Leslie @6: I think your story might be, if possible, even sadder than Perlstein's original anecdote.
My two surviving grandparents are nearly in their nineties, and their health is declining; after all their generation's sacrifices and hard work, it would be nice to think that maybe they would have the opportunity to see us building on the foundation they helped to establish rather than tearing down our democracy and putting up a new gilded monument to fascism.
Thanks, Jim, for providing links to concrete things we can do to help stem the tide of disinformation.
Dan, Don, et al.: is my family's use of "f#@$&n' stupid" as an epithet OK? It seems to both convey our sentiments and avoid inadvertent insult of any particular group.
We heartily encourage our 6YO and 8YO to use it, anyway. Obscenity is better than bigotry.
My childhood best friend moved to Massachusetts for grad school a few years ago. She and her longtime partner were just married last month. This news made me thrilled for her... and also heartsick to think of how differently it could have gone if same-sex marriage had been submitted for the voters to decide.
Michael, Madeleine, Melissa: a few months ago, my seven-year-old son used "I'm gay" as the caption of a drawing of a google-eyed, tongue-lolling fellow he'd done. I restrained myself from yelling and managed to discuss it fairly calmly with him instead (though he knew full well that anti-gay slurs were completely unwelcome in our family). Ten minutes later, he came in and asked for a permanent marker so he could black out his caption and replace it with something else. (His final choice: "I love George W. Bush.")
John Stanning, will shetterly et al.: There was an article in (yesterday's?) NYT about the intersection of both definitions of "class" under discussion here. The Class-Consciousness Raiser profiles Ruby Payne, a woman who's parlayed her self-published book on the cultural differences between lower-, middle- and upper-class families into a multi-million dollar empire. She now tours the country sharing her insights with educators; her presentations include such pearls of wisdom as "rich people don't eat casseroles" and "poor people play the TV too loud." Fascinating read, and it forced to reflect a little on my own middle-class assumptions of how the world is supposed to be. (Polite. Tidily dressed. Unostentatious. Bourgeois notions, all.)
Paris Hilton, OTOH, seems to personify my (dirt-farmer's daughter) Grammy's maxim: "All the money in the world can't buy you a lick of taste."
As an aside to Patrick's recent sidelight: LOLcatz for physics geeks.
Awwww, man... I've been wanting to go to this conference since I was a lowly undergrad. If you see Virginia Jansen (art history, UCSC) tell her hi for me! (Hers would be an excellent brain to pick about anything and everything having to do with medieval/early modern urban design and the evolution of cities. Also, Salisbury Cathedral.)
Eric Sadoyama @ 263: I picked up Elantris on the advice of an LDS friend and thoroughly enjoyed it. The story is not a series of typical quest-fantasy tropes, and there's some unusual and interesting character development. Some nice spooky bits, too, if I remember correctly.
Oh, and there are no sequels. It's all wrapped up in one juicy 656-page package.
Chris Clarke @ 51: Hee. I've not been reading Making Light long enough; I had to dip into the past via the magic of Google to figure out what you were talking about.
BruceCohen @ 52: the main drag of our fair city is now festooned with a series of Halliburton HR billboards. Apparently they are always hiring; they pay quite well; most of the rig jobs require little or no experience or education; your large white truck, gigantic American (or Confederate--take your pick) flag and shotgun are issued at employee orientation.
This area boomed in the early '80s when Exxon (and a few other companies) started blowing up mountainsides going after oil shale. Predictably, it all flamed out spectacularly when it became apparent that oil shale was far too inefficient (not to mention environmentally destructive) to be a worthwhile source of energy. You can drive all over the county and not find a single house built between about 1982 and 1988... people vanished overnight, leaving their still-furnished brand-new tract houses behind them. Now with the current lip service being paid to "energy independence," our rocky and inaccessible oilfields are looking tempting once more. Even Exxon is sniffing around again.
Those who have lived here since before the first oil-go-round shake their heads and hold on to their wallets. Those who moved here thinking this looked like a town on the verge of a takeover by priced-out Denverites in search of good restaurants and an active arts scene are getting the heck out as fast as we can.
Serge @ 43: Oh yes, resurrection-style coffee. Reason #437 on the official list of reasons Portland will be a better city in which to live than the current one. (Reason #436: never again having to live, as far as I can tell, round the corner from a house with a driveway crammed full of Halliburton trucks.)
Sisuile @ 40: a very strange thing happens, though, when you look at the trendline for fantasy novels.
