DC was perfect. Mallory forgot to do the open thread and I forgot to do any of the social sharing on Friday so it was a REAL LAIDBACK DAY. But, most importantly, I met Nikki IRL.
There are so many incredible pieces of writing about Muhammad Ali and responses to his death, and I will just share one here (the fabulous Gillian B. White on how he helped her understand her father and her grandfather in very different ways), please share the ones you like best in the comments:
For my grandfather, the realities of this country and its potential for brutality were clearer and more deeply entrenched than they were for his son, who was just reaching adolescence. His memory of what this country could do to a young, brash black men was longer and sharper than my dad’s. He could also readily remember the brutality that had happened not-so long ago: Emmett Till, the young black boy murdered when his own black boy was just a toddler.
Grandad’s distaste for Ali was part an old-school rejection of a young man who talked too much, but it was also the fear that the result of Ali’s braggadocio could be a squashing of the progress blacks had made thus far. In Indianapolis my grandfather could earn a respectable living, he could buy a home and a car, and take care of his family. He could provide a modicum of safety and security for his family, and surround them with other black people who were doing well too. But he knew that safety could be fleeting and precarious in this country, and feared what a black man invoking the ire of white society could mean. The result was a complex generational rift. Ali and his persona were one of the few things my dad and grandfather fought about.
It wasn’t just Ali’s pride, it was his pride about who he was—black, Muslim—at a time when society didn’t encourage men like him to have any pride or voice at all, that really struck a chord with my father. Whether or not he agreed with his views on Vietnam or refusal to fight did not matter. At a time when black men were supposed to apologize and accommodate, to simply keep their heads down and do as they were told, Ali’s push to stand up for himself and his beliefs was invigorating. While my father’s childhood included vivid memories of segregation, of racial violence, of the fight for basic rights, they also included the hope that one day this country would be a more equitable and welcoming place for people like him. Ali’s radicalism could help make that hope, reality, he thought.
You may not feel comfortable reading the victim impact statement made by the young woman in the Stanford rape trial, but if you do, it’s shattering and hugely brave:
On January 17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and I sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I was working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at home by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her friends. Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to do, so why not, there’s a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go, dance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked that undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige cardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself “big mama”, because I knew I’d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college.
Jared is loosely based on his mom:
Tegan and Sara on their ten favourite (Tegan and Sara) songs:
“Nineteen,” The Con (2007)
At that point, Sara had written “Walking With a Ghost,” and that had done really well for us. But this was probably the first song that I wrote that had a connection with the audience, which I hadn’t yet had a song accomplish. It was sort of obvious right from the beginning that it was gonna be everybody’s sad, weepy breakup song. Even when I wrote it, I remember calling Sara and her girlfriend in the middle of the night in Montreal and telling them to wake up and go listen, and I was like, “I think I wrote something really sad, accidentally.” It was very cathartic, which throughout the early part of our career, I had rejected that word — like when people would be like, “Do you find writing cathartic? It’s like reading out of our diary” — because I thought it was really sexist. But that was the moment where I was like, no, no, this really is cathartic to sing this, to scream on stage every night, and watch everyone else scream along. When I say exactly how I feel, it really seems to connect. It still feels the same performing it now, though obviously, we’ve updated it. Our musical director suggested doing it on piano, and it really transports me back to the first few times we played it live. It feels very emotional — lots of tears in the front row. I have to kind of not look because it makes me very sensitive.
This is so incredibly important:
Most American schools take a 10- to 11-week break during the summer. The assumption that underlies summer vacation — that there is one parent waiting at home for the kids — is true for just over a quarter of American families. For the rest of us, the children are off, the parents are not. We can indulge our annual illusion of children filling joyful hours with sprinkler romps and robotics camp or we can admit the reality: Summer’s supposed freedom is expensive.
In 2014, parents reported planning to spend an average of $958 per child on summer expenses. Those who can’t afford camps or summer learning programs cobble together care from family members or friends, or are forced to leave children home alone. Self-care for 6- to 12-year-olds increases during the summer months, with 11 percent of children spending an average of 10 hours a week on their own. In July 2014, a South Carolina woman was arrested when she left her 9-year-old in a park while she worked. Parents afraid of being at the center of a similar incident may be more likely to park their kids in front of the TV.
I am such a This Is Spinal Tap stan:
The critics liked us very much. The public that found us, either by fluke or in response to the “trickledown” theory of promotion, found us funny. But we were a modestly budgeted satirical film with a very specific voice; we gave the bigger spring releases no serious nightmares. It did play in one theatre in Boston for something like a year, and the fans we encountered were smart and funny and flattering. This Is Spinal Tap made a lot of Best of the Year lists; it just didn’t crack 1984’s top 10 box office. But it was the movie we had wanted to make, and we were very happy with it.
well, this ticks all my interest boxes:
While the Kent/Berberova edition of Anna Karenina contains thousands of revisions, it essentially remains Garnett’s translation. “That she made errors and that her heritage dictated pruderies which occasionally mute some of Tolstoy is certain,” Kent and Berberova write, “but that her language and syntax almost always faithfully reproduce both the letter and the tone of the original is no less true; indeed, we remain as unconvinced as many others that her translation has ever been superseded.” Kent and Berberova deftly change “he eschewed farinaceous and sweet dishes” to “he avoided starchy foods and desserts.” They correct a truly serious error in the passage where Vronsky first lays eyes on Anna at the train station. Garnett writes that he “felt he must glance at her once more; not that she was very beautiful…,” which seems odd, since Anna’s exceptional beauty is one of the novel’s givens. In the corrected version “not that” becomes “not because,” and all falls into place.
However, there are revisions that subvert, you could almost say Pevearise, the Garnett translation. In book five, chapter 3, Tolstoy writes with delicious malice of the ridiculous young man Vassenka Vesselovsky’s realization that his fancy new hunting outfit is wrong while the tatters Stiva wears are the height of chic. In the original Garnett version Stiva is dressed “in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat.” Kent and Berberova properly remove “spats” but substitute some mystifying “linen bands wrapped around his feet.” What are these bands? In their version, the Maudes solve the mystery for the reader: “Oblonsky was wearing raw hide shoes, bands of linen wound round his feet instead of socks, a pair of tattered trousers….” There are no socks in the Tolstoy original. The Maudes just decided to help out the reader. Whether you think they were right or wrong to do so says something about where you stand in the current controversy about the translation of Russian fiction.
In Poe’s case, his hair was even given as a gift during his lifetime. In 1846, a fan requested the writer’s autograph, but he decided to offer her some of his hair instead. “I guess I do want a lock of Mr. Poe’s hair!” she replied, “but I also want a line of his writing.” (There’s no record how Poe’s hair was clipped, but scissors were the likely implement of removal. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Poe wrote of the “great force necessary in tearing thus from the head even twenty or thirty hairs together.”)
The enthusiasm for Poe’s hair has hardly abated among collectors and Poe obsessives. In fact, celebrity hair—despite a considerable ick factor—still seems to be sought after. “Clippings from long-dead celebrities’ hair have emerged widely at auctions in recent years,” observed the New York Times. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that Susan Jaffe Tane, owner of the world’s greatest private Poe collection, purchased a lock of the author’s hair—as well as his fiancée’s engagement ring, photographic portraits, and other paraphernalia—for a reported $96,000. Poe’s tresses have also been sold on eBay.
And so, for a long time, it was the Mexican government’s position that El Chapo ought to die in one of its prisons. When asked in 2015 whether he would extradite his prize captive to the US to stand trial, Jesus Murillo Karam, then the Mexican Attorney General, said, “El Chapo has to stay here and do his time, then I’ll extradite him…[in] 300, 400 years.” That was before the tunnel underneath Altiplano, before the failed attempt to storm his mountain hideout in the remote “golden triangle” on the border of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, before the shoot-out in Los Mochis. Murillo Karam is no longer Attorney General. (He stepped down as a result of the ongoing scandal over the mass kidnapping of forty-three college students in Iguala, Guerrero; then he landed comfortably in a new cabinet role as the Minister for Agrarian and Urban Development.) His boss, President Enrique Peña Nieto, has had enough of El Chapo. Putting him on trial in Mexico and holding him in its prisons just isn’t worth the cost, apparently. In January, shortly after El Chapo was recaptured, Peña Nieto announced that he was instructing government officials to “achieve the extradition of this highly dangerous delinquent as soon as possible.”
This is an excellent link Roundup.
Toasties! My house sold! It finalizes in the next couple of days! Also I am going to Halifax for work tomorrow and I have an entire half day Thursday all to myself! I am SO excited and I plan to wandering around the downtown core and visit all my favourite shops and places and eat a nice meal or two! I don’t care if it will rain! I also plan on getting up early Friday and having a nice coffee shop breakfast somewhere before returning to the airport and home. Ahhh!!!
