This week in The Slacktiverse, July 23/24 2011

The Blogaround

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Being Flung From the Narrative
What new hijinks are in store for us this week as Bella concocts wild plans to escape to the nurse’s office and contemplates violence against her fellow classmates? Will Bella take the long-view of the situation and maintain her cool or will she throw down on Jessica right there and then in the cafeteria? And what Hogwart house would Bella be sort into? Come help us decide!

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: Identifying with the Aggressor
Edmund has been dubbed a bully and so shall he remain for the rest of the novel... but why? Is he really a “bad” child or has he been placed in situations where he has learned to imitate stronger bullies in order to survive? As Lucy and Edmund disappear into Narnia to each meet their respective Narnians, it’s worth wondering if Edmund’s adventure might have turned out very differently had he run into someone other than the White Witch. Is the country of Narnia setting Edmund up to fail? Join the debate!

After reading a misleading description of Wiccan practices in an article in Religion Dispatches magazine, Literata wrote about her successful request to have it revised, along with further thoughts about why the redundant statement "female goddess" was used in the first place. She also suggested ways to take visualization further by including more senses and began exploring whether the potted plant on her desk might be an altar.

This week the former conservative blogger: addressed a fundamentalist blogger's misuse of scripture; talked about misogyny and rape culture as it relates to evangelicals; criticized the tendency to oversimply theology: wrote about Rapture Ready's criticisms of the TV series, Glee; and wrote about the state of broadcast radio vs. internet radio.

As an accompaniment to the Paganism 101 currently under development, Literata has started collecting terms and ideas for explanation in a Pagan glossary. She has started the Wiccan component with descriptions of terms in concept clusters. So far there are names, things Wiccans do or use, and things Wiccans read and say. Literata invites all readers, Pagan or not, to review these and suggest improvements and clarifications. She is interested in adding sections about non-Wiccan Pagans and Paganism, and would appreciate collaboration in those areas.

This week aravind posted the fourth part to a deconstruction of "The Prince of Persia" (some implied violence).

This week Laiima posted about: letting go of memories (more on boundaries); participating in her first esbat (full moon flood); images in dreams (what dreams may come); and the promise of the realm of Medeine (maps, mystery, and Medeine.)

This week mmy posted a review of Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novel Wild Strawberries

Last week, Storiteller contrasted her life with a famous Shel Silverstein poem ( Where the Bike Path Ends) and wrote about a map she maintains of the Metro D.C. area foodshed.

This week, she attended a Farm-to-Street Party and contemplates how to use an unexpected bounty of potatoes.

Coleslaw writes: Mmy's moving post about her mother inspired me to write about heroes in my family, except we don't exactly have any. What we have, you can read about in my post, Heroes. And (Warning, some brief diet talk) my foot is getting better.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: A Eulogy for Food
Becoming a vampire means giving up a great many things, including food. And yet so far in the pages of Twilight, Bella has yet to enjoy a single meal, despite several visits to the Forks cafeteria and the Swan kitchen. Come help us deconstruct why situational fasting in YA novels is not innocent and most definitely should not be in the pages of Twilight.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Percy Jackson: The Curse of the Smart Girl
Feminists keep clamoring for strong female characters, and it’s easy enough to give them one: just take a female character, make her super-smart, and then instant Action Girl, right? Come help us explore what makes the “Smart Girl” in literature so often a Faux Action Girl – ineffectual, unhelpful, ultimately not smart at all, and a bane to female readers who would like to amount to more than just a trophy that spouts exposition.

In case you missed this

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule starts a plan of action with 'break up the megabanks' and runs through a few more ideas ending with 'regulate the financial system better', with forty pages of historical, economic, and political analysis to back up the suggestions.[MercuryBlue]

Ross writes: The guy I end up quoting a lot, Mike the Mad Biologist, synthesizes two very good articles by other people to make a point about the grinding, soul-killing effects of the current economic state we're in and why "shared sacrifice" is a joke that isn't very funny. Devil Take the Hindmost As Public Policy: Thoughts on Joblessness and Need

From MercuryBlue an eight-line summary of what we do and don't want to tax..

ManWithDuckonHead(MWDH) links to an article on the Salon website discussing the way in which the Oslo bombing was categorized in much of the mainstream media as terrorism when it was assumed Al Qaeda was involved, and extremism when it became apparent that the alleged bomber was Norwegian ( The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism".

