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musesfool) wrote2025-05-18 07:58 pm
a variety of other things
I also watched the first two episodes of Murderbot. It was cute. I like Mensah a lot. I only read the first novella and thought it was fine but not at all memorable, so I have no real dog in this hunt. ( spoiler )
Ugh, I just found out the Mets are on ESPN next Sunday night too. ESPN is the worst broadcast.
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agonyaunt2025-05-17 09:55 pmthe rich / eat
Dear Good Job,
I work as a household manager for a very wealthy family. My clients are very kind, and I love working for them, but the mom, “Carol” has some habits about buying things that are kind of impeding how I do my job. Buying groceries, pet food and household supplies is supposed to be my responsibility and I know what the family likes to have in stock and how often various things need to be replenished. But Carol is a compulsive shopper.
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neotoma) wrote2025-05-17 12:38 pmFarmer's Market -- 17 May 2025 (Bugloss Day, 28th of Flowering, Year 233)
Follow-up to brother with abusive tickling incident
Dear Eric: I have been a special-education teacher for 51 years. I have never responded to any of the advice columns, however the one from “Mom of Two” was quite disturbing. Having worked with children with mild to severe disabilities, which includes emotionally and behaviorally challenged, this behavior resembles torturing and finding pleasure from it. The older child was torturing his younger brother, and by smiling when told to stop by his mother, showed callousness and lack of remorse. I disagree with your response and feel counseling, both individual and family would be indicated. I fear for this family and the future of these children. These parents need to be sure the younger child is protected and not at the mercy of his older brother.
— Alarmed
Alarmed: You’re correct, and I reached out to the letter writer directly the day the response was published originally. I was overwhelmed by the content of the letter and, in the end, didn’t focus enough on the most important piece of advice, which was ensuring the safety of the younger brother and therapeutic treatment for both boys and the family. I wrote that the behavior of the older brother could escalate to bullying or abuse, but the fact is it already has risen to that level. The letter writer and her husband need to take immediate steps to separate the boys, provide the younger son with a space of his own, with a locked door, and get counseling for both boys. They should also talk with the older boy’s doctor and/or a psychologist about the behavior they’ve witnessed. It’s likely this isn’t an isolated event. The husband’s cavalier response is also something that needs to be addressed in therapy. I appreciate you writing. I regret that the answer I gave originally didn’t meet the standard that I set for myself. I share your concern for this home.
One column, so many terrible choices
1. I married my husband three years ago. My husband’s sister and her husband adopted their 9-year-old daughter, “Lila,” shortly after she was born. They also have a biological son who is a few years older. They’ve chosen not to tell Lila that she was adopted—a decision my husband and I strongly disagree with, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Lila is a bright and curious child with a deep love for animals and science. She and I have bonded over both, and I’ve become her closest aunt. She devours science books, especially those about genetics, and lately, she’s been asking me questions that make my heart stop. She wants to know why she has so many traits that aren’t shared with her brother, her parents, or anyone else in her family—why she’s the only left-handed person, the only one with blue eyes, the only one with a squint, the only one who’s shorter than average height, and so on. She’s clearly putting the puzzle pieces together. I’m not sure how to talk to her or to her parents about this.
—Troubled Aunt
( Read more... )
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
My mother-in-law, “Lane,” has taken a normal toddler thing and blown it into the stratosphere. My husband and I have 3-year-old twins, “Olivia” and “Harold.” On Saturday, Lane picked them up for a trip to the park to be followed by lunch at McDonald’s to give my husband and me some much-needed alone time. Harold has been going through a phase lately where all he wants from McDonald’s are McNuggets, so I told her to keep that in mind when they ordered lunch.
When Lane brought the kids back, I could tell Harold had been crying and asked her if something had happened. She gave him a stern look and said that “someone” had misbehaved—had refused to eat the cheeseburger she’d ordered for him for lunch, and that next time she planned a fun outing, only Olivia would be invited to go with her. I reminded her of what I had told her earlier, and her dismissive response was, “Adults decide what children eat, and they eat it.” She called Harold “ungrateful” and said I was allowing him to “rule the house” before she turned on her heel and left. My husband quickly followed her outside. When he returned, he said it would be best to give her some time to cool down. He explained that his mother’s parents grew up just after the Great Depression and instilled in her and her siblings that wasting food was one of the worst things imaginable.
I’m not interested in her excuses. Lane was told about Harold’s eating habits, and the entire thing could have been avoided if she had just listened to me instead of going her own way. And this isn’t the first time she’s ignored my instructions when it comes to the kids. As far as I’m concerned, Harold doesn’t deserve to be excluded over something that wasn’t his fault. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to let her take the kids on her own for the foreseeable future. I have asked my husband to set some ground rules for his mother since she refuses to listen to me, but he’s afraid of upsetting her. How can I make him grow a pair when it comes to dealing with his mother?