My house sold too! And with it my final tie to the never-ending relationship of blech! Settlement isn’t for another couple of weeks but I still I booked myself a long weekend by the beach to celebrate/drink cocktails/go swimming/try to pick up at the swim up bar.
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
On this day in 1826 was the birth of Sarah Remond, an African-American abolitionist and talented orator. With slavery abolished, Sarah’s mother had been born free, and along with her father (who had come from the West Indies), the family became well-known in the abolitionist movement, especially as a safe place for those escaping slavery in the states where it was still legal. Her family, which was well off thanks to a catering business and a hair salon, placed a high emphasis on education; Sarah and her sister attending elementary school in Salem, and both later passed the exams for a new girls’ academy. Unfortunately, they were rejected due to their race, after which the Remonds moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where both Sarah and her siblings were able to attend and all-black private school.
Sarah had a love for education outside of school, and supplementing her schooling with attendance at plays and concerts, and the reading of books, plays, and poetry. After Sarah left school, her family moved back to Massachusetts and she joined the Salem Female Anti-Slavery society, eventually following in her older brother’s footsteps to give lectures and speeches to anti-slavery societies. Known as a talented orator, Sarah gave her first public speech at the age of 16, in an era where women very rarely gave public speeches. Sarah spent the next decade organizing for anti-slavery, as well as giving lectures. One of her boldest efforts involved an attempt to sit in the white section at an opera in Boston. Angry police pushed her down the stairs, and she sued the city for the injuries they caused. She won, and a panel of (white male) jurors awarded her $500.
In 1856 she was hired by the American Anti-Slavery Society to travel nationally, giving speeches out west. She broke even more barriers in this, as she traveled without a male escort, something that broke the moral rules and codes of the time. In 1859, she traveled to England at the request of the AASS, and became what she saw as a representative of her people. Again she caused a stir, this time when she fought (and prevailed against) the American Embassy in London’s refusal to grant her a passport to France. When the Civil War began, Sarah had to remain in England, but she didn’t cease in her cause. She worked for much of the war speaking to Britons who might be inclined to support the Southern cause (cotton was vital to British textile mills), reminding them that human rights and the end of slavery were far more important. While in London, she also enrolled at the Bedford College for Ladies (the female college of the University of London), where she studied music, as well as French and Latin.
She returned to the U.S. in 1867 and joined an attempt to revise the New York constitution to remove references to white males, and expand rights to women and black people. After the failure of this attempt, she moved permanently to Europe. She lived the rest of her life in Italy, enrolling to study medicine at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. After becoming a Doctor, she later built a medical practice in Rome, and practiced medicine for 20 years. She never returned to the U.S., living out the rest of her life in Italy, where she was later joined by two of her sisters. She did not marry until she was 50 years old, and died in 1894, at the age of 68.
What I’m getting from this is that she was a BAMF.
What. A. Badass.
I love how she threw all her energy and intellect into civil rights issues, but when the racist society around her refused to budge, she went “fuck it” and moved to Europe to be awesome elsewhere. America did not deserve her.
LOOK AT YOUR ADORABLE FACES.
That’s what I came to say too!
I read about the Stanford rape trial for the first time this morning (it hasn’t been covered much in the UK news it seems?) and I have been seething all day – I have so much to say about it but I also have no words that could possibly express the injustice.
It’s barely been covered in national news in the US until this weekend. :-/
I read a statement from the rapist’s father that said he shouldn’t have his life ruined over “20 minutes of action.” I’ve been seething ever since.
I want to think that the father meant action as in behavior and not as in “my boy got some action tonight”. I need to think that. Not that it makes any of it any better.
Yeah, I can’t, because wouldn’t he have used the formulation “the actions of 20 minutes of his life” to emphasize that he has years to atone? No, that asshole father knew what he was saying.
I am so angry at that man, especially as he thinks his son should tour around colleges to teach people about behavior and alcohol consumption when that is the OPPOSITE of what that guy should do.
The sociopath doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Oh my god yes, my first thought after reading the father’s statement was “this guy definitely raped some women.”
RIGHT? I saw the headline and thought “welp, now we know where the son’s opinion of women as disposable lust-objects comes from”. *spits*
I hope the dad has a MISERABLE life, filled with mysterious rashes and a son that becomes, somehow, woke.
I thought this about the father, the defense team they hired, and the lenient judge. None of these dudes recognize this particular case as a violent crime, and so deeply empathize with the rapist in a disturbing, unconscious way. Like, they haven’t even learned how to couch their language around it, because they actually don’t view what they did as wrong. I just…if so many women have been sexually assaulted and raped, these are the dudes who do it. It’s not just one guy running around assaulting 1 in 4 women. It’s all these men.
This is the part of the victim’s statement that made me tear up:
Most importantly, thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story.
And that detail, those two Swedes who chased that son of a bitch down and saved her life, is the tiny but true silver lining for mankind. But it’s not enough to outweigh the assholes who are in positions of power, who are lawyers and judges.
Everything about that statement was horrifying. He referred to his son as “not violent.” He talked about how being charged with sexually assaulting an unconscious woman was so hard FOR HIS SON. And he suggested that his son could help educate students about the dangers of alcohol on campus – as if the alcohol was the problem (it also seems to suggest rape is a dumb slip you make when your drunk as opposed to a decision to assault someone).
I get that it could be hard to see your son as a rapist. But he is. And it’s clear to me that his father still doesn’t think that he’s done anything wrong, and almost certainly taught him the attitude that led to think it was all right to assault an unconscious woman in the first place.
Not just alcohol–he said his son could educate college students about the “dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity. I AM SO, SO ANGRY. In his father’s view, the rape victim is at fault–she enticed his poor, poor, defenseless son.
Even when you take out the complete, repulsive tone-deafness of his statement, on a basic level of logic this just doesn’t make sense. A lot of stuff can happen in 20 minutes! That is such a weird line of argument to make!
Right! The Sandy Hook shooting took less than twelve minutes! Honestly, I think it’s another argument that what Turner did isn’t really a crime.
20 minutes is an entire sitcom episode! You can put a coherent story iine spanning several days into 20 minutes.
don’t give this guy the idea to give rapes a plot
I mean, he could just watch Family Guy for examples. Now that I think about it, he probably does.
I just had another thought on this (can you tell I have lots of thoughts on this?!), and it was only a mere ’20 minutes’ because he was stopped by two grad students before going any further – it wasn’t like he had an epiphany or anything.
Then again no amount of time would have made any difference to this guy or his dad, it’d just be ‘his life shouldn’t be ruined over 1 hour/1 evening/1 night’
Dad’s also sad because his widdle boy doesn’t like eating ribeye steaks and chips anymore. Brockie is going to work to educate others on the “dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity.” I HATE THIS FAMILY WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS.
Literally every mention he makes of ways his son is “suffering” (in quotation marks because fuck him), I just think “Good.” Can’t sleep? Good. Can’t eat? Good. Worried all the time? Good. You brutally assaulted another human being, you shouldn’t sleep easy at night.
Alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity are not the issues here! Rape is the issue here! What an awful statement.
This part of the victim’s letter:
“Again, you were not wrong for drinking. Everyone around you was not sexually assaulting me… Sipping fireball is not your crime. Peeling off and discarding my underwear like a candy wrapper to insert your finger into my body, is where you went wrong…If you want talk to people about drinking go to an AA meeting.”
Made me want to applaud. Like, I have been Way Too Drunk at a lot of college parties and I have somehow managed to never assault a person! Stop blaming alcohol, which is a fine friend to many of us, for your own violent and antisocial behavior!
And alcohol abuse is a serious issue on college campuses! Addressing a culture of irresponsible partying, peer pressure, and alcohol poisoning is a legitimate thing to do. It’s just completely unrelated to the crime he actually committed.
Not to mention that a big problem with college drinking is that it can be very secretive and nobody wants to involve the authorities for any reason– so there’s pressure not to make a scene if you are in danger or see someone who is in danger. I don’t think you can solve that unless you have a culture where people feel comfortable saying “hey, I’m 19 years old and I’m a little drunk, but my friend needs medical attention.” Scolding people about drinking won’t do that!
Also what the hell does he thinking his message to students would be– “hey dudes, don’t drink or sex or you’ll end up like me, a rich asshole who more or less got away with crime”
Yeah, the only way to address that is to work with police and hospital administrators to make sure that they won’t bust people for underage drinking if they bring their friends in for medical attention, then making sure students are aware of that. None of this will be accomplished by having a convicted rapist tell students not to drink, because then they might rape somebody, suffer no real legal consequences, and wind up being unable to enjoy steak.
He doesn’t feel like eating pretzels anymore? CRY ME A DAMN RIVER.
brb, SETTING EVERYTHING ON FIRE FOREVER
I just had a gorgeous mental image of Beyonce wielding that baseball bat from Hold Up on these dudes while Toasties sat on the sides cheering. It was a nice vision through the rage.
