Monday, June 25, 2012

The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links for the Week)

Here's what I've been reading that made me smile, sigh in frustration, and think. What about you?

The Good

Pretty All True has a story about parenting that made me laugh out loud, as her posts so often do.

mama nervosa has a great post on raising girls to be brave with their bodies:
As a feminist mom, I want my daughters to have positive relationships with their bodies: I want them to see their physicality as a source of strength, health, joy and pleasure. This is pretty easy with small children. They are still at ages where physical activity and play dominate their social lives. They attend schools that focus on free, outdoor play in nature, where the children are encouraged to climb, explore, dig in, and get dirty.
On a related note, I really enjoyed this article featuring 25 images of female adrenaline seekers. Thanks for the inspiration, ladies!


The Bad

I spent so much time complaining in my blog posts this week that I feel the need to skip over "The Bad" and move right on to the "The Curious." I trust you'll be able to find your own sources of frustration on the web. If you are at a loss, I suggest you try some YouTube comments.

The Curious

Raising My Boy Chick has a great article that examines some of the complexities of what eating "local" really means, especially in a neighborhood undergoing gentrification:
So here’s my choice: I can buy dinner from a locally-owned restaurant that’s been here for decades and uses conventional produce and imported noodles and factory farmed meats frequented by the people of color who have lived here for decades, or I can buy it from the three year old place that uses local and organic and fresh everything and is all the rage among the white people who have lived here for three years.
Offbeat Bride has a post examining wedding "humor" that jokes about grooms' (and occasionally a bride's) last chance to run

Over at Love Live Grow there's a post about public attitude toward children that really resonated with me, especially this part:
When I used to work in a restaurant, oh, 14 years ago or so, I used to bitch about the mess that children left on the floor. I was completely dumbfounded how such an immense amount of food could end up on the floor, and weren’t those people so rude! Fast forward, and now I have a child who leaves a truly amazing amount of food on the floor sometimes. Sometimes I try to clean it up, because the critical voice in my head is mine, but it’s really kind of silly. It’s silly for me to pick up food crumbs by hand, when there’s an employee nearby who has a broom, has to sweep the place anyway, and gets paid for the time either way. 
The truth is that children are messy sometimes. And loud sometimes. And they run around sometimes. And they bang on things and drop things. And they and their parents should still be welcome in public spaces.
So, that's what I've been reading. What about you? 

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