My boys love temporary tattoos. The love of tattoos seems to skip generations in our family. I’m not tattooed (sorry to be morbid, but I’d like the option of Jewish burial); my dad’s tattoo was an homage to his much-beloved, long-departed, tattooed grandpa. Recently, a local artist was photographing tattoos and collecting the stories of the tattoos and so she photographed my dad and recorded his story, and then requested a snapshot of the boys with him, showing off their... Read more
In the second book of the Little House series (Little House on the Prairie), the Ingalls family comes down with malaria–or what they call fever ‘n’ ague–which is described this way: Laura was so hot that everything seemed wavering…she did not exactly go to sleep, but she didn’t really wake up again for a long, long time. Strange things seemed to keep happening in a haze. She would see Pa crouching by the fire in the middle of the night, then... Read more
So I’ve been on the lookout for more artifacts that might say interesting things about how we represent bodies, and then this weekend at the Festival of Faith and Writing, the lovely Amy L. Peterson introduced herself and said “Check out My Little Ponies! They’ve changed!” And I did. So here we go, three separate incarnations of My Little Pony– And then the Moondancer toy from the mid-90s, a bit taller, a bit thinner, eyes larger and ‘sexier’ (is that... Read more
(and Etsy, and crafty blogs, and…) Three years ago, I came upon a popular blog that kind of changed my life. It seemed to have it all–sustainable living, peaceful, joyful family life, relaxed homeschooling, great food, plenty of outdoor time, lots of good books, and abundant handmade crafty goodness–captured in friendly, relaxed prose and appealing, soft-focus photographs. I bought this blogger’s book. I waited impatiently for every new post. I took up knitting again, this time with a vengeance. I... Read more
Well, sorta. I’m at the Festival of Faith and Writing (have been since Thursday! Fooled ya!), hanging out with other writing friends, probably wearing a geeky nametag, eating bad boxed meals, and trying to get within earshot of Marilynne Robinson around without seeming like a total nutty fan, which is, of course, what I am. What!? You don’t know who Marilynne Robinson is? It’s okay; I’ll forgive you, but please do yourself a favor and read (or listen to the... Read more
Some weeks ago, the Daily Beast ran an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Afterword to the 2012 edition of his book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal. Even though, in some ways, little has changed since the book was first published a decade ago, Schlosser is hopeful that there is real change afoot–that ten years from now the book might actually be outdated: “Everything that I’ve learned since Fast Food Nation was published has made me... Read more
On Monday I wrote about the horrific conditions for laying hens, which reminded me of this Opinionator piece by Mark Bittman from a few weeks back. He draws attention to this new book by Timothy Pachirat, out from Yale University Press–Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. Perhaps the cover says more than the title: From the Yale Press description: This is an account of industrialized killing from a participant’s point of view. The author, political scientist... Read more
Some weeks ago, Rachel Held Evans posted some of these funny pictures my dad drew over a decade ago, and they elicited all kinds of responses, some angry, some amused, some whaaats? I wanted to post them again here, mostly to brag on my dad’s awesome artistic skillz, but also to highlight his own perspective on them. Dad wrote on RHE’s blog: For the record, so to speak, I did indeed draw these for my own amusement, over a decade ago. ... Read more
I had this vague memory of reading something about an academic study of G.I. Joe figures–by researchers from UMass and Harvard Med, by the way–which found that the figures have grown much more muscular over time, with many contemporary figures far exceeding the muscularity of even the largest male bodybuilders… …our observations appear to represent a “male analog” of earlier studies examining female dolls such as Barbie. Together, these studies of children’s toys suggest that cultural expectations may contribute to... Read more
…and so I don’t think we approve of… Chickens being occasionally decapitated by the automatic feeding cart, then rotting away in their cages. Chickens getting their necks stuck in the bars of their cages and dying because they can’t get them out and no one comes to help. Workers must blast exhaust fans and run in to do a job quickly because “it’s physically hard to breathe because of the ammonia” fumes rising from the manure pits below the barns.... Read more
Rachel Marie Stone
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In