PROMISCUITY??? Fuck you, Dan A. Turner.
“BINGE DRINKING AND ITS UNFORTUNATE RESULTS”
The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life forever alters where he can live, visit, work, and how he will be able to interact with people and organizations.
Taking bets on how vehemently Dan A. Turner opposes the restoration of voting rights to convicted felons.
committed to educating other college students about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity
Sorry, coming back to this because of the steak thing. Like, the issue for the father here is that his son was enjoying all of the things he liked to consume, until one of those consumable objects objected to his behavior, and now all of his consumption is tainted. He can’t enjoy women, he can’t enjoy steak, and I really think Mr. Turner sees these pleasures as equivalent.
“I was always excited to buy him a big ribeye steak to grill . . . [n]ow he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist.”
Go lightly on him because he doesn’t enjoy steak anymore? Who are these people? Rhetorical question, because they are everywhere 🙁
Oh also there is a petition here re: the judge of the case https://www.change.org/p/california-state-house-r…
“In justifying the six-month sentence, Judge Persky said positive character references written on Turner’s behalf, such as that given by his father, had factored into his decision. His age, his lack of a criminal history, and the role that alcohol played in the assault were also mitigating factors.
“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” said the judge. “I think he will not be a danger to others.””
Quote from the guardian http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/fa…
I think he will not be a danger to other [MEN]
Burn it all down.
*screams into a sponge* (after watching Lady Dynamite I will do all my screaming into sponges from now on)
I think a bill needs to be passed stating that male judges cannot preside over rape cases, or that if they do, they can’t reduce the prosecution’s suggested sentence by more than 1/3. Something. Because this is nuts. Can we get Elizabeth Warren on that maybe?
Also, the judge apparently went to Stanford himself and was captain of the lacrosse team. Bias? What? No, of course not…
So happy someone else had the same sponge screaming takeaway from Lady Dynamite as I did!
Kirsten Gillibrand!! She’s done SO MUCH for rape in the military AND campuses to protect victims. I feel like she’s our Senator on this one. I’m getting on this. It matters.
Kristen Gillibrand for President
Yep. This judge’s commonalities with Turner certainly create a cycle of privilege, if anything. The wheel keeps on turning.
yeah it’s kind of amazing how readily American judges understand the profound damage that prison can do to someone when it comes time to protect a well-off white guy from it.
sending countless poor kids away forever on possession weighs heavily on the conscience after all, perhaps it’s time we learn to accept and forgive *flips pages* killing four people
Signed. Shared.
Thanks for the petition, Peanut – signed.
Signed! And left a livid comment as well.
So did I.
I’m reminded of an ex-coworker of my husband’s whose kid got dragged in front of a judge for a marijuana possession charge. The judge told the boy he was impressed that he’d worn a suit and gave him some really light probationary period. The coworker told this story with pride, like oh, I’m such a good dad getting my kid to wear a suit to court, rather than with alarm over all the kids who don’t have dads or suits and thus get screwed over the same piddling charges.
Except this case is a billion times worse, obviously.
I just came across the statement from the Stanford swim team: https://twitter.com/mldauber/status/7396499496299… (sorry, I don’t know how to embed links).
They blame the victim for dancing, ask that Turner not be made a “scapegoat” (I…honestly don’t know what that means here. He’s being sentenced for a crime he committed), and, again, talk about how much Turner and his family have suffered. I just…Rape is not an accident. Rape isn’t something his victim did to him.
And even accidents that harm other people are punished under the law! Accidentally hitting somebody with your car is still a crime. Accidentally shooting somebody after you fire a gun into the air is still a crime. Whether or not he’s a “good person” doesn’t actually change the crime he committed.
(Note: he’s obviously not a good person. I’m just pointing out that even if we accept the premise, manslaughter and criminal negligence charges undermine the swim team’s argument that being a good person means you can’t criminally injure other people.)
This dude is clearly terrible. His father is clearly where he gets it from. But her description of his legal defense team, I just, how do they sleep at night? How do their families look them in the eye after profiting (!) over treating a rape victim so abusively? Who the hell are these men in their private lives? How do they treat people outside of work? Like, if that were in any other workplace, you would call it verbal abuse. If I ever did business with someone who treated me the way his defense team badgered, gaslit, and verbally violated her, AAM would advise me to report that shit so fast. And this is okay?? It’s okay to treat someone like this in front of a judge? (Well, obviously this judge…) As if the experience of the hospital collecting evidence with compassionate nurses & the compassionate police wasn’t bad enough (and ugh to when they aren’t compassionate, all too often) this is why we don’t come forward. What a fucking mystery.
The rapist’s father’s statement in the Stanford rape case is so incredibly illustrating. This is precisely why rape culture still exists: because boys are still being raised like this. Some boys are still, to this day, being raised to be obtuse and to not understand the damage they might cause by their actions. It’s very, very scary. I feel for these boys, on some level: they, too, deserve better. They deserved to have been raised better and to know better. To understand consent, sex and human relationships. But I feel much, much more for their victims. There is no excuse for rape. The father can go to hell.
Shout out to the woman who biked past me this weekend wearing a gold flash tattoo of a uterus. If she’s not a Toastie, she’s clearly one in spirit.
Man, I just tried to google this and didn’t find them. Does this mean she had them custom-made? I’m swooning.
They were giving them out at the Reason Rally in DC, and if you google “twitter golden uterus flash” you’ll get some results. That’s all I know though, I wasn’t there. DC Toasties may know more.
That’s AMAZING!
I’ve worn those before! I got mine from Lady Parts Justice
Ugh, I have so many Tegan and Sara feelings. Mostly that, if they want to make guitar-less albums, I wish they sounded more like “Nightwatch” off of Sainthood. But also, I know I am terribly contradictory because if literally anyone else on earth has made Heartthrob or Love You To Death, I would probably really enjoy them, but because it’s T&S and I love the complex, dense stuff on The Con, and the breezier, but still dark feel of Sainthood, I for some reason just can’t.
You are not alone! I am having similar feelings.
Yeah…I mean, I respect their choice to grow and change their sound, and I appreciate that all of their albums have a different feel, but neither of those things is going to make me like any of their recent albums as much as the Con. The Con was just phenomenal.
The article about summer is so on point. Also, why do we even have it anymore? We are way past the point where enough children work on farms that we need to let everyone stop school for months at a time.
Of course, then schools like the one I went to would actually have to have air conditioning, instead of letting everyone turn into a puddle of sweat for the first and last months of the school year.
I vaguely remember murmurings of air conditioning being the actual reason that a lot of schools weren’t considering year-round schedules.
I think the air conditioning thing is definitely a reason, esp. with the inevitable cost of a breakdown in August.
Also the whole hurricane season thing. I remember the ’04 and ’05 seasons playing merry hell with my (middle-school) education; this year, with the storms already closing schools in the Big Bend area and school not even out for the summer yet…it may get hairy.
Yup, very few public schools have AC, even in warmer climes.
Really? My school system had ac. It didn’t necessarily work that well, but it was there. As far as I know, all the schools in my city (different systems) have it; school has been starting back in August for at least a couple decades now – practically July now, but not much later when I was still there – and it’d be a health hazard without it.
I mean, it’s not universal, some of the rural districts around me will close for heat sometimes, but very few surprises me.
That was probably more of a blanket statement than it should have been; at my work we need to find schools with AC, and they’re hard to find in many parts of the country, even where you might expect them.
To be honest, I’m more surprised that the schools I attended paid for a/c if it’s common enough to find schools without it.
There was one school district in my city that started at least two weeks later than all the other districts, because most of its buildings didn’t have AC and they couldn’t make students come to school in the August heat. It was the inner-city, financially-disadvantaged district, SURPRISE.
Such a surprise!
The rural systems around me that close for heat are too poor to afford a/c (or much of anything else) but at least it’s system-wide and not just one district in a city. Ridiculous.
The only part of my (Northern Virginia) high school that had AC was the office. At this time of year we were constantly manufacturing excuses to visit the office to cool off. Fortunately the secretaries were fairly tolerant of our nonsense.
I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like of schools in warm areas with no AC and schools with dress codes forbidding girls from exposing any of their “distracting” shoulder and leg skin.
I have lived in rural Iowa and Southern Michigan where the whole agricultural argument actually DOES apply to about 50% of high school and even middle school families. I started work detasseling corn fulltime during the summers at the age of 13.
I can see that there are some districts who may need to keep the existing schedule for high schools but most high schoolers are able to look after themselves during the summer anyway. We are way past the point where most elementary school children are working on farms during the summer (I hope?).
But then they’d have to change that law about not having school at the same time as the State Fair!
