#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

Since I don't have a #MicroblogMonday post prepared (again!), here are some odds & ends I've been gathering over the past week or so for your reading pleasure:  

• As if I needed a reminder that I'm getting older (lol), I had lunch recently with a friend from high school. 
• First, I realized that it will be (gulp!) 45 YEARS in June since we graduated -- which means she & I have known each other almost 50 YEARS (since we first met in Grade 10, in the fall of 1976). 
• Second, she told me her YOUNGER sister's GRANDSON is getting MARRIED this summer!!  (Just let THAT one sink in!)  Her younger sister was in my younger sister's class, a year behind us;  she was pregnant at graduation, and the daughter she had then also had a baby shortly after SHE graduated from high school.  Who is now getting married...!   
• Speaking of age -- Deanna Stellato-Dudek is my hero. :)  At age 40 -- 33 years after she first hung up her competitive skates -- she just won the world figure skating championships in the pairs event, with her partner Maxime Deschanps. (She's an American who is now skating for Canada, and is seeking Canadian citizenship in time for the next Winter Olympics in 2026.) This is a sport where most women are considered washed up at 25.  And, oh yeah, she does not have children.
• I spent most of this past weekend watching the skating, both livestreamed online and on broadcast TV, i.e., CBC and NBC. The event was held in Montreal, four years after it was originally scheduled and then cancelled at the last minute when covid descended upon the world. It was a fabulous competition, and worth the wait! 
• If you can find a video, watch American skater Ilia Malinin's program in the men's final (as well as Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps's program). What he achieved was absolutely jaw-dropping -- and I've been watching skating for a LONG time! (lol)  -- SIX quadruple jumps in his program, including a quad axel (he's the only person in the world right now who's doing it).  And he's hinting that QUINTUPLE jumps may be in his future. 
• Helen Davenport-Peace is really hitting it out of the ballpark lately with her Substack, The Antidote. Case in point:  "You said nothing (and I wish that you had)." 
• Anne Helen Petersen had a long, thoughtful post on her Culture Study Substack about how the founding American myth of "rugged individualism" inhibits the development of community. Don't skip the comments -- if you look at the "top first," some of the first ones there delve into the divide between parents and childless/childfree people. 
• The Atlantic had a great article recently on "America's unprocessed covid grief" ( = why so many people are in a funk right now). (Gift link, accessible for the next 14 days.)  There's a slight political angle, but overall, I think they're absolutely right, and I found it really interesting.  Excerpt:  

Four years ago, the country was brought to its knees by a world-historic disaster. COVID-19 hospitalized nearly 7 million Americans and killed more than a million; it’s still killing hundreds each week. It shut down schools and forced people into social isolation. Almost overnight, most of the country was thrown into a state of high anxiety—then, soon enough, grief and mourning. But the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured. As clinical psychiatrists, we see the effects of such emotional turmoil every day, and we know that when it’s not properly processed, it can result in a general sense of unhappiness and anger—exactly the negative emotional state that might lead a nation to misperceive its fortunes.

• Medium posts are often paywalled (and you have to pay for an extra subscription if you want to send gift links!  :p  )  -- but if you can access it, Ali Smith's post on "Bridging the Gap Between Parents, the Childfree and the Childless" is well worth a read (and she's a great writer to follow on childfree/childless issues generally!).  (Subhead:  "Friendships can survive and thrive when we take different paths, but only if we validate each other.")  All three groups are dealt with compassionately. Excerpt:  
  

Whether childless or childfree, all non-parents experience the weight of pronatalism.

We are othered, shamed and excluded.

Governments, religious leaders and even Elon Musk lead this resistance toward non-parents.

And yet, the same groups that are trying to lead the stampede against non-parents are, in fact, wolves in sheep's clothing. They do not provide adequately for parents and children....

I’m begging you, please don’t allow the ulterior motives of conservative people to widen the chasm between parents and non-parents.

And:  

I was recently on Newstalk, an Irish national radio show. We were discussing how children can change friendships.

In my experience, the friendships that survive are the ones that incorporate reciprocity.

Sometimes, the pendulum swings one way and stays there for a while, but it needs to return to the equilibrium at some stage.

I will happily go to soft play and listen to endless anecdotes about my friends’ kids. And I will delight in this because I love my friends and want to be a part of their lives.

But I need the same courtesy extended to me.

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.