My son is not afraid to express his feelings in public.
This is why Mallory is so good at being Prudie:
Q. The work of love: I have an unusual job: I’m a sex worker. Lately I’ve been dating a lot, and while I haven’t really gotten to this point in a relationship yet, I’m wondering when I should tell my dates and potential sexual partners about my job. Do I have an ethical obligation to tell my partners before we have sex? I am always safe with my clients, and, frankly, I don’t really consider selling sex to be any different from providing any other service. At what point in a relationship should I tell someone that I am an escort?
A: You don’t, I think, have an ethical obligation to tell your partners what you do for a living before you sleep together, especially since you’re practicing safe sex and not putting anyone at risk. My only advice would be that it might save you some wasted time by being up-front about your job—you presumably wouldn’t want to date anyone who stereotypes or resents sex workers, and this might help screen those people out. Of course, I also understand that disclosing your work puts you at some risk of arrest or violence, so I don’t want to encourage you to disclose before you feel comfortable. The short answer is: Whenever you feel ready to tell someone you work as an escort is the right time. Happy dating!
The suicide crisis in this First Nations community is horrifying:
Reserve police are working round the clock, watching to ensure everybody stays safe. Meanwhile, counsellors are brainstorming ways to help encourage youth in Attawapiskat.
Some of the ideas include developing a drug strategy and hosting more activities for young people.
Hookimaw said a lot of her friends need support.
“I just tell them that people do care and people do love you.”
Ruth Graham on Beverly Cleary’s lesser-known novels for young women:
Teen culture changes much faster than kid culture does, so Jean and Johnny’s story feels much more dated now than, say, Ramona’s. I don’t remember being aware as a child that Ramona was “born” in the 1950s, because her world was so similar to my own. But the fashion, foods, and family dilemmas in the First Love books are unmistakably dated. The protagonists have hobbies like sewing and flower arranging. Their love interests call them on the telephone, take them to formal dances, and ask them to wear their identification bracelets as a symbol of commitment. In 2016, these books read like historical fiction, which may have contributed to their lapse into relative obscurity.
Our beloved Esmé Weijun Wang was interviewed by Fusion:
I feel like with nonfiction there’s more of a responsibility to write about something very specific. For example, I never name David Nowak’s [a main character in the novel] mental illness in the novel. It’s not known whether he has bipolar disorder or schizophrenic disorder. It’s not cut and dry in that way, whereas the essays that I write very much focus on schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. In fiction, things are much more loosey goosey. I was able to address some thoughts I’ve had for a long time about “mental illness” and the way we look at mental illnesses.
I worked for about three to five years in a psychology lab at Stanford, and while I was there, it really became clear to me—through hundreds of hours of clinical interviews with people for experimental purposes—that looking for a “clean” subject with a certain diagnosis was very difficult. In order to have a subject in a psychological experiment who qualifies as having a disorder, they really need to fit the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] definition in specific ways. So many times, I would interview people, I would talk to them for three hours and realize they qualify in this and this way, but they ended up not qualifying for this story because they don’t quite fit in the box in the way the DSM said they should.
The book is very, very good (and was required reading for history majors at my college sophomore year), so I am CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC:
The story involves the real 1858 kidnapping of a 6-year-old Italian boy who was secretly baptized and, in accordance with papal law of the time, taken from his Jewish family to a monastery for full Catholic conversion. This Spielberg pic will put Bridge of Spies‘ Mark Rylance on the other end of seizure as Pope Pius IX, the ruler of the Papal States whose refusal to return Mortara sparked international controversy and ultimately underscored problems with the pontiff’s secular power. Drama.
McKinnon is the first person ever identified with a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory. She knows plenty of facts about her life, but she lacks the ability to mentally relive any of it, the way you or I might meander back in our minds and evoke a particular afternoon. She has no episodic memories—none of those impressionistic recollections that feel a bit like scenes from a movie, always filmed from your perspective. To switch metaphors: Think of memory as a favorite book with pages that you return to again and again. Now imagine having access only to the index. Or the Wikipedia entry.
“I know bits and pieces of stuff that happened,” McKinnon says of her own childhood. But none of it bears a vivid, first-person stamp. “I don’t remember being shorter or smaller or having to reach up for things. I have no images or impressions of myself as a kid.” She finds herself guessing a lot at what her experiences must have been like: She assumes the Cayman Islands were hot. Perhaps she and Green walked around a lot there. “It was probably sometime between 2000 and 2010,” she ventures.
Twitter’s gynecologist tells all:
Gunter frequently writes about gynecological snake oil on her blog, where she also covers topics ranging from yeast infections and toxic shock syndrome to abortion legislation and fetal-tissue research. Reporters contact her because she’s usually among the first to comment on women’s-health news, either on her blog or on Twitter. There, she weighs in on presidential debates, cracks jokes about vagina tea, and responds to those among her nearly 26,000 followers who tag her in posts about monstrosities like vaginal speakers and vaginal yeast beer. She’s a bit like Twitter’s gynecologist, but she’s not exactly answering DMs about weird rashes.
r/legaladvice does not have a lot of sympathy for this gentleman:
So my friend needs help but I don’t know what to do or how to help. Basically the situation is that he tried to get custody of his kid from his ex-girlfriend. She won the lottery last year but she wouldn’t help him out when he needed so he thought if he got custody she would have to pay him child support.
But instead he got denied custody and isn’t allowed to see his kid at all or even pick up his kid from school when his kid starts school this fall. He also got told he has to pay her 2 yrs worth of back child support and child support going forward even though she’s never asked for child support or for him to be involved ever. How can they do this if she never tried to get him involved? It’s unjust that he will go bankrupt when she won the lottery and has lots of money. Can he appeal this or something? He’s real worried and I want to help him out.
I found this profile of Lizzie Skurnick, who I really only knew from her Jez “Fine Lines” column, absolutely fascinating, and I just bought All-of-a-Kind Family for my kids:
“The column began when blogs were launched and could never have existed at any other time or place,” she said. “It was a place where women could gather,” virtually, of course, “and talk about these books. It was a bunch of 35-year-old women saying ‘I never realized how important that book was for me.’”
She was approached by a book packager who offered Lizzie her own imprint, Lizzie Skurnick Books, which launched in 2013. “I use my expertise in finding out-of-print books that we should bring back, as well as books that should have been popular and never were.” The imprint has 23 books now.
The first of Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family series remained in print, but the other four did not until Lizzie rescued them. They are by far the most popular of her books.
Most Jewish women have read those books, which were set in the 1910s and first published in the 1950s.
This is a perfect example of the kind of pending comment that basically all other sites would approve (reasonably!), but I look at and am just “you are vaguely condescending so no”:
Ah, for those rare times when the legal system gets exactly the right result.
The comeuppance there is just so beautiful.
I marvel at Nicole’s ability to spend time on these subreddits without wanting to pull all of her hair out.
Some careful curation of subreddit subscriptions is called for. I’m sure that the same situation would get a very different reaction on, say, /r/redpill.
Yes, I have been loving these little snippets but I have absolutely no stomach for finding any of it myself.
It’s unjust that he will go bankrupt when she won the lottery and has lots of money.
She’s his ex GIRLFRIEND. So basically if I have sex with someone, and they later win the lottery, I’m entitled to half their winnings? Is that pre-tax or post-tax? What if she had had an abortion? Would he desire more lottery dollars because he missed out on the experience of being an utterly absent father?
I’d bet lottery winnings (if I had them) on the OP being his own “friend” and looking for advice for his own situation.
If I had a child with someone, and that person had no desire to be in their child’s life UNTIL I WON THE LOTTERY, you would probably not be able to find his body. Good lord.
You know, I’m not the sort of person who would even dream of putting a hit out on someone–I really believe that living well is the best revenge, and lottery winners probably live very well indeed–but there’s a fairly obvious cost-benefits analysis there. Just sayin’.
” Also his ex-girlfriend wanted him involved but he wasn’t ready and she stopped asking after the baby was born. She never even tried to bring the kid to see him. . .After he broke up with her she never took him to court so thought that he didn’t have to pay support and she never tried to make him visit. The judge held this against him and denied him because he never tried to visit even though his ex-girlfriend never asked him to. . .But the judge denied custody because he was never involved before because his ex-girlfriend never tried to make him be. ”
Clearly the greatest injustice in the history of the universe!
Looking at the photo of Nicole’s son with his lady friend, I believe ZZ Top captured it when they said, “Every girl’s crazy bout a sharp dressed man.”
How. On earth. Do you know that infant is a girl?
Also didn’t we all agree it’s creepy to sexualize children’s relationships? I feel like we’ve had this discussion a lot.
Matt knows she’s a girl bc we talked about it on Twitter yesterday, and I think ZZ Top is too playful to be sexualizing anyone in this quotation. This girl is my son’s best friend.
I mean, she’s his best friend but he DID steal her toy unicorn, so they’re going through a rough patch.
Are we talking a regular toy unicorn or one of those Disney unicorns that talk and play something from The Nutcracker while the horn blinks in different colours? Because those are the best, and I can totally get behind someone stealing them.
Pretty standard-issue.
This makes me feel much better, thank you!
ANOTHER TOAST ARGUMENT RESOLVED SWIFTLY AND CONVIVIALLY!
Of course, now I’m mad at Matt bc I have been singing EVERY MAMA CRAZY BOUT A SHARP-DRESSED BABY for twenty minutes.
My bad. As I scanned my memory for a follow up ZZ Top joke, I at least realized there are far worse earworms that band has produced.
I know it’s a girl from the tweet Nicole originally posted, in which she said her son had lunch with a beautiful younger woman. I apologize for the tone of the joke. It was more of a comment on her son’s dapper dress than an attempt to sexualize children’s relationships.
With context and Nicole’s comment I’m feeling a lot better about it, so thanks for explaining, Matt. I think it was the one-two punch of ‘of course she’s a girl and of course she’s his lady friend’ that got me, but I didn’t realize you had insider knowledge here.
By ‘insider’ I of course mean ‘a tweet I did not myself see.’
That reddit guy – it gets worse, replace ‘She never tried to get him involved’ with the revelation further down the thread that he broke up with her while she was pregnant. That’s why he doesn’t have custody or visitation rights: it sounds like he’s literally never seen this child. And the title is ‘Unjust situation in Florida’ Jesus Christ.
Yup, and the “friend” blamed the mother, because she never asked her ex to visit. I mean…
It’s obviously all her fault he wasn’t involved!!
Some people on the thread are calling ‘troll,’ and who knows, but I have known 2 situations very similar just in the last few years (not with lotto winnings, but absentee dads showing back up and child support as a main issue). There are definitely people like this out there.
I wonder how much the lottery winnings even were. I’m guessing this isn’t a multi-million dollar jackpot.
It’s the principle of the thing. Women shouldn’t have money. Also gold-diggers, amirite. And child support, let’s turn the child support bullshit around on them and see how they like it.
Yeah, some lottery winnings are enough to buy a car or a house but aren’t exactly enough to retire.
The only thing I doubt about it is ‘asking for a friend’.
From what I’ve heard from lawyer friends, literally nothing is too crazy or too petty for family court.
