(I'm waiting for them to do a historical game in the GTA mode called Susie Clelland's Got a Gun.)
*is killed dead with laughing*
The Asian Bird Flu Disaster
*is resurrected just so she can be killed again*
It's times like these that I'm glad I have a five-month-old baby who likes to hear poetry, needs to be rocked to sleep at night, keeps rolling over and getting trapped on her belly, and is just beginning to eat cereal.
It helps more than I can say to have such a human, life-affirming, and incredibly attention-demanding process going on right in front of me.
It's amazing how much more successful a person's arguments can be if they get to make up what the other side is saying, too. Take a look at commenter "ES":
Some of the posts here truly amaze me. The largest relief effort in the history of this country is underway. In a matter of only 48 hours, (guess that's too long for the email addicted, impatient generation) ships, boats, barges, red cross, tens of thousands of volunteers, 30k national guards, money coming in from everywhere, even countries that supposedly hate us, France, Germany, Venuzuela all have vowed to assist and donations are coming in from citizens of all countries of the world. Yet, we're not doing enough to 'save the poor'. Malarky!
Of course no one here has been criticizing the post-hurricane relief effort. The outrage has focused on the pre-disaster evacuation, and the complete and utter failure to plan any sort of means of evacuation for the 1 in 6 New Orleans residents without a car. "Y'all gas up your SUVs and drive north until you find yourself someplace to stay" isn't an evacuation plan that makes sense for a large urban area. Additionally, people have criticized the federal government for failing to apportion funds for levee repairs which were widely recognized to be critical.
Those are hard arguments to answer. It's much, much easier for "ES" to deride us for failing to appreciate what has been a truly heroic nationwide response to the disaster, than it would be to answer our legitimate concerns about pre-Katrina governmental decisions.
Survival is an instinct and it can't be bought, bartered, earned, stolen or looted. Survivors think and survivors ACT! That's why they survive. It has nothing to do with not having a car or food or money.
Here's a test: Have someone drop you and your riches in the middle of a desert and we'll see how much those riches help your situation. You'll die. Have someone drop you and your riches into a hurricane which was announced DAYS earlier but you get the test of 'riding it out.' You'll probably die.
Wow, look at how quickly that straw man falls down! "ES" must feel like a powerful fighter.
Being rich is certainly no advantage in New Orleans now, when there's no one to buy things from and having obvious wealth would make you a target. Again, the question was never whether rich people would have an easier time riding the hurricane out in place - it's whether rich people would have an easier time evacuating. Money wouldn't do me any good if I were dropped into the eye of a hurricane, but it sure as hell would help me to provision my family in advance, transport us out of the endangered city, and pay for lodgings elsewhere. "ES" can hardly argue with that... and so he doesn't.
Mythago, for heaven's sake. Maybe people aren't talking much about Roshkow's role in all of this because he hasn't written anything about his own opinions and feelings. We have Olen's published account and Tessy's published account, which are dramatically at odds with each other. They've both written at length about their actions and feelings. Couldn't that be why people are, you know, discussing their actions and feelings? Does it really have to be sexism?
Olen puts opinions in Roshkow's mouth, but she also portrays Tessy's weblog as a hedonistic slutfest. She might be right about his feelings or she might not, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that people are declining to speculate.
Mike - you write, (Random unrelated question: Just how much money do you have to make before a nanny starts being in the realm of possibilities? I'm not exactly poor, but I don't know anyone who has a nanny, and can't imagine affording one myself. They always sound like a luxury of the European nobility, not people with jobs.)
I have a nanny. My husband and I are certainly more well-off than the average American family, but our combined income is less than $100,000 a year and we carry a lot of educational loans. We are able to afford a nanny because both of us were able to convince our employers that our jobs could stretch to include some days at home. I work at home two days a week, and my husband works a flextime schedule that crams a 40-hour week into four workdays instead of five.
The other two days a week, we have a part-time nanny, which (as far as I can tell) is a fancy word for a babysitter who comes during the day while you're at work. She works about 16 hours a week in our home, and gets paid $10 an hour. We pay Social Security taxes on her wages. The amount we pay for nanny care, per week, is considerably less than we'd pay for full-time daycare in a group setting. But again, that's because we were able to arrange our work schedules so that we don't need childcare full time.
I've seen, elsewhere (at Dr. B's, maybe?) the assertion that any woman who can afford a nanny can damn well afford to stay home and raise her children herself. (As always, these are apparently parthenogenically created children, with no father to share the responsibility of rearing them.) I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one for whom that statement is lightyears away from being true.
I was reading the comments to Dr. B's post when the nanny showed up this morning. That felt a little awkward.
The mother/nanny relationship is inherently weird. This woman spends 15 hours a week in my home. She reads my books and eats food from my fridge. Yes, I'm quite sure she's much more focused on my daughter than she is on me (or my husband), but the fact remains that she's naturally got much more access to personal and intimate information about me than I do about her.
Fortunately, I have experience with that kind of relationship from the other side. The therapist/client relationship is also both intimate and one-sided - I learn all about my client's deepest secrets and vulnerabilities, while revealing as little as possible about my own. What I've learned in that setting is that it DOES NOT WORK to try to even up the intimacy imbalance by upping the degree of personal exposure on the professional's side. There are some things my clients can only tell me because they know nothing personal about me, because I am in some sense anonymous.
