Give out the password to thoughts between my eyes
Good news: I slept five or six hours last night. It was sticky, tangled sleep, but it was sleep and at this point I'll take it.
Weird news: I dreamed about secrets of elemental magic contained in children's books, crumbling first editions of a British series that came out in the '50's or '60's and I was looking for them in a library or one of those mostly vanished used book stores like warehouses full of out-of-print treasures and astonishing trash, but the whole milieu felt much more M. John Harrison than J.K. Rowling, right down to the fringe of people who already knew the magic and the character who cried in my arms because he was running from something out of one of the books, not that he could describe it or even tell me which book it came from for fear of attracting its attention. The plot of the dream went to fragments as soon as I woke up, but I think I managed to keep him from dying. I can't say the same about everyone else in that chase.
Bad news: RCN has temporarily broken my e-mail.
Please enjoy this collection of links while I leave the house.
1. The Atlantic profiles Mel Brooks at 92. I like how David Denby writes about Brooks' comedy, which the man himself once famously described as rising "below vulgarity": "The larking sadism still makes one wince—the joke hasn't lost its sting—but in the end the effect is liberating: Brooks pushed the gloom of Jewish history over the brink into black comedy. The Jews had survived; the Nazis and the inquisitors were sufficiently dead to laugh at."
2. The New York Times profiles the policing of mothers. Looking at the list of normal parenting decisions that self-righteous strangers are apparently willing to call the cops on women for, I began to wonder how much of so-called helicopter parenting is really a matter of anxious apron strings and how much is just a reaction to society-wide, racially-stacked, gender-stacked concern-trolling. It would fit nicely alongside all the other damned-if-you-dos-and-don'ts: either you can be the bad mother who neglects her children or the bad mother who smothers them and either way, however they turn out, you did it wrong. Not to mention that once again we see the police functioning as a personal one-stop-shop paramilitary for the reactionary on the street. Whatever this form of micro-swatting is called, there must be a way to legislate against it. At least on the state level I have a chance of the government agreeing with me about who to punish and who to protect.
3. Courtesy of
brigdh: jade-green icebergs.
4. Elizabeth Alexander writes about marrying into a family of refugees: "'I don't want the children to be refugees,' my husband would say, and we'd share a dark, knowing laugh. 'But I do want them to know what we refugees know: that you can make your life from scratch. I want the children to have the strength and wile of survivors.'"
5. I just like these paintings of Greek goddesses and nymphs. I wish I could buy a print of Amphitrite.
6. David Schraub re-reads Albert Memmi, still bitingly relevant to the interaction of Jews and left-wing politics today.
7. Courtesy of eshusplayground: the many different things it can mean when a Jewish person says they are a Zionist/not a Zionist/an anti-Zionist.
8. I cannot see either financially or logistically how I am to get to both of these shows this summer, but there appear to be stellar revivals of Carmen Jones (reconceived by John Doyle, starring Anika Noni Rose) and Fiddler on the Roof (directed by Joel Grey, in Yiddish!) going on off-Broadway and while I am slightly biased toward the Folksbiene, I could just use a teleporter.
9. The title overstates like most clickbait, but the article has a point about meta-messages: "With James Gunn's Firing, Disney Destroyed the Message of 'Guardians of the Galaxy'."
Weird news: I dreamed about secrets of elemental magic contained in children's books, crumbling first editions of a British series that came out in the '50's or '60's and I was looking for them in a library or one of those mostly vanished used book stores like warehouses full of out-of-print treasures and astonishing trash, but the whole milieu felt much more M. John Harrison than J.K. Rowling, right down to the fringe of people who already knew the magic and the character who cried in my arms because he was running from something out of one of the books, not that he could describe it or even tell me which book it came from for fear of attracting its attention. The plot of the dream went to fragments as soon as I woke up, but I think I managed to keep him from dying. I can't say the same about everyone else in that chase.
Bad news: RCN has temporarily broken my e-mail.
Please enjoy this collection of links while I leave the house.
1. The Atlantic profiles Mel Brooks at 92. I like how David Denby writes about Brooks' comedy, which the man himself once famously described as rising "below vulgarity": "The larking sadism still makes one wince—the joke hasn't lost its sting—but in the end the effect is liberating: Brooks pushed the gloom of Jewish history over the brink into black comedy. The Jews had survived; the Nazis and the inquisitors were sufficiently dead to laugh at."
2. The New York Times profiles the policing of mothers. Looking at the list of normal parenting decisions that self-righteous strangers are apparently willing to call the cops on women for, I began to wonder how much of so-called helicopter parenting is really a matter of anxious apron strings and how much is just a reaction to society-wide, racially-stacked, gender-stacked concern-trolling. It would fit nicely alongside all the other damned-if-you-dos-and-don'ts: either you can be the bad mother who neglects her children or the bad mother who smothers them and either way, however they turn out, you did it wrong. Not to mention that once again we see the police functioning as a personal one-stop-shop paramilitary for the reactionary on the street. Whatever this form of micro-swatting is called, there must be a way to legislate against it. At least on the state level I have a chance of the government agreeing with me about who to punish and who to protect.
