Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 256

12 classic books that won’t put your kid to sleep

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If you think “classic” equals dusty and fusty, think again. When it comes to kids’ books, classic means that the stories and characters are so engaging and compelling, readers have loved them for generations. Consider “The Hobbit”, a tale so epic it spawned three movies! Or “To Kill a Mockingbird”, whose suspense-filled courtroom drama has been keeping kids up past their bedtimes for decades. These and other classic books share timeless themes, page-turning pacing, and important lessons that are just as relevant to today’s young readers as they were when they were written.

Below are 12 of the best kids’ books for age 7 to teen that have stood the test of time. For more suggestions, check out these lists: Classic Books for Kids and 50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They’re 12.

“Charlotte’s Web,” by E.B. White, age 7+. This gentle story with its kindly wisdom about friendship (among barnyard animals and a spider) will inspire readers to think about how we should treat each other and make and keep friends. Though it provokes tears near the end, it’s never maudlin or sappy.

“The Hobbit,” by J.R.R. Tolkien, age 8+. There’s a perfect balance of nonstop adventure and richly imagined details in Tolkien’s fantasy of Middle Earth featuring a wonderful main character: a hairy-footed little Hobbit who truly triumphs. A great read-aloud for kids 8 and up and read-alone for kids 10 and up.

“James and the Giant Peach,” by Roald Dahl, age 8+. A boy is orphaned on page 1 and treated cruelly by his selfish aunts, and his only friends are giant insects in this charming, fast-paced fantasy. It’s very satisfying to see poor, deprived James rise from his lowly state to become a leader with true friends.

“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” by C.S. Lewis, age 8+. The first of the beloved Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series stars precious English children transported to a world where animals talk and great adventures and serious battles abound. It’s full of Christian allegory, but some kids may simply enjoy the book’s fairy tale aspects.

“A Wrinkle in Time”, by Madeleine L’Engle, age 9+. Young Meg searches across time and space to find and rescue her physicist father in this sci-fi classic. Besides being an exciting story, its messages of individuality, nonconformity, friendship, and courage have inspired generations of readers.

“The Westing Game“, by Ellen Raskin, age 10+. In this exciting whodunit, eccentric millionaire Samuel W. Westing gathers 16 potential heirs to his $200 million estate to compete in a mysterious game to discover who among them murdered him. It’s compelling from the start — a gripping mystery that never takes its foot off the gas pedal.

“Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” by Anne Frank, age 11+. The inspiring journal of a girl hiding from the Nazis in German-occupied Holland is both a must-read for young people learning about World War II and a meaningful book about the inner life of teens. Readers of any age will feel moved by Anne’s great fears and everyday problems.

“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,” by Mildred D. Taylor, age 11+. A family struggles to keep their small piece of land — and their dignity — in the face of racism in 1930s Mississippi in this compelling Newbery Medal winner. It’s the best kind of historical fiction, in which powerful lessons from the past are tucked into an absorbing story with unforgettable characters.

“The Outsiders,” by S.E. Hinton, age 12+. This book about greasers vs. the in crowd is super relatable. It’s perfect for preteens (many read it in sixth grade) because that’s when kids break into cliques and life becomes tribal. The feeling of being ostracized is timeless — which is why this book remains relevant after almost 50 years.

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, age 12+. This Pulitzer Prize winner examines racism through the eyes of children Jem and Scout Finch in Great Depression-era Alabama, when an African-American man goes on trial for the alleged rape of a white woman. Though some of the characters and the society are racist, this book is one of our most eloquent appeals for tolerance and justice.

“Black Boy,” by Richard Wright, age 14+. The award-winning author’s autobiography is a brutal, disturbing portrait of his experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South during the 1920s. Hungry, degraded, and living under the constant threat of violence and death, Wright somehow emerged as a self-respecting man of ideas, so his story is as inspiring as it is upsetting.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, age 14+. There’s a reason this story of teen alienation and family trauma has remained a best-seller and has been assigned in high school for 60-plus years: Its emotional power and poignancy are as strong as ever, and Holden Caulfield’s inner self is just as recognizable to teens today as it has ever been.

How companies can learn to root out sexual harassment

(Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Fox News renewed its contract with former host Bill O’Reilly earlier this year despite knowing that he had just settled an expensive sexual harassment case, according to recent revelations.

Given this and other tales of bosses accused of harrasment, many Americans are surely wondering what companies can do to stop and stave off harassment. As organizational psychologists who have researched toxic work environments and consulted on related issues for years, we believe that it is possible.

The key, we’ve found, is to build organizational cultures where people fear the consequences of not speaking up more than they fear the consequences of remaining passive and silent. In short, human resources departments need to change their ways.

After former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly claimed that no one had ever complained about him to the company’s human resources or legal departments, Megyn Kelly declared that she did.

A workplace menace

The scourge of sexual harassment has been getting ample media attention in recent weeks amid a raft of stories reporting allegedly abusive behavior by, among others, show business executive Harvey Weinstein, screenwriter and director James Toback, celebrity chef John Besh and Amazon Studios executive Roy Price.

Most recently, The New York Times reported that O’Reilly struck a US$32 million deal to settle sexual harassment allegations just weeks before Fox News gave him a new four-year contract. O’Reilly, who denies doing anything improper, was fired in April after the network investigated multiple allegations against him.

