"Chasing History" by Carl Bernstein

Whenever people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them I wanted to "be an author" -- i.e., write books.  The older I got, though, the clearer it became that not too many people were lucky enough to make a living doing that. 

But then, as a young teenager, I gradually became aware of the possibility of a different kind of writing career: journalism. We'd always subscribed to and read the newspaper at our house. Undoubtedly, I was also influenced by the buzz created around the Watergate scandal in the U.S., and role that journalism and journalists played in bringing it to light, eventually forcing the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, who broke the Watergate story, were elevated to hero status and influenced an entire generation of young aspiring journalists -- including me. I read (and re-read) their book, "All the President's Men," and my sister and I saw the movie version, two nights in a row. (I re-read the book again in the summer of 2017, and wrote about it, and the impact it had on me, here.)  I did wind up going to journalism school and worked briefly as a reporter at a smalltown weekly newspaper, before landing a communications job in the corporate world. 

Now, Bernstein has written a memoir -- but not about Watergate, or anything that came after it. "Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom" is an affectionate coming of age story about how Bernstein got his start in journalism -- at age 16 in the summer of 1960, as a part-time copy boy at the Post's long-gone rival, the Washington Star.  His dad arranged the interview:  "He rightly feared for my future — a concern that was based on hard facts, most of them having to do with the pool hall, my school report cards, and the Montgomery County Juvenile Court." He was instantly hooked, and even as he tried to finish high school (while rapidly losing interest), he gradually began taking on assignments to report on meetings of local civic organizations and to act as a "legman," providing details on events such as the Kennedy inauguration that were included in the stories written by more senior reporters (who, of course, got the byline). Eventually, he became a full-time staff member, taking dictation from reporters phoning in stories, and reporting on stories of his own. 

Bernstein has an incredible memory and eye for detail (which, I suppose, is one reason he's the legend he is).  This is a vivid and lovingly written portrait of Washington and suburban Maryland in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and of the newspaper business of the time -- a bygone era of copy boys (and they WERE all boys), linotype machines and typesetters, payphone booths and rolls of dimes, and libraries of clipping files -- when a 16-year-old kid could be sent to help cover a presidential press conference at the White House, and nobody would bat an eye. 

But even then, it was an era in its twilight days. Bernstein dropped out of college (before he was kicked out) -- which meant he was at risk of being sent to Vietnam -- and his days at the Star came to an end because, despite his already-considerable experience and fat scrapbook full of impressive clippings, he didn't have the college degree that, already, had become the prerequisite for a reporting job. A friend gave him a job at a newspaper in New Jersey and then, two years later, the Washington Post took a chance on him -- and the rest is history. 

But that's another story...  

I saw Bernstein interviewed about this book on CNN (where he's a regular commentator) by Brian Stelter of "Reliable Sources"  Stelter noted some reviewers have described it as a love letter to the newspapers of the time, while others describe it as a eulogy for them. "Which one is it?" Stelter asked. Bernstein said both -- and it is both. Much has changed since 1960 in how stories make their way to readers -- but the essential lessons Bernstein learned at the Star -- about what journalism is and should be, how the job is done, the importance of getting out of the office and talking to people and cross-checking your stories with multiple sources, and following the facts, wherever they might lead you -- are still relevant and important today. "The ideal was always to get as near to the truth as good reporting could take you, through persistence and listening and observing with an open mind, regardless of your own opinions," he writes in Chapter 18. And later, in Chapter 20: "I'd gotten it in my head that all good reporting was pretty much the same thing: the best version of the truth you could come up with. It wasn't just stringing together disparate facts, an approach that could actually undermine the truth... but it was also about finding a way to put context into a story." 

 

I enjoyed this book, and I think anyone with an interest in journalism and/or in life and events in and around Washington D.C. in the late 1950s/early 1960s will like it too. It's evocatively and lovingly written. 

That said -- I have to admit... while I enjoyed it, it didn't knock my socks off the way I thought (hoped) it would. I found it just a wee bit long and maybe almost a little too detailed. (There's a huge cast of characters, and it was sometimes difficult to remember who was who.)  It took me longer to get through it than I expected. (Of course, a lot of time I could have been reading recently has been spent watching the Olympics instead...!) 

So, not 5 stars, for those reasons, but still, a fun read. Four (4) stars on Goodreads. 

