What I’ve Been Reading

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

This week, I was a little obsessed with parenting better (as always), cultural appropriation of food (and my white, white guilt), trans issues, and sustainability.

Are you teaching kids how to make good decisions? Here’s how to be sure (A Fine Parent): A Fine Parent has loads of great articles talking about positive parenting. This has a great breakdown on steps to take to teach the skills needed for good decision-making.

I Raised My Glass to the Moon (Five Kids is a Lot of Kids): Beth Woosley has a lovely, honest, hilarious voice. Some of her article make me laugh, some make me choke up. This is a mix of both.

Sniff (Lunar Baboon): Awesome comic about parenting and life, expressing a lovely moment through the generations.

A Guide for People Who Suck at Mindfulness (Rants from Mommyland): This is why I want to throw my phone across the room when I listen to the “mindfulness” app.

Babies (XKCD): What he gives actually is a pretty good response to seeing a baby.

 

Help Your Child to Wonder (Rachel Carson): As an environmental communicator, Rachel Carson is one of my icons. So I was thrilled to find out that she wrote an article way back in 1956 about exploring nature with her nephew. Also, the sentiments she describes and advice she gives still ring terribly true.

Life in a refugee camp (Yes and Yes): A very different perspective on refugee camps from last week (Syrian refugee camp in Jordan), from someone who visited this one because her students’ families were actually in it.

How It Feels When White People Shame Your Culture’s Food – And Then Make It Trendy (Washington Post): “I tried to pretend the blue fish swimming around in the murky green water were pets, but the lack of tank accessories gave away our true intentions, stunning my white friends.”

Craving the Other: One Woman’s Beef with Food and Cultural Appropriation: (Bitch Media): This is another great article on the subject and has some particularly icky examples of it, perhaps most unfortunately from Alton Brown.

Take the Red Pill: The Truth Behind the Biology of Sex (Disrupting Dinner Parties): While many people agree that gender is socially determined, even your sex is less black and white than it seems.

Here’s What’s Okay (And Not Okay) to Say to a Trans Person – Once and For All (Everyday Feminism): Trans people are just becoming more prominent in society, but people still ask them things that they would never ask cis-people (people who aren’t trans). Here’s a quick guide to simply showing respect.

Keep your scythe, the real green future is high-tech, democratic and radical (Boing Boing): I don’t know if I agree with this – I think we do have to seriously lighten up on the consumerism aspect of American society – but definitely an intriguing, unquestionably Marxist approach to sustainability.

 

 

What I’ve Been Reading

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

For Lent, I’ve gone on a social media fast. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram (although you can still follow me in the meantime!). While I’ve kept my short, semi-witty insights to myself, I also miss the chance to share some of the excellent articles I’ve read over the past couple of weeks. At the same time, I had been contemplating doing a link round-up. So here’s some of what I’ve been reading, sorted at least minimally by category.

 

Parenting

Pregnancy Needs to Be Part of the Working Parent Conversation (Mommy Shorts): Straight talk on how pregnancy influences how women are seen at work before and after maternity leave.

It’s Preschool Open House Season, Motherfuckers (Red Tricycle): As you may have guessed from the title, a deeply foul-mouthed and absolutely hilarious satire on picking the perfect preschool.

This is Why You Couldn’t Feel Her Love for You (Momastery): On how boulders keep the river of love flowing from some parents to their children and how it is never the children’s fault.

 

Social Justice Issues
So Many Ways to Die in Syria Now: Neil Gaiman Visits a Refugee Camp in Jordan (The Guardian): An older article I had bookmarked, but one that’s incredibly moving and important, from one of my favorite authors.

The Dark Enlightenment of Flint (Eruditorium Press): The disturbing connections between Silicon Valley libertarianism and the horrifying policies that led to the Flint, Michigan water crisis.

Don’t Send Bottled Water (Michael Moore): Michael Moore’s impassioned cry to start a revolution to act against the policies that poisoned people in his hometown of Flint.

The Lawyer Who Became Dupont’s Worst Nightmare (New York Times): Dupont’s blatant disregard for the health and safety of people near one of their factories and the lawyer that  blew open the whole case.
Fun Stuff
Sorry, kids, but that “astronaut ice cream” has always been a myth (AV Club): Noooooo! It was terrible, but at least you felt cool eating it.

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about Ghostwriter (Atlas Obscura): I was totally a PBS kid and loved this show. A lot of nifty facts that make me proud to have actually watched it.

The Deadpool Phenomena and the American Male (New Yorker): I enjoyed Deadpool a lot (and yes, we did go to it Valentine’s Day weekend), but as this essay states, it was way less subversive than it thinks it is. In fact, it provides a lot of insight into what men in America want out of masculinity these days.