Sansa has now finished getting all her puppy shots and has a jingly red rabies tag. In two more weeks, her parvo will be all kicked in and we can finally take her out to mingle at the park.
Great work by Gina Mei:
We were both volunteering at a high school luncheon for the Chinese Parents’ Association, and a few people turned to look and listen. I was wearing my favorite cheongsam: a sheer black dress covered in colorful embroidery layered over a simple black slip. Normally, the garment made me feel powerful, but suddenly, I felt self-conscious.
The girl continued to berate me, asking why I would lie about my ethnicity when I was so obviously Latina. I tried to explain that, contrary to her opinion, I was half Chinese and half mostly Italian.
“Well, either you’re adopted or someone’s been lying to you, because you’re definitely not Chinese,” she said.
I haven’t worn a cheongsam since.
So glad people are talking about what’s wrong with how Reconstruction frequently gets framed:
Clinton, whether she knows it or not, is retelling a racist—though popular—version of American history which held sway in this country until relatively recently. Sometimes going under the handle of “The Dunning School,” and other times going under the “Lost Cause” label, the basic idea is that Reconstruction was a mistake brought about by vengeful Northern radicals. The result was a savage and corrupt government which in turn left former Confederates, as Clinton puts, it “discouraged and defiant.”
The Conversation I’m Tired Of Not Having:
I want to tell you a secret: America really doesn’t care what happens to poor people and most black people. There I said it.
In my position as a Teacher of the Year and a teacher leader (an ambiguous term at best), I am supposed to be a voice and hold positions on a host of ed policy issues: teaching evaluations, charter schools, test refusal, and (fights over) Common Core come to mind. I am so sick of reading about McCleary (Washington’s ongoing intragovernmental battle for equitable funding for K-12) I don’t know what to do with myself. But, increasingly I find myself tuning out of these conversations. As a nation, we’re nibbling around the edges with accountability measures and other reforms, but we’re ignoring the immutable core issue: much of white and wealthy America is perfectly happy with segregated schools and inequity in funding. We have the schools we have, because people who can afford better get better. And sadly, people who can’t afford better just get less–less experienced teachers, inadequate funding and inferior facilities.
Women and weightlifting (so much cool history here, but also the author talks about her anorexia, which may not be your bag today):
In this regard, little has changed in the past century. Toned yet tiny fitness models like Jen Selter and Kayla Itsines are considered athletic and beautiful, while larger—and stronger—professional athletes like Serena Williams and Karyn Marshall, a prominent figure in female lifting in the US, are mocked for looking masculine. In a recent phone conversation, Marshall recalled being asked to appear on a news show at the peak of her fame in the 1980s. The host asked her to rebut the claim, made by a representative of the Ford Modeling Agency, that women who lift weights don’t look good and shouldn’t model. “To have society come down on you and say, ‘you’re too big, you’re too muscular, you’re not feminine,’ is not something you want to hear,” Marshall said, “especially when you’re an athlete. If I’d been a man, I would’ve been praised.”
Mallory got the world’s most difficult question:
Q. Smelly situation: I have a friend (20-plus years) who smells. It is a sickening smell, and I believe that it emits from her ladybits. Whenever I have tried to broach the subject, she gets defensive and won’t speak to me for weeks. Is there another way to help without her taking any more offense?
So, were I a professional advice-giver, which I am not, I would have the two following suggestions:
- Move to a new country and spend over twenty years making a new friend.
- This is basically never the right thing to do, but a very kind, firm anonymous note with some links to WebMD pages and a suggestion to talk to her OB.
- But she’ll probably still know it was you, because you’ve TRIED to talk to her about it already.
- For the love of Pete, if someone tells you that you smell, you DEFINITELY smell, because no one want to tell you that you smell, so please fix it (unless you have a terrible medical thing and you cannot fix it, in which case, email me so I can send you a present.)
The Awl ran a cool take on the Per Se kerfuffle (also, please read all of Ruth Reichl’s books):
But this is all a relatively strange and ahistorical reading of Wells’ reviews, even if he is the most exceptional Times critic—and one of the greatest food writers—in a generation. While a good critic does far more than merely say whether a restaurant is good or bad—there’s always Yelp or Foursquare if that’s all you want and you have a deep and abiding faith in the taste of your fellow man—considering the value of a restaurant relative to its cost is core to the entire proposition of a food critic as a service journalist, especially at a large daily or weekly paper, where their chief task is to answer the question, “Is this restaurant worth your paycheck?” Wells’ review of a restaurant that exists far outside the daily realm of possibility for most New Yorkers is also far from unusual; if anything, such restaurants were more or less the primary domain of the Times’ chief critics until the arrival of Ruth Reichl in 1993, when she began “giving SoHo noodle shops 2 and 3 stars,” which, according to her predecessor Bryan Miller, “DESTROYED THE SYSTEM.”
I am uncomfortable with the fascination I feel for deconstructions of plane crashes and various other disasters, and it’s unlikely I can chalk it up to anything other than my innate ghoulishness, but I read the New York Times Magazine investigation of the recent Amtrak derailment very very avidly:
At around 9:16 p.m., the train crossed the intersection at North 22nd Street. In Reyburn Park, the fluorescent lights gleamed. The skies above were clear, with the temperature hovering at 82 degrees. A westerly wind gusted gently at 20 m.p.h., flattening the trackside weeds. Bostian was less than a mile from North Philadelphia Station, where 188 did not stop, and roughly three miles and three minutes from Frankford Junction, one of the sharpest curves on the Northeast Corridor. The last thing Bostian says he remembers, according to his lawyer, was ringing the in-cab bell as he passed the station house, headed toward the junction.
I am seeing Hamilton in 5 hours and I’m ridiculously excited!!!!!!! Will report back. Thanks Toasties for all the advice on what to see in NYC, I’m having a great time.
I am very, very excited on your behalf, and also extraordinarily jealous. Enjoy every second!
Have the best time!!!!!!!
I’m going next Wednesday! I’m so excited to wear a pretty dress to a matinee and try not to sing along with “Aaron Burr, Sir.”
I saw it last night and I’m having a lot of trouble thinking about anything else. Feeling like there should be a secret Toast chat room where we can go afterward to process it.
[Actually, if you have any interest in having a drink after, I work in the neighborhood…]
Yoooo me too and I saw it last week. I have Thoughts.
I am too! It is now T-minus three and a half hours!
(Also why is there not a secret Toast handshake so we can identify each other when we are out and about?)
Maybe we all need really lovely Toast jewelry? Pins, rings, pendants, something like that. Or just pin an actual piece of toast to your garment, and leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs that other Toasties can follow to locate you.
I wanted to reply before the show and let you know where I was sitting, but the WiFi cut out. I hope you had a fabulous time! My husband and I loved it.
It was AMAZING and I loved it so, so much. Glad you had a great time too!
I’m seeing it Saturday at 2, and Clevermanka’s gif pretty much sums me up this week.
YOU POSTED FOUR HOURS AGO SO YOU ARE PROBABLY THERE ALREADY AND I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU!
I just got the news that Hamilton is coming to SF and tickets are available for pre-purchase, but you don’t get to choose your seat (just the section) 🙁 I am debating buying a few anyway because NEED.
Do it!
Yaaaayyy! I saw the matinee yesterday!
God, I love Mallory’s take on Dear Prudence. Although this week was a WHIRLWIND. Whew. Abusive parents, repulsive smelling friend, sister who used a siblings death to raise money for crisis pregnancy centres, man-child who won’t grow up, nosy person who thinks a widow and her son are too close. Life is truly a rich tapestry.
But if someone tells you that you smell, you smell.
I love how firm she was about CPCs, especially in the second reply. Those places are outright evil.
Agreed. I loved that it was unequivocal. Not that I would expect less of Mallory, but so often people in the public eye are so reluctant to offend anyone that they soften the message.
ETA: Not usually people on the ultra-conservative pro-life side, of course — they never shy away from stating completely ridiculous, often untrue, just as often hurtful, things. But I so tire of people on the pro-choice side (or pro social services or what-have-you) being afraid to really state the truth.
See also: if you insist you don’t smell, you probably do.
Possible exception: siblings. (Telling you you smell when you don’t in order to hurt you.)
Another possible exception: mean kids in school.
There are adult versions of these people.
The way people who were cruel, selfish children grow up into cruel, selfish adults, who are SO GOOD at plausible deniability and framing the rotten things they say as “concern for youuuuuuuuuuuu”* has been hitting me like an avalanche all winter.
For a culture-wide version of this, see Orwell in “The Road to Wigan Pier” about how he was brought up to believe that “the lower classes smell.” If you can’t afford to ruin someone’s life by suing hir, telling hir zie smells is a great way to make her feel terrible (whether she smells or not) and if you think there aren’t awful people who take advantage of this you’re naive.
*Sorry to keep harping on this, but consider that bit in the BBC “And Then There Were None” where Miss Brent tells Mrs Rogers to put on cologne because she smells BECAUSE SHE’S BEEN WORKING IN A BLOODY KITCHEN COOKING DINNER FOR YOUR UNGRATEFUL FACE, MISS BRENT.
Thank you for this. Smell is complicated! And also it is quite easy actually for people to tell you that you smell. When I studied scientific racism I found that a lot of these philosophically minded european and usian scientists were writing quite matter-of- factly indeed that non Caucasians smell, to add another dimension.
I bet that, due to wearing woolen clothes before dry-cleaning and eating a lot of animal fat, those same scientists probably smelled dreadful to the people they were studying.