This was Book #7 read to date in 2022 (and Book #2 finished in February), bringing me to 16% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 2 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

Questions about power, influence and authority

I recently became a paid subscriber to Culture Study, Anne Helen Petersen's Substack newsletter, after enjoying it for free for the past year or so.  Petersen is childfree by choice, and writes sympathetically about both motherhood/parenting issues and choosing a life without children (among many other subjects). To date, she hasn't had much to say about those of us who are childless-not-by-choice -- I would love to see her in a conversation with Jody Day of Gateway Women ! But essays like "Your Own Harriet" -- which I absolutely loved -- are relevant to all of us without children, no matter how we got here.   

Petersen is fascinated by the world of social media influencers -- "momfluencers" in particular -- and has devoted several recent newsletters to the topic. As she explained in a post last October ("The Ideological Battlefield of the "Mamasphere"): 

I’m not a mom but I like to know what the moms are up to. You should too, regardless of your identity, because “the moms” — meaning, the moms embodying and directing ideals of femininity and domesticity and parenting — have a lot of power, and power demands attention.

She's introduced me to two others who think and write extensively on these topics, and I now follow their newsletters as well:  Meg Conley of Homeculture (who wrote movingly about miscarriage last  year), and Kathryn Jezer-Morton of Mothers Under the Influence, who is actually doing a PhD on the subject (!) at Concordia University in Montreal. 

I had interesting reads in my inbox today from both Petersen and Conley. First, Petersen interviewed Conley (again), this time about "The Edenic Allure of Ballerinafarm." I'd never heard of Ballerinafarm before:  it's a working farm in Utah, as well as an Instagram account/brand, run by a ballerina/beauty pageant queen turned mom (of SIX children, soon to be seven)/homemaker/farmer. Explains Petersen: 

The Neelemans currently sell Ballerinafarm beef and pork, along with a cornucopia of Ballerinafarm-branded merch. But the real product is the lifestyle: pastoral, filled with beautiful moppy-haired children and their graceful, angel-faced mother. There is a lot going on here! And I am grateful that Meg agreed to unpack some of it with me, using a set of analytical tools and frameworks you don’t often see in influencer commentary.

Then I got a newsletter from Conley herself.  Last month, she wrote a lengthy, detailed piece about the influential Magnolia Network, and how her friend Aubry's life has been upended for the past two years by a home makeover (for Magnolia's Home Work TV show) gone very wrong. In this update, she writes about the fallout from the first article -- how she was tagged in a response from the program's hosts (the Merediths), which led to a flood of outraged DMs from their followers. I found this passage particularly interesting (and you'll understand why when you read it): 

...The reactions I got in its aftermath did not surprise me. The rancor I saw in response to Aubry’s story did kind of surprise me. Aubry is a single woman without children. She’s chosen her life and it’s a good one. Aubry is very, very upbeat. Meredith Blake called her IG account "relentlessly cheerful." Which made me laugh. Because...that's accurate! But in a lot of the commentary I saw, she was characterized as shrill, greedy and jealous. This was not how other married with children clients were characterized when they came forward with similar stories about the Merediths.

One homeowner is the mother of five children. While I saw Andy and Candis’s followers push back against her story, they still granted her the authority to tell it. In their online commentary, many framed it as a difference of perception, a simple misunderstanding or a shame that her experience didn’t work out. Her children and marriage somehow gave her the rights to make claims about what happened in and to her home. The Meredith’s reinforced this authority in their video by acknowledging her claims even while denying they were truly at fault.

In their video, the Merediths singled Aubry out as the person whose authority they were most eager to undermine. They did this with images and videos of her inside of her home. They repeatedly referenced their own children. For those looking for it, this created a story of a A Mother with Children Done Wrong by a Woman Without Children. This reinforced the narrative I saw spawning across the internet around the Merediths. The one that said, A single, childless woman lacks authority to correctly witness and relay what happens in her own home.

Well. F*** that, you know?

There's a lot more -- but this is all absolutely fascinating stuff.  It's all worth a read and worth pondering. 

#MicroblogMondays: Small pleasures & annoying things

Small pleasures: 

• Stumbling onto reruns of "That Girl," one of my favourite TV shows from childhood (and groundbreaking for its day -- one of the very first shows -- even before "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- to feature a young single woman living by herself and trying to forge an acting career in New York City). 
• Taking delivery of some pretty new sweaters that I ordered online, on sale. They fit -- AND the colours are PERFECT on me!! (Now to be able to WEAR them somewhere...!) 
• Watching the figure skating team events at the Olympics (even if Canada wound up in 4th, after winning gold last time around). 
• Watching our Canadian women's champion, Madeline Schizas, age 18 and under extreme pressure, absolutely killing it in both the women's short & long segments of the team competition (skating well enough in the short program to pull Canada into the finals, after the qualifying rounds). I was nervous about her prospects, but I think she has a great future ahead of her! 

