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Once upon a time, when the first Bladerunner movie came out and I was obsessed with all things Harrison Ford (I got over it, as I think most of us have), I tracked down the Alan Nourse book as a paperback in a library. I tried reading it then, and was incredibly confused. I somehow learned that the movie was based on PK Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and tried reading that, and didn’t much care for that either. I’d always known that the relationship of written works to derivative plays / film / TV series was fraught, but wow, this whole thing was Extra.

Recently, I realized I could access The Bladerunner by Nourse via Kindle Unlimited. I selected it, and it sat around until today, when I tried to read it. And I’ll just say straight up: it’s a really bad book. It’s bad science fiction, because there’s all this complicated pay phone stuff while at the same time there are autohelicopters that you can make video calls from. Make it make sense. Don’t tell me no one had imagined mobile phones. Everyone knew all about tricorders and communicators from Star Trek: TOS, and everyone knew about mobile phones. Cellular phones were ever so slightly later, but plans were in the works by the time this thing was published. It’s just bad science fiction.

That would make it problematic, but nothing can save this book from its reprehensible politics. It’s honestly reassuring to learn that Heinlein dedicated Farnham’s Freehold to Nourse, and Friday was based in part on Nourse’s wife. Nourse’s actual career as an actual medical doctor was, shockingly, even shorter than my career as a programmer, which is really saying something. The description of the robots trying to learn from Dr. Long (surely a reference back to Heinlein) and Dr. Long’s efforts to subvert that process are on a par with all the episodes of bad SF TV in which someone logics some piece of alien something or other into exploding because of a paradox or whatever.

While it is nice to have a depiction of disability in SF, when you name the person with the clubfoot Billy Gimp, it’s real hard to have any respect for the author.

But I think the most insane part of all of this is the backstory on how what sounds like Medicare for All broke healthcare and all of society. This is the weirdest fever dream straight from a Republican member of the AMA in the 1950s, complete with an anti-healthcare mob firebombing the doc’s house, killing his wife and baby, as part of his motivation for providing illicit health care. The eugenics component of the story is exceptionally wild, 100% the kind of nonsense that circulated during the debates leading up to the ACA. In this world, you can only get official health care at government clinics if you agree to sterilization if you get treatment more than three times. They don’t do this to kids under 5, but apparently they really are doing tubals prepubescent girls and vasectomies on prepubescent boys. I think if I kept reading, I’d find out they were euthanizing some of the patients, but I’m not inclined to stick around for that. I nearly bailed out when Doc Long starts smoking a pipe _at the hospital_. But what did me in was the explanation how vaccinations campaigns wiped out natural resistance and that’s why everyone kept getting sick.

“A medical triumph [successful childhood vaccinations against diphtheria in the 1940s and 1950s], it had seemed, until sporadic outbreaks of a more virulent, drug-resistant form of diphtheria began striking adults in the 1970s, with antibiotic treatment now ineffective and the death rate rising to over 60 percent of all victims. Within another ten years widespread epidemics were sweeping the country and mass immunization campaigns were needed to damp the flame of a dreadful disease running wildfire through a population left naked of any natural resistance.”

Ok, what the actual fuck. Obviously, none of this actually happened, but what we’re seeing here is someone who almost certainly was run out of medicine in the 1950’s because he was anti-vax then uses science fiction to predict that diphtheria will kill off 60% of its adult victims in waves, during the same time frame that old people are living longer and longer? How does that even work? Also, having diphtheria does not protect that well against getting it again! Worse than vaccination, actually! This is so weird!

“Rupert Heinz had analyzed this pattern and come up with a frightening thesis: that medical intervention in itself had contributed the lion’s share to the massive spread of this virulent infection. Without immunizations earlier in the century, natural resistance would have kept the milder disease under control; now even a massive immunization campaign would be no more than a stop-gap, with horrible future epidemics to be expected as new virulent strains of diphtheria developed in the population.”

Anyway. While this book is of moderate interest as a window into just how long a certain strain of thinking has been kicking around in some corners of our society (Nourse did not make it to 70, and he died in Thorp, so I’m pretty sure we all know what corners I’m referring to), it’s way too painful for me to actually finish reading.

DNF. Ugh.

I haven’t read any James White in years, but I remember really loving the Sector General stories and novels. Having perused the wikipedia entries for White and Nourse, it’s not hard to understand why I loved White, and why I bounced so hard off of Nourse. Now, while experiencing moderate temptation to reread White, mostly I’m remembering enjoying Jenny Schwartz’s book, Doctor Galaxy, and wondering if there’s anything else current in the mashup of doctor / hospital stories and science fiction that I have sometimes enjoyed and sometimes abhorred.

ETA: I’ve never read S.L. Viehl’s Stardoc series, so I’m off to try a sample of that.

ETAYA: Accidentally stayed up late reading Stardoc. This is not great literature, but at least it’s fun!
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I tried reading The Book of Love by Kelly Link.

I hit a point where I was feeling very clearly Not For Me, so I went to assess review. Definitely Not For Me. And then I read the one stars. LOL.

Also. Over 600 pages long. Wow. Good luck out there!

What is the problem I have with this book: author being gratuitously mean to teenagers for no clear reason. There are good reasons to be mean to teenagers. And there are ridiculous things to do in a book that are also enjoyable. This was neither.

ETA:

I had a weird text exchange with one of the four people who asked about a lot I posted on FB marketplace. It was 2 mini tape measures (new they sell for about $5 on Amazon) and a Victorinox card shaped multitool (new about $30 on Amazon). I tell the person who isn’t getting the item that if I’m ghosted, I’ll let them know. People are usually nice about this, but this guy wanted to know why I wasn’t selling the stuff. I used to have these conversations when I was in my 20s with friends about (this was the 1990s) what amount of money it was worth Bill Gates time to bend over and pick up off the ground. Not my idea of a conversation — other people brought it up. It was a vibe. I didn’t say, not worth it to sell it. I said, I’m too busy to sell it. Same idea, different in the nuance. I’m fine with people monetizing what I give away for free. This very nice person perceived what I had to say as “kind”. Not sure I’d take it that way, but I’m not here to argue with that.

I eventually got around to looking up the values new on Amazon and used on eBay, and the guy was right. Two of those tape measures plus the card could potentially net $30, altho I think you’re more likely to get about $10. They weren’t any of them NIB. I was a little surprised about the price on the multitool. I have so much nice stuff that I just don’t really appreciate. It’s probably best I just give it away and don’t think about it too hard.
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Years ago — possibly 10, actually — nibling went to a con — probably Connecticon — and met John Hemry / Jack Campbell. When I learned she was there, I expressed envy, because I love reading his books, and she went and got a picture with him and sent it to me. This was a really NICE thing to do! I can imagine it not being nice in other personality dynamics, but here, it was intensely awesome. I couldn’t be there, so she found a way to share. I couldn’t find it anywhere (and I foolishly set my text history to auto delete, so I couldn’t just scroll back forever, the way I used to), so I texted her and asked if she had it and she found it! She also supplied a bakery recommendation for Balticon. Woot! So I now have a prop for when I attempt to introduce myself to him before / after a panel at Balticon or wherever.