Fox News has been contending with sexual harassment scandals enveloping not just O’Reilly but many more of its executives and hosts for more than a year. The network’s management faces pressure from its owner to end what appears to be an institutional culture that has treated unwanted sexual advances and misogyny as routine.

Underreporting

Even with all this attention, sexual harassment remains a poorly understood concept that often remains in the dark.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency tasked with enforcing laws barring discrimination against job applicants and employees, has a solid definition.

“Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.”

Yet most victims don’t report incidents. An EEOC task force estimated in 2016 that anywhere from 25 percent to 85 percent of American women have experienced harassment on the job.

Researchers have found that sexual harassment can make people less engaged with their work and less satisfied with their jobs. It may also cause physical and mental illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder. The long-term psychological harm is one reason why harassment victims may prove reluctant to file formal claims.

Sexual harassment on the job is also costly in monetary terms and to a company’s reputation. Employers paid about $125 million in 2015 and 2016 to settle claims through the EEOC. That doesn’t include claims that ended up in court or those, like the ones involving O’Reilly, which were settled confidentially and can lead to big payouts.

Workplace culture

So what can companies do to root out the bad behavior of some bosses? First it helps to consider the types of workplaces where harassment is most common and why more people who witness it don’t speak out.

Studies have determined that sexual harassment is most common in male-dominated industries, such as construction, where women are underrepresented. Even when famous movie stars experience harassment, they may attribute their silence to a lack of faith that their employer or other authorities will believe them and take their complaint seriously. Many develop a sense of shame and fear career damage – including job loss.

Uber’s debacle is a case in point. Until a former employee exposed the company’s entrenched sexual harassment problems – leading to the CEO’s ouster – Uber’s culture and human resources team tolerated them.

In contrast, female-dominated and gender-balanced fields such as education harbor less tolerance of this behavior.

These patterns point to how employers can rid their workplaces of this problem and encourage witnesses to sound the alarm.

For starters, employers can adopt and enforce strong anti-harassment policies and train staff to recognize and report instances of this behavior.

But making a real difference demands more than formal policies and practices, which won’t on their own deter perpetrators or make victims speak out unless employees believe their employer is serious about enforcing them. Bystanders won’t do their part either if they think they’ll experience backlash for offering their help and support.

And as one of us (Katina Sawyer) found in her recent work, powerful men can help rid their companies and organizations of gender inequality and sexism by being good allies to the women they work with.

Best practices

We believe workplace leaders can help by improving their organization’s informal culture. Here are four ways that senior managers can actively signal their commitment to stopping sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination:

Participate in and even present at sexual harassment training sessions.
Attend conferences and workshops geared toward preventing sexual harassment.
Create and protect anonymous reporting channels.
Hold HR managers accountable for enforcing these policies, aiding victims and encouraging bystanders to speak up.

When workplace leaders truly lead, victims feel more empowered to report their experiences and bystanders become more likely to intervene. Perpetrators, in turn, realize they could be punished or fired over sexual harassment, making them less likely to do it.

Fixing HR

In addition, the profession of human resources – usually the first place a victim of harassment will go to find support – needs to change.

That’s because, beginning in college and graduate school, HR professionals learn to worry more about protecting employers from anti-harassment lawsuits than rooting out the misogyny that makes the perpetrators of harassment feel free to prey on their victims.

In addition, HR departments seem to treat harassment training as more of a box to tick rather than an important message to employees that this behavior is both wrong and illegal.

Instead, these professionals should be trained at school and encouraged on the job to create and promote the conditions that deter harassment. They can do so by encouraging reporting and leaving no doubt that management will take complaints seriously.

They should never fail to follow through on harassment claims or enforce harassment policies. Letting them go or even giving employees accused of this behavior a raise – as Fox did with O’Reilly – signals tolerance to perpetrators, victims and bystanders.

Reporting the problem, in other words, should be encouraged and not punished in any formal or informal way.

Once victims and bystanders feel that it’s safe for them to report harassment and other outrages, it won’t take decades for powerful men like O’Reilly, Weinstein and Toback to be held accountable for their alleged misdeeds. Otherwise, harassment is bound to remain underreported and pervasive.

Katina Sawyer, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Villanova University and Christian Thoroughgood, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Human Resource Development, Villanova University

What rape culture says about masculinity

Harvey Weinstein (Credit: Getty/Yann Coatsaliou)

The phrase “rape culture” elicits strong responses. Prominent among them are confusion, scoffs, anger and even anonymous vitriol from internet “haters.” When I posted on Facebook that I was seeking pro-feminist men to participate in a research project on rape culture, my co-investigator, Jacob Beaudrow, and I found ourselves to be on the receiving end of an email diatribe that included a death threat. That there was only one such email was a surprise.

The argument we make is that while women who have been raped endure the lasting effects of psychological and emotional harm, the problem of rape is not a “woman’s problem.” It is squarely a man’s problem. In the wake of recent horror stories about men in power who abuse women — like Harvey Weinstein — we offer some of our findings on rape culture and some suggestions for men to make change.

Predictably, naysayers will offer three main objections. One is: “But what about false accusations?” My response is: They happen. They are rare, but they happen. They should not be ignored, but neither should they distract us from the objective fact that assailants are overwhelmingly men and victims are overwhelmingly girls and women.