Based on my own (admittedly limited) pro bono experiences, this is correct. No, you can’t get custody after you haven’t seen your kid for two years because your ex-knocked her out after you punched her in the face. No, marrying some lady you don’t know will not make custody more attractive. No, you cannot get unsupervised visitation when you are currently testing positive for PCP.
D:
“No, revenge is not an adequate reason to ask for custody.”
Ugh, that should say “because you knocked out your ex when you punched her in the face.”
My friend had a case where an older brother was attempting to adopt his younger siblings and dad – who had been out of the picture for six years – admitted in open court that he was only fighting for custody because the older brother was “questioning his manhood” by fighting for custody.
Masculinity. So fragile.
Arggh one of the cases I know seems to have WAY more to do with the guy’s need to be a Macho Winner than to actually parent his daughter. I can’t know his heart, of course, but his behavior makes no sense otherwise. What is the deal with people.
Seriously. It’s one area in which I actually have a decent amount of respect for my father. He’s always been a sorry excuse for a parent and was pretty lousy at making child support payments on time, but when it came to the custody hearing, there was no question that Mom would get full custody. “The girls need their mother, the person who raised them, the one who’s most qualified to continue to raise them.” He didn’t fight it because he knew it wasn’t in our best interests. At least there’s that. In this area he was willing to admit to his limitations.
the thing that makes this true statement so sad is how the kids are always used as pawns in some argument between the parents. Literally no concern for the children whose lives will be affected forever by the petty BS of people who should know better.
Once before Christmas I was in the court of appeal on some civil matter and two people were there fighting out their appeal over…. custody of the dog.
Pre-Christmas is a well-known time to witness absolute family law shit-shows in court, as people FREAK OUT over custody and visitation over the holidays.
Please watch one of the best movies ever, The Awful Truth (1937) with Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, and Ralph Bellamy. The dog in question is the same one who played Asta in the Thin Man movies. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028597/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)
Also relevant to legal matters, My Favorite Wife which features Cary Grant getting Irene Dunne declared legally dead.
… which is, yet again, just fine with Ralph Bellamy. (The courtroom scenes in My Favorite Wife are simply sublime.)
(even better is Too Many Husbands, which is the same plot as My Favorite Wife but gender-reversed and the ending is STRONGLY suggested to be a happy three-way marriage. it’s even better than My Favorite Wife because Jean Arthur isn’t the vague asshole that Cary Grant is, and also Melvyn Douglas is perfectly hilarious and also petulant, which is the best kind of Melvyn Douglas role. oh, also, Fred MacMurray wears the most amazing pyjamas, and I think at one point Jean’s frilly peignoir so.)
That sounds wonderful plus who doesn’t need to see more Jean Arthur?
Is it weird that I’m kind of in love with whoever you are because you have an opinion about Melvyn Douglas?
After 10, nearly 11 years, my ex is still very bitter that he made poor choices that led to the court granting custody of our children and child support to me. In fact, he recently told me that he has “tried” to forgive me, but he “just can’t.”
Dude, grow the fuck up and move on with your life, and let me continue to move on with mine.
Hey, just now I tried to forgive you (for being a responsible and loving single parent) and guess what? I did. Tell him it was easy.
how dare you
I was reading that post yesterday and frantically IM’ing choice bits to my work bestie. I live in Florida, always have, and stories like this are SO frustrating. Stop making the rest of us look bad!
“Florida”. Always with a sigh and an eye roll.
I’m just shocked by the upfront ‘he needed money so he tried to get the kid from her’. Like MOST people would have enough self awareness to know that’s a shitty thing to do, even if you’re still doing it, bury the lead a bit!
That said, I know a fair few fathers, mine included, who have sought custody for vindictive/money reasons. (Luckily my father had no claim on me, he left while my mother was pregnant and they were never married, but my half siblings weren’t so lucky.)
I know right, it’s just ‘I have a right to her money because I knocked her up that time, despite not wanting a child and showing no interest in said child.’ People are awful.
But god forbid the woman that got knocked up that time should ask for some money to help with the care of said child.
No that’s a feminazi plot to destroy men’s lives is what that is.
Children are basically like houseplants, right? You stick them in a corner and water them once a week? So if someone’s going to get money for the super easy and completely expense-less job of looking after a five year old, why shouldn’t it be him?
(nods) A family member’s husband sued for custody of their young children when they divorced, won, then turned around and put them in foster care. Where they stayed.
WHAT?
Yep. It was a long time ago, the 70s I think.
“I got a lady pregnant, therefore I am entitled in perpetuity to a share of her income, and I will use the child I have never supported as a pawn in my endeavor to get my hands on her cash.”
Sounds like an airtight case.
I’ve seen the extreme of this: her family has money so I will insist the child lives with me in the divorce proceedings purely so I can claim more money in the settlement for ‘child care’ (drugs and music festivals. Child was 16 and largely cared for herself until shipped of to boarding school once the settlement was done.)
This was a former male model who claimed that Zoolander was based on him in case you needed any more context.
This story is magic. Hideous, infuriating magic, but the Zoolander bit is gold.
Oh man. This guy was wild and will be included in my autobiography of weird anecdotes. I did feel bad for his daughter though, she got caught between two terrible people (well a terrible father and her mothers evil family), but she got a good education out of it at least.
BUT DID HE THINK ZOOLANDER WAS A COMEDY OR REALIST DRAMA, THIS IS IMPORTANT.
it’s a political thriller
I refuse to click on any links to reddit, so thanks for the extra details. That just makes everything a million times worse. It’s basically trying to take a child he’s never met away from the main adult in the child’s life just to get some money.
My BFF just randomly sent me a link to a horrible post about a guy who “didn’t have time” to talk to his GF about their unexpected pregnancy because he has “a couple of social events” already this week and had some “very high level positions on campus”. . .from two years ago. I almost want to believe it’s the same asshole.
I just read All of a Kind Family for the first time this year and LOVED IT. I have been trying desperately to lay my hands on the other four books without spending a fortune on it, because it was just so great. It’s exactly in my favourite wheelhouse of “gentle stories about growing up in different times” (see also: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Birchbark House, the collected works of Beverly Cleary, etc.)
I tecently reread them via library copies, I’m putting together a collection of my own now!
My library doesn’t have the rest and IT KILLS ME.
INTERLIBRARY LOAN!!!!!
sorry that looks unnecessarily aggressive, but your librarian can probably find a copy in another library system to request to borrow for you!
unnecessarily aggressive library recommendations, here for that all day.
You got here before I could! ILL is magic! (In fact, the first ILL request I ever made was for one of the All-of-a-Kind Family sequels, way back in the day when I had to look it up in a book and fill out a card!)
You can never be too aggressive about spreading the gospel of ILL.
gentle stories about growing up in different times
This is precisely the library collection I need for my small literate human. I will keep checking this thread for further recommendations 🙂
If you don’t get an overwhelming response, please try a dedicated thread early in the OT on Friday. Best crowd-sourcing environment, bar none.
Betsy-Tacy!
I am, of course, assuming he will be perfectly fine reading about girls.
He loves reading about girls. He is relatively gender-oblivious. For this I thank the higher power of my choosing pretty much daily.
Maudie in the Middle, the Betsy-Tacy books, Katie John, the Moffatts, the Keeping Days, the Little Maid books (“A Little Maid of Nantucket”, “A Little Maid of Connecticut”, etc), “The Good Master”, Rachel Field’s books, the Melendy books by Elizabeth Enright (all of hers, really, Gone-Away Lake and Thimble Summer too)…
Good reminders! More than half of these were in my childhood collection 🙂
I have such wistful memories of the Melendy books. As a ten-year-old I nurtured wee little dreams of naming a future son Rush. Oh how THAT name has been ruined for the ages!
🙂 back!
“Time at the Top” by Edward Ormondroyd and “Fog Magic” by Julia L Sauer are very gentle time travel books which were both themselves written in bygone days, now. The “Swallows and Amazons” books are also good, and “Fell Farm Holiday” and its sequels (which are harder to find but is like a how-to manual if you are a Midcentury British Child Visiting a Farm in the Lake District). You probably know all of these, too!
Siddons Packard, have you read Antonia Forest’s books about the Marlow family? This is a very important question.
I have not but I think I must get on this. Thanks for the rec!
They’re about a big family, mostly girls, and about half the books are school stories and the rest take place in the holidays. The first ones were written in the 1940s, but she kept writing them into the 80s. (What’s odd about that is that she updates the time period accordingly, so that the main character is thirteen in 1947 and fourteen in 1965 or so.) I cannot possibly convey how good the characterization is; it’s hard for me to think of another writer, in any genre, who does characterization quite as well as Antonia Forest.
Unfortunately, as they’re cult classics, they tend to be very, very expensive. You can usually find cheap copies of the first one, Autumn Term, though. It’s not quite Antonia Forest at her best, but it’s a good place to start. Falconer’s Lure, one of my personal favorites although it never seems to rank very high with Forest fans in general, is going to be reprinted in May by a publisher called Girls Gone By.
The ones I recommend, in order, are End of Term, Falconer’s Lure, Peter’s Room, Autumn Term, The Ready-Made Family, The Cricket Term, and The Marlows and the Traitor.
The ones I do not recommend starting with are The Thuggery Affair, Attic Term, and Run Away Home – they all have their moments, but they’re definitely sub-par Antonia Forest.
How I adore Elizabeth Enright! The Saturdays!
Oh, The Good Master! Such a wonderful book. And The Singing Tree if you can bear to read it. It’s a glorious masterpiece, but if I ever switch to an acting career I will have no trouble crying on cue because all I have to do is think about The Singing Tree.
Yes to the Moffatts and Elizabeth Enright! So good! I don’t know the Keeping Days or the Little Maid books, but will keep an eye out for them.
The Little Maid books are quite old (my mom read them when she was a child) but I remember them being very comforting.
The Railway Children, Narnia, The Happy Hollisters (child detective series featuring kids age 5-12), Half-Magic series, The Boxcar Children, 5 Little Peppers, Cheaper by the Dozen.
Oh man everything you just listed save for the Happy Hollisters was a big part of my childhood reading list.
I have the Edward Eager books on my iPhone for quickie comfort reading.
I loved the Homer Price books by Robert McCloskey. Also the age old Harriet the Spy books (there are 3 or 4 about those kids). And for slightly older literate humans the Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater is gold. When I was younger I loved reading about children who had more freedom and went and had adventures but grown ups didn’t mess with them.
We have SO MUCH Daniel Pinkwater and the 5yo, over whose head they would effortlessly sail, is always asking to read them. I so look forward to the day he gets his wish!
Homer Price!!! I loved those too! And Daniel Pinkwater. The Snarkout Boys are my favorite. I wish Beanbender’s Beer Garden and The Deadly Nightshade Diner (We Never Close) really existed.
I forgot “The Stone Book Quartet” by Alan Garner!
The Borrowers and the Mennyms have this kind of vibe too.
Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwicks series is set in the modern day but very much has the kind of throwback vibe I think you’re looking for.
It’s precisely the library collection I need for Hard Brain Times.
Toastfolks, these are all such good recommendations (and, in many cases, flat-out reminders!) and I have saved ALL OF THEM. You all are the best, as you already knew.
Understood Betsy by Dorthy Canfield. Ballet Shoes (and all the other “shoe” books). Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (maybe not quite as gentle, but I don’t remember the details).
