And now for something completely different: more comments reposted from elsewhere (including but not only other Dreamwidth journals)
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radiantfracture posted, under the heading "An exercise in revision," the question "What room is there in your heart and your life for me?" and then talked about the phrasing, and possible use of the question for him. I said:
If I was going to ask someone that, I would want first to have thought about, and be ready to answer, the parallel "What room is there in my heart and my life for you?" And maybe work on better phrasing to open that conversation than "I've been thinking about a question, or maybe two questions: What room is there in your room, and your heart, for me? I know there's room in mine for you."
In response to a locked post on "QOTD: What is the oldest piece of technology that you've held onto for all these years?" I said:
I suspect that the oldest piece of technology that I have held onto (fervently) and still use is my mother's Pyrex mixing bowls, which may be older than I am.
My edge case here is probably the geode that I use, in the tradition of millions of years of our ancestors, to smash the shells of crabs and sometimes other shellfish. It's a rock that fits my hand well, but as far as I know wasn't shaped in any way. I haven't had it nearly as long, but this kind of tool use is Paleolithic. (My other stone tool is a piece of pumice.)
The oldest kind of technology I'm using is probably the magnifying glass. (Eyeglasses in general also go back to the 13th century, but bifocals only to Benjamin Franklin.)
ETA: I mentioned this tocattitude and he said he'd go with clothing, and while "clothing" is general, in specific we have and I sometimes use a needle.
ursula was answering five questions (the shower/interview meme is going around DW again). In response to part of her last answer, I said:
I realize the context here, but still like "Someday I will figure out the twentieth century!" (Even with context, "the twentieth century" spans enough that I'm not sure how large that musical space is. except that I'm sure there are corners if not continents I'm unaware of.)
To someone on a Captain Awkward comment thread about, among other things, sometimes hurting people you love:
I can't tell you how to balance being openly yourself with what's best for your children (and probably couldn't even if I knew you), but modeling honesty is also something that your children will benefit from. I can tell you that I want--and am fortunate to have--partners who are positive about me being openly queer and poly. That doesn't mean their families, or anyone's coworkers, have had all the details--I'm okay being "this is my friend Vicki" instead of "girlfriend/partner Vicki" to someone's colleagues I may never see again--but it would hurt me to make an effort to hide.
Who you are is the person who has the temerity to tell the world "I love them" about your partners, and to push back against the selfishness of relatives who can't or won't see you even when you hand them a captioned photograph.
(I don't think you, or anyone, owes the world more openness than you're comfortable with--but I do think we don't owe it to closed-minded relatives to closet ourselves for their comfort.)
Sparked by a discussion inumadoshi's journal of appropriate relationship names/terminology for her non-binary partner:
"Auncle" might work on paper/screen if you pronounce it as "awn-cle" ("au" as in "awl" or "audit") or "anne-kle" but "ankle" is problematic, and "ahn-cle" runs into the French "oncle."
"Nuncle" is old-fashioned/dialect for "uncle," which might help it get accepted as a "real"* word, but also make it less likely for people to realize that it's intended as nongended (either "any sibling of one of my parents, regardless of gender" or "my parent's enby sibling.")
* "Not a real word" is, in my not so humble opinion, useful only in specific contexts like "you can't play that in Scrabble**" and "I think that's a typo."
** For "not a Scrabble word," no you can't make "auncle" but you also can't make "isn't" or "New York." And you can make things I would never actually say, because there are (for example) plurals that are grammatically valid and don't have capital letters or internal punctuation, but that I would change or query if they turned up in something I was editing or proofreading.
andrewducker's links roundup included an article on "Most white women are very happy with white supremacy":
Yeah, that's the thing about intersectionality: it's valid, important, and far from universally understood. A lot of white (and/or able-bodied, upper class, or lesbian and bisexual) women either haven't heard of intersectionality, or dismiss it as wrong or unimportant, mere rhetoric.
My idea of feminism/activism doesn't just mean that my feminism overlaps with (among other things) anti-racism, anti-Nazism, LGBT rights, and disability issues: it's saying that I'm not just voting my own interests. When I worked to restore voting rights to (largely non-white) ex-felons in Florida, it wasn't just because I thought I might benefit because that might, two or four or ten years down the line, help elect more Democrats to Congress. It's because I believed it was the right thing to do.
We keep hearing the question, Why do women/working class people/nonwhites keep voting against their own interests. And sometimes the answer is, it's because they've been misled or distracted from practical interests (this factory is closing, but the company closing it talks about patriotism), and other times it's because their priorities are different. In the long term, I not only oppose racism as a decent human being, I benefit from living in a less racist society. But being a woman doesn't somehow make me immune from racism; women are swimming in it too.
radiantfracture posted, under the heading "An exercise in revision," the question "What room is there in your heart and your life for me?" and then talked about the phrasing, and possible use of the question for him. I said:If I was going to ask someone that, I would want first to have thought about, and be ready to answer, the parallel "What room is there in my heart and my life for you?" And maybe work on better phrasing to open that conversation than "I've been thinking about a question, or maybe two questions: What room is there in your room, and your heart, for me? I know there's room in mine for you."
In response to a locked post on "QOTD: What is the oldest piece of technology that you've held onto for all these years?" I said:
I suspect that the oldest piece of technology that I have held onto (fervently) and still use is my mother's Pyrex mixing bowls, which may be older than I am.
