The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
The Social Commentary
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0044430H8&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrOn this, Chapter One of Killing My 2010 Vacation Days, I was awakened at 6:52 a.m. by the dog. He wanted me to know that his mother had left for work and he did not want to be alone. I did not get back to sleep.
Whenever I have a random day off, I think about going to the movies. I generally don’t. I think I see one movie in the theater each year – the last being Star Trek. I even skipped the last Harry Potter. I refuse to go on a Saturday night. Re. Fuse. Friday at 11:10 a.m. was worth a try, so I went to see The Social Network. There were five of us in the theater.
I know, I know. Punk kid movie. Why did I want to go and see a punk kid movie? Two words:
Aaron Sorkin.
Sorkin is just about my favorite writer in Hollywood and let me tell you, I could feel the old magic in the very first scene, when Zuckerberg’s girlfriend dumps him in a Boston bar. The dialogue is fabulous. The Zuckerberg character is a total ass. Seriously. I have known social climbing jerks and I have known genius jerks. But I am happy to say I have never in my life met such a foul combination of the two.
I am sorry to say that the ex-girlfriend, with about five minutes of total screen time, is the most sympathetic character in the entire film. “Arrogance” is the word that best characterizes this story to me. Or maybe “hubris”. (And not a politician in sight!) Seriously, people. If history determines this tale is 50% true, then I submit: it is already too late for this country, civilization is dying and we are all going to hell.
I don’t know what made me the most uncomfortable.
- The idea that nerds are really manipulative paranoid vengeful thugs that think they can get away with anything because they are smarter than the rest of us. Please tell me this is not true.
- The idea that entrepreneurs are really manipulative paranoid vengeful thugs that think they can get away with anything because they can pay us all off. Please tell me this is not true.
- Justin Timberlake. That was a scary performance, and I totally bought it.
- The idea that people at Harvard really think their harvard.edu addresses make them hot.
- That in this country, a $65 million settlement could be considered, “the equivalent of a speeding ticket”.
I am on Facebook all the time. My current status reads, “I feel dirty.”
Re-Reads
Weekend Assignment # 342: Read It Again
Some people like to read a book once, and then they’re done. The plot is resolved and they know whodunnit, so it’s time to move on to the next book. Other people reread a favorite book every few years, and still others keep it on their shelves in case they may want to read it again someday. Are you a frequent re-reader, an occasional one, or are you “one and done”? How do you decide what to reread, and when?
Extra Credit: What was the book you reread?
I love re-reading. I love to re-live a plot and take another look at the characters and see the things that I didn’t see the first time when I just wanted to know what happens next?! However. If I had the luxury of three lifetimes, I would not get to all of the books I want to read. So I don’t indulge in it as much as I’d like.
When I was young, I re-read lots of stuff. But whe I was young, there weren’t nearly so many age-appropriate books. I recently confessed on Booking Through Thursday to having a rather ragged copy of Flowers in the Attic. There are a few novels from the original V series that I read to death. I would love to find a hardcover copy of my first chapter book, Little Witch
I have mentioned that I used to read Gone with the Wind every summer through high school and college. I haven’t picked it up for more than a reference check in years.
This year, I re-read Jane Austen’s Persuasion while I was on vacation. It was a Kindle freebie and an old favorite. I also re-read The Outsiders, by S.E. Sinton, because I found a darling copy in a used book store and got nostalgic. I am considering re-reading A Christmas Carol, as well. Those are all short novels.
The last time I re-read anything of the epic variety was A Tale of Two Cities a few years back. I would like to do that again sometime. Kindle would be good for that too.
It is now official that I spend as much time shopping for books and talking about books as I spend actually reading them.
That Time of Year
Open Enrollment. Three trips in three weeks. Peppermint hot chocolate. Spending too much money. And taking off every Friday (that I am not on the road) so that I don’t “lose” my vacation time.
I also start power-reading because I may or may not officially be behind schedule in my 50 Book Challenge. Which I should be doing now, inasmuch as I am at the library. But I find it weird to read on a Kindle when I am physically in the Used Book Store.
The Fiction shelves are already pretty packed. In fact, we are pulling out duplicates to make more room on the shelves. I am thinking we should pull all of the mysteries out, move them to where the cookbooks are and hijack the space that is not being used effectively by foreign language titles. I realize that you don’t care, but I needed to write that down so I don’t forget to make the recommendation.