Lois Lenski – she wrote historical ya in the mid 20th C. I remember loving Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (true story of a young woman captured and the adopted by the Seneca), although I have no idea how well it holds up w/r/t racism and imperialism.
Yes, the Shoe books! But Ballet Shoes (and isn’t there at least 1 sequel?) is the best.
I have a fondness for the Ice Shoes (?) Book which is about ice skating friends.
I think it’s Skating Shoes. I’m also quite fond of Theatre Shoes (and I think Pauline may show up in that one)….
Understood Betsy SO GOOD! Dorothy Canfield also wrote a really amazing novel about a married couple who are totally miserable until the husband falls off the roof (or something) so she goes to work at the department store and he stays home and nurtures the kids and they become so much happier because fuck gender norms.
I read that one too! it’s amazing. It kind of sucks that the dad had to get paralyzed to be himself, but (other than that) it’s great.
ETA – just looked it up, it’s The Homemaker.
Have you tried Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series? I think it’s*gold*
For the Betsy-Tacy books: there are the ones when the children are little, which I read and loved when I was little. Then in middle school when I started going to the library’s YA section, there were more! It was quite exciting. Where the girls are teenagers and then the final book Betsy gets married. They would go well with the later Little House books, I think.
I think you said your child is 5? Some of these might need to wait a year or three, or might be good bedtime reading. All choices skew heavily towards female protagonists.
– Heidi (good for small humans — my mom’s motivation for learning to read was so she could read Heidi whenever she wanted, instead of waiting for her grandmother to be available)
– Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, An Old-Fashioned Girl, and other books by Louisa May Alcott (I actually liked the above better than Little Women)
– Secret Garden
– Little Princess
– books by LM Montgomery (she wrote a lot besides Anne)
– Mary Frances books (housekeeping, sewing, knitting, etc. instructional books for children)
– Redwall
– The Velveteen Rabbit
– Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards
Here for the All Of A Kind Family reminiscing, I read them continuously as a child like a playlist on repeat. They fall in MY favorite category of children’s books (very closely related to yours), which is “Gentle stories about growing up in different times, and also about penny candy”
Abebooks has a ton of used copies of it, and sequels, most for $3.44 including shipping. (Ask not how I know, or whether I just ordered a copy!)
I love buying used books (all the time) but I’m in Canada and they’re more expensive, but my real hangup is that I’m not going to pay $9 for shipping an $8 book, USED BOOK SELLERS. (This complaint gets a lot of play around my house.)
My sister and I read them all so many times as (little Protestant) kids. I was very excited that the Boston Public Library has them, and prompted put holds out for all of them.
OH, I loved those books as a small child. I read the first one to pieces and went running to my mom to ask whether we could be Jewish.
“No, honey, we’re Episcopalians,” she said.
My internal response is a strong, core memory: “SO WHAT, GOL!”
If you aren’t opposed to Amazon, they seem to have the Lizzie Skurnick reprint editions for sale?
All Of A Kind Family!!!! I freaking loved those books. I’m kind of surprised they went out of print — I bought them at a new bookstore as a child, I think.
I am here for this Link Roundup being an All of a Kind Family lovefest. I long ago learned there was no point in including those books in childhood YA favorites discussions unless I was talking to fellow members of the Tribe. I never had patience for Little House, but adored All of a Kind Family.
Yeah, plus it’s nice to have some Jewish reading that isn’t related to the Holocaust or escaping The Old Country. (Rereading Letters from Rifke now, so traumatic…)
This is SUCH a good point. I sometimes wonder what reading all of those Holocaust narratives did to my head. Not that children shouldn’t read them, but when you’re looking for representation of yourself in literature, it’s got to have an effect when most of what you find relates to your people being exterminated.
Yeah, I mean, I guess most kids don’t play “hiding in the ghetto and rationing out one piece of bread for all the dolls,” or judging each house they enter for the ability to hide people from the Nazis, but I like to think my avid reading of Holocaust literature also sparked an interest in human rights and empathy and protecting minority rights. So good and bad and weird all mixed up, that feels like my childhood.
Yes! I never really thought about that, but it’s true, we really did grow up on a diet of Holocaust literature. I memorized a lot of poetry as a kid, and part of the reason was that I figured I should have some reading material in my head in case I ever ended up in a prison camp or something.
I really can’t handle Holocaust stories in any medium, probably due to my status of “not Jewish enough for Jews to consider me a Jew but Jewish enough to have been gassed by Hitler”–god, I’m having panic feelings just writing it–but I loved the All of a Kind Family books for precisely their historical location–that’s when my mother’s side of the family were making their way to New York, so it really felt like “my people.”
Your family was likely neighbors with my family once they got here!
As a half/half who never considered herself as anything other than Jewish, and who had an entire family willing to push anyone off a balcony that said otherwise (this is a true story), I am sorry that you’ve been led to feel Less Than. I am glad that you found one family welcoming, I know I related to them for that same familial connection that you did.
I just recently learned that my half-Jewish grandmother, whose mother had the foresight to send her to England from Berlin shortly after the Nazis came to power, was not actually Jewish enough to have been gassed by Hitler. This completely boggled my mind. I always assumed that if she had stayed she would have died.
Oh look, it’s my exact situation. That’s precisely how I feel about the whole situation.
I’m Catholic, actually, and I read those books as a kid. They were in my school library. (There were no Jewish families in my hometown, to my knowledge.) I loved them just as stories. It wasn’t until I was older that I retroactively appreciated how they taught me a bit about a religion other than my own.
Same! Well, I’m not Catholic, but I’m not Jewish either, and I devoured these books as a kid. I even returned to them as a college student for comfort reading, but I went to college in NYC so I guess it’s not too surprising to find Jewish children’s fiction there.
Also same! I grew up in Milwaukee, so not a small town, but I went to a small Protestant parochial school, so pretty much everyone I know was Lutheran until college.
The AofKF books were great, both as historical fiction for a time and place *and* for glimpses into Jewish life and culture that wasn’t the Old Testament.
Big ol’ non-Jewish-person here and I loved those books when I was a kid!
Yeah I definitely got all four from the library more than once in the late 80s/ early 90s and I thought I owned new copies of the first two, but maybe it was just one (although I guess that would still be 25-30 years ago, yikes).
I was just thinking about the storyline with the uncle’s girlfriend contracting polio the other day, for reasons I don’t recall.
Those were lovely books! I have been distributing them to the children in my life as they hit the right age.
There’s a quiz on Buzzfeed- I suspect we will have a lot of Sarahs: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ajlhornbooklizzieskurnick…
Having never read the books, (they’re on the list now) yep, definitely Sarah.
There was a paperback copy of the first one in my fifth grade classroom and a must’ve read it at least six times . . . I guess I had always assumed they must be easy books to find because they seem like the kind of thing that all children should have access to.
(And this is me reading it half a dozen times when I had zero patience for Laura Ingalls Wilder or L.M. Montgomery or Louisa May Alcott at that age and liked my books full of conflict and drama and potentially with a body count. But All-of-a-Kind Family transcended all that for me.)
I loved All of A Kind Family! I also loved Allegra Maud Goldman by Edith Konecky. I was Catholic but the school I went to had lots of Jewish students so the presence of Jewish children’s literature makes sense in hindsight. I think the Judaism of both the books either went over my head/didn’t make an impression–I’d love to re-read them.
Today I noticed that the courthouse a few blocks from my office is named after a legendary 19th-century logger. I think this is amazing and also very, very Quebec – when I think justice I definitely think “giant French-Canadian man who spent much of his life beating the shit out of the Irish and other anglos.” Love it.
BIG JOE MUFFARAW.
Big Joe Muffaraw
Paddled down the Ottawa
All the way from Mattawa
In just one day!
One the river Ottawa
The best man you ever saw
Was Big Joe Muffaraw
The old folks say
https://youtu.be/Zk-x_tBPzzM
There are a surprising amount of Big Joe statues in the Ottawa Valley.
God I love both of you
The French version of that Wiki article is even better. Highlights:
– One day Jos came across a large number of Irishmen while crossing a bridge over the Ottawa river, whereupon he grabbed one of the Irishmen by the legs and used him as a club to knock the other Irishmen into the river.
– Jos used to announce his arrival in local taverns by kicking the ceiling. (I need a lot more information about this – sure, he was tall, but even if he could lift his feet up to head height, that still leaves him with a ways to go before he reaches the ceiling – so did he do a backflip? Did he take a flying leap into the tavern? Were ceilings just really low back then? Did he worry that merely being a super ripped 6 foot 4 world-renowned Irishman-Walloper wasn’t enough to get the bartender’s attention?)
– “Certain jurists” deemed it inappropriate to name the courthouse after a man who was known to spend a lot of time in taverns, from which we can deduce that drowning dozens of Irishmen for no particular reason is not considered an obstacle to having prestigious public buildings named in your honour.
All of these stories are like 90% of why I’m obsessed with place names and the names of buildings. So many ridiculous stories!!!!
Well, they say Big Joe drank a bucket of gin
And beat the livin’ tar out of 29 men
And high up on the ceiling of the Pembroke Pub
There’s 29 bootmarks and they’re signed with love
Stomin’ Tom did a lot of Big Joe’s rep with English Canada. (I mean, maybe the Irish are still bitter)
Being loyal to my homeland, I will always prefer Sudbury Saturday Night, but this is also good.
My family might sing Big Joe Muffaraw at all our weddings…
Not an obstacle unless he was drunk at the time. You’ve gotta have standards.
I refrained from typing out the entire song.
And he’s the mascot for the local football team! There was a big to-do when it was announced, because it was “Big Joe Mufferaw” and not “Grand Jos Montferrand,” so now it’s just “Big/Grand Joe/s”.
omg that is so Canadian.
Toasties who get headaches: I’ve had a pretty bad one for 2 days now. It woke me up at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, and though it seems to respond briefly to meds, it keeps returning to the same level of pain. This has never happened to me before, but… are multi-day headaches just a thing that happens sometimes? At what point should I be worried/do something besides take painkillers? I’ve had a few migraines before, but they were different—most notably, speech and visual problems/auras and the fact that I couldn’t function (whereas currently I am considerably uncomfortable but still functioning).
I’m a medical issue baby, but I think it would be perfectly reasonable to give your doctor a call, if you have a primary care doctor, or if you have health insurance with a nurse hotline, call them. It’s early in the day so there’s lots of time to pop over if they want to see you! But that’s a pretty painless way to find out what your next step should be.
This probably goes without saying, but do not look up your symptoms online. No good ever comes of it.
You’re probably right—I was hoping to avoid going the doc route because I hate it, but it could be wise.
Doctors visits suck for sooo many reasons, but the upside is always that you can either get reassured that nothing’s wrong, or get whatever treatment you need asap. Whatever you do, I hope you are feeling better quickly!
Seconding this! If this is an option for you, seeing your doctor when you have something new going on can be really helpful. They may be able to identify it as something easier to treat, like a sinus infection, and can decide whether it would be useful to do some tests to rule things out. Make sure you ask them when you should follow up with them if it comes back/doesn’t get better, and if there is anything that you should do in the meanwhile, like starting a headache diary.