A second point is that men can get raped, too. That’s true. Some men are raped by other men and suffer emotional damage from stigma and a loss of identity as men. Some men have been forced to have sex with women, as legal scholar Siobhan Weare reports, but their experiences are belittled and go unrecognized in criminal codes and programs to assist and support victims of sexual assault. That needs to change.

A third objection might be that only “bad” men rape — the proverbial bad apple — and that most men are “good” men who do not rape. As Jacob and I have already argued, it is certainly the case that the majority of men do not rape women. So what, then, is the “culture” part of “rape culture?”

Consider the metaphor of thumbs and fingers. All thumbs are fingers but not all fingers are thumbs. Similarly, all rape is part of rape culture but rape culture is not limited to actual rape. In other words, rape culture encompasses a much broader range of behaviours, beliefs and norms than actual rape.

What is rape culture?

What we found from our conversations with 16 men who identify themselves as either feminist or pro-feminist was that while none of them were rape culture naysayers, most of them were not able to clearly identify what “rape culture” might mean or what it might look like when they see it.

The culture aspect includes gender norms that validate men as sexual pursuers and attitudes that view women as sexual conquests by which manhood is legitimized and women are objectified (“bros before hos”). It might mean media depictions of women as sexual objects to be owned or used or ways of communicating that minimize the effects of rape. Consider, for example, “I’m feeling rapey” T-shirts and comments among gamers such as, “I just raped you” instead of “I just beat you.”

Culture is a social script that we learn over time. It informally educates us about values, beliefs and behaviours that are broadly seen as “normal” or “common sense.” Examples of rape culture include jokes that minimize the effects of rape on women and pop music in which men tell women that “you know you want it.” It includes statements that decry the “tragedy” when the lives of college athletes who are convicted of rape are ruined. They include misrepresentations of rape as “20 minutes of action” or “just sex” and all manner of victim-blaming based upon what a woman wore or how much she drank.

Instead of teaching her how to avoid getting raped, perhaps more attention should be paid to teaching him how not to rape.

While all of the men we interviewed believe that rape culture is real, we noticed gaps in knowledge. One focused, for instance, on “the emotional issues that women have to work through … as well as their daily experiences from catcalling ….” Another pointed to the case of former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, who was acquitted on charges of sexual assault, as an example of rape culture and victim-blaming in action. Still another pointed to Donald Trump as emblematic of the problem, particularly for his famous brag that he could grab any woman by the “pussy” as he pleased, without her consent.

Institutions feed rape culture

Little of the response from these men highlighted broader social and institutional factors that contribute to rape culture. One participant noted how the cliché “boys will be boys” validates a wide variety of behaviours, including sexual harassment. But he stopped short of connecting it to broader gender norms of masculinity that justify such behaviours in the first place.

What are called “homosocial” contexts, such as the male sports leagues and campus fraternities, tend to be places where rape culture can thrive. It is no accident, for instance, that women who serve in male dominated professions such as firefighting and the military may face ongoing sexual harassment.

Feminist writer Jessica Valenti notes that one in five women are sexually assaulted on campus. She writes: “Not all men who join frats (or varsity sports teams) are predators, [but] when so much sexual violence is centered around one area of campus life, something has to be done.”

Universities across Canada are in the process of drafting and implementing policies on sexual assault in the wake of human rights complaints filed by victims against their institutions. The universities of British Columbia, Victoria, Toronto, Dalhousie, Carleton and St. Mary’s are among them, but indications are that policies are ineffective and not followed properly. A nation-wide student group graded university policies across Canada, the average of which was C-.

Perhaps university policies on sexual assault might pay more attention to educating men as a key strategy to reduce sexual assault of women on campus. Re-learning gender norms, values and behaviours need not be perceived as a threat to manhood, as anonymous haters would suggest through online vitriol and misogyny.

Actively choosing to diminish rape culture

Culture does not determine our beliefs and behaviours; it only influences them. Men have choices beyond culturally prescribed norms of masculinity. As the 16 men who we interviewed collectively demonstrate, men can challenge their own values, beliefs and behaviours — and those of other men — when it comes to their sexual attitudes towards women, including in matters of consent.

Given the evidence of rape culture in everyday society, the outlook seems grim. The ray of hope that our research offers is that boys and men can be educated to be men of conscience, both informally and formally.

Working to mitigate the harms of rape culture is not about hating men. It is simply about taking responsibility for how we, as men, behave and act in the world. Harvey Weinstein, the most recent Hollywood power broker to fall from grace by a tide of sexual harassment and assault allegations, would have benefited from such an education. The women he targeted would have reaped the benefits too.

Gerald Walton, Associate Professor in Education of Gender, Sexuality and Identity, Lakehead University

Astronomers discover exoplanet where it rains sunscreen

(Credit: Shutterstock/Salon)

If you’re going to Kepler 13Ab, don’t worry about forgetting your sunscreen.

Scientists at Penn State University, using observational data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, studied the gaseous planet’s atmosphere and observed that the atmosphere “snows” titanium oxide — which is a close relative of the UV-blocking component of the strongest sunscreens, and what temporarily stains human skin white when copiously applied.

