sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2019-06-13 03:15 pm

You never hear them sing, you never hear them scream

It is greyly pouring. My afternoon was just disrupted by the unannounced arrival of several handymen to disconnect our stove. (We have a new stove coming tomorrow. This is great in the sense that we haven't had a working broiler since December or a working oven since April and I have been in frequent communication with the property manager about it, but not so great in the sense that we were given no warning about the disconnection, it was dumb luck that I hadn't left the house for the day, we can't cook until the new stove arrives, and the property manager's husband has no idea when that will happen except tomorrow, when [personal profile] spatch is working and I had prior commitments.) I have plans to meet [personal profile] rushthatspeaks in the evening, but until then have some links.

1. I started this article with great trepidation; its title and its opening lines made it look as though it was going to be one of those sheepish appreciations where you have to spend as much time acknowledging that the thing you love really wasn't any good as defending why you love it anyway. It is not that kind of appreciation. I don't agree with every word of it, but I don't need to. It's a loving and thoughtful look at a show that was so important to me, I've almost never written about it: Jennifer Giesbrecht, "Babylon 5 Is the Greatest, Most Terrible SF Series."

2. I love the siren dynamics of Nibedita Sen's "We Sang You as Ours." (Shout-out to the Lovecraft Reread for pointing me its way.) Then I sort of accidentally chased it with Christopher Caldwell's "Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan." Now I really I miss the sea.

3. I was glad to read this reflection by Carly Pildis on carrying a Jewish pride flag at the D.C. Dyke March. "The final lesson is that we that we need to reject a paradigm where Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and those who seek to support them cannot be in a movement together without rejecting core parts of their identities."

4. On that note: "But for Seth Farber, the problem with a DNA test for Jewishness runs deeper than politics; it contravenes what he believes to be the essence of Jewish identity. There is a specific principle in Jewish law, he told me, that instructs rabbis not to undermine someone's self-declared religious identity if that person has been accepted by a Jewish community. The central principle is that when it comes to Jewish identity, the most important determinants are social – trust, kinship, commitment – not biological." What the absolute hell, Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

5. I can't tell if this is fanart for the Southern Reach Trilogy or the film derived from the first book, but I can't see what else it generally would be: Simon Clarke, "Annihilation."
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2019-06-14 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)
I was brought up Christian (Anglican Protestant) and converted to Quakerism in my teens- guided there, interestingly enough, by a gay Jewish Quaker poet (who probably has a lot to answer for :o).

Both the Jewish and the Romani ancestry were kept from me when I was young. Embarrassment? Concern over my finding out what happened to part of my family? I really don't know- and it all came out in my twenties when I got interested in my background.

Culturally Jewish I am not-I am such a mix that that's how I tend to think of myself- a mongrel.

But I'm fiercely proud of all the elements of that mongrelitude! :o)
Edited 2019-06-14 13:10 (UTC)