I’m also reading samples today. I reread Doctor Galaxy yesterday, but I’m in the mood to try some new stuff, so, Samples!

First up: Breathing Space by Kristen Painter. It has detailed, amazing reviews on Amazon, and it sounds potentially interesting to me: a cozy mystery, the protagonist is a librarian, on a cruise ship in space with a bunch of people in cryostasis. I’m a little confused about the cryostatis + cruise ship? But possibly that’s just the future equivalent of steerage?

In any event, so far we have a plumber in the chat complaining about people not putting the lid down in the loo and that interferes with the proper functioning of the “WCS”. Which, fine, but signage exists now, as do motors. Future space ship can’t solve this problem? Next, the head librarian is having a hot flash and goes over to cryo to cool down, which is kept at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. We’re still using Fahrenheit in the future. How utterly discouraging. The librarian says that library cards are complimentary in the chat, and invites people to visit the library to access entertainment like video games. Why do you have to go to the library to access that? Why are there library _cards_? These are all details that are likely intended to make this Space Ship more relatable to readers — oh look, it’s our society, but on a space ship! It’s like a cruise ship now, but in Space! I hope that it works! I’m pretty sure it does work for some readers. It does not work for me. Next issue: the jumpsuit. There’s a whole thing about the librarian opening up her jumpsuit in cryo to cool down (they don’t have effective treatment for hot flashes in the future? Plausible discouraging), which has a strong cover of RAH’s Friday vibe to it. If that’s an elaborate reference, I’ve got a whole other set of issues. The librarian’s daughter is Vice Admiral on this starliner, and yet still, jumpsuits. Then there’s a paragraph about how she doesn’t have to wear the jumpsuit when she’s not working _but she is still wearing it_.

This is too much. This is way too much. None of this makes any sense. I’m going to try to read a few more pages, but unless it turns into a totally different book in that time frame, I’m abandoning it. ETA: I can’t. I just can’t. If this sounds like your kind of book, I wholeheartedly hope you enjoy it. It’s available on kindleunlimited — this wasn’t even a sample in the end.

I’m off to do Duo and then try something else new. Happy Friday, and may your experiments with new things be enlightening and enjoyable! For all my complaints, this experiment for me was both. While I do not want to continue reading, I am ecstatic that readers who like this sort of thing have this author / this series as an option.
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I said recently that I don’t typically notice things on rereads any more. But I sure don’t remember this from my first read through.

When Carlene is sentence to “two decades of service to the public good”, it is “under the supervision of the Sonorannellan Planetary Emergency Response Mission”.

D’oh.
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”If you put each group into a plastic basket, and label the baskets on the shelves, retrieval and return will be a snap. As will cleaning the shelves: Just remove the baskets, wipe the shelves off, then return the baskets. Try doing that as easily with eighty loose bottles, jars, and boxes!”

This is describing a linen closet.

Why would you need to clean the shelves UNDER the baskets? They won’t get dirty unless the baskets leaked something that spilled within the baskets. And if the baskets leaked something within the baskets, then you are going to have to take everything out of the basket and clean it thoroughly.

Look, I’m entirely here for containerization of small items stored in a large space (classic situation in linen closet / bathroom storage closet). But come on.

“Joseph, a marketing manager, needs a place in his briefcase for his cell phone, Palm Pilot, and project files.”

“Colin, a freelance writer, needs a place in his bag for reading glasses, sunglasses, keys, notebook, handheld tape recorder, and his laptop.”

I feel like Joseph is coming to us from the 1998 edition, and Colin arrived with the second edition. But who really knows.

“Packing light requires releasing the “ready-for-anything” mentality. Instead, visualize where you are going, what you will actually have time to do, and what you will actually need.” Written like a theater person trying to figure out what props are needed and which ones need to be pared down.

I also cannot help but notice the wild lack of water bottles and hot and cold sipping bottles with the adults in these books. I definitely remember this evolution in this time period, but seeing that absence in this book is kind of amazing. It makes me wonder if water bottles had to happen, to replace all the things we were no longer carrying around.

ETA: Water bottle showed up! Altho so have rolls of film, so, there’s that. Oh goodness, and carrying a checkbook around!!!

ETAYA: I guess if you are already carrying both a laptop AND files around, maybe this makes sense. No. No it does not.

“Pack a scrapbook, tape, a gluestick, and scissors for vacation trips. Each night, the family can write a description of the day’s highlights and paste in the treasures and mementos collected. By the time you come home, your memories of the trip are all containerized! Your scrapbook is complete and ready to be enjoyed.”

I would note, you will be checking the scissors [ETA still further: as long as they are 4 inches or less from the pivot, you can carry them on, says TSA], except this whole thing is so unhinged. However, the scrapbooking subreddit indicates that people do actually do this, and go so far as to having those fold up scissors for this purpose. Amazon carries scissors like this labeled “TSA compliant”. Some of them are quite attractive.
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Saturday, when I got back from having my hair done, I suggested going out. It was around 1:30 pm, and R. suggested Silver Girl, but their hours indicated they had a two and a half hour break between 2 and 4:30, so I was like, nah, maybe later. But when I went to get a reservation, the first available was 9 pm. Yikes. But we discussed it, and I grabbed it, and we ate our usual meals at home and then went out for drinks.

The parking lot was packed and they were not quick to greet and seat us, but the interior is beautiful, and there was a group of people with drinks standing and chatting as well as lots of people seated at the bar and in the lounge chatting. We wound up doing two rounds of drinks, all of them good and none of them whiskey drinks, because the cocktails on the menu had exactly one whiskey drink and I don’t like Angel’s Envy Rye. Which is honestly saying a lot. Their whiskey selection includes Buffalo Trace and they have Blanton’s as well as several scotchs, so I could have had whiskey, but all things considered, the mezcal and/or amaro cocktails looked like a better choice and they were fantastic. I got the “trail mix”, which was excellent. Pepitas are small, so I wound up using a spoon for part of it. I also got the granita, which is shaved ice. Flavor of the day was pineapple mint and it was very yummy.

Next to me at the bar was a group of four women, looked like they were in their 40s, having an animated discussion of their recent reading including romances. After a while, I turned to the one next to me and asked if this was a book group and could I join. They were not a book group; they knew each other from their kids’ preschool years, and they are scattered around Maynard, Stow and Acton. They were incredibly sweet and one of them was genuinely collecting book recommendation. None of them knew about SBTB, so I told them about that, and you can really tell the age difference in that the B word hits so different. My age and up, we are so calloused and our anger so comprehensively encysted and calcified that we barely recognize it and our commitment to coopting that term and also not letting anyone else use it is intense. Their recs included a Mary Higgins Clark, Rebecca Yarros, Joanna Bourne — they have good taste and they are not queer, and they have not fully dived into the deep end of the pool. But boy, was it so much fun to get to chat with them.

