What are you up to this weekend? We are taking it very easy and running errands, but we might also go see the Oscar-nominated animated shorts. (I sobbed through Bao!) Nothing like heading to the movies on a cold winter weekend. Hope you have a good one, and here are a few fun links from around the web…
Wow! This rescue of a boy dangling from a ski resort chairlift (by a few teenagers!) is incredible.
I swear by this for smooth, glowing skin.
Does anyone really like holding hands?
I’ve watched Olivia Colman’s wonderful Oscar acceptance speech like 10 times.
These New Yorkers have had the same jobs for 50, 60, 70 years — and love it too much to stop. (NYT)
Do you name your plants?
The life-changing magic of the $15 minimum wage. “A $15 minimum wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid. A diet. A stress reliever. It is a contraceptive, preventing teenage pregnancy. It prevents premature death.”
Fleabag season 2! Cannot wait.
“How Marie Kondo helped me sort out my gender.”
Plus, two reader comments:
Says Alison on tips for hosting a dinner party: “My friend hosts ‘Scrappy Happy Hour’ at her house for friends in her neighborhood. They all bring whatever scraps they’ve got around — half-eaten boxes of crackers, leftovers, a bottle of wine — and then the kids run amok while grownups socialize. She’ll talk about them and their text thread as ‘my scrappy moms,’ lol.”
Says Emily on the Proust Questionnaire: “I have a very common face, and people are constantly telling me that I look like someone they know. I always say, ‘Well, she sounds beautiful.'”
(Photo by James Ransom of this tomato tart. Chair lift and Marie Kondo links via Kottke.)
111 COMMENTS
I adore holding hands! It’s become so much more than a romantic gesture to me — holding hands with my friends casually when we walk around or when there’s a large crowd or when they share something personal with me is the best way I can tell them, no words needed, that I am here for them completely. I feel so reassured when other people reach for my hands first, then, that I have that connection back.
xx
I’m married to a wonderful man but there was once another man in my life, a friend who was himself married, and who I thought of secretly as my soulmate. One night after a party he confessed to me that he’d always been in love with me and though we managed not to kiss, we did hold hands. Actually we made sort of a stack of our hands, just clasping hands and wrists for the longest minute, and while we were standing there in the street, in silence, he just sort of breathily said my name. It was years ago, he’s now divorced and re-engaged to someone else and we don’t talk, ever – but that hand holding remains the most erotic moment of my life.
I have a 22-year-old rubber plant I named … Planty. My husband purchased another one that we named Junior.
Holding hands is so intimate and can be so special! I will absolutely never forget the first time my high school best friend and I held hands for the first time, ever so cautiously, in the backseat of his friend’s car. It. was. ELECTRIC. More than my first kiss, or losing my virginity. It makes me tingle to remember it; all the nerves and what our fingers intertwining for the first time signified.
My fiddle leaf fig tree’s name is Fergie. She’s beautiful and she knows it.
I have only ever named two plants: Robert Plant (a ficus) and Figgy Smalls (a, uh, fig).
As a woman in her 30s finding herself in a female/female relationship after years of heterosexual dating – I entirely took public hand-holding for granted and miss the ease of an action done so unconsciously.
I LOVE holding my girlfriend’s hand but the reactions and unwanted attention (we are both ‘straight looking’ whatever that means) pushes her anxiety way up to the point that she doesn’t even like to lock arms. Sometimes if we are walking down an empty street I’ll ask if we can hold hands just for 10 seconds and it’s a little fleeting moment of hand-holding happiness. I’d love to be out and proudly holding hands, but I respect her wishes and would never want to cause her unneeded anxiety, so we don’t.
We don’t have a quick morning kiss goodbye at the train station before work, I look into her eyes and tell her I already can’t wait to see her later instead. We don’t snuggle in close at the cinema, we entwine little fingers under the arm rest. When I pick her up from the airport we hug close and whisper love into each others ears, we don’t lock lips, not even the tiniest amount.
I didn’t fully grasp how effortless those small actions of affection are between two people until those actions became an invitation for others to comment. I know visibility is the key to acceptance but in real-life it’s hard to be resilient at all times. I’m very very aware that my partner and I benefit from the so-called straight privilege and also that I’m wildly new to the whole community.