Smell is complicated and subjective and gendered and racialized (remember all those 50’s ads telling women to wash their vaginas with Lysol?) and there’s always good old classism and ableism in there as well. And what smells great, or unobjectionable, or not at all, to one person, might be unbearable to another. (And why is LW sniffing around her friend’s private parts anyway?)
I mean, it is entirely possible the friend smells so bad because of a serious medical issue that is maybe not being addressed, but yes, there are a lot of complex issues tied up with smell and how other people smell. I always find the discussion of food smells to be both fascinating and appalling in terms of what some people feel comfortable ruling on as the supposed norm. “Don’t eat weird-smelling ethnic food in the work lunchroom,” etc.
“Don’t eat weird-smelling ethnic food in the work lunchroom” is intensely frustrating because if you are very unlucky, your coworkers will define essentially every food that way. I wish we could all agree that we don’t comment on other people’s food and also don’t burn popcorn in the microwave, then leave it at that.
Also, office popcorn-burning will be punishable by death, no appeals.
(Okay, maybe that’s just me…)
Terrible ex-coworker complained about my curry WHILE EATING A MICROWAVED HOTDOG.
I am fully on-board with the “no one comments on anyone else’s food choices” policy.
YES re: assigning different levels of “offensive smelliness” to food based on the food’s supposed ethnicity (worst office microwave stuff I’ve ever had my nose around was [I have edited this out because I don’t want to shame anyone on hir work lunch choices., but it wasn’t something generally described as “ethnic.” Anyway, it wasn’t a big problem and lunch is over all too soon, anyway. Sorry!]
It’s weird- if the letter had been “my friend’s perfume makes me sick” or “my friend’s laugh gives me a headache” I’d have been Team LW. But the people in my life who have been all, “Oh, if someone’s body smells bad it must just be because they’re dirty and don’t wash,” are also the ones who go, “Oh, if you’re poor it’s because you’re lazy” or “Oh, if you’re fat it’s because you’re greedy,” and that’s harder to endure than a bad smell.
It’s also possible I’ve read so much of the Bad Advisor tumblr that now I unjustly assume at least half of all letters to online advice columns are passive-aggressive requests for validation.
[ETA] I dropped a brick and used a very unfortunate simile in an earlier, un-editable post on this thread and there is nothing I can do about it but I am sorry.
I had never read a Dear Prudence column before Mallory took over, and each time I read it after a Toast link I am so impressed! Does Mallory Ortberg truly exist? She is good at everything.
She’s actually a persona invented by Nicole and created by a team of writers amd researchers.
Some serious conjuring wizardry there. Providing photographic “evidence” of her meeting with Sansa was an excellent strategy in this regard, puppehs don’t lie!!
Wait, I thought we were all created by Mallory, or at least that everything was written in a Mallory-esque style so that the echo chamber could mindlessly parrot and applaud her every thought.
(It was Freddie de Boner, wasn’t it, who wrote that article about “books white men own” and misattributed it to Mallory? Or was it some other insufferable ass?)
I’m really loving MO as DP so far! I like how her strangeness, which is normally out in full force around these parts, has been appropriately toned down… but bits of it still peek through! It’s the best.
The “fascinatingly vulgar” answer was my favorite yet!
It made me think of Miss Manners, who is basically my favorite advice columnist ever–it has this level of faultless graciousness but you can totally hear the implicit raised eyebrow. (okay, that’s a weird mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean!)
I love that Miss Manners is so firm on the importance of common decency over nitpicky fork-placement. In the ’90s especially it seemed that every week someone would write in “so-and-so keeps using the wrong utensil/not saying ‘bless you’ when I sneeze/etc. was I wrong to call her out at the all-hands meeting?” And Miss Manners just lays into them.
I also remember vividly a letter from a woman about how to be firm when rejecting sexual advances without being rude. It was a perfectly slut-shaming-free response and I had never realized that a man (obv., not a gentleman) might *not* accept such a rejection politely. Lots to think about that day. PS I’ve been trying to find that column through the library newspaper search and am unable. Am very sad.
Yes! There are so many times when she coolly lays down the law. I remember looking at an older collection once and the question was like, omg what do I say if I’m introduced to a homosexual couple?!? And Miss Manners answers, in total: “Hello, nice to meet you.” “Hello, nice to meet you.” BAM!
She’s really good at cutting through people trying to use manners to be jerks–giving women guff for not being “ladylike” in business negotiations, hand-wringing over whether to give baby shower gifts to a (gasp) unwed mother, not forcibly “helping” old ladies across the street and getting huffy if they don’t appreciate it. . .
One of the most embarrassing moments of my life was when my supervisor called me into her office to tell me that my coworkers had complained that I didn’t smell good.
I think that (at least part of) the problem was that our uniform pants were a wool blend, and sometimes the seams (especially in the crotch) didn’t dry completely even though everything else was dry. They smelled bad even when they were clean and I hadn’t worn them.
I know it was a horrible moment for her as well, but let me tell you, it did not make me want to keep working there.
Aaah I had cheap wool/polyester blend dress pants from Zara when I was in college and they had a weird smell that your comment just totally brought back to me. I kept them too long because they were my only pants that looked nicer than jeans and I couldn’t afford new ones, but ew
I had to get rid of a beautiful ombre yoga top someone gave me once because the first time I wore it, it exploded into a huge wall of stink — even though I was just sitting around the house and not actually yoga-ing in it. I can’t imagine having a work uniform that had the same problem; that is TERRIBLE.
Oh, God, this happened to me on a job, and I still can’t think about it without remembering exactly where I was when my boss said the words, and that cold sharp shock of mortification. THE WORST.
awful
Oh god. I live in fear of this sort of thing happening, because I frequently end up leaving late for work and having to run, in addition to travelling on very crowded Tube trains. Hence, sweat, meaning I worry I smell by the time I get to work despite having showered and put on deodorant and clean clothes before leaving the house. I cannot decide whether being able to smell oneself means other people can definitely smell you (because you’re used to your own scent!) or that they might not (they’re further away!). I should really leave the house earlier.
Ack! Yes, this happened to me last year, and I’m still feeling residual shudders of mortification. I think the worst was “some people around the office have noticed…” Oh good, now I’m wondering which of my coworkers are complaining to the others about how I smell…
I think that if someone has a sickening smell coming from their ladybits for 20 years, it’s a medical issue. If she just needed a shower, she would have done so by now.
having known grown ass adults who were unfamiliar with the concept of laundry, I would not at all take that as a given, but telling someone point blank they stink probably isn’t going to result in much positive either way
I kind of suspect the man-child one was someone riffing on Wolowitz from the Big Bang Theory? It seems like an odd thing for a real person to be concerned about. But perhaps I’m wrong.
While this particular situation does sound like the writer’s overreacting, I read an interview with an NHS psychologist today which did give an example of overly-close parent-child relationships being a problem: “First up is a home visit to see a young woman whose family have wrapped her in love and cotton wool to the extent that she has limited social skills. She’s at risk of sexual exploitation because she doesn’t know how to appropriately make friends. She is 22 years old”. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/26/th… So I can understand it.
That poor woman.
Wash your ass, everyone.
I mean…do you really think that people don’t know how to shower?
Yes. It happens. My mother tells of girls she went to school with whose mothers told them not to bathe during their period. (!) It was a common small-town southern US tradition. My mother’s home econ teacher gave the same personal cleanliness presentation 4 times every year.
Today, I know a few school nurses who report girls and boys they had to teach to wash their genitals. The children’s parents had told them Don’t Touch Down There and either forbade washing or the kids assumed they shouldn’t.
What about the kids in the above situations who did not have my mother’s home econ teacher? Or never got to chat with a dedicated school nurse? Those people grow up to be:
Adults who don’t know how to shower.
If there is any time I will not skip a shower, it’s period time. Oh man.
I think it started back when everyone shared the one bath water once a week–you didn’t want menstrual blood in it. A practical consideration for others became a superstition.
YES
Unfortunately, yes.
Usually, they do; but I have met my share of dudes who do not. Yes, you have to use this much soap. Yes, on every part of your body. Yes, with a sponge or washcloth, and you have to rub it in and not just swipe it once. I wish I was joking.
There’s a story that I’ve read or heard told by more than one former uniformed service member about someone in basic training who wouldn’t shower, not just once or twice (because they have very little time to get ready in the morning) but ever. This story often ends with the recruit being forcefully given a shower by the others, sometimes involving scrubbing implements not really suited for personal use. Not sure if that’s a family of origin issue or someone being passive-aggressive in a crowded environment, though.
Also, this is the first time, because of Mallory, I’ve ever been even mildly tempted by Slate Plus. Especially this week, relevant to my interests.
I am so glad I am not the only ghoul; I find stuff about disasters facinating, although horrifying. (In a fire safety training session at work recently we got to watch footage of the Bradford City Stadium fire! I have read about it on Wikipedia many times, and so this was very exciting for me. We also got to put out real fires with fire extinguishers. It was amazing.)
OH MY GOD I had to watch that at a work training and it was absolutely awful but mesmerizing at the same time.
We did not get to put out fires with fire extinguishers, however. Harrumph.
It just goes so fast – from the first sight of smoke to the stand being completely engulfed in flames really does not take long at all. And the molten tar dropping off the roof from the heat! Terrifying.
Getting to use fire extinguishers was great. Everyone else was weirdly reluctant, which I couldn’t understand – fire extinguishers! Actual fires! It was brilliant.
As a kid I read about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in a book and I was fascinated, I ended up writing about it for multiple papers as like, a 10 year old.
