Anniversary

~ Clarissa

Dear friends,

tomorrow is the anniversary of my son’s death. The blog will be going dark for the day. I know you feel profound compassion and want to help. And there is a way you can help. Please leave links to articles that caught your attention, questions, blogging suggestions, etc. This is what helps me because it creates a bridge towards the future.

Tomorrow will be a very difficult day. I will get through it because that’s what I do, and you will help me emerge on the other side. You are all great people and I’m very happy to have you in my life.

P.S. It’s also a great idea to leave jokes. But not videos because I don’t like videos.

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Published by Clarissa

84 thoughts on “Anniversary”

  1. Well, I would like to know more about your potential trip to Oxford, as well as any other travel plans for this year and the next.

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      1. I hoped you knew some. The cineclub of my department has chosen for the only film in Spanish, one based on a novel by him. That mea he has major respectability. What gives?

        Also note: the series cuéntame cómo pasó. In one episode it says directly that thepos-dictadura is about el olvido. Not justice, but forgetting.

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        1. Los sol dados de Salamina? The guy is a total facha, as I prove convincingly in my soon to be published article. 🙂 The movie director cast a woman in the leading role, which hides the author’s intense machismo.

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            1. The really creepy thing is how nobody sees that in the text of his novel that absolutely screamed “Adoro a la Falange.” Before my article was accepted at BSS, I had two rejections, both of which chided me for attacking a classic of Spanish literature and being incapable of appreciating the profound nature of his writing because of my ideological stance.

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              2. I have figured out who put the film on the program. Pérez Reverte and Cercas are this individual’s favorite 20C authors.

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              3. “Pérez Reverte and Cercas are this individual’s favorite 20C authors.”

                – Wow. I hope this is not a colleague of yours because working with people of this intense intellectual caliber might be a little daunting at times. 🙂 I can just imagine these lunch break conversations.

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              6. Doesn’t speak to me because I do not respect his honor (he actually said this). Needs special reverential treatment because wants to be adored as first Spaniard anyone ever met. He replaces someone who wanted to be the first lesbian anyone ever met and I disappointed her too, being from SF, did not get shocked enough … and now I am not enthralled enough. It must be something about that office.

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  8. Interested in hearing more about your take on this: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-import-ban-cystic-fibrosis/26545128.html. I had not realized that Russia had banned some food imports, and I guess it would never have occurred to me that some of the things that would be banned are these medical foods (I’d assume things like Boost or Scandishake, similar medical foods, would also be included in that ban) or that similar Russian products would not be widely available. We use them so much here in so many areas where people have trouble gaining weight that I find this very surprising.

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  11. I am so sorry for your loss and the pain you are enduring. I would love to read some more details about your reaction to Teaching Naked. I have lots of thought in response to that text!

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    1. The book club where we discuss it will last until December. My colleagues and I coincide in wondering if the author realizes that a large number of students don’t have Internet access at home or gadgets to carry around because they don’t have the means.

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  12. I honor your son Eric and your love for him and the capacity for love he revealed in your and your husband’s hearts. Please do spend the day thinking about him and I hope you are able to comfort each other in your grief.

    When you turn your thoughts to the future, I am interested in pretty much anything you write. I enjoyed The Interestings, but I will be interested to read your thoughts. I am currently immersed in the second volume of Knausgaard’s My Struggle and I am curious if this is something you would ever be tempted to read.

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    1. I never heard of Karl Ove Knausgaard before I read your comment. But know I have looked him up online and I’m VERY interested. Norwegian and controversial, that sounds fascinating! I think I will amend my Classics Club list to include him. Thank you!

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  15. Today I’ll spend a few minutes thinking of you and your husband and mourning for your lost baby. Clarissa you’re strong enough to cope and I admire your strength.

    I’ve just read your post on How to Stop Caring about what People Think, it made me smile and remember when I too as a teenager wouldn’t dare to leave the house. Aren’t we lucky to be adults! I wouldn’t go back to being a teenager for anything.
    Today I’m just an ageing hippy and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks!

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    1. As somebody who can’t stop marrying programmers, I know it is all true. 🙂

      Actually, the way it works, I marry a Ukrainian / Russian non-programmer, and he turns into a Jewish programmer immediately.

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  17. I read this article
    http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/11673/

    What do you think about:

    perhaps Jews have reason to worry. If there are “underrepresented” minority groups on campus, it follows that there are “over-represented” ones too.

    That may well happen sooner than the ADL thinks. In May administrators at the City University of New York created a new minority group to be identified in the hiring process, “White/Jewish,” raising fears among Jewish professors that there is a movement afoot to limit their overall numbers in the interest of increased racial diversity.