Any given day at a bar is a new experience (hopefully! If you are having the same experience at the same bar over and over and over again that is often not the best experience), but I’ll go back to Silver Girl for the excellent drinks, wonderful interior decoration, and tasty smalls. I may or may not get around to having any of the entrees, because this was such a fun thing to do late in the evening and I kinda want more of that.

We’re going to try Velvet Vine next, altho probably not today. Altho Silver Girl on a Saturday night followed by brunch at Velvet Vine the next morning is some kind of aspirational.

As a result of timing, I did not walk with M. I did get my hair done in the middle of the day, and a lovely woman who was also waiting for her hair to do its thing, who works at Fiorella part time, and I had a delightful chat. It was a really nice day for chatting with people I don’t know.
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I walked with M.

Someone picked up the kids’ handbags. Woot! Ring light is still sitting here, tho. Oh well!

Today’s meeting involved blocking. I punted on all questions involving the exercise room, and a bunch of mounting TVs / monitors questions. We got through a lot of towel racks and robe hooks and some closets. We did not get through the whole house, so we’ll be doing this again on Friday.

In the evening, after picking A. up, I went over some of the delayed questions, and updated slides and sent email. I even picked out ceiling locations for a speed bag and a heavy bag, altho I don’t know if we’ll really do that or not.

I used the treadmill, and finished reading the REBT book. This is a great opportunity to take a hard look at how obnoxious some of the ways I think about things really are, and to make changes in myself to be less obnoxious. Do Not Recommend this book.

I started reading a sample about distance therapy, and it’s pretty good so far. Treadmill reading is good for trying out stuff that is only somewhat engaging.
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This is actually quite an impressive memoir. Not on writing style — memoirs often have very strange authorial voice — but on emotional insight delivered in a super detached way. Like a lot of really amazing people who have careers (decade or more) front of the house, he has a well-developed ethos of service. He has some earthy ways of describing it.

“As the master maitre d’hotel Guy Sussini of the Water Club always said to me, “Give zem zee beeg blow job.”

After describing his first and second encounters with Danny Meyer, C-A expands upon a question Meyer asked him in the first encounter (an interview that did not lead to C-A being hired, unsurprisingly): “What is more important, food or service?” Obviously, service. Duh. This is a book about working front of the house.

“We all want to connect, to be recognized, treated well; some of us need to be adored, “recognized” either as the movie star we are, or the billionaire titan of Wall Street, or that politician, cop, restaurant-industry professional, tailor, construction worker, teacher — all of us want to be made to feel special, to be known and acknowledged.”

C-A then goes on to explain how the magic is done, which is great and expands on further details which are also great and the book is worth reading, but mostly, I’m really struck by this conception of restaurant patrons. It’s not wrong. It’s just a different frame from how I’ve thought about things, and it is absolutely the most perfect explanation for MIL’s behavior in restaurants and why I have such a problem with it (not jus MIL!).

I’ve been going to restaurants with MIL now for over two decades (fortunately, not too many in a compressed period of time!). She is _the worst_ in restaurants. My sister can be a real problem if the restaurant is too fancy for her and it makes her uncomfortable, but she at least doesn’t ever insist on tipping and then leave such a low tip that I have to sneak a supplement. (I just don’t let people pay or tip any more if I’m at the table, with extremely limited exceptions. I don’t need the hit to my reputation as a customer.) As annoying as the stingy tip problem is, however, it is nothing compared to constantly sending things back (which SIL does, but I’ve eaten out with her only very occasionally, and with a tiny bit of luck, hopefully even more rarely going forward). On the most recent trip to Florida, I obsessed over restaurants in Pompano Beach, searching for one that was Nice Enough for MIL, but not Too Nice for sister, and had things on the menu that everyone would be able to eat and enjoy, and good drinks, but where the menu wasn’t so fussy that it would trigger MIL’s insecurities around not recognizing the dishes being listed. I landed on Beach House, which was amazing. It was really loud, but that even turned out fine, because my sister no longer tries to talk over loud in a restaurant so I just got to sit and enjoy the amazing view.

I was so worried about MIL sending things back, that I did something I hate when people do to me: I asked her for her order and then I placed it for her. I went over every element of her order, and asked her proactively if she wanted that part of it / how she wanted it cooked. And she didn’t send anything back.

It occurs to me that MIL goes into restaurants, pastes a smile on her face, and is deceptively undemanding in appearance. The server takes her order, doesn’t ask any questions beyond how she wants her steak cooked and moves on. And she doesn’t feel special at all. Since she wanted to feel special — because apparently this is why people go to restaurants! — she punishes the server for not making her feel special. She makes work by sending things back. And if she can, she’ll tip stingily. And she’ll complain to her tablemates loud enough for others to hear. It’s vile behavior. I fucking hate it. I dread it. And I had no idea what was driving it. I fixed it entirely inadvertently. I was so tired of it, I just meticulously eliminated any possible source of complaint and then waited to see what she’d do this time. She was, miraculously — or, apparently NOT miraculously — well behaved. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that not BIL was sitting next to her. She really likes to be seen in the company of a man.

Anyway. I get fantastic service in restaurants. I overtip. I always use a credit card, and almost always the same one I’ve used since forever. I make the reservation online. I’m clear up front about my dietary issues, I acknowledge they are unreasonable, if I’ve been there before, I note that we always have a great time, I specify nothing is a cross contamination issue (even tho that isn’t totally true, I manage that issue separately, through where I go to eat or what I order when I get there). So they 100% know who I am when I am being seated (I’ve been told this, and it surprised me) even if I’m not a regular, because restaurant computers keep track of everyone and I make it super easy for them to do so. _I’m there for the food_. I like a really light touch on service (altho I do find it frustrating when I’m waiting for the bill). This whole It’s All About the Service thing is … explanatory.

Back when Julie’s Place was still in business, B. used to rave about what a great customer I was. Openly. To other customers. It was awkward, but that’s always been my goal. I want the staff to see me and go, finally, someone who I know exactly how to please, and who won’t take up a ton of my time and energy, and it’s great to see a friendly face and be utterly certain that the tip will be worth it. The biggest hazard of being me is that bartenders who become aware of my existence in restaurants where the bar is good but not The Feature will sometimes reward my behavior in ways that mean I really should not order a second drink. I’ve had other, memorably odd interactions with servers who chose to tell me how successful I’ve been in my goal, which never fails to be anything other than awkward for me.