I, like my mother before me, get headaches constantly, some of which took more than one day to shake off. My sympathies. I find that mine are pretty much all tension headaches, where tension in the muscles of your neck/back of the head are the culprit–maybe that’s the case here with you? Things beside medicine that have helped me relieve pernicious headaches revolve around relaxing the muscles in my neck/shoulders/back of head: taking a hot shower, laying down with a heating pad under my neck/shoulders, getting a massage. My sister get massages regularly for exactly this reason, and she knows she’s behind on getting one when headaches start cropping up again. Hope any of these strategies help!
I have this problem too and when I discovered the connection between the headaches and the nasty knots in the muscles of my right shoulder I found I could get rid of the headaches a lot faster! But prior to that they would often linger on over a day or two. Massage, stretching, and heating pads also work for me. Good luck and hopefully if/when you visit a doctor it’s something easy to address!
I get those same tension headaches, for days and days at a time. To add to your helpful list of things to try, Robax Platinum, a muscle relaxer + ibuprofen, really helps me.
I am definitely a fan of ibuprofen for headaches as well–ibuprofen is my go-to “cures what ails ye” drug of choice–but since the OP talked about doing things besides taking painkillers I thought I’d just leave it off the list. Never heard of Robax Platinum before! Google tells me that it’s ibuprofen + a muscle relaxant that’s only available by prescription in the US, whomp whomp. Glad it helps you.
Multi-day headaches are a thing that can happen, but if you have the option you should definitely see a doctor. Even if the cause is something relatively harmless, they’ll probably have suggestions to help you manage it better if it comes up again.
Ugh, I’m sorry. Any chance you’re on or close to your period? I often get strong headaches during this time, and this was not the case when I was younger, it just developed.
Unfortunately, they have evolved to occuring on a more regular basis by now; I have recurring headaches that sometimes last half a day or two days or any amount of time in between. It’s not quite a migraine but still sometimes so bad I can only lie down and sleep.
They’re most certainly stress-related, though, so there’s not much I can do.
I’ve been to the doctor nevertheless and he referred me to a specialist for a MRT which is apparently the usual procedure. I only got an appointment in June, so I don’t know anything yet.
But I only went that route because I have them (when it’s real bad) several times a week, so, if this is a one-time experience for you, I wouldn’t worry too much. If it occurs more often, try to write down the day and the intensity, and then see a doctor.
Ugh, I had the same thing – period headaches, starting only about two years ago. The only reason I even found out they were period-related was that I wondered, two periods in a row, how the headache remained unaffected by the painkillers I was on for cramps. As if those weren’t bad enough!
It’s like nature punishes us over and over again.
Aren’t bodies fun?
Interestingly, the day it started was the day I got my period! I wondered about the timing, but it’s never happened before… I hope you can get yours sorted out.
This was exactly what happened to me when I had a 3 day headache & it was actually the first thing my primary care doctor asked about when I went to see her. I’m not sure if it didn’t happen before my late 30’s or if before then I had mostly been on hormonal birth control that controls the headaches. The first time I really noticed it was when I had been off of hormonal birth control for about a year or so. But I had a couple of multi-day period headaches when I was trying to get pregnant that were untouched by anything except Excedrin migraine. FWIW, they went away after I got a Mirena IUD, not sure if that’s causation or correlation, tho!
These just started for me, too!! What the hell, body.
Are you absolutely sure they’re not migraines? This also goes for everyone posting on this thread who gets bad period-related headaches. It took a long time for my mom’s headaches to be diagnosed as migraines because she doesn’t get any aura – no visual disturbances, just pain. I get the same kind of migraines, but mine got diagnosed much earlier because I knew about my mom’s.
I’m not, no; this is just what my GP said. I have an appointment with a neurologist after my MRT and maybe he’ll say something different; after all, a diagnosis wouldn’t be the worst thing to have…
Thanks for your input and I’m glad you at least got diagnosed early on!
Apart from seeing/talking to a doctor; weird things that help me when I had a headache include forcing myself to drink at least a pint of water, putting on a hat, and something menthol like tiger balm on my temples/forehead.
Other than that I just cover my eyes and go to bed until it goes away.
I second the tiger balm recommendation! Or just regular peppermint oil, might be cheaper (I have no idea how much tiger balm costs)
Tiger balm is usually pretty cheap, but something like Vicks or peppermint would be just as good! I think in the US you can get a special menthol stick to rub on your forehead which sound glorious but I’ve never seen in the UK (Americans get all the good OTC products like Bodyglide/Chub Rub, cortisone creams, headache stick. I used to raid my friends medicine cupboard whenever her Dad came back from the US)
I’m sure those menthol forehead sticks exist in the UK, I’ve never used one but I’m sure I’ve seen ads for them. I can picture a woman with pulsing red circles swiping a thing across her forehead and then it’s all green wavy lines. You know what I mean.
I know exactly what you mean, and yet every Boots I’ve ever been in does not have them.
Isn’t that what Olbas Oil is for?
Olbas oil is for unblocking your nose, ime it’s not nice when applied to skin
Ah, I see. The More You Know!*
You can order it online! I got mine from UK Amazon – it’s called Migrastick. There’s another one called 4head or something, but it’s not as good: the essential oils are in something Vaseliney and so they’re not as strong and (more importantly) it messes with my makeup.
I like your tiger balm idea. I’ve never tried it before, but considering all the pain is right in my temples and they’re actually sensitive to the touch, it’s certainly worth a shot.
Try sticking an ice pack on there too, or one of those cooling strips. Basically anything that gives you a cold sensation might help, it usually distracts me a bit at least.
I’ve had success with putting Extra Strength Bengay (ugh) on my neck, forehead, and temples. Smells like Pepto Bismol, but I don’t mind!
Seconding the water thing, it’s really easy not to notice how dehydrated you can get. (I survive on coffee and wine and get a lot of headaches even though I KNOW I need to be drinking water constantly.)
I get deydration headaches really easily, and sugar crash headaches, so first port of call is drinking water till I feel like puking and then pain killers, if that doesn’t fix it then I probably have a brain tumour.
I get these kinds of headaches, too. Usually in the spring and fall, when the weather is unpredictable. In fact, I’m on day two of this particular headache right now! My dad (a pharmacist, but not a doctor) thinks they might be cluster headaches, and some of my symptoms do match that. I think especially if they’re waking you up, that might be the case.
However, apparently cluster headaches are a bitch to diagnose. Tracking your headaches might be a good place to start, and you can bring that info to your doctor. I usually just try to ride it out with ibuprofen until the weather settles into a more consistent pattern. I hope you feel better soon!
P.S. One thing that seemed to help me was taking a daily dose of Vitamin D. It’s totally anecdotal, but my headaches seem less intense when I’m taking it. YMMV, talk to your doctor, etc.
Oh hey, fellow second-day headache sufferer! One of my coworkers yesterday also asked if it might be related to weather/barometric pressure/whatever. The weather here (Boston) has been fairly volatile lately, so it’s possible? Thanks for the tips.
My multi-day headaches are weather-related; it’s so fun to be able to predict weather! (by which I mean, not at all fun) I’ve found that meds for sinus pain are really the only thing that knock them out, but they also keep me up all night so . . . YMMV, and best of luck to you. Headaches suck.
I basically had one long migraine throughout pretty much all of puberty. (Fun!) Back then, it was all headache and nausea and no aura. The few I’ve gotten since then have been all aura and no headache (except for when they are caused by hangovers). So, it may still be migraines even if they’re not the types you usually have. If you’ve had any hormonal changes lately, it may be affecting you.
Imitrex came on the market right as I turned 14 and no longer needed it, which was pretty rotten luck.
What type of meds are you using? I get migraines fairly often where if I take tylenol/paracetamol the pain will lessen, but not go away completely, and as soon as the med wears off, the pain is back as bad as ever. However, if I take ibuprofen, it’s dead and buried within half an hour. (At least for a week or two.) If you haven’t already, if try switching up the painkiller you’re using as it might not be the best one for the job.
The fun thing about migraines is that the symptoms can change over time. My migraines change and I get new/different symptoms every few years it seems. Huzzah!
That being said, if this isn’t a type of headache you’ve had before, I would see a doctor, as others have suggested.
Non-doctor suggestions: my neurologist told me I could take Benadryl if I ever found myself without my migraine meds, and it worked pretty well in a pinch. My purely non-scientific solution is caffeine and fatty foods, that combo usually helps me feel better for some reason. Finally, and I think this is pretty common, but I do love a cold compress on my head or neck.
Feel better!
Thanks for the tip! I didn’t know that about Benadryl.
This! My triggers have changed too. Migraines really are ALL the fun.
I second the period headache hypothesis. I often get a headache that lasts for days around my period, and I self-diagnosed the cause as period-related mild anemia/ lack of iron. Therefore, I try to eat iron-rich foods, preferably some pate with a baguette. I haven’t consulted a doctor and I did make all of this up myself, but anecdotally I think it really helps. And I love pate.
Interesting! I too get painkiller-resistant period headaches (which is weird as, with an iud, I don’t actually have a PERIOD — just cramps, headaches, and mood swings 3 or 4 days a month, hormones, what), and it has never occurred to me that it might have a traceable/treatable cause other than whatever weird chemical shifts are precipitated by menstruation. Huh.
I get barometric pressure migraines that can last weeks at a time. As soon as the pressure changes, I get a migraine, and if it stays high – anything above 29.50 for me – the headache sticks around until the pressure drops again. Last month we had numbers of 30.50+ for almost two straight weeks and I was a WRECK. I have prescription migraine meds, but they make me feel like I’m underwater, so I try to stick with advil and watch the weather reports like a hawk to get out ahead of it. But even with the pain muffled, the sinus pressure still makes my teeth ache and my skull feel like it’s going to explode outward.
My brother and I inherited this lovely sensitivity from our mom. Growing up, rainy days were always occasions of great giddy excitement in our house, because it meant a break in the pressure and a rebirth as a normal human being for each of us.
Oh, interesting, Siri tells me the current barometric pressure here is 30.4. I will make a note of it. I’m sorry you have that sensitivity; it sounds terrible.
Thanks! Yeah, it stinks. But it’s definitely worth tracking to see if the numbers coincide with how you’re feeling. It could also be that it’s just really crappy timing, and a cocktail of triggers are overlapping for you – hormones, barometric pressure, stressing over the headache itself. Do you have any allergies? They can also be a contributing factor – especially now, with all the mold and pollen in the air.
Ugh. I’m so sorry. If this has never happened to you before and it persists, you may want to talk to your doctor about it. If only for the peace of mind. Good luck – I hope you feel better soon!
Is it raining or thunderstorming where you are? I tend to get bad headaches when there are weather changes, and I know some other folks who have the same issue– I think it’s related to changes in barometric pressure.
Though it may be worth going to the doctor if it’s something new for you, just to get checked out.
Lots of good suggestions already, but I’ll also mention Yoga with Adriene’s “Yoga for Headaches” video. It’s very low-key relaxation/breathing/light stretching, which I’ve found helpful for stress and tension headaches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we0q2hojlxg
This may be too late, but I get multiday headaches that have been diagnosed as hemicrania continua. For me, these are period associated and resistant to any painkiller except indomethacin. It turns out nortryptaline (antianxiety med) is the best treatment! All this is to say, you don’t have to live in pain, a visit to a neurologist might be helpful if you have a recurrent issue.