    The article is from 2012. Interesting what changed at the City University of New York since then.

    “I think it goes to the idea of ‘We have enough of this group, let’s get more of that group,’” Hikind told the New York Post. “Diversity is a wonderful thing, but I think the university should hire the best and most qualified educators. If that means all professors are Asian, so be it.”

    Do you agree with the above?

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  19. New jokes from Ukraine (I liked only jokes from the one that begins “Пам’ятаєте стареньку мініатюру Данильця та Моїсеєнка про виступ Тягнибока у Верховній Раді”)

    Анекдоты новых времён
    http://lugovskaya.livejournal.com/1532240.html

    And another joke:

    The Competitive Institute (Washington D.C.) announced an energy conservation award to M. Gorbachev and delivered it to the Soviet Embassy on May 1. “In recent weeks Mikhail Gorbachev has reduced Lithuanian oil and gas consumption by over 80%,” stated CEI president Fred Smith. “These unprecedented strides in energy conservation, accomplished in what by Western standards is an incredibly short time, demonstrate the importance of looking beyond our borders for new ideas on how to save energy…”

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    1. Genius!!! Thank you for this great joke. I think I already shared this one, but just in case: Евреям все достается с большим трудом. Но зато все.

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  21. I think this is a joke…

    Yesterday, someone I do not know, a friend of a Facebook friend, blocked me and wrote that he hoped I learned some basic math soon. I would never have known what he had written if I had not been looking at the comment thread the moment he wrote this. It disappeared from my screen a moment later.

    He was upset because I had written something very slightly favourable about the Federal Reserve.

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  24. I wish you strength. It’s great that you have some truly supportive people in your life, too.

    From your previous post, when you wrote: “The reason why I’m writing these posts is that if I don’t share these stories, they will keep poisoning me from the inside.”

    I’m interested in the ways that sharing a story, a narrative about yourself, helps psychologically (when you share a story, does its structure change over time – for instance, your framing of it or where you choose to begin and end it). If you have additional thoughts on that. Maybe I’m not being clear, but my curiosity is more open-ended about the telling of stories to keep them from, as you say, poisoning you.

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    1. When something bad happens, it is really crucial to tell the story as many times as you can to anybody who will listen, write it down, tell it to yourself aloud.

      When Eric died, the first time I told the story (in an email to my boss, because I had to) I thought I would die. It took me over two hours to write that email. But I kept forcing myself to tell the story. I still keep telling it. And the act of telling blunts the edges so that it doesn’t feel like a piece of broken glass. Instead, it’s like a piece of glass that was beaten by the sea waves. It still hurts but it doesn’t kill.

      Sorry, I sound very pompous today.

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  26. I read this article (don’t recommend reading it) about :

    On July 31, 2014, a group of left-leaning historians called “Historians Against the War” posted an open letter to President Obama denouncing Israel’s actions in the Gaza War and calling for a cut-off of American military assistance to Israel. […] On August 14, the blog announced that more than a thousand historians had signed the statement.

    I knew about “a double standard of critique, a critical one applied to the extreme Right in the West and another, apologetic standard applied to similarly based rightist Islamist movements.”

    What was new and very surprising to me :

    For this historian, the “Historians Against the War” statement of summer 2014 recalls the policy of the Comintern during the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939–1941. In that two-year period, as Hitler invaded and occupied all of continental Europe except the Soviet Union, and island Britain fought on alone, the Communist Parties denounced “Anglo-American imperialism”, called Franklin Roosevelt a “war monger” for aiding Britain and abandoned verbal attacks on Nazi Germany. The Communist Parties only returned to the previous anti-fascist stance of the Popular Front era because Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union, presumably the Communists Parties would have opposed a strictly Anglo-American attack on Nazi Germany.

    Of course, Soviet Union’s communist party wouldn’t attack Hitler pre-1941, but those in Western countries? Made me also think about position of some parts of Left on Ukraine today.

    Another surprising revelation was about “efforts by the literary scholar Judith Butler several years ago to include Hamas in the camp of the global Left “. I heard she was a super-famous scholar, but haven’t known she was such … don’t have words.

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    1. Judith Butler is a genius in her field. But outside of it, she is as disappointed as the absolutely brilliant late Edward Said.

      “Of course, Soviet Union’s communist party wouldn’t attack Hitler pre-1941, but those in Western countries?”

      – They were under complete and violent control of Stalin.