—Fast Food Fiasco
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3. Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I are expecting a daughter at the end of August, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. What I am not thrilled about is that his mother, “Helena,” has been after me to give her a family name that I detest. We have already chosen a name, but she refuses to lay off and in fact is becoming increasingly persistent as my due date gets closer. When I told my husband how fed up I was getting, he proposed that we tell her we’ve decided to go with the name from her side of the family after all—and then, when our daughter is born, we simply go with the name we’ve chosen. She’ll just have to deal with it, he says.
Personally, I think he’s trying to avoid putting his foot down with his mother, but if it gets her to shut up, I’m desperate enough to go for it. And an evil little part of me does find it appealing, considering how she’s been driving me up the wall ever since we told her I was pregnant. This wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to do, would it?
—The Joke’s Gonna be on Her
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(no subject)
I have been with my wife, “Madison,” for seven years, married for four, and for the entirety of the time I have known her, she has always sought the approval of her older sister “Crystal.” Crystal is keenly aware of this and takes full advantage of it. Madison is always willing to drop everything when her sister needs something, be that watching her kids at a moment’s notice so she can have a night out, letting her borrow clothes, or taking time away from things we like to do or her own activities so she can help Crystal grade papers (Crystal is a teacher). Crystal, however, never reciprocates.
The last straw for me was when my SIL decided on a whim that she wanted to go to a movie with her friends and called—on our anniversary!—asking if she could “pretty please” drop off her kids with us for the night because the movie was going to get out late. This was less than half an hour before my wife and I were to leave for dinner at a restaurant where we had to make a reservation nearly six months in advance. The babysitter we’d hired to watch our 10-month-old had already arrived. Madison started to agree, but I grabbed the phone and told Crystal our plans (which she was well aware of), said that she was out of luck, and hung up. Madison was upset and it cast a pall over the entire evening.
The next day she said she had spoken to her sister, and Crystal was demanding an apology from me. I refused and finally told my wife what I thought of her sister. I asked her why she keeps allowing herself and us to be used by her. Now she is pissed at ME! What can I do to get her to see what a self-serving bitch her sister is?
—Take Off the Blinders
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scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-16 04:06 pmThe Big Idea: Bishop O’Connell
Is being a hero a selfless act if the hero has nothing they’re sacrificing? Author Bishop O’Connell explores what a hero really looks like in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Stain of a Nation. Come along as he shows you what bravery looks like when someone has everything to lose.
BISHOP O’CONNELL:
Lost Cause Mythology is bullshit idea that the Confederate cause during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. Spoiler, it was centered on slavery. In Two-Gun Witch, the first book in this series, I wanted to counter that trope. I created a character who actually fought for a just cause and still lost. It served as a rather subtle attack against the myth. In Stain of a Nation, I drew inspiration more from John Brown in how I’d tackle the notion. If the book’s title sounds vaguely familiar, it’s a middle finger to a pro KKK and Lost Cause mythos film from 1915 called Birth of a Nation. That’s about as subtle as this story gets.
I love history for the stories it contains, but also the lessons it can teach. Granted, sometimes those lessons can be hard to learn, especially when dealing with the darker and more shameful periods of our lives. However, if reading your nation’s histories only make you proud, you’re not reading history. You’re reading propaganda. That’s the legacy of Lost Cause mythology; a whitewashing, softening, or (especially recently) a complete erasure, of our nation’s darkest aspects.
Where I grew up, I was taught a fairly honest history of slavery, the civil war, and their aftermath. Even so, what I learned on my own horrified me, both in content and that it hadn’t been in our text books. A lot of people in other parts of the country learned an almost nauseatingly sanitized version of that period. Unfortunately, as more stories are told, America has witnessed a redoubling of efforts to ignore, erase, or explain away our nation’s historical horrors. I didn’t set out to write a book as a direct counter to that, but it seems the timing of the release accomplished anyway.
In Stain of a Nation, a found family (a few of whom worked on the Underground Railroad) learn of a town that decided not to accept the results of the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. They drag the recently freed back into bondage, using dark and terrible magic to do so. The protagonists react as any reasonable person would, they set out to free the enslaved and burn the fucking town to the ground. In the doing, they find examples of how deep human cruelty and depravity can run. I’m sorry to say only the magical aspects of what I’ve written are fictional. The rest actually happened, and more frequently than most, myself included, wanted to know.