It says a lot about how relentlessly blind I am to other people’s perspective, that I only just now figured out how precisely mirror universe I am vs. MIL. She walks in looking all kinds of easy to please and creates a nightmare. I walk in looking like all kinds of frumpy trouble and create an oasis of enjoyment. Go figure.

ETAYA:

Soft open at The Water Club is all the crazy. (I avoid newly opened everything and give it a month to settle down before trying. I make exceptions when ordering technology and frequently regret it.) “This is where I learned another valuable lesson … no matter what anyone tells you … the most important person in the room is the owner and if he is taken care of perfectly, he rarely notices anything else in the room.”

Absolutely perfect summation of a lot of what was wrong with 1980s management culture and not just in restaurants.
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Author is now quoting Ariely, which is 100% not reliable, and the quotes about Gottmans being used to support not giving feedback in the moment are 100% dishonest in terms of representing the Gottmans’ excellent work. If you are pulling 4 Horseman, you need to take a break. But if you are NOT, then in the moment is fine. In the moment feedback is absolutely crucial in virtually every learning environment — which this for sure is! — and delaying feedback and giving it all at once at a point in time where it can’t change anything sounds horrifying. It turns life into a graded exercise. Gah.

The author is obviously trying to get people who are feeling a lot of big, negative emotions to take a break and supply informative feedback calmly later. That’s great. But then there’s this: “Delivering feedback in the moment is never helpful, not really. Sure, there can be merit to saying how you feel when you feel it.”

Actually, that’s so much crap. Feedback in the moment can be very helpful. If you walk in the door carrying an under 3 year old and there’s an adult present who can pick up legos, saying, “Please get all the legos and other chokables off the floor so the under 3 year old can safely play in here” is immediately helpful and likely to be appreciated. The lesson may even stick long term, because they can connect Baby Present = Get Chokables Put Away Immediately. Also, do that with the first kid. Don’t have a second kid with someone who is unable to absorb that rule.

There are other strategies: segregated rooms for chokables, segregated rooms for no chokables, etc. But honestly, it is very useful to be able to focus in the moment on what you need done right now, clearly articulate it and repeat it until people comply.

Also, I still don’t understand why you can’t say, hey, there’s a grocery list, please add anything you want to it and then go get the groceries and remember it’s Sunday they close at X time, or, in the example given, please drop off the dry cleaning and they are not open on Monday. This whole, have to get someone outside the house to do it is awesome if your long term goal is separation and divorce, because all the basics will be covered once the other person is out of the house.

“Tip! Fridays over Sundays. Many couples report that a check-in on Friday is preferable to a Sunday because by the end of the weekend, most couples are toast.”

W.T.F.

We’re fried on Friday, and mostly recovered by Sunday. The book is targeted at two-career couples with young children. How is it that your weekends are more exhausting than your work week?

ETA:

“Three days after Alan took on the “transportation (kids)” card, he confessed to his wife: I’m so sorry you’ve been stuck in this never-ending carpool line every day. I had no idea how much time this one job requires.”

So many questions.

First, yay, if this game gets people to quit being fucking tourists in their own lives, then That Is Everything. Also, really? He ignored her comments on the topic completely? She failed to mention any of it? Really?

ETA:

There’s all these Fair Play “fixes” for things going wrong that basically amount to, Failure to Perform As Agreed. There are lots, but the trigger was dad not feeding the kids lunch, with a pre-agreement “by noon” and “no later than 1” and this was detected by not-present parent after 2:30. Reminding him of his commitment is NOT going to fix this problem.

Ask me how I know.

(And this isn’t even about R., altho he does it too. I have a List of perpetrators. It is Long.)

This part I do agree with:

“The more you invest in unpacking the details of your domestic workload, setting clearly defined expectations and mutually agreed-upon standards, the more you will be rewarded”. That’s true. That’s super super super true. Mostly, because if you get rid of as much as possible by reducing commitments and expectations, and then automate as much as possible, and create systems that clearly document commitments, there’s less to do and easier for anyone to do it. But that’s not what’s going on in this book. At all.

I still feel like a card based assignment system could work; I just really loathe the details of this one.

ETAStill More: I don’t understand how playing piano again is Unicorn Space. Also, if Pilates and spin class are NOT Unicorn Space, what about fencing or martial arts? But if fencing or martial arts could be Unicorn Space, what exactly is it that stops Pilates or spin class from being Unicorn Space? It’s really clear that part of Unicorn Space is having something that makes you Interesting . But reading a good book is NOT Unicorn Space. Is running a book group Unicorn Space? It is giving back and it definitely can make one interesting (bizarrely!). So reading books you don’t necessarily like is Unicorn Space but reading books you love the hell out of isn’t? If you are reading a good book as part of a project to better understand use of repetition in popular literature as part of maintaining and establishing a brand, in service of a hypothetical monograph on the topic (monographs, general interest non fiction work, series of blog posts or articles), is THAT Unicorn Space?

“Pick one category that appeals to you today and drill down to identify a trade, skill, sport, art, practice, or class that you want to commit to exploring, developing, or completing over the next six months.” But why can’t it be spin class or Pilates? I mean, I’ve never done either so maybe there’s something about these activities that make them NOT legitimate examples of a class sport or practice that one could commit to exploring or developing?

But it really seems like if learning to read music, or learning ASL or learning a modern or ancient language could count, then why NOT Pilates or spin class? Is it just, no, you can’t go exercise more in the way you usually do, it would have been helpful to say _that_. Then it can’t be, Go For Longer Walks to someone who walks. But could it be hiking? Do you have to have a goal of becoming a backcountry guide in order to legitimate walking as Unicorn Space?

Wait, cycling CAN be a “Heart (pumping)” Unicorn Space activity. But not spin class?
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Regular readers know that when I say “a bit more” or “a few words” or similar, brace yourself or possibly skip reading.

I’m reading through the cards section of Fair Play, and the CPE structure kind of drives me bananas. It is concealing too much. The goal, of course, is to be able to turn the mental / planning / reminder load off of the person who is running the household / handling most of the kid duties. That’s a great goal, and there is a lot about the CPE structure to love about that. However, there are really serious problems, too. Like, there’s a card for Special Needs / Mental Health (kids) that is separate from Teacher Communication. First off, I don’t understand how that could work. A lot of times, the author explicitly says that people holding one card will have to work closely with the person holding a related card (kids parties and kid transportation, for example), or she’ll say that if you have this then you have to deal with the transportation component of it as well. That’s confusing. But there is NO SUCH COMMENT on Special Needs / Mental Health and Teacher Communication. Further, there’s NO COMMENT about redealing Special Needs / Mental Health. And there’s NO CONNECTION made to the Discipline card. I don’t understand how these are separable tasks AND if you have multiple parent-figures / caregivers, you have to involve as many as you possibly can in IEP processes or the IEP won’t work. Literally. I put a ton of pressure on R. to go to these meetings even tho he didn’t see any purpose in his presence, because there wasn’t a lot for him to say. But it was incredibly important to everyone for him to be there to hear what the team had to say, and when there was something for him to say, it was important for him to be there, notice and say it.