We tried “year round” schooling in the public schools in the early-mid 90s here, but I don’t know why it stopped after a couple years – I mean, I was in catholic middle school at the time, so I wasn’t even fully aware it was an experiment, except my mom worked for the Y and when she picked us up from school, we went back to work with her, so I saw the posters about the rotations and the kids during summer programs changed according to which track they were on.
I guess my point is that it has been tried in some districts, but it didn’t quite work. I think a lot of people found that the distributed vacation period didn’t really work any better than a summer vacation, and the rotating breaks (instead of all kids on the same schedule) were less favorable for the teacher’s union or something?
The more I think about it, the more I suspect Duval County’s Year Round School problem was that it was limited to certain neighborhood schools (not the entire district or nearby counties) and then NCLB was on the horizon, or whatever it was that preceded it in Florida. It was also supposed to solve the learning decline that happens over summer break (or any long break from school), but kids still need breaks from school, and that part wasn’t managed very well (again, NCLB precursors and reducing recreation/non-structured play time).
Okay I got really curious about this, and it turns out that as many as 9 of the Duval County schools were year-round for 7 years, but out of 150 schools, only 20 had tried it at all.
Local paper article about the School Board’s decision in March 1998: http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/031898/…
The experiment was partly about overcrowding and partly about the summer learning decline.
Under a modified calendar, students gave up their long summer breaks for more frequent, shorter breaks during their school year. They attended the usual 180 days altogether but went for 60-day sessions, with 15-day breaks in between.
Proponents, like School Board member Stan Jordan, said modified calendars provided the chance for students to get remedial help during the breaks, as well as eliminating the need to bring kids back to academic speed after long summer breaks.
And schools on modified calendars could go to multiple tracks, meaning students go to schools in groups that start and stop at different times. So some students are always on break, freeing up classroom space.
So it sounds like if EVERYONE was on the same schedule instead of only 13% of schools and also sometimes not even in the same school, the biggest hurdle – the planning of family things when kids are in different schools/different tracks – would be solved.
“Some students are always on break, freeing up classroom space” seems to leave out another important piece: teachers and other staff would NOT be on break, ever. I know enough teachers that I would never wish that upon them. Shorter but more frequent breaks, sure. But given how most school districts treat their staff and faculty, something tells me that they’d have every last bit of additional labor squeezed out of them.
Yep, my partner is lesson planning for the upcoming year right now, and looking at the amount of work that goes into getting ready for the school year, I’m not so sure that could be squeezed into a year-round schedule. It could also make hiring time weird, especially if the school year doesn’t quite sync up to the time period when new teachers are graduating from college/MA programs. And i’m sure no one would be willing to pay teachers more for the extra work.
I do think there should be *some* free or very cheap option for childcare or summer classes, but in too many areas school districts and teachers are already stretched about as thin as they can go.
One thing I learned that was a huge problem with year-round schools is that the buildings were falling apart faster than the other buildings – they were getting 1/3 more wear and tear, but there wasn’t ever time to do the repair work. Imagine that on a school building that’s already being held together with duct tape and tar!
Yeah, we’d need to address the criminal under-funding of public schools for it to work.
I went to a year round elementary school in the south and at least once a year we all got to go home early when the AC broke. Highly recommend!
I know that it makes a lot of sense to do year round schooling. And yet, I can’t think about it without remembering how horrified I was when as a kid I first heard the idea: you mean it’s arranged so you *never* get to escape for any length of time from the tyranny of school? (I…uh cried pretty much every night up into high school at the thought that I had to go to school the next day. Not even that I hated the particulars so much; it was more out of existential horror (which I could not quite articulate) at the realization that as far into the future as I could imagine I would never be free from a forced regimen of time and place and being required to do things.)
I had very similar terrors! And I still do, in some ways. All throughout high school, I absolutely dreaded working in an office, because of how much I hated that forced regimen of education. But I didn’t know enough or even what I didn’t know to be able to make informed choices for potential non-office jobs, alas.
The year round school I was familiar with had 3-week (15 day) breaks at set intervals, instead of a long summer, but honestly that just seemed annoying to me, like throwing a bone to a dog but not actually letting the dog chew the thing.
Honestly, as a teacher, it’s similarly terrifying to me.
Oh yeah, I am still struck with panic when I realize that no matter the changing seasons, no matter how much I feel like I’ve come to some kind of stopping point, I am going to be going to work 5 days a week for the forseeable future.
How about instead of kids going to school more we just have adults working less/ more affordable child care?
So many problems would be solved with flexible scheduling options parents at work
” I am still struck with panic when I realize that no matter the changing seasons, no matter how much I feel like I’ve come to some kind of stopping point, I am going to be going to work 5 days a week for the forseeable future.”
This fills me with existential horror every time I think about it. I’m glad I’m not alone.
Oh, I feel you so much re: that existential horror. School was such a painful and frightening experience for me, despite the fact that I enjoyed learning and did well, mainly because of that regimentation and that feeling of no possible escape.
i can speak to why you don’t hear many teachers advocating for an end to summer, except in teacher-effacing charter systems and the like: burnout and compassion-fatigue are real, debilitating, and potentially career-ending phenomena. i am finishing my fifth year in the classroom (eighth in education) this week, and it’s strangely disconcerting to observe my own brain struggle with burnout, detachment, avoidance and depression after writing a master’s thesis on this exact professional problem just two years ago. i’ll probably spend the first few weeks of summer, as usual, vacillating between extraordinary relief (at having time to be a human again) and crushing guilt (that my individual efforts have been largely ineffective in pushing back against a system that perpetuates existing inequities). in this year alone, i have reported two sexual assault cases. i need this summer to find a therapist and deal with some of the secondary trauma i’ve taken on, or it won’t be April next year when the burnout hits–it’ll be November.
i’m all for free summer enrichment programs at schools–that is, if they are taught by other people and focus on enrichment and building cultural capital. kids need time to be kids, to explore and play–even (and perhaps especially) teenagers. summer is a great time for outdoor education, fieldtrips, and creative project-based learning, and many middle-class and upper-class families are able to provide these enriching experiences that make students enjoy learning and engage with their classes when they return to school in the fall. the fact that working class families are generally unable to provide these expensive opportunities during the summer only strengthens educational inequalities.
year-round academic schooling only makes sense if we actually value the sustainability and expertise of teachers’ labor by allowing them to teach fewer classes, providing them with more paid time for office hours and tutoring, and insisting that each school has the professional faculty and resources necessary for holistic child development.
Also SO MANY of my teacher friends rely on the income they bring from side hustles during the summer to make ends meet. So yes, year-round schooling only makes sense if we start valuing teachers.
Right. It’s actually terrifying how many of the barriers we’ve identified in this thread of comments come down to the fact that we simply don’t fund the education system well enough. Not enough money to teachers, infrastructure, etc. I guess it makes sense now why we “haven’t just done something” since the problem is so large.
I have to add: the students get tired, too. As soon as they get old enough to be facing standardized tests that their futures will depend upon, especially. My primary emotion throughout my school years was exhaustion. I don’t think many people recognize just how MUCH kids are expected to learn.
In addition from Junior High onwards I was bullied quite badly; if I hadn’t been given two months off each year (as it is here) to get away from those people I’m not sure what i would have done.
Year round schooling would only work in the most idealized possible school environments. I vote we actually pay parents a living wage so they can afford childcare instead of heaping more work on top of the already stressed out school system.
Our schools had air conditioning, but the city actually passed a law that the school districts could not start before a certain date in August because the tourist industry was whining to them about keeping their cheap student worker labor for as much of the summer season as possible.
All the teacher-parents I know tried to plan their pregnancies over the summer, so they could have a baby and a month or two of leave without having to rely on whatever shitty healthcare is affordable on a teacher’s salary. So we’d also need to improve benefits for educators, which our legislature will approve right after the Indiana State Senate Chamber (in other words, hell) freezes over.
I cannot get over how brave and strong and incredible the victim response piece is. It should be required reading for any conversation about rape culture and consent. It should be required reading for every intro to women and gender studies class. It should be required reading for graduating from high school. It should never have had to have been written.
My heart goes out to her and everyone who is a victim and is revictimized constantly by the systems we have in place which are supposed to protect and support us.
I am in awe of her and her words and how she sleeps under the painting of two bikes to remind her to have hope in people. I hope she finds all the support she needs and am so angry at the legal system for making a horrible situation even harder for her.
It was really, truly moving. I struggled through it and definitely cried a lot, but it felt so important to read it and witness it. The detail of the pine needles coming back again and again was so chilling, such a gut punch. Incredible.
Yeah. I struggled as well. I struggle with all of them. But I figure that if they are strong enough to write their experiences down, I need to find the strength to be a witness to that. Or at least that’s how I approach it.
She is so impressive. It’s horrifying that the rapist is getting such a short sentence, but she is so brave for still speaking out about it. (I was also comforted by the description of the men who intervened, and were clearly very upset by what they’d witnessed – it is nice to be reminded that not all people are terrible.)
