Odds & ends

A couple of personal notes:  

• It's been overcast, grey, occasionally rainy, and cool to chilly, more often than not lately. Where is my summer??  :(  
• Younger Nephew invited us over for lunch last Saturday, along with his parents (BIL & SIL). They live close enough to us that we could walk there & back. Little Great-Niece entertained us royally  :)  and we left with enough leftovers for lunch for the next several days.  :)  A very nice afternoon! 
• Dh recently remarked on the number of books showing up in his e-book sales emails related to fathers & kids -- and dads and daughters in particular (in advance of Father's Day this weekend).  He usually doesn't say much in this vein, so I'm guessing it was bothering him more than usual...!  :(  

And now, a few good recent reads on my radar lately:  

• A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a thought-provoking piece I'd read by Ruby Warrington in her email newsletter, which (together with a Substack piece from another writer) got me thinking about "information overload versus creativity." 
• Ruby received such a big response to that email that she decided to post the text on her website and to point to it on her social media accounts. I had to do a bit of hunting to find it (it's kind of buried in there!), but here's the link, in case you'd like to read the whole thing:  "Creativity in the The Era of 'Peak Content'."
• Says Ruby, introducing her essay: "I realize the irony of me putting the following into a blog post that I also plan to share on social media. In fact, I hesitated before writing this piece, which I originally shared on my newsletter. Wouldn’t I just be adding to the problem? But the response was overwhelming; clearly, I am not alone in these reflections. Which makes me think a new way of doing things is ready to emerge."
• The New York Times interviewed 10 prominent artists on the subject of grief and how it's changed them. 
• Alison Motluk has a thought-provoking essay about the implications of sperm donation on her Hey Reprotech Substack:  "Anonymous Father's Day." 
• Is U.S. First Lady Jill Biden Hunter Biden's mom? Monica Hesse of the Washington Post weighs in. (I know everyone's story is different, but may step- and adoptive mothers will relate...!)
• As someone whose daughter was stillborn at least in part because of placental issues, I was glad to see this article in the Atlantic:  "A Breakthrough in Preventing Stillbirth." (Subhead: "Half of pregnancy losses have unidentified causes. The placenta could provide answers.")(Gift link, good for 14 days after this post is published.) 
• https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/placenta-stillbirths-research/678570/ 
• "You Decided to Become a Mother. What Happened Next?" The New York Times wants to know! (Gift link.)  There's a form you can fill out. (You may be contacted by a reporter for more information.)  It would be nice if they got the message that the journey to motherhood is not always smooth, does not always end happily ever after and, for some of us, motherhood ultimately never happens at all.  
• Jake Tapper mentioned on CNN today that many of the 20 children who were murdered at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut 12 (!!) years ago would be graduating high school right about now. !!!  
• Hearing that was a gut punch that brought tears to my eyes. I remember how incredibly hard it was, watching the parents of Katie's peers proudly posting photos of their child's graduation in June 2016, and then taking them to university that fall (and mourning their "empty nests" -- when mine had never been occupied to begin with...)  My heart goes out to the parents of those precious children who never got the chance to grow up and graduate. 
• At the time Sandy Hook happened, Mel wrote about focusing on remembering just one of the young lives among the many snuffed out prematurely on that terrible day. As I wrote in a blog post at the time, I chose Ana Marquez-Greene, whose family had ties to my home province of Manitoba.  I still think about her whenever Sandy Hook comes up.