Letters to the Editor
ololon
Published Letters: 77 Editor's Choice: 14
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Kudos, Carrie!
[Read the article: Trading preschool for passports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are absolutely right -- it is nice to read stories about people from different socio-economic backgrounds and a few columns about "regular" people would be welcome. Me, I'm a stay-at-home mom who gave up grad school for single-syllable conversations and a newfound relationship with crayons. Why? Because what I could earn isn't enough to afford decent child care, and my husband makes just enough for us to get by. We don't own a house, and we don't own a car, but our rented house has a small garden and we can occasionally buy organic. No nannies, no fabulous vacations, no snazzy clothes, no fancy preschools. I worry constantly about what my child won't have because we're "poor"... but she's a ridiculously happy kid and I'm hoping she stays that way.
On that note, I fantasize about joining the Peace Corp and taking my kid with me to some pristinely undeveloped village in Africa to teach elementary school while a herd of elephants meanders past the thatched-roof schoolhouse. Or taking a job teaching English in Spain. Or, really, taking a job almost anywhere at all, because what I am desperate for, as Ms. Ward seems desperate for, is something new, fresh and ADULT! Luckily for me, adjunct English positions in Hawaii seem scarce (I've checked) and we don't have a pot to piss in -- such thoughts must out of necessity remain harmless fantasies.
And such fantasies would be harmful as realities, at least for my daughter. I know. We just moved to another country. Did the bounce around on extended holiday while our things were in transit. Cool to be country-hopping, right? WRONG. Three year-old was really good about it for longer than we had a right to expect, but after about three months away from "home" she was stuttering, highly stressed, and pitching weepy wobblies if anyone looked at her askance. She missed home, she missed her friends, she wanted her local park and her local grocery and her local everything. She's cool now but we've been in our new "home" for just about six months now. She has settled. I think she'd rip our faces off if we tried to move back, let alone anywhere else. Conversations with other recently-relocated parents indicates our kid is the norm rather than the exception. Vacations are one thing, but move a preschooler away from their comfort zone for more than a month or two and the caacaa will hit everything... twice.
So instead we dream. We dream about what we did before we were parents, what we never got to do when we were parents, and what we will do when they move out. In the mean time, we try and remember that a day trip to a science museum is as exotic and exhausting to a preschooler as a month-long kibbutz is for an adult. And maybe we switch the Cap'n Crunch for... um... anything.
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Is trolling violent?
[Read the article: Help! I'm an Internet troll!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Disruptive, certainly. Provocative, definitely. But is trolling -- as described in this post -- actually a violent, destructive act akin to cherrybombing a suburban neighborhood? I don't think so, and I don't think offering a dissenting opinion in a public forum is analogous to wanton prepubescent destructive tendencies.
This is about empowerment, not about releasing aggression. Anonymity offers a certain amount of true freedom -- freedom to actually say what you like without fear of reprisal, to have the message stand alone without the imprint of identity.
Dissention does not equal trollhood. The LW may get off on stirring up the right-wing pot occasionally, but where else could (s)he without risking her/his actual neck? For all the appearance of enclosed community, ideologically-slanted online forums are the most truly open spaces that have ever existed. You don't sign a waiver that you believe in order to read and/or respond, do you? You don't pay. You sign up and speak. Brilliant. If you can do what the LW has done -- which is write something (s)he believes in -- you aren't trolling, you are participating. Some people may not like how you do it, but hey -- this is a nation of dissenters. We should remember that.
Having said that, the LW should know that no one is truly anonymous. But someone would have to work to track you down, and as these forums are about speech acts not physical acts, I doubt anyone would if you make no "real world" threats of your own.