457th Friday Blog Roundup
Keiko sent me the Mindset List for the class of 2017, the incoming freshman at Beloit College. The point is to give people the students’ frame of reference, building the lens through which they see the world. These kids have never known a world with a living Jerry Garcia. I was in my grandmother’s apartment when I learned that Jerry died. I got on the phone immediately with my boyfriend. Jerry was dead and THESE FRESHMAN WEREN’T EVEN BORN YET.
Their whole lives, the Olympics have been every two years. They’ve never had a four year wait between Olympics. They have always had USB ports on their computers — WE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE COMPUTERS. Most of them have never had chicken pox.
The list made me feel very very old.
I looked at the list of the people who started college in 1998 since it was the first Mindset List they created, but even that one made me feel old. Those kids never had records. They don’t remember the Cold War or the Challenger blowing up.
They think our Star Wars special effects are “pathetic.” Fuck them!
These lists have made me become very ornery, yelling in a cranky manner at the screen about my uphill walk to school both ways. And how we liked it.
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The twins and I have started the fifth Harry Potter and joined the Order of the Phoenix. I know I originally said that I would wait until they were much older for Book 5. But I started thinking about how books 1 – 3 go together in terms of scariness. And then there is a steep drop to 4 and 5. And then another steep drop to 6 and 7. So if they could do 4, they could also do 5. Whereas in 6, we start getting into the idea of murder splitting a soul and the concept of what makes a person take another person’s life (and the fact that there are people out there who kill not because they have a problem with the other person but because they enjoy the act of killing). And 6 kicks off that idea that there is nowhere that is completely safe and no one who will always be there to protect you, which I think are very scare thoughts for a child. So… yeah… drawing a hard line for a bit longer with Book 6, but allowing Book 5 to happen now.
I am so happy to be back with Harry, even though we were totally grooving on the Kairos. We’ll come back to you, Murry family.
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This is it: LAST TWO DAYS. This is over on Saturday. It’s the last chance to get Measure of Love at $1.99. (Amazon featured it as a monthly deal for the Kindle for the entire month of August.) I would deeply appreciate any help you could give in getting word out about the promotion. Telling a friend, Facebooking it, tweeting it, blogging about it, etc.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I sure would like to do something nice for Melissa,” helping me spread word for these final two days would be it. That would be the nice thing you could do that I would really really appreciate.
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And now the blogs…
But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:
- “Not Just Baby” (Life as Two)
- “Grief Intelligence: a Primer” (Huffington Post)
- “Should We Stop Blaming Facebook for Our Unhappiness?” (BlogHer) — thank you, Lori!
- “Next Chapter: Surrogacy” (Moonfish and Buttermilk)
- “Dear Friends of Waiting Adoptive Moms: Some Things to Know (also, we’re sorry)” (Wonderment, etc)
- “Knowing Our Limits; Even When it Hurts” (Where the *Bleep* is Our Stork?)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Stupid Broken Eggs has a post about her mother’s recipe for gravy (which we call tomato sauce); how her mother gave her the card with the recipe written out, and the first time she made the recipe back for her mother. She writes, “Will my son or daughter ever come to be? Will I ever get to pass this recipe on to them? Will they ever get to make their version of The Gravy for me?” Since she doesn’t know the answer to that, she has turned the recipe over to the Internet, giving all of us the opportunity to share in her family. I LOVE this post. And yes, I’m going to try my hand at the recipe; sans meat.
Invincible Spring has a post about the panda twins born at the National Zoo. Admittedly, I only heard about the one panda who lived. There was another panda who was born still. She writes, “And when I read that she groomed her dead baby for 17 minutes before relinquishing it to keepers for an autopsy, not only did I cry; I felt I got it, a little.” My heart hurt on her play with the word “endangered” at the end.
Inconception has a post about how she thought about people living child-free after infertility before she made the decision herself, and how she views them now. I love, love, love the end: “The reality of it is, now that I’ve made it, walking away from treatment is one of the bravest decisions I have ever made in my life.”
And lastly, Battlefish cracked me up with her post about bra shopping. As someone who would go to the ends of the earth for a good bra, she’s hit upon one of my favourite topics. I too am guilty of holding onto bras I know I will never wear again. Now I’m just waiting for the update to find out if the bra was any good.
The roundup to the Roundup: The Mindset List made me feel old. Started Harry Potter 5 with the twins. Measure of Love is on sale for only two more days (and I’d love your help continuing to get word out). And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 23rd and 30th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.
