Today’s baby otter is yoinked from floflo at deviantart. The picture was taken at a safari park in Peaugres in France.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: arts & entertainment, fun & hobbies, Life
100 books by women in 2016 
Vale David Bowie 
Jurassic World – Movie Review 
#AWW Book Review: Mateship with Birds 
Hoyden About Town 
How can that thing at once be so cute and so terrifying??
Nothing really on my mind–wondering if I’m ready for summer school, but no time for second thoughts! 🙂
Ok, I think I like this login better.
I think I got accepted to Grad School. Really really.
I mean, I got an email from my Department saying they had recommended me to the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and then I got an email from the FGS saying “Welcome to Grad School!”, but I haven’t gotten my paper-letter with that oh-so-important student ID number which will allow me to take advantage of on-campus stuff like Student Counselling Services.
But I think I got accepted to Grad School, and that’s good, right? 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
That sounds exciting, Anna! What will you be pursuing?
I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the response to my essay over at Racialicious. I feel like I should be taking my writing to the next level, but I just don’t know.
Anna: Congratulations! I’m looking forward to hearing more.
@ Anna:
Too damn bloody right it’s good. Woohoo!
EEEE! 🙂
I’m doing my MA in history, Jha. I wrote my undergrad thesis on the Nova Scotia School for the Deaf & Dumb in the 1880s, focusing on how the Sign Language vs Oralism debate played out here compared with in the US, and for my MA I’m hoping to expand that to look at the way other forms of philanthropy towards PWD played out, specifically with the School for the Blind and the Society for the Protection of the Feeble-Minded. I’m really interested in the rhetoric around disability and the use of language. “Most Pitiable Children of Silence” and “good Christian Charity” that focused on how their mothers must feel to have such silent children was very apparent in the fund-raising for the school fo r the Deaf.
I have to be careful – I can talk about this forever. 🙂 I am so excited! EEEE!
That is a great essay, Jha. Really enlightening for someone who’s totally clueless about the subculture itself.
Anna: That’s awesome! Congrats!
I’ve had a challenging weekend. My parents visited over the weekend. First time in about 2-3 years that I’ve spent time with them without my partner, as he’s away for work at the moment. Quite aside from my ‘grew up in abusive home’ issues, my father (who is a self-professed athiest) managed to denounce science, deny that racist/sexist jokes might be uncool, and claim (in the conext of the attacks in Indian/South Asian students and in front of his Asian wife and daughter) that racism is all “Asians attacking each other – it’s an ethnic thing”.
Now I plan to spend the precious last afternoon of my weekend curled up with trashy tv and hot chocolate.
Oh, I am ready to rant myself into the rantiest rant in the history of ranting. Honest, my ears are smoking.
You may have noticed that it’s the last day to vote for the JJJ Hottest 100 of All Time. So I thought I’d better get onto it. I see they have a convenient timeline designed to assist you to “remind yourself of important moments in music history”. How thoughtful. What a shame it appears that NO WOMAN HAS EVER RELEASED AN ALBUM IN THE HISTORY OF THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. In the page on the 60s they include the Supremes in a list of artists under the Stax/Motown banner, and mention Janis Joplin under the Monteray Pop Festival. Then in the 2000s they mention the White Stripes as having something to do with garage rock, although the album they show is the Strokes. That’s it. I repeat for emphasis: THAT’S IT.
Apparently Jay Z’s “99 Problems” (let us remind ourselves of the rest of the line: “but a bitch ain’t one”) did more for the art this decade than anything PJ Harvey, Queen Latifah or Gwen Stefani have done. And RatCat had a bigger impact on the 80s than Kate Bush, Madonna or BLONDIE FER CHRISSAKE. Joni Mitchell didn’t influence anyone in the 70s. Aretha Franklin? Tori Amos? Bijork? Tracy Chapman? Patti Smith? Pah – nobodies, obviously!
Livid does not begin to cover it. I note with similar contempt that of the 33 people whose top ten they have posted of as examples, there is a total of four women, plus two groups that include a woman. Who is running that station these days?
Congrats to those who are heading back to study… I’m gearing up to go back to study and work mode of juggling next semester as well…
This semester I tutored and I loved it (the first time I’ve done it)… student feedback was good… how I wish I was tutoring again…
I’m putting together my top 10 for JJJ hottest of all time… women seem to feature quite a bit… Blondie def does along with Joni Mitchell and PJ Harvey… it takes time to compile however…
Well done on grad-school Anna.
I’ve now given up on returning to study at the local FE college and am starting a natural science course with the Open University by correspondence instead. I’d rather be part of an academic community but it’s just too far on public transport because of my disability and I can’t afford taxis every day (and there is zero financial support available for transport). When I’ve done enough with the OU I can qualify for entry to a normal degree – I only live five minutes from Edinburgh University – but until them I’m stuck home on my todd.
An access course would get me back to uni in a single year, but guess where they’re held? A residential access course at an adult college would cost me £9,000 (I couldn’t get a normal bursary because it would effect my benefits and I’d risk losing my accessible flat). Specialist disability training colleges that are residential only offer vocational courses to get you back to work, not university.
Sorry for the downer. Just feeling very frustrated. I have explored every POSSIBLE option over the last couple of years and am still hitting a brick wall. Admittedly, I haven’t actually asked the local high school if I can study there but that’s because I’m reasonably sure they’ll think I’m a pervert or something.
/rant
Nine thousand pounds????
Wow. Wow.
Am I to take it that everybody is ok with JJJ crediting the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Saints with “simultneaously discovering” the punk sound in 1976, when Patti Smith brought out “Horses” in 1975?
The £9,000 is a combination of tuition (over £3,000) + boarding fees/living expenses. Normally a grant/bursary system covers both sets of costs so adults on low-incomes can still have the educational opportunity, but any additional money I’d get would be deducted from my means-tested welfare payments (failure to report it would result in prosecution for benefit fraud.) Basically I’d have to find an extra year’s living expenses on top of those I’m already paying in order to study at a residential college – I can’t just give up my accessible flat and start again from homeless once the course is over.
The Open University is a perfectly good Higher Education provider with excellent academic standards and good support for students with disabilities (apparently it has more disabled students than the rest of the UK’s Higher Education sector combined) … it’s just not what I want.
@ orlando:
Not OK with it, just don’t know what to say.
Anna – Woo! Well done.
DEM – Eeeh, that sucks. It’s brilliant that the OU exists, and I’m sure that it helps lots of people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to higher education, but it is a bit rubbish that it’s your only option.
Hey all, hoping there are some Hoydens of a similar type of mental place to me who might have some thoughts on this. I am pregnant and thinking about the birth. Has anyone got any thoughts/experience of birth support for high risk pregnancy for someone who is fairly anti-intervention but… also high(er) risk of complications? I’ve been looking around at doula websites and many are rubbing my skeptic self the wrong way. It could be I’m overthinking it though: I doubt we’d find ourselves in a debate about homeopathy at the crucial moment.
Mary – this is the website of the midwife that helped me through my last pregnancy. Even when I gave into the bullying and had a caesar she was with me every step of the way. If she isn’t in your area she may be able to recommend someone who is.
http://www.midwyfservices.com.au/
Hope all goes well for you and your bubs.
Mary – congratulations! (though not about the high-risk part, obviously, which must be horrid)
No recommendations for you I’m afraid, just lots of wellwishes.
Thanks tigtog. Mindy: thanks for the contact info, I’ll follow up.