rings a bell for someone, I can’t seem to find it with Google searching or slogging through the archives and would love some help.
Was this (one of) the one(s) you were thinking of? http://the-toast.net/2015/05/12/books-that-litera…
Possibly, if I’m conflating stuff. I thought there was an author voice in the post kind of exaggerating and mocking the “I’m so eclectic” thing, but I might have made that up.
I’m pretty sure if it were socially acceptable for men to wear dresses they would all the time because DAMN dresses are easy.
I can’t wait for the redesign!! I have an iPhone and the boyfriend has a Mac desktop and both tend to flail and/or crash when I’m reading The Toast. I’ll finally be able to use my intense debate account! Yay!!
Oh, Nicole’s thoughts on Joe Biden are pretty much exactly my own. He has made decisions in the past that I certainly don’t agree with, and politically I’m probably more aligned with Bernie Sanders, but he seems to actually evolve on a lot of issues, which is not a given among politicians. God knows (pun sort of intended) I have a complicated relationship with my Catholicism, but Biden always reminds me of the good parts–he’s got that quintessential working class Catholic thing going on, which I’m a sucker for. Also he is responsible for two of my favorite debate moments: a) Malarkey! and b) the best Giuliani slam ever, “there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence, a noun, a verb, and 9/11.” Also that gif of him doing that sort of wink/sort of finger guns at the State of the Union, which is a national treasure.
I completely agree about Biden and his Catholic roots, and that interview pushed it up another notch because Colbert is also the sort of public figure who reminds me of the good parts of Catholicism. Watching that interview made me like Biden, Colbert, and Catholicism in general more.
I hope your shipping linguistics writer doesn’t overlook the phenomenon’s roots in early 2000’s pop RPF fic.
One word: Trickyfish.
I haven't heard of that! Thank you- I do like CBT (also a fan of DBT, which I think my therapist used a bit of as well) but often need to be reminded to actually use the techniques. I will check that out!
Thanks! I'm not at a point yet where I'd feel comfortable taking anything, but I definitely want to keep information about different potential medications in my mind for the future, because I know the sheer variety of them can be overwhelming.
I hear ya re: taking brain candy. I was prescribed three different types of psychotropic drugs over the course of a decade and was never comfortable taking ANY of them (the longest trial I ever lasted was a month, tops). Wishing you a safe and healthy journey!Sent from my iPad
This is my experience, too. I don't know how to undo this cultural and internal misogyny that tell me pants are neutral and skirts are not, but I'm also not willing to wear stuff that makes me feel dysphoric.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently. My mom is a linguist who studied anthropology and translation issues, and she told me almost every culture has a marked gender and an unmarked gender. For example, xkcd has a boy stick figure who is blank, and a girl stick figure with hair. Or if you see two cartoon animals, the one with eyelashes drawn on is the girl: marked and unmarked. But in some cultures if you draw a blank stick figure, people think it's a female, and if you want it to be male, you have to add a little line in between the legs for a penis.
Apparently there's tons of other language examples of these marked/unmarked pairs that have nothing to do with gender (i.e. we say 'honest' and 'dishonest' but we don't say 'liar' and 'nonliar') So basically the urge to have a default and a modifier is a universal subconscious desire. I'm not sure what I think about that in regards to gender politics. Personally, I wear really short hair and lipstick. I mostly wear lipstick because I'm a really tiny woman and otherwise I look like I'm eleven years old. I like to gender-mark myself as a way to adult-mark myself.
Late to comment, but seeing a therapist for the first time Monday for this exact reason. I've spent too much of the last couple of years thinking things like "as soon as I get past this particular period of ridiculous stress and/or grief causing shit, it will be fine" and inevitably something new happens, cause it's life we're living and that's just how it works. Time to learn how to deal with it in the present.
You don’t get to criticize “Big Pharma” unless you have to negotiate your existence with them.
This is so exciting. I mean, I'm terrified – what if your baby doesn't think I'm the coolest friend-aunt!? – but also SO EXCITED FOR YOU TWO. You're going to be great.
Exactly! Congrats on picking a therapist! Going when I was back in undergrad was probably the best decision I've made.