This is a great book, and a needed book, and the author, as a mediator, is very, very good at creating structured opportunities to help families get to a better working relationship. But boy oh boy the specifics of the cards are utter bullshit.

There’s other minor stuff, too, like, dishes. My sister has carved up the dishwasher project to have one piece for each kid, altho she is the manager of the structure. We worked pretty hard to move kids along the process of understanding how to load the dishwasher, because it’s a critical life skill. I’m still working on making sure the last person to bed starts the dishwasher, but honestly, we’re nearing a point where that will be a programmable part of a smart dishwasher (if closed and if it is after a certain time of night then start running, type of thing). Having this be a card between the parents and not involving the kids in the process seems weird. And there’s a lot of stuff like this.

ETA:

The card “Informal Education” is a whole bunch of stuff that PE and related should be teaching, and the extent of riding a bike is learning to balance — nothing about adhering to traffic rules, local rules about sharing sidewalks and bike paths with pedestrians. But that’s not what I’m here to complain about! I’m here to complain about “(Hint: If your kid is the only one in class still wearing Velcro sneakers, you might want to remedy that by teaching him to tie his shoes.)”

Nothing referring back to the Special Needs card, either. Entirely un-inspected assumptions.

ETAYA:

In the section about why not to break up a task / ask for spousal help in Execution, there’s a story about parent heading out the door to pick up could-choke-on-things-offspring from mom’s who asks other parent to pick up the “Marvel Legos”. Other parent hears “marbles” can’t find any leaves legos on floor. This is given as a reason not to break up a task.

!!!!!

How is there a parent in this scenario — this is the _younger_ of _two children_ — who doesn’t realize that when the kid-who-could-choke-on-things returns home, there must be nothing (not marbles, not marvel legos) on the floor!

Same section, story about hears the drycleaning please drop it off. Person tries to drop it on a day when the drycleaner is not open. Person _would have made this mistake themselves_ if they had been responsible for conception and planning (ask me how I know. Just ask me. I’m not even talking about R. here. I know too many people who’v made this mistake). And yet somehow, it’s “solvable” by having one person do CP and E. No it’s not! It’s “solvable” by someone habitually doing the drycleaning dropoff OR by having the drycleaning dropoff time put on google calendar where it fucking well belongs.

There is so much stuff in this book that basically amounts to, CPE will fix this! And if you need help with E, ask your village, not your spouse! Some of these are things that would be way better fixed by teaching people to use gentler language with each other, and how to be consistently emotionally validating (even in a mechanical manner). Some of these things are a matter of one person in the partnership hasn’t been doing a lot of stuff and basically needs to learn how. CPE is _a_ solution, and it’s not clear it’s even a _great_ solution.

Then there’s crazy shit about resolving disagreements in the Minimum Standard of Care. In the event you can’t agree on an MSC, the players are supposed to ask “Would a reasonable person (in this case, your partner, spouse, babysitting, caregivers, parents and in-laws) under similar circumstances CPE this card in this way.” _Really_?!?! That guy a couple paragraphs up left legos on the floor with an under 3 year old coming home. _He is a dangerously incompetent visitor in his own house._ _He would not know to ask this question much less what the answer is._ Fine, he’ll learn by doing, and fine, maybe his spouse isn’t the right person to teach him, but how does any of this help?

Reading through the Need Execution Help again, and just cannot get over the request help from someone in your village other than your partner by providing full context and an explicit request. So, like, if you have a medical emergency and have to go to the hospital, and you haven’t done your Daily Grind tasks, you have to arrange outside help from someone other than the parent of your children, and fully explain how to do everything, rather than ask the other adult in the house to deal with it while you drive yourself to urgent care / the hospital?

Really?

“My husband taking full CPE ownership of the ‘auto’ card was worth ten cards to me because …” Oh boy. This husband had dropped the ball on car care?!? The Superwoman vibe in this book is _wild_.

“When my husband took over “extracurricular (sports)” for Zach and Ben, I gained back eight hours a week.”

The husband had dropped the ball on _sports_ _for_ _sons_. And this book is intended to reduce men resenting women for nagging and ordering them around? The men in this book are … something else again. Car, lawn, sports for boys are well within trad male responsibility.
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I was over at SBTB and saw a rec for a new to me Molly Harper, Witches Get Stuff Done. But I’m 10% of the way into the book, and so far, all that has happened is a ferry ride, argument over the bathroom, and people having feelings about said ferry ride and the bathroom conflict.

I mean.

What.

I’m going to try something else for now.

I walked with M.

R. and I had dinner at Azucar, which was even better than its usual excellence.
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I’m halfway through, and I hit a bit about Lyme disease, zoonotic disease, etc.

“Zoonotic diseases (diseases that pass from animals to people) have been around for centures — think smallpox, anthrax, or tuberculosis.”

OK. Yes, they have been around for centuries. But no fucking way _just_ centuries. I mean, I know this has been going on for _at minimum_ millenia. And then I thought, well, wait a second. When I hit that thing at grammarly asserting there was no evidence for whether sharp pointy teeth in dinosaurs means they were carnivores (there is tons — ha ha ha — of evidence in the form of in situ stomach contents of dinosaurs), I was like, really? But this time, I’m like. Nah. This has to have been going on for a really, really, really long time.

How long?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263064/

“Traditionally, it was thought that TB has a zoonotic origin, being acquired by humans from cattle during the Neolithic revolution. However, the biomolecular studies proposed a new evolutionary scenario demonstrating that human TB has a human origin. The researches show that the disease was present in the early human populations of Africa at least 70000 years ago and that it expanded following the migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa, adapting to the different human groups. The demographic success of TB during the Neolithic period was due to the growth of density and size of the human host population, and not the zoonotic transfer from cattle, as previously hypothesized.”

I don’t have an opinion about how TB got started, and I sincerely doubt that anyone is going to, at this late date, convincingly prove one way or the other, _exactly_ how it got going originally. BUT, definitely tens of thousands of years of humans having TB.

What about Anthrax?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26854-z

“Genetic diversity of extant Bacillus strains suggests that anthrax-causing Bacillus pathogens evolved in sub-Saharan Africa15,16, likely well before humans migrated around the globe17.”

OK, and smallpox?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/health/smallpox-vikings-history-study-scn-trnd/index.html

And to be clear, like, they sequenced smallpox, so that’s not _maybe_ it’s smallpox. It’s definitely smallpox. But there are a bunch of people that think that goes much, much further back.

