I knew Ashley Ford’s name first on Twitter as @ismashfizzle because she does good work for the world there but here’s another facet to love: her interview with Michelle Yeoh.
“America First” – not my America. This piece was hugely resonant for me as a child of immigrants, knowing how much the generation of parent-immigrants gave up in order to give us a better life. I still feel that sense of gratitude even if my own remaining parent has turned out to be a terrible person. It’s weird but I do.
Golden Globes
I don’t watch awards shows but I will watch Sandra Oh in pretty much anything. And Samberg is hilarious. This monologue made me laugh out loud. And they cut to her mom.
Katelyn Ohashi, I Was Broken – her recent performance was breathtakingly extraordinary but it was made more so by the joy she has now. This video of her finding her joy again, whew: “There was a time where I was on top of the world, an Olympic hopeful. I was unbeatable. Until I wasn’t.“
Not Mine to Mold: My children, nondisabled and disabled, are not mine to mold. I wouldn’t subject my bookish nondisabled son to unwanted daily sports training; nor should I force Edmund to stop repeatedly tapping his head for comfort. Accepting Edmund, and supporting him to be himself, means I stop acting so much like a coach, and more like his mom.
I strongly feel this about JB. I am responsible for molding zir into a compassionate and caring human, but not to make zir any kind of duplicate of me.
Everyone in the department knew that this doctor discriminated against women, are afraid to speak publicly for fear of retaliation, and yet they can’t find evidence supporting it. Hm.
This was a lovely description of empathy around the holidays with a child. I keep trying this with JB but ze just gets worked up and angry instead as I describe zir feelings.
I wouldn’t believe him either. Unification Plan From China Finds Few Takers in Taiwan: On the one hand, Mr. Xi threatened military force if Taiwanese leaders grasped for independence. On the other hand, Mr. Xi said that if Taiwan were to agree to unification, its rights would be ensured by the “one country, two https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/world/asia/xhina-xi-jinping-taiwan.htmsystems” framework that Beijing used in Hong Kong after it returned from British colonial control in 1997.
…
But neither the threat nor the promised reward seemed likely to sharply weaken Taiwanese opposition to China’s demands, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at the Hong Kong Baptist University who studies relations between China and Taiwan.
I’m A Man And It Took Me Years To Recognize I Had Been Sexually Assaulted: In our ongoing and expanding dialogue on the nature of sexual assault, I only hope that we continue to encourage men to feel safe in recognizing their experiences with it. Vulnerability isn’t weakness and victimhood need not be a badge of shame
An interview with Richard Grant, on his abusive alcoholic father. I find this view a bit hard to reconcile: Of course, like he always was, he either had blacked out or had no memory of what he’d done the night before, and would sign a check and push it across the breakfast table and be full of remorse and beg for forgiveness and all of that.
I absolutely loved and adored him, because he was a very, very funny, sharp-witted man and very provocative in his conversations. He was very well-read and all of those things. So reconciling that with this person that he turned into — I think that it’s a measure of how much a child loves a parent. That even though [I had] suffered those things, I always very, very clearly understood that who he became when he was drunk was not who he was. To me, that was the monster, and it wasn’t my father who I loved.
This brought tears to my eyes: In “The Barefoot Woman,” Mukasonga’s latest book, translated from the French into English by Jordan Stump, she attempts to fulfill her daughterly duty: “Mama, I wasn’t there to cover your body, and all I have left is words — words in a language you didn’t understand — to do as you asked. And I’m all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.”
From earlier this year, Kristi Yamaguchi, Unlaced: On the eve of the National Championships, Nicole Chung and champion skater Kristi Yamaguchi discuss life after the Olympics, what it means to be ‘the first,’ and the state of figure skating in 2018.
I’d never heard of Direct Air before this article, and I’m glad I hadn’t! What terrible people.
My empathies to Joe’s family as they are dealing with a rough situation with his mom’s dementia. Brings back some bad memories for me since it happened when we were much more precarious financially and didn’t have the resources to get her a better caretaker than us. I am glad that Joe is in a much better position than we were in.
RB40 asked: “Do you feel guilty for not giving your family the best when you can?”
(He’s talking about material things.) Nope, because I do give them the best I can. It’s just that to me, the best doesn’t mean the most expensive or what other people think is the best. The best is the thing that serves the purpose well without generating unnecessary waste. What do you think?
Related to that, Matt talks about how to be happy and you might notice that buying it isn’t a good long term plan for that sort of thing. There is a threshold where money makes a real difference, but after all our needs and most of our reasonable wants are covered, I want myself and my family to embrace gratitude and contentment, and not have to keep chasing the next high.
Why do you tell your story? Good question! It used to be because I didn’t have enough people to discuss money with but that’s less true these days.
What a litter!
The most popular videos of 2018: Golden retriever mother takes tiger, lion and hyena cubs as her own pic.twitter.com/VhnZtYPNHn
I knew the CRISPR baby gene editing was bad, I didn’t realize quite how bad it was. But of course if you’re going to be unethical, why would you bother to be meticulous about the quality of your work?
Oh great, another data breach. This time with my favorite hotel chain: Starwood.
As much as I’m an introvert and don’t want to talk to anyone, I also do want a little bit of a fabulous neighborhood.
Whew. A standard marriage according to the research sounds absolutely terrible: “Experts used to tell straight couples they should get hitched and stay that way, no matter what. But one researcher told a different story: marriage was not only harder for women—it could actually ruin their lives.” Also I’m not so sure what the big deal is about your friends choosing to have polyamorous relationships. In what way does that affect you?
This FlyerTalker’s question about what salary you make and how often you fly business class was interesting in how people pushed back. Some interesting anecdotal information there. Personally we make more than the OP, together, but I don’t think we’ve ever flown business class. There was that time Dad went and bought us Premium Economy for an overseas flight when we could ill afford it but that was foolishness in the extreme, they were paying for that for ages. One set of friends got hooked on business class recently because of an unexpected upgrade and blanched at the real business prices ($5000 for a single overseas flight). I don’t think I know anyone else who travels business class regularly (outside of Kathy) but I’d like to, once or twice. It’s not really a thing you do with kids, though. Still other well-off friends choose to travel economy, despite traveling in style during their working years, to preserve their retirement income for all the other fine things in life they enjoy.
