sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2018-07-28 03:41 pm

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 [personal profile] 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'."
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2018-07-28 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)
We are absolutely the weirdos for letting Child go up and down the hallways in the building to visit her friends, of the same cohort, also in the building. We let them walk two blocks in front of us, in sight, when we're walking not-on-the-five-lane-road. We let them choose their sport and their position in that sport. They're halfway to majority, for Chrissakes; learning to obey the walking signal on one's own is not a bump of meth.

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.
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2018-07-28 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
The main beef I had with the Meitivs (who I agree were badly treated in various ways) was having a child of ten be responsible for a child of six for an extended period (two hours or more). That's not something my mother would ever have done, and my childhood was far more free-range than most today. Giving an individual ten-year-old freedom to go to the park alone (something I certainly did) seems to me like a very different thing from expecting them to also haul a young sibling around. I mean, maybe their kids never fought or tried to ditch each other or whatever, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing one could count on.

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.
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2018-07-28 11:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I have a bunch of issues with the situation, not least that the Meitiv kids were walking on the sidewalk of the aforementioned five-lane road, but we're a queer couple with a second-parent adoption and had to do a lot of guardianship paperwork, so all I meant was we're not going to jeopardize that in the county in which we reside given the track record of hetero parents. :)

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.
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2018-07-28 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
A lot of this busybody-ery should really come under the heading of wasting police time!
moon_custafer: neon cat mask (coppelia)

[personal profile] moon_custafer 2018-07-28 08:46 pm (UTC)(link)
A few years ago I was struck by a plot-point-in-search-of-a-plot: if you needed a protective charm repeated over and over as part of an ongoing ward, you could do worse than teach it to the local kids as a nursery rhyme.

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.
rosefox: Steven's three guardians all ruffle his hair together as he grins (parenting)

[personal profile] rosefox 2018-07-29 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
Data point: I live in a neighborhood that's overrun with kids who are minimally and relaxedly supervised, and that's absolutely going to be a factor in when and how we let Kit roam without us once they're old enough to do so. It's one of the reasons I love it around here. A key thing, I think, is that it's a poor neighborhood that hasn't gentrified, so everyone's too busy trying to scrape together a living to be the nosy busybody sort who calls the cops on a child left unattended for three! whole! seconds! Lots of kids playing outdoors also means lots of adults getting to know all the neighborhood kids, too. Every time Kit goes out front with a bucket of chalk, children run over from three houses in either direction to draw with them. Within another few years we'll be on first-name terms with everyone on the block.

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.
alexxkay: (Default)

[personal profile] alexxkay 2018-07-29 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
not exactly the same, but Diana Wynne Jones, in Deep Secret, has some important mystic knowledge encoded in the nursery rhymes of several different dimensions (each one getting only a partial copy).
isis: (la la shep)

[personal profile] isis 2018-07-28 09:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooh, I would so much love to see that Carmen Jones! I enjoyed the linked review, which I thought did a great job of explaining the shortcomings of the film and the nuances of the new production. I only know Anika Noni Rose from her role as Mma Makutsi in the (alas single season) adaptation of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but she inhabited that character so well - and goodness, her IMDB photos show such a wide range - that I can't imagine she wouldn't be amazing.

...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.)
isis: (Default)

[personal profile] isis 2018-07-29 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
Do you recommend the season that exists of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency?

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.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-07-29 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)
OMG, Liberace did it with a jazz combo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TLzFcvlLXA
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-07-29 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
That is AMAZING.
drinkingcocoa: (Default)

[personal profile] drinkingcocoa 2018-07-28 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Whoa, Joel Gray directing Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish! I know almost nothing about him, so looked him up just now and found that he came out at age 82... These things have made my day. Also, love your dream.
jesse_the_k: Large exclamation point inside shiny red ruffled circle (big bang)

Thank you thank you thank you

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2018-07-28 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Even when sleep deprived, you share such riches.

#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.

lilysea: Serious (Default)

[personal profile] lilysea 2018-07-29 06:30 am (UTC)(link)
On the one hand, I think children who are of an appropriate age to do so should be able to play in the park / walk to school / walk to the local library / catch the train without the police being called.

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/.
Edited 2018-07-29 06:35 (UTC)
lilysea: Serious (Default)

[personal profile] lilysea 2018-07-29 07:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I do think it should not be cause for alarm if a child is comfortable in a car for five or even twenty-five minutes with a tablet or a book.

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."
Edited 2018-07-29 19:56 (UTC)
thisbluespirit: (Northanger reading)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2018-07-29 07:31 am (UTC)(link)
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

<3
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2018-07-29 09:55 am (UTC)(link)
So many who want to police us for being in possession of a female body.

Grrr!
drwex: (Default)

[personal profile] drwex 2018-07-30 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I like your link collections. Thanks for posting this one.
lauradi7dw: (Default)

policing of mothers

[personal profile] lauradi7dw 2018-07-30 07:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't believe that a child under ten, say, should *ever* be left alone in a car (or with other kids that age), even for long enough to "grab a coffee." I feel that ten is a perfectly sensible age for a kid to be home alone (I think that was what the Arlington PD told me once, when I called for a friend - old enough to call 911, not old enough to think you can take care of an emergency on your own). I am OK with an transit-experienced elementary school child being alone on the T. Or someone who has demonstrated safe street crossing going to a park or shop, depending on circumstances. We didn't generally ask, but I think, statistically, that a child is not safe in a house with a gun, even when the parent claims the weapon is safely stored.
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?