Anyway.
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Little bit of a content warning here — this is about deer bodies and composting.

After a detailed description of the bins, the sawdust and the lack of smell, the author describes seeing inside the bin some deer and a dog. “We hadn’t discussed road-killed pets at all, and I imagined he worried that if I was a dog lover, seeing it here might turn me off the system he promotes. But what I found sobering about this wasn’t the idea of compost.”

I will note that when I first heard about composting bodies, I was like, that’s what I want when I die. R. was super upset and didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t bring it up a ton, but if you are around when I am no longer, and you can remind people, that’s what I want. Also, in Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn Few, one of the most powerful sections of the book involves how they handle death and bodies. So I am absolutely _here_ for composting human people just like animal people. Circle of life. Etc.

“What hit me was the ignominy of the deaths,, and the fact that living beings are transformed into garbage — their bodies seen as a troublesome, unwanted sort of material. It was the difference between the technical way of treating these deaths and the reverential way we believe we should handle human bodies.”

So, I definitely do _not_ want anyone looking at my body after I am no longer and thinking, well, we’ll use this part for this purpose, and that part for another purpose. Yes, I signed the organ donation thing on my license so up to a point, sure, but I don’t want anyone upholstering anything with a part of me. I’d rather it be composted. The author has been pretty fascinated at the many cultural uses to which deer parts have been put. But she kinda gets hung up on the composting thing.

*shrug*

To each their own; some things I am never going to understand.
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I tried reading Janelle Monae’s _The Memory Librarian_, and the language is delightful but I was super confused. I will likely come back again at this and try later.

I tried reading _Priory of the Orange Tree_. I bought this (and the audio book) as part of the find f/sf for A. that is woman-centered and has good reviews. Reading this has made it super clear to both A. and I that we actually do not like High Fantasy. It is _possible_ that there are examples of High Fantasy that we can like. The definition of “high” is “totally different world” vs. “low” which is some degree of connection to our own reality. And then “high” is usually “epic”. And generally speaking NOT humorous. Apparently Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is unusual in that it _is_ humorous but also considered High Fantasy. Dunno? But a lot of the fantasy that I enjoy (Ilona Andrews, for example) is definitely low fantasy — near term / alternate universe stuff. The Ilona Andrews works that are not low fantasy tend to be more on the SF direction.

I actually don’t know _why_ I don’t like High Fantasy? I don’t think it is a thorough-going hatred of it, because I really enjoyed Travis Baldree’s books, and I also really liked Casey Blair’s tea chronicles. It may be the case that the only “High Fantasy” I like is at the super-humanistic / at least lightly comedic end of things.
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Last night I realized that there were three Jayne Castle kindle books available and I don’t think I’ve ever read them before. They are new (as of last month) to kindle, but from the early to mid-80s. I’m reading 1984’s _Double Dealing_ right now and enjoying the hell out of it because I _think_ these are the earliest instances of some things that show up over and over again in her later work in combination with things I am not sure I’ve ever seen her repeat.

For example, there is a single phrase referring to Samantha (protagonist) being taken along with her mother (Vera) as a child to Alabama to participate along with her mother in social activism. This is the beginning of Samantha’s fear of dogs (which gets a lot more than a single phrase). It’s part of a compact but intense description of Vera and how Vera raised Samantha which is, to say the least, atypical. There are tons of JAK novels in which the protagonist was raised by just one parent, a single woman, but it isn’t usually the biological mother — it’s usually a dead parents, raised by an eccentric aunt situation.

The Deal is present (I don’t have any reason to believe this is the first appearance of The Deal), and there is a strong theme of who-has-the-upper-hand (again, probably not the first) as well as Am I Being Manipulated by This Strong Sexual Attraction? The characters protect themselves in various ways from various other characters, including not being entirely forthright about very important information (Failure to Disclose, altho not in this instance virginity, because that’s not an issue here). But wow, the book is titled _Double Dealing_ for a _reason_. Everyone in this book has got at least a couple things going on at the same time, sometimes more. It’s _fun_!

There’s a revenge-in-business plot, altho oddly, this time it’s the woman driving that bus (altho I’m betting that he’s in it for the same reason as well). Often, the woman talks the man _out_ of the revenge in business plot. The Someone Is Plotting a Takeover But is Spotted in Time plot is here in a few sentences as background for Samantha’s business intel competency WRT the Thorndyke’s. The book starts in California, heads up to an island in the Puget Sound, but revolves around property in Phoenix (and there’s some backstory in Florida), so really all the standard locales are in play. Maybe they’ll go to Hawaii in the second half of the book. LOL.

I meant to read a chapter or two and stop, but I blew through the first half last night before going to sleep. I’m a little frustrated because my kindle keeps rebooting and I’m not sure why.
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I’m listening to : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897?i=1000613645578

If that link works, it is to If Books Could Kill, part 2 about the book Nudge.

It is profoundly validating. Michael Hobbes hating on Cass Sunstein is one of the most validating experiences of my recent life. All the episodes I’ve listened to have been amazing, but hearing Hobbes and Shamshiri call Sunstein things like sociopath and murdered is just amazing.

It’s been impossible to get people to remember Sunstein even exists, much less all the horrible things he’s done. Hobbes has the receipts.

Seriously, this podcast is incredible.
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I’m gonna lead with the stupid funny story, and then proceed from there. Once upon a time, when I was in my 20s and going through an anarchist phase (I’m still kind of idealistically a social-anarchist, but as a practical matter, I believe in government and quite a lot of it), and spending far too much time trying to figure out if my values could fit into anarcho-capitalism (they can’t, and I say that as someone who is actually a pretty big believer in capitalism, so this was something of a surprise to me). Anyway. There were recommended books list that circulated among people associated with this stuff, things like Benson’s Enterprise of Law and Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, but also things like Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Please do not view this as in any way recommending that you read any of these books! But the person who hooked me up with this crowd and who I lived with for a time and dated for a longer period of time and so forth, he kept saying he was really confused about the Heinlein book being on that list. He said he’d read it and it was just an adventure novel. I mostly blew this off the first couple times he said it, but I eventually became something of a Heinlein completist and read it on the path to doing that (yeah, look, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and this is on the list).

Obviously, it completely makes sense to put Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on an anarcho-capitalism book list! Duh! So I said to the person in question, when did you read that book? “When I was four.” I’m like, you probably should read it again. I think you may have missed some things.

For reference purposes, this person was so lacking in self-insight and generally NOT introspective that he wished he had spent more time when he was a child reading the classics. I’m like, what’s the point, you wouldn’t get much out of them as a child anyway. Obviously, my opinion would have been different if he had not been vehemently opposed to rereading books.