Annoying things: 

• When the same ads keep repeating over and over and OVER again on TV (even before the Olympics started...!). 
• When the ad music is especially annoying but earworm-ish and you can't help but have it playing in your head over & over again. 
• Discovering that the bottom sheet on our bed has shredded -- the second set of sheets ruined in recent years. (They weren't cheap, either!) Luckily I had a spare set!  
• In my email inbox:  
• Marketing email from national department store, titled "Something for you + your mini me" (a matching set of mother/baby slippers). 
• And then, just a few minutes later: a New York Times newsletter, with the header, "Rihanna and the Art of the Pregnancy Portrait Shoot."  I mean, seriously??!
• Zits on my chin and under my nose. You'd think I was 16 instead of 61...! 
• The book I'm reading right now is taking more time to get through than I had anticipated. 
• Not being able to think of anything more original for a #MicroblogMondays post. 

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

"Misfits" by Michaela Coel

The February pick for my online Gateway Women/NoMo book club is "Misfits: A Personal Manifesto" by Michaela Coel -- a British poet, actress, screenwriter and producer/director, whose work includes the TV series "Chewing Gum" and "I May Destroy You."  I had never heard of her, but when I Googled her, I learned that "Chewing Gum" is available via the CBC Gem online streaming service, and that "I May Destroy You" has been shown on HBO and won her an Emmy for outstanding writing. (She was the first black woman to claim that prize.) We don't get HBO in Canada, but apparently the show is available via the Crave streaming service (which we don't subscribe to). 

I will admit I feel a bit guilty counting this as a book read. It's not even 100 pages long (well spaced, with large pullout quotes sprinkled liberally throughout), and took me about an hour to read. I did, however, pay the same price for it as I would for other, much longer books (which seems somewhat ridiculous -- and I bought an e-version on Kobo, which was half the price of the hardcover -- the paperback won't be available until this fall) -- so I will justify myself that way. ;)  The "book" is, in fact, a lecture she delivered in Edinburgh in 2018 before 4,000 people, with an introduction and epilogue added, explaining how she came to deliver the lecture and what happened afterwards.   

It did not begin especially auspiciously for me: Coel almost immediately launches into a story about her hatred of moths -- an image that she repeats throughout the book, both in words and graphics used to divide the sections of the book.  I shuddered as I remembered the "miller" moths that used to flit around my grandmother's old house, out on the screened-in porch and inside, around the lamps in the bedroom my sister and I shared. I could NOT go to sleep until every single moth had been hunted down, killed and disposed of (by my mother or grandfather -- certainly not by me!), and I still fly into a fit if one happens to get into our condo when the screen door is open. I will admit to muttering, "What do moths have to do with what she has to say, anyway??" In the epilogue, however, she makes a comparison between moths and butterflies, and "aha!" -- it all finally began to make some sense. (I didn't realize until later, reading others' Goodreads reviews, that this section is titled "The Aftermoth"...!) 

"The term 'misfits' takes on dual notions;  a misfit is one who looks at life differently. Many, however, are made into misfits because life looks at them differently," Coel writes. She describes her experiences as a black woman growing up in a social housing development in the middle of London, and later in the TV industry.  She makes an argument for greater honesty and transparency, diversity and inclusion, and breaking down all kinds of barriers, which many don't even realize exist. 

3.5 stars on Goodreads, rounded up to 4. There is some powerful content here -- but it's a little disjointed and ambiguous in parts. The points she's making are not always immediately clear. "I will do what I'm best at: tell stories, in the hope that you'll be able to connect the dots, find threads to tie together," she says in the introduction. (She says essentially the same thing at the beginning of her lecture.) But sometimes it takes a while for the patterns to emerge.  

(There's also a fair amount of references that left me, and no doubt other North Americans, scratching my head. I knew what Boots was and who Claire Foy is, but Kat Slater (who gets mentioned several times)?? -- But I had to chuckle, because several of these references were asterisked and, at the very back of the book, there's a page of notes explaining who Kat Slater is, among other things. Thank you, Michaela!  ;)  )  

I will be thinking about this one for a while, and I'm looking forward to our discussions about it this month in Gateway Women's private community. It's certainly worth a read -- but see if you can get a copy on sale or from the library. ;)  (Apparently the lecture is available to watch/read online too.) 