Who would’ve thought we could fill this up so fast?
While I am talking about the Used Book Store, the dates for the Holiday Sale are set. December 4 – December 18, most of our books will be half off the regular price. Books listed on Amazon.com will be 20% off. There are several that I am looking to buy myself!
In other Glenview news, Steven Soderbergh is filming a movie in the Glen. Some high school buds on Facebook find this cool. I find it a nuisance. Fortunately, the trailers stayed put and I was able to go about my happy day.
I took out my winter coat. But the Dairy Bar is still open. What’s up with that?
Because I Don’t Want to Talk About Election Returns
. The kid was finally arrested so I am hoping it is all downhill from here. Or I will not make the 50 Book Challenge. I even made that when I was in school!10 Things
I love this series of articles – 10 Things Your (Fill-in the Blank) Won’t Tell You. Your Waiter. Hairstylist. Funeral Director. This one is the hotel housekeeper.
It helpfully answered my question about the “eco-friendly” opting out of housekeeping. It is, in fact, costing them hours – and therefore pay. It confirmed that most guests are not tipping their housekeepers, and reminded us to leave a note confirming that the money is for them, or else they are not supposed to keep it.
Three things I didn’t know:
- Some
guestspeople leave such messes in the rooms that houskeepers could just cry. And sometimes they do. - “In a city like Chicago, where the majority of hotels are unionized, housekeepers make $14.60 an hour,” says Strassel. “But in a city like Indianapolis, where there are no union hotels, a housekeeper at that same chain will be making about half that. There’s a very wide range.”
- It takes something like twice as long to prep a room for a new guest as it takes to clean another room.
Health Care Reform – This is Interesting
The AP is reporting that Birth Control may be covered as part of the “preventative care” provision of the Health Care Reform Law. This means that the Pill, among other things, would be convered under health insurance plans without deductibles, co-pays or co-insurance. “May be” because even at a billion pages, the thing is still up for interpretation. But check this out:
“There is clear and incontrovertible evidence that family planning saves lives and improves health,” said obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. David Grimes, an international family planning expert who teaches medicine at the University of North Carolina. “Contraception rivals immunization in dollars saved for every dollar invested. Spacing out children allows for optimal pregnancies and optimal child rearing. Contraception is a prototype of preventive medicine.”
The underlined was my emphasis. Dollars saved for dollars invested may be the best way to sell this provision. Let’s do some math:
The Pill costs me something like $30 a month, before BCBS adjusts the claim. (I am pretty sure that is what it cost 15 years ago, too.) $30 times 12 months in a year is $360. Let’s say I am on that Pill for 25 years. $360 times 25 = $9,000 over my lifetime. You know what is more expensive that $9,000? An unplanned pregnancy.
I have been on the Pill since college and seem to remember that it wasn’t covered under my insurance plan when I first started working. The way I remember it, only after the mass marketing of Viagra (which was covered under every plan) was the chorus of “What the Hell?!” finally answered. And the answer was, “Viagra is a drug that treats a disorder. The Pill is merely preventative.” And then the fight got really ugly. It is covered as a regular prescription drug now, at least in the state of Illinois.
I understand that covering the Pill at 100% is a trade off. It adds to the cost of coverage. I will continue to use the Pill whether or not it is covered or at what level it is covered. This issue is not about my needs as a patient. It is about a whole lot of other women that do not currently have the option of a safe, consistent form of birth control that they can control. As in not have to rely on a man to wear it, or provide it. Or have to choose between buying the Pill and buying groceries.
The article goes on to address the concerns of the Catholic bishops. Did you know there was a National Catholic Bioethics Center? Neither did I.
I realize this is a major matter of public policy and much more complicated than my few paragraphs of opinion. But I hope those crazy liberals win this one.
Only the Candy Remains
Weekend Assignment # 341: How Do You Do Halloween?
Each year at this time, we are told that Halloween is second only to Christmas in its commercial impact. Once an amalgam of religious holidays, it has grown over the years, at least in the U.S., and it’s not just for children as it may have been half a century ago. What, if anything, do you personally do to celebrate Halloween? Have you ever participated in an alternative or related holiday, such as the Dias de Los Muertos, Samhain, a church Harvest Festival, etc.?
Extra Credit: What was the last Halloween costume you wore, and when?
