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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
lily
Published Letters: 8 Editor's Choice: 4
Overindulging in celebrity gossip may be signs of an underactive social life. When I was a college student, I never read celebrity magazines and hardly watched TV. The social world in college was simply too rich and involving and immediate to leave any time or interest for the world of celebrity. Once I graduated, however, People magazine crept into my life, and I noticed that during my loneliest periods (when I moved to a new city, or my current social group dissolved, or I was working in an isolated job) I would spend hours each week reading celebrity magazines.
I think humans prefer to gossip about people they actually know and to whom they themselves matter. It's difficult to find a social group out in the real world, though, and we often work long days with people we don't have much in common with, isolated in cubicles that leave little opportunity for interacation. As a result, we turn to celebrity gossip to fill our natural desire to ponder human behavior. It's far more fulfilling, though, to be concerned with people we actually know, who we mean something to as well.
As a thirty-five-year-old member of Generation X, I'd like to see an article about all the women in my peer group, working or not, who will be unable to have children at all due to current economic conditions. It's almost impossible to have kids and retain a toehold in the middle-class today, unless you inherit a good bit of money, work as a doctor or high-paid lawyer or engineer, or get lucky on the stock market. Teachers, nurses, librarians: those jobs just won't cut it. Perhaps I should rephrase this concern as retaining a toe-hold in the "upper-middle" or "upper-class," since there really isn't much of a middle-class lifestyle to speak of anymore.
I think this LW's problems are quite common for our age. I read recently that psychologists want to extend the definition of adolescence up to the the age of thirty, which seems about right to me. In this bewildering day and age, the twenties are currently about experimentation and just getting a foothold in life, unless you are fortunate enough to start out with a trust fund that allows you to join the family-kids-home bandwagon right away.
That said, the LW is smart to realize that time marches on and thus to be building a solid career for herself even as her mind is primarily engaged with hipster symbols and pursuits.
I can tell the LW, though, that I'm 36 and still haven't solved her dilemmas, even as I stare down the waning years of my biological clock. I too have cultivated a steady, decently paying career (with many fits and starts) and bought a home, even as I was more engaged with the latest album, film, or novel to catch my attention. I just took a few days off from my steady job, complete with settled old farts (who are undoubtedly interesting in their own way but certainly not exciting), and my normal work-gym-home routine to attend the SXSW music festival, and I can say it was EXHILIRATING. It felt like a prison break.
I do still believe, because I have met a couple of them, that there are guys out there, some even with steady jobs as engineers or what have you, who will GET IT, and who are as exciting and interesting to be around as a good SXSW showcase. Unfortunately finding a relationship that is truly engaging is difficult, but I'm willing to forfeit the family and kids if need be because I'd prefer to be on my own to cultivate my own interests than to settle in that particular realm. I've turned down a couple of "great on paper" guys because for whatever mysterious reason, I simply didn't find them compelling, as much as I wanted to do so.
My two cents for the LW.
This book review is right on target. I read an advanced copy of this book and although passages of it were interesting I was left totally confused as to what the author was trying to say. A truly muddled piece of work.
I don't think the solution to this lw's problem is going to be as simple as just "getting out there." It seems that the most accomplished women around the globe are facing the existential crisis of possibly living out their lives alone. The best piece I've read so far on this phenomena is "Single Professional Women: A Global Phenomenon: Challenges and Opportunities" by Linda Berg-Cross , Anne-Marie Scholz, JoAnne Long, Ewa Grzeszcyk, and Anjali Roy, which can be found through Google.
Strip your hotel bed when you first arrive and look for bedbug signs along the mattress and in the box spring. Also check the headboard.
There are also precautions you can take to avoid bringing bedbugs home. Old fashioned, hard metal suitcases are better than cloth ones, because bedbugs can't grip on to metal. Always keep your luggage closed and on a luggage rack, away from the bed, or in the bathtub. You can also keep your clothes in plastic bags and then throw them in a hot wash and dry before putting them away or even bringing them into your home.
Bedbug bites are often first mistaken for mosquito bites, but they linger for weeks. They can also blow up into welts and cause asthma. They can take up to nine days to appear because the poison from their saliva has to work it's way through your system.
Perhaps global warming is another cause of the increase in bedbugs?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