This was Book #6 read to date in 2022 (and Book #1 finished in February), bringing me to 13% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 2 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

Support networks (or the lack thereof)(an update)

Further to my #MicroblogMonday post about being prepared (re: covid) --while I addressed practical things like stocking up on food and medical supplies, I later realized I didn't say anything much about social support networks, which is what Mali was mainly talking about in her post. I did say in my post that being closer to dh's brother and our nephews, as well as other relatives, was a big reason why we moved here in 2016 -- and I know that, if we got sick and needed them to bring us some groceries, etc., they would be able to help us out.  (Unless they were all sick at the same time too...!) 

It's great to have family close by (and willing) to help, of course -- but family doesn't always compensate for having a broader social network of friends and neighbours. I wrote a long post a few years back (May 2018) about "Social capital, adult friendships & childlessness," which I searched out and dusted off while thinking about these issues. Most of what I wrote then is still valid. A few things I wrote near the end, though, had me thinking it was time for an update! 

We've been living here two years now -- and we really haven't met a lot of new people here either.  There are neighbours & other people who live in the building that we know by name & exchange pleasant chit-chat with, but nothing deeper. None of dh's cousins, local or otherwise, have come to visit & inspect our condo (which surprises me -- we're the first in the family to get a condo & I though the novelty/curiosity factor would bring them over, if nothing else...!). His aunt has been here, but only because we took her out for dinner and then back here later for coffee....

Well, it's been almost SIX (!) years now -- and while we have lots of acquaintances in the building (and their dogs! lol) that we know by name and exchange pleasantries with, we're still not at the point of inviting them over (or being invited over) for dinner or anything like that. There ARE a very few people (including our next-door neighbour -- one of the building "originals" and a current member of the condo board of directors) that I think I'd feel comfortable asking a favour from in an emergency now, which makes me feel a bit better and less isolated.

We still haven't had any family visitors, after almost six years (!) -- albeit, of course, two of those years have been consumed by the pandemic, when nobody has been socializing much. (We love dh's relatives, but we wouldn't want them here right now...!)  Not even BIL & SIL have been over since the pandemic began, although of course we have been over there (and up to Older Nephew's new house) to see them, many times, especially since we all got our vaccinations this past year. 

Back to the 2018 post: 

I keep saying I'm going to join a yoga class -- mostly because I need & want the exercise & the relaxation/mindfulness benefits it promotes -- but also because it would get me out of the house. I've researched a few places but haven't tried any out yet. Likewise, I would love to find a book club. Even if I didn't make any real friends there, I would love to discover new books and talk about them with other people. I went on Meetups.com in search of one hereabouts, but most of the ones listed there meet in the city proper and would be difficult to get to. I've even considered going back to church in an attempt to meet people (if not with an eye to my eternal salvation, as I sometimes joke).

Still haven't found a yoga class (not that I looked that hard...! -- and even if the yoga studios are operating -- which can be iffy, depending on current restrictions -- I wouldn't feel comfortable going to one right now anyway -- all that emphasis on deep breathing, etc...!).  

I did join a book club through the local library in early 2019, and very much enjoyed attending the monthly meetings for a year, until covid intervened...!  I didn't make any real friends there, but I was getting to know the regulars and their names and quirks, and there were several women who usually sat near me that I would chat with while waiting for the meeting to begin, and then as we were leaving. (We all usually wore nametags, which helped.) I've found some online book clubs since the pandemic began that have helped to fill that bookish gap, and I very much enjoy too, but if/when we ever get rid of covid (!) and the library club restarts in-person meetings, I will definitely return. 

Still haven't been to church here (let alone considering regularly...!).  Churches are open, but capacity is currently restricted because of covid. 

I also wrote about investigating the local Gateway Women meetups. Of course, these have all (or mostly) been online for the past  two years because of the pandemic. I've made connections with some local GWs & other childless women through other CNBC online forums -- there have been some Zoom calls, and talks about getting together for coffee or maybe a hike, etc. -- but the pandemic keeps making this difficult.  While some might be comfortable meeting face to face at this point, I'm afraid I still wouldn't, not yet. There's also the distance & transportation factor: the Greater Toronto Area is pretty far-flung, I don't drive, and public transit has its limits.  Still, it's something I'd be interested in, if/when we can ever get rid of covid...!  

Meanwhile (as Mali reminded me), I am very lucky that I have some awesome friends right here in my computer. :)  Thanks for being here!  :)  

What's saving my life right now...