The Twitter gynecologist seems so cool! Definitely going to follow. I think freely sharing information is a really powerful thing, and I hope that whenever I become an expert in a field, I’ll have the same attitude towards propagating knowledge. (Granted, my field isn’t as widely useful as gynecology…)
I hadn’t heard of Dr. Gunter before that article (although from the sound of it I’ve probably seen her quoted without recognizing the name), but I’m a fan now. It’s awesome to see a physician recognizing that the internet is an opportunity for patient education rather than something to ask patients to completely swear off. I’m sure it’s frustrating for medical providers when someone comes in sure they know exactly what’s going on because they read one spurious blog post, but I think this tactic of trying to improve the quality of what’s out there is a more practical one than begging people to stop WebMDing things.
Her statement that, “Sometimes conventional medicine makes it so difficult for people to jump through the hoops,” is, I think, really accurate. I have a science background (although not a medical one) and a job with good health insurance and decent sick leave and I’ll still ignore a medical problem rather than try and get an appointment, get the time off, figure out if I’m supposed to contact a specialist myself or go through my GP for referral, see whether my insurance will cover treatment, etc. Makes that blogger saying I can probably heal myself with yogurt or something look real appealing!
So difficult to jump through the hoops!
I haven’t been to any health care provider of any kind (except for urgent care last month to get swabbed for strep) in the past five years. Astute readers will recall that not only am I an actual working licensed health care provider but also my kid is, well, five.
(I do take the kid to a pediatrician. I’m not a monster. I’m just someone who hates trying to navigate the fucking health care system. I could use a coworker as my health care provider, but I hate the thought that certain other coworkers might be able to dig around in my health record.)
I’ve been reading her blog for several months and I love her. She just wrote a fierce denunciation of a male gynecologist fluttering about “poor, poor girls not born because of sex-selective abortions, we must ban them to protect The Girls!” by going to spurces and discussing her experiences with women who needed them. Powerful, depressing, and necessary.
I just read that post, it was marvellous. I love her simple line – ‘abortion is the symptom, not the problem’ – that works for every bit of whataboutery anti-choicers use to try to derail conversations.
I.e. if there is a social reason that abortions are happening, you improve women’s freedom of choice by resolving the social issue, not by restricting abortion access.
I follow her on Twitter, she’s the best. Besides speaking up on medical misinformation she speaks up on women’s issues. Read her recent post about sex-selective abortion as recommended in the comment below.
Jesus that memory article. Uhm.
I guess I had always assumed that this was just how memory worked? That the idea of vividly flashing back to the personal experience of a memory was mostly just made up for movies?
Yes, me too! I’m not as completely removed from personal memories as she describes (I can recognise old photos and recall emotional situations – especially embarrassing ones!) But there’s no filmic play back. I feel like that’s more to do with a lack of visual memory/ability to mentally visualise things though. I definitely can’t picture myself on a beach etc.
Memory is weird. Having studied psychology for a short time I came to realise presumptions about ‘normal’ functioning are rarely as universal as textbooks suggest.
I have a friend who says she can play back her memories in her mind. It’s completely visual, though.
I don’t have vivid flashbacks, only fragments of images, feelings, and impressions. They’re so fragmented that sometimes I can’t tell whether an impression was imagined (a dream, something I read in a book) or something I’d actually seen (part of my life or from a TV show).
Memory is totally weird.
I feel the same way. I remember some things, but I don’t have any really vivid memories that I can recall or relive, like I know I went to school and stuff & I was once small, and I recently went on a trip, but I can’t really picture that being me or how I felt doing any of those things. A lot of it is just filling in blanks with guesses about how I felt or what was going on. Weird.
This is pretty close to how things are for me. The last few years are clearer, but things become fuzzy quickly or devolve into a series of inferences – i.e. I know when my grandmother died because I know when I flunked out of a specific university.l
The most uncanny thing about that article is how much the artfully manipulated photos resemble how my faceblind self recalls faces. Just soften the lines into curves and it’s exactly how remembered faces look to me! It’s amusing.
Like clarestainthorp, I don’t get a lot of explicit visual playback. Sometimes I get more of a general spatial sense–like, I was sitting here when this happened. It’s not that I can “see” that place around me, in that memory; more like it just feels like that location…
Moreover, the memory I’m referring to in this case is of where I was when I first read a particular scene of a book, which is not highly… important? Like, if we’re going to record some specific memories, can we make them useful ones?
I’m also a person without a strong visual sense, though, so maybe that is connected.
Same! I remember virtually nothing of my childhood, and the vast blank space becomes larger with time. I used to scoff at people who take pictures of everything, but honestly I regret not having more pictures from high school because without the few I have I’d have completely forgotten these people.
Oh man I wish I didn’t have the playback. I can give myself a panic attack just by being briefly reminded of a thing that happened years ago. And I’m like “No let’s not think about that, brain” and it’s like “Too late the movie reel has already started, enjoy your crippling feelings!”
Never has a thing been more REAL. I remember far too much, far too vividly, and it can be both a gift (I remember wonderful moments!) and utterly overwhelming (good luck forgetting any awful moment. ever.)
Of course, I have always assumed that’s just how everyone’s memory works…
it me
This is so interesting. I definitely don’t experience flashbacks like in a movie, it’s nothing that organized or linear, but I often remember details like what I was wearing, what the weather was like, what book I was reading at the time. A lot of my semantic memory is hung on that kind of scenic/affective memory: e.g. I remember asking someone’s birthday but not what her answer was, but I remember celebrating it another time, and I know it fell on X holiday because we were talking about that earlier in the day, and I remember which holiday that was because of the flowers someone was putting together.
I wonder how common this is. My memory is kind of similar to what you describe, in that a lot of my memories are not directly recalled, but are more the result of deduction? “It must have been Christmas Eve because we were at D’s when we had that conversation, and that’s the only time we ever go over there.”
It’s kind of weird; I have a terrible recall when it comes to facts, but I can vividly recall how I felt during any given event, to the point that I end up re-experiencing the relevant emotions, but only when they are negative. (I try not to think about the past too much, as a result. )
Oh, me too! Except in my case, I can never remember the words used (like when trying to recall the awful thing a boyfriend said in a fight) but only the way I felt. It really takes the zing out of my stories, ya know?
“And then he said…I don’t know, but it was HURTFUL.”
This sounds closest to what I experience, too. Brains are so weird.
Yeah, memory isn’t like a video recorder with imperfect playback so much as it’s a collection of stories that you tell yourself (and that can, and often do, change in the telling over time), but she apparently doesn’t even have that.
This is how my memory works – a lot more like stories hinging of photos and fragments. No video! So interesting to see how different everyone’s minds are. I do have moments I remember vividly, as physical memories, but not every detail, for sure.
Me too! Again, not as completely removed as she is – but most of my memory is semantic, and where those facts come from… who knows. My partner, on the other, is more on the opposite end. Between the two of us we have one functional narrative for our relationship…
I haven’t read the article yet, but I kind of figure that’s how my memory works, too. I know that Events happened, and how my childhood home looks, but if there isn’t a picture of it, the scene is gone from my memory. There is no internal movie to look at for me.
SO INTERESTING.
I can remember feelings, and have some visual memories from very intense times. I also have really really good food recall, which is super weird. I remember what I ate on trips, dates, etc. Even when I don’t remember other things.
At my recent wedding, I tried VERY hard to make some specific memories. And succeeded, for the most part! I have a very good memory of my spouse’s face before we walked down aisle together.
But also, and I don’t think this is all alcohol based, I don’t have that many memories of the reception, despite it being 2.5 weeks ago. Like, I barely remember our first dance. But, of course, I remember the food VIVIDLY. Go figure.
I also don’t have visual memories – I don’t visualize while reading either. I remember very little of my childhood, and what I have is very washed out – like remembering the memory rather than the event itself.
Does anyone else have weirdly strong memories associated with audio? I’ve noticed this a few times with audiobooks, like I remember exactly which road junction I was crossing and where I was going while listening to a particular part of David Attenborough’s autobiography, or where I was hiking when I listened to Jo Walton’s My Real Children.
Please enjoy this tiger being a real asshole:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p8f-dwURY20&fea…
Yes. Yes I will. This is an oddly accurate representation of what interactions between my two (of four) male cats is like. The younger one is the aggressor. Always.
Yeah, this happens fairly regularly in my house, often preceded by one cat pretending to be nice to the other and then clobbering him/her.
I’m just surprised the first tiger didn’t lick his shoulder in the universal feline “nothing to see here/I meant to/didn’t mean to do that” language.
Total asshole tiger!! You sleeping? Let’s fight! Who me, start a fight? You’re crazy. I’m just getting a drink of water, see? See me walking away? You crazy tiger.
What a prick!
Hey wake up!
K bye.
Is it normal for zoos to have more than one tiger in an enclosure? I thought they were solitary animals and didn’t like sharing space. (As this video demonstrates.)
They look like siblings to me (based on behavior, not because I know anything special about tigers).
The sleeping tiger is obviously lower on the pecking order than the asshole because it goes into a submissive pose even though it clearly really wants to tear the other tiger a new one.
That back scootching is pretty amazing in itself, though. It really embodies how I feel when my husband comes to bed at 3 AM and steals my covers. Not that I’m bitter and groggy this morning, why do you ask?
Haha, I love how the tiger initially tried to fight him on his back. My cats do that too!
My cat’s “attack” pose involves flopping onto his side, I assume so that he’ll have all legs free for grabbing and slashing.
My cat’s as well. I figure that way she can easily get her paws around my wrist and kick until my hand’s neck is broken.
Someone come talk to me about the Doctor Strange trailerrrr: https://youtu.be/Lt-U_t2pUHI
it is funny to hear him use Doctor House’s American Accent.
Doctors Strange and House! Gravelly Assholes Saving the World!
they should put your slogan on the posters
He DOES sound like House! And Tilda Swinton as kinda-Morpheus? HERE FOR IT.
that is the standard “Grumpy British Guy Does an American Accent” accent, very heavy on the junkyard-dog “r” sounds.
Oh yeah! I remember Helena Bonham Carter saying that “Fight Club” was really difficult because of the hard R in words like ‘cancer’. Guess the House accent overcorrects for that.
He does a better “northern” accent than his one from Twelve Years a Slave, I have to say.
Not enough Chiwetel Ejiofor.
That is written in Sharpie on the outside of the known universe.
Luckily you can vote for him in the Tournament of Hotties today! https://vgum.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/homeless-mo…
If you’ve never seen it, I can heartily recommend Redbelt. Originally got it because I like Mamet’s stuff before he became a neocon weirdo, but Chiwetel Ejiofor does a phenomenal job in the leading role.
The one-two punch of that movie and Talk To Me are what ignited my eternal crush on Chiwetel. That movie also made me want to learn jiu-jitsu!
Did you see the shot of him walking down the street with a sword and think, “Shit, it’s The Operative!”?
This looks like the Matrix mashed up with a Marvel movie to make: Mysticism: The Movie and I am HERE FOR IT. 🙂
Not enough reality-bending time monks played by Tilda Swinton in the world.
(but yes, not sure how I’ll make it through a whole movie of Cumberbatch’s American accent.)
