(no subject)

[bitterlawngnome]

I’m reading what y’all are writing. Just so you know.

Three things on my mind today.

1. Preparing in case there’s an invasion. What I’m seeing over and over from people with actual experience is that the best thing you can do in advance is create mutual aid social networks. Thinking about what I can meaningfully do, I think my best role is to help create emergency response capacity (way too old and unwell to actually fight). So to that end I’m working on getting as much emergency medical response training for myself and my social network as I can afford. If you’re in Canada: https://sja.ca/en/first-aid-training
2. I’ve just started reading Margaret Atwood’s memoirs and already, a few pages in, some provocative ideas. Is the place of memoir to talk about what has happened to one? Or also to talk about one’s internal evolution?
3. Tangentially related. As one ages, if one survives long enough, there eventually comes a time when one feels one could credibly write or tell the story of one’s parents’ lives. I think this is a major milestones that is not widely discussed.

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

1) People from Minnesota talking on the radio about how ready they were to resist, partly because of getting organized when George Floyd was murdered, and partly (in the case of one interviewee) because they already had a neighborhood group chat when they were bringing meals to someone who was sick, so all they had to do was fire it up about protests. Yes, community.

2) Is internal evolution not something that has happened to one?

3) You mean because one becomes one's parents in some ways? I do feel that when my parents were in their 90s I got caught up on some stuff I had missed, including looking through papers after their deaths, but I also realized how random some of the stuff I learned had been, and how easily I could have missed a lot of other pertinent things by not being around for an off the cuff remark.

[bitterlawngnome]

1) one of my primary sources right now, yes indeed.

2) In a sense, but I think what she’s getting at is that some bios are all, “then we did this, then we saw that, then there was this other event in the news”; while others talk about the internal state of the narrator, or even primarily about that, like Doris Lessing.

3) In my case it’s because I feel like I finally have an inkling of the shape of what my life will have been? If you know what I mean? And so in general I feel like I can maybe apply that kind of knowing to their lives, as a whole, rather than being confined to who they were as my parents, or as children, or as retirees etc etc.

[otter]

1. My neighbors and I already help one another out, for years. This is different and worse, but we're already connected. I got a text this morning that ICE was nearby.

2. I think I'd be personally more interested in Atwood's internal evolution, as I'm at an age where I can look back and see some of my own. When I was younger, I think I'd have been more interested in life events, maybe.

3. There is still so much I don't know about my parents. Even though I see my dad every week or two. The best I can get from anyone about why my mom came from tiny small town to big midwest city is that lots of young women came here to go to business school. No one talked much about why we only visited once or twice a year. It was a 2.5 hour drive. 3 hours if we stopped for brunch/lunch on the way. So, that's not a milestone I've reached in any case.