I’ve also always been fascinated by Chernobyl, which I think is a fairly common one. Especially in high school I used to look at pictures of it all the time and read up about it. I know it’s ridiculous to want to go there (and it’s also really hard to get to) but if I got the chance to go some day I absolutely would.
I too am weirdly fascinated by Chernobyl (and other nuclear disasters). I remember getting the National Geographic issue (maybe a special issue?) about it when I was young and rereading it over and over.
Has anyone seen the The Babushkas of Chernobyl film yet? Is it amazing?
I have not seen that but it looks incredible, I will definitely have to check it out!
When I moved to NYC my first job was near the building where the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire happened (it’s NYU classrooms now). My history buff boss pointed it out to me one day – it was the first time I’d encountered a location from my history classes that had just become part of the everyday landscape with time and it kind of blew my mind.
I always end up reading books about horrific disasters (last year, the Donner party, this year, the siege of Leningrad) during the darkest part of winter. They cheer me up for some reason.
Ooh, could you provide titles? I feel like I read these kinds of things as inoculation. I know so much about disasters! Therefore, they will never happen to me.
The Worst Journey In the World is about one of the more horrific Arctic expeditions and its great.
Oooo. I would probably like this since I’m also fascinated by the Shackleton expedition. Someone in the elevator complained about the very cold weather the other week and I said, “Yes! I feel like I’m a member of the Shackleton expedition every time I venture out the door.” This person was not a fan, judging by the baffled look they gave me.
Did you see this news story? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35398552
Butting in to say that I read The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown last year and I’m still a little horrified by it.
10/10, would recommend!
(runs to amazon)
And just reserved at the library.
Disasters are FASCINATING, you aren’t the only one. (I am particularly fond of reading about nautical disasters but that’s just me.)
I am obsessed with the sinking of the Essex.
ME TOO. My mom and I both devoured the book and we were looking forward to the movie but it turned out to be such a disappointment imo.
I put it in my poem about the sea witch from the Little Mermaid (not Ursula) and it remains one of my favorite things I’ve ever done.
Insert revived discussion about the Edmund Fitzgerald here!
Superior, it’s said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early…
Let me jump in and recommend my favorite nautical disaster book: “Curse of the Narrows” by Laura M MacDonald about the 1917 Halifax explosion. It was fascinating!
People have asked me why I’m so obsessed with reading disaster books and watching disaster movies. The conclusion I’ve come to is that I am studying for a test that may never come.
It actually lessens my anxiety; I’m like, “Right, well, that 17-year-old with a broken arm walked away barefoot from that plane crash in the Amazon rainforest, and survived by following a water source downriver because her dad always said that where there’s water, there’s civilization. NOTED.”
Yes! That’s it. Also, sometimes, I think there’s a way to honor the victims. Sometimes it’s just gross, but the American Experience episode on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was beautiful.
I volunteer in kiddo’s elementary school library, and the “I Survived” book series (historical fiction about real-life disasters) is incredibly popular. So apparently this fascination a. starts young, and b. Is really common.
Ditto child-surviving-alone narratives, like My Side of the Mountain and Island of the Blue Dolphins, no? I guess there’s a connection!
I loved “My Side of the Mountain” when I was a kid– that was one of my favorites.
Most of the children’s books I’ve ever read seem to involve orphans. No parents = adventure! (I guess).
I so loved Island of the Blue Dolphins! Thank you for the reminder.
This isn’t about a large-scale disaster, but I have to share one of the unsettling experiences of my life: I was on an Amtrak train from Flagstaff, AZ to Los Angeles and it struck a woman and her child, killing them instantly while her husband watched from a position of relative safety (they were on a trestle, and unable to get off it before impact). So horrible. But the worst part was the engineer coming on the PA to apologize that it was taking so long because we were waiting for the coroner, and the majority of the passengers being obscenely put out that they had to wait. I will never, ever forget that experience.
I will watch all the disaster documentaries I can find. Ask me how many times I’ve streamed the 30 for 30 film about the Hillsborough disaster (it’s really good, and I cry every time). I’m terrible.
It so good! Someone has posted the annual Hillsborough ceremonies on YouTube and they are incredibly moving.
I love disaster books so much I made an entire booklist of them for our library. “Isaac’s Storm” is the greatest disaster book of all time! Of all time!
You can choose and still push, demanding more. It really isn’t too much to say, if you’re going to govern a country, you should know its history.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, getting straight to the heart of it. I’ve never met or spoken with him, but I whooped out loud when I heard about his genius grant, and writing like this is why.
I loved that paragraph, because he succinctly hits why you can’t just check out and not vote (at least, not in good conscience), and then lays out the response for the anarchists/whoever who want to argue that voting is automatically condoning the fucked-up things that happen in your country’s name.
The Per Se article is great — but maybe its tags are even greater?
Agreed 100%! I think the Awl originated the idea of putting jokes in the tags (at least, that was the first place I saw it done) and I still believe they are the reigning champions of that particular Internet art form.
The link to the historic take-down of Guy Fieri’s restaurant added a cherry to the whole experience. I will never get tired of that review.
Donkey Sauce.
That Guy Fieri review is pure perfection. It’s one of my go-to pick-me-ups. It should have won a Pulitzer.
Also one of my pick-me-ups! I’m so glad they linked to it, I really needed to read it again (it’s been, like, 6 months since my last read).
I lost it at “Capital Rules Everything Around Me”
My favorite is “Of course Thomas Keller hasn’t actually cooked anything in years but that’s a whole other discussion :)”. Also the repeated denials of any criticism of Pete Wells, national treasure.
I love all the links throughout the article to other restaurant reviews! I am saving ALL of them to luxuriate in on some rainy day.
An equally delightful per se takedown https://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/a-goose-in-a-…
Also http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/sexy-fish-not-…
“I have never seen a restaurant whose ethos is so clearly and comprehensively, so preeningly and unapologetically: ‘Fuck you, I’m rich and I want a golden cave and servants. I want a pony and all the hookers I can strangle. I want a pyramid of cocaine and an Audi -Quattro.’ It is like being punched in the face by Abu Dhabi.”
The word that comes to mind when I see a take-down like this is “stroppy”. Maybe the British class system had to exist just so that we could watch it clawed to bits.
That review is my favorite piece of food writing ever! It’s basically, Ancillary Justice as a restaurant review.
“the food is so overtended and overdressed I am amazed it has not developed the ability to scream in your face, walk off by itself, and sulk in its room.”
“A turnip, as you know, should be allowed to be a turnip; that is for the best. A turnip is a humble root vegetable, and should not be expected to close a Broadway musical, solve a financial crisis, or achieve self-consciousness through the application of technology. But here Turnip — with Variations in its Own Broth (in honor of Johann Sebastian Bach?) — is presented without even a carrot for company. The chef — was it actually Humm? — wanted to save the turnip from itself and remake it as something wonderful, because then — then! — he could have proved something to himself. What that is, we will never know; some people can speak only in vegetable. The chef should not have bothered. It is entirely revolting, and the most grievous result of the cult of chef I have yet witnessed. Could no one have told him, “Don’t bother with the turnip course, you’re wasting your time, it’s a turnip”? Bah! Surrounded by acolytes — by enablers — the chef dreams his turnipy dreams and does things to turnips that should not be done to any root vegetable.”
“The table, says the waiter, is blond maple wood and surpassingly smooth; it is sanded between every service because each drip leaves a stain. I have never before met a table that thinks it is a tablecloth.”
*quivers*
Oh my god Gina Mei’s piece gives me so many feelings. Mostly because I’m mixed ND somehow still the lightest skinned person in my family – even lighter than my white mother. People look at my last name and just assume I’m married. I gave up on trying to explore my heritage on my father’s side of the family years ago, before his parents passed, and only recently have I come to regret it. It was so weird growing up and feeling like I didn’t belong to any ethnicity at all- I was too white for one side and not white enough for the other.
(I also have a lot of confusing emotions about cultural appropriation in general, but they’re probably better left to themselves. There’s a lot I don’t understand.)
Better teaching engages students and keeps them in classrooms, rather than the streets. Better teaching is the one thing we never really talk about. Better teaching is the only mechanism we have left.
ARRRRGH I am so DONE with this notion that “better teaching” can somehow render meaningless the systemic poverty that kids in poor neighbourhoods suffer from.
The only way we can fix educational inequality in the US is by making sure every kid has enough to eat every day, and somewhere secure to sleep at night. You can’t pin everything on the teachers.
Well, and throwing money at schools so that every kid’s school is as well-stocked and well-staffed as the rich kid schools in the suburbs. Food and shelter are important, but good education is going to require moving a little farther up the hierarchy of needs.
For reference, I am coming at this as an erstwhile TFA corpsmember who burned out hard after one year of teaching kids who were dealing with: homelessness, parents not around because they were working multiple underpaid jobs, inadequate nutrition (all of the kids got free breakfast and lunch on school days, and the lucky ones got backpacks full of food for the weekend, but that’s not enough when there’s no money at home), the incarceration of half the men in their lives, shootings in their neighbourhood at night, boarded-up houses in the streets by the school, and used condoms and needles in the playground.
Of course every kid deserves a committed, smart, passionate teacher, but teaching alone can’t fix the achievement gap. And neither can money – the state was literally throwing money at the school I worked in, but it all went to “educational consultants” and “educational technology” programs, with very very little noticeable return. Which is a whole other rant.
