Grab the Lapels

Sunday Lowdown #255

THIS WEEK IN REFLECTION

I was able to come out of the cold in about 4-5 days and then had to double down on my first paper for Sociology of Religion. Although I read a variety of articles, my focus narrowed to any effects religion may have on health and wellbeing. Some interesting findings: faith typically has little effect on health and wellbeing, but the social support (e.g., counseling, food pantry, education about smoking, drinking, and drugs) provided by places of worship do improve health and wellbeing. Also, people who were raised in a religion and left it tend to have poorer health than people who were nonreligious and stayed nonreligious. Based on what I read, sociologists are interested in consequences of the New Atheist movement on health and wellbeing and need to conduct more studies.

Once schoolwork was out of the way (for now), Nick and I focused on getting ready to head north for Christmas. We wrapped presents and cleaned the house, packed and did laundry, and confirmed plans with family. We packed the car, left the cat with some catnip, and hit the road. For reasons I don’t know, the freeway was almost completely clear. If Christmas is on Monday, what is the biggest travel day of the year? It definitely was not Saturday.

We enjoyed an evening with Biscuit and Dad at a nice restaurant. My dad’s business (which now consists of just my dad) always has an end-of-year Christmas party, and Nick and I were invited. Later, Dad mentioned that he’s trying to hurry up and spend money for the business so he pays less in taxes. I did not realize I was a tax write off, but I’ll take it! LOL, either way, we were grateful to be involved and had a nice evening. I stayed up until midnight reading Cold Mountain, and today (Sunday) we will be meeting up with Nick’s dad for Christmas lunch. By the time I write again, we’ll have had lots of Christmas events together.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that in my family we celebrate the secular, Coca-Cola version of Christmas. We don’t attend church or celebrate the birth of Jesus, etc. But right now, the month of Hannukah, in the United States, Jewish people are being attacked and harassed even more, and the connection seems to be whether folks are pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israeli. I’m not going to pretend to understand what is happening with that war, but I will say that hearing statistics about hate crimes increasing against Jewish people, and how police are patrolling more in an effort to cut down on antisemitic hate crimes feels distant to me — numbers on the news. Who is out there in the U.S. seeking Jewish people in order to harm them? Who is that angry?

And then I opened this blog and saw I had a pending comment from an anonymous user. They responded to someone else’s comment on an old post from 2019 — and it was an vicious antisemitic comment. Who is so angry that they sought out a blog post, found the one comment that mentioned something about Jewish people, and left a vile comment? I have protections set so that new bloggers and anonymous people must have their comments approved, which is standard. The bizarreness of such behavior is what really hit me. People are looking for spaces in which to be vile, and right now, they feel they have the right to do so.

IT DIDNโ€™T MAKE IT TO GRAB THE LAPELS

N/A

THIS WEEKโ€™S BLOG POST

With the holidays in full swing, Disobedience by Jane Hamilton didn’t get a ton of traction. Also, I find Hamilton’s books hard to explain. At their most basic, they sound like every book you’ve ever read (or didn’t want to read). But Hamilton has this dark, weird sense of humor and way of seeing things. For instance, Disobedience (2000) was her reaction to someone claiming women always write an affair novel. However, in 2009 she took it a step further and published Laura Rider’s Masterpiece, which is about a wife trying her hand at a romance novel who secretly encourages her husband’s affair so she can use it as fodder for her manuscript. It is a ridiculously funny book and evidence that Hamilton takes something well known, like an affair, and turns the situation on its head.

NEXT WEEKโ€™S BLOG POST

I hope you’ll join me next Wednesday when I share my end-of-year statistics, the results of book club polls I sent out, my most memorable reads, and a general sense of closure for 2023.

BOOKS I BOUGHT

Books I paid for (that are not textbooks) since January 2023: totaling $68.04.

BOOKS ADDED TO THE TBR PILE

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Published by Grab the Lapels

I'm a graduate of the MFA fiction writing program at the University of Notre Dame, which inspired me to follow along with trends in teaching, publishing, and reviewing. I also have an MA and BS from Central Michigan University. I used to teach composition, creative writing, and literature in higher education, then did a brief stint at a civic theater, followed by two years at a references desk at a public library. I'm now working toward my ASL Interpreter license.

23 comments

  1. It is puzzling how people leave unrelated comments on old blog posts. Sometimes I know they’re trying to find out if the blog is defunct so they can use the comments to communicate with dissidents or criminals. Sometimes they’re just shouting into the void.

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    • Someone had left a comment about the Queer Jewish community, and this random person responded to that comment, so it was related. Therefore, I think it was just paranoid/mean (and I’m hoping not criminal related).

