(no subject)
Nov. 15th, 2015 01:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "India woman’s arm ‘cut off by employer’ in Saudi Arabia:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34483504
* "The Indian maid who had her arm chopped off in Saudi Arabia:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34804892
* "As rate of women dying in childbirth falls globally, US sees rise:" http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/12/global-maternal-mortality-numbers-decline.html?utm_content=bylines&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
* My father spent a lot of time in France. He had a lot of friends there. All through my growing up, we'd have random french people visiting. It wasn't just my father's friends, though I have a picture of me a few months old being fed by one of them, but friends of friends and their friends. Someone would come to America on vacation and we'd put them up. (They'd turf my sister and I out of our rooms for the guests). We'd take them around and show them the sights and feed them. Conversation could be a little complicated depending on how fluent various of us were and various of them were. (My Father was completely fluent and idiomatic. My mother spoke enough to hold basic conversations about things like food, scheduling, etc.). My Sister could curse, but not much else. how much French I spoke increased over time and I could converse by High School assuming the vocabulary didn't get too complicated or specialized, though these days I pretty much am down to sweet talking the cats, snippets of 30+ year old slang, and curse words again, since I never use it unless I'm watching a movie and the subtitles are bowdlerized). Despite being turfed out of my room, I loved having them. My father's friends were interesting people and many of them had fascinating lives. It was fun showing them our city. I remember one year a friend we were all particularly fond of came for Christmas with her young son and we showered them with gifts. They'd just escaped from Mexico with little more than the clothes on their backs from the boy's abusive father who had been holding her child and her passport hostage. We wanted her to feel loved and part of the family. I'll never forget her face, her surprise delight that it wasn't a token, that we'd really gone all out so that the two of them would know they were important and that they'd have a good memory to take back home. I remember Jean Pierre, who's English wasn't particular good, but who my Dad and I could talk to and his mischievous sense of humor. I have a picture of him and my father sitting in matching armchairs in our living room looking like brothers, the time he came to live with us for a few months after a bad break up. I remember my Father's friend who was ex-resistance and had been a world traveler, and so m any more. My father's friends were family we only saw once and a while, but they were people we loved. Most of them are dead now, and the few others gradually lost touch.
The year we all went to France, instead of just my father, was a year of bombings. the train we were on got hit in Lyon a few hours after we debarked. A few months after we came home, they bombed a store we had been to. The whole time we were there we could not miss the complicated and often ugly racial tensions, a legacy of the colonial past in north Africa and made worse by subsequent events. It is a hard thing to write about, requiring a delicacy and focus I do not have tonight. As far as I can tell, none of the places hit were where my Father's friends lived. Odds are, if any of his Parisian friends still live they weren't harmed. It doesn't make the events of yesterday any less distressing. Yes, I got sexually harassed at the Jeu d'Pomme and followed that one time in Clermont-Ferrand, but my memories of France are full of kind strangers. I remember the suburban bakery where they treated us like visiting celebrities, delighted to have real Americans in their shop. I remember the people who cut my hair and how kind they were even though they had no English and I had no appropriate vocabulary for the transaction except the word for hair and how much. I remember Domonique making a crepe casserole and taking us around to see things my father had no interest in, her perfect rp pronunciation and incredibly kind eyes. I remember Jean Pierre endlessly going everywhere Interdit as if it were a special invitation just for him, including a crumpling piss ledge in a castle where he could easily be killed, and the two of us climbing that rickety church belltower to my mother's horror, and him making faces to cheer up my little sister who was terribly bored at a formal dinner. I remember the elderly lesbians who cooked us an amazing 13 course dinner because they thought my father charming.
I just... I have no words I can write about this terrible thing that has happened in Paris. It is too real and too personal and too dreadful. So I carry on between bouts of crying, because that's what I do, what my family has always done.
So if you see me not saying much directly about the attacks, this is why.