In any event, I’ve always enjoyed rereading books and for the first thirty or so years of my life I pretty consistently got a lot more out of each reread. But after a while, mostly what I got out of rereading books was a combination of shame and sadness that I had ever loved a book that now was glaringly … not okay. The specifics of the Not Okay were variable, but the reality of the Not Okay was pretty amazingly consistent. There were a few books that got better coming back to them in my thirties and forties, altho I would be hard pressed to name a single one now.

This has not necessarily stopped me from rereading books! Sometimes I see with clarity the Not Okayness, so if I still want to reread something that has problems, it’s not a sad and embarrassing surprise and I just acknowledge and accept whatever it was that I wish was different. Lately, I’ve been rereading things that I did not _want_ to reread previously, because I had quit reading them over the Not Okay. Specifically, I revisited Jennifer Crusie after the Liz Danger releases were announced and I’d read the first one and decided I really wanted to know what 54 year old Walkitout would thing of Crusie’s body of work. Also, I have that monograph I keep thinking about involving commercially successful authors and reuse. I was _very_ surprised how oblivious to setting I had been in previous reading of Crusie novels. Prior to moving out of Seattle, I just had no fucking clue what Ohio was like. I mean, I still have never lived in Ohio, but I at least have a better sense of Ohio now, and wow, having a sense of what Ohio is like and noticing that all Crusie novels are about Ohio just changes everything. It was a _pleasure_ to reread them as a lens for thinking about politics in the United States over the course of my adult life. I mean, look, politics over the course of my life have not been _pretty_ and certainly lack a lot when it comes to pleasure, but using those books as a way to get an inside perspective on the feelings … that was amazing.

I got to thinking about Alis Rasmussen, and wondering if I could use her work as part of the Project. She’s about 10 years younger than JAK and Crusie, but has over three decades of published work, and while most of her work is nominally SF or F, it also consistently has significant romance components/tropes/arcs. I cannot remember now whether I first read The Highroad trilogy, or if I read Jaran and then backtracked to The Highroad trilogy, but I definitely remember having to work pretty hard to find a copy of the third book in the Highroad trilogy and generally finding the entire thing riveting and being really confused when no one else much cared for it. I don’t know that I have reread it since 2000, and it’s possible I haven’t reread it since the mid 1990s. I _suspect_ I loaned them out to someone who never returned them, but I’m just not sure.

Anyway. They’re available on kindle, and the first two were really cheap so I bought them both to make sure they didn’t re-increase in price. I started reading the first one, and wow. I’m reading this and having so very many thoughts.

First off, I do not think I reread this series _after_ I started doing martial arts myself. So, that is point one. And a big point it is! Second, I read Melissa Scott’s Roads of Heaven trilogy, which was written _before_ The Highroad trilogy_, long after I read Rasmussen’s books. For whatever reason, in that order, I don’t think I realized the influences, but at this point, I not only want to finish readind Rasmussen’s trilogy, I’m thinking I’ll follow it up with Scott’s trilogy for comparison purposes. (I don’t think Scott has anything specifically to offer to the reuse project, altho if you think otherwise, try to convince me! I’m open to the idea.)

And then there is a massive cascade of other books I keep thinking about. The Liaden books that focus on merchanters. Cherryh’s work, same. M.A. Foster’s Morphodite (I am so sorry about that name) trilogy. These are all SFF books that are heavy on philosophy, disillusionment, frustration with conservative (big c, small c, other c) families of origin, PTSD, episodic, intense connections developed rapidly and just as rapidly left behind while moving to the next stage of the journey. The Liaden books are the _least_ like this, in that over time the universe has wrapped around and reconnected so many people (and resurrected at least one), but that happened later.

I do sort of wonder how many of these books are reworking authorial experiences in the counterculture movement of the late 60s/70s. I don’t mean to suggest they directly participated in anything, but they all lived through that time period, and a lot of the themes surrounding social unrest in the books sound like that era.

Obviously, there are tons of other SFF books that directly interact with that countercultural movement, but honestly, the direct interactions are somewhat less interesting to me than the ones that are so intricately worked out in a very different culture / time / place.
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Hopefully, that subject line is enough of a warning about the content of this post.

I’m a parent. I have a son who has gone to sleep away camp for several years (minus one, due to the obvious). I don’t know if it is possible to send a kid to sleep away camp without at least entertaining the idea that the kid might not come back. Things Happen.

If you google — and I don’t actually recommend this — deaths at boy scout camps (not in quotes), you will get a lot of recent coverage of deaths at boy scout camps, boy scout camping weekends, etc. You might wonder if I intend to single out boy scout camps as particularly dangerous and evil. If you search on deaths at 4H camps, for example, you find a lot fewer news articles. On the other hand, there are probably more boy scout camps than there are 4H camps? I don’t really know.

I will note that the character, methods and goals of the Baden-Powells were really different from the character, methods and goals of 4H.

Anyway. I know absolutely nothing useful about Veldskool in South Africa. I followed a link in a Matt Levine column to this, in which a reader of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk has some Issues with the content of the book. I am absolutely sympathetic to having Issues with the content of a book, and I will note right now that I haven’t read anything by Isaacson in full because samples are more than enough to convince me that actually reading one all the way through will turn into one of those absolutely tedious, huge number of words series of liveblogging posts that are the worst possible combination of infuriating and boring to read (writing them is cathartic, which is why I do it — way better than haranguing anyone unlucky enough to be physically near me).

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy

The author of this post starts by criticizing a story about poker. The observation that having arbitrarily deep pockets and a willingness to walk away from the table as soon as win big is deeply infuriating to other poker players is not exactly a novel one. I mean, there’s a reason why tournaments don’t let you do this in general. But you know, never mind that.

Extended quote from substack begins here:

The first sign of trouble shows up on page 1 of the prologue. Isaacson opens with an anecdote from Musk’s troubled childhood, relating a story from when Elon was twelve and he was sent to veldskool, a wilderness survival camp:

“The kids were each given small rations of food and water, and they were allowed—indeed encouraged— to fight over them. (…) Near the end of the first week the boys were divided into two groups and told to attack each other. (…) Every few years, one of the kids would die.” (page 2)

The intent of this anecdote is to relate how, when Musk went back to veldskool at age sixteen, he realized he was too-big-to-bully. Isaacson uses this scene to impress upon his readers that (1) Elon learned at an early age that you have to fight to survive, (2) he carries the scars of that childhood with him today, and (3) it drives him to want to control and dominate every situation.

It’s an unbelievable story. And by that, I mean I don’t entirely believe it. Musk grew up rich and white in apartheid-era South Africa. Are you really telling me that rich white kids in South Africa were repeatedly dying, and the camp stayed open?

If veldskool left a trail of child corpses, it would’ve been covered in the newspapers. That’s something a reporter could easily track down. Instead, Isaacson merely confirms the anecdote with Musk’s brother (and frequent business partner) Kimball. Elon says it happened that way. Kimball says it happened that way. Maybe they’re exaggerating a bit, but it’s still a great anecdote!