I didn’t mean to write a whole essay here, I just wanted to say how much I love holding my girlfriends hand and how sad I am that it causes her so much anxiety. LGBT+ rights have come so far, but they also still have far to go and hand holding is such a seemingly innocuous tip of that iceberg.
Tabby i’m sorry that you and your girlfriend are self-conscious about this. I found after mostly hetero dating that it just took time for me to get used to showing public displays of affection with my wife. Similar to breastfeeding in public.
At first you think everyone is looking at you (in either situation) and feel very uncomfortable but the more you do it the more you realize it is fine and most people don’t really look. I have been with my wife now for 12 years and we don’t even think twice about it (even when we should like when traveling to countries where homosexuality is a crime). We almost never get looks or comments and if we do we don’t even notice bc we are just going about our lives. And we live in a very hetero and conservative neighborhood. Our kids who are six don’t even know another child who is the product of a same sex couple. You are right that LGBTQI+ rights have a ways to go but could your GF’s insecurities and own bias be more of a factor than she/you realize?
That ski rescue is awesome. Honestly, the world is so full of hope and brilliant kids. We get so wrapped up in the cycle of gloom and doom but if you just start opening up to it, people are awesome – especially kids – this is just ace. A year ago I started volunteering with scouts, it’s brought me so much personally, but also really opened my eyes to how much potential and natural brilliance so many young people have. Good on those boys! Quick thinking and amazing common sense.
OMG—such a fabulous round up. I’m inspired and in tears and uplifted by these varied stories/instagrams/videos. Thank you.
That rescue story made me a little teary. I’m mom to two tween boys myself, and I’m also a high school teacher; I always think of the job as working with the future of the universe. This story really drives that point home.
Love this!! Just think — every day you’re influencing the future makers and problem solvers of the world.
The “Beautiful, isn’t she” post made me tear up. I’m 9 months pregnant (so that’s part of it), but I also have a preexisting long abdominal scar from an emergency stomach surgery. It gives me a lot of anxiety because it’s a reminder of the pain, but I’m still so proud of everything my body has gone through! There is something comforting about seeing your struggles and triumphs reflected in other people, especially when it can feel so isolating at times.
I am not surprised that all of the jobs people love too much to quit are physically and manually engaging. No one loves looking at a computer screen for 60 years!
I came back here to comment the same thing!!! Isn’t that amazing?! And also so encouraging, like find a job or a hobby that literally moves you and you’ll be fine.
I love this. I’m a writer and book editor, so I literally stare at a screen all day. I love what I do, but there isn’t any passion in staring at a screen.
I’m currently in a professional existential crisis – I find myself so unmotivated and unable to focus because, well, I just don’t give a shit. I love my colleagues but I have no passion for what I’m doing. I sit in a cube and stare at a screen, or sit in meetings talking about talking about doing things (I work in higher ed). I’d love if you could do a piece on finding professional passion in your mid-30’s (and pregnant!), Joanna….I’m feeling lost.
that’s a great idea, E. thank you! and so sorry you’re going through that.
Regarding the “Beautiful, isn’t she” instagram account I have two thoughts:
1. I’m so glad people are showing real postpartum bodies. A friend’s mom once said she hated how her daughters felt pressure to post their growing bellies in a celebratory way during pregnancy but had never seen a changing post partum body in a positive or realistic way and so I think many new mothers experience a shock when they realize their bodies have changed and we aren’t taught to cope with that, instead we feel an intense desire to erase the appearance of what happened and to pour our precious and limited energy to make ourselves smaller rather than savoring the precious time we have with our new little ones
2. I find the focus on being “beautiful…still” not as helpful as Lindsay Kite from @beauty_redefined puts it “girls and women aren’t suffering only cause of the unattainable ways beauty is being defined, they’re suffering because they are being defined by beauty. They are bodies first and people second”.
They also have a mantra that I find helpful, “the body is an instrument, not an ornament.”
Hoping all of us post-part mums can find respect and compassion for our bodies, whatever they look like xo
And a third thought, a friend of mine who is also a hero of mine for teaching me this said that after her first was born, she looked at herself in the mirror and said, “Yes! I look like a mom!”