I don’t actually have Halloween traditions anymore. Other than buying the candy, I mean.
Today, I went to the used book sale at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. I managed to control myself and only purchased three books. None of which I remotely need. Then I had lunch and came home.
I spent the afternoon on the couch, flipping between football, The Rocky Horror Picture Show 
The last time I wore a costume was to a Halloween party held by my friends Bill and Liza just before they were married. I believe Liza just said that was eight years ago. I went as a medieval ghost with the dress and the makeup of death. I remember my friend Andrew did the makeup, which was cool because I would have done the softer pale-haunted look, and he went for the starker-scary look.
Eight years, though. That rather suggests that I am over Halloween. How sad.
Pre Literacy Skillzzz
This summer, at the book sale formerly known as Brandeis, I picked up a box set of Junie B. Jones 
Today, when they all came over for lunch, not-quite-two-year-old Ainslie was holding one of those books. She had it open, pointed to things on the pages, turned them and jabbered away. Oftentimes, mentioning the name of my dog.
Looking at her, I remembered something a schoolteacher friend told me about young children. The establishment of something called pre-literacy skills. Things like:
- Holding the book the correct way
- Turning the pages correctly
- Knowing the words go from left to right and top to bottom
So I mention this to my sister-in-law, another schoolteacher, and she agreed. She added that Ainslie’s jabbering had inflections to it, as would ours when we read aloud.
She is going to be a reader!
BTT – Skeletons
In honor of Halloween this weekend:
What reading skeletons do you have in your closet? Books you’d be ashamed to let people know you love? Addiction to the worst kind of (fill in cheesy genre here)? Your old collection of Bobbsey Twin Mysteries lovingly stored behind your “grown-up” books? You get the picture … come on, confess!
Oh, hell.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000P8XU36&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrFlowers in the Attic. The whole series. All of my friends read it in junior high and the horrible Kristy Swanson movie came out around that time. Twenty-some years later, with an overflowing library and I cannot trash those four so-worn-out-they’re-taped-together paperback novels. I should really get it in hardcover. Wait. No.
Interestingly enough, I was reading one discussion board or another where someone asked if our mothers knew we read those books. Because they are, you know, trashy. And sort of unfit for children.
My mother knew I read them. She bought them for me. So I went and asked her if she knew what they were about. No. So I told her. “What?! No! I just knew they were in the Horror section! Next to the Stephen King! You had already read all the Stephen King!”
So true.
The Privilege of Books
Once upon a time, I was at a conference attending a session on managing diversity. The hour began with a talk about privilege. The speaker asked us a bunch of questions that proved what a bunch of lily-white-collared folks we all were. A few of those questions were about books:
In your childhood home, were there more than 10 books?
More than 20?
Did your neighborhood have a library?
Did your school?
The questions blew me away. I never thought of books as a privilege.
I have a friend that grew up in a small rural town. She says that her family never had much money, but that books were in the “Need” budget, as opposed to the “Want”. She wondered, in all seriousness, if her mother had to choose between books and groceries…
That friend now teaches Literature to middle schoolers and has personally funded a classroom library for her students. So when I saw this article in the Trib, about Chicago Public Schools and their utter lack of libraries and librarians, I wondered how many other teachers are spending their own money trying to get things for kids to read.
Check this out:
At Durkin Park Elementary School on the Southwest Side, half of a dank and windowless supply room doubles as a library. Only a few children can squeeze into the 12-foot-by-15-foot space, with barely any room to sit down to browse through a book.
“Yeah, I’m frustrated,” says Durkin Park Principal Dan Redmond. “I know we’re better off than most schools, but when I go to other schools (with better libraries) and I see what they have, it breaks my heart. It doesn’t seem fair.”
There was another big story in Chicago recently about a group of parents squatting in a fieldhouse that had actually been condemned, because they wanted to use it as a library for their kids. One of those parents was quoted:
Araceli Gonzalez, who helped organize the sit-in, said she began fighting for a library because her 10-year-old daughter is a voracious reader.
Halfway through last year, the girl had already exhausted the offerings of her small classroom library.
“Their reading grades are low,” she said of the school, which has not met reading standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act since 2008. “What does that tell you? They need books.”
The good news is that with this story, the parents received bunches of donated books. Which is good because with state funding gone to hell, CPS isn’t likely to get them from Illinois any time soon.
The Next Dark Age 