If you’ve ever used serious day-at-the-beach grade sunscreen, the kind that lasts all day without rubbing off, you’re almost certainly using either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide sunscreen. Just as polished metals like brass and aluminum tend to be shiny and reflective, metal oxides like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are similar and can be used to reflect back the sun’s harmful rays — like having a liquid metal sheath over your skin. (The nonprofit watchdog group Environmental Working Group actually recommends titanium dioxide sunscreen as one of the safest.) What scientists detected in Kepler 13Ab’s atmosphere was technically titanium oxide, as opposed to the sunscreen-component titanium dioxide, mainly because the temperature under which the atoms fused yielded a slightly different molecule with one less oxygen atom.

Still, you would need a lot of sunscreen to avoid getting a sunburn on Kepler 13Ab. That’s because it orbits quite close to its parent star — far closer than Mercury orbits our sun — and also because its parent star, Kepler 13A, is much, much hotter and larger than our sun. As such, the sun-facing side of Kepler 13Ab is a toasty 5,000 Fahrenheit, beyond the point at which most metals turn to liquid.

Kepler 13Ab is part of a class of planets known as “hot Jupiters” — gaseous worlds the size of Jupiter or larger, yet which orbit their sun(s) much closer than Jupiter does ours, yielding scorching-hot gaseous planets. A large number of discovered exoplanets are of the hot Jupiter variety; this is because larger exoplanets are easier to detect than smaller Earth-sized ones, and also because planets orbiting closer to their parent stars tend to be easier to detect due to the nature of the observational methods generally used to hunt exoplanets.

Besides being scorching and having metal oxide snowfall, Kepler 13Ab has the added unpleasantry of being tidally locked in its orbit around its parent star. “Tidal locking” refers to a phenomenon where a planet or moon’s rotation matches its revolution — in other words, Kepler 13Ab only spins on its axis once in the time that it orbits its star, meaning that the same side of the planet always faces its sun, and the opposite side is always dark. Earth readers may recall that our moon is in tidal lock with Earth; hence, we only see one face of the moon from our perspective.

“The sunscreen snowfall happens only on the planet’s permanent nighttime side,” notes the press release from the Penn State scientists. “Any visitors to this exoplanet would need to bottle up some of that sunscreen, because they won’t find it on the sizzling-hot daytime side.” The scientists describe the process by which the titanium oxide snowfall happens as such:

…powerful winds on Kepler-13Ab carry the titanium oxide gas around, condensing it into crystalline flakes that form clouds. Kepler-13Ab’s strong surface gravity — six times greater than Jupiter’s — then pulls the titanium oxide snow out of the upper atmosphere and traps it in the lower atmosphere on the nighttime side of the planet.

Many exoplanets (that’s the technical term for planets orbiting stars besides our own) that have been discovered so far have been tidally locked with their parent star; it is relatively common in the solar system. It is unclear whether life could form on a tidally-locked planet, mainly because the temperature differential is vast and weather patterns are so different; studying planets in tidal lock helps give scientists insight into habitability and properties of such worlds.

Maybe it’s okay to judge parents after all

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“Don’t judge.” We hear this well-intentioned admonition a lot these days, as parenting takes center stage in pop culture and “shaming” generally is, well, shamed. But is passing judgment on someone else’s parenting all bad? I don’t think so — and I’ve been on the receiving end of it.

It started with my son’s hair. I wrote an article about helping him feel confident about his blazing orange locks despite the unsettling attention they garner from strangers. In the accompanying picture, my four-year-old sits staring at a magazine cover featuring NFL star Andy Dalton, awe of the grown redhead causing my boy’s pacifier to hang slackly from his mouth. Plenty of people commented on the substance of the article, but a significant number took issue with his binky instead.

Some were aggressive. “I’m more concerned that a 4yo has a pacifier than the color of his hair. Wtf?” wrote one.

“[All I] can think when I see this is why the hell does a 4 year old have a binky in his mouth,” said another.

A third broke it down for me: “You are not only messing up his growing mouth, but you are enabling him.”

To them, the issue seemed cut and dry: (1) only babies should be given pacifiers, (2) allowing a child to keep one is therefore poor parenting, and (3) it is the right of anyone to say so. Each point is more complicated than it might seem. Of particular concern to society is the last.

First though, back to binkies. Common wisdom requires weaning because pacifiers tend to cause an overbite, but my son has a natural underbite. His dentist thought a little more pressure in the opposite direction might save us all the pain of braces down the line. We also had reason to suspect a genetic predisposition to needing oral comfort. I sucked my thumb into middle school, and my brawny, woodworking husband was rarely seen without a “dummy” until, at age five, he traded his pacifiers for a giant bag of gum. When we tried to pull the plug from our son’s older sister too early, our previously happy, good sleeper became a sullen insomniac.

Some of the commenters anticipated gray areas like these. One hedged: “[A]h why does he still have a passy???? Unless he’s younger than he looks.”

A few readers even acknowledged the questionable appropriateness of their binky policing: “People are gonna hate me for this probably but I just can’t get over how this 4 year old still has a pacifier,” one wrote.

Their hesitance makes sense given the current anti-shaming movement, especially as it applies to parenthood. In the past year, three incidents involving children who found themselves in danger of animal attack (known colloquially as the “Cincinnati gorilla mom,” “Disney alligator dad,” and “Canadian sea lion parents”) were followed by an initial flood of tweets and posts condemning their caregivers, and then a second wave of commentary urging the critics to back off.