3. Courtesy of
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
4. Elizabeth Alexander writes about marrying into a family of refugees: "'I don't want the children to be refugees,' my husband would say, and we'd share a dark, knowing laugh. 'But I do want them to know what we refugees know: that you can make your life from scratch. I want the children to have the strength and wile of survivors.'"
5. I just like these paintings of Greek goddesses and nymphs. I wish I could buy a print of Amphitrite.
6. David Schraub re-reads Albert Memmi, still bitingly relevant to the interaction of Jews and left-wing politics today.
7. Courtesy of eshusplayground: the many different things it can mean when a Jewish person says they are a Zionist/not a Zionist/an anti-Zionist.
8. I cannot see either financially or logistically how I am to get to both of these shows this summer, but there appear to be stellar revivals of Carmen Jones (reconceived by John Doyle, starring Anika Noni Rose) and Fiddler on the Roof (directed by Joel Grey, in Yiddish!) going on off-Broadway and while I am slightly biased toward the Folksbiene, I could just use a teleporter.
9. The title overstates like most clickbait, but the article has a point about meta-messages: "With James Gunn's Firing, Disney Destroyed the Message of 'Guardians of the Galaxy'."
no subject
We are absolutely the weirdos. And we'd do more (less?) if our county wasn't the county so zealous to snatch kids into protection that it made national news a couple years ago. (Meitiv is now running for public office.)
It always strikes me darkly ironic. I couldn't convince social services to protect me, and my kid can't walk to the JCC two blocks over.
no subject
Admittedly the one time I tried to get my four-years'-older brother to let me go to the park with him (in our case the park started right behind our house, so it didn't involve traffic), he said I could do so as long as I stayed 200 yards behind him (I think that was the figure, but as you'll see it hardly mattered). I kept shouting "Is this 200 yards yet?" and he would shout back "No," until he had succeeded in getting too far ahead for me to catch up or figure out where he was headed. So I went home disgusted.
no subject
And yeah, being responsible for a younger body just added to the issues, I'll admit. But our kid is extremely self-possessed and we would otherwise trust them to go to the bodega in the lobby of our building, for example, and not cause havoc and bring back the quart of milk AND the change.
no subject
I still think it's weird that that's considered weird. It's a building! A contained space! It's not the other side of a city! I didn't have the world's most cavalier parents and I walked all sorts of places by myself as a child, even just around the block for fun. My mother had a whistle call for when she took me and my brother to parks or beaches and we were out of sight but not earshot. I still think of that as normal.
It always strikes me darkly ironic. I couldn't convince social services to protect me, and my kid can't walk to the JCC two blocks over.
It's nice to know in which wrong direction the values of your generation are pointed.
no subject
no subject
Agreed. You'd think that would count for something with that old standby, the taxpayers' dollar.
no subject
I am quite sure that most parents who don’t let their kids outside on their own aren’t afraid of kidnappers, they’re afraid a meddling or malicious neighbour will call CPS on them. The frustrating thing is that any attempt at raising free-range kids requires a critical mass of like-minded parents — not just to avoid trouble, but because it can’t be much fun being the only kid allowed to walk down the block: who do you play with? I suspect the relative perceived safety of allowing kids to roam in the past not only had to do with “neighbours knowing each other and people sitting out on their front porches” but with the safety-in-numbers factor of the kids playing outside as a group; and usually accompanied by at least one family dog.
no subject
That is very good. I'm surprised I haven't seen it in fiction before.
I suspect the relative perceived safety of allowing kids to roam in the past not only had to do with “neighbours knowing each other and people sitting out on their front porches” but with the safety-in-numbers factor of the kids playing outside as a group; and usually accompanied by at least one family dog.
I got this article originally from
no subject
Our downstairs neighbor, L, has a child who doesn't live with him but visits periodically in the summer; the kid, whose name I never manage to catch, is about seven and really likes playing with Kit. L encourages him to play on his own in front of our house and periodically glances out through the open door to check on him. At one point my partner and Kit wandered around the corner and L's kid followed them while I stayed hanging out on our front steps. The next time L came out, he looked a bit alarmed to see no seven-year-old there, but I said "He's around the corner with Josh and Kit" and L nodded and relaxed and went back inside. We never discussed that we feel like whichever adult is around is responsible for all the kids; that's just how it is. And it's how it is up and down our entire street.