I got explicit training in graduate school about the danger of "multiple relationships" - which is not in this case polyamory, but two people relating to each other in multiple roles, such as therapist-client and friend-friend. When one set of roles involve a power imbalance, multiple relationships generally lead to trouble. Unfortunately, no one gives that kind of training to nannies or people hiring nannies. Tessy didn't know that accepting Olen's overtures of friendship - and it seems very clear that Olen wanted to treat the nanny like a family friend - would be so disastrous, and I can't really blame her. She's learned an expensive lesson. I can blame Olen. As the person in the relationship with the greater amount of power, it was her responsibility to know better.
I like my nanny. I looked hard for a nanny I could feel comfortable with, and someone who would fit in well with the way we want our household to work. But I don't make the mistake of thinking that she's my friend. I pay her salary. I can fire her. No matter how buddy-buddy I want to be, she's never going to be able to forget those two things - so neither should I.
Melissa - those of us from Elmira are going to have an awful time with your novel. But then again, how many of us are likely to be from Elmira?
Niall - Darth Sane, Darth Competent and Darth Dividualistic.
"Prepare to fire! No, not you, Darth Flammable!"
You are bad, bad, wicked, and evil. Thank you.
Andy Perrin - thanks for your kind comment on the cuteness of the baby otter. Strangely enough, it wasn't just a lucky shot - she really is that adorable just about all the time. Nine months of slaving away in the cute factory really paid off!
"If I think someone wants to kill themself, I'll try to get them to go to a doctor, but in the end, it's their right to end their life."
I operate under the assumption that people who genuinely and unambivalently want to kill themselves do not signal their intentions in advance. Especially not to someone who, like me, is a psychologist. Especially not to someone who is their psychologist. So if I find out about it, I assume that I have been notified by the part of the suicidal person which does not actually want to die.
So, although I acknowledge that if someone really wants to kill themselves, I'm not going to be able to stop them, I nevertheless take whatever steps are necessary to stop people from attempting suicide if I discover that they're thinking about it - including involuntary hospitalization.
I have never had someone come back and tell me that I should have let them die.
Greg - go ahead, make me weep. I have sworn off tuna for the duration of my current young-brain-creating project, which should be finished... oh, about another year or so from now, I guess. Mercury. Tuna ceviche made with sushi-grade fish sounds absolutely marvelous.
I think that the proportions of lime juice I use in that recipe aren't sufficient to cevichize fish, even cut thinly - but of course one could increase the lime juice quite handily. In that case, it would help to add more sweet fruits, or more sugar, to the salsa.
Yum.
My favorite fish recipe:
Marinate a pound and a half of meaty filets (shark, swordfish, salmon, tuna all work) in olive oil, lime or lemon juice, cumin, salt, and pepper.
While the fish is marinating, put together a tropical fruit salsa: one mango, diced, one can of chopped pineapple in juice, drained, and a small red bell pepper, diced, seasoned with a splash each of lime juice and white vinegar, a sprinkling of sugar, and some crushed red pepper to taste.
Grill the fish and top it with the tropical fruit salsa.
Okay, that "small-minded indignation" site just broke my brain. Not with the outrage about the Pope serving Communion to "bare-breasted natives." Not with the horror at the very idea that Judaism is a legitimate religion.
With the phrase "Progressivist Cardinal Ratzinger."
What. The. Hell.
Here's the NYT story. And they got your name right!
Here's a piece by a Jesuit bioethicist explaining more about the Catholic Church's position on withdrawal of medical treatment.
The Church has never required aggressive treatment until the end, or disapproved of withdrawing all but comfort care in terminal cases. Azygos's friend has some idiosyncratic beliefs about this issue - he's not reflecting official Catholic doctrine.
Jack - take a look at this post by that same doctor, and tell me why we should take his medical opinion seriously.
Seriously, even in the comments section of the post you link to he already backs down from some of his more, um, authoritative pronouncements about the Schiavo CT.
Julia - yeah, I was excited about the availability of a Friends school in Baltimore for about five minutes. Until I checked the annual tuition.
Teresa - Unitarian-Universalism is not a Protestant sect, so that's one less for you to worry about sorting out.
(There are UU Christians, yes, and I'm one of them. But it's a creedless faith in which individuals choose to believe what they like, and the number of UUs who choose to believe in (for example) the Resurrection is quite small.)
My Unitarian-Universalist jokes have always been heartily accepted at church, fortunately. So regardless of what various fundamentalist websites claim, UU is not a cult.
Some favorites:
UU Bible Study will be held after church today. Please bring your own Bible and a pair of scissors.
Q. What do UUs have in common with Dracula?
A. Both originated in Transylvania, and both shy away from the cross.
Q. Have you heard about the new UU evangelists?
A. They knock on your door and say, "Would you like to tell me about your religion?"
Q. What do you call the corpse at a Unitarian funeral?
A. All dressed up with no place to go.
Q. What happens when you get the UUs really mad at you?
A. They show up and burn a question mark on your lawn.
Q. Why do UUs make such lousy congregational singers?
A. Everyone is reading ahead to see whether they agree with the next line. (Note: this one is SO true that it hardly qualifies as a joke.)
You can tell you're in a UU church if the only time the minister says "Jesus Christ" is when she spills her coffee.
Rivka - does it literally say in the Bible that she laid him on his back?
Laura - Shhhhh. Don't spoil a perfectly good riff. ;-)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 2 |
| 2005 | 24 |
| 2004 | 23 |
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