MercuyBlue sends in a link to a short explanation of why it is not only necessary but fair that we raise taxes on the rich, in the format of a campaign ad, rich don't share toys.

Trigger Warning: Implied torture, mistreatment and/or death of children

Art imitates life imitates art compares The Colbert Report with Torchwood: Children of Earth. The characters of CoE are off the record when they advocate deliberate mistreatment of the underprivileged. Colbert has far too many clips of people advocating that on the record.

Things you can do

Famine in the Horn of Africa

Donate to the World Food Programme

Donate to MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES (MSF) (Doctors without borders)

Hunger and need elsewhere

In Canada those who need to use, would like to donate to or volunteer at a food bank can find information food banks across the country at Food Banks Canada.

In the United States those who need to use, would like to donate to or volunteer at a food bank can find information food banks across the country at Mama's Health or Feeding America.

The the United Kingdom those who need to use, would like to donate to or volunteer at a food bank can find information food banks across the country at the Trussell Trust.

For local food sharing, you could start/join a local Food not Bombs: http://www.foodnotbombs.net

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

Comments

[Brad]

I liked the message behind "Rich Don't Share Toys," but the charts go by too fast to make an impact. For a TV ad you need strong visuals that entice the viewer to go to the website for more information. This is what I mean: http://www.box.net/shared/6xudkryoqgzg622h151q

[Kit Whitfield]

Here's something nice: wedding pictures of New York couples celebrating their newly-granted right to same-sex marriage:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/jul/24/gay-marriage-new-york-photos#/?picture=377217633&index=0

Much joy to all of them.

[Ross]

By the way, it's a comparatively small thing, but Amy Winehouse, about whom I know almost nothing, died over the weekend, and I have seen far more people making heartfelt snipes about her having deserved her fate, and being all vitriolic that anyone would dare lament someone losing their battle with addiction when there's tragedy going on in Norway than I have anyone actually lamenting her death or putting it ahead of the tragedy in Norway.

Why is our ability to feel empathy always considered such a scarce resource?

[Mmy]

@Ross: By the way, it's a comparatively small thing, but Amy Winehouse, about whom I know almost nothing, died over the weekend, and I have seen far more people making heartfelt snipes about her having deserved her fate

I have read a frightening number of truly vitriolic rants about Winehouse "deserving" to die -- many of which are heavily laced with misogyny. There is a level of hatred which I think is partially mixed with envy and the tall poppy syndrome. That woman had pipes that were amazing and there is a sick joy in seeing her crash so young.

For additional irony/sadness -- when mmyspouse wanted to show my dad (then in his early 90s) the itunes system of downloading videos spouse brought his laptop (with air card) over to my parents and showed my dad a music video. It was Rehab. Which dad didn't particularly enjoy (not the style of music he likes most.) My dad is still alive and Winehouse is dead.

As for empathy, having spent some time (with my grandmother, my mother and friends of my parents) with people who are dying I suspect that human beings have something like a fuse on their empathy circuit. With some of us the breaker trips at a very low current and others can withstand a heavily flow but all of us has an upper limit of empathy beyond which we would simply shut down and be unable to function.

[Ross]

@Mmy: There seems to be more than the usual amount of vitriol this time, as if people are deathyl afraid that someone might "waste" empathy on Winehouse that would be "better" spent on Breivik's victims.

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I feel sort of dirty even thinking this, but I'm annoyed that the News of the World story is now completely done and over in light of this weekend's events. Far too often, the media obsesses over a small thing or ignores a big thing, all because something more interesting did or didn't come up the next day.

[Literata]

Mmy, empathy exhaustion is a known danger among people doing compassionate work. I wish more people were aware of it. One of the few ways to help prevent it is caregivers engaging in self-care, which isn't always an option.

[Mmy]

@Literata: empathy exhaustion is a known danger among people doing compassionate work. I wish more people were aware of it.

I can believe it. In fact it makes sense to me. Take, for example, the palliative care (end of life) unit my mother was in for the last weeks of her life. Just in the small unit there were two young people dying of cancer (one not yet 20, the other in their early 20s.) Every single room (there were about 18 people in all) had a painful story. I have to admit reaching the end of my empathy when a man who had been in the unit for only two days died. I felt empathy for the man (who had esophageal cancer among other life-threatening conditions) and was in horrific pain. He had asked to be DNR'd and removed from the cancer ward to the palliative care unit. It was his family that shorted my own empathy circuit. They told other people (me for one) that they were suffering far more than anyone else on the floor. They demanded that the shared family lounge (where people could go for read, or watch tv) should be given over to their family alone--more to your point, the family was driving the care-givers to distraction by sucking up all their time and energy.