(Also, the image of Swedes on Bikes appearing on the scene to rescue victims is a charming break from the visceral horror of the rest of the story.)
Swedes on Bikes sounds like a charming children’s cartoon, which I definitely want to watch in order to wash away the horror of the judge’s decision.
Yes, this is where I teared up:
Most importantly, thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story.
She’s unbelievably, staggeringly courageous. I can’t fathom going through everything she has and delivering such an eloquent and lengthy public address on what this trauma has been like and has done to her. There’s no way I’d have the stamina, I would have shut down completely long before that day.
There is a call on Twitter to start calling her “The Lighthouse” instead of “Brock Turner’s rape victim” which I think is lovely and wonderful. I completely agree that her response piece should be taught.
I love that! I was struggling with how to write about her without making the narrative about him or reducing her to one aspect of who she is.
That is amazing.
There’s an amazing story here about lighthouses growing from shattered ships piecing themselves back together after getting dashed on the rocks, but I don’t know if I’m a good enough narrative writer to do it justice. Something about a broken ship screaming into the waves, her* discontented spirit eventually drawing itself together to become a guiding light to other endangered vessels, and a source of support for them if they do find themselves broken on those same rocks.
*finally, a use for ships always being referred to as “she”.
Oh my, this made me burst into tears all over again. One one level I wish I hadn’t read the letter, because it was immensely triggering and I still feel physically shaken up from it a day later, but I am also so glad that I did, for the bravery and strength emanating from that letter, and the outpour of support for her and the outrage against all the awful men. I will think of her as The Lighthouse.
I thought the same like, obviously this is an incredibly important thing sociopolitically but also, what a fucking fantastic piece of writing.
I think it’s a great example for a persuasive writing class!
It was a very hard thing for me to read (as a survivor of CSA). I actually go back and forth about whether or not I’m glad I read it. It was so triggering that I spent the better part of one and a half days recovering / getting grounded this weekend. I’m not sure it was worth it to me.
But I read the whole thing (even though I could feel myself getting triggered) because I wanted to bear witness. And I did feel a huge rush of pride in her – for speaking her truth for herself and for those who haven’t found their voice yet.
Oh totally. I think it’s very important to prioritize your own mental and emotional health. I hope you are getting the love and support you need right now.
This. Her strength is staggering.
Amidst all comments on this piece on various media outlets, I saw one by a mother with four sons who said she has printing it out and having them all read it– I immediately teared up with love and gratitude for that mama. Reading accounts from sexual assault victims should be a *mandatory* part of Sex Ed. (If I designed sex ed classes, consent would be at least 60% of the curriculum.)
I support this 100%.
My 20 year old goes-to-a-private-California-university cis white son is the one who first told me to read it, that he and his friends were all sharing her account, and I am awed and grateful to be his mom.
Muhammad Ali is one of the greatest figures in American history. An incredible athlete, but more importantly an incredible man that stood by his convictions, believed in himself entirely, and worked continuously to empower and elevate the oppressed. I still cannot believe that the king of the world is gone.
He really was a great man, and to me what stands out about him is how much he managed to do for others. It is one thing to be a trail blazer, to reach dizzying heights of accomplishment and glory for yourself- but it is another thing to turn around once you have achieved your goal and reach out your hand to help others up. And that was what he did. He was great not just because of the strength of his accomplishments, but because of the strength of his character.
And he was, as he always said, very pretty while he did it.
Tegan and Sara song for today: Monday, Monday, Monday
Rape victim statement of the day: ohmigod, throw that cockroach in jail for a couple of years already!!
Count me as one of the “can’t afford summer” parents. In my case the kids are older but doing nothing for the almost-month that I have them now. I thought I had managed, between my job and my assistanceship, to finagle a two-day trip the the Canadian Falls this week, and free “camp” for the 13 year old by signing her uo to be a camp helper. The kids came home last night to tell me that we can’t go, because of teen work schedules and driving lessons. And the girl complained that “taking care of children is my worst nightmare, you obviously don’t care what I think”. (She’s really getting this teen thing down, isnt she?)
Now is when I really hate their peer group’s parents who discuss month long trips to dude ranches, or $800 a week science camps, or summer beach cottages or trips to Disney.
I can’t even pull off two unpaid days with my kids this entire summer. I am really bitter about it.
O sweetheart, this sounds so rough. I have no kids, and cannot really commiserate, but I do know what it is like to listen to people complain about things that are wildly unreachable for you, and it SMELLS.
Also, I was the dirtbaggiest teen, I totally made my mom cry a number of times by telling her that she clearly did neither know nor love me, but i turned out ok and my parents assure me that having lovely conversations with adult me makes the – imma say 4 – years of me being a total jerk worth it. Toasthugs are here.
I’m so angry at that article for not ONCE mentioning the library. WHERE DO YOU GET FREE (AND OFTEN SELF-DIRECTED) SUMMER ACTIVITIES? THE DANG LIBRARY.
City libraries are closing. Out here, you can’t get to one without a car. (Technically you could ride a bike, 3 miles on 45 mph rds with two major hills).
There are like a million and one DON’T USE THE LIBRARY AS CHILD CARE pieces out there on the Internet though. Libraries are good for short-term activities of the kind that a kid must be escorted home from. Your kid cannot be there all day (although I often was, as a child). It’s a possible solution for like 2-3 hours of a day with a parent to drive to and from, since most kids under 10 can’t walk more than a couple of blocks by themselves without raising eyebrows (and suspicions of neglect).
In the small town I grew up in, this was a perennial problem. The year I worked in the public library as an adult was more like babysitting than it was working; during the summer I had to keep an eye on the kids who showed up and stayed all day, often getting bored and cranky. During the school year I had to keep an eye on the kids whose parents apparently told them, “go to the library after school every day and I’ll pick you up.” That makes sense for studious, curious, and/or reading-inclined kids, but not for kids who would really rather be out running around in the park or doing anything other than reading or homework. It’s a really hard balance to strike between being a public resource that is (relatively) safe for kids to hang out in without their parents and being free childcare for kids who really aren’t library-ily inclined.
WOOOOOP have clicked on the Tolstoy translation piece only to discover that it is by that most excellent journalist/murderer JANET MALCOLM, today is looking up.
Did you know that Errol Morris seems to have debunked her whole book and how sad that made me?
I haven’t read A Wilderness of Error – is it really a debunking of Malcolm’s book? From what I’ve read about it, it sounds more like a debunking of McGinniss’s. The facts of the MacDonald case, which it sounds like are the main subject of Morris’s dispute, aren’t really at the heart of Malcolm’s argument.
Well, it’s a debunking of her underlying assumption that MacDonald was guilty, which I think was a pretty big part of her perspective?
It’s been a while since I’ve read TJATM, but I remember her main focus being McGinniss and the ways in which he used his relationship w MacDonald to advance his book. I don’t think MacDonald’s guilt or innocence was particularly relevant to Malcolm’s thesis, which is about the practice of journalism rather than the facts of the case.
Also GOOD LORD how I will miss this comment section.
I think that definitely was her main focus and thesis, but the excerpt I read from Morris’ book did directly quote TJATM and refute some claim or characterization she was making… and now I can’t find it! It was on Longreads quite a while back.
(In case anyone else is wondering what the heck these lovely Toasties are talking about, a place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journalist_and_… ; the article I like about it is Gene Weingarten’s piece although I understand it isn’t perfect: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine… )
that Anna Karenina article is good, but I got to object to the characterization of D. H. Lawrence’s description of Garnett’s translation as condescending — maybe there’s a subtlety here that I’m missing, but he seems to be describing someone whose genius he’s in awe of?
I would be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt were the description not by David Herbert “Famously Fucked Up About Women” Lawrence.
well, it’s a description that makes her sound rad as hell, and that’s how I’m going to continue imagining it!
I cosign this.
I don’t condone taping and sharing live performances but there are some Mondays where Rebel Wilson as Ursula is a necessity. (Sorry non-US toasties)
BLESS YOU. this is exactly what my Monday needed.
I had never thought of this before but that is perfect!
I could watch from not the US, if that was why you were apologising to us!
I am not a massive fan of Rebel Wilson, but she did nail that performance.
Yeah, I know at least some youtube videos can’t be watched in some countries so I usually don’t link them here. But Rebel is just too good as Ursula to not link.
I believe we call this Living the Dream- she was what? 8 or 9 when The Little Mermaid came out? Same age I was and you better believe I’ve wanted a chance to belt this one out in public.
Jared is the best character on Silicon Valley and I will HEAR NO ARGUMENTS ON THIS
I don’t watch Silicon Valley but I’ve seen a few interviews with him and he seems like such a nice guy IRL.
I LOVE HIM. He is the ultimate puppy dog man.
He should see that gif! His eyes look like glaciers there too!