I am glad I wasn’t the only one thinking Matrix. I know absolutely nothing about Dr Strange but it looks like fun!
I’m rather tired of the “white man learning mystical, vaguely-Asian powers and saving the world” trope. I’m especially tired of Benedict Cumberbatch playing these roles. I mean, Dr. Strange even has a manservant named Wong!
obviously though, we also got to talk about how thoroughly east-Asian-inspired this story is despite not featuring any actual Asians.
This is 100 percent true. I feel the same about Iron Fist, so far.
Yup. Count me out.
okay, ugh yes. I don’t know anything about Dr. Strange, if the comic-book storyline is that appropriative, or if this is the movie deciding to elaborate on an origin story.
well, it’s interesting, the character of Doctor Strange has been around for more than fifty years — when he first started, the origin story was 100% “white dude goes to Tibet to learn the mystic secrets of Asia and then becomes Sorcerer Supreme and also he has an Asian manservant named Wong”. In the subsequent half century, different writers have strayed farther from or closer to that narrative, but it’s always been saddled with the fact of its 1960s origins.
That said, I 100% agree that there is a big problem with just thoughtlessly replaying a racist-ass origin story from 1963 — AND ACTUALLY somehow making it more racist? Like, at least in the comics, The Ancient One was actually Tibetan instead of a bald-headed (however rad Tilda Swinton is) white lady.
Mmmmmmmmm. I see. That IS wildly ridiculous. I think I just thought “ooohh wildly make-believe world with a bald Tilda Swinton because why not, this is some sci-fi Jupiter Ascending made-up land.”
but if this is supposed to be ACTUALLY TIBET that is crazy, and even if it’s not, I do see how problematic that is, and I’m really bummed there aren’t any Asian actors in it.
Plus, Swinton’s character was originally a Tibetan man called the Ancient One. Apparently they’re trying to justify the change by saying that’s just a title passed to various people, but that’s not the way it was in the comics. There was only one Ancient One, and he was Tibetan.
I heard somewhere that it’s not supposed to be Actually Tibet because China would not approve. Not that that makes it better.
I was going to say! Needs more East Asians.
I was ambivalent about this movie, but the prospect of a) Benedict Cumberbatch’s ridiculous accent and b) Tilda Swinton apparently punching his ghost out of his body have pushed me over into the ‘I need this in my eyes immediately’ camp.
I just need a movie where Tilda Swinton punches the ghost out of Benedict Cumberbatch. Nothing else. Just that. Over and over again.
wut. I need to see this. Fuck all the other issues this movie has, I need to see Tilda Swinton perform an exorcism by punching.
Okay but Cumberbatch’s body is clearly going to fall over and get a concussion in that shot.
It’s a mashup of Batman Begins (white peeps training each other in Buddhist temples) and Inception. Not feeling it.
I was very meh about Doctor Strange, but now that it has Tilda Swinton, I’m kinda excited. I might need a Kermit gif.
I have no time for men who act like supporting their kids is the worst thing possible in the world, and HEAVEN FORBID that there is any appearance that the woman gets any benefit out of the situation. And then play his sad victim story and attract the sympathy of naive, gullible people? No.
We are living in the 21st century, people. Can we PLEASE get everyone to come on board?
that photo made it very very hard for me to concentrate on anything else in this roundup. THEY ARE CONFUSED YET GIDDY LOOKING BABIES HOLDING HANDS HOW COULD ANYTHING ELSE BE RELEVANT EVER
I subscribed to Esmé Weijun Wangs Tiny Letter on Monday after reading her schizophrenia artic, and I have already received two lovely letters. I higly recommend signing up, she seems like a wonderful person.
I would have been hesitant to approve that comment as well. Whenever I see or hear a preponderance of “you need to/you should” being directed at me or used in general, I start to feel fire coursing down my spine – never a good sign.
UGH and I know there were SO MANY at Nikki for that casual racism article, simply based on the few that were shared here. Wading through those must have been nightmarish. …And smile!
One of the reasons I love the commentariat here is how advice is given. It’s never “you should” or “you need to”. Instead, people always phrase it like “well, this worked for me, maybe it’s worth a try?” or “Perhaps, if you’re feeling up to it, you could try x” or something like that, with alongside it lots of “hugs if you need them” and “you did nothing wrong”. It warms my heart, it really does. And I think that’s why some people have really benefited from the advice here!
I love how self-reinforcing it is, too. I am totally capable of writing a long advice comment and realizing as I click “post” that I forgot to add the kindness and encouragement part, but that’s very hard to do here!
Except when it’s “you should set him on fire.” But some situations require urgent advice, forcefully given.
One of the finest moments of my life was when GentlemanX, when confronted with a nine year old dude telling me, repeatedly, at volume, what I should do, interrupted with a firm “You know what you should do? Stop telling ladies what to do”. Sage advice, that.
Nine. Year. Old. Dude.
They are starting early these days.
Well. He does want to be just like his dad :S
Yuuuuuuuuuuup. He’ll never stop being the kid’s dad, but he did stop being part of my family, and there is some solace in that 😉
I’m enjoying that so far this morning I’ve seen a couple of Donald Glover GIFs. I hope this is a harbinger of how my day will be.
I think I noped out of that comment with “But what I can’t stand is…” about other peoples’ discussions about a serious problem that the commenter may or may not (probably not) actually experience. Bless you, Nicole.
Also, babies holding hands might be my favorite picture subject, besides dog pictures, especially when dog is going in backwards for a butt rub.
Pictures of yawning kittens are right up there for me, alongside babies holding hands.
DAIRY PUZZLE tho.
I miss taking a baby to a restaurant. I could rake in all kinds of compliments for his “great behavior” and just give him a $3 fruit salad. Now he’s five, and loud (well-behaved, just has a loud talking voice), and is apparently a tiny lumberjack because he eats more than I do and even our neighborhood diner has therefore gotten expen$ive if the kid is going to tag along.
Oh man, basically all my friends with kid(s) have gone through that, “MAN it was so much easier to take an immobile child places, she just sat in her carrier or the car seat and when she got fussy I stuck a boob in her mouth or gave her a Larabar from my purse, jeez, now she gets into EVERYTHING and like TALKS and EATS FOOD FROM THE MENU and stuff, what is my life” phase.
I worked in a daycare when I was in high school, and ever since then I have told anyone who will listen that I LOVE babies, but am not too keen on small children, so I don’t care if my (eventual) husband isn’t super jazzed about babies – apparently they are boring to some people? NOT ME – as long as he LOVES kids, because once they start talking back I am just going to hand them to him to deal with.
Wait til he starts playing high school/competitve sports. Oof, my grocery bill!
I’m hoping he a) learns the joy of staying home to read from both his moms and also b) inherited the strong Ravenclaw tendencies from both myself and our sperm donor, and that he therefore c) turns out to be more Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club and less Anthony Michael Hall in Edward Scissorhands.
My 9 yo swam half a mile the last weekend he was with me.
And then we went home from swim lessons and basically spent the ENTIRE REST OF THE DAY feeding him things. It turns out that my most important parenting skill is the one where I stock the freezer.
man, swimming always makes me really hungry, too
Eeek! Don’t let that kid do a triathlon until he moves out and buys his own food, then.
Also? There is the thing where, as far as strangers are concerned, quiet child = good child. The best behaved child is one who is asleep. Small children derogate from goodness the moment they open their eyes. By the time they get around to expressing needs, they might as well be rabid dogs.
Taking toddlers to restaurants is hellish, and it doesn’t get better until they’re about eight.
currently suffering the phase where both my kids suck at restaurants. Thank god for pizza delivery and chinese takeout.
The best thing at restaurants with toddlers? Experienced wait staff who periodically drop by with something new–crackers, dough, lemon wedges, whatever–that fascinate and distract if the food is taking a long time in the kitchen. They get a big fat tip and requests for their tables on subsequent visits.
Our toddlers are now giant teens. All I can say is that the payoff is really great if you have a comfortable, family friendly place to go where you can work on “restaurant manners”.
We have enough loud hipster restaurants in my city that people can really chill with their kids without annoying everyone. Cement floor + picnic tables + loud-ish music + buzzing ambience + fast service + food served in pie tins = kid friendly like whoa.
The only current downside of bringing my baby to restaurants is that she eats all my avocado. ;_; Also, she once started grabbing the tofu from my pad see ew from my plate, which is how I discovered she likes tofu! And she’s never not hungry!
This might be a good place to share that I was at dim sum this weekend with a 3-year-old, and got to witness her experiencing her first potsticker.
It went like this: suspicious eyeballing…sniff…lick…nibble…RAPTURE.
This process is basically my child’s introduction to every food he has ever consumed. He doesn’t like yogurt, he doesn’t like smoked cheese. He’s never had meat. Otherwise he will eat whatever you put in front of him, although for appearance’s sake he will pretend to be put off by a new food until he takes that first taste.
“[A]lthough for appearance’s sake he will pretend to be put off by a new food until he takes that first taste. ” Serious question. Is your baby a cat?
What troubles me the most about the reaction to the Attawapiskat suicide crisis is that people are only focusing on sending out bandaid solutions instead of wanting to address the root problems: insufficient & overcrowded housing, & a severe lack of basic facilities or general infrastructure.
I would never argue that this community doesn’t desperately need counselors and/or mental health professionals, but all of that won’t amount to much if a person living on that reserve isn’t able to meet even their most basic human needs.
My heart cries out for these kids, that they suffer so much because we – Canada – fucked their community (and all First Nations/Inuit communities) up so royally. It’s just wrong on so many levels.
*nods vigorously*
This +a million. I cannot understand what the policy makers are missing.
Did we all see this? Here’s What Young People In Attawapiskat Say They Need To Fight The Suicide Crisis
I didn’t see it and thank you very much for sharing. I ache for more indigenous coverage.
I hadn’t, thank you. What Kuluvi said is so true, their problems are much deeper than a medical health professional can fix – their mental health problems are the SYMPTOM of what’s wrong in this case, not the cause.
I don’t know. I mean, yes, those problems are huge and need to be addressed, and you’re right that counselors and mental health professionals can only help with some of the causes, not all of them. But I would say that the root problems aren’t that simple; they include, but are not limited to, a culture that was deliberately suppressed and has never entirely recovered, a cycle of physical, emotional and sexual abuse started by white schools and churches, alcoholism, the genetic effects of generations of trauma, and a school system that has trouble getting good teachers to stay in remote villages. There’s no quick and easy way to address these problems, but in the meantime, having counselors on hand saves lives in a really immediate way.
I live in Alaska, where we have similar problems. A few years ago, I had a student from a village that had just had its own suicide epidemic. She told me that it was very difficult for the teenagers in her village to admit to being depressed and ask for help, because there was so much pressure on them to be the exceptions and be immune to the epidemic. I tried to find her a counselor through the school I work at, since she’d written about her depression and clearly needed someone to talk to, and there weren’t any counselors available. The school just didn’t have the resources to help her. (I hope, by the way, that it’s okay to write about my student in this way, since I left out identifying information? If anyone thinks it’s not cool, I’ll take this post down.)
Babies. In. Tiny. Ties.
For anyone else finding themselves requiring more of this, may I recommend this video of Ellie Kemper helping a baby in a tuxedo dunk a basketball, among other silliness.