Ron Fournier of The Atlantic wrote of the zoo incident: “We’re too quick to judge . . . We don’t know what events led to [the] tragedy, much less whether it’s part of a pattern of this mother’s behavior. . . .” I said something similar when I defended my hands-off, iPhone-on approach to the playground: “You may happen to see a mom’s single 10-minute block of phone time for the whole day . . . And maybe that other mom who’s giddily chasing her squealing brood around the park has all that energy because she planted them in front of the TV for four hours that morning. You just can’t know.”

But here’s the rub: just because a judgment doesn’t apply in a specific case or isn’t conveyed in the kindest, most tactful way doesn’t mean it serves no purpose.

In “All Joy and No Fun: the Paradox of Modern Parenthood,” Jennifer Senior wrote that American parents have few guideposts: “There is no folk wisdom,” she said. “‘In old static cultures,’” she explained, quoting famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, “‘one can find a standard of behavior . . . but in America, there is no such fixed standard.’” That can be freeing, but it also sometimes leaves us feeling rudderless in a sea of conflicting expert opinions and rocked by waves of successive parenting fads.

Criticism of my four-year-old using a binky helps establish a norm based on the most recent research on pediatric dental health. When another mom stares me down for texting by the swings, she communicates a similar community standard: parents have a duty to unplug periodically to give their kids attention. The case of post-tragedy blowback charts the same course. Yes, freak accidents happen, it seems reasonable to expect a kid to be able to wander a few feet without being mauled by a wild animal, and targeting grieving parents with vitriol is unconscionable. But there’s still a positive value — children should be protected from bodily harm as much as possible — buried in the criticism.

Moreover, judgmental looks and comments show that people care about someone else’s baby. And that is a beautiful thing, a reflection of our desire to connect, to become a village once more. I told myself something similar when random people felt up my bulging belly and later stuck their heads into my newborn’s stroller. The impulse that denied us personal space would also drive folks to pitch in and help care for my children.

In other words, assessing and remarking upon other people’s parenting can be what anthropologists call “prosocial” in the same way that gossip can actually help build relationships and community. Juli Fraga, Psy.D., who sees patients at the University of California, San Francisco told me, “When psychologists say ‘prosocial,’ we don’t mean that all unsolicited advice is helpful, only that the practice, on the whole, works to the benefit of humans.”

Certainly some ways of expressing concern are more constructive than others. To say the internet has a tone problem is like declaring “Hamilton” had an acceptable opening season on Broadway: both are truisms and massive understatements. There’s also a special restraint required when dealing with new parents who tend to be sensitive to input. And issues of class and race come into play. As an affluent white woman, it’s easier for me to brush off the negative impact of judgment—dirty looks and a piercing comment or two — than it would be if a stranger’s opinion were likely to trigger a visit from Child Protective Services.

Those things aside, I worry. We intend for our “don’t judge” and “to each their own” approach to lift up individuals, but telling us we have no right to care about each other’s children and create societal norms for their upbringing may undermine a world of love and community more than it creates one. I say go ahead and comment on my kid’s binky. I’ll listen, think it over, and make my own judgment. Whether I agree or not, I’m glad you give a damn. Or, at any rate, a “WTF.”

Gail Cornwall is a former public school teacher and recovering lawyer who now works as a stay-at-home mother and freelance writer in San Francisco. You can find her walking down the streets of San Francisco next to the kind, well-adjusted kid with a binky in his pocket. Connect with Gail on Facebook and Twitter , or read more at gailcornwall.com .

“You’re the one with the slaves in your family”

(Credit: Salon/Ilana Lidagoster)

The windowless basement of the Buffalo Grove Family History Center had the feel of an underground bunker—fluorescent lights, cinder block walls, the musty scent of dampness. At the room’s entrance sat a gray-haired woman, birdlike and benign. With robotic precision, she meted out instructions on how to use the machines, where the microfilms were located and how to order original documents. She appeared as nondescript and gray as the walls.

I’d come to the family history center in search of my grandfather Azemar Frederic. I was between adjunct college teaching jobs, applying for tenure track teaching positions in creative writing, and working part-time as an assistant editor for a medical journal. The year before, I’d been offered a position in creative writing at a liberal arts college in Tennessee. But I turned it down. Uprooting my life at the age of forty-nine for a position that paid in the low five figures seemed foolhardy. My husband would need to obtain a Tennessee dental license to practice dentistry, and we would have to pay out-of-state tuition at the University of Illinois for our daughter Lauren. So I resigned myself to seeking positions in the Chicago area where the competition was especially rigorous and my chances for success slim.

I had time on my hands and an insatiable longing to find Azemar who over the years had become more and more unreal to me as if he never existed, was a figment of my mother’s imagination. Without a photograph of him, I had nothing physical to connect him to me. This need for a physical image of him was primal. It was an aching absence that I needed to fill.

This was 1995, before the Internet, before Ancestry.com. Family research required a journey, was a physical as well as an emotional quest. I’d arrived at 10 a.m. when the center opened. I would stay as long as it took to find my grandfather Azemar Frederic of New Orleans, my mystery man.

But I had little to go on. I didn’t know when he was born or when he died. My mother couldn’t or wouldn’t help me. Her memory faltered when it came to her father.

“He might have died after you were born. I don’t remember. Maybe in the 1950s.”

