Friday, August 18, 2017

Weekend Reading: The Bad Week Edition

Wow, am I glad it is Friday. This post is late because of all the reasons that make me glad it is Friday, but primarily because I had to pick one kid up from camp, get her to a friend's house for a sleepover, and then be available to receive the other kid coming home from a day spent with a friend.

We pick Mr. Snarky up at the airport on Sunday, and I am looking forward to only driving to half of the things next week.  (Fun twist: we pick him up at LAX, not the San Diego airport, so I get one last burst of driving to round out the week! My conclusions from the week of being one with my car are that I need a larger playlist on my ipod and that I should buy a steering wheel cover because the steering wheel on the 10 year old Prius sort of flakes off on your hands after you've been driving for an hour.)

Anyhow, let's get to the links.

First some sort of self promotion: Water into Wine, a sci-fi novella by Joyce Chng and the next Annorlunda Books release will be out next month, and available for pre-order in a couple of weeks. I'm looking for advance readers. If you are interested, sign up on this form.

Also, next week I'm running a sale on The Lilies of Dawn, a fantasy novelette by Vanessa Fogg. The ebook will be just $0.99. The price is dropping on the ebook retailer sites this weekend. Click through to the book's home page to read more about the book and find direct links to your favorite ebook stores.

And now some friend promotion: A friend of ours has an awesome weather app for Android called Flowx. It lets you swipe through the day and see the cloud cover (or other weather stat) change on the map. Check it out!

On to the less awesome stuff. Warning, a lot of the link this week are really tough to read. It was a bad week.

Roxane Gay on the hate that doesn't hide, and regrets for not doing more to prevent this election outcome.

Charles M. Blow on the Republican complicity in the current situation, and how far back that complicity stretches. If you don't know what the Southern Strategy was, and have never read Nixon's own aides admissions about it, please read this piece.

Alexandra Petri on Trump's despicable words.

A Mother Jones reporter visits her small Southern home town and interviews the people of color who live there.

The president of Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, on what that Saturday was like for him and his congregation.

Susan Bro, Heather Heyer's mother, gave a hell of a eulogy for a her daughter:




I marvel at her strength and am heartbroken that it is necessary.

Lest we think that this is only a Southern problem... San Diego removed a marker for the Jefferson Davis Highway from our downtown this week. And there's a debate underway in Denver about a neighborhood named for a former mayor who was also a member of the KKK. (h/t Bad Mom Good Mom for that last link.)

Dave Pell on how the character being tested now is not Trump's, it is ours.

David Frum on how we've let the 2nd amendment cancel the 1st amendment.

Read Noah Smith's list of things he'd do to improve our economy and think about an alternate outcome in which we are discussing ideas like these instead of how to defeat the emboldened Nazis marching in our streets.

Here's a nice politics story: the friendship between Norman Mineta and Alan Simpson.

This made me laugh. Click through to read the entire thread:




Mat Pearce asked people to share their favorite public statues and there are some great answers:







Here's an old post with one of my favorites.

Bunny in a hat!




That's all I have this week. I'm sure I missed some things I meant to share, but it is still a lot of grim reading. Sorry about that. I hope for a better week next week, but given who is in the White House and the number of White Supremacist rallies I've seen planned around the country... I think that may be an impossible hope.

But I want to end on something happy, so here is the song that has been stuck in my head all week because my kids like it and ask for it when we're driving around:



The fact that last week Mr. Snarky and I finally got around to watching the (excellent) documentary about the song probably has something to do with it being embedded in my brain, too.

1 comment:

  1. Just wanted to say thank you for the links and postings that you've been doing recently. I'm heartened that many Americans see what is happening and are challenging it vigorously in their own ways. Keep going and thanks

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