This marks a fundamental problem that pops up throughout the book: (1) Musk is a serial liar. (2) Isaacson seems utterly disinterested in investigating whether anything Musk says is particularly true.

End of extended quote from substack.

OK. Let’s look into this. What happens if we google veldskool? Well, first, we find a bunch of people reminiscing about their time at veldskool. Definitely, both the people who enjoyed it in the era that Musk would have attended and the people who really, really didn’t seem to agree that the safety standards of veldskool in that era were not what one would expect from a camp in the United States in that era or now. The second thing that I would observe is that the spirit of veldskool in that era is much, much closer to Boy Scouts than, say, 4H. And the third thing I would observe is that people die repeatedly at Boy Scout camps _to this day_ and they don’t get shut down.

I can’t speak to whether South African newspapers would have covered deaths in Veldskool. I think the assertion that they would have covered those deaths is naive and implausible, but I don’t really know one way or the other. The idea that a reporter could easily track that down is ludicrous. While I think you probably _could_ access at least some newspaper archives in South Africa, unless you _immediately_ found deaths of children at veldskool, you would have to search very exhaustively to establish only that there had been no coverage. And remember, thinking that the newspapers of the time would have covered those deaths is naive and implausible.

Finally, and I cannot really emphasize this enough, we’ve spent the last decade or so documenting the horrific abuse in camps in the United States — deaths, maiming, sexual abuse, you name it. _This is an ongoing problem in the United States_, and camps that have deaths, including repeated and multiple deaths, are not automatically shut down. I really don’t understand why the author of this piece thinks that South Africa would magically be safer? But _especially_ I don’t understand why he thinks that a white boy in South Africa would magically be safe from the violence inherent in the Apartheid era. Violent regimes train their elites to perpetrate violence on the oppressed groups by being violent to those elites when they are young. That’s how you do this.

I have no particular reason to think that the book being criticized is accurate in any way shape or form. But the argument that this particular part of the book is wrong displays a degree of delusionality about our world that I find startling.
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So far, I am 0 for 2 in terms of convincing friends who read _The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant_ that the “Poor Sheila!” remark in the final paragraph is a nasty little authorial chuckle at the expense of the real-life woman who was raped by Eric Caswell, who strokes 4 for Dartmouth. I have, unfortunately, read in the past about exploits of Dartmouth men of this era and earlier, so I assume the worst. My friends are much more prepared to just assume the author is narcissistically thinking “Poor Sheila! I lost interest in her so quickly! She’s just not a very interesting person! Poor her!”

I tracked down photos (in The Aegis) of both crew teams for 1962, and the men sitting 4 do not appear in subsequent year book crew or in subsequent yearbooks seniors. That doesn’t mean much — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t angle in on scandal at Dartmouth in that time frame.

https://1962.dartmouth.org/s/1353/images/gid315/editor_documents/articles_by_d-62_authorsr/bob_marrow_rye_magazine.pdf

The author describes his academic path and is insecurity leading him to emulate the worst of his local environment which got him suspended from Dartmouth, quoting “an unauthorized but popular version of the Dartmouth Football Fight Song”

“Dartmouth’s in town again, run girls run
Dartmouth’s in town again, fun girls fun
Our pants are steaming hot, we’ll give ‘em all we’ve got
Virgins are just our meat; Rape, Rape, Rape!
Down from the hills we come, surge on surge,
F**king like Dartmouth men,
We’ve got a biologic urge
Dartmouth’s in Town again.”

I don’t even know _what_ to say.

https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/article/1980/9/1/the-dartmouth-animal-and-the-hypermasculine-myth

This is an amazingly thoughtful if somewhat dated piece about hypermasculinity in the context of early 1960s Dartmouth and the impact at mid-life on relationships, for the alumni magazine.

Wetherell’s story was first published in 1983, for timeline purposes.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/library/rauner/archives/oral_history/community/transcripts/Sjogren_Interview_Edits.pdf

An amazing interview in 2013 with someone who was at Dartmouth in the relevant years. Sjogren refers to “When Better Women are Made, Dartmouth Men Will Make Them” as something that made him uncomfortable at the time he was there. It was _not_ just Dartmouth that used that phrase, which apparently represented the anti-coeducational perspective. You can find this for at least Harvard and Yale (the only other ones I have searched on) on auction house websites and at Etsy (vintage), and Princeton you can find an alumni weekly online from 1955 with their version. I’m 3 for 3 so far.

Cornell has a box in their library: https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMA03439.html

I can’t find Columbia or Brown doing this (but that means nothing, given the trend!).

Williams college having its own reckoning with the sentence: https://williamsrecord.com/92897/features/yearbooks-give-insight-into-the-colleges-complicated-past/

Lehigh’s entry in the genre:

https://www.lehigh.edu/lts/lib/speccoll/memorabilia.html
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The Lost Family by Libby Copeland roams over the vast landscape of genetic genealogy circa 2019. It came out in March of 2020. I was at the Silver Unicorn very shortly before the lockdowns and bought a book or two at a school-connected event (some sort of reading) that was very hot and crowded.

https://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/1778498.html

Anyway.

I picked it up again to continue reading today, some years later (I think I have picked it up at least once, maybe twice and then put it down again). I’m most of the way through, and have reached a picture of Phillip Benson (switched at birth with Collins) and his first wife, Esther Abolafia Benson, sitting with their son Kenny.

I cannot stop laughing. I absolutely did not expect to meet a relative-by-marriage in these pages, but it was probably inevitable. When my dad’s first cousin asked me to track down Mrs. Abolafia after my first visit to her, I had no recollection of ever having heard that last name. It’s especially funny showing up here, because Abolafia isn’t even an Ashkenazi Jewish surname (and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in an Irish family is what started the whole search for the babies swapped at birth), so Philip Benson, supposedly Ashkenazi but actually Irish, first married a Sephardic Jew.

That last name has been the source of so much unexpected for me. The mother-in-law and father-in-law and assorted other relatives of Mrs. Abolafia are buried in the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood cemetery which makes perfect sense given that last name, but I was trying to identify the plot in the cemetery using an online map when I realized I’d spent the first 24 years of my life across the street from that cemetery. When I reconnected with another cousin after a multi-decade gap, she told me stories of going to that cemetery for one of the burials. I told a good friend who was my next door neighbor for several of those years that story, and she said she worked with an Abolafia for quite a few years.

I’m going to resist the temptation to attempt to trace the connection between Esther Abolafia Benson and my extended family, at least tonight.

ETA:

Apparently — and I just learned this on sep 3 2023 — there are _two_ Sephardic cemeteries very close to where I grew up and I misunderstood which one the Abolofias are buried in. It isn’t the one across the street from where I grew up, but rather a few blocks over. Oh well!

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