I AM HERE FOR THAT RANT. I taught third grade for two years in a 65% ESL/72% F/RL district, until our school failed to meet AYP goals and the principal got fired and half the staff got moved. I agree that money spent poorly can’t fix the problem, but money spent intelligently – we had one special ed. teacher for K-5, for example, when we probably needed 6 or 7 – would have made a huge difference.
Oh god yes, the money they spent on consultants could have paid for a support staff member in every classroom, which might actually have had an impact! So frustrating.
That special ed teacher must be a miracle worker. Good lord.
HAHAHA OH BOY! Do I have a great story about how I was effectively assigned to work as a SPED teacher at a charter school run by TFA people while I was still uncertified/not an official corps member. It was super super illegal and terrible for both me AND the kids!!! I DEFINITELY DIDN’T CRY ON THE WAY TO WORK EVERY DAY AND THE KIDS ALSO DIDN’T COMPLETELY HATE THEIR ENGLISH CLASS!*
*Where they were being made to read books with at a 9th grade reading level because “we promote high standards.” Never mind that at least 15 of my 30 8th graders had IEPs and the median reading level in that class was around 4th grade. AN UNTRAINED, ENTHUSIASTIC TEACHER AND GRIT CAN DEF OVERCOME POVERTY, SERIOUS LEARNING DISABILITIES, AND MENTAL ILLNESS! YEAH!
I mentioned my city’s horrible child poverty rate in another comment– there have been attempts to get a city-wide “children’s zone” going to address systemic poverty issues, which is a worthwhile idea. But there’s so little funding for the staff they need.
We have so many city students dealing with poverty, abuse, homelessness, etc., and there’s one social worker for maybe 300-400 kids!! (Who probably has to travel between several schools, so an individual school doesn’t even have a social worker available every day). It’s completely ridiculous.
It amazes me that Newark was allowed to squander away the money Zuckerberg gave them. I work at a non-profit and the grant reporting and expectations we have for funding are a little outrageous, but they keep people (pretty) honest and the outcomes are better for it. How are school administrators not held to that standard??
Fucking technology money! Cause yeah one and a half iPads is going to some how teach a room of 45 students -with 35 desks between them- what Shakespeare is about or how to solve a system of equations
EVERY SINGLE CLASSROOM in my failing, crumbling school had a SmartBoardTM. We didn’t have functioning heating, or roach control, or pencils, but By God we had tech.
Nobody will give you a grant for roach control.
and By God kids being taught with that SmartBoardTM are going to become highly paid STEM workers.
Exactly. No teacher is talented enough to negate the effects of extreme poverty, which literally affects the way that kids’ brains develop.
Also, the one thing that’s actually proven effective in closing the achievement gap is integration. If you haven’t heard this episode of This American Life (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with), I’d definitely recommend it. Really well done and really heartbreaking.
YES that was an urgent piece of journalism, I want everyone to listen to it.
Oh man, I was JUST looking for that piece. Loved it so much and agree that it should be required listening.
Thanks for sharing, great interview.
Yep. Everybody knows that here where I live (where we have failing city schools under emergency management, alongside some of the top-rated suburban schools in the country). But nothing will ever happen, because there’s zero political will to create a metropolitan school district or change anything.
I just posted a link to this downthread and I totally agree. It’s one of the TAL episodes I find myself still thinking about all these months later–so frustrating and heartbreaking and painful but important. I’m positive my high school community would have acted like Francis Howell, or worse (literally after the 2008 election there was a pic of one of the parent “boosters” drinking wine and crying, and not for joy) and racking my brains to think about how that could ever change.
Oh my GOD, that entire episode gave me chills and nearly brought me to tears at the end. It’s one of the most succinct, standalone pieces of evidence for American racism (and failed school systems, government incompetence) I’ve ever encountered. Thank you for linking it.
The school board meeting is so so brutal, especially when Mah’ria talks about the experience of walking up to the microphone, then getting nervous and turning around.
This American Life has done a ton of really stellar education reporting lately. The second installment of “The Problem We All Live With” (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-two) and “Three Miles” (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/three-miles) are definitely worth listening to if you haven’t done so already.
“Is This Working?” (about discipline and the school to prison pipeline) was really good too I thought. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/ep…
YES. Weirdly, I actually thought about that episode yesterday when someone at my organization mentioned restorative justice, and I was considering re-listening to it. Now I definitely will!
YUP. A huge piece of the pie isn’t even anything that’s done in school, but getting kids to school at ALL. Chronic absenteeism is a huge contributor to the achievement gap between wealthy and poor kids. This is absolutely tied to systems of poverty– some kids don’t know where they’ll sleep that night let alone be able to get to school on time, other kids have to work one or two or more jobs, other kids have to help with family childcare, other kids have to rely on shitty public transit, and on and on and on. Better systems for helping and supporting these kids instead of writing them off would make a huge difference.
God, I felt the exact same way about that article. Does he really think no one ever talks about “better teachers”? That’s where all these constant performance evaluations came in, tying teacher pay to student output, etc. I’m sick of placing all the burden on the teachers and I don’t know who this Nate Browning guy is but he has blinders on.
Perhaps he meant to say “better training”? Better cultural training? I’m looking into teacher prep programs right now and I’ve noticed two kinds of programs, “regular” education and “urban” education. Seems pretty coded to me.
But tying teacher pay to student output worked so well in Atlanta! And DC!
I’m torn on the article. Because the first few paragraphs are a sharp condemnation of school segregation and the willingness of white suburbanites to ignore poor students of color in schools that are literally decaying.
Then his proposed solution is better teachers, which is always a suspect, non-solution – can’t we solve every problem by just being better at solving it? But there’s a little more in his argument than the usual evaluation-and-gimmickery solutions.
It comes from the claim that political white supremacy means that we’re never going to have meaningful interventions about poverty and other systemic problems. I’m not sure that’s true, but we’ll go with it for the moment.
The proposal isn’t “we need to fire the crummy teachers in bad schools and replace them with better ones.” It’s pointing out that the quality of life is so much better for schools in rich suburbs, and so bad for teachers in urban schools, that there’s every incentive in the world move on or drop out of the profession. So it’s saying – “how do we make teaching in poor districts a sustainable career path, and how do we keep the people we have doing it now?”
That’s still problematic, but it’s better than usual.
I think my main issue is that he’s acting like classrooms are little bubbles, totally insulated from the neighbourhoods they sit in. This is a big mantra in TFA – “YOU determine the environment in your classroom! Nothing else matters!” – and it sounds good, but it’s not true. Kids can’t learn properly when their basic needs aren’t being met, including their need for safety and security at home.
I don’t think you can retain teachers in struggling cities without addressing that directly.
Yeah, and I agree with you there. And some of it shows how badly TFA has tainted the discourse and done the dirty work for right-wingers.
But I don’t think he’s pitching “better teaching” as any kind of cure-all. I think he’s offering it as the only thing that might be changed, because white supremacy has rendered political solutions to poverty impossible. Which is pretty depressing.
And you’re definitely right: asking teachers to solve poverty with education, not only in a generational sense but day-by-freaking-day is awful. As though you could eat a lecture. And that pressure is a key aspect of retention problems.
As though you could eat a lecture. “Maybe if you really cared about the kids, you COULD eat a lecture”. – my TFA manager
WAIT WHAT someone said that for reals?
The quote is a slight exaggeration/joke, but it’s an accurate reflection of the TFA ethos as I experienced it. My manager did tell me in my exit interview that it was too bad I was leaving after a year (due to my health COMPLETELY FALLING APART FROM STRESS), because he had thought (incorrectly, was the sorrowful implication), that I really cared about my kids. Also my end-of-year test scores were good, and That’s What Matters.
Then he offered me the opportunity come back to TFA and start again once my health had recovered, which I noped joyously and with a peaceful heart.
well yeah if you a priori rule out making any effort on 90% of the significant work that could be done because it’s probably too difficult what you’re left with is nibbling around the edges of tangentially relevant, probably ineffective token gestures. It worked for welfare, it worked for healthcare reform, and it’s working great for education.
TFA’s special ed work is especially gross to me, too. Like, yes, there is a shortage of special ed teachers and its commendable to try to fix that. But sending people who only have five weeks of summer training to work with kids who have some serious mental and emotional differences that can make teaching/learning a totally different ballgame? Along with all of the effects of poverty? Like, the “you determine everything!” mantra is just… kind of evil.
I was a corps member in D.C., and I left after two years to go to law school because the shit that really impacted my kids — homelessness, criminal justice system, etc. — was not something I could do anything about from my classroom.
But with that said, I don’t think they are wrong in saying “the only thing that matters is your classroom” — I don’t think that means systemic injustice doesn’t impact your kids. It absolutely does, it’s why there is a gap in the first place. But you have no control whatsoever of what happens out there — how could you get up and believe that anything you do is meaningful if you are constantly thinking about the chaos that swallows the kids when they leave the school (or heck, even in the school)?
I never saw TFA’s “locus of control” mantra as an expression of literal reality, but like the assumptions you plug into an equation, and solve from there. The classroom is the only space in which teachers could have an impact– so how do they make the best of so much fucked up reality?
I don’t think anyone, at least not any TFA staff that I interacted with, believed that these kids just had bad teachers and once you threw in a teacher who ~~cared~~ everything would be great. I think they believed exellent teaching could at least fix one variable in the equation that equals systemic inequality, and trying to be extremely rigorous about that variable.
[in best “Teaching As Leadership” voice] Ok, let’s drill down.
