- What are you all up to? We're having a quiet weekend. (Not that most of our weekends aren't quiet...!) Catching up on reading emails and books.
- From the New York Times on MDay weekend: "An Ode to Those Who Mother Us." (Gift link.) "Those who love and care for us are not always our parents. For Mother’s Day, The Times asked readers to tell us about the mother figures in their lives." (Some of the examples cited, albeit not all of them, are childless.)
- Marsha Lederman in The Globe & Mail had an opinion piece this weekend with a headline that gladdened my heart: "A Mother’s Day plea: Be mindful of those around you." (Gift link.)
- It starts out very promisingly, citing many of the reasons why Mother's Day can be difficult for so many people. ("I hate to be a bummer, but we should be mindful that this is not a day of brunches and roses for all families.")
- Then it shifts to the story of Anna Jarvis, who created Mother's Day -- and lived to regret it.
- Alas, the ending undercuts the message, with a shoutout to the power of mothers. Sigh...
- Jennie Agg at Life, Almost, interviews Jenni Calcraft, a physiotherapist (based in Liverpool, England) who helps women in their physical recovery, postpartum, after pregnancy loss. Check out the interview, and Jenni's website, the PABL Project. Hopefully this is something that will catch on more widely!
- I wish I'd seen this article in time to include in my last "odds & ends" roundup, since there were several (other) articles there that were critical of the fertility industry. This one is from The Atlantic: "America’s IVF Failure." (Gift link, available for 14 days from today.) Subheader: "One out of every 50 babies born in the U.S. was conceived via IVF. Why is the industry so poorly regulated?"
- (I don't think Canada is a whole lot better...! -- the legislation regulating the fertility industry is 20 years old -- the result of a royal commission on reproductive technologies created in 1989 (!!) -- and was already considered out of date when it was finally enacted in 2004.)
- Annoying thing: My (relatively new) Kobo e-reader has not been synching or downloading new books for almost two months now (AGAIN -- it's been doing this almost since I bought it last fall...!). I haven't especially needed or wanted a book that's not already been downloaded for a while, but I will soon, and it's annoying.
- Signing in & out of my account has worked as a fix in the past (and I've usually been able to sync regularly for a while afterwards) -- but it's like setting up my e-reader all over again from scratch: I can see all the titles I've purchased, and it keeps my collections intact -- but anything I've downloaded from outside sources gets wiped (I keep all those on my old reader); all my bookmarks and highlights, etc., disappear; and it only downloads the most recent 5 books I've purchased -- I have to re-download all the other titles I want to keep ready to go. (Right now, I have more than 600 downloaded.) Sigh....
- I created a new blog label/tag, "e-readers," so that I (if not you! lol) can find relevant posts faster!
- (Very) annoying thing: I just saw a TV ad for Ragu pasta sauce with the tagline "Cook like a Mother." ARGGGHHH... (Apparently it's been around for a few years now.)
- I Googled "Ragu" and the tagline, and it looks like I'm not the only one who finds it offensive...! (for a variety of reasons that I never would have guessed...!).
- Non-ALI related: I've enjoyed reading several of Nick Hornby's novels (and the movies adapted from them), and recently learned he has a Substack newsletter (who doesn't these days??). In a recent post, he wrote about a new television adaptation of Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel "A Man in Full." (Disclaimer: I have neither read the book nor seen the TV show.) The show is set in present day, but Hornby points out that Charlie is still very much a man of the time when he was created, and the times he would have lived through to that point:
He belongs exactly where and when we first met him, at the end of the 1990s. If you start to fiddle around with him so that he at least pretends to understand what’s going on now, he falls apart. The novel was written to reflect that kind of ‘90s man; that was Wolfe’s schtick, the journalistic eye. Wall Street. Property. No women in any boardroom. Swinging dicks. There are assholes running big business now, of course, but it’s a different kind of asshole, one that reflects the times they have lived through.
Moreover, Hornby explains (and I love, love, loved this paragraph -- maybe because he's not that much older than I am....! -- and because he offers some sound advice to writers and others, along with a plug for the importance of considering history):
No character can exist outside of history; history is a part of what makes us who we are. Working out what has happened during a character’s lifetime is an important step on the way to that character becoming real. Young writers attempting to imagine someone of my age, 67, often tend to attribute a cliched version of ‘elderliness’ to them: retired, walking the dog, doing the crossword, voting for Trump and Brexit, shouting at the television. Well, kid: I was nineteen when the Sex Pistols released their first single, and twenty-five when I heard hip-hop - ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash - for the first time. (And I voted Remain twice, in 1975 and 2016.) Haight-Asbury was pop-culture history to me, something I learned about from my elders. The drugs were mostly the same, although you couldn’t order them from your phone. People had a lot of pre-marital sex. I’m not saying that I’m not ageing. I’m just saying that it’s happening differently for my generation. No pipes, not so many slippers. (Lots of dogs, and probably even more shouting at the TV.) We’re living longer, and we are fitter. Old age doesn’t have a permanent character.
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