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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
southendgirl
Published Letters: 45 Editor's Choice: 6
So apparently, Ms. Waldman's idea of the perfect gift during the hoiday season is....a better genetic roll of the dice for her kids?
Food, and in particular, holiday food traditions, are about the love, warmth, and generosity of the season. So, your holiday host and hostess used four pounds of butter? Do they eat like that every day? I doubt it. Ms. Waldman might want to focus on other things than her weight: like teaching her kids the value of daily good nutrition vs. the enjoyment of long-standing holiday traditional foods, and how and when each has its place.
In addition to the beat-to-death conversations about weight, body image, patriarchy, and post-feminism, the conversation that's really gone missing is about our ability to cook, to share, to feed ourselves effectively and what that means for our traditions and for our future.
Get over it...stop the self-loathing and start loving your life, your kids, and your world. Teach your kids how to cook, choose sustainably farmed or organic foods over mass agriculture, and revel in your history as evidenced in your holiday foods—then you'll not only do the world and the starving a favor, but you'll do yourself one, too.
My two siblings and I were raised by wonderful, intelligent, smart and loving parents...who had been raised by their parents to use corporal punishment. To this day, the sight of a wooden spoon, a breadboard, or a belt provides me with a quick trip down memory lane of running, in abject terror, away from my mother or father to avoid a spanking for wrongdoing.
To this day, my parents have repeatedly apologized about it, and have told us all, "If we had to do it over again, we'd never hit you."
Overall, I'd say my two siblings and I are very well adjusted, with one serious caveat: when I get angry with someone, I hit; playfully, seriously, either way, it's still hitting. This has been an issue with both my husband and close friends, and I have worked on it in therapy.
But the issue remains: I have been taught that hitting, causing physical pain, etc., is a good way to teach someone what not to do.
Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, whatever....physical violence begets physical violence. It's not an effective teaching method, period.
Many, many thanks to Gary Kamiya. I think I'll print this out and re-read it every year—maybe every day. It's tragic, sad, ironic, and silly that homo sapiens are only and always at our most noble or despicable when time runs out. It's a shame we can't experience true living—and true thanks—every day, and instead, when our end approaches, face it with same blase we employ in daily life.
So thanks Gary. From one blue-stated based, Democratic, secular humanist cancer survivor to another, thanks.
Some people have family Bibles, and for Traister's family, the Bible just happened to be a cookbook.
For my family, it's The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. When I moved out of the house, my parents insisted it was the only cookbook I needed. When my sister was sent off to Germany while in the Army, I bought her a copy.
We were not transformed by FFC's somewhat traditional cuisine, but I cannot make an apple crisp, a bread pudding, or countless other dining staples without grabbing my copy and turning its food-splattered pages. (You should see the page with the recipe for Newberg sauce; it's barely legible.)
My mom's original copy (a paperback) is yellowed, coverless, broken into sections, and held together with a rubberband.
I love Debra Dickerson's work. She's a smart, talented writer and cultural commentator, and while this is a good piece about health, it's off the mark. I wish her editor had a had a stronger hand, because this article is really about women risking their health to an ideal of beauty.
Be it anorexia or diabetes, our ideals of sexy are STILL warped and twisted because our heterosexual, capitalist culture decides what looks good is what sells, and what sells rules.
Good luck, Republican America. If you want Mitt the Twit, you can have him. This governor took more vacation time than any other Massachusetts governor in recorded history. He was also responsible for the Commonwealth losing more population that it gained, doing NOTHING to stem double-digit increases in housing prices, and privatizing the T (subway) so that we now pay more to get less for our public transit.
I for one, am happy to see the backside of his Teflon Pompadour as it high-tails it back to a conservative base that will likely pillory him for being the Gay Marriage Governor and the Socialist Health Care governor.
Have fun, America. Mitt's all yours. Not that he will really do anything. (Oh, and health care reform? It had a solid base for support with several key advocacy groups, such as Health Care for All, LONG before Mitt the Twit was in office.)
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"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