Few reading this, especially on this site, will grumble about virtue signaling, or white guilt, or something other such pile of horseshit. Just in case though, rest assured Stain of a Nation isn’t either of those things. Neither is it some self-insert white savior story. I’ll be honest though; it might be a bit of a power fantasy. I do love the idea of those with the power to do something, stepping in and helping those who don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, while I sometimes enjoy the idea of a God mode character curb-stomping slavers and fascists without breaking a sweat, that isn’t a hero. A hero can do something, but also has something to lose, sometimes everything, and does it anyway. History might well abound with such people, but we frequently don’t hear about those who did just as much, but often against more, and with less. In some cases, more socially palatable legends drown the grim histories. More often though, their stories disappear because no one knows. They fought and died in anonymity, their only legacy being the results of their efforts. Mind, that’s a pretty awesome legacy.
I regret we won’t ever know their names, but we can still recognize and celebrate them. While not my only goal, it was one of them when I wrote Stain of a Nation. As impressive as the main protagonist, Talen, is, I made sure to shine the light on others who stood against darkness. Some of whose names you’ll learn, others you won’t.
In short, Stain of a Nation is a book about heroes, big and small, famous and anonymous. None of whom ever enslaved someone because of their skin color. Never donned a hood to terrorize, murder, or torture someone for the same. They marched for equity, not segregation. They stood to be heard and recognized as humans, not to intimidate or coerce silence and obedience.
Stain of a Nation: Falstaff Hardcover|Falstaff Paperback|Falstaff E-Book
Author socials: Website|Facebook|Bluesky|Amazon Author Page
hannah) wrote2025-05-15 07:54 pm
Jump the fence.
I'd expected as much, honestly. I'm not at all surprised, except for how she was surprised - but I keep thinking that if she hadn't wanted someone to talk to her about the music, she wouldn't have been playing it so loud.
What's particularly odd is that she was the second person I had a baffling encounter with in that gym: before she arrived, someone quite a bit younger was in there, and I tried to make small talk about her tattoos. She didn't recognize the pigeon's scientific name of columba livia, and when I asked her about a skeletal hand giving a "rock on" horn sign, she didn't know how to take my observation that the slightly exaggerated proportions made me think it was a hand from another primate.
On the plus side, as she lived in Utah for five months, she knew about the radiation survivors - though as she said she was there for "treatment" I don't think she had a particularly enjoyable time there.
wondermark_feed) wrote2025-05-15 10:00 pmSaturday, May 17: Juneau!
I’ll be in Juneau, Alaska this weekend at the 2025 Alaska Robotics Minicon, along with a bunch of other great folks!
The event is Saturday, May 17 at the APK Libraries, Archives, and Museum building.
I’ve written about my travels to Juneau before! Here are three fun posts from previous trips:
• The Story of How Juneau Ate My Boots
I’m not entirely sure where I got these boots. I’ve had them for at least a decade. They just appeared in my closet one day — I honestly don’t know where they came from...
• 11 portraits of me from Alaska
Celebrated likeness-capturer Scott Campbell had the idea for a group of artists to break into groups and draw portraits of each other...
• The Pleasures of Camping Out
The telegraph, the telephone, the locomotive and the steamship, the modern printing press, and thousands of minor devices which add immensely to the sum total of his pleasures, are all willing servants if properly used; but once in control, they become the hardest taskmasters...
musesfool) wrote2025-05-15 07:13 pm
and i feel that so much depends on the weather
In the meantime, I bring you two cool links:
- the Superman trailer which looks so good (I also ordered this adorable Superman dress for Baby Miss L); and
- this interview with John DeMarisco, who directs Mets games for SNY (and a cool behind the scenes video here).
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jesse_the_k) wrote2025-05-15 04:14 pmGreat Reading About Reading Here on Dreamwidth
Someday I may again add to the cornucopia of excellent reading reports available here on Dreamwidth. In a previous life, enjoying these posts would also add to my teetering TBR pile. Now I get vicarious thrills from how folks’ reading made them feel. In particular:
chestnut_pod
https://chestnut-pod.dreamwidth.org/?tag=books+are+the+meaning+of+life&skip=30
dhampyresa
https://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/tag/reading+wednesday
rivkat doesn’t tag and does post many, many great reviews
https://rivkat.dreamwidth.org
runpunkrun
https://runpunkrun.dreamwidth.org/tag/book+report
Any recent DW entry with the tag "books" https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest?tag=books
Self-rec: mostly reviews, but also about the mechanics of reading https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/tag/reading
Reading-focused communities
readingtogether
booknook
Let me know whose reading reviews you enjoy....
conuly) wrote2025-05-15 12:38 pmGot an interview
Also, today is A's birthday, so happy birthday! They will never see this.
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