YES! i love your thoughts, natalie.
Thank you, Joanna!! xoxo
great way to put it. thank you for the fresh perspective, natalie!
The ski lift rescue had me in tears too! Grouse mountain, where it occurred, is in my hometown of North Vancouver and I spent many Saturdays learning to snowboard in the winter and hiking up it in the summer. I have two little boys and seeing kind teenage boys in a farmiliar place is warming my heart!
My goodness, those teenage boys’ rescue on the chairlift!! That gets the tears flowing! Gives me hope that there ARE indeed well-raised boys out there.
I’m a doula, and holding hands is one of the things I do best! You can transfer so much support, love, understanding, empathy and strength through a hand squeeze. To me, it’s very powerful.
Also on being a doula… all I can see in that photo is a placenta!
Beautiful ❤️
Do you mean the tomato tart Emma? Me too! Also a doula.
Holding hands or even just laying a hand on a leg, shoulder, head, conveys so much. You are not alone. My love for you is steady and unwavering. You are understood and seen. You matter. So much. Hands give space but also bring two people close. Hands are intimate but not too close. One of my clients said once, “holding your hand just felt human. It reminded me what I was doing was human.” So beautiful.
Haha Sasha yes – the tomato tart! Right?! Sending a wave to a fellow doula :)
I have two ferns (among other plant children) names Jules Fern and Leonard Fernstein.
haha great names!
This just brought me life today. <3
All good links, but man, with the skiing! Wow! I love how they gave they rescuers’ names in the captions with the description “hero” like it’s their job! Cause that’s what they are.
I love the power of holding someone’s hand. Reaching over and gripping the hand of a friend who is breaking down after a traumatic loss while as I drive her home; holding the frail hand of my 75 year old mother who is lonely from the loss of my (very affectionate) dad 16 years ago and still needs loving touch everyday; sweating in bed, unable to sleep because the room is too warm but still linking fingers with my boyfriend to be connected.
My favorite memory of the first date with my now boyfriend was walking around the State Fair, weaving through crowds and seeing him reach his hand behind his back in a subtle attempt to try to hold my hand when I was following him. I smiled really big to myself, but didn’t grab it. Felt like too big of a step for a (really great) first date!!
You might also like Lost & Found – an Australian stop motion short film that tugs at the heartstrings. A knitted toy dinosaur must completely unravel itself to save the love of its life. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35i4zTky9pI
I love Emily’s comment! I too must have a common face because I’ve been told so many times that I look like someone people know.
Same!! New contacts ask me if they’re related to people I’ve never heard of, and I get messaged by people I haven’t heard from in years thinking they saw me at a coffee shop near them. Maybe Emily, Andrea, and I look alike :)
My sister and I name all of our plants. I have a fiddle leaf fern named Loretta who is SASSY and a very large basil plant named The Marvelous Mrs. Basil. I recently got another basil plant as a gift and her name is Season 2.
Hahaha love this
I seriously laughed out loud so hard at that!!! MMB & S2 sound great! ahahahah
As I hold my sleeping 6 month old, all I can think about watching that ski video is how brave that dad was! Letting go of his little boy trusting he would fall to safety. Silently sobbing over here.
I am doing the exact same thing.
I would just like to say how much I simultaneously love and hate the weekly last Friday post. It’s easily my favourite for how well curated the selection of articles and fun things you collect together are. I happily and slowly consume the content, and inevitably share at least half the list with various different friends. I also hate it, though, because it means I won’t get another fix if Cup of Joe till Monday at the earliest.
I just named one of my plants ” harry potter” . I’ve had him for a couple of years and I just re-potted him so i thought he deserved a name.
Am I the only jerk who was horrified by the postpartum bodies post? I’m currently 26 weeks pregnant with my first and am wondering, wondering, wondering what my favorite part of myself prepregnancy will be like after…my waist/belly. So far so good. Of course all I really want is a healthy baby girl…but must it be a complete stomach disaster afterward? I’m okay with only seeing such examples for now…(nothing wrong with the link/post just talking about my own issues)
Side note – I was afraid I’d hate my pregnant body and instead I still feel really powerful and beautiful.
