In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

Something else to recommend from all the way back to Feb. 26: Claudia Roth Pierpont on books in and on warfare.

[Front-Ranger]

As long as we're on back issues, I'd like to mention the article "Hostages" by David Remnick in the January 22 issue. It is not really about the Israeli hostages but is more about Benjamin Netanyahu, whose portrait appears with the article. As he describes Mr. Netanyahu's career, one wonders how he holds on to power. And there is also a lot of information about Gaza, the Palestinians, and Hamas and its leaders. It was really eye-opening for me.

[serious crayons]

The Shouts & Murmurs in the New Yorker that came yesterday is actually (mildly) amusing. It's not a thigh-slapper, but it has some humor to it and avoids the usual wild exaggerations that wreck some S&Ms.

[serious crayons]

It's been my personal experience that people who don't want to be referred to by traditional male or female pronouns can be quite insistent about that and even get offended if you slip up, so I feel they are "insisted upon" rather than "preferred."

I suppose there are some people who don't get offended and just quietly correct you.

I think it depends. If you're talking about someone who wears makeup and polished fingernails and skirts and high heels and maybe has boobs, etc., and calling them "he" I think it strikes them as a deliberate transphobic insult (and often, if not always, they'd be right).

If you're talking about someone who completely comes across as male or female in facial hair, clothing, etc., and has done nothing to look the part, I think the mistake is more understandable and if they get mad about it, it's on them.

The latter also goes for people who look distinctly like one gender or the other but prefer the pronouns "they/them." Frankly, I think a lot of young people do that to be cool. Or, more charitably, to be good allies.

[Jeff Wrangler]

As long as we're on back issues, I'd like to mention the article "Hostages" by David Remnick in the January 22 issue. It is not really about the Israeli hostages but is more about Benjamin Netanyahu, whose portrait appears with the article. As he describes Mr. Netanyahu's career, one wonders how he holds on to power. And there is also a lot of information about Gaza, the Palestinians, and Hamas and its leaders. It was really eye-opening for me.

Reminds me. I read that article about mini-Trump Matt Gaetz. Talk about a duty article, and a very distasteful one at that, but I felt it was necessary to learn more about him without just accepting that he's an evil, entitled tool, which, of course, he is.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Over lunch today I began reading the March 18 article about so-called Classical schools. The third paragraph shocked me.

In many public schools, kids learn to read by guessing words using context clues, rather than by decoding the sounds of letters. In most classical schools, phonics reigns, and students learn grammar by diagramming sentences. Some public schools have moved away from techniques like memorization. ... In contrast, classical schools prize memory work, asking students to internalize math formulas. ...

In this respect, these classical schools sound an awful lot like the public school education I received. We learned by phonics. We diagrammed sentences. My mother actually had flash cards to drill me on math (I still have trouble remembering that 9 + 5 = 14 and not 15.  ) I had Algebra I and II in junior high. There is a mention, too, of an emphasis on civics; in junior high I had a class that was actually called Civics. (I vaguely remember we did things like study the Constitution, the branches of government, how the government works--things like that.)

[Front-Ranger]

The most interesting article in the April 8 issue, to me, was the piece about the "All you can eat" buffet in the South of France. "Crazy-Making" by Leslie Jamison, about gaslighting, was fascinating in a creepy way. It brought back to mind my experiences with my ex-husband. Before he left me, he tried to get me to walk away from the house and leave everything to him. He underestimated my capacity to withstand misery. But that is not gaslighting, but something else. Sometimes in my life I have thought that some people were out to get me, to destroy me. I brushed it from my mind as paranoia. But then, sure enough, it happened. I lost my job, or I was removed from the board, or my husband announced he had bought another house and was going to move. And then I was left with the debris. So, the article depressed me but I just had to keep reading anyway.

This is the third article by Jamison that I've read in TNY, and I'm liking her work. It mentions that she teaches at Columbia University. I also read the article about music managers, especially the part about Madonna's first manager. I wouldn't like to do that work.

[serious crayons]

Reminds me. I read that article about mini-Trump Matt Gaetz. Talk about a duty article, and a very distasteful one at that, but I felt it was necessary to learn more about him without just accepting that he's an evil, entitled tool, which, of course, he is.

I was glad to see a bunch of these headlines today: McCarthy says Gaetz ousted him to stop ethics complaint over sex scandal

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/10/matt-gaetz-removed-kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-ethics

I can kind of, slightly, partly, maybe see -- but in a baffled way -- why people support Trump. But why people support Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and MTG I have no idea. They don't even have Trump's very thin veneer of charisma.

I saw a meme yesterday that said, "This is what Lauren Boebert gets at a movie theater." It showed a popcorn box with a hole in the bottom.

[serious crayons]

"Crazy-Making" by Leslie Jamison, about gaslighting, was fascinating in a creepy way. It brought back to mind my experiences with my ex-husband.

I saw an essay online yesterday by a man who finally realized that when his wife asked him a million times not to leave his dishes by the sink he should have stopped leaving his dishes by the sink, not because he began to see it as a big deal, he still thinks it wasn't, but because it was a big enough deal to his wife for her to mention it a million times, getting increasingly frustrated each time, until she'd finally had enough. (The guy wrote a whole book about the end of his marriage, which at first looked interesting but turned out to include marriage advice, of which I have no need.)

Which reminded me of the time I was at an art show and saw a crafted sponge holder. I said, "If I'd seen this sponge holder 10 years ago I might still be married today." The artist laughed and asked why. I told her that my husband used to do the dishes -- that part was good! -- but always leave the sponge in the sink, full of cold water that would sit overnight accumulating bacteria that I would later have to squeeze out. I asked him a million times to stop and he never did because he didn't think it was a big deal. He got to call that shot. Yet I tried to avoid doing things that bugged him, even when I didn't think were a big deal. He had exactly the same problem the guy in the essay did.

Not gaslighting exactly but gaslighting-adjacent.

This is the third article by Jamison that I've read in TNY, and I'm liking her work. It mentions that she teaches at Columbia University.

I have, and read, her first essay collection, The Empathy Exams, and it's very good. I have her second essay collection, Make it Scream, Make it Burn, which I have not yet read. Now I'm motivated to pull it out this evening!

[Jeff Wrangler]

Which reminded me of the time I was at an art show and saw a crafted sponge holder. I said, "If I'd seen this sponge holder 10 years ago I might still be married today." The artist laughed and asked why. I told her that my husband used to do the dishes -- that part was good! -- but always leave the sponge in the sink, full of cold water that would sit overnight accumulating bacteria that I would later have to squeeze out. I asked him a million times to stop and he never did because he didn't think it was a big deal. He got to call that shot. Yet I tried to avoid doing things that bugged him, even when I didn't think were a big deal. He had exactly the same problem the guy in the essay did.

I'm glad to hear somebody else uses a sponge to wash dishes. That's what I do. My dad always thought it was weird. He insisted on using a "dish rag."