I finished a draft of my novel, and have been filled with torpor ever since -- I slept until almost noon yesterday, and then also went to bed early. In between I did almost nothing but read, though I did mow the lawn in the evening. That's twice so far this summer. Usually we are in mid-July before I have managed to get around to mowing the lawn twice, so go me!Links!
A lovely alternative parenting history
An utter pile of Right-Wing Bullshit. I hate this nostalgic everything was better in the old days crap anyway, but Sweet Jesus, this one is talking about 1954. Up your game, losers. That's within living memory of some of the people still around.
A comic about gender roles, and how fragile they really are
A Christian mother writes about her trans child -- I was upset by the abuse the mother put this child through, but to her credit she acknowledges the abuse, and her part in it, and knows that she was wrong to have done it. Writing this essay, I think, is one way she is attempting to keep others from inflicting the same sort of abuse on their own children.
Writing Advice!
It's not quite vampirism, but young blood (very young blood) seems to make old brains run better.
Toni Morrison on racism
5 comments:
Congratulations on the draft! That's fabulous!
Thanks, Bardiac!
[This needs posted in two parts due to character restrictions.]
Many things in that "Nicer Days" link are older than the grandmother, born in 1952.
*"the shootings at schools" - Technically not a shooting, but the worst massacre in American schools took place in 1927, with 45 deaths.
*Television - First demonstrated around 1926; first television station established in 1928.
*Penicillin - Someone's never seen The Third Man, made in 1948. The drug was discovered 1928, and first used against infections in 1942.
*Frozen foods - Around for centuries; apparently the writer doesn't consider the Inuit to be human. Frozen chickens were being shipped from Russia to Great Britain in 1885.
*Contact lenses - The first practical pair was produced by Adolf Fick in 1888; Thomas Young had experimented with them in 1801. Boy, Grandma's old.
*Credit cards - "Charg-it," the first card accepted by multiple companies, was introduced in 1946.
*Ballpoint pens - John Loud created the first one in 1888, but the first one that would work well with paper wasn't patented until 1938.
*Air Conditioners - Willis Carrier created one in 1902.
*Dishwashers - A hand-powered one was invented in 1887.
*Clothes Dryers - G.T. Simpson invented the mechanical dryer in 1892.
Then we have some personal recollections. Although she may have been calling police officers "Sir" throughout her life, I believe some of her contemporaries were calling them "Pig" before they turned 25.
*"Every family had a father and a mother." - I'd like to know how they kept every parent from dying. Didn't any fathers die during the Korean War?
*"before gay-rights" - As I said, apparently non-Western cultures don't count. However, France did legalize same-sex relations in 1791.
*Daycare - The earliest such establishment is unknown, but the New York Day Nursery was operating in 1854.
*Group Therapy - Trigant Burrow was developing this during the 1920s, due to a complaint by Clarence Shields that one-on-one therapy was too authoritarian.
*"Our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments" - remember, boys and girls, the Ten Commandments did not ban Jim Crow.
*"We never heard of FM radios" - W1XOJ started broadcasting in 1937
*Yogurt - It seems eastern Europeans don't count for much, either.
*Guys wearing earrings - King Tut wore them. Boy, Grandma's ancient. I bet you could find her birth certificate in the British Museum. (And didn't anyone see the earrings on Mr. Clean?)
*"Making Out" - first used before 1949.
*McDonald's - Opened in 1940, but, to be fair, the Golden Arches didn't appear until 1953, and Roy Kroc didn't join the company until 1955.
*Instant coffee - Invented by Alphonse Allais in 1881. George Washington (not that one) introduced the first major American brand in 1910.
[Continuation]
*Streetcars - Grandma's not from New York City, since the McDonald Avenue Line closed in 1956, which would be too early for her to remember.
*"you could spend your 5 cents on enough stamps to mail 1 letter and 2 postcards." - In 1954, you needed 7 cents to do that; rates had gone up in 1952.
*"petrol was 4 cents a litre" - I don't recall litres being in common use in the US during the 50s, or at any other time. (The word "petrol" was in use in the US, however. In the 1953 cartoon Cat-Tails for Two, "Benny comes to the rescue by cooling George down, but misinterprets a bucket of petrol as 'a funny way to spell water' leaving him half furless.")
*“grass” was mowed - In 1943, Time magazine noted that grass was a slang term for marijuana. It was also associated with jazz music.
*“coke” was a cold drink - Also used since around 1908 to refer to cocaine.
[After researching this, I wanted to learn how old the list was. A similar one was posted in 2000, and one commentator said it's very amusing if you imagine Abe Simpson saying these things.]
Exactly, D. Shannon. As usual, these posts are counting on no one ever bothering to check sources, do research, or even spend two minutes thinking about the claims being made.
The BS about every family having a mother and a father was especially egregious, both for the reason you note and because both actual divorce and men (and women, more rarely) abandoning their families more informally have been happening since marriage became a thing.
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