1. Obviously teachers can only control their classrooms, and not outside factors in their kids lives. In my experience, even TFA staffers acknowledged this, BUT the expectation was very much that good teaching could render those outside factors irrelevant. I think this outcome is naive at best, highly damaging to kids (and school systems) at worst.
2. My main issues with TFA are its shitty 5-week training, support of charter schools (a DIFFERENT separate rant!), and stealth-conservative messaging that it’s not actually necessary to do anything about endemic poverty to improve “outcomes” for poor kids. But I also object to the allocation of resources to TFA – cash-strapped school districts pay tens of thousands to TFA for the privilege of hiring their novice corpsmembers as teachers – when there is no evidence that it’s a cost-effective intervention. Absolutely, most people who are part of TFA believe that they’re doing good. But belief is not enough.
I WANT TO BURN TEACHING AS LEADERSHIP IN A FIRE
Gasp! Without TAL, how will you strive for CIE and optimize your student outcomes within the AIM??!?!?
(Ahh, fond memories of TFA Jargon Bingo at institute…)
As someone who has a ton of highly decorated, creative teachers in her family, who went to a successful public elementary school that was practically Montessori, followed by a high school that was all about ~Socratic Seminars~, Teaching as Leadership was so jarring and awful.
I kind of tried asking, but didn’t because it was Frowned Upon, about how its methods teach kids to… you know… develop a love of learning without external stimulus. Or take joy in reading. Or engage in critical thinking.
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t.
(Hoo boy, I’m on my rant now, but kids coming from poverty NEED things like arts education and opportunity for critical thinking/evaluating “heavy” philosophical stuff because they live that shit every day! And while there is a place for data and direct instruction, these kids want and need to be treated as whole people who are capable of thinking about the world they live in… and that won’t be accomplished through constantly monitoring whether they are “tracking” or meeting a particular state standard at every minute of the day.)
Another TFA alum and I 110% agree with everything you’re saying.
in my region, there was quite a bit of the mentality, among both the CMs and staff, that the district teachers were ineffective “bad teachers” and that we were there to save the kids with our enlightened mindsets. admittedly, i was part of the charter corp (’08) in that region, and disillusionment with the city’s systems set in pretty quickly, so i can’t speak to current theories of practice.
my major issue with TFA, in addition to those outlined by britomartian, is the way the organization posits itself as a fix for the educational system, while supporting certain types of reform that cause even greater problems. the year my commitment ended, the district closed 29 of its 61 schools in a messy “right-sizing” consolidation that ignored the geography of the city’s gang violence, firing 700 teachers in the process. the next school year, TFA brought 150 new corps members into the region (three times the size of my cohort), placing many of these inexperienced teachers into jobs, including SPED positions, created by the layoffs. then TFA celebrated the superintendent who orchestrated this right-sizing with an invitation to speak at the 20th Anniversary Summit. i submitted a question about the impact of his decision-making during the panel, but i saw my regional director sorting through the notecards, and the only questions asked were softballs. i was livid, and that moment marked the beginning of what i call my “philosophical break” with TFA. that superintendent went on to manufacture a fight with the school board to cover up the fact he had already negotiated a contract with Detroit, where he went on to “right-size” more schools. needless to say, i will not be attending TFA’s 25th Anniversary Summit this year.
(aside: i’ve lurked on The Toast since the beginning, but i just HAD to create an account to post about this. TFA encouraged me to pursue a career i genuinely love, but their philosophy of reform is ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.)
Yes! In my region (urban, mid-south) TFA was actively displacing veteran teachers from the district, including those highly ranked by the (flawed, but viewed by TFA as legitimate) evaluation system.
THANK YOU! I am so damn tired of being blamed by everyone for systemic issues that I can’t control. I teach in an inner-city school, and my school has one of the highest limited English proficiency populations in the state. We are in trouble for being one point away from a “failing school” and our entire district is a mess, our kids often aren’t literate in their native languages, let alone English, we are given no special ESL instructors, a lot of our staff isn’t bilingual, not to mention the issues around poverty others have already mentioned…and yet if somehow I was more “engaging” my kids would learn. I am in the 3rd year of teaching and will stay in the profession long enough to finish grad school for another field and leave. All my life I have wanted to teach, and the incredibly toxic teaching culture has destroyed it. Fuck this shit [edited because it isn’t the articles fault and it brings up some good points. I’m just cranky today].
Oh man, massive hugs. I lasted one year in an inner-city 95% free or reduced lunch school and had nightmares and panic attacks for years afterwards. As sad as it is to have to say this, I hope you’re able to get out soon to a less toxic field <3
GOD YES. In my high school there was only one ELL math class. That was taught by our regular (monolingual) math teacher, and I, a high school senior with only a few year’s French under my belt, assisted. We had… at least three different languages in that class, and the entire spectrum of educational experience, from kids who were actually very gifted but were stuck in the class due to their lack of English proficiency, to kids who literally had never been to school before and didn’t know how to hold a pencil. It was literally impossible for us to adequately meet the needs of everyone (anyone) there.
Exactly! And it’s not just a problem in urban school districts, either. My mom teaches in a rural school district where there are very few jobs in the area, meth is a big problem, and poverty is a huge problem. They (unfortunately) don’t have a breakfast program so my mom buys healthy snacks in bulk at Sams and Target so she can feed the kids early on and sometimes sends them home with snacks.
Sadly, the last two years she’s been given the “advanced” class and this hasn’t been a problem. I say sad because she teaches first grade and the difference is already visible: the kids who score higher on tests and do better in classes are typically children who come from stable families where they get enough to eat and parental attention. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Blame the teacher rhetoric is ruining an already crumbling public education system. It’s an easy way for politicians and their ilk to place blame on someone without tackling the complex problems that created and sustain the achievement gap. It’s an excuse to pull funding, but the expectations remain with a smaller budget. How are you supposed to serve X students when you’re only receiving 60% of the budget required? Let me hire an extremely expensive and wasteful educational consultant to figure it out!
And yes, kids need good food to eat, a safe place to sleep, but they also need free after school daycare so parents can work, supportive environments, safe neighborhoods, role models, mental health services (particularly trauma-based), social emotional learning opportunities, exposure to careers, etc, etc, etc!
The war against poverty did not work out, but Early Head Start and Head Start are outstanding programs that came from it and I truly wish every child/parent in America had the opportunity to go through the program. Federally funded pre-school would make a huge difference in getting a child school-ready, and excited to learn.
And yes, kids need good food to eat, a safe place to sleep, but they also need free after school daycare so parents can work, supportive environments, safe neighborhoods, role models, mental health services (particularly trauma-based), social emotional learning opportunities, exposure to careers, etc, etc, etc! YES forever to all of what you wrote, and especially this.
A small part of my soul is struggling against this idea, but I’m fairly certain at this point, that “here, do 100% of your work with 60% of the required budget” was a Toxic Boss way of justifying cutting the required budgets altogether. Sort of like Congressional Republicans gutting Obamacare, then smugly complaining that it doesn’t work.
Absolutely 100% agree!!
My hometown has the highest child poverty rate in New York State (even worse than NYC). In many schools, 98- 100% of kids are eligible for free lunch.
I went to city schools myself, and I have a number of friends who are teachers there now. They’re working their asses off, but there’s only so much any human being can realistically do when poverty is concentrated like that.
We have some very wealthy suburbs where the kids score very highly on tests. If you read any local news comment section, you’d think that the suburban teachers were solely responsible for this, and that all we have to do to fix the city schools is to “bring in better teachers from the suburbs”. Sigh.
I still find myself thinking a lot about the 2 part This American Life on integration as the most effective education solution–and the one know one is willing to commit to.
(http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with)
My heart broke for those kids in the Normandy school district.
Katie Sandwina’s meeting with her husband remains my favorite story of how someone met their husband and I aspire to it and I want a historical rom-com made from it.
Honestly, I’m having problems continuing to read that article because I keep going back over and over and over that second paragraph.
stuff you missed in history class did a great podcast on her if you want to keep filling your heart with the glory of katie sandwina! http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/the-glamo…
Considering I just had the “authenticity” conversation with one of my good friends (in which I, yet again, had to explain that the fact that my great-grandparents emigrated to South America from Europe doesn’t negate my Latina-ness), Gina Mei’s piece is speaking to my soul. Love it.
I do not think I’d be able to resist telling nosy strangers it was my German grandpa, sometime in the 40s
“A major part of being mixed is the feeling that you must always announce what you are before someone else does it for you. It’s partly an exercise in self-preservation, and partly one of survival: If I can establish what I am in a stranger’s mind before they’ve had the chance to do it for me, I can finally take ownership of who I am.”
I got to that point in Gina Mei’s piece and had to stop and compose myself. My office has no door and it wouldn’t do for anyone to find me crying. That’s exactly how I feel, all the time, and I’ve never been able to put it into such concise, elegant words.
YES. I’m half Eastern European non-Jew, half mixed-but-ultimately-nonwhite Jew, both sides with tiny bits of Central Asian ancestry. It’s not clear that I am who I am from my appearance or name, and the constant default assumption is that, if not “Russian,” that I’m a white Jew, with all the attending cultural experiences. It’s incredibly frustrating to be accused of being an embodiment of European colonialism in the Middle East, or to have Ashkenazic people and non-Jews alike go, “Jewish name, Seinfeld, Yiddish, Festivus, doctors, summer camp, I Had a Little Dreidel, amirite?” And refuse to believe that I don’t know what they’re talking about. Not that there’s anything wrong with these things at all, but they’re not a universal Jewish experience. I often feel like I’m interjecting my Sephardic identity too much into various contexts, but it’s the only way I’ll have any chance at all of being seen for who I am, and often not even then. And it’s something that Ashkenazic Jews don’t generally have to do in a Jewish context.