Tania @ 24: I am absurdly pleased to see that my soon-to-be hometown of Portland scores so well on the zombie-meter. Who knew the Pacific Northwest was home to so many slavering fans of the living dead?
Alas, in a head-to-head face-off, vampires still beat zombies handily, though it looks as though fascination with blood-suckers is trending downward while interest in the shambling sort of undead continues to rise gently apace.
Kathryn @ 46: thank you, thank you! Any month in which one has three small and two large article deadlines and in which one is also trying to sell one's house and pack for a cross-country move is a very bad month in which to discover addictive new pastimes of any sort.
Boomshine is evil, hideous and wrong.
Any game that has you frantically Googling for strategy tips, only to find that the most common advice is "qba'g ybbx ng gur fperra jura lbh pyvpx" ...which you still, obsessively, Skinner rat-like, for hours on end, keep doing... is obviously a ploy of Satan to distract us while he leads his army of minions up from the depths. I expect an infernal knock on my door any minute now. Which I will ignore, 'cause I've gotten 52 on the 12th level five times in a row now, and surely my luck is about to take a turn for the better...
Er, thanks, Avram!
A quick corollary: one of the links at the end of the postcard entry goes to a Ladies' Home Journal article from 1900 titled "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years." Can you imagine LHJ, or any other "women's" magazine found at the grocery checkout, publishing anything similar now? ("The Trials and Triumphs of Katie Couric?" "Lose 50 Pounds with the Cabbage Soup Diet?" Now that's news you can use.)
(Said article includes among its predictions "There will be no C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet"--how quixotic! Also, "There will be no wild animals left except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated.")
I received a heads-up on this a few days ago in the form of an e-mail blast from See's--the chocolate I grew up eating. Every Saturday, my sister and I would stand shoulder to shoulder in our freshly cleaned room, palms out to receive our allowance. Once our $7 was in hand, we'd walk the mile and a half to the comic shop to load up on Elfquest and X-Men (me) and Archie Double Digests (her), then stop by See's on the way back for a San Francisco Brickle Bar, a couple of chocolate suckers and the ubiquitous free sample.
Even if I didn't care about good chocolate (which is akin to not caring about gentle spring rains or fluffy gray kittens), I'd have submitted a comment just to support such a stalwart and delicious pillar of my childhood. (Kind of like how my sister still flips through the Archies at the grocery checkout counter; but she swears they're not as good as they used to be and she won't buy them any more.)
The organ surged, sending deep shudders up her spine and down her quivering legs. A seeming choir of angels trilled in unison, and her lips moved along with theirs. "Praise God," she cried, "from whom all blessings flow!"
She loved hymns. She really loved hymns.
About a year and a half after we graduated from high school, my best friend Kerri and several other kids were driving home after midnight from a Counting Crowes concert. The sixteen-year-old driver saw a dog in the road, slammed on the brakes and sent the van into the ditch.
Everyone was wearing her seatbelt--except Kerri, who in her inimitable hippie-rebel style, was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the van massaging someone else's feet. Everyone else was shaken but unharmed (including, as far as we know, the dog). Kerri went through the windshield, broke her neck and was killed instantly.
She was a singer, an actress, a very-much-loved fixture of our local community theater who had just been accepted to the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. There were over five hundred people at her memorial service. And in the thirteen years since then, I've never again made such a good friend.
Wear your damned seatbelt.
Tina @ 109: I'm sorry to hear about your kitty. My cats have been all that keeps me going at times, and it makes me sick at heart to think of the day I'll lose one of them. You have my sympathy.
And to all drawing parallels between vanity publishing and mainstream music labels: have you seen the film I Am Trying To Break Your Heart? It's the story of Wilco falling apart at the seams while struggling with their record company over the release of their soon-to-be-classic album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The money-grubbing, short-sighted, ultimately evil industry practices it documents are enough to make any self-respecting band go out and start its own label, a la Sufjan Stevens and Asthmatic Kitty Records. Massively recommended.
I'm sorry to hear about Porco Bruno. He was a lucky little guy to be so loved.
And "Frumentious" is a tremendously wonderful name.
Leslie, thanks for the tip. I recently unloaded a bunch of clutter on eBay and invested the proceeds in a Powell's gift card (in anticipation of being very poor after our upcoming move and having no book money), so I was hoping to be able to buy it through them... but abebooks will work just fine. It's really a fascinating book.
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