I was a city kid who was running errands to the supermarket three blocks away as soon as I was old enough to safely cross streets on my own—maybe age seven or eight?—and taking the subway alone by the time I was 12. All this alarmism about unsupervised kids is so weird to me.
no subject
no subject
...and now I'm helplessly earwormed with "Carmen's Boogie" and I had to go listen to it on YouTube. (I think the Andrews Sisters version is the original, but my mother had the Crew Cuts recording and so that's the one embedded in my lizard brain from childhood listening.)
no subject
I seem to have seen her only in the 2006 film of Dreamgirls, where she was the Dreamgirl who wasn't Jennifer Hudson or Beyoncé. When I thought I hadn't seen her at all, though, Hilton Als still made a superlative case that I should. Do you recommend the season that exists of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency?
...and now I'm helplessly earwormed with "Carmen's Boogie" and I had to go listen to it on YouTube. (I think the Andrews Sisters version is the original, but my mother had the Crew Cuts recording and so that's the one embedded in my lizard brain from childhood listening.)
Okay, links?
no subject
Oh, yes, it's a lot of fun, and Jill Scott is absolutely perfect as Mma Ramotswe. I should warn you though that I viewed the show through the rose-colored glasses of having listened to the audiobooks, gorgeously read by the South African Lisette Lecat. I listen to audiobooks while running, and I remember more than one run in the snow, making my way along the plowed rec path in tights and jacket and gloves and hat, while in my mind I was in Botswana, escaping from the hot sun under the shade of an acacia tree, watching the cows grazing and the old women gossiping. Honestly, everything I know about Botswana I learned from those books.
Carmen's Boogie - The Andrews Sisters
Carmen's Boogie - The Crew Cuts
It helps if you're familiar with the Bizet melody.
no subject
That's amazing.
no subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TLzFcvlLXA
no subject
That's a thing.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes! And wrote a lovely autobiography, Master of Ceremonies. And I will always be sorry not to have seen in person the photo series in which he played that poet of Alexandria's history and men's beauty, Constantine Cavafy.
These things have made my day. Also, love your dream.
I'm so glad. Thank you.
Thank you thank you thank you
#2 it seems that mothers have always been to blame. Whatever the charge. (Choosing child freedom = best decision I've ever made.)
#3 Going straight to my desktop to soothe me during hot August nights
#5. εξαιρετικός
#7. EVEN BETTER.
Re: Thank you thank you thank you
I am very glad they are of interest and/or comfort to you!
(I love the jade bergs.)
no subject
I also think the police should not be called on children of colour and/or low-socio economic children any more than they are called on white children and/or middle class children.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want adults to adopt a totally mind-your-own-business mindset - I was severely physically/emotionally/verbally abused as a child, and severely practically/medically/emotionally neglected, and I wish an adult had intervened.
(I do wonder why my parents friends/the adults at my parents church didn't intervene. Did they genuinely not notice, or did they think it was none of their business?)
One time I had to walk home from the city at a far-too-young-age - 11.3km / 7 miles - because I lost my trainfare (I lost my coinpurse) and my mother refused to come get me and told me to walk home. I decided to walk along the train tracks so I didn't get lost - I didn't know the way home *at all*. The police picked me up and dropped me home with a lecture about how walking on the train tracks was very dangerous and also illegal - but they didn't bother asking me or my parents *why* I was walking along the train tracks at all.
There was also the time my parents made me get out of the car and walk home as a too-young child, and I grabbed onto the car door handle so they couldn't drive away and leave me behind, but they started the car even though I was hanging onto the door handle for dear life, and I got dragged by the car bodily along the bitumen for several metres - and had to walk home grazed and bruised and in tears and I didn't know the way, and no adults stopped or called anyone.
So: I think nowadays in the US the threshold for "call the police on unaccompanied children" is far too low,
but in 70s/80s/90s Australia the threshold for "call the police on unaccompanied children" was far too HIGH.
I would like to see a middle ground, not a return to the standards of the 70s/80s/90s/.
no subject
I don't think anyone in this thread is advocating a total mind-your-own-business mindset—especially if you look at
no subject
I agree, subject to safe weather conditions - in an Australian summer, a parked car can get hot enough to kill a child in only a few minutes.
"On a typical Australian summer day, the temperature inside a parked car can be more than 30°C hotter than outside the car. That means that on a 30°C day, the temperature inside the car can reach over 60°C (140F)!
A child left in a parked car under those conditions for even a few minutes can very quickly become distressed, dehydrated and can die from organ failure."
no subject
I think I include "not going to die" under "comfortable."
no subject
<3
no subject
I can't take credit for my dreams, but I like when they work.
no subject
Grrr!
no subject
Amen!
no subject
no subject
You're welcome. I'm glad you do!
policing of mothers
I was very surprised to see that dads got more slack, because the impression I got while parenting a child (admittedly years ago) was that men are presumed to be totally incompetent with children, all evidence to the contrary. wouldn't that make them *more* likely to be turned in?
Re: policing of mothers
I agree that the stereotype persists of men as naturally incompetent at parenting, but instead of more stringent policing, it seems to mean they get credit for just showing up. A mother is supposed to have no life outside of her children. A father has all these other responsibilities and is cut slack for them.