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  2. I hope you and Nick (and Biscuit and your dad) wake to a happy Christmas. I drove down to my daughter’s on Saturday and thought it quiet too. This morning I drove mum to church (and attended! An hour that took me back to my childhood). I must say it is a pleasure to live in a country where I don’t have to define myself as a (healthy) atheist vs the dominant christians.

    I have been pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist (white settler colonialism) all my adult life. You’ll have to take my word for it that that doesn’t make me an anti-semite.

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    • You’re going to have to tell me more about this church experience, because I never would have believed it. Does your mom know her son is a “heathen”? Did you listen to an audiobook with one earbud in?

      I’m not sure what makes a person an antisemite other than hating Jewish people — and I know you don’t hate Jewish people — so the whole thing is confusing.

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  3. Awww, what a wonderful picture of you two! โค I love it! ^_^
    Yeah, the hatred so many people insist on harboring and putting out into the world is astounding. Imagine if they used the energy and time to do something good or productive instead of malicious and destructive? ๐Ÿ˜ฅ
    On a much lighter note, we can't wait to see you guys soon!! ๐Ÿ˜€

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  4. Glad the cold went away and you got your first paper done. Interesting topic!

    Like Bill, I’m pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist. James is Jewish and he has the same view, though not all of his family does. Thankfully James has never experienced anti-semitism, but there has always been a lot of it out there and it’s gotten worse since Trump was president.

    Happy Christmas to you and Nick, dad and Biscuit!

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    • I looked up what Zionism even is. According to Britannica: “Zionism, Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisraสพel, โ€œthe Land of Israelโ€). Though Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine, where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion.”

      This is even more confusing because they use the words Jewish and Palestine and Israel, so now I’m doubly confused. Is everyone in that area Jewish but some are Palestinian, and is there a difference? Is it that Israel has laws that the Palestinians don’t agree with, so they want to have their own country but Israel said no? I need to do more Googling…

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  5. Merry Christmas Melanie! I hope you are having a nice holiday, it sounds lovely. We also celebrate the coca-cola secular Christmas. It’s interesting, my husband was raised catholic but absolutely despises religion now, all religion, because he points to its cause of so many wars, etc. Although he’s not technically wrong, I think many religions also bring people lots of comfort and joy, and a desire to be better, so I’m not ready to write it off the way he has. But after taking lots of world religion courses in school (as you have), I can’t see myself ascribing to any particular religion now that I know how similar many of them are.

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    • Aaron may be especially disappointed that the Catholics are in the news for sexually assaulting children and burying the bodies of indigenous children. I see his point. Now that I’m a Bible college (meaning evangelical) it’s very different compared to the Catholic upbringing I had for a time. And as I’m reading more for my winter class (Sociology of Religion), I’m seeing that the main benefit of religion is that it supplies a social support system that the government often does not, such as free food, clothes, counseling, daycare, addiction recovery, etc.

      Merry Christmas, Anne!

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    • I think some folks have convinced themselves that what they think is true, and something out there, be it their church, parents, TV viewing, whatever, convinced them that their fears are justified. My local Fox affiliate doesn’t just report about what’s happening with immigrants and refugees, they call it “CRISIS AT THE BORDER.”

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  7. I am catching up. Last Sunday was of course our Monday and Christmas Day, and life has been busy. I’ve also been trying to catch up on preparing my end of year posts. As for actually reading? What’s that? Danged if I know!

    Anyhow, I hope you and Nick continued to enjoy your time with family, tax write-off or not, and I look forward to hearing more about it, perhaps, in tonight’s post.

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    • LOL, my mom seemed a little tiny bit displeased that I called us a tax write off, but I was largely being silly. I’ve been reading a bit; one book for the sociology of religion class and one for the book club with my mom. I didn’t even think about how Christmas Eve was also Christmas Day for my readers on the other side of the globe!

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      • Tell Biscuit not to worryโ€ฆ most of us got the joking aspect Iโ€™d say!

        Youโ€™ll have to start realising that we downunder are almost first for most celebrations!! New Zealand of course beats us as do some Pacific islands.

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    • Actually, because my interpreting blog (melaniepageasl.com) is also about what I’ve learned on my journey, etc., I plan to publish my work once I get my final grade next week. The report is about how religion does not lead to better health, but the support network provided by places of worship does. The argument (I’m in the middle of writing it and getting mad) is about how the more literally a holy text is interpreted, the more likely people in the 21st century are to leave their current church, synagogue, etc. People born after 1981 are more likely to leave and become nonreligious in general, whereas people born before that go “church shopping.” As I’m writing these papers, I keep thinking of you. I think you would find them interesting.

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