[links] Link salad likes both kinds of music

[jaylake]

Endurance by Jay Lake - A review of my most recent Green novel from a feminist perspective. As it happens, this comes fairly close to my own view of the book.

Ancient language controls crime rings - Some gang members serving prison sentences are using an ancient language to try to keep control of their criminal organizations on the outside as

Comments

[autopope]

Am I alone in finding the idea of the most hardcore criminal gangs catalyzing a revival of an Aztec battle-language kind of scary? Put it together with the Mexican cult of Saint Death, and the cultural implications are not nice at all. (Unless this is merely the emergent linguistic side-effect of what's already been happening all along.)

[joycemocha]

I would lean toward it being an emergent side-effect of things that have already been happening. Doesn't make the cultural implications nicer at all, but it would make sense.

(I have limited exposures through my middle school teaching work, and that particular hypothesis seems quite plausible).

[selfavowedgeek]

re: "It gets to me, sometimes"--The same quote you pulled is one I grew up identifying with (from age 10-26 and beyond). When growing up is defined by rounds of tests on a loved one (mother), then a sixteen-year law-of-diminishing-returns fight against MS, it does tend to color one's outlook. Once, she and my dad had remarked they wished my brother and I could've had a normal childhood.

I replied that it was normal for us. Our normal. For our family.

Still fight the resentment and cynical streaks to this day but am acutely aware of the need to find balance even in the little moments in life. And in this moment, the issues with which I had to contend growing up are _not_ the issues for Things 1 and 2.

[jaylake]

And I look at your same issue with respect to my daughter. Sigh.

[selfavowedgeek]

From where I've been sitting and reading these several years, your daughter has a real mensch in her corner. You have worked so hard informing yourself (and others) that she's armed with the opportunities to navigate such waters. Although I can't speak for anyone else, I can say my parents helped foster a sense of the calm at the eye of the storm.

A year after her diagnosis, the chance to take tae kwon do came up. It was a godsend and informed/impressed further balance as well. Quite concrete analogies for getting knocked down and right back up.

Looking back, though, as a family, we sure laughed a hell of a lot.

[melissajm]

"It sounds silly, but I've thought about writing down the things that make me happy."

Not silly at all. My day job involves people who are at one of the lowest points of their lives because of illness, pain, poverty, all of the above...It gets hard to remember that not everyone's in this situation. I keep a file on my computer called Thank You, of notes where somebody's said that to me at work. It helps.

[joycemocha]

The son is essentially a professional patient due to his Crohn's (in fact we're spending the lovely sunny day in the ER due to gut pain which could be Crohn's, could be appendicitis, could be....). It is not fun at all. But it's been his life since he was sixteen, and he's got reasonable coping strategies.