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  28. This article about “Europe’s Immigration Crisis” is rich in numerical data.
    http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/09/05/europes-immigration-crisis/

    What seems strange to me is the statement “Young Europeans seem to lack either the skills or motivation to fill these spots.” You talked about permanently unemployed in Spain and other countries. Why can’t people from poorer European countries be invited and helped with employment instead of immigrants from Asia and Africa? Shouldn’t Europe take care of its own first?

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  29. I love reading about animals and now am discovering books of Richard Dawkings. Here is an excerpt I found interesting from “Рассказ предка. Путешествие к заре жизни”.

    «Рассказ Кузнечика» рассматривает без конца обсуждаемую и деликатную проблему рас.
    …
    Мы имели дело с необычно высоким уровнем генетической однородности человеческого вида, несмотря на внешность. Если Вы возьмете кровь и сравните молекулы белка, или если Вы секвенируете сами гены, то Вы обнаружите, что существует меньше различий между любыми двумя людьми, живущими где угодно в мире, чем между двумя африканскими шимпанзе.
    …
    Почему другие виды выглядят сравнительно однородными, тогда как люди демонстрируют различия, которые, если бы мы столкнулись с ними в другом месте в животном мире, могли бы заставить нас подозревать, что мы имеем дело со многими отдельными видами?
    Наиболее политически приемлемое объяснение состоит в том, что члены любых видов обладают повышенной чувствительностью к различиям среди своего собственного вида. Согласно этому взгляду, мы замечаем человеческие различия более охотно, чем различия в пределах других видов. Шимпанзе, которых мы посчитали бы почти идентичными, выглядят столь же различными в глазах шимпанзе, как кикуйу отличается от голландца в наших глазах. Рассчитывая подтвердить этот разряд теорий на внутрирасовом уровне, выдающийся американский психолог Г.Л.Тойбер (H. L. Teuber), эксперт по мозговым механизмам узнавания лиц, попросил, чтобы китайский аспирант изучил вопрос, «почему жители Запада считают, что китайцы выглядят более схожими, чем жители Запада?» После трех лет интенсивных исследований китайский студент сообщил о своем заключении. «Китайцы действительно выглядят более схожими, чем жители Запада!» Тойбер рассказывал эту историю, сильно моргая и шевеля бровями, что является верным признаком, что он боролся со смехом, таким образом, я не знаю, какова была правда. Но мне не трудно поверить в это, и я, конечно, не думаю, что это должно кого-то расстроить.

    http://coollib.com/b/218410/read#t76

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    1. When my husband was a gamer, he always posed as a woman because he didn’t want to be one of the stupid idiot boys (of all ages) who populate the gaming communities.

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    1. “They had something over me, and that something was a culture, which is to say a suite of practices so ingrained as to be ritualistic. The scholastic achievers knew how to quickly memorize a poem in a language they did not understand. They knew that recopying a handout a few days before an exam helped them digest the information. They knew to bring a pencil, not a pen, to that exam. They knew that you could (with the professor’s permission) record lectures and take pictures of the blackboard.”

      – That was totally me when I first became a student in Canada! And look what I do now. 🙂

      “And so a white family born into the lower middle class can expect to live around a critical mass of people who are more affluent or worldly and thus see other things, be exposed to other practices and other cultures. A black family with a middle class salary can expect to live around a critical mass of poor people, and mostly see the same things they (and the poor people around them) are working hard to escape. This too compounds.”

      – This is why what my university is doing is so incredibly important. That’s why I’m so addicted to it. Irrespective of race, our students normally don’t come from families of affluent scholars. And then I see them brush me aside because they are deep in a discussion of the role of Spain’s anarcho-syndicalist movement in the Spanish Civil War. In Spanish! Who needs drugs when you can be a part of this?

      “For carrying books in black neighborhoods, in black schools, around black people, I was called many things—nerd, bright, doofus, Malcolm, Farrakhan, Mandela, sharp, smart, airhead. I was told that my “head was too far in the clouds.” I was told that I was “going to do something one day.” But I was never called white. The people who called me a nerd were black. ”

      – This really resonates with me. I was called a blue stocking, an emancipee, and a man. Brilliant article, thank you!

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    1. Some alarming statistics, yes,
      however the credibility of the survey is questionable
      because it was conducted by the Washington Institute.
      Because the implications are compelling
      I spent an hour researching them and this is what I found…

      Of the Washington Institute’s 15 advisors,
      9 are Jewish and 4 are military
      – John R. Allen, General, United States Marine Corps (ret.)
      – Robert McFarlane, former National Security Advisor
      – James Roche, former Secretary of the Air Force
      – R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence

      One was secretary of state for Reagan
      – George Shultz, former Secretary of State for Reagan
      which is biased enough but researching further I find that
      between 1974 and 1982, Shultz was an executive at Bechtel, eventually
      becoming the firm’s president,
      Bechtel being the largest construction and civil engineering company in the
      United States,
      ranking as the 4th-largest privately owned company in the United States.
      The Bechtel family is Jewish.