* "Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?" http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media?CMP=share_btn_link
* "This Muslim Woman Is Responding to Her Hate Tweets in the Most Ingenious Way Possible:" http://mic.com/articles/128475/this-muslim-woman-is-responding-to-her-hate-tweets-in-the-most-ingenious-way-possible?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social#.0vdbTqS6C
* "Women legislators turn the tables and introduce bills regulating men's reproductive health:" http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/12/1073566/-Women-legislators-turn-the-tables-and-introduce-bills-regulating-men-s-reproductive-health
* "Archaeologists studied the remains of Biskupin-type fortified settlement in Germany :" http://scienceinpoland.pap.pl/en/news/news,404343,archaeologists-studied-the-remains-of-biskupin-type-fortified-settlement-in-germany.html
* "Stone-age Italians defleshed their dead:" http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/03/stone-age-italians-defleshed-their-dead
* "Together for 2000 years, ‘father and son’ in grave:" http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/together-for-2000-years-father-and-son-in-grave-1-3731848
* "Archaeologists say skeleton of woman is latest known early medieval burial found in Wales :" http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art521863-an-amazing-grave-archaeologists-find-skeleton-of-woman-who-is-latest-known-early-medieval-burial-in-wales
* The good fan died a few nights ago, and now I'm struggling to sleep in the heat. Even if the right kind of fan were on sale right now, which it's not, I couldn't afford to replace it anyway. I don't have money for fish food, for fuck's sake. It also really freaks me out that my air conditioner on full with a box fan as a force multiplier is not strong enough to chill my room to sleep temperature in November. It's not as scary as the satillite photographs of the Northwest Passage we melted, but it's up there on the list of scary climate change things.
* "American Horror Story, Season 5 (Hotel), Episode 6: Room 33 :" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2015/11/american-horror-story-season-5-hotel_13.html
* "I’m reading Emma Thompson’s diaries from the Sense and Sensibility filming for an essay and it’s very satisfying:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/133133431685/megcarr13-saintkitten-im-reading-emma
* "Rare footage of chicken budding...:" https://www.facebook.com/ceredwyn.ealanta/videos/954042814661608/?l=7366249147045489971
* RIP. Eagles of Death Metal "Solid Gold:"
* Donate to help refugees "UN Refugee Agency:" http://donate.unhcr.org/international/general
* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help
* A list of LGBTQA Charities: http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
* "The Indian maid who had her arm chopped off in Saudi Arabia:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34804892
* "As rate of women dying in childbirth falls globally, US sees rise:" http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/12/global-maternal-mortality-numbers-decline.html?utm_content=bylines&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
* My father spent a lot of time in France. He had a lot of friends there. All through my growing up, we'd have random french people visiting. It wasn't just my father's friends, though I have a picture of me a few months old being fed by one of them, but friends of friends and their friends. Someone would come to America on vacation and we'd put them up. (They'd turf my sister and I out of our rooms for the guests). We'd take them around and show them the sights and feed them. Conversation could be a little complicated depending on how fluent various of us were and various of them were. (My Father was completely fluent and idiomatic. My mother spoke enough to hold basic conversations about things like food, scheduling, etc.). My Sister could curse, but not much else. how much French I spoke increased over time and I could converse by High School assuming the vocabulary didn't get too complicated or specialized, though these days I pretty much am down to sweet talking the cats, snippets of 30+ year old slang, and curse words again, since I never use it unless I'm watching a movie and the subtitles are bowdlerized). Despite being turfed out of my room, I loved having them. My father's friends were interesting people and many of them had fascinating lives. It was fun showing them our city. I remember one year a friend we were all particularly fond of came for Christmas with her young son and we showered them with gifts. They'd just escaped from Mexico with little more than the clothes on their backs from the boy's abusive father who had been holding her child and her passport hostage. We wanted her to feel loved and part of the family. I'll never forget her face, her surprise delight that it wasn't a token, that we'd really gone all out so that the two of them would know they were important and that they'd have a good memory to take back home. I remember Jean Pierre, who's English wasn't particular good, but who my Dad and I could talk to and his mischievous sense of humor. I have a picture of him and my father sitting in matching armchairs in our living room looking like brothers, the time he came to live with us for a few months after a bad break up. I remember my Father's friend who was ex-resistance and had been a world traveler, and so m any more. My father's friends were family we only saw once and a while, but they were people we loved. Most of them are dead now, and the few others gradually lost touch.