My husband will bring pistols at dawn over this because he is All About Erlich. I don’t know that I can decide. Everyone is so great! (Also, one day I’m going to go on a rant about how Dinesh gets such shit for being the virgin who can’t get a girl when I find him BY FAR the most attractive man on that show.)
At some point it struck me that my husband is the Erlich in our relationship, and I am the Richard, and now neither one of us can unsee it. (I not-so-secretly wish I could be the Erlich, but it’s just not so.)
I am Erlich when it comes to yogurt, I think. That’s about it.
Everyone should be the Erlich about yogurt, methinks.
OK, I do have yogurt-Erlichness. So there is that.
I love Jared so much and I LOVED him in last week’s episode (haven’t seen last night yet).
Also, I have seen Zach Woods perform improv live and he is unquestionably a super genius. So there’s that.
Heart eyes emoji for Jared.
Translation (albeit literary translation which is totally not my field) is really having A Moment lately I feel, and I am HERE FOR IT. Validate me, media, VALIDATE MEEEEEE.
I posted this in the comments to the Link Roundup last Friday, I think: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36434191 It’s about Katie Koestner and what it was like to publically speak out against date rape; she sounds so brave and impressive, as the social pressure to just stay silent (even from her own dad!) was so strong.
Also, an interview with the director general of Unesco, who sounds extremely cool. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jun/03/i… She is in the running to be the leader of the UN. (Did other people know that when Unesco voted to allow Palestine to become a member, it lost all of its funding from the US, which was about a third of its budget? Not great.)
Finally, if anyone is interested in pictures of children and pandas, this is for you: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun…
That date rape article was so good. It really reminds you how recently attitudes have started to change (and makes me devoutly grateful to be living now, and not any other time in history, to be honest).
Hm… I read War and Peace out of the Garnett and Anna Karenina half out of the Garnett and half out of… something else? way back in high school and took half a translation class once in college (thus: total non-memory/non-qualification to weigh in). And I do like that this article defends Garnett’s choices as choices — maybe Tolstoy does ‘translate’ to English literature best if he is translated into generically 19th century novelistic prose.
But the Pevearr/Volokhonsky school of thought is also valid! It’s not a “bizarre idea of the translator’s task” to want to draw attention to weirdness and difference. And a novel is more than plot and characters, Janet Malcolm! Some of the examples given of contrasting translations are doing wildly different things with focalization and voice, for instance! I don’t know which one is “truer” to the original, because I don’t speak Russian, but, y’know, it’s valid to want to know whether — in the first example — it’s the omniscient telling us that the character’s barrier of non-explanation was “made up of a certain amused perplexity” (i.e. it’s what she is trying to project: how I read that passage of the Garnett) or whether it’s the guy she is refusing to explain to who is confronted with what he can only perceive as a confusing ” sort of cheerful perplexity” (his reading of what she’s projecting: how I read the P/V version)
My Russian is terrible but I did study Russian and travel in Russia and it has made me a P&V fan. The atmospheric sense of reading about Russia is there in P&V translations that imho Garnett cannot recreate and transcends Malcolm’s short examples. Though I do think in the second example the parentheticals are more appropriate than the way Garnett translates Anna’s restlessness. The Victorian-ness in Garnett is much too present.
Yes, the Malcolm article made me a little nuts, honestly. I only know a bit of Russian, but all the really smart Russians I know insist that Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc build a lot of their style on strangeness, awkwardness, etc, and the idea that the translator is supposed to smooth that out and make it nice and pretty in English seems really misguided to me (there was a post about Emily Dickinson above– her original editors also said yes, great poems, hon, but let’s take out all the fucking dashes and make it pretty. Umm, no.). My personal feeling about great art is that a lot of what it does is Mess Shit Up, and I don’t want my translators coming in and tidying up after the author.
You may be pleased to know that the Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures listserv (which is an email list populated by many older academic types, mostly in the US and the UK, and is consistently entertaining) is having a SPIRITED discussion of this article today. It’s great.
I personally have very mixed feelings about P&V. I like them because I can often guess from their translation exactly what the original Russian was (“if you can do that why aren’t you just reading these novels in Russian in the first place, rusalka?” – it is because I’m lazy). I particularly like them for Dostoevsky, where I kind of want to feel like I’m in a bizarre fever dream anyway.
BUT I heard them give a talk once about their translation of Doctor Zhivago and I really didn’t like their dynamic. (Okay, him. I really didn’t like him.) Their process is that Volokhonsky produces a literal word-for-word translation of the Russian; Pevear then English-ifies it. And I just got a very “Larissa is the vessel which allows me to practice my craft” vibe from him. No thank you.
Ohhhh, that right there is my least favorite mode of translation, the “I am a white dude so therefore my brilliant literary genius will transcend the slavish mechanical word-for-word translation I am using — done by some nobody who actually knows the source language– and will commune with the original spirit of the text!” school.
So it does make me side-eye a bit some of the things he tosses around (evidently) about denaturing English and preserving the style of the original. (You aren’t even reading the style of the original!). I guess at least he presents it as a team effort, and not just as his translation, the way some people *coughTedHughscough* have done…
I’ve heard them talk, too, and know people who know them, and I think it’s pretty clear that Larissa is the real boss of the family. 🙂 And his Englishing of her literal translation is also done with reference to all the other standard translations, and he knows a lot more Russian than he really lets on. So I think the ‘separate spheres’ line is their public face but not necessarily an accurate description of what they actually do.
I can only imagine what a field day SEELANGS is having with it, though– just too many white dudes per square second on that list, I had to stop reading it.
They’re actually being pretty good. Someone was very crabby about the article, someone else piled on, and then Robert Chandler came in with a very reasonable “The tone of her NYRB article is impassioned, not “snide”, and I think she deserves to be written about with respect. Her name is “Janet Malcolm”, not “the socks lady”.” etc.
I don’t have a problem with the ‘direct translation -> idiomatic translation’ thing, just the ‘native speaker as wife and muse’ framing of it. And yeah, at their talk someone was like “so you really don’t speak Russian?” and he was like “nope, not really” and Volokhonsky was like “yes you do, dear.” Haha.
LOL–that sounds about right. If Larissa Volokhonsky tells you you speak Russian, you fucking well speak Russian. Probably he chooses not to *speak* much, but understands and reads pretty well.
Also LOL at “the socks lady.”
I personally tend to lean more toward the Garnett school of translation–in my mind, a translated text can never actually replicate the original, so it’s better to embrace the difference than try to minimize it. Like, Tolstoy-via-Garnett (or via Pevear/Volokhonsky) is almost a separate thing from Regular Tolstoy in Russian, but that’s kind of how it has to be for literary translation to be effective. And I think a lot of people tend to hate on that interpretation, so I kind of get why Janet Malcolm is so defensive?
But on the other hand, there’s also definitely a need for an accurate, word-for-word, maybe kind of awkward translation a la Pevear/Volokhonsky, because people need to know what Tolstoy actually wrote without learning an entirely separate language. For academic reasons, if nothing else. So maybe what we need is to have both an extremely accurate translation that’s maybe kind of difficult to read AND a looser but better-written version that readers in the non-original language can enjoy?
sidenote: Every time I see Berestein Bears spelled Berenstain Bears, my soul cramps.
(I once got lost in the Reddit thread where people really believe this is proof of multiple universes getting sloppy? Instead of “they spelled it this way a long time ago, and then it changed”?)
I totally got lost in that thread, too. But I completely remember it being “Berenstein Bears” and I have no idea why.
I think the mult universe theory (which most people think is a joke, and it’s just fun to defend the joke) depends on the fact that it was never spelled the way you think it was. Never. They did not change the spelling. We just all consistently misremember it the same way. Are you sure this is the same reality you grew up in? 😉
The Berenstein truthers are so fascinating to me. I think a lot of the confusion is that 1-stein is a far more common suffix than -stain 2-so people writing/talking about the books would unconsciously misspell or mispronounce it 3-even the old cartoon seemed to be pronouncing it -steen instead of -stain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjXiIZYsGJY#t=40.
But the authors’ son has weighed in on it that it’s definitely -stain and has been since the family arrived in the US: http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/its-berenstain-…
TOO NICOLES
Oh Toasts it has been a hell of a weekend and now I’m back in work and I have no brain. My mother has been staying with me for a week and I was in a play that ran for 3 nights and I haven’t had a minute to myself in over a week and I am fried. I am very much looking forward to a chill weekend, potentially including a very relaxed date with a nice boy.
In the mean time please enjoy this picture of my weird bunch of friends (and 1 sexual predator, no I’m not kidding.) and I in our make up for Oh What a Lovely War.
Is the sexual predator the one in the back with no hat? Or the guy on the left with his right hip jutting out?
I am going to guess until I get this right, by golly.
You were right the first time. Creeper at the back grabbed one of the other girls boobs on stage on our final night. I’ve never liked him anyway and now all of my suspicions about him, and old white dudes in general, are confirmed.