You’re probably not the only jerk who is horrified. There may be others as well.
As the mother of a former 2lb, 6oz preemie (yes, you read that correctly – he weighed 2 pounds at birth) who was very unexpectedly born at 28 weeks (for reasons still unknown to our doctors) and who spent almost 4 months in the NICU and experienced numerous lifelong complications AND a clinical psychologist who works in a high risk infant follow up clinic where we follow not only very early preemies but also newborns with brain injuries and rare and debilitating genetic disorders…many of whom had otherwise healthy pregnancies and deliveries – my advice is to kiss those “favorite parts” of yourself and give them a tender and loving pat for being a part of you and promise them you’ll love them even more after they’ve helped you create a life. Those smiling moms with the bodies that horrify you have learned something through pregnancy and motherhood that you haven’t yet learned. Motherhood is hard – and it’s hard on every part of you, but life and health are precious and not promised to anyone. Creating that life will raise within you a strength, love, and humility you never knew existed. And when that strength roars and spits fire on your command, the critical voice of self-loathing and shame will bow and submit. This will happen throughout the day…but once that critical voice realizes you’ve trained your dragon so well Khaleesi would be envious, it’ll then begin to appreciate that it too has been tamed.
So to go back to your question again, you are surely not the only horrified jerk. But I promise you none of us Mother of Dragons are horrified – we’ve been there and continue to train them. And soon you’ll be one of us and we will welcome you and your untamed dragon with open arms.
Brandi, this was one of the most beautiful, fierce, true, poetic, and real responses I’ve EVER read to a comment. Sending you gratitude and a deep bow of appreciation for these words and for all you (and other mothers) have had to go through.
Brandi, wow. I think this is the wisest comment I’ve ever read here, the wisest thing I’ve ever read about being a mother. Thank you for sharing your gifts. And bless you for being mom to such an early and tiny baby, that must have been very very hard.
Olivia, it’s hard to see the you you will become on the other side. That you will be strong enough to love yourself, saggy belly, tired eyes, scars….. That you will have a new mission in the world and it will be to spread the fiercest love imaginable and the deepest protectiveness possible. You won’t forget to save a sprinkling for yourself. You will love your self in whole new unfathomable ways because of a new appreciation for your creative powers. It’s totally ok to not get any of it now. You will.
I am 100% for minimum wage being raised to $15/hour if the cost of every little (or big) thing stayed more or less the same. The problem, at least in Los Angeles which I’ve noticed is that almost overnight everything has been raised by a couple bucks or more. What good is minimum wage going up when rent goes up 3% every year and the cup of coffee is now $6, a lemon is $1, going to a movie costs $18 etc etc etc. I don’t know what the answer is but I assume the problem lies somewhere in that we have an unsustainable business model where most companies have to have an upward trajectory for its shareholders. Not every company can have upwards growth. Not everyone can have upwards motion without someone else having a downward motion. Ultimately they stick it to the little guy. Its downright depressing.
This is so true too in DC, where I live. We have a $15 minimum wage, and not only is a muffin now $6 at a local coffee place, but a lot of jobs have been automated or eliminated or combined. For instance, the lady (a recent immigrant) who used to wash hair at the salon I go to is gone, and now the hairdresser does it all.
They might be a result of technology and systems changing too, though, and not because of a minimum wage change. I’m going to read more about this, and all the complexities. But overall I’m so supportive of a living wage for all people.
Goods have been artificially cheap for a long time because of low wages. As someone whose life has changed significantly since the 15$ wage was introduced in my city I am not sad that your muffin is now $6 because I don’t have to be on food stamps anymore! I find it really depressing that people would rather have a cheaper cup of coffee than for other people to be able to buy groceries and pay their bills and improve their lives! It feels really degrading and awful that people that comment on a website like cup of jo care so little about people in poverty!
Right, as Elizabeth says below companies will find ways to automate low-wage jobs if a $15 min wage is applied. In Seattle, a $15/hr wage was mandated and McDonald’s very quickly automated many functions and laid off workers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/06/28/seattle-reveals-the-ugly-truth-about-the-15-minimum-wage-movement/#17b2134962dc
Wow this conversation is a bit sad.