What I did know wasn’t much, birth and death place—New Orleans and the precise spelling of his first and last name. As a child my mother would spell out her maiden name for me—a school requirement on this form or that. Always stressing that there was no k at the end of Frederic. “That would make us German. And we’re not German,” she’d say. “We’re French. And your grandmother Camille Kilbourne is English and Scottish.” Her tone was fierce and not to be challenged. She took great pride in her French heritage, occasionally throwing out a French phrase to prove her point: tante/aunt, très bon/very good, n’est pas/isn’t it so.

Persistent over the years, I pieced together other sparse facts about the elusive Azemar—even his name conjured mystery. My mother had a shorthand way of describing him: hard worker who didn’t smoke or drink. He and my grandmother divorced early in their marriage. They both remarried and started families.

My mother never spoke of her father’s second family when I asked about them, except to say the oldest daughter resembled her. I didn’t know how many other children there were from Azemar’s second marriage or who his second wife was. My mother refused to talk about them. The mere mention of them made her go quiet.

“People say I looked like him,” my mother would say, placating me as if her face replaced the one I desperately wanted to see. Then she’d add, her eyes far away, “I asked my mother once why she didn’t stay married to my father. And she said, ‘he was too jealous.’”

And as often happened with my mother’s stories, the not telling was the telling. If I’d been older, I might have picked up on her clues. But I was a child. I accepted what she told me. She was my mother.

The morning wore on. Time passed without notice as I scrolled through the microfilm finding Fredericks, Fredericos but no Frederics. Every once in a while I’d have to stop scrolling and close my eyes. The whirling of the microfilm and the low lights were making me queasy or maybe it was the gnawing hunger that I refused to placate. I was a woman on a mission.

It was almost 1 p.m. I’d been there for three hours and hadn’t found Azemar. I decided to finish the 1900 Louisiana census record and return next Wednesday.

The surname Frederic happened first. It jumped out at me, spelled exactly as my mother said: C, no K at the end. Then I spotted my grandfather’s unusual first name Azemar at the bottom of a long list of other Frederics. In 1900 Azemar Alfred Frederic was three years old and listed as a granddaughter, sex male. Finally I knew when he was born: 1897. A flutter of elation ran through me as I jotted down his information on a legal pad that until now was woefully empty.

There were many family members living in the Girard/Frederic household. Azemar’s father was Leon Frederic, his mother Celeste Girard Frederic. I savored the beauty of her name, my great-grandmother Celeste Girard. Azemar was the youngest of five children: Louise, Leon, Leonie, and Estelle. They lived at 379 Ursuline Avenue in New Orleans. The head of the household was Albert Girard, Azemar’s maternal grandfather, my great-grandfather. There were also a number of Girards sharing the residence.

As I traced across the grid, I stopped on the letter B, perplexed by its meaning, then I scrolled up to find the category: Race.

My mind didn’t quite take in what I was seeing. Would the census taker use B for black in 1900? It didn’t seem likely. Then what did B mean if not black? And why would the census taker mark my grandfather and his family black? It had to be a mistake. My grandfather’s family was not black.

Aware of the time, I hurriedly searched for Azemar in the 1930 census. When I found him, his race was no longer designated as B, now his racial designation was W. I was familiar with the one-drop rule, a racial classification asserting that any person with even one ancestor of African ancestry was considered to be black no matter how far back in their family tree. But the B perplexed me, as did the W. How could Azemar be black in 1900 and white in 1930?

I glanced back at the gray-haired lady. She was shuffling through index cards, keeping herself busy, and looking bored. I got up from the machine and walked over to her.

“I was wondering about the racial designation B in the 1900 Louisiana census. Can that be right?” I asked reticently, purposely not mentioning that the B was attached to my mother’s family.

“Those cards have been copied. B means black.” She looked me up and down. “You know the saying, ‘there’s a nigger in every woodshed.’”

I was speechless. Struck dumb.

She laughed, a tight pinched laugh full of malice. “Things were different back then. We had those candies, you know, we called them ‘nigger babies.’” She said this with some glee in her voice as if we were sharing the same joke.

The word nigger kept reeling from her mouth like the rolls of microfilm whirling around me. I stood there, stunned, having no idea what the woman was talking about or how to respond. I’d never heard of “nigger babies.” And if I had, I’d never be spewing the term out like a sharp slap.

All I could muster in defense of a family whose race I’d just discovered and was unsure of was a fact that sounded like an excuse. “In Louisiana,” I muttered, “you only had to have one drop of black blood to be considered black.” I felt assaulted with an experience I had no way to relate to and that I wasn’t certain I could even claim.

She finished my thought for me as if confirming what she’d already said about race and blood. “Yes, just one drop was all that was needed. You know the saying, ‘nigger in the woodshed.’”

She seemed to think I agreed with her, that the one-drop rule was correct, leaving no doubt about my race and in her eyes my tainted blood. It was evident to me it would be useless to continue this conversation with this bigoted God-lugging woman.

For a long second she stared through her glasses at me as if she was searching for a physical confirmation of my heritage. “Oh,” she finally said as if a light bulb had gone on in her head, “You’re the one with the slaves in your family.”

Slaves? I never said anything about slaves in my family. She’d made her own logical leap—black ancestry equaled slaves. This was a logical leap I was not prepared to accept. This was not how I saw my family or myself. Shaken, I returned to the microfiche machine, rewound the role of microfilm, placed it back in its box, and refiled it in the steel drawer, avoiding the woman like a contagion, afraid of what other derogatory racial expressions she’d resurrect from her arsenal of bigotry.