WAH thanks for the gut punch Gina Mei piece. It’s weirdly relevant to me today as my Chinese-Malaysian mum got some Malaysian batik maternity dresses made for me in Penang, where she lives, and posted them to me this week. I’m wearing one right now but it makes me a little sad that when I chose the pattern of the fabric from photos she sent me, I chose the least obviously batik-y one because I was worried about cultural appropriation accusations/explanations! Even with the one I’m wearing I feel a bit paranoid. She also gave me a maternity dress she wore when she was pregnant with me, that’s blue batik in a cheong sam cut, and I don’t have the guts to wear it at all.
FEELINGS thanks for the extra feelings definitely at six months pregnant I needed extra ones I totally have room for them.
My mother is Chinese from Malaysia and that is an extra can of worms that always makes the Explaining of Ethnicity extra long because I have to explain that “that side of the family is Chinese but no one has been to China for two generations because they ran away from the Communists.” And then there’s also the way that light-skinned Chinese have privilege over Malaysians which is always an awkward conversation.
At least my Japanese side of the family has a straightforward immigration story, but people always find it baffling that my parents are “two different Asians.”
I hope you keep wearing the dresses. I bet they are fabulous (and comfy).
who the shit are these people actually patrolling around policing random folks about what clothes are appropriate for their blood quantum anyway, why are they real
A friend of mine (who is aboriginal, this is important) was told her feather earrings were culturally appropriative by a white barista sporting dreds. I think of this exchange a lot.
Today’s picture of Sansa freaked out my brain a little bit this morning. I kept scanning the picture looking for the rest of his body, but it’s so perfectly hidden by his adorable fluffy face that my brain kept screaming “It’s just a head! Oh no!”
This has been Jenn’s weird freakout of the day. Time for more coffee.
Also: the related posts include the one that introduced Sansa as a wee fluffy puppy, so for about a minute there I was just marveling at how big she’s getting.
Yeah, it’s been a couple days since I’ve seen a link roundup (only a couple!I swear!) and that puppy has tripled in size! Instantly!
I had a co-op work placement at the Transportation Safety Board. A lot of downtime spent reading accident reports, especially Swissair 111. Then I graduated to NTSB accident reports, which sometimes include transcripts of cockpit voice recorders in the appendix. Spoiler alert: all of them end with “[sound of screaming] [sound of impact] [end of recording].”
None of this is stuff that I want to be thinking about, but there is something so awfully fascinating about it. They recently released the report on a double-decker bus that collided with a train here in Ottawa and I couldn’t stop staring at the photos. A chunk of the bus was sheared off like it was made of room-temperature butter.
My first job out of college was as an automobile claims adjuster. It is no coincidence that I put my notice in shortly after I worked my first fatality claim (they work you up to those). I was already jaded enough from working the regular everyday injuries and damages that I knew I didn’t want to become similarly calloused about the fatalities. That one incident really highlighted for me how far I had already gone. Some of that stuff is absolutely fascinating and horrific in equal parts.
My favorite claim is still the guy who traded his truck to his friend for several rocks of cocaine, later reported his truck stolen when said friend didn’t return after several hours causing a high speed chase to ensue when police spotted the “stolen” truck then leading to a crash and the truck was totalled. We denied the claim as the vehicle was involved in illegal activities (usage traded for drugs plus driver technically had permission to use vehicle) and the guy was so upset he filed a complaint with the department of insurance.
I am an insurance lawyer, and when I was a paralegal the two worst things I saw were photos of gunshot wounds and photos of a meth lab explosion with no fatalities. The room was half normal (you could read the labels of the precursors they were storing) and the other half was Dalí melted.
Sansa! Pretty girl! The waiting to be cleared to take them out to socialize is so hard. But so worth it when they finally get to play with other pups.
So CUTE. Also it’s very wonderful when all that energy gets to go in a other than my laundry/recycling bin/the butts of passing joggers.
Has anyone read about Joseph Fiennes being cast as Michael Jackson in a movie about a road trip with Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando (which apparently happened IRL)?
http://www.avclub.com/article/today-yes-really-jo…
People have mentioned in the comments that really, it’s kind of impossible to cast Michael Jackson, which I agree with, but I feel like Joseph Fiennes is a stretch no matter what.
I just read about it on Pajiba, where someone suggested Michael Ealy. Probably the best suggestion I’ve read. It’s a delicate casting situation to be sure. In an ideal world, they’d search for an unknown talent with vitiligo, but I don’t see that happening any time soon 🙁
Would it be somehow insensitive (i.e. to people with vitiligo) to cast a black man and lighten his skin with makeup? Honest question. I don’t know to what extent vitiligo is considered a disability and/or something that mustn’t be appropriated.
That is an excellent question and you’re right, should probably be taken into consideration. I don’t know enough about vitiligo/the community to be comfortable saying. So really, the ideal would be that unknown talent with vitiligo.
As I understand, MJ bleached his skin as the vitiligo progressed (plus the surgeries, obviously) so…it’s definitely a fraught casting decision either way.
In any case, casting a white guy is….well, unsurprisingly racist.
Oh, for SURE.
I know the weird casting of Fiennes has taken up all the attention, but can we talk about how perfectly the other two roles were cast? Especially Stockard Channing as Elizabeth Taylor, but I also think Brian Cox is a find for Brando.
Stockard Channing! My heart. (But Fiennes, no, wtf.)
Yeah, I’ve never seen Cox do any sort of celebrity impression, but I immediately went, “Latter-day Brando? Absolutely.”
I saw a headline about that and was immediately like…
Oh for God’s sake. MJ was a black man, whatever he wanted to do with his skin. He had black parents, he experienced racism as a black man, he was BLACK. AFRICAN AMERICAN. A few days ago wasn’t Hollywood just race-splaining away the lack of Oscar nominations for people of color by saying, “well, there aren’t many roles for POC.” HERE’S A ROLE FOR A POC and what happens – a white guy is cast. Fuck all that shit.
Heard it on the radio first thing this morning, assumed it was a joke and/or I was still asleep and dreaming, saw an article right before lunch and went “What?? it’s REAL????”
Phil LaMarr (aka Marvin from Pulp Fiction)
Even though this is a comedy sketch, this is how they should cast it–take a black actor and pancake/powder his face as needed.
Anyone remember this episode of Community?
Hillary’s statement is a bit of a mess, though I read her as saying that we had Reconstruction, then (re) segregation, then Jim Crow — i.e., that these things happened sequentially. The problem here is that Lincoln, even had he not been assassinated, probably wouldn’t have had much to say about the end of Reconstruction in 1877 (he would have been 66/67 years old by this time.) From our vantage point, we tend to conflate the entire period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, which makes sense when you’re talking about big historical trends and themes and so on — but not so much when you’re talking about personalities and individual lives.
That said, “Abraham Lincoln” is basically the safest answer to the question “which president do you most admire?” because the popular perception is “Lincoln freed the slaves, yay Lincoln” so… I expect we’ll be having this conversation many, many times.
I agree– although I 100% am behind the TNC piece, I sort of had to read that with the cynical view that she was throwing a bone to angry white Southern voters, who want their “history” of perceived disenfranchisement acknowledged.
funny how Hillary secretly never means it when she calls single mothers on welfare lazy parasites or says the white southern man was victimized by cruel abolitionists or advocates for pointless wars, it’s those awful blue dog bigots somewhere else that are forcing her to say those things, boo those guys
My apologies for not being clear; this was not intended as a defense of her comments.
Maybe I’ll pick Warren G. Harding, because at least he had some self-awareness about how much he sucked…
I have not read ANY of the links yet (except for Prudie, which of course I read religiously), but I wanted to say I am RIGHT THE FUCK HERE for all of Ruth Reichl’s books. She is the very best. Garlic and Sapphires is one of my “if books were food” comfort foods; I’ve read the paperback, listened to the audiobook, all the ways to consume it are the ways I’ve consumed it.
Garlic and Sapphires was amazing. Dressing up in intricate disguises and being paid to eat in New York restaurants-and then calling them out for their sexism and classism!- is Best Life Living.
I want to be Ruth Reichl when I grow up. Her writing is amazing.
I even love the titles. “Comfort Me With Apples” has always stuck in my head since I first saw it in my mom’s living room, and I’ve never even read the book.
It’s originally from the Bible (Song of Solomon, to be precise). And yes, it’s lovely! Ruth Reichl has excellent taste in titles too.
Ah, thank you! My Biblical illiteracy announces itself once again.
Which one of her books would you recommend to someone who’s never read her? They all look really interesting and I’m indecisive.
Garlic and Sapphires for sure.
Garlic and Sapphires is the third book in the trilogy, but I think it’s also the best — it was the one of hers I read first, anyway, and it works as a stand-alone.
Yes definitely Garlic & Sapphires!
When I first discovered Ruth Reichl it was Garlic and Sapphires. Picked it up from the library’s shelf, sat down to read a bit and see if I wanted to borrow it. That book never made its way out of the library (well, where I am concerned); I finished it right there, a few feet from the shelf I got it from.
BOY has that happened to me before or what!
Really, you find her comforting? Her books fascinate me but she seems utterly cold.
I read/heard Garlic & Sapphires first, which I think is a much more tender book (because she references her mother so much, and her son). Maybe the audiobook would make a difference? She reads it herself and that’s how I first encountered it.
