Fundamental Oppression.

This article really hit home for me, especially the first and last sections.

Artistic expression poses an inherent challenge to fundamentalists because it offers the ultimate manifestation of the temporal and the heterodox. It embodies freedom of thought. Art suggests that mere human beings may also be Creators. As a result, in Muslim majority contexts many artists have faced profound risks for the content of their work, or simply for producing art whatever its content, but they have continued nonetheless.

Deep thoughts, with books and blogs.

I have an ongoing fascination with the way things intersect in our lives — how you do a new thing you’ve never done but Oh! completely unexpectedly it overlaps or intersects or has some deep resonance with something else you just did. I am particularly obsessed with this when it comes to reading (see “Good Things Come in Pairs” on this page) — it always feels like you somehow came to exactly the right thing at the right moment when those resonances happen.

Right now I am reading The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit and yesterday I read this quote that just dug deep down into the heart of me:

The things that make our lives are so tenuous, so unlikely, that we barely come into being, barely meet the people we’re meant to love, barely find our way in the woods, barely survive catastrophe everyday.

Today I was reading Lizzy House‘s blog and saw this:

Also, I just want to say, that maybe I would have met these people another way, that somehow we all would have come together in whatever way, because we were supposed to. Or that my hard work and merit would have positioned me for all of this good, but I do not believe that that’s how the world works, otherwise we’d all live on islands that were having parades in our own honor everyday.

Dang, world.

I already loved George Saunders.

And then I read this quote about his writing process

“If somebody gave you a furnished apartment that they had furnished, your first impression would be, ‘Well, thanks, but this doesn’t feel like me.’ But then if you were allowed to replace one item every day for seven years with an item that you liked better, after seven years that place would have you all over it in ways that you couldn’t anticipate at the beginning. So, likewise in a story, if you’re doing hundreds of drafts, and each time you’re micro-exerting your taste, that thing is going to look like more and more of you. In fact, I feel like my stories are much more indicative of me than this guy here talking to you or even me on one of my best days. The story’s a chance to sort of super-compress whoever you are and present it in this slightly elevated way.”

and now I love him even more.

I highly recommend his stories. Wicked funny.

It’s possible I have never laughed so hard in my whole life.

Until I was an early teenager, I thought persecuted and prosecuted were the same word. So when there were signs in stores that said ‘shoplifters will be prosecuted,’ I thought it was like they would be treated like the Jews during WWII.
-posted by Peter on January 8, 2013 at 03:27 PM

You just must go read this post and all its comments. It will be 100% worth your time.

Sewing Blogs

So I might be stuck right in the middle of one of those “I AM GOING TO SEW EVERYTHING!!!” frenzies and here are some blogs that are inspiring me to stay up super late shuffling through patterns and fabrics and ideaboards and…

Make Something
Made by Rae
Grainline Studio
True Bias
Little Betty
Sew Well
Dana Made It
Soozs
La Petite Josette
Tidy Tipsy
Vivat Veritas
Tansit-Isis Sews
Be Mine
Savory Stitches

(I will add these all to my links page eventually, I just haven’t had the time)

Hunger Games, the movie!

I swear I will be back sometime within the week to talk about how I felt about this movie, but in the meantime I’m going to post something I meant to post last week before it opened:

If you’re interested in seeing it AND HAVE READ THE BOOK (b/c these might be spoilery if not), I would encourage you to read Kristin Cashore’s post on the series overall. (Kristin Cashore = the author of Graceling and Fire, two books I loved as much as I loved the Hunger Games books!!!) I really love what she has to say PARTICULARLY what she has to say about Katniss’ ultimate choice (or decision). I’m SO TIRED of hearing people whine about the third book and how they feel Katniss becomes too Bella-like (passive) in it and I think that paragraph really touches on how that isn’t true.

I would also recommend the MonkeySee review of the movie which has a number of good points.

(My long-ago brief comments on the HG books are here and here. I reread book 1 before going to the movie on Sunday and I’m glad I did as I was remembering things more as a whole and it was nice to just think about things from the beginning again.)