I fully support a minimum, living wage. I live in Australia (which is by no means perfect) but I am so grateful that I could support myself in university with hospitality jobs that paid between $18 and $23 (AU) and hour.
Jo I would love to read more commentary on this, based on research so look forward to your future posts on this topic.
My point wasn’t about the cost of my muffin; it is about how government-dictated wages have real costs—for small business owners, consumers, and especially for the lowest-skilled workers, including immigrants and teenagers. If the minimum wage is $15 employers are going to look for individuals who have the most impressive skills sets and combine jobs. I’m certainly not against a living wage, but it the very real costs are not always so obvious.
I’m solidly in support of a basic income for everyone, and we also need a much stronger and wiser safety net. $15 an hour won’t do any good if it just replaced what you were getting through food stamps, but there’s no net gain. It’s better to earn your own way and for corporate America to be paying it’s fair share for sure, but won’t matter to workers who are still in the exact same place, and that place is poverty. We need paid parental leave, we need universal health care and child care. Period.
Two wonderful books I’ve recently read that get to the heart of poverty in America, Maid by Stephanie Land, and Heartland by Sarah Smarsh. If you’ve never experienced violence in a home you were too poor to leave, gone hungry, experienced hate for using a food stamps card or WIC checks at the grocery store, or gone without needed medical care so that your children might eat instead, you owe it to every person in America who does this on a daily basis to better understand their lives. $15 an hour isn’t only about economics, it’s about real people.
To Layla, I think you misunderstood my point. I’m not sad that MY muffin has increased in price, I’m sad that lower income earners’ muffins have increased in price. I’m sad that earning $15 an hr now doesn’t have as much benefit to the lower class because the cost of everything for the lower class has just gone up.
@ Elizabeth, maybe because I’m in DC too, but yes to everything you’ve said. I fully support $15 hour minimum wage, but if feels like businesses immediately try to make that top level profit back by passing the costs on to consumers. Another thing I rarely see addressed is that $15 minimum wage is supposed to mean that *all* wages rise, right? But government wages for skilled workers just don’t, or at best, there is a 6+ year timetable. I’m thrilled that young people starting out now get $15 an hour, but not so thrilled that I now only make a couple of bucks more per hour despite having two masters degrees, and I’m only guaranteed a 3% raise by 2022.
Oh man. My son who will be 3 in a month has his third ski lesson in the morning. His instructor mentioned last time that she might take him up the lift because he’s doing so well. I’ve been so nervous about it and debating whether to trust her professional opinion or tell her no way in heck! After that video I’m going with the latter!
I just realized I’ve never held a job for more than 5 years at a time. Bless those people for finding their calling.
Same here. Although, if funding hadn’t been an issue, I would have stayed at/been able to stay at my last job. I was at the four year mark (and would have hit five years just a few days ago). Alas, working at university means budgets are wonky and things change regularly.
I have a friend who’s sister intentionally pushed her off the chairlift while in an epic argument! She was ok and they promised each other never to tell their dad who would have banned them from skiing for life. When she told me that story, I was like wow, and I thought my sister and I had crazy fights!
My plants are named Henri, Gaston, and Javer. My ‘real’ kids and husband tease me mercilessly about it but I don’t care! They are my babies :)
I don’t know why but that video made me sob big sobs.
ME TOO.
Me too!! I’m actually still gulp sobbing typing this, trying to calm down whatever crazy hormone reaction got triggered watching that rescue.
SAME! I came into the comments to say that too. Not sure why it really choked me up (I don’t have children, I generally think 13-year-old boys are annoying, I have no connection to skiing…) but I too am teary.
omg Fleabag is back!!! I watched the trailer, and it says March 4…on BBC3? how does one here in the USA get that? any online platform anyone can recommend? I have watched Fleabag season 1, on either Netflix or amazon prime…
Fleabag season 2 will be released on Amazon Prime Video on May 17th! Can’t wait :)
Oh goodness, I can totally relate to the common face quote. My college room mate always said I looked like his cousin. I took a ride home with him for the break and the first thing his mom, who had never met me says… You look like my niece. I like that I look familiar. People tell me I look familiar often.