HOORAY, there’s an audiobook copy at my library! Thanks for the rec.
I read all of her books while working in the cafe at Borders in 2007, because the registers stared directly at the food section of books and they were in my face all day. Then I made all my coworkers read them, because they are great. One of my favorite memories from that job.
HER MOTHER THO.
Gina Mei’s piece really hit me. I’m 3/4 white, 1/4 Japanese, but look very white. I don’t really speak Japanese, but there are so many things that I feel I can’t say & things that I feel I can’t wear without looking like a douchebag while all these fucking anime kids are out here being ~~~kawaii as hell~~.
I even feel weird about my mom calling me by my middle name, which is Japanese. I’ve forced myself to use “Katie Aki” in my art & online presences to remind myself that it is my name, the one I was born with, and I’m entitled to have it.
Uggghhhhh weeaboos are so gross
(Some days I feel like being half Japanese and studying Japanese literature in college was the most aggravating path I could have chosen.)
Oh my god, you’re very brave. I don’t think I could have done it.
I also just remembered my favorite weeaboo story. My mom was walking with her husband & his young teen weeaboo son in the mall. They passed some kind of store that sells, idfk, anime body pillows and stuff. The son said something to the effect of “there’s my people.”
My mom stopped. “Your people?”
“Yeah. Japanese.”
She had to take a lap while his dad told him that just because he calls everyone a “baka” & lived on okinawa for 2 years doesn’t mean he’s Japanese.
Oh man. I’m a quarter Japanese too and I feel this so much. I remember going through high school with this huge fear of being mistaken for one of the anime kids, ’cause I was studying Japanese and knew stuff about Japan. (Which is what naturally happens when your mother was heavily raised by her Japanese mother and lived in Japan until she was eleven, so I hated feeling like I should pretend I didn’t come from that just to avoid being mistaken for being like some of the white kids in my Japanese class. There were some . . . very enthusiastic members of the Anime Club, let’s just say.)
I guess it’s compounded by the fact that I get read being not-white sometimes (but not always), usually by strangers straight up asking me where I’m from or assuming I’m Hispanic, but I never get read as part Asian. So the whole identity thing is a little weird at times.
!!! Yes! I have people speak to me in Spanish all the time and then I get weirdly embarrassed for the alternate-universe Katie who is part Latina & shamefully doesn’t speak Spanish. It’s like… isn’t it enough to have all kinds of weird shame about my ACTUAL heritage? Do I also need to be ashamed for not being “enough” of something that I’m not any of?
I wish my brain would chill out.
When I was at college, a woman once starting speaking to me in Spanish and when I apologized and said I didn’t know Spanish, she got pretty upset that my parents hadn’t wanted to make sure that I spoke their language. That’s the only time I’ve ever upset someone; usually they just give me a funny look and don’t say anything, but I still always feel like I want to apologize for having misled them.
I’ve also had people insist that I’m Lebanese, Persian, French (??), and Jewish. And probably some other things I’ve forgotten about. But I’ve had more than one conversation with someone giving me a version of “No, I know you’re American now, I understand. I’m just saying that you’re family is originally from X” after I say, “No, I’m sorry, I’m not X.” So that’s fun.
But, yeah, there have been moments when I half-wished I’d studied Spanish instead of Japanese so I wouldn’t have strangers disappointed in me every so often. 🙂
(Then again, I’ve also had people comment that my English is very good as though there’s no way it’s my native tongue, so wtf. I feel like everything sometimes has me stuck between wanting to say “Seriously? I don’t look that white” and “Seriously? I look super white.”)
Yes!! I’m half Taiwanese, and on a trip to Mexico the local merchants kept asking me if I spoke Spanish (but never my driven-snow white husband.) Every time I responded with “I’m sorry” before “no.” I felt so guilty, even though it was a tourist town and everyone’s English would be ten times better than any Spanish I tried to pick up.
More than just being an ignorant foreigner who didn’t learn the language first, I felt like I kept disappointing several people a day by not meeting their expectations for supposedly-Latina Squishalicious.
I’m half Arab, half white and get asked why I don’t know Spanish by Spanish-speakers and asked about Arabic by Arabs (who are the only people who can tell I’m Arab, at which point I’m torn between being happy they can tell and guilty I’m not better at it).
Hello fellow quarter somethings! 3/4ths mixed white european (french and scottish) and 1/4th Azores Portuguese here! It is such a mess. I feel like a poser but also like, fuck you man, my great grandma worked in a mill and never learned to read, my grandma got married at 16 and reading between the line my mom’s WASP grandparents basically ditched my grandma when my grandfather died, I want to take everything that my survivor matrilineal line has to give me. My mom was basically told by some dudes that she wasn’t white enough to date, like in Mystic Pizza, and then here we are…her blue eyed fair kids, going to grad school and stuff.
I dunno that I have anything to add exactly. It’s not like I wish that I weren’t me, or don’t know how much I benefit from being white, but it’s not that simple either is it? And I’m not even Latina like Rory Gilmore. I’m Iberian. Every single time I see a race option on a form I think, I guess caucasian? But what does someone who is half greek put? Plus the Azores was a complicated mixing pot. Some of the moors and jews hid out there. I might be genetically jewish and north african through my mom’s side. What would that make me? I kind of don’t even want to know! I tend to say I’m American and Portuguese.
Did anyone else see the bit about only women showing up for their US Senate jobs yesterday (video autoload, beware)? Women fuck yeah.
We get the job done.
I knew you would have that gif, yaaaaaaaaay.
Air Disasters (aka Mayday) is on heavy rotation on my DVR. It has made me less scared of plane crashes, since most of the episodes reinforce how hard it is to actually crash a passenger plane. And I really like the investigation portions as well. Sometimes I vaguely think about making a career change, but then I remember that I have literally never taken a physics course in my entire life and am not 100% sure how planes actually work beyond lift.
I’m not 100% sure how the internal combustion engine powers a car, either…
nobody is, but if you stop believing in it it stops working so the mechanics gotta make up technical explanations that sound plausible and educated but repel further questioning
just think about the critical, unappreciated duty they’re performing, next time they ask $40 to change your headlight fluid
Or to replace my muffler bearings.
Have you read Michael Crichton’s “Airframe”? It might be up your alley
I find reading about disasters comforting sometimes, because there are cases where even in terrible situations, people managed to fix things. (For example: the plane that had all four of its engines fail due to volcanic ash but nevertheless managed to land safely; the Kegworth air disaster, in which despite a plane crashing on a motorway, no motorists were injured because some drivers saw the plane descending and stopped traffic.) It’s heartening.
Ravenclaw represent!
George Washington is a Hufflepuff.
Slave-owning isn’t very Hufflepuff-like…
Isn’t it? I bet lots of Hufflepuffs had house-elves who they “treated very kindly, just like part of the family.”
The whole Vanity Fair article on Grease is enjoyable but the first sentence is relevant to Toastie interests I think:
“He drove a yellow Mercedes with a personalized license plate that read CAFTANS, a nod to the more than 100 flowing muumuus hanging in his closet.”
“He was in Grease, he had a thirst for knowledge
He had hundreds of muumuus in his closet, that’s where I…caught his eye”
(sorry)
Please do not apologise for this, it is beautiful.
Thank you.
They arrested a bunch of the bird-hostage-takers in Oregon, including almost all the leadership. Sadly, a bunch of guns were fired and one right-wing terrorist is dead, but mostly we should all commemorate the news by looking at birds, I should think.
That dude there almost unseats the Frogmouth Owl as my favorite bird…
…almost.
Nahhhhh. Look at that owl. She’s pre-rolling her eyes before someone talks to her. She’s an inch from letting them know how she really feels about them (spoiler: not a fan). She’s not putting up with any shit today. She knows they’re about to say something sarcastic, and she isn’t having it. I love this owl.
POTOO
Ah yes, the bird where the whole species looks like it’s been huffing bath salts and doing whippets all day and now wants to talk to you about chemtrails.
In other words, especially appropriate when discussing the Bundy bunglers.
I love Potoos so very very much.
Yelling Birb wishes botheration (but no gun fire) on all other bird-hostage-takers
(Caption from caption list: “Billy” a jazz sea Gull with a liking for song, has been a favorite at the Washington “Zoo” since his arrival in 1905. Sea Gulls are as arule [sic] silent, but “Billy” has a voice that in volume and tone rivals the peacocks.) http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/npcc.01503/
I love this. Also, “Sea Gulls are as a a rule silent”?! I’m guessing this writer never saw gulls in their natural habitat (the beach, the city, the suburbs, dumpsters) because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gull that didn’t have SOMETHING TO SAY.
usually, FRENCH FRIES, FRENCH FRIES OVER HERE EVERYONE, and then when everybird swarms, fight them like mad for the french fries! Like, you could have just kept it to yourself, gull. Plan ahead a little.
also, MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!
I have been assaulted by wildlife twice, and both times were seagulls demanding food in my hand (first: I was nine at the dolphin-feeding pool at Sea World and was waiting for a cetacean to take the fish, when a gull took it and a chunk out of my finger as well. Second: didn’t throw the french fry fast enough at Ivar’s on the waterfront and was walloped by very large gull wings in front of a group of tourists.)
I have been assaulted by geese for not feeding them fast enough. I was once feeding geese/ducks and one got cross that I wasn’t dispensing the food as quickly as it wanted and grabbed the skirt of my dress in its beak.
The sound of seagulls was a constant background to my childhood (I grew up in a coastal town). Whatever seagulls this writer is talking about are not ones I am familar with.
