I’ll just say this. This is a thoughtful comment, but one that is so fraught with the risk of facile misapplication. How do you reliably distinguish “soft bigotry” from genuine kindness?
I’ll also repeat something I’ve said several times before. I find many of Beck’s little blog-like anecdotes entertainingly reminiscent of the short stories collected in Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson. Jackson was a serious writer of fiction, but this book collects anecdotes of her chaotic family life in small-town Vermont and it’s hilarious. Beck is doing something like that in her own small way, and being pilloried for it.
Beck may not write in a classical or refined style, but she has a natural sense of language and cadence, a good sense of how to tell a story with wit and charm, best illustrated in some of the longer “bad, bad, bad” threads. She’s a better writer than I bet she thinks she is. To those who think it’s boring or somehow intentionally malicious, just ignore it, or go away. How hard could that be?
My trusted companion Ivy is a very kind nurse. With lots of good attributes.
Mostly she smothers me a bit. I’m ok with it usually. Cause she’s very reliable. I wouldn’t be alive multiple times, if not for her.
She judges practically everything about me. Every day. Not shy about telling me her judgements. Good and bad.
It’s her job to watch me for physical as well as cognitive discrepancies. So she can decide what to do.
We all judge people.
There’s a giant difference in hating a whole race of people and judging their actions than making judgement calls on the people around you.
Your employee or your friend. Your spouse. Your kids. It’s a full time job around here figuring out who’s having a bad day or who is feeling happy.
Be happy
b.
PS Ivy knows my speech difficulties. She doesn’t mind telling me to just say it or shut up. Not big on learning ASL. I think it’s cause she’d rather knit or crochet. No one’s perfect.
Eh. I guess I don’t really have all that high of expectations for online posters.
Like, I genuinely don’t see anything right now to be particularly upset about. And it’s not like I don’t call out Beck when she’s being an ass.
But right now she’s basically in line with most other posters here at various times. I’m not particularly interested in the topic she’s discussing, so I skim a bit and move on.
I love those speech buttons. That was an inspired purchase, and lots of loving patience with Bayliss! There are some amazing videos of some really smart dogs interacting with speech buttons who are literally constructing sentences from the individual meanings, not just reacting by rote. Bayliss seems to be doing much the same! Good boy!
Really? I don’t see that from other posters typically. Blogging, yes, and that’s fine even if I’m not interested.
But hijacking other threads with a completely different topic for the sole purpose of annoying people and ruining their discussion? Trolls do it. I can’t think of many (any?) regular posters doing that. Who do you have in mind?