That kid is having none of it. Amazing.
I cannot get over the tie! I need to know where one procures these jumpers and do they come in 4 year old sizes?
It’s a Gymboree blue sweater with the tie stitched on, it is GENIUS, and I hope you find one!
ITS STITCHED ON? That’s even better, I thought it was in the pattern!
Well now I know what my brothers children are getting for Christmas. Sorted. Niece will look so dapper in a bow tie.
Ugh Nicole you’ve sent me down a dark hole that my bank balance will not thank you for
TODDLER SWEATER VEST http://www.gymboree.com/shop/item/toddler-boys-ca…
Not even my children.
One of my best friends buys my kids stuff from Gymboree and it is so fancy and durable and gorgeous.
My elementary school library had all of the All of a Kind Family books, and I LOVED THEM. They were the main way that I, a half-Jewish kid with a Jewish last name but militantly anti-religious parents, growing up in a public school of mostly Mormons and (other) evangelical Christians, learned about that part of my heritage (seriously: at least 2/3 of what I knew about what it meant to be Jewish came form All of a Kind Family books (the other third, from my dad’s side of the family, was the Yiddish jokes, rants about the stupidity of religion, and a sense that as ludicrous as becoming a practicing Jew would be, Christianity was definitely more sinister. ETA — I’ve grown up a lot, though! And even my dad has moderated his opinions, or at least learned to pretend to moderate them in public.)
It was only a lot later that I realized that the other thing All of a Kind Family did for me was give me an high (and almost always disappointed) expectation that children’s and YA novels would have Jewish characters who were real characters and not just helpless and tragic victims who demonstrated that Prejudice Is Bad or wise “magical rabbis” (vel sim.) dispensing sage advice to the gentile protagonist.
Since I am not Jewish, I wonder if I would have been familiar with the books from a much younger age if I was. But I have no idea why they aren’t better known! They’re AWESOME! And considering that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is my favourite book you’d think I would have cottoned on faster.
My favorite Beverly Cleary book is The Luckiest Girl. I read it when I was a lot younger (I think I had a copy of it), and kept very fond, nostalgic memories for it. A few years ago I went looking for it again. I don’t think I remembered that it was Beverly Cleary at first, I’m pretty sure I googled basic plot points and found it? But anyway I bought the ebook version for myself and reread it and wow the nostalgia was so intense. I mean it’s still a pretty good book even now as an adult but the best part of it was the waves of nostalgia when I read parts I very intensely remembered.
(I must have been ~in the mood~ for more after that because I also ended up reading Fifteen, and Jean and Johnny for the first time, because they’re all categorized as part of her “First Love” series.)
My favorite Beverly Cleary is her autobiography, which I devoured as a 10-year-old. It was written for childen but very honestly and may have been my first window into an adult woman’s perspective. All I wanted was to be just like her.
Anyone else get sucked into r/marriedredpill last night thanks to Nicole’s excerpts on Twitter? I feel much worse about the human race than I did yesterday thanks to that. The moment that killed me was when one man responded to criticism of his misogynist ways with (I’m paraphrasing slightly), “I got an hour long blow job tonight so I think my marriage is fine, thankyouverymuch.”
That seems like it would be uncomfortable for everyone involved?
My jaw is seizing up just reading about it.
Eh, probably the wife doesn’t have to open tooooooo wide…
This is the actual perfect response.
seeeeriously
That was my thought! I mean a) not a relationship benchmark in the first place but also b) not at all appealing! I checked with a person with a penis and he agreed that didn’t sound great for either party.
According to male porn start on Cracked (I can’t google that right now.) chafing from teeth is a serious issue with extended length blow jobs.
My jaw hurts just thinking about it
Perhaps he forgot to specify that it was from a robot?
omg I read that and it is sad how amazing it makes me feel about my partner just because he does not tell me I owe him sex.
Oh ye gods. Staying far far away. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Wise choice. I paraphrased because there was no way I was diving back in there again.
An hour? My jaw is hurting in sympathy.
I read that and basically wanted to write thank you letters to the people who pioneered the no fault divorce.
I really hope all the wives of all the guys on those forums are just biding their time, lining up their ducks, so that the divorce will be as good for them as possible. In fewer than six months from now.
I am so confused! What is “r/marriedredpill”? I just looked at the reddit, and I have no idea what it is even about. And there is a bluepill reddit too?!
Gah!!!!
Married men’s rights activists/pick-up artists/other dudes who believe not only in traditional gender roles, but also in an unhealthy helping of evolutionary psychology bullshit, overt antifeminism, plus the idea that real men are total assholes to women and that’s what women (who are dumb and irrational) want. It is the worst.
(The bluepill is folks who reject and/or like to mock the redpill stuff. So, like, normal humans.)
Thank you! It is all absolutely horrifying!!! D:
and just throwing in here, as was much delighted upon all the internet round recently, that the red pill bros took their name from a movie series that we now know was made by two trans women.
Oh, I should say “married.” Who knows if they really are.
Also, I’m sure others have told you this, but A+ username.
😀
What I found worse was the (non-marriedredpill) post by the guy asking for advice on how to tell his children that they are not his biological children because he and his wife have a cuckolding fetish and deliberately “bred” (HIS WORDS) his wife with their partners for 2 out of their 3 kids. The kids are now teenagers – oldest is 18 – and they have no clue and didn’t anyone even CONSIDER how they would tell them, I dunno, BEFORE they were conceived? My face while reading it was… priceless, I’m sure.
Same, I really really hope that one was fake
Oh, Toastfriends, don’t click the Amazon link for “Fifteen” unless you want to read a lot of vaguely slut-shaming reviews about how much better the 1950s were and how today’s YA romances have too many makeouts 🙁
Those tweens are taking the shortcut to Slut Road, I tell you. The 1950s were such a golden age for women, as we all know.
It was a simpler time…because I don’t remember it…
I wonder if those people trust reports from such fly-by-night organizations as, say, the CDC?
“Birth rates for U.S. teenagers have generally fallen in the United States since peaking in 1957. The rate fell 57% between 1991 and 2013.”
that’s right buckos, your precious 50s had the peak year for teen pregnancies.
Uuuugh.
See also: the reviews of “Sister of the Bride” (which, love) in which people lose their shit because the heroine has vaguely-datelike plans with TWO DIFFERENT BOYS at the end and the narrative presents this as a perfectly fine thing.
SHUT IT, PEOPLE.
I wonder if the ignorant people who say that realize that kids were making out even in the 1950s.
Or that plenty of kids are having sweet, chaste, Fifteen-style relationships now.
Yep!
I can honestly say I had no idea All-Of-A-Kind Family was a Jewish thing! Maybe this is why I’ve always assumed other people knew more about my culture than they actually did. Those books are such treasures.
Off topic, but serious: How to Talk with Your Kids about Donald Trump
I was excited about Berkeley scientists examining the intersection of race and news media through a child’s developmental learning lens.
Donald Trump is my kid’s greatest fear. Not in the way that a Donald Trump presidency (shudder) is among my greatest fears. But like, my kid doesn’t know there is such a thing as a boogeyman, so Trump fulfills that function for him?
He knows that Trump, like us, lives in NYC. He knows that Trump “says mean things” and wants to be president. He fears that Trump will COME TO OUR HOUSE. “Mama, what will we do if Donald Trump comes to our house?!?!?!? [all the fretting blue-forehead emoji]” ….. “Mama, what will we do if Donald Trump comes to our house AND WE ARE NOT HOME?!?!?!?!?!”
(We’ve had a few talks recently about the specific kinds of mean things that Trump says. Age-appropriate, I hope, for a 5yo.)
My friend’s six-year-old (who is also a fierce feminist!) has the same kind of fears about Trump, and is worried he’ll deport her Hispanic friends. Me too, kiddo.
Trump announced his candidacy about a month before my baby was born, so her whole life, he’s been the Republican frontrunner. I can’t handle this.
Ahhhhh, I am torn between distress and awwwww. That feeling, all the time, must be one of the upsides to having kids.
And you sound like a good parent!
Thx for the link. Important safety information-Avoid the Comments section. It’s pretty ugly.
oh, wow, yeah, the comments are TERRIFYING. Thanks for the heads up.
My two year old asked my husband, “Who is Donald Trump?” the other night. We both started laughing and then sort of hung our heads in shame. There are so many more honorable and worthwhile people I would like our son to know about.
“Well, if he wins, he wants to send people back to the countries where they are from,” said my son. “So what is he going to do with me? Send my arm and leg back to Africa, send my other arm and leg to Mexico, and the rest of me back to different countries in Europe?”
OH MY GOD. THIS KID. KIDS IN GENERAL. !!!!!!!
This is why people say “out of the mouths of babes,” right? And it just amazes me how they carry Trump logic to an even more horrifying and Hannibal-esque, yet strangely natural, conclusion.
So true! “If [x] wins, what is [x] going to do with me?” is I think a pretty core concern for any election, at any level.
OF COURSE YOUR CHILD IS HAVING NIGHTMARES OF DONALD TRUMP COMING TO HIS HOUSE TO CHOP HIM INTO PIECES AND DIVIDE THOSE PIECES INTO SHIPPING BOXES, THEN DOING THE SAME TO ALL HIS FRIENDS AND EVERYONE HE KNOWS. LIKE AN EVIL SANTA CLAUS MADE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. IT’S A COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLE REACTION TO THIS PRESIDENTIAL RACE.
Look, it’s not like Trump is the Zodiac Killer or something. We already have Ted Cruz for that.
Maybe the Zodiac Killer is actually a conglomerate.
Although that would suggest that both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are capable of cooperation.
I know this is more of an OT post, BUT I just put down my deposit for grad school. Simmons Archives/History, here I come!
I’m excited and also feel like I am going to die because this is theoretically the next three years of my life, is expensive, and is a real step towards saying “this is what I want to do with my life and I expect to be happy and fulfilled by it”, but oh goodness, what if everything falls apart. So, you know, I’m just marinating in the normal mixture of emotions that happens whenever you make a big life choice, and I needed to share.
Yay yay yay! Archivists are the coolest.
Having recently decided to do the grad school thing next year, too, the “I expect to be happy and fulfilled by it” part is what terrifies me. I dearly hope I’m not about to devote years of my life and significant effort to something only to move on afterward to a career that (like what I’m doing now) makes me go, “Ehh, it’s a job, I guess.”
Me too. The money is a huge part of it, but just the future possibility of disappointment in something that I’m so hopeful for. I guess I’m risk-averse? I guess I just jumped in head-first when I was younger, the first time around? Hopefully that’s why my first career choice didn’t fit in the end and I bailed in a super huge freakout. Hopefully, I know myself slightly better now and care a lot less about what other people think at this point, twenty years later.
Anyway, it’s nice to hear from others that this ball of emotions is not unheard of.
Congrats!!
*throws confetti* congratulations!
I remember those feels very well when I put down my grad school deposit. I cried a lot, and not just because of the money. Congratulations! As the partner of a librarian (who is not an archivist), I am all for more experts in informational things.
Congratulations! 🙂
hey congrats! I have a friend in that exact program! It seems pretty dang cool!
She sometimes comments here but is currently gallivanting around England, but I’m sure in future if you need Simmons people to talk to she’ll be around!