I could look at photos of Owls all day. <3
From the women and weightlifting article: I thought less about size and more about strength, less about form, more about function. Yet, since form and function are inextricably linked, my body looked better than it had six months ago. I’m 27 and I’m in the best shape of my life, a superlative I once thought would forever belong to my days as a varsity cross-country runner…in high school.
This could have been written by me, down to the cross-country running. I am so much happier with my body now that I do regular strength training. I’m “thicker” than I was in high school, for sure, but I’m so much stronger and I love to see my muscles working when I move.
The weight lifting article is cool, although I have no interest in weight lifting, I do admire the women who do it!
This link buried in the text kind of broke my heart http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/the-strongest-woman-…
What a baller woman; but she gets ignored because she’s not ‘pretty’ athletic. Her twitter is pretty cool, I’m gonna give her a follow and I hope she gets more attention (since attention = money these days)
I’ve been struggling lately with ethnic identity and authenticity, as half Metis and half Greek, so Mei’s piece hit me deeply. I’ve recently been able to learn more and participate in my Ojibwe culture, and because I am pale to the point of white privilege (though am sometimes called Latina?) I’ve gotten quite a bit of flack from my friends due to my increasing presence in the native community, which has been really validating, because they think I’m not “Indian enough.” Thank you for including it!
The Ruth Reichl interview linked in the Awl piece is great, especially the parts about justifying how much (wo)manpower and money the Times puts into food reviewing. I ran to my phone to put Garlic & Sapphires on library hold!
Does anyone have other book recs about food critics/restaurant reviewers? I feel like there must be more great memoirs or a comedic novel or two. (Delicious! was fantastic.)
For great critical food writing, the classics are MFK Fisher and Laurie Colwin. MFK Fisher is Of Her Time and can be kind of a snob, but she’s also really smart and funny and her food descriptions are incredibly evocative. Laurie Colwin has a more casual, comfortable voice–reading her is like talking to your cool friend who knows everything there is to know about how to fry chicken.
I also like Judith Jones a lot. She was never a food critic but she edited Julia Childs, and she has some amazing Julia stories.
ooh, thanks, never even heard of Judith Jones before & she looks awesome.
I am going to head over to the library on my next work break and check out Garlic & Sapphires as well!
When I was a kid, my feet smelled because my parents didn’t buy me socks and because I didn’t have the money to buy socks on my own. My clothes smelled because I was on my own for laundry (though thank god we had a washer and dryer in our house) and yet someone else was always using the laundry so I couldn’t always wash my clothes. I smelled because I was going through puberty and didn’t have any maternal guidance and didn’t realize that even if I showered every day, my crotchal area would smell by the afternoon because I was wearing tight, synthetic fabrics. I also farted a lot because I didn’t realize until adulthood that I can’t digest lactose as well as some and no one bothered to find out.
Let me ask you this: did it help when I found out people were talking about my smelliness? I was aware of some of the smells (crotches), but I didn’t know how to fix it.
Now I’m an adult. I buy my own socks so my shoes don’t smell but I’m still ultra paranoid that they do and I can’t tell. I have an air purifier in my home because I’m paranoid that my apartment smells like cats. I am constantly worried that my body smells and I just cannot notice. I guess you could say that other kids telling me I smelled (mostly behind my back) helped because now I’m ultra-vigilant?
Except that I will never ever be rid of the burning humiliation and the fear that I’m smelly. So maybe not?
Maybe there are helpful ways to tell someone they smell (maybe it’s helpful if you tell them how to fix it and assume that they don’t just walk around oblivious or that they don’t know about deodorant?). Just telling someone they smell, though, can be very hurtful.
My mother made a point of telling me when I smelled. I think she thought I didn’t know and she wanted to make sure I wasn’t walking around smelly and unaware. All she did was give me a complex about how I smell. Of course she is a blessed human being who doesn’t have BO and rarely had to wear deodorant, so I was largely on my own as a fat girl with a very active job (Which meant my shirts very quickly got a smell in the armpits that could not be removed, and I couldn’t afford to buy new shirts every week).
I always used spray deodorant (which unfortunately makes things 100% worse really, but I felt that it worked the best), and instead of helping me find deodorants that did work, my mother just ranted about ‘chemicals’ and told me to use rock salt blocks (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yes, a bit of salt is going to stop my veracious sweating.).
Yeah those rock salt blocks are a big vat of bullshit that my mom tried to push on me, too. Ugh. Sorry mom, I’ll take the prescription-strength stuff, I don’t care if maybe it might give me aluminium poisoning.
I mean, they do work for me on days when I’m not exercising much. So it’s not that they’re entirely bullshit, it’s just that they only work for some people in some circumstances. I definitely agree that it’s bullshit to claim that they work for all people in all circumstances and therefore everyone should use them all the time.
Yes, of course! That’s what I meant – it certainly does work for HER, but for ME it is absolute bullshit.
*Toast hugs* I wish I could do something nice for Young You.
So much sympathy and understanding – I was in a very similar situation as a kid/teen, and I’m still hyper-aware and afraid as an adult, too. I’m so sorry you had to deal with that cruelty and the helplessness to understand/prevent it!
Add Abe Vigoda to the death toll. This month.
I once had a friend who smelled, and it was awful. I knew it was likely because he wasn’t showering because of depression, and it had been going on for a few months. So he came over to play video games, we talked for a bit, he mentioned that he’d been rejected by a girl and felt bad, and I went, as delicately as I could, that maybe she hadn’t liked the smell of his cologne. He looked stricken, our eyes met, and I went on, “I know a super-good place, they sell all these specialty products and lotions and stuff, it’s where I go for my shampoo, wanna go tomorrow?” So we did and we bought stuff and talked about self-care, and I never mentioned that I knew he knew I knew he wasn’t showering.
You are a good friend.
Agreed! That was a very sensitive and caring thing to do.
This is such a sweet story. You’re a good friend.
You are a good person; I had a friend/girl I sat beside in primary school who had the most horrific bad breath (and often had BO too), all I could do was move and sit beside someone else.
She used to eat cheese and onion crisps at lunch, and the memory of her breath after that still stops me eating them.
That is the best possible way you could have handled it. Well done.
That is just about the kindest way possible to handle that situation. Like, Mallory!Dear Prudence couldn’t give better advice. I hope it helped him.
That is a compliment!
:-*
Just popping in to say…yesterday I learned that the ADA only recognizes two animals as “service animals”. Dogs and…MINIATURE HORSES.
MINIATURE. HORSES.
Sorry if this was widely known information, I just loved it so much and it absolutely brightened my day.
MINIATURE HORSES = Lil’ Sebastian. What would a mini horse service animal do? Like are there people out there who have seeing-eye mini horses?
There are seeing-eye mini horses! (Sometimes people with dog allergies/phobia will get them instead).
Also, there is a mini horse who works as a therapy animal at my hospital and he has his own ID card AND wears TINY HORSE SNEAKERS so he doesn’t slip on the flooring. (He also looks very much like Lil’ Sebastian).
Pictures please!
Here is a thing about guide horses/ponies! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshir…
Someone from my town had a miniature horse named PANDA as a guide animal! Sometimes it would come into my high school (I think the woman who owned the horse might have worked at my school, but I can’t remember!?) and sometimes you could see it ~around town.~ The NYT even ran an article about them http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Crea…. Please enjoy this sentence: “When miniature horses fly, they stand in first class or bulkhead because they don’t fit in standard coach..”
Now I’m imagining the flight attendants carefully maneuvering the drink/snack cart around a mini horse who’s standing up in the first class aisle.
why are there no minihorses on my flights
It really should be an upgrade option.
trained minihorse flight attendants with little drinks carts packs on their backs
That essay by Gina Mei hurt a lot to read. My best friend is biracial and one of her parents is from Hong Kong, and people have said horrible stuff to her that is along similar lines to what Ms. Mei was told. People can be so cruel 🙁
Now I'm imagining the flight attendants carefully maneuvering the drink/snack cart around a mini horse who's standing up in the first class aisle.
ooh, thanks, never even heard of Judith Jones before & she looks awesome.
The weightlifting article reminded me of a conversation with a friend who has greatly increased her strength (and coincidentally lost a lot of weight at about the same time) about the troubling intersection/overlap between fitspo and thinspo.
are there really that many concerned liberals who have horseshoed clear around to “race mixing is treason, be a pure proud White or we will harass you” because the Mei piece was like wow you got some real shitty people in your social circle but now everyone in the comments is getting the same thing
what the hell
Re the bit about how even your family can other you in Gina Mei’s piece, members of the full-Chinese side of the family have said mean things about my half-white grandfather in my presence before, and it’s weird to hear that and wonder if they’re including you too even if you’re hardly (just an eighth) mixed. But, this is an a context where I only found out I was biracial as a teenager because my dad and sisters having ringlets never clued me in somehow.
It can get confusing to navigate, and the microagressions laid out on the journey don’t help any.
Sansa is ALF.
There's a story that I've read or heard told by more than one former uniformed service member about someone in basic training who wouldn't shower, not just once or twice (because they have very little time to get ready in the morning) but ever. This story often ends with the recruit being forcefully given a shower by the others, sometimes involving scrubbing implements not really suited for personal use. Not sure if that's a family of origin issue or someone being passive-aggressive in a crowded environment, though.
My grandmother used to tell me that bathing or washing one's hair during one's period caused insanity. As did studying too much.
You have really done a great job!! Appreciate all of your hard work 🙂
You have really done a great job!! Appreciate all of your hard work 🙂