17 comments
At first glance, the new Mindset List made me, too, feel quite old. But then I clicked through and read the list for those who started college in 1998. I was disappointed by it, as I started college in 1997 (and was born late 1979, so could have been class of ’98) and many, MANY of the things on the list don’t apply to me. I distinctly remember the Challenger blowing up and my first video games were Atari (an Atari800). Blue M&Ms were introduced in 1995 – I was 15 and remember it clearly. For YEARS the TV in our kitchen was B&W with a 5-channel knob. Anyway, all of that to say that I’m reading the new list with a grain of salt.
Well, as someone who graduated HIGH SCHOOL in 1979, I am constantly reminded that the world is a much different place these days :p and that my frames of reference are very different from those of the younger people I work with.
I was reading an article in the paper (yes, I still read the hard copy paper) 😉 this morning about telephone aversion, & how millenials in particular prefer e-mail to picking up the phone, even in sales positions where personal contact is everything. It ends with the story of a manager having to explain to a young employee what a dial tone was (!) & that there is no “send” button on a regular phone. Oy. :p I could tell more such stories but my blood pressure is high enough at the moment. 😉
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579036714155366866.html
Damn, I’m old…
LOVED the first mindset list! It doesn’t really make me feel old. It just brings back some happy memories- Vinyl (which is definitely making a comeback!), Pong, Mork and Mindy, Dallas and Fantasy Island- good times!!! Some not-so-good memories there, too, but I’m just going to ignore those for today…
I really liked this post from the past week (okay, fine, it’s one day older than a week) by Furrowed Fox explaining how she views Twitter http://foxinthehenhouse.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/twitter-the-party-everyone-was-invited-to/
Great! Now I feel old, too! Thanks!
I just love every single one of the blogs on the Roundup this week. So glad you are sharing the next Harry with the kids!
As I read the mindset list I felt old and slightly out of place. My niece, my brother’s daughter, is a college freshman this year. My brother and I are the same age. It would be entirely plausible for me to have a child old enough to be entering college. Instead I’m trying to type this while my daughter, an only child conceived with ART just over two years ago is hitting me on the head with her stuffed animal. Sometimes I feel like there is an additional generation gap between her and I.
Maybe I’m missing the point/funny or whatever of those mindset lists but honestly they seem a bit dumb (and make teenagers of a certain generation sound dumb as well). I looked at the 1998/2002 one (as I was born in 1980 & graduated high school in 1998), it was painfully wrong which makes me think the current one probably is as well. Always annoys me when I see lists like this (buzzfeed is notorious for them), just because people were born in a certain year/graduated in a certain year it doesn’t mean their knowledge base/experience/etc is the same. /climbs off soapbox
Thank you so much for the link love!
Thanks for linking my blog! I appreciate the new readers! I have a great guest blog post up and I think some would appreciate it! Mel, thanks again for this site!
http://www.wherethebleepisourstork.blogpost.com
Thanks for the mention. I’m glad you enjoyed the bra-post. I’ve posted a quick update. Even quicker: I like bra!!!
I recommend this to all the moms in the crowd. It’s brilliant and I love how she includes adoptive moms as well. http://putdowntheurinalcake.com/2013/08/this-is-my-body-sacred-and-scarred
reading measure of love now- and I love . LOVE. LOVE! what rachel says about comforting those who grieve. It’s a perfect paragraph.
Thank you so much for including my blog in your roundup this week! Have really seen a spike in traffic. I really appreciate it Mel!
Thank you so much for including me in the round-up this week! People have left some really moving comments ^_^
I want to echo what Tara said above. I’m also the supposed subject of the first mindset list. (Born in 1980, graduated high school in 1998) i just read through it and it is offensively wrong for me and other people I know! I remember or owned at least half of the things I’m supposed to have no knowledge of. I vividly remember the Cold War, Reagan as president, and the challenger exploding (we watched it in school, first grade, it was horrific.) We had a black and white tv and didn’t have cable until I was a teenager, although most of my friends did. My parents owned a record player and I owned a fisher price kids one. I used both. Even if I hadn’t owned one I would still understand what the phrase, “like a broken record” means. It seems they think i shouldn’t remember anything that happened before I was 10. It’s a silly list. I would assume that they are probably not giving the current high school graduates enough credit either. Don’t let it make you feel old, it’s not very accurate.