Entry 712: Mother's Day 2024

Happy Mother's Day to those who celebrate!

I added that last part to stave off any potential push-back from people who don't like Mother's Day. I've heard tell of this holiday destroying text chains before. In perhaps the most heated example, somebody I know who lost both her parents at a relatively young age and has been unable to conceive children herself, responded to a "Happy Mother's Day!" text by asking the group to please refrain from such niceties, as they aren't so nice to those among us who aren't and/or don't have mothers. Then somebody else -- another childless woman, for what it's worth -- responded to that text with a longish rebuttal, saying that she (the first woman) could simply ignore such texts and that on a group chat you can't be expected to forego standard well-wishing due to one member's personal issues. The first woman then wrote back: "Remove me then and fuck off." And that was the end of that.

By the way, I just now noticed that it's Mother's Day and not Mothers' Day, even though it's a celebration for many mothers. That's weird, no? Other holidays, such as Presidents' Day, aren't like that. I guess it's a reference to the royal mother, like how some people just say "mother" instead of "my mother." Mother came to visit last weekend... I've never liked that. I'm not your brother.* I especially dislike it when dudes do it. It comes off as some combination of pretentious and serial-killer-y. I don't know if Hannibal Lecter ever references his mother in any of the Silence of the Lambs movies, but if he does, he surely says "mother" and not "my mother." So, if you're somebody who does this, I urge you to go ahead and start adding that extra syllable in there. It's a third of a second well spent.

*Unless you are my brother or sister reading this right now. But then I'd think it was weird you were calling our mom "mother," considering we've pretty much only ever called her mom.

As I've surely mentioned before on this blog, I'm not big on gift-giving, especially socially mandate gift-giving*, but I usually do give S something on Mother's Day nevertheless. This year I made her a little slideshow video of pictures of the boys through the years -- the type of thing Facebook would do (back when people were on Facebook) and randomly put in your feed, only instead of cheesy music playing behind it, it was cheesy narration, provided by me. I think she liked it. Actually, she inadvertently gave me the idea. I was making a video of my Immaculate Grid, this baseball thing I do on Twitter (the only thing I do on Twitter), and she overheard me and was like, "What are you doing? Are you doing something for Mother's Day?" I reflexively responded, "No!" which was the truth, but then that made me think that I should do something, so I did, which now makes my response sound like a lie. But it wasn't.

*I'm not big on gift-receiving either, so this isn't a totally selfish trait.

The main thing S wants on Mother's Day is to not have to deal with all the usual stressors of day-to-day parenting, so I did my best to alleviate those as much as possible. I did the laundry, changed the sheets on the bed, and made a few day's worth of lunch for her. I even did a touch-up paint job in our living to cover up some old water damage. Then, I let her "zone out" and do whatever she wanted, which was actually mostly more household chores, but I get that. Sometimes as a parent what you legitimately want is to be left alone to do tasks in peace. On the rare occasions that I'm home alone for a few days, one of my simple joys is to get ready to go into the office in the morning. It's so different and pleasant without two preteen children around.

The other thing about Mother's Day is that it is always very close to S's birthday. This year I actually will be out of town for her b-day. I'll be seeing Pearl Jam in Vegas. (Vegas, baby!) This came about quite suddenly. What happened is, a friend* of my good friend is in a band who's opening for Pearl Jam at one of their Vegas shows, and he got him a couple of floor tickets for the show, kinda last minute. So my friend texted me to see if I wanted to go, and of course I said yes, granted S was cool with it, which she was, even though it's her birthday, because she's awesome.

*He's kinda my friend too. I've long contended that we need a word in English for somebody who is between a friend and an acquaintance. I have so many people in my life who I get along with and have hung out with and exchanged texts with, but I wouldn't really call them "friends", because we've never been super tight, and we could have major life events without the other one knowing. "Friendly acquaintance" is the best term I have for somebody like this, but it feels clumsy to me. We need something better.

It's gonna be a whirlwind trip. Neither my friend or I can take much time off right now, so I'm flying out of DC at 7:00 am the morning of the show, and then flying back the next day. I'm sure Pearl Jam won't even go on until the wee hours of the morning DC time, so I'm basically just not gonna sleep for a day or so. I mean, I'll try to sleep on the plane, but that never works. Whatever. I'm still young enough to do this... I hope.