NOOOOOOOOO
Yep. And the whole time everyone has been all ‘ooh he’s just old and lonley and a bit weird’ and I’ve had a proper skeevy vibe off him. GUESS WHO WAS RIGHT.
I was stood beside her on stage when it happened (there was a scene where two of the men had to kiss us on the cheek to say good bye, the other guy was always very respectful about it and this guy was WAY TOO KEEN.) and I said it too her backstage and she said she wasn’t really sure what had happened and wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t brought it up. #sisterhood.
This is nightmare fuel. Always listen to the person with perv intuition! Always!
GUESS WHO JUST GOT A JOB OFFER FOR THE JOB SHE REALLY WANTED
HINT: IT ME
I’VE SPENT 5 MINUTES TYPING THIS BECAUSE MY FINGERS ARE SHAKING TOO HARD FROM EXCITEMENT
Congratulations!!!
Congratulations!!!
YOU! YOU! I am so excited and happy for you!
Yay!!!! Congrats!!!
Congratulations you are terrific!
YAYYYYYY
Congrats!
*jubilant muppet flailing*
Yayyyyy!
HOORAY FOR YOU!
Beckie! I mailed you a letter 2 weeks ago. Other people to whom I mailed out letters the same day have reported that they haven’t received anything yet but I just wanted you to know I haven’t forgotten our delightful correspondence!
Thank you! I’m sorry I’m the one who really owes you a letter. I will be writing soon!
– Digging McKean’s one-man oral history of Spinal Tap. Some gems:
“It spooved (yes, that is the correct word) network and local television”
“Raise the Titanic (right boat, wrong direction!)”
“Armpit Farts of the Gods”
this picture
– There’s something deeply wrong with things when someone can’t afford to send their own child to the daycare that they work at. When I worked at a public library, we used to kind of dread summers because of the influx of kids who just wanted to play and had nowhere else to go, but we also knew that the library was also something of a safe refuge for a lot of these kids and that the summer reading program was also a great thing for many of them. (Most of my own childhood summer vacations were spent outside in small towns and were fairly idyllic, at least in retrospect, but I could have happily gone to the public library every day and just ruled the summer reading program.)
“There’s something deeply wrong with things when someone can’t afford to send their own child to the daycare that they work at.”
So very much.
I worked at the Brown rare books library one summer while I was in college there. They have several locks of Poe’s hair, as well as one of a very small number of daguerrotypes of his face. He had a very young cousin in Providence whom he was in love with–she is responsible for Brown’s possession of these treasures.
That’s so much cooler than a construction helmet that Vartan Gregorian wore when he toured some campus building or another when it was going up. Which is what I got to catalog when I worked in the archives there. 😛
That scene of Nigel trying to fold the bread is a thing I used constantly to explain work situations to people. Sigh.
If we do move to year-round school, I think it shouldn’t be year-round academic school. Kids need to play and explore and live. Summer school should be camp-like, less structured, perhaps more on a Montessori model, with as much outdoorsy nature time as possible–and it should be free–and there should not be attendance requirements, so that kids who spend the summer with the divorced parent elsewhere/travel with family/have other opportunities are not penalized.
It would be GREAT. But it’s not going to happen (sigh).
As a teacher, yes, this is how it would have to be done if it were going to be done right. Thumbs up forever.
It won’t be because the only argument for year-round school anyone cares about is whether reading and math decline over the summer. Alas.
I don’t think I have been quite as enraged by anything in the near past, as by the defense of the assailant by his father. The crux of his argument consequently supported by the judge basically translates to this – if you are an otherwise productive member of society (in whatever capacity) you can go around raping people, and it’s OKAY!
Well, as long as you don’t do it for more than 20 minutes :/
That’s all relative. 20 minutes is the limit today, tomorrow it will be something else. But whatever it will be, it will be okay because competitive sports trumps all. Human dignity, one’s physical sanctity, value as a person etc. are all secondary and indispensable to it.
God! My ears are turning hot just reading and writing about it.
I can just see this number rising in inverse proportion to the number of weeks within which an abortion is considered legal.
There’s a mathematical equation: the amount of time a dude is allowed to spend raping is proportional to his athletic potential, his whiteness, and his father’s wealth.
But he can’t eat steak anymore, you guys. Steak!
I know!
Poor dear! He got only 20 minutes of action and lost his lifelong (or at least temporary) taste for steaks. Oh he will never be his happy go lucky self again, and for what? Just for raping a woman?
For Shame!
My inner ethics of consumption/environmental feminist alarm is going off.
Well, it’s okay as long an you’re white.
This boy’s hit the trifecta of privilege – white male, wealthy and athlete.
I was at the Smithsonian Museum of American History yesterday and in a display of old cast-iron-type toys, there was one of a big-headed man in a little horse-drawn cart and the plaque labeled it “Rubber Neck Foxy Grandpa Nodder.”
That is the best combination of words I have read in a long time, so I needed to share.
Oh my gosh I WISH I were the graphic designer who had to label that plaque.
I’m 12 but when the Russian translation article referred to the offending new translators as “P & V” I snickered.
24 Things Women over 30 Should Wear
#21 is one half of the couple that owns the building/art park complex where I work, and she genuinely looks that fabulous and Boho at all times, because Beatrix Ost is too witches for your style guidelines, society. Oh, and her hair under that turban is a fabulous shade of lavender.
The best part of that (okay, not really, those are great women on that list) was the person who came in and was like “ladies don’t use the F word.” HAHAHAHA.
I think we may all quote Mark Darcy in this: “yes, they fucking do.”
Or Mallory: “fuck on that”
Noooooo that picture of Helen Mirren though
*melts into a puddle*
*evaporates into the air*
*survives as the barest hint of mist on that leather jacket*
There’s nothing like a Dame, is there?
Nothing in the world!
OMG, here’s Beatrix wearing a very similar leather jacket:
Ohhh man, #17 stopped me dead in my tracks as the perfect encapsulation of my style goals. Perrrrr-fection!
I want #8 to have a Cruella DeVille-off with Meryl Streep.
Number 17 stopped me dead in my tracks as the perfect encapsulation of my imaginary girlfriend goals.
(Well, not completely imaginary because I do know a single queer girl who dresses like that with that exact hair cut – seriously I had to look twice to check it wasn’t actually her – and I am desperately in lust with her and we definitely have chemistry but I am Intimidated and Too In Awe Of Her Awesome to actually make a move on her. So the person is real, but the girlfriend bit is imaginary. Woe.)
I love all of this. What the fuck is this arbitrary over 30 thing? Aside from it being total bullshit, over 30 can be such a loooong time.
Also, there are an awful lot of things that look dumb on 20-year olds that look fantastic on, say, Helen Mirren. That’s actually my go-to response to every single thing that women over 30 “shouldn’t wear.” “Would you tell Helen Mirren not to wear that? No? Then shut the fuck up.”
(I happen to agree that women over 30 shouldn’t wear booty shorts, but I don’t think anybody should wear booty shorts. I accept that this is my personal preference, and thus refrain from commenting on anybody’s decision to wear booty shorts.)
I am 36 and own several pairs of very short-shorts. They were intended for hot yoga classes but eeeeh fuck it.
Being able to see the bottom of people’s buttocks, but not the rest of the buttocks, just weirds me out for some reason. It’s like toe cleavage in super-pointy shoes, which just makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can’t quite articulate. However, I acknowledge that your buttocks are your business.
I also own several pairs of very short shorts. I wear them only in the house, and never look in the mirror. I accept this inconsistency about myself.
It was in response to a specific article detailing “what you should never wear over thirty.”
Thanks for this–loving it. Had not realized Gabourey Sidibe was over 30 though–she has such a youthful face I thought she was still early 20s and had to Wiki her because I was prepared to protest.
And I totally agree with @Smoomin that 30 is crazy young to everyone except children.
ETA: Author of the original negative piece appears to be about 26 (based on starting her AA in 2008, per LinkedIn), so maybe she’s just feeling conflicted about being in the second half of her 20s and will get it all sorted out soon. Too bad she has to work out the conflict by being shaming of everyone else’s choices though.
Yeah, I just turned 32, and am in no way an adult.
OT, but Agh! I need to complain about publishing! Last week a deal announcement went up for this gorgeous, amazing novel I sold (!!!). And since then, people have been coming out of the woodwork wanting more books like this from me (!!!). And I just got a request from a Publisher who had seen the announcement, was so excited about it, and wanted to know what more I have like it in the works. Which is amazing, except for the fact that they had actually rejected the novel that is, evidently “very much in line with what we’re looking for.” Sometimes this industry is so very silly.
*eye roll* This industry. I don’t know if you’re on Toastie Slack, but we have a #publishing channel there! It’s a great place for networking, celebrating, and bitching. Join us if you can!
