Friday links: 29 April, 2022

Good morning, and happy Friday! Boy, am I looking forward to the weekend, with slightly less to do (…maybe). I don’t think we have anything on the schedule, so maybe I’ll actually get to watch those YouTube videos I’ve been saving for a few weeks!

Today is our shortened day of school, with my daughter’s counselor appointment at 12, but we’ve been trying to squish in some extra schoolwork when we get home. The same will go for today, as long as I can also figure out what to make for dinner in that space of time as well…

Anyway, here’s what I found interesting on the internet this week!

 

1 in 5 Educators Say They’ve Experienced Long Covid

Coming soon to likely every school near you: a staff full of struggling people (and that’s not even touching on how any of the kids have been affected…). We were already struggling to keep teachers in the profession before the pandemic; now, with teachers having been and still continuing to be treated like garbage by both administration and parents and the community at large AND now they’re being disabled en masse by a virus we insist is no big deal? Yeah…this is an awful situation for everyone, and it’s just beginning. I think we’re really in trouble here.

 

‘Everywhere Babies,’ a picture book celebrating infants, on list of banning targets in Florida

*blinks*

This is how bad it’s gotten. The illustrations here aren’t even specifically of two dads or two moms (NOT THAT THAT WOULD BE A PROBLEM EITHER); they could be two not-parenting-together people of the same sex- a woman and her next-door neighbor, for example, or a dad with his brother- but either way, we all know that two people of the same sex never, ever do anything or go anywhere together in public unless it’s for nefarious purposes that are against these book banners’ limited sense of how the world is supposed to be. *insert the biggest eyeroll emoji you can think of right here*

Can you feel how disgusted I am? We’re actively working as hard as possible as a species to dumb ourselves down as much as we can, and it really seems like we’re succeeding at a disturbingly rapid pace, based on what these morons are doing. Speaking of disgusting morons (these people are putting me in quite a mood)…

 

Tennessee Lawmaker Suggests Burning Banned Books

Because THAT has worked out SO well throughout history! Book burners have always been looked at as paragons of freedom and liberty! Definitely not the opposite!

What is going on? Why are we so desperate to drag the country into fascism? Tennessee has been trying this out for years, and they’ve never been a state to embrace any kind of progressive measures – when I lived there and our schools couldn’t open for the year in August because they didn’t have enough money in the budget, one of the county commissioners sneered at us and told us he went to a one-room schoolhouse and turned out fine, so our kids, in 2012, shouldn’t worry that the computers in their schools were older than any of the students there (my son was ten at the time), that they didn't NEED technology at all! – but this is beyond disgusting. I hope this dude never has a solid bowel movement for the rest of his life.

 

Simplicity

This is a wonderful article that mentions Wendy Mogel, the author of the fabulous parenting book, The Blessings of a Skinned Knee (which I highly recommend). I’m a little bit in the process of mentally examining all the things I own and trying to figure out what to keep and what to send on its way to its next home. Articles like this really encourage me to keep the process going, because owning fewer things means fewer things to take care of.

And along those lines…

 

Do Less: The Power of Simplicity

Does this ever sound appealing after the hectic week I’ve had!

I do have a bit of a beef with this paragraph, however:

Business consultant Alan Weiss points out that “Time is the great equalizer.” Everyone has the same amount of time in their day, rich and poor alike. It’s what you do in that time that makes all the difference.

That’s entirely untrue. Someone who commutes or takes public transportation two hours to work each way does not have the same amount of time as a person who works from home. Someone who gets home from work and has a wife who takes care of every. single. thing in the house – food, laundry, cleaning, etc – has WAY more free time than someone who needs to come home and make dinner and help the kids with homework. People who pay someone else to do their housework have more free time than people who do scrub their own toilets and floors.

But, in general, less is often more, and simplifying life often means fewer things to worry about. What can you drop that isn’t bringing you joy?

 

And that’s it for this week! I’ve got to get dressed and then put my daughter’s carseat back in the car. Wish me luck; this is hard on my back and it’s already not feeling great. Wishing you all a wonderful, relaxing weekend! Shalom, friends. : )