Tired or not, it will be great to see my friend. We were supposed to rendezvous in Maui, but then the west side of the island caught on fire, so I haven't seen him in a few years. So Vegas it is. I mean, YOLO, right?

Until next time...

Entry 711: The Right To Ignore

I've been thinking about the protests of the war in Gaza a bit lately (how could I not, given the inescapable media coverage?), but I haven't written anything about them. In part, that's because of what I said in my last post -- I lose my desire to write about serious things once the weekend rolls around -- but also it's because I don't have much to add.* Anything that could be said about the protests has already been said. They are a topic the media seems obsessed with, even if the general public is not. As Nate Silver lays out in a recent (and very good, in my opinion) Substack post, the Israel/Palestine conflict ranks among the least salient issues to Americans today, even young Americans.

*Although, I'm about to write a post on them anyway.

It's not near the top of my list either. Although, of course, I find the entire thing tremendously sad. The brutality and disregard for human life... there are no words for it. To me, it's a true moral conundrum -- there is no totally right side, no morally satisfying position, no just outcome. It's just so much hate and violence. And I worry that we are importing the hate and violence to our country. We are supposed to the country where Arabs and Jews can live together in peace. We're the place people go to flee the violence and hate. And we should be thanking our lucky stars everyday that this is the case. We should be eternally grateful that we happen to living at a time and a place that isn't beset by senseless death and destruction. We should not be recreating here the conditions of the places people want to escape.

But maybe that's not what's going on. It's not clear to me what exactly the protestors want, or, more to the point, what they realistically hope to accomplish, how camping on college campus in the US will change anything in Gaza. So, it could be a lot of the participants just want to protest more than they want to achieve an actionable end. I wonder if I was in college right now if I would be part of the protests. I don't think I would because I kinda hate sleeping in a tent. I certainly would not have understood anything about the conflict, so it would have come down to my love of a bed.

Regardless of why students are protesting, however, I support their right to do so. This type of speech should absolutely be permitted and tolerated on college campuses. It's been funny to watch each side completely invert their positions on free speech since the start of the protests. Suddenly, a whole bunch of the "fuck your feelings" people, the ones who decry things like safe spaces and trigger warnings, are calling on college administrations to do more to make Jewish kids feel comfortable. And the ones who think it's harmful to ask somebody where they're from are cool with accusing people displaying Star of David iconography of supporting genocide.

The universities really have egg on their faces here. They've been so protective of every other minority community -- allowing students to shut down invited speakers who don't have the exact "correct" views on race or transgenderism or policing or what have you, and doing so in the name of student safety -- that it does look a wee bit antisemitic when that same standard isn't applied to Jews who support Israel. It's such an egregious self-own. I've been saying it for a long time -- if you limit speech you don't like when the tide is on your side, you are going to look extremely foolish when the tide turns, which it will, because it always does.

So, I almost always favor more speech. I say "almost," because, in speech, as in every other facet of life, there are exceptions. And I think I've come up with a good way to encapsulate these exceptions: The right to ignore. Just as we have a right to speak; we also have a right to ignore. If you speak in such a way that it denies others their right to ignore, then it becomes harassment. So, for example, you have a right to say what you want on TV because people could always turn the channel; you have a right to speak in an auditorium because nobody is forced to attend; but you don't have the right to stand in front of somebody's house at 3:00 am with a bullhorn and scream insults at them. This violates my right to ignore principle.

In the case of the protestors, they should have the right to peacefully assemble and say basically whatever they want, short of direct threats. But if they are, say, preventing others from moving through campus (as I've seen in several videos) or disrupting lecture or graduation ceremonies or otherwise stopping students from accessing aspects of their campus and their education, then they are not within their rights, in my view. And, in this case, it is not wrong, and it is not anti-free speech, for campus administration to shut them down, even if that means calling in the police (although I wouldn't recommend that except as a last resort).

Let people speak, but let people ignore. More empathy, not less.

Until next time...