I recently saw that Modern Mrs. Darcy had posted her annual list of  "What's saving my life right now" as an antidote to the midwinter gloom (more important now than ever, as we endure our second February -- my least favourite month -- of living with covid)(third, if you count 2020, when covid was looming ominously and drawing ever-more closely, even if it hadn't made much of an impact on our lives yet).  

Then I saw that Turia had posted hers -- which reminded me that both had inspired me to post a list of my own last year, and got me thinking about what I'd put on my list for this year. 

I tried not to look at my last year's list too closely before I started writing this. Inevitably, there is some overlap, but I came up with a few new items too...!  

• Dh. I've become very conscious in recent years (through the work of Jody Day & Melanie Notkin, and through the Gateway Women community) that there's quite a large number of women who are childless because they never met the right partner in time to have a family with. Dh has his shortcomings, of course, and we've had our ups & downs over the years -- but I've been reminded several times in recent months, as we passed the 40-year mark in our relationship (!!), of just how lucky I am to have him in my life. :)  He makes me laugh, he makes me dinner almost every night, he makes me tea every afternoon without me asking for it, he's been doing most of the grocery shopping for the past two years since covid (insisting on taking on that extra risk himself), he pitches in with the laundry & cleaning... I may not have children -- but I have him. I am lucky and I know it, and I am very, VERY thankful. 
• Days that are clear & sunny (even if they're freezing cold!), versus grey & gloomy. I was born & raised on the Prairies, where it might be -35C outside -- but the sun will, more often than not, be shining! As I am sure I've confessed before on this blog, I find the damp, slushy, grey gloom of southern Ontario in mid-winter a little hard to cope with.  So I appreciate those bright, sunny days when they happen!  (I notice that MMD does too! -- see #2!) 
• Visits with Little Great-Nephew. At this time last year, our first vaccinations were still two months away, in early April. Older Nephew, his wife and Little Great-Nephew were all still living with BIL & SIL, not far away, but because of covid, our visits were few, short and mostly masked.  Once we all got those first shots, though, we shed the masks around each other and began visiting more often -- especially once LGN's mom returned to work in May after maternity leave, leaving him in the care of SIL.  In the months since then, he's gone from hiding behind his grandmother's legs when we arrived to running to the door to greet us with a huge smile on his face. We never got to spend this kind of regular, quality time with our two nephews when they were little (we lived on opposite ends of the city, and we were working during the week), and we are loving this opportunity for a bit of a do-over.  We've often said that LGN will probably never know or appreciate just how much joy he brought into all our lives at a very dark time in the world. (But we'll probably tell him so when he gets older -- if only to embarrass him, lol.)  
• Listening to music. The news these past 5-6 years has been hard to watch -- first, what happened in the U.S., politically, then covid, and some of the more recent events here in Canada. We still watch the news channels (CNN & CBC News Network), especially first thing in the morning, as well as the local CBC supper hour newscast and "The National" (CBC's nightly national newscast). But we've learned to turn them off during the day (unless there's something really important going on) and turn on a music channel instead (usually our favourite classic rock).  
• "Bob's Burgers" reruns. If there's nothing else on TV at night that we want to watch, we know we can depend on Bob & family -- they're on every night on the Adult Swim channel here at 8 p.m. for an hour (two episodes), as well as new episodes on Sunday nights on Fox, and they rarely fail to tickle my funnybone, even if it's an episode I've seen a dozen times before. I've written about my love of this show before, most notably here.  :) 
• The Winter Olympics. (The opening is tomorrow morning, but the team figure skating event starts tonight!)  It sounds like a rather joyless Olympics, to be honest, with the strict covid protocols being enforced by the Chinese government -- restricted audiences, no families present, no cheering (!) -- and the threats of both illness and politics hanging over everything. But there are always some great performances to watch and celebrate. (Go Canada!!) 
• Online shopping. Obviously, I can't do this too often, for the sake of my wallet!  lol  And there's nothing like in-person shopping, and being able to see & feel what you're buying. (I miss our weekly pre-covid walking and browsing trips to the mall. We haven't even been back to the local mega-bookstore since before Christmas.)  But I've had fun ordering a few things online recently -- some I was running out of (essential oils), some because I had a birthday discount that I didn't want to waste (skin care from Sephora), some I just wanted (pretty jewelry, pretty sweaters)  -- and opening a box that was delivered straight to my door is always a nice little pick-me-up on a dreary day. :)  
• Books. The five I read in January to start the year off were all great. In particular, I can heartily recommend Richard Osman's two books in "The Thursday Murder Club" series, if you're looking for something fast and fun. :)  
• Tea. A nice big cup of plain old Tetley's orange pekoe (although I do have other varieties) with sugar and milk, in the morning after breakfast and mid-afternoon with a cookie. (Sometimes after dinner too, but I've tried to cut back on caffeine in the evening in an attempt at better sleep.)  Always soothing and relaxing! 
• This blog.  I've been here for 14+ years now, and still haven't run out of things to say. ;)  Writing is so cathartic for me, such an outlet, and never more so than these past two years with covid, I think...!  
• The knowledge that there are just 28 days of February to endure. ;)  

What's saving your life right now? 