Outside, the cold January wind was like a tonic, snapping me back to the ordinariness of winter—snow and cold, the need for shelter. I hurried to my car, shut the door, and started the engine. But I didn’t leave. I sat staring at the silvery sky, the mottled clouds, the uncertainty of light that made a Midwest January day bearable—when the sun disappears for days.

What just happened? I felt like I’d had an out-of-body experience. In a split second I became someone else, my identity in question. When I walked into the squat, brown building I was a white woman. When I left I didn’t know who I was. Was I still a white woman but a white woman with black ancestors? Were Azemar Frederic and his entire family the “niggers” in my woodshed?

Why hadn’t my mother told me? Was this the reason she didn’t have a picture of her father, fearing I would see the physical evidence of his blackness? That I would see what she’d been hiding? Was this why she never took us to New Orleans to visit her family?

I couldn’t get it into my head that I wasn’t who I thought I was. I wasn’t this white woman. Or I was this white woman who was also this black woman. Or I was neither? Who was I really? And what did my racial mixture mean?

As I pulled out of the driveway, I glanced at myself in the rear view mirror. Nothing had changed. I looked the same. Anyone could see what I was.

JB Smoove is Larry David’s black guardian angel

Larry David and J.B. Smoove in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (Credit: HBO)

Fans are excited about the new season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; especially in these tough political times, we need humor from greats like Larry David and his crew, who have the ability to put out some of the fires that the Trump administration is setting all over the country.

Of David’s clique, Leon Black, played by JB Smoove, is my favorite. He acts as Larry’s black guardian angel, giving him the confidence he needs go out into the world and proudly piss off anyone and everyone he comes in contact with.

Earlier this week, Smoove visited “Salon Talks” to give us some updates on Larry, what we can expect in the new season of “Curb” and glimpses into his new fiction-meets-self-help memoir, “The Book of Leon: Philosophy of a Fool.”

“Normally Leon gives Larry advice, so when I thought about Leon writing a book, I thought about Leon giving Larry advice, so Larry can turn around and give it back to him,” Smoove said.

Smoove told Larry about the idea while filming.

“We were just shooting a scene, and I said you know I’m writing a book. He said oh that’s cool, and then Larry’s like you know what, you should write a Leon book.”

Watch our full “Salon Talks” conversation on Facebook to hear about how Smoove got permission from HBO to write the book, his new life as a writer and what he has in store for the fans.

Tune into Salon’s live shows, “Salon Talks” and “Salon Stage,” daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on  Salon  and on  Facebook .

Here’s who could receive Mueller’s indictment

(Credit: AP Photo/Matt York, File)

After news broke on Friday night that special counsel Robert Mueller had criminal charges approved by a federal grand jury, speculation fueled over who would receive the indictment on Monday and what they would be charged with.

Mueller is currently leading the special counsel investigation into Russia’s alleged ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign. The president, and associates that are involved, have all repeatedly denied wrongdoing in any capacity.

The charges are still sealed by order of a judge, but NBC News confirmed with multiple sources on Saturday that an indictment would be served and made public on Monday. The story corroborated the original report by CNN.

Obviously, the question everyone wants the answer to is simple: who is going to be charged?

One of the names that has been speculated the most is Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort. Manafort recently said he expected to be indicted, and last week it was reported that Manafort was under investigation by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office in an alleged money-laundering scandal.

Manafort’s financial relationship with billionaire Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, is also stronger than had been previously thought. The two have done roughly $60 million in business dealings together over the past decade.

In July, Manafort’s home was raided by the FBI and less than two months later, news came out that he was also wiretapped by the FBI. Last week, the realtor who sold him the home in Alexandria, Virginia, testified before the grand jury.

Some who have worked with Mueller in the past, have even suggested he may use an indictment against Manafort to flip him against Trump.

“There is a lot of pressure on people who are under investigation to cooperate with Mueller after this indictment,” Michael Zeldin, a lawyer who served as a special assistant to Mueller when he was director of the FBI, told the New York Daily News.

Another prime suspect has been Gen. Michael Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser before he was caught in a lie about contact with Russian officials during the campaign, or transition period.

Besides Flynn and Manafort, there are other shady suspects that have been focused on as well.

Among them are Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, who have come under scrutiny in the probe that is also “investigating whether Trump obstructed justice when he asked [Former FBI Director James] Comey to drop the Flynn investigation and then fired him in May,” NBC reported.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has also been a major suspect of the investigation after his meeting with a Russian lawyer. Prior to the meeting he had been promised damaging info against his father’s political opponent Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian effort to ensure Trump an electoral victory.

This week it was reported that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, showed up with talking points she received through collaboration with the Russian government.

Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee for five hours on Friday.

Trump’s longtime ally, Michael Cohen, testified before both House and Senate panels in which he was grilled “on emails he received in 2015 from Felix Sater, a former Trump associate with a criminal past, about a potential deal to open a Trump Tower in the Russian capital,” NBC News reported.

Roger Stone is also a longtime friend of Trump, and worked on his campaign for a period of time as well. On Friday night he went on an unhinged Twitter rant, largely directed at CNN’s Don Lemon, as Salon previously reported.

Regardless of who receives an indictment on Monday, the fact that Mueller has already filed charges highlights a significant change in the investigation.

