Letters to the Editor
Jillian
Published Letters: 5
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It's a lot harder than it sounds
[Read the article: For some reason I feel I must move to France]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just a word of warning to the letter writer: it is HARD to get a work permit in the EU unless you are an EU citizen or married to an EU citizen. Generally, work permits are only available to Americans whose companies/employers sponser them for a fixed period of time. Moving to France is a lovely romantic ideal, but the legal aspects of it are much more complex than Cary's letter suggests. My advice? Find a French citizen to marry or somehow get independently wealthy. Otherwise, by all means take a nice long sabbatical there, but don't plan on a permenant stay.
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Why the hostility toward the letter writer?
[Read the article: My stepson is impossible! What's a stepmother to do?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't get why everyone is pounding on the LW. The real person/people at fault here are the parents of this kid, who divorced in the first place, and then (at least in the father's case) seem to have blithely moved on with their lives with hardly a thought for the impact on their child. The *father* "fell in love" within a year of a divorce. The *father* made the choice to move to be with the LW. Why does the blame always fall on the "eveil stepmother," and not on the actual PARENTS who get their kids into these situations in the first place?
All LW is doing is having a relationship with a man who clearly has already decided that his child is not his #1 priority. If she leaves this guy now, he'll just find someone else to fill the role she currently occupies. The problem is with him, not her. You can question her taste in men, but she is not the villain of this piece.
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Why must we look for someone to blame?
[Read the article: Who's to blame for James Kim's death?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This article highlights a facet of current American society that never ceases to amaze me: no tragic event (or even a simply unfortunate one) can occur without people lining up to dole out blame. Your kid broke his arm on the playground? It's the park management's/school's/negligent teacher's fault! Family member killed in a car accident? It's the fault of the car manufacturer/road maintenance crew/waiter who served him a glass of wine with dinner. You've got cancer? It's because you didn't eat organic/meditate/put on enough sunscreen. And so on. Nothing even remotely unhappy can happen without people slinging blame around, either at the victim of misfortune or some big, bad external actor.
Truth is, there are certain crappy things that happen, and there is no one person/thing to blame. It may not be fair, or just, but it happens, and there is no point in sitting around looking for whose fault it is. But of course, Americans refuse to believe that there is anything that they (or someone else in a position of power) CAN'T control. Evidently it's more comforting to people to believe that there are incompetent and/or nefarious forces out there trying to do them harm, than to believe that sometimes the universe just shits on you. And so the blame game goes on.
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What's most disturbing about the wedding industry...
[Read the article: The marriage industrial complex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]at least from my perspective, is its relentless focus on appearance and facade. It's not about honoring genuine traditions (whatever those may be) or the impending marriage or the emotional or religious committment a couple is making - it's about projecting a certain image, with all of one's friends and family and acquaintances as a captive audience for at least one day. In spirit, the big wedding is identical to the McMansion - most of the focus is on appearance. The *substance* is less importance than the projected image. The comfort and utility of the McMansion is less important than the image it projects of "success" and having "made it" in modern America; the spirtitual and emotional content of the wedding ceremony is likewise vastly less important than the impression made by the event (and memorialized in the ubiquitous wedding albums/photos/portrait that gets hung up in the never-used dining room).
A common, and telling, phenomenon at modern big weddings is the bride and groom and bridal party the size of Hannibal's army disappearing for an hour or two to do pictures, while guests stand around at a reception site waiting for the "happy couple" to appear. That is a pretty blatant statement about what a couple feels is really the important aspect of the wedding. Hint: it's NOT their guests and assorted "loved ones."
One final comment: I don't think it's as hard to "opt-out" of the wedding-industrial complex as the author of the book and various letters have suggested. I had a very small, perfect wedding (12 guests, courthouse, dinner) and got no grief from anyone about it. Friends who were not there sent nice cards (no gifts, of course, which was absolutely correct) and well-wishes. And no one has ever given me a hard time (or, as far as I can tell, even noticed) my lack of an engagement ring, diamond or otherwise. Are there really people rude and obnoxious enough to actually vent their anger at a newly-wed couple for not having had a big wedding? If so, I must just be lucky to not know them.
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I have actually seen the film
[Read the article: "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have no opinion on the worth (or lack thereof) of comic books/graphic novels/whatever you want to call them. However, my husband, a Marvel fan, dragged me to this movie a couple of nights ago, and the final ruling is ... it sucks.
Now, I'm no movie snob - I can enjoy a big-budget blockbuster, *provided that* there is actually some attention paid to plot and character. However, "Silver Surfer" is an incoherent, poorly-acted mess of a flick about a bunch of people/"heroes" about whom one couldn't care less. Save your $ and see ... well, I don't know. Everything this summer had pretty much stunk.