Midweek odds & ends

• (Very) proud great-auntie moment today:  we went to visit Little Great-Nephew & his grandma this morning. And... he called me by my name for the first time!! I could scarcely believe my ears, but SIL said, "Did you hear that?" Dh heard it too. :)  His vocabulary is growing all the time, and he's getting clearer/easier to understand too.  
• So -- you might remember that, back in November 2019, SIL & I bought tickets to see Elton John here in Toronto on March 29th, 2020... of course, covid intervened, and the concert was postponed, first to Feb. 15th, 2022, and then, more recently, postponed again to March 13th. There was a limited-time window to request a refund, and SIL & I decided to take it. I received a confirmation that my request had been received on Jan. 23rd. (Here's my most recent Elton-related post, with links going further back.) 
• The latest chapter in this seemingly neverending saga: I haven't received the refund yet -- BUT, on Tuesday morning (Feb. 1), I received an email from Ticketmaster:  

Your Event Has Been Postponed. [My reaction: !!!] This is just a heads up — your tickets are still valid... The Event Organizer is still trying to reschedule your event; if they do, your tickets will remain good for the rescheduled date. Hang on to your tickets — we'll email you as soon as the status of your event changes or the new date is announced.  Please Note: Your Event Organizer is not allowing refunds at this time. [??] Event Organizers are constantly assessing the situation and making determinations regarding refunds. You can always check your Ticketmaster Account later, as this status may change. Just go to your order to see if a refund link appears, which would indicate that the Event Organizer has made your order eligible for a refund.

So -- they obviously haven't processed my refund yet. I'm assuming I am still getting one?? As I said in a previous post, "I figured that March 13th was still highly optimistic -- in fact, under the provincial government's current reopening plans (which are subject to change, depending on how things go...), capacity limits on large events venues (like arenas) will not be lifted until March 14th -- the day AFTER the concert!"  

It will be interesting to see how much further back they push the date? -- although the wording ("if they do...") suggests it might not be rescheduled at all. Much as the guy loves performing, he probably just wants to get off the road already -- I'm sure he never dreamed when he started his "farewell tour" back in September 2018 that he'd still be doing it well into 2023...! 

• I was stopped in my tracks by this article, written by a woman whose chronically ill sister was determined to have a baby, despite warnings from her doctors. It cost her her life, as well as the life of her unborn child.  :(  "I fear I lost my sister to this idea that women’s lives are incomplete until they’ve been through childbirth," the author writes. If that's not pronatalism at work, I don't know what is...  
• I found a lot of food for thought in this article from the Globe & Mail about the importance of rituals in our lives, how they help us process changes to our identity, how the pandemic has interfered with our ability to celebrate/mark these important milestones and (importantly for us as childless women) the importance of creating new rituals in the absence of the old ones. There are the usual pronatalist examples of life milestones/rituals (weddings, baby showers, etc.) -- which of course reminds us that one reason childlessness hurts so much is that we miss out on a lot of these established "rites of passage," as well chances for a do-over with the ones we missed out on or have regrets about in our own lives. In some ways, we find ourselves stuck in the liminal state/"identity limbo" the author mentions. But I think this is a good way to start thinking about these issues, and worth a read. 
• I wrote about childlessness and the absence of rituals/milestone celebrations, back in 2016, here. ("Menopause parade," anyone??) 
• "Want To Know Why Women Under 30 Don't Have Kids? Start Asking Men." Yes!! 
• In the same vein -- I think this article is the first one I've seen (certainly in quite a while, if ever??) where a man owns up (kinda/sorta...) to his part in why women may not be having the children they wanted:  "Are men like me the reason young women aren’t starting families?" by James Innes-Smith in The Telegraph. (You may have to register to read it.) 
• Finally, Pamela -- one of the first bloggers I discovered who was writing specifically about childlessness after infertility -- is celebrating Blogoversary #15 this week!!  Go over & congratulate her on this milestone!