Letters to the Editor
Serai1
Published Letters: 502 Editor's Choice: 32
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That's it?
[Read the article: This is what a feminist looks like?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reading this post, I kept getting the sense that it was heading towards some point to be made. Halfway through, I was thinking, "OK, we're going to get some cited fact that really knocks this guy out of the frame. The waitresses are being paid minimum wage, or they work overly long hours while the bartender gets a regular 8-hour shift. Or there's no health coverage, or it doesn't cover women's health issues."
But titty lamps? That's the worst you could find? If you're not going to take the story seriously enough to do a little digging, then why did you bring it up in the first place? This is just the kind of lightweight rolling-eyed "bitch please!" pseudo-reporting that passes for journalism these days. If you want to make this guy's claims look ridiculous, then come up with a serious refutation, something that really proves him to be underhanded or mendacious. Because, as the poster above says, these women are choosing to work there. The titty lamps and pretty sarongs are not hidden in a back room - the ladies applying for jobs can see them easily.
There's a difference between exploitation and bad taste; one is anti-feminist, the other is just gauche. If the decor is what's getting you exasperated, then be honest and accuse the guy of being tacky. Don't make this into a politico-social issue unless there's some evidence that it is one.
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@be-bop-o
[Read the article: Bush's 2001 condemnation of Russia's human rights abuses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]healing most any bodily infections...a BALM!
A BALM?? You can't give a child a balm! That's a very dangerous animal!! It's got big, nasty teeth and breathes fire...
There is an animal called a balm. Or did I dream it?
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@bebop-o
[Read the article: Bush's 2001 condemnation of Russia's human rights abuses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And I did not intend to be obscure. With your poetical/satirical musings, I thought you might pick up the thread of my snaky vaudevillian reference. Perhaps the circus went flying too high?
At any rate, your herbaceous flights of fancy are quite charming, and put me in nostalgic mind for my gardens in Santa Cruz. In my years there, moving from seaside cave to forest eyrie, I founded and left a number of little gardens, full of the grey-green denizens that whisper, sing secrets and give away to one and all. I miss them, my little crowds of children.
Calendula I knew well, and white sage, lavendar, lemongrass (my namesake), geraniums from rose to chocolate, and all the glittering little thymes. The fierce trio of freedom fighters: pennyroyal, tansy and rue.
Tomatoes, picked warm from the sun and eaten on the spot. Darkhand said it tasted like...well, I won't go into that.
And my one bowl of mashed potatoes, made from the little spheroids I grew and dug up myself. Is there anything more satisfying than eating food one has brought into being oneself?
Hands in the soil, caressing seedlings, the weird damp odor of earthworm castings, the lovely wet wriggle of the worms themselves. How many hours I spent just sitting among the green, loving my small friends.
Thank you for the push down memory lane. I miss them all.
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Life feeds on life
[Read the article: Adventures in snail hunting]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A vegetarian is someone who can't hear a tomato scream.
-- Joseph Campbell
This article brings back memories. (It seems like an evening for trips down that lane.) When I was 15, I tried snails for the first time while visiting family in Spain. A big get-together in the dusty afternoon heat of August, and among all the other platters and pots of delicious food, there was a big pot of fresh snail soup. That's how they make 'em down around Sevilla - a hot spicy broth filled with the little guys. I drank some wine to get up my courage and tried it. To my surprise, they were good!
And fun, too. Because they were cooked in the shell, we had to use toothpicks to coax the little slips of meat out. (They use little snails in bright stripy shells there. Not the large kind that my dad calls "graveyard snails", with a shudder.) So it wasn't just tasty, it was a game, and we laughed a lot. Food is great when it's fun as well.
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Nice
[Read the article: Do you really want to be a goddess?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So not only is Broadsheet sneering at women's choices they don't like, now they're sneering at other nation's religious practices? How very civilized. What's next, putting down other languages?
This tendency at Salon to take that condescending "aren't they ridiculous?" tone to other cultures when they don't fit into the tight little box of what's "acceptable" is extremely disheartening. Especially at Broadsheet. Perhaps feminism has changed to some unrecognizable form in the years since I first got into it, but as I remember, making an attempt to understand other people's ways and not being prejudiced against them just because they sound odd used to be a hallmark of feminism. Tolerance and reaching out and all that. Exploring other ways of being spiritual, of interacting with each other, of co-operating. There's an awful lot of put-downs and eye-rolling for a column that's supposed to be about empowerment and understanding. At least, that's my understanding of feminism, as I learned it.
Maybe it's time to take into account that not everybody sees the world the same way, eh? And that what might sound like "exploitation" to someone raised in Western culture might not look that way at all to someone from, say, Nepal.