My edge case here is probably the geode that I use, in the tradition of millions of years of our ancestors, to smash the shells of crabs and sometimes other shellfish. It's a rock that fits my hand well, but as far as I know wasn't shaped in any way. I haven't had it nearly as long, but this kind of tool use is Paleolithic. (My other stone tool is a piece of pumice.)
The oldest kind of technology I'm using is probably the magnifying glass. (Eyeglasses in general also go back to the 13th century, but bifocals only to Benjamin Franklin.)
ETA: I mentioned this to
cattitude and he said he'd go with clothing, and while "clothing" is general, in specific we have and I sometimes use a needle. ursula was answering five questions (the shower/interview meme is going around DW again). In response to part of her last answer, I said:I realize the context here, but still like "Someday I will figure out the twentieth century!" (Even with context, "the twentieth century" spans enough that I'm not sure how large that musical space is. except that I'm sure there are corners if not continents I'm unaware of.)
To someone on a Captain Awkward comment thread about, among other things, sometimes hurting people you love:
I can't tell you how to balance being openly yourself with what's best for your children (and probably couldn't even if I knew you), but modeling honesty is also something that your children will benefit from. I can tell you that I want--and am fortunate to have--partners who are positive about me being openly queer and poly. That doesn't mean their families, or anyone's coworkers, have had all the details--I'm okay being "this is my friend Vicki" instead of "girlfriend/partner Vicki" to someone's colleagues I may never see again--but it would hurt me to make an effort to hide.
Who you are is the person who has the temerity to tell the world "I love them" about your partners, and to push back against the selfishness of relatives who can't or won't see you even when you hand them a captioned photograph.
(I don't think you, or anyone, owes the world more openness than you're comfortable with--but I do think we don't owe it to closed-minded relatives to closet ourselves for their comfort.)
Sparked by a discussion in
umadoshi's journal of appropriate relationship names/terminology for her non-binary partner:"Auncle" might work on paper/screen if you pronounce it as "awn-cle" ("au" as in "awl" or "audit") or "anne-kle" but "ankle" is problematic, and "ahn-cle" runs into the French "oncle."
"Nuncle" is old-fashioned/dialect for "uncle," which might help it get accepted as a "real"* word, but also make it less likely for people to realize that it's intended as nongended (either "any sibling of one of my parents, regardless of gender" or "my parent's enby sibling.")
* "Not a real word" is, in my not so humble opinion, useful only in specific contexts like "you can't play that in Scrabble**" and "I think that's a typo."
** For "not a Scrabble word," no you can't make "auncle" but you also can't make "isn't" or "New York." And you can make things I would never actually say, because there are (for example) plurals that are grammatically valid and don't have capital letters or internal punctuation, but that I would change or query if they turned up in something I was editing or proofreading.
andrewducker's links roundup included an article on "Most white women are very happy with white supremacy":Yeah, that's the thing about intersectionality: it's valid, important, and far from universally understood. A lot of white (and/or able-bodied, upper class, or lesbian and bisexual) women either haven't heard of intersectionality, or dismiss it as wrong or unimportant, mere rhetoric.
My idea of feminism/activism doesn't just mean that my feminism overlaps with (among other things) anti-racism, anti-Nazism, LGBT rights, and disability issues: it's saying that I'm not just voting my own interests. When I worked to restore voting rights to (largely non-white) ex-felons in Florida, it wasn't just because I thought I might benefit because that might, two or four or ten years down the line, help elect more Democrats to Congress. It's because I believed it was the right thing to do.
We keep hearing the question, Why do women/working class people/nonwhites keep voting against their own interests. And sometimes the answer is, it's because they've been misled or distracted from practical interests (this factory is closing, but the company closing it talks about patriotism), and other times it's because their priorities are different. In the long term, I not only oppose racism as a decent human being, I benefit from living in a less racist society. But being a woman doesn't somehow make me immune from racism; women are swimming in it too.
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And now I'm thinking about the oldest technology I use. The oldest item I own is a Levantine pottery shard from 5K BP, but I don't use it. The oldest form of technology I use regularly is probably a metal knife, since I don't sew often. I have a couple books made in the 1900s, but while I do use them I don't use them often either. And my oldest piece of cookware -- a colander belong to WD's mom -- is currently out for repairs.
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I think my oldest technological instance is a medieval spindle whorl that I put on a new spindle and use occasionally. (It's one of those types of artifacts that are so common they have no archaeological value out of context. I bought it from an ethical vendor of antiquities.)
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[Footnote for new readers: that's complicated because Velma and I were sisters of the heart but didn't grow up together (so things like oldest/middle/youngest child dynamics or expectations don't apply), as well as because she died of cancer a few years ago.]
There's also the shape of family dynamics where "cousin" versus "aunt/uncle" is largely generational. We always called my mother's first cousin "Cousin Hanni" (or just "Hanni" if we were talking to her rather than about her) but in some families it would have been "Aunt Hanni" because she was an adult when I, my brother, and my first cousins we were born. And, as you and I noted the other day, few if any people use "cousin once removed" or "second cousin" as titles that way: "Cousin Hanni," not "Cousin-Once-Removed Hanni" or "Mom's Cousin Hanni."
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