Category — Uncategorized

I have been obsessively reading every piece that has come out about the college bribery scandal.  Not the petty ones combing through Felicity Huffman’s social media postings, but the ones from reputable news sources detailing the allegations.  Oh my G-d.

I am stunned and not stunned at the same time.  We know stuff like this happens.  Maybe not always on this level, but we know that people make major donations to universities for the sole purpose of having their child considered for admission.  So paying someone to change their child’s answers on the SAT… I can see that happening.  And at the same time, oh my G-d!

I think I can’t stop reading about it because the whole situation fills me with fear.  Not that we’ll lose our values and pay $500,000 to have our children pretend to be on the crew team, but because people who do this will be in the mix when we apply to college in a few years.  [I know, we can pause for an aside for a few seconds.  Remember when I started this blog and the twins were still drinking bottles?  Yeah, now my hair is grey and they are applying to college in a few years.]  Not literally these people because these people are involved in a major bribery scandal.  But people like these people who are willing to spend enormous sums of money to get a coveted spot in a freshman class.

The admissions process (and life in general) is already NOT a level playing field.  My kids have an advantage over another person’s kids because I am willing to buy them SAT prep books and encourage them to do them over the summer.  That’s an advantage.  Being in a strong school system, knowing how to navigate that system, reading every piece of literature that comes home from the school so I’m always informed — all advantages my kids have.  I can list these all day as well as all the disadvantages my kids have in comparison to other kids in the area, but the point is that college admissions aren’t balanced and fair.  Education isn’t balanced and fair.  And then you hear about something like this…

What do you think?

“Pyt” is Danish for something akin to “oh well”:

Pyt is usually expressed as an interjection in reaction to a daily hassle, frustration or mistake. It most closely translates to the English sayings, “Don’t worry about it,” “stuff happens,” or “oh, well.”

But what I really loved is not the word but the way it’s used: “At its core, it’s about accepting and resetting. It’s used as a reminder to step back and refocus rather than overreact. Instead of assigning blame, it’s a way to let go and move on.”

Accept and reset.  Adding a pause into a moment and deciding something is not worth getting upset about.  Taking a beat to breathe and reframe.  It’s not just that they have the word — it’s that they put it into action.  It’s a mentality, a reassurance, a comma breaking up a sentence about life.

I’m reading Liane Moriarty’s new(ish) book, Nine Perfect Strangers.  It’s set at a health resort.  The story doesn’t exactly hang together, but I’m enjoying most of the characters.

One of the caveats of the resort is that you need to hand over any devices.  It’s ten, screen-free days.  Frances, one of the guests at the resort, laments the idea of giving up the Internet for 240 hours.  On page 106, Moriarty writes, “How was she going to cope for ten days without instant answers to idle questions?”

That is exactly what I would miss about the Internet.

I could stay off of Facebook for ten days: I love you all, but I could skip reading your updates for ten days knowing that Facebook’s algorithm ensures that I never see every post anyway.  I’m going to miss a bunch whether I’m on or not.

I could not write in this space or read someone else’s blog for ten days.  I would miss writing and reading, but I could always journal and catch up on my feed reader when I return.  I wouldn’t miss television shows or movies or games.

But I’ve grown dependent on instant information.  On being able to look up the answer to any random question that bubbles up in my mind.  I get so frustrated when I hit a question and there’s no easy answer, or I’m trying to find someone online and I can’t.

For me, that would be the hardest part about giving up the Internet.  What would be your hardest part: idle questions, FOMO, a feeling of disconnection, or… ?

This article was being passed around the internet last week, and I just got a chance to read it in full.  It’s 15 brief interviews with people who came into a sum of money.  Some of the payouts were enormous — a million, for example — and some were much smaller in the thousands.  Some came from hard work and some came from strange luck.  And it’s a really interesting read.

I found myself thinking whether I would have spent the money the same way or felt the same way about receiving the cash.  Sometimes I just let the words wash over me:

A lot of the emotional work I’ve done is trying to distinguish myself from this money. We live in a culture that makes us personally identify with any money we have, and we believe our money is us and we are our money. It’s put a lot of work in my lap in terms of figuring out the responsible thing to do with it.

That was money from a trust fund.  And another from someone who spent money while he was ill building a magazine that changed other people’s lives:

I was really proud to spend all this money. And had I not been so ill, I’m not sure I would’ve been so altruistic.

Or the MacArthur grant winner: “People don’t want to admit the price you pay for working.”  Or the lawsuit winner:

It made me appreciate what a difference money given can make in someone’s circumstances. If someone gave me $10,000 right now, that would be great, but it would also be very different than being given $10,000 that early in my life, before I had loans, and before I was working, and before I had commitments. That $10,000 would go to bills now.

I think people are very reluctant to talk deeply about money, so an article like this feels like peeking into a window.  I’m so grateful to the people who told their story for it.

I have such mixed feelings about turning books into movies and television shows.  We’re currently watching Umbrella Academy with the ChickieNob, so she keeps asking how it’s different from the comic.  And it is massively different from the comic, but it doesn’t bother me in the least.  I love it.  The show is so well done.

And I am beyond excited for Good Omens, even though I suspect it will be nothing like the book.  How could it?  It takes hours upon hours to get through that thing and the details and bit characters are the best part.  You know they’re going to trim it for television, but I want to watch it anyway.

And then there is the Handmaid’s Tale.  They changed some things in the Handmaid’s Tale.  I could not get over how they changed the Handmaid’s Tale, and I refused to watch beyond the first season.  That is where the book ends; I don’t want to see the story continue.  Maybe I’m missing out and the second season was fantastic.  But I can’t bring myself to watch it.

And I haven’t been able to closely look at the cast of the Magicians much less watch a single episode.  I was excited when I first heard that it was being turned into a show, but I love those books so much.  If the Quentin and Alice in my head don’t match the Quentin and Alice on the screen, it will break my heart and mess with the way I visualize the story when I read it.  So I didn’t give it a chance.

So zero rhyme or reason for why I’ll watch one adaptation and not another.

What do you think has been done well?  And what has gone really really wrong?