Syllabus #41

The list is short and Bernie-centric this week.  I'm tired.  If you have primaries or early voting coming up in your state, get thee to the polls.  That's your only homework assignment.

Children's books are weird, guys.  I wanted to hate this book based solely on the cover, but it had a beautiful message about dressing to please only yourself and not bowing to peer pressure, and had some underlying messages that celebrate gender-nonconformity.  4.5 out of 5 stars, can't wait for the sequel, Chicken Grew a Unibrow and Wore a Vintage Mechanic's Jumpsuit. 

How do you feel about Medicare For All?  I'm down, you down?

How about now?  Would you like to avoid the need for medical tourism and get adequate, affordable care in your own city?

This should be a required and recurring course in elementary, middle, and high school, along with a class that teaches you how to manage your finances.  Actually, my school does have a social and emotional learning curriculum, but I'm still waiting on the finance thing.  Sure would be nice if kids understood how money worked when the book fair rolls around, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.  Actually. I am holding my breath, because money is filthy and kid money is often sweaty and crumpled, which just creates more crevices in which the germs can propagate.

Look, Bernie found the Fountain of Late Middle Age.  It's not a sweet, clear water that bubbles up out of the ground in St. Augustine like the Fountain of Youth.  It's a tepid brown liquid that trickles out of a gas station coffee urn, but it works like a charm.  He hasn't aged a day in 30 years.


I could watch Jayne's Instagram videos all day.  Note to self:  get a haircut soon.  Just don't pay $325.


Are you on the right or wrong side of history in this recipe headnotes war?  As a long-winded person, myself, I sympathize with the desire to provide context and share an anecdote.  If I'm being completely honest, though, I'm a big fat hypocrite, because 95% of the time I scroll right on past the headnotes and skip straight to the recipe.  The only headnotes I read with strict religiosity are Deb's of Smitten Kitchen, because they are delightful.  I even read her meat-centric recipes that I know I will never in my life attempt, because I enjoy her banter.  But it's like this, people:  these food bloggers are givin' that shit away to you for free (like so much emotional labor performed by women, natch).  If you don't want to read the headnote, just scroll on by.  Tolerating the headnote is the food blog equivalent of making polite small talk with a cashier, or asking a coworker about their kids before you ask them for a favor.  You don't have to actually care, but it's part of the social fabric that clothes our transactions.

Analog Reading:

Finished The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.  It was a quick read, but powerful.  I wouldn't put the writing quite at the level of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, but it is another example of the power of showing, not telling.  It paints a very clear picture of the awful calculations and trade-offs that black people in this country have been forced to make to protect their safety, to protect their children, especially their sons.  The reasons are both explicit and implicit, and this has of course been happening for hundreds of years and continues to this day with issues such as overarching as police brutality and as intimate as the friendships children forge in school.  There are many other books that portray these realities, but until it stops being present reality and recedes into a thing of the distant past, it's a story that needs and deserves to be told.

Just started The Great Pretender:  The undercover mission that changed our understanding of madness by Susannah Cahalan.  This book is the antidote for anyone who, like me, watched Patch Adams as a kid and thought it would be zany and fun to admit oneself for a short jaunt in a mental institution.

About 1/4 of the way through American Dirt.  I have thoughts.  They are mostly not positive, with regard to both the writing and the issue of cultural representation.  I'm trying to reserve the full weight of judgment until I'm finished, but so far, I kind of feel about this book the same way I felt when reading the YA novel Uglies earlier this year.  It feels like the author doesn't have a lot of respect for her readers' intelligence in a lot of instances, but I'm still going to keep reading to find out what happens.  The writing is super melodramatic, and a textbook example of telling, and telling, and telling some more instead of showing.  I had to see for myself what the critical fuss was about, but I am so ambivalent about even admitting that I'm reading this book that I waited until Andy finished reading his copy from the library and snagged it to speed-read before the due date.  I couldn't bring myself to place a hold on it of my own accord.  The secret is safe here, though.