I remember one day saying to a young nurse "you look like you have been having a bad day" and she started cry, telling me "no one ever thinks what it is like to come in every day and know that no one on your floor is going to leave the unit alive."

[Literata]

Denial, anger, horizon effect...it sounds like that family was going for the record in all areas. How kind of you to make that observation to the nurse, though. I've actually seen healthcare workers going the other direction when their own empathy is tapped out by years and years of taking care of people, especially people whose actions may have contributed to their own conditions. Both reactions to compassion fatigue are dangerous and painful for all involved. I truly think that a lot of bad policy in the US results from the kind of simplistic solutions that people come to when their empathy and compassion are exhausted. As the lawyers say, hard cases make bad law.

[Mmy]

@Literata: My experiences on the palliative care floor are highly coloured by the fact that both of my parents are what the nurses refer to as "sweeties." My father, who had throughout his life worked at many a hard and unappreciated job, is always thoughtful and polite. Not a push-over, but someone who never takes out on the worker grievances that arise from failures of the system. Every person who came into mom's room (and dad's when he was hospitalized as well) was greeted with the same politeness if they were scrubbing the floor, delivering meals or doing rounds. My mother was the same. My mother actually apologized for work she was causing while vomiting bile on the newly changed sheets.

The thing that many families don't seem to "get" is that most of the health-care personnel are there for the patients not their families. There are usually/often people who can help the families but the job of the overworked people on the floor is to look after the patients.

Note: the kindness that we received from hospital staff was amazing. They arranged it so my parents were sharing a semi-private room when my dad was hospitalized while my mother was dying. When I spent the night in the ER with dad (while they were moving things) they brought me (unasked) a geri-chair to sleep in, heated blankets AND a hot cup of coffee in the morning. But remember I was actually freeing up their time to look after other patients because I could do a lot of things for dad that normally would have required a nurse. All too often the requests of the families of patients become zero-sum. The staff only have so much time/equipment and that which was being spent on one patient could not be spent on another.

[storiteller]

By the way, it's a comparatively small thing, but Amy Winehouse, about whom I know almost nothing, died over the weekend, and I have seen far more people making heartfelt snipes about her having deserved her fate, and being all vitriolic that anyone would dare lament someone losing their battle with addiction when there's tragedy going on in Norway than I have anyone actually lamenting her death or putting it ahead of the tragedy in Norway.

The first thing I thought when I heard she died was, "That's terribly sad." It didn't mean that what happened in Norway wasn't much, much sadder, but as you said, many things can be sad at the same time. That empathy limit is what sometimes frustrates me - when I do advocacy/activism work, I sometimes get overwhelmed at the idea of how much work there is to be done. But it doesn't mean people have to get snippy about it.

Beyond the misogynist aspect, it seems like that attitude reflects the lack of empathy and blame put on drug addicts. Yes, they have clearly made bad choices. But that doesn't mean that we can't care or provide help as a society. Again, people see it as a zero-sum game, which is so destructive to society.

I don't know why, but something about her death reminded me of the song Candle in the Wind, even though she wasn't like Marilyn Monroe at all.

[chris the cynic]

In addition to creating it's first commercial, MercuryBlue is a founding member of the Committee to Tax the Effing Rich Already where some other stuff has been posted that gives some sort of context to the issues of wealth, income and taxation in America.

I also recorded some stuff, longer and more rambling (as I tend to be) and without charts. I never did produce what I exactly wanted, which is why the videos are unlisted, (I'm also not sure exactly what I wanted to produce) but if anyone here wants to take a look they're welcome to it.
Wherein I talk about the debt
Where I try to pick up where I sputtered out in the first one
Where I offer some concluding thoughts, which are mostly related to my observation that those most likely to say, "America is a Great Nation," don't seem to believe it as evidenced by the fact that they seem to be unwilling to work to give us things a great nation ought to have (like a really good educational system.) And that if we want to be the great nation we always claim we are we'll have to actually pay for it rather than try to balance the budget with spending cuts.

Or something like that.