Is it just me, or has Buzzfeed news done some damn fine reporting on rape culture over the past year? Am I the only one who-s noticed this?
I heard that if you write a bunch of Buzzfeed’s bread-and-butter “10 Things Everyone Who Bakes Cakes Will Relate To”-type froth, they give you the time and support for your serious journalism.
They use the ad/click revenue from the listcles/sponsored posts to fund the more serious long form stories, that’s their business model (a lot of other companies have the same idea, but BF is the most successful because they spend years building their brand and churning out click baity but good content).
I’ve heard that the staff writers have a ‘2 for them, 1 for you’ rule, or something like that, where you write X amount of click-baity/popular articles and then you can write something serious on a topic your interested in.
OT-y but y’know. Yesterday my dude (6 months??) and I a lil heart to heart where he let me know he wasn’t really ready for having a more emotionally deep relationship. Which I knew was coming (didn’t stop me from dreaming that the conversation would be more “I’m only pulling away because I love you so much and I adore you and I want to run away with you and become birds”) We decided to Not Break Up because we’ve got a Pretty Good and Nice Thing going on. But I’m going to back off and want less or whatever and he’s going be better at communicating that he needs space or whatever. I feel good about it, I think, but I also feel potentially foolish as fuck for not being like “If you can’t handle me at my I’m Healing From Trauma you don’t deserve me at my Loving and Fun 2 Be Around”
idk idk idk idk
You’re allowed to wait and decide if you’re getting enough of what you need to be content. There isn’t a timetable.
This is what I needed to hear <3
What does “having a more emotionally deep relationship” mean? What are the actual practical, behavioral ramifications of that?
I speak from so much emo NF experience… deciding to want less as a strategy might buy you some time but it is unlikely to make you happy. I have been negotiating the rocky ground of this myself, and in the end, no one’s happy because it will eventually blow up in your face. If what is here makes you happy as a casual entertainment for right now, then you have at it, but don’t sell yourself short or think you can fool your heart into being satisfied on a diet.
*hug*
This is what I’m afraid of. “don’t sell yourself short or think you can fool your heart into being satisfied on a diet.”
Thank you, and I hope you find what you need too.
Hugs. I don't think there's a right way to feel about something like this. I hope you find what you want, and go out and seek it, whether that is in this relationship or not. <3
Welcome in and out of the Happy Valley!
You guys, this is OT but I can’t wait until Friday, my dad had a bad accident over the weekend. Details in the reply.
So my dad is in his late 60s and has multiple health issues, the most serious being diabetes and a completely unrelated auto-immune kidney disease that usually kills people before doctors find out you have it–it was a 100% lucky chance that he had to go in for a physical and his doctor noticed something weird and had him do more testing. Anyway, he does at-home dialysis every night and is on the kidney transplant list.
Yesterday he fell down the stairs. My parents’ bedroom is on the second floor of their house, and he is more and more shaky and probably shouldn’t be going up and down stairs right now. He’s in the hospital with a broken arm, some cracked vertebrae, and a concussion. My mom was home at the time, thank god, and was able to call an ambulance. He didn’t break his neck, and has feeling in and is able to move all his extremities, so it’s not as bad as it could have been. But he doesn’t remember what he was doing before he fell. He had been on the phone with a friend, and he doesn’t remember any of that conversation, and he has no memory of falling.
The other thing that’s frustrating is that my parents are so, so private about medical things. They don’t want to worry their kids (I have a brother and a sister), so that means they don’t tell us about changes in my dad’s health. My sister and I both live far away, although my brother and his wife live in the same town as my parents. The only reason we know my dad had an accident and is in the hospital is because my mom called my sister-in-law yesterday at around 4 in the afternoon from the hospital because she was worried that their dog hadn’t been out since 4 in the morning. My dad fell at around 10 am, apparently. So I’m frustrated that mom didn’t tell us, and frustrated that I’m 2500 miles away and so pretty useless, and feeling guilty that my brother is going to have to take care of a lot of difficult conversations over the next few weeks (like, you can’t sleep upstairs anymore, dad, but also potentially you can’t drive anymore, dad, and if it does come to that I can tell you my dad is not going to like it. And also apparently dad doesn’t have a will or a living will or an advanced directive or a medical power of attorney or anything set up, and me being the practical one who always handles logistics is silently screaming why the hell did you not set that up as soon as you were diagnosed with the kidney thing, FFS). So I’m also feeling guilty about being frustrated with my parents for not wanting to face/discuss these potential end-of-life record-keeping things that are so, so important.
I’m sorry this is all a little incoherent, but I needed to vent. If anyone has advice on how to approach the ‘let’s get your affairs in order’ conversation with parents, I’d be grateful.
Ah, shit. That sucks to be involved in. I have no advice, just know I am thinking good thoughts for your whole family.
Thank you!
Ugh, I’m sorry. Get Your Shit Together might help with just knowing what you need to start talking about, if not necessarily how to broach the subject.
That’s a great site, thanks.
I feel you on all of this. Both of my parents are cancer survivors and yet there is still no will or advance directive! I got progress in the form of them agreeing to write one when my husband lost both of his parents in a short period of time and I took a family dinner as an occasion to explain how much money, time and pain his parents had saved their children by having wills and trusts and begging them to save me and my sibling from having to probate anything. But since then, no progress I know of, despite another hospitalization, so another chat at Father’s Day is in order. I may have to just call a family friend who’s a lawyer and either book a consult with him or someone he recommends so I can force their hand.
Oh, that’s a good idea–just get a consult with a lawyer. I’ll have to tell my brother.
I’m sorry you’re dealing with all of this and from so far away. The best thing you can probably do for your brother (in addition to all the good advice here), is make sure your parents know you and your siblings are on the same page about these issues. Would it help to tell them that you worry more when you don’t know what’s going on — you make up worst case scenarios that are always way worse than reality — and so it would actually ease your fears if they were more open with you? That’s assuming “we don’t want to worry the kids” is their actual reason, and not a smoke screen for something harder to combat.
One important thing to know is that not remembering the events immediately leading up to a big accident like the one your Dad had is pretty common. The medical term for it is “retrograde amnesia,” meaning that you can remember everything about an accident after a certain point, but you have no memory of the accident itself or what immediately preceded it. So while it certainly sounds like the fall is related to your Dad’s overall health, his not being able to remember the fall or what happened right before is not necessarily an indication that he is having memory issues. This is not to dismiss the possibility that he has longer-term memory issues underlying this as that’s certainly possible. But memory loss around an accident is definitely a known thing.
I think their reason really and truly is not wanting to worry the kids–it’s a sort of extension of their ‘let them go off and become adults without our interference’ attitude that they took when we all went off the college. They didn’t want to be too pushy or intrusive–they wanted us to find ourselves on our own. And it was great! And I really appreciated it! And now they still don’t want to be intrusive or to interfere in our adult lives, but in this case it’s not an intrusion, it’s keeping us up-to-date on Dad’s medical issues. I think I’ll try the ‘my imagination inevitably makes things worse than they are’ angle and see if that helps.
Also, thank you for the reassurance about the memory issues. I have no experience with concussions so I really have no idea what to expect. I learned from my brother today that, in addition to the chronic stuff, Dad (and apparently everyone else–Mom, my brother, sister-in-law, their kids) has had some kind of horrible upper-respiratory infection thing, and that the interaction of the drugs Dad was taking for that with his regular drugs to manage the kidney thing and diabetes probably contributed to him passing out, plus the upper-respiratory thing of course hit Dad the hardest because he has the weakest immune system.
The discussions around these links at apartment therapy might also be helpful:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/thinking-about-de…
I have been thinking about this a lot as not only my parents get weaker but my older brother and sister are starting to get aches and troubles! And the Bay Area is soooo shitty with almost every apartment and condo up a steep hill and craploads of stairs. Grr.
That is extremely helpful, thank you!
This sounds complicated as hell. How intense and stressful and scary and sad. I am so sorry.
I agree with other posters on this, and there are attorneys who specialize in this kind of law, and can make is as simple and painless a process as possible.
Sending you and your family lots of healing, solace, and good sense…
Thank you.
NO ONE has commented on the fact that if MALLORY forgot to put up the open thread, this must mean that MALLORY is the bartender!
I took it to mean that Nicole was/is, and that was why Mallory wouldn’t be used to doing it.
Ahhh good point.
The Poe hair article is everything I could ask of a LR.
Videogame site ZAM is writing a series of Toast-inspired “If X Was Your Y” pieces about game characters. I don’t know the character or the game (Zarya from Overwatch; she’s a stoic Russian Olympic weightlifter), but this one seems to get the tone.
I hope it’s a developing trend.
Most of Buzzfeed's longform articles are indeed excellent.
I do think they should give them a slightly different brand – Brainfeed? – because there is still a lot of dismissal of the site because of the listicles.