Hand holding. It’s not really easy to do and walk still maintain speed and efficiency. But I’m not sure there’s anything more heart warming than reaching out my hand in the air and have my child’s hand magically find it. No words. No eye contact. Just hands.
yes! even if they’re walking behind you, you just hold out your hand, and a moment later, there it is. my heart!
My daughter started college last fall and since she spends the summer as a camp counselor we found ourselves doing all the getting-ready in the few weeks before school started – on one of our errand runs I realized that I was gripping – not holding – gripping BOTH of her hands in mine! Like a psycho! My hand was cramping! As soon as I realized, I loosened my grip and somewhat tearfully apologized – and that precious, precious girl very kindly grabbed hold of my hand and assured me that she liked it. Hand holding with the kids is the absolute best.
On the gender article: I find articles like this frustrating because they draw such a strict line around what it means to be a woman, as if all women love dresses and heels and red lipstick. What’s so wrong with being a woman who doesn’t wear dresses? If I don’t try very hard to be pretty, does that make me a bad woman? Or not a woman at all? In many ways this feels like it’s reinforcing old and restrictive stereotypes about women.
I know that being trans is much deeper and more complicated than this, and I hate to see it reduced to this cliche. But the author draws such a straight connection between the two (“my actual preferences: my feminine clothing did not spark joy”). I wish that they had discussed the process of exploring their gender without reinforcing the idea that women are defined only by their appearance.
Yes, I have had similar reactions to articles like this one in the past. But I have gradually come to appreciate that (a) everyone has their own gender journey, and for many trans and non-binary people, it involves a *lot* of struggles with how others perceive/misgender them, which is necessarily going to put focus on how their external appearance fits or doesn’t with traditional gender expectations; (b) it’s ok (and quite separate from their struggles) that my gender journey involves being a not-very-frilly cisgender woman. I have the privilege being part of the majority, which in this case means never worrying about people mis-perceiving my gender even on days when my beauty regime consists entirely of “this striped T-shirt is comfy and maybe I’ll wear some chapstick.”
I didn’t read it that way at all. They simply described their personal process, their experiences, their perspectives, their opinions. It doesn’t have to represent the masses, or anyone else. It’s simply about them—a personal essay, not an article, not a study. I was grateful to have the insight.
Re: Emily’s comment on her familiar face. I also look someone’s someone else… now I know how to reply.
Wow! That article “How Marie Kondo helped me sort out my gender” is so beautifully written!
Also Oliva Coleman is the sweetest. I love watching movie awards speeches, I’m moved more then i’d like to admit. Anyway I’ll definitely recommend the Favourite if you haven’t seen it already.
Now i’ll try to procrastinate reading the other links so they’ll last the whole weekend.. Have a good one!
My 3-year-old son guiltily confessed to me the other day,
“Mommy, I shot Penelope with my dart gun.”
I smiled and told him it was okay as long as he apologized.
Just as he said, “Sorry, Penelope” my husband walked in the room, shook his head and said, “We’re aologizing to house plants now?!”
Yes. Yes, we are.
hahahaha, the cutest.
The gender article by Sandy Allen was so moving!! Made me think of this quote- “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”-muriel rukeyser
So grateful to brave people like Sandy for splitting open this world so we can piece it back together to make it safer and more beautiful for our kids.
Harry and Meghan :) on the hand-holding.
And I, too, have a common face and get that a lot. Borrowing. That. Response. Thank you, Emily! I wonder if we look alike? Haha.
Maybe we do!! Wouldn’t that be something.
I will be running around watching the second to last weekend of hockey! Looking forward to the end and SPRING after a long MN winter and every weekend with hockey for my 2 kiddos!
Hope you have a great weekend!
Your comment made me laugh because my husband is a die-hard NHL fan and I’m pretty sure their season NEVER ends. Hope your kids are having fun ☺️
The chairlift rescue has me in tears. I can usually watch things like that and end with a holler or a “hell yeah!”. But after the last couple weeks of our news cycle and feeling like the world is imploding, that just caved my chest in with joy. God, I love our young people! It’s my age group that I find to be the biggest flaming pile of garbage sometimes and who dominate the news with our nonsense. But these kids… man. They just bring me so much joy. Thank you for sharing that wonderful story with us.