The year we all went to France, instead of just my father, was a year of bombings. the train we were on got hit in Lyon a few hours after we debarked. A few months after we came home, they bombed a store we had been to. The whole time we were there we could not miss the complicated and often ugly racial tensions, a legacy of the colonial past in north Africa and made worse by subsequent events. It is a hard thing to write about, requiring a delicacy and focus I do not have tonight. As far as I can tell, none of the places hit were where my Father's friends lived. Odds are, if any of his Parisian friends still live they weren't harmed. It doesn't make the events of yesterday any less distressing. Yes, I got sexually harassed at the Jeu d'Pomme and followed that one time in Clermont-Ferrand, but my memories of France are full of kind strangers. I remember the suburban bakery where they treated us like visiting celebrities, delighted to have real Americans in their shop. I remember the people who cut my hair and how kind they were even though they had no English and I had no appropriate vocabulary for the transaction except the word for hair and how much. I remember Domonique making a crepe casserole and taking us around to see things my father had no interest in, her perfect rp pronunciation and incredibly kind eyes. I remember Jean Pierre endlessly going everywhere Interdit as if it were a special invitation just for him, including a crumpling piss ledge in a castle where he could easily be killed, and the two of us climbing that rickety church belltower to my mother's horror, and him making faces to cheer up my little sister who was terribly bored at a formal dinner. I remember the elderly lesbians who cooked us an amazing 13 course dinner because they thought my father charming.
I just... I have no words I can write about this terrible thing that has happened in Paris. It is too real and too personal and too dreadful. So I carry on between bouts of crying, because that's what I do, what my family has always done.
So if you see me not saying much directly about the attacks, this is why.
* "Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?" http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media?CMP=share_btn_link
* "This Muslim Woman Is Responding to Her Hate Tweets in the Most Ingenious Way Possible:" http://mic.com/articles/128475/this-muslim-woman-is-responding-to-her-hate-tweets-in-the-most-ingenious-way-possible?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social#.0vdbTqS6C
* "Women legislators turn the tables and introduce bills regulating men's reproductive health:" http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/12/1073566/-Women-legislators-turn-the-tables-and-introduce-bills-regulating-men-s-reproductive-health
* "Archaeologists studied the remains of Biskupin-type fortified settlement in Germany :" http://scienceinpoland.pap.pl/en/news/news,404343,archaeologists-studied-the-remains-of-biskupin-type-fortified-settlement-in-germany.html
* "Stone-age Italians defleshed their dead:" http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/03/stone-age-italians-defleshed-their-dead
* "Together for 2000 years, ‘father and son’ in grave:" http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/together-for-2000-years-father-and-son-in-grave-1-3731848
* "Archaeologists say skeleton of woman is latest known early medieval burial found in Wales :" http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art521863-an-amazing-grave-archaeologists-find-skeleton-of-woman-who-is-latest-known-early-medieval-burial-in-wales
* The good fan died a few nights ago, and now I'm struggling to sleep in the heat. Even if the right kind of fan were on sale right now, which it's not, I couldn't afford to replace it anyway. I don't have money for fish food, for fuck's sake. It also really freaks me out that my air conditioner on full with a box fan as a force multiplier is not strong enough to chill my room to sleep temperature in November. It's not as scary as the satillite photographs of the Northwest Passage we melted, but it's up there on the list of scary climate change things.
* "American Horror Story, Season 5 (Hotel), Episode 6: Room 33 :" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2015/11/american-horror-story-season-5-hotel_13.html
* "I’m reading Emma Thompson’s diaries from the Sense and Sensibility filming for an essay and it’s very satisfying:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/133133431685/megcarr13-saintkitten-im-reading-emma
* "Rare footage of chicken budding...:" https://www.facebook.com/ceredwyn.ealanta/videos/954042814661608/?l=7366249147045489971
* RIP. Eagles of Death Metal "Solid Gold:"
* Donate to help refugees "UN Refugee Agency:" http://donate.unhcr.org/international/general
* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help
* A list of LGBTQA Charities: http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2015-11-16 07:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-11-17 04:06 am (UTC)