797th Friday Blog Roundup
It was a week. That’s the best thing I can say about it. I helped the ChickieNob process JK Rowling’s transphobic tweets—that was a hard one to wrap her brain around because Rowling’s words seemed to run counter to Harry Potter’s central message. It was an excellent reminder that even people who imagine fantastic, magical wizarding schools onto the page can hold hurtful, harmful views.
I also read Rowling’s personal essay, but I didn’t find a lot to hold onto with the exception of the last line: “All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.” No one should receive threats or abuse. That said, people also shouldn’t present their unfounded fears as facts.
I read her say; I still don’t agree with her.
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School is ending. Our high school, unlike middle and elementary school, operated fairly independently, similar to college. Students got assignments and exams on Monday, and turned them in mostly by Friday. They now enter summer homework, and we told them they need to create a summer project for themselves. In other words, next week will not look appreciably different from this week. Everything is blurring.
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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.
Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.
As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.
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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:
- “Zum Nachdenken” (Elaine ohne Kind)
- “I Can’t Breathe” (Finding my Plan B – The Black Women in the Room)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Searching for Our Silver Lining reminds us of the important act of shutting up and listening. She talks about how much can be gained by hearing someone else’s thoughts. She specifically addresses the conversation around feminism. Go read her words.
The Barreness also writes about Black Lives Matter and systemic racism, tying together yoga practice and the hard work of sitting with uncomfortable truths. She writes, “Many days it is like pulling myself through taffy, other days it is total joy. This practice is healthy for me, as things are upside down in my country. I am ashamed, angry, heartbroken and yet still hopeful.” I love this post and the analogy it contains.
Lastly, My Lady of the Lantern wonders how it could be so long between posts. She writes about the pandemic: “Something I discussed as a remote instance with my students in February, is now the reason why I have been home for a couple of months now.” Isn’t it so weird to think back to how we were thinking and moving as recently as February? Again, the one nice thing in the pandemic is that old familiar voices are popping up to check in.
The roundup to the Roundup: It was a week. School is almost over. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 5 – 12) 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.
9 comments
I don’t understand why JK Rowling feels the need to weigh in on the issue. It’s another instance where listening and learning might be more beneficial. Sigh – the idols always have clay feet.
I am excited to be going somewhere for the first time in a while that isn’t the grocery store or post office or bank! The zoo opens today and we have reservations for Monday. Can’t wait! The library sort of opened last week but I have to phone in an order and they put it outside for me to pick up. No browsing, no requests from other libraries, no chatting with the librarians. But we have new books to read and movies to watch, so that’s something.
Ugh. The J. K. Rowling transphobic reboot is such a bummer. I was really hoping she was going to just stop harping on it. The fact that she keeps pushing it makes it impossible to ignore and now I’m not sure how to proceed. I already had to come to terms with Orson Scott Card actually being a bigoted anti-gay reactionary, despite all the messages to the contrary he wove in the Ender’s Game universe (a favorite set of books when I was in high school). And now this. Such a bummer. I’m curious how you helped ChickieNob process it. I could use some help myself…
Not really on topic of today’s post, but I wanted to thank you for the weekly reminder to do back ups. It really paid off for me this week when my five-year-old iPhone decided to die in the middle of a workday. The only things I lost from that phone were a few text messages received during that day because the rest was backed up to iCloud.
I am upset about the JK Rowling situation. I also read her words and I still don’t see her point of view. My 9 year old is currently reading Order of the Phoenix. Hogwarts means so much to her right now and she is also young enough to be blissfully unaware of Twitter.
As I read with her in the evenings, I am so sad to think that the mind behind this amazing, seemingly accepting world, is so…not that way herself. People can be so disappointing.
But that aside, I took my kids to a park this morning – early when it was still empty, lots of sanitizer on hand – and they were so joyful to be out in the world for the first time in months, just being kids. And that’s what I’m choosing to focus on.
I have nothing to add, except that I notice you are getting very very close to your 800th (700th?) Roundup!
Yes. My nine-year-old has just finished all of the books and is now rereading them. Fortunately, for now she’s not really aware of who the author is in definitely not aware of anything the author has said. But very disappointing. That said, our school still celebrates Dr. Seuss week even though some of his books are racist. Well, I think it supposed to be read across America now, but our school still has dress-up day thing one thing two, etc.
My daughter is deep into gender thingsandhasfriends who identify as trans she is also a Hqarry Potter fan. These kids hurt so much. She loves Daniel Radcliffes story for the Trevor project.I think it might help the ChickieNob too.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2020/06/08/daniel-radcliffe-responds-to-j-k-rowlings-tweets-on-gender-identity/
I can’t figure her (JKR) out – she’s done a lot of good tweeting about women’s rights, taking on DT etc. Then this. I have a UK friend who has pretty much taken the same angle, whilst being egalitarian about pretty much every other issue, and I don’t get it.
Glad you flagged the posts from The Barrenness and Cristy. I loved both of them. And I want to flag Infertile Phoenix’s post from a week ago (I only read it a couple of days ago) about finding meaning in life when your initial dreams don’t work out. It’s lovely – https://infertilephoenix.blogspot.com/2020/06/finding-meaning-again.html