Shout out to Grouse Mountain! This is our local ski hill and this tremendous rescue by a group of very brave young boys has been huge news up here. My husband fell off chairlifts a few times as a kid, once as he was dangling from his father’s frantic clutches the Japanese junior ski team training on the (Alberta) ski hill formed a human pyramid to rescue him. Alas, it was well before the dawn of phone videos!
That ski lift rescue left me with a lump in my throat. When my sister was 5, she was accidentally pushed off a lift. Thankfully it was right at the beginning so they were able to stop it in time. Those kids reacted faster than any adult in the vicinity with ingenuity, creativity and bravery. Bravo!
I used to name my houseplants after my ex-boyfriends. I had two for like 20 years; one is still going ok, but one recently gave up the ghost. Sorry Ben.
“Sorry Ben.”
This made me chuckle!
The “Marie Kondo helped me sort out my gender” story made me cry! What a beautiful story of love and acceptance.
I had to come back to thank you: i LOVED the essay by Sandy, about gender and Mari Kondo, what a beautiful story of love, AND the new-yorkers at work for so many years and loving their job. I hope I’ll be like them. thank you thank you!
A $15 minimum wage may be balm to many but it is brutal for others. Many small business owners I know are struggling to keep their businesses afloat. It isn’t that employers wouldn’t love to pay their workers a terrific wage but jumping from $8 or $10 or $12 to $15 is a large increase to absorb when one has upwards of 50 employees.
I appreciate that people aren’t keen to side with business, however, businesses are run and owned by people too. People that have to choose which employees or benefits to let go to pay the rest $15/hour and stay in business.
Two sides to every story. ❤️
❤️
The minimum wage has been a life saver for me. I lost my full time job a few months ago when my division closed. I have been working a combination of minimum wage part time jobs since to make ends meet. It’s such a relief to be able to comfortably eat and pay rent through hard work. When I was younger and trying to break into a competitive, low paying industry, I had to supplement my income with a second minimum wage job ($8 an hour) and it would have been impossible to live on. I have a graduate degree in Economics, so I’ve heard all the cases against an increased minimum wage, but from my experience, truly don’t think anyone who works full time (or often much more) should be unable to eat, or have basic access to medical care and housing. Generally the economic idea is that people can work their way out of minimum wage jobs, but that’s not always based in reality, especially because of factors like systemic racism, regional poverty, inequalities in the educational system and questionable employment practices (e.g. the often insane ratio of what a CEO makes vs. other employees). Many companies with the highest rates of poverty among employees can absolutely afford to pay them more (Ahem, Amazon, which makes record-breaking revenue, doesn’t pay taxes and forces many of its employees to live on public assistance). Finally, case study after case study (eg WalMart, The Container Store, Costco) show that companies thrive and usually see far greater financial returns when they start paying employees a liveable wage (thus creating a more engaged workforce who can build a career at those companies.)
I am very for a living-wage–anyone who works 40 hours a week should be able to afford the basic minimum for a decent quality of life: rent, food, and healthcare. That might be 15$ in some places, although it won’t be the case everywhere. And the rate should climb up with inflation, not be set and forgotten.
That said, I’d be most interested in the government implementing a tax on companies who pay their employees so little that these workers still depend on government aid. Basically, the company profits off paying low wages and on top of that, many of these companies also get tax breaks (think Amazon, for ex.) since when they come to town they bring jobs. Then it’s up to the government (read–taxpayers) to supplement those workers’ income so that they can afford to eat? live? That is not sound economic policy. I wish there was more attention paid to this idea since these companies command an enormous percentage of US labor.
Here’s the gist of the idea: https://ips-dc.org/the-walmart-tax/
I was so struck today by teenagers saving the boy from the chairlift. Oh man I so love when people do good. It moved me to tears.
That tomato pie!
Have a fantastic cozy week-end!
I don’t know where to leave this note, but I would love to see Sarah and Beth from Pantsuit Politics on Cup of Jo! Maybe a joint beauty uniform or a piece on how to talk politics while really listing to the other side? I’m obsessed with them so just wanted to throw this out there! :)
I second that!