      That leaves only one contender with neither Jewish nor Military connections:
      – Birch Evans “Evan” Bayh III, former United States Senator
      but a Jewish magazine describes him as a “Pro-Israel Stalwart”
      http://forward.com/articles/125842/evan-bayh-pro-israel-stalwart-to-leave-senate/

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      1. Actually I am questioning my own post now. I am not from USA and friends have since pointed out to me that American-Jews are usually liberals who oppose Gaza/WestBank occupation and that, given the size of the Jewish population in USA, it is not that improbable that the best experts would have Jewish ancestry. The non-Jewish political/military connections are still a worry. I still hope the survey is flawed because it does paint a bleak picture.

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    2. “read the post”? You aren’t expressing yourself very well as an academic. It claims that slide 2 is “surprising”. I was surprised when I saw them too. Whether El or I are “surprised” isn’t important though, the statistics and their implications are. I wish they were not true. In fact slide 1 is just as disturbing.

      You approved my post questioning the credibility of the pollsters without refuting it. So I refuted it. Do you find it strange that someone should reassess their stance as they learn more? I don’t know what your academic expertise is in but mine is computing and am happy to learn more about the politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict but perhaps I should look elsewhere for mature discussion.

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      1. You are a surprisingly stupid piece of shit. Have I made this complex idea clear enough? Now buzz off my blog, you vicious little insect. You are banned from the company of normal human beings.

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  33. morreth wrote about “Taras Bulba”

    Как я вижу, довольно многих в мой журнал привлек разбор Лермонтовской “Бэлы”. Я привествтую этих людей, и кое-кому я даже пообещала проолжение разбора “Героя нашего времени”, но “Тараса Бульбу” я обещала раньше.
    http://morreth.livejournal.com/2503478.html

    I usually love Gogol and studied this novel in school, but now I read the post and noticed that Gogol uses a swear word for Jews all the time. Don’t know how I missed it, when studying this at school.

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    1. This Ольга Чигиринская person is a total genius. I can’t get over how brilliant she is. Thank you, I subscribe to the blog but I missed this article in the midst of my drama.

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  34. Since you and some readers are Ashkenazi Jews, I think the following is important to publicize (may be, you could put it in next links post?):

    Israeli research team: Screen all Ashkenazi-Jewish women for BRCA mutations.
    Previous recommendation was that screening should be done if a close relative contracted breast or ovarian cancer.
    http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Health/Israeli-research-team-Screen-all-Ashkenazi-Jewish-women-for-BRCA-mutations-374551

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  36. A bit late to the party but here goes.

    The Scottish independence vote on September 18th seems to have swung slightly to the Yes side after David Cameron and his party has acted out the disastrous “We know what’s best for you” attitude of the upper class Brits. They think that they have the trump card by sending the Queen in at the last moment to appeal to the patriotic instincts of the Scots.

    On November 9th, the people of Calabria will vote on an independence referendum. Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy is doing the independence referendum is constitutionally illegal route. They’ll probably send the (new) King in at the last minute also as a symbol of national unity.

    If the Scots vote for independence, what will be the effect on Spain?

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    1. “the people of Calabria will vote on an independence referendum”

      They already had that back in 1975 and then they joined Italy. You might be thinking of Catalonia (land of supremely irritating nationalists who moaned in 2010 that Spain had robbed them of a world cup victory….).

      I’m not really clear on what either Scotland or Catalonia think they’re going to achieve with independence. They’ll both at least temporarily lose membership in the EU (within the UK it’s my understanding that Scotland’s more pro EU than England).

      Also in neither place do they seem to have a clear currency plan meaning that either the elites are ready to rob both country’s blind and/or the ensuing currency mess will undo the supposed financial rewards for some time or …. both (my guess especially since the father or Catalan nationalism has now been show to be a crook).

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      2. “I’m not really clear on what either Scotland or Catalonia think they’re going to achieve with independence. ”

        – There was a great post written by me on the subject a while ago but now I can’t find it. In short, they are harboring under the illusion that they can avoid the problems of the modern world by placing themselves into a pre-modern situation. Can’t take the change, want to go back in time. This is obviously very idiotic and will not work.

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      3. To put it very bluntly, they don’t want to solve grown up problems and choose to revert to early adolescence instead. The next best thing would be to put the whole Catalonia on bright red Harley bikes.

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