This is Sherlyn in the school library. DO YOU WANT TO BREAK HER HEART?
The Neighborhood School is in a Defcon 1 situation. Thanks to drastic budget cuts, we’ve lost our funding for a school library. TNS is not a wealthy school (40% of our students qualify for free lunch) and our parent body is already stretched to the limit providing art and music education and field trip subsidies as well as stuff like, y’know, paper towels and photocopier paper and Kleenex. We need to raise $40K by June 27th to save our library. And we’re terrified. SO YES I AM GOING TO BEG YOU FOR MONEY BUT I PROMISE TO BE ENTERTAINING ABOUT IT.
I have a piece in the current (May?) issue of Self on how lying about money can fuck up relationships. Those are not my legs in the accompanying photo. But I want the shoes.
Press release of the day, apropos of the fact that we were just trying to figure out when Josie who thinks she is SO FREAKING MATURE can ride in the front seat (answer: quick googling does not tell me the law, but the interwebs say that because kids in the front seat are 40% more likely to be injured in a crash, “the safest place for children under 12 is the back seat,” but I digress): A lot of us are car seat morons. [click to continue…]
Anti-bullying is the new black. Of course, the reason why nothing is REALLY ever the new black is because every new black is really just the flavor of the month. And being against bullying is the flavor of the month. (Please. Is anyone FOR bullying?) Oy, so much talk about bullying right now, to so little effect! Most of the portrayals of bullying we get in books, movies, TV and news stories are reductive, and the solutions we’re offered are preachy and/or non-real-world, and the disconnect between language and action is huge. Most ADULTS, let alone kids, don’t see the gulf between the way they talk about bullying and the way they act, (subtly or not-subtly), like homophobic, fat-phobic, difference-phobic, inclusion-phobic, classist, racist, privileged, we (I, my kid, etc)-are-brilliant-and-special-and-everyone-else-is-less-brilliant-and-less-special douchenozzles. Look, I’m so irked my syntax is going.
Anyway, I loved Wonder for a zillion reasons, but the primary one is it should be the one book EVERY MIDDLE SCHOOL KID reads about bullying. It makes the importance of allies and bystanders really clear — simply going along with the popular crowd, when they’re being mean or smirky to someone they consider less-than, makes you part of the problem. The book makes it clear how hard it is to do the right thing. And it’s a BOOK, not a sermon. This is a great story. (Two-sentence summary: Kid with horrid facial deformities starts going to school for the first time after years of being home schooled. And he starts in MIDDLE SCHOOL.) I liked the fact that different sections had different narrators. And that the writing is utterly un-showy. (I’ve been reading a lot of lyrical stuff lately and it’s nice to read something so direct.) And that it’s a very quick, fluid read — I think MOST kids will really like it, not just book-loving kids. It’s moving, and it’s not pedantic, and there’s humor (and my GOD there is a lot of Star Wars stuff). Yay. Adults who enjoy kidlit should read this as a way to talk to their kids about standing up to their friends when their friends are acting dicky. (And the portrayal of a popular, powerful ADULT mom whose helicopter-y, bad-behavior-excusing conduct lets her kid continue to be a bully SHOULD make parents squirm.) And I think it could help a lot of people recognize that they themselves have been bullies, not just allies to bullies and bystanders to bullying. The ending was maybe too tidy, so I’ll give it four stars as a work of literature and one more for wearing its importance so lightly.
This week’s Tablet magazine column: The Ungapatchka-ness of the Bat Mitzvah. (It’s like The Passion of the Christ, but with Louboutins.) My issue is really with the cookie-cutter sameness of so many of these ceremonies, as much as it is with the over-the-topness. I didn’t want to write yet another rant about consumerism. What I was trying to say was that the lack of individualization and quirk is as depressing as the sluttiness and loudness. Being reminded by the Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age exhibit of how hard-won the Bat Mitzvah ceremony was in the first place made me long for a more individualistic, thoughtful approach to ritual.
As usual, Josie and I participated in the CHALK Project, writing the names of victims of the Triangle Factory Fire in front of the places they once lived. And as usual, Josie chalked for Kate Leone, the youngest of the victims. But something new: [click to continue…]
Sunday is the 101st anniversary of the Triangle Factory Fire. (I have written many times of my obsession with the fire. Josie and I will once again be participating in CHALK.) Here’s a look at some of this year’s memorial activities.
I have a piece in the April issue of Real Simple. It doesn’t seem to be online. But check it out at the newsstand if you’re not a subscriber, because it is so FREAKING PRETTY. It’s a decor story (I KNOW! ME! WRITING ABOUT DESIGN! IT IS TO LAUGH!) about a really lovely woman upstate who has decorated her home through swapping, thrifts and Dumpster diving. She has an amazing eye — very Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table – but spends almost no money. Kim is a former costume designer who now takes in border babies for an adoption agency (she’s very matter-of-fact about it, not all virtuous and annoying), makes tote bags and aprons she sells at the local farmer’s market, and does costumes for local plays. I was totally smitten by her home and I loved her values. Her place is small (it’s a cottage, maybe 1400 square feet, where she lives with her husband and two tween boys and a very sweet dog and whatever baby she’s currently caring for) but just so serene and visually enticing, you could plotz.
And we went Dumpster diving and found a big trove of vintage Hardy Boys books. Whoo.
by 
Rss Feed