Congratulations! I have always greatly admired Simmons.
Simmons! That’s an excellent choice from what I can tell. Congrats!
My #1 advice is join us on archives twitter and #2 is read all of medium.com/on-archivy.
Do you have any advice on how to infiltrate archives twitter? I’m still pretty firmly in the personal twitter realm of following friends, Nicole, Mallory, and a couple of celebs that I like. Would you recommend using a Professional Twitter or is it more chill in the archives twitter world?
Congrats! If you’re doing the program locally, there are a LOT of Boston Toasties and Toast-adjacent folks to hang with and all of the ones I have met are rad as heck.
All of a Kind Family <3
Team Sarah, for the record.
The Toastie-est of book covers I ever did see
Found on FB this morning
AMAZE.
The must-anticipated SECOND NOVEL just has a line drawing of boobs and is “A gritty and groundbreaking tale of how the romanticized version of the author grows up and finds meaning in an alienating world by having sex with minors.”
<3
This (and awnutts comment) apply to so many white men in creative fields, not just novelists and not just first works. These are dark days we live in.
Well, if nothing else, I hope that idiot learns that trying to get custody of your kid for revenge and money is A TERRIBLE GD IDEA.
Also I love the dad who calls it a “stigmata on single fatherhood”
He was so mad at himself when he realized his mistake! Hilarious.
I do adore how shocked the “friend” is that this visit to family court had repercussions.
If you’ve been dodging your legal obligations for five years, maybe don’t sign up to stand in front of a judge who has the power to unilaterally enforce those, even though no one said anything about them.
what an unexpected pleasant surprise that must have been for the mom, eh?
Off topic but I have my first post-grad school job interview today. I have NINE PAGES of notes and questions* to bring with me because I am nervous and excited and I want this job so bad. Also graduation is a month from today and I will never be a student again ever so I am having A Lot of Feels.
*I’m not going to ask all of them, I just wanted options.
Those are some mighty Feels. Good luck!
Good luck!!
I know what you mean about never being a student again – it’s basically the end of an era, and it is both exciting and terrifying and feels very unreal.
Good luck, let us know how it goes! 🙂
I think it went really well! I talked to the executive director for almost an hour, then she introduced me to the incumbent (who’s retiring) and we talked for a while, and then they asked me to sit in on a conference they’re holding on Friday. I’m excited beyond belief. I think this could be the job for me.
I would like to put this here. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/the-great-e…
Freedomm!
Sorry it’s not a real link, I am not very tech savvy.
My mom sent me this today! I like how people were like, did someone steal him?? and the people who work there were like, nope, if you knew octopuses you’d know this was totally a jailbreak.
I saw that as well and thought it was simply fantastic. I love the idea that octopi are curious!
They’re great characters. Otto the Octopus is another one; famous for rearranging everything in his tank “much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants”, also juggling with the hermit crabs and more: http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/11/07/ott…
Toasties! It is my birthday, and I have lemon cake and my coworker got me a cute little flower arrangement, and my parents are taking me and my daughter to dinner tonight. I hope you all have a fantastic day, and that the weather is nice where you are, and that the animals in your life give you snuggles (or not, as is your preference).
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday! I hope the lemon cake is as delicious as I’m imagining it is.
NICOOLLLLEEEEEE HIS LIL TINY TIE IT’S TOO MUCH
But it’s part of the sweater, right? (Regardless, it’s adorable)
“As a woman you won’t get shot”
I’m sorry, but Sandra Bland, the victims of Daniel Holtzclaw, and so many others prove that even if you might not “get shot” right on the spot, if you are a black woman you have MUCH to fear from the police and are NOT guaranteed safety.
And really, is “You won’t get shot,” or even, if it were true, “You won’t get raped,” the standard we are aiming at here? How about “Police will treat law-abiding citizens with respect regardless of gender, race, culture, or sexual orientation.” This is the standard in most other workplaces.
I recently read MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail and the letter that inspired it for the first time (because all my history classes in school ended at WWII, WTF), and it explains so much. For minorities, just being well-behaved and going through the proper channels to file a complaint has never been enough. That is what white leaders have wanted them to do, so that white leaders can resolve the problem to the white leaders’ satisfaction.
Also: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/13/black-wo…
Aiyana Stanley-Jones was SEVEN, and she was murdered by a cop. Even little black girls aren’t immune.
His misogynoiristic comment is why #SayHerName is a thing. Because black women and girls also get murdered by police, but media very rarely focuses on them.
Bonus: Daniel Holtzclaw, afaik, still hasn’t reported to prison to serve his jailtime. So even though he was found guilty, he’s currently still getting away with whatall he’s done.
The non-Cliffe baby looks so grumpy!
non-Cliffe baby is amazed at magic surging through Cliffe baby’s fingertips!
An article about the best Freaks & Geeks scene ever? Please and thank you!
http://www.avclub.com/article/freaks-and-geeks-ca…
That is literally the best scene. But let’s talk about something: I tear up (just like the author) every time I see it. Why? I mean, it’s not like Bill is desperately lonely or his life is especially terrible, he just has a “low-grade sadness fill[ing] the contours of his life”. But maybe its the juxtaposition of that knowledge with that unabashed, open-mouthed crackup that he does through the whole thing that makes me want to cry? Someone help me understand myself and us as a whole, please.
Ha, I watched it and was ready to come back here and say “can someone tell me why I burst into tears watching this?” and then I saw the author mention it.
I don’t remember if I cried when I saw this while actually watching the series, funny enough.
I’m thinking about this now. The author says that Bill is really the only one who is comfortable with himself. Is THAT why? Because I was totally a geek in high school, and was never comfortable with myself. Does it make me sad that I couldn’t find that comfort?
No idea if I’m on the right track, it just popped into my head.
LOVE
I also was SO IMPRESSED that they dealt with intersexuality in such a progressive and thoughtful way, for the time (really, for this time still!) How did Judd Apatow go on to make crap like Knocked Up? I really don’t know.
I cannot reconcile that Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen and James Franco all became buddies on Freaks and Geeks and then went on to make the bullshit they make now.
I just keep thinking of that Trainspotting scene with Sick Boy talking about how all the great musicians and actors just start sucking more and more and they age. Like, is it celebrity? The more famous you get the less you are capable of making insightful, nuanced work?
Maybe? Either way, A++++ Trainspotting reference.
I’m regretting now that I didn’t just post “All I’m trying to do is help you understand that The Name of The Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory” and leave it, but hey.
– That Dear Prudence LW whose ex wants to pay her for a date? Ugh. Reminds me of an ex-roommate who wanted to pay his ex, who had come out as a lesbian some time before, for sex, and she was broke enough to consider it. (No idea if they ever did it, pretty sure that I don’t want to know.)
– Expect a lot of backlash for that Spielberg movie from a certain strain of Catholic that feels that they’re constantly being “persecuted” (read: objections to official Church policies on LGBTs and abortion). As I’m a “lapsed” Catholic myself, I’ll be dealing with the same from various relatives.
– Even for Reddit (disclaimer: I’m a redditor myself), that guy (who, crazy thought here, just may in fact really be the “friend” he refers to):
He had a lawyer but he can’t afford to pay her anymore because he thought when he won custody his ex-girlfriend would have had to lay for his lawyer. But the judge denied custody because he was never involved before because his ex-girlfriend never tried to make him be. He does have a job and all that but she just has more money.
It is really disconcerting that anyone, including the super conservative Catholic circles I am tangential to, could think that stealing someone else’s child and getting away with it is acceptable, and any protesting or subsequent negative portrayals count as persecution.
I really can’t even stretch my brain around the possibility of backlash – have you heard any backlash yet? I sincerely hope you’re wrong about this one.
There’s pretty regularly news stories about people who adopt a baby in shady circumstances and then fight the birth parent who is trying to get the baby back, or who want to adopt their foster kid while the people in charge of the foster care system are trying to reunite said kid with their family. And there’s always some people on the baby-stealing side of the argument. The Mortara case is worse, but it’s not enough worse that I would expect a total absence of backlash.
They probably won’t argue that stealing the child was ok, but they will argue that it was right to refuse to return him.
I haven’t heard any yet, but I’ve read plenty of stuff from the ultraconservative apologists who deal with repeated and ongoing cases of clergy sex abuse by blaming the victims, or blaming the press for reporting it, or blaming hippies or feminists or gay people or whomever else they can latch onto in order to deflect criticism from the Church. This case has been reported before, but there’s an order of magnitude of difference publicity-wise between a book and a Spielberg movie. (Especially expect the more blatantly homophobic apologists to highlight the fact that a gay playwright, Tony Kushner, is writing the script.)
Yep. It’s inconceivable to most, but the ‘we are persecuted’ Catholics are definitely A Thing, and a terrible Thing at that. I’ve had to deal with a close relative reacting to the child abuse scandal in exactly the way you describe (rather than, y’know, having EMPATHY with the victims). I shouldn’t have been surprised, their reaction to the introduction of Childline (phone counselling service for victims of child abuse rolled out in UK & Ireland in the 1990s) was ‘That’s just encouraging children to inform on their parents!’ :-0
I just got the ebooks of those Beverly Cleary books from my library. I’m currently reading Orry-Kelly’s memoir, so I think some chaste YA romances will be a nice palate cleanser.
My mom told me she read Fifteen four or five times when she was a young teenager, so I’m especially looking forward to that one.
Smart Bitches Trashy Books posted a lovely tribute to the Luckiest Girl in honor of Beverly Cleary’s birthday and it reminded me of everything I love about that book. http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/the-lu…
How funny; when I saw the Ruth Graham link I immediately thought of Lizzie Skurnik, because her essays about “Fifteen” and “Sister of the Bride” are so lovely. (Especially in “Sister of the Bride” she quotes a passage about her mom’s “Ladies Club” and points out how it’s illustrating different kinds of women-for-women communities before explicit consciousness raising second wave feminism.) I think I tried to read one of them when I was very young and dropped it because it was too different from what I was expecting, Beverly Cleary-wise, but I keep meaning to pick them up now.
(Also, I’m not the only one who had a lot of feels about Beezus, right? I’m a little sister, but much more of a Beezus I think. I loved Ramona as a character (and actually really like the name–both names, for that matter, on my short list) but even as a kid I felt like hanging out with a real Ramona would probably be exhausting and a little bit stressful for me sometimes.)
Off to actually read the links now.
Oh man, that memory article. IT ME. IT MEEEEEE.
I immediately sent that link to two different friends and had a a long, heartfelt conversation just now about what we think makes us us if it’s not our memories and it was pretty lovely.
Okay but non metaphorical opossums are kinda cute right? Especially baby ones.
Their crooked little smiles! <3
There's a wonderful podcast called The Sporkful that frequently touches on these kinds of issues! Also, seconding the recommendation for Searching for General Tso, the documentary anyway, which is on Netflix.
Hello. Have you considered getting a back or neck massage? (Do NOT get a chiropractor to feel around in there.)
Every time I go in to my masseuse with a long-lasting headache, she palpates my neck and back, feeling out the tenseness, and then after working a bit on the back and neck, she begins working on the larger muscle groups, clearing knots and stress there before returning to my neck and back.
Scalp massage also helps.
Certainly, go to the doctor, if you are very concerned.