“We’re moving away from a political fight, where everyone can see it the way they want, and into … a legal process — where there are rules of evidence, facts are established. … Bob Mueller is known to be a pretty careful prosecutor,” MSNBC’s Ari Melber said, according to Axios.

Matt Miller, a former Obama Justice Department Official told Axios, “I think it means this will be a rolling investigation. Rather than conduct his entire investigation and then wrap things up with indictments and possibly a report at the end, he is doing it in stages, the way the Justice Department might attack a drug cartel or a mafia family.”

5 Awesome things that have been ruined by their fans

(Credit: Adult Swim)

My girlfriend says that I’m an instigator. Well, if that’s true, it’s only because there is a certain type of person out there who gets so riled up by mindless support for X that they’ll act like fools when X is challenged in any way.

Speaking of different types of fans:

1. Rick & Morty: A small subset of this fanbase made the news for causing a scene at multiple McDonald’s outlets over a tie-in that wasn’t even directly promoting their show. Any group that finds themselves on the wrong side of that kind of story needs to do some soul-searching.

I suspect that the type of “Rick & Morty” fan I’m talking about falls into that nebulous area that separates people who can merely recognize smart storytelling from those who actually understand it. Can there be any better example of this than an overprivileged mob getting semi-ironically outraged over a joke whose punchline is nihilism and randomness? Can anyone imagine Rick, one of the titular characters of their beloved show, acting in the way that they did?

The worst part about the “Rick & Morty” bros is that they don’t realize just how unremarkable they really are. We have had ridiculous pop culture obsessions before and we will have them again. I could try to armchair psychoanalyze the archetypical “Rick & Morty” fan, but I suspect it wouldn’t tell me anything different than I’d learn about fans of other properties. That’s the thing that the “Rick & Morty” bros don’t get: Rick is right about life being pointless. Stop acting like a cliché and try to do something interesting!

2. Sports fans: You know where I’m going with this. There is a certain type of sports fan who just cannot detach himself from his emotions. This person will shift from volcanically angry to histrionically weepy, and anyone who breathes a word of criticism about his team does so at their semi-genuine peril.

Since my favorite sport is football, I’ve observed this most often while watching various Super Bowls (I’m definitely a casual fan). Since I’m rarely going to find myself rooting for either of the teams playing (i.e., I’m not a New England Patriots fan), I just like to watch the game and enjoy its merits as a game. But I always need to mind my surroundings when I do so, because any wayward comment in front of the wrong sports fan can cause interminable hours of conversation. Sometimes it is hostile and others just overly intense, but it is never interesting and it’s usually uncomfortable.

3. Video games: Roger Ebert was wrong. Video games are an art form. The proof is that video game culture has been intersecting with social justice politics like crazy over the past few years. On the plus side, this has involved video game criticism analyzing the social consequences of the art as well as its more immediate qualities. The darker side, of course, is what we see in the anti-feminist internet campaign known as Gamergate or gaming celebrities like PewDiePie getting caught in their very own racism scandals.

I’m not even going to discuss who has been harassed by whom and when, where and why. The bottom line is that, if a fanbase is being criticized for having members who act like jerks, what is the good reason for not addressing that behavior? Even if their main concern is ethics in gaming journalism, as they claim, in what reasonable world is that more important than large groups of people saying they feel mistreated when they share their hobby? Why not just believe them and try to make them feel more welcome, regardless of whether they’re describing sexism, racism, or just the nerd equivalent of acting like a meathead?

And then, if necessary, tend to your consumer revolt.

4: Bernie Sanders: If you’re a Bernie Sanders supporter who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, you are part of the problem in politics today.

They know who they are, and I’m sure they have already heard this reason from their Clinton-supporting friends and/or other political writers. The problem is that they view their ability to not be persuaded as some kind of testament to their mental fortitude, rather than as an Achilles’ heel.

These are the people who believe that one can say no wrong about Sanders, except maybe that he endorsed Clinton. They ignore the man’s staunch pro-women’s rights views by dropping some of the vilest misogyny you’ll see in message board debates. Their hatred of Clinton surpasses anything that can be reasonably chalked up to ideology, and the truth is I suspect many of them would have voted for Donald Trump over her if forced to choose. And it’s quite likely that if the Democrats err in 2020 by nominating a neoliberal — and that would be a monumentally dumb error, to be sure — these Sanders supporters could give us four more years of Trump.

They aren’t benignly passionate. They are uncompromising in the worst way. Speaking of which…

5. The Constitution: You should read the Constitution some day. In fact, check out the story behind the Constitution as well. It’s a tale of great statesmen mingling with ordinary politicians, working on compromises in order to  design the architecture of the world’s oldest active democratic government.

So why is it that the people most likely to drop the Constitution in a debate are doing so to be uncompromising?

Yes, it’s vital that we connect our existing governmental principles to the ideals embodied in that document, but its also important to remember that the authors of both that and America’s other founding documents often disagreed with each other. It’s not hard for anyone supporting a given position in modern debate to connect their views to those of the founding fathers (I do it all the time). It’s useful as a way to develop intelligent political theory, but the ones who constantly bring up the Constitution seem to do so to shut down debate, not open it up.

If passive-aggressive obstreperousness could be a thing, this would be it.

ESPN’s Barstool Sports debacle is the sports network’s reckoning

(Credit: barstoolsports.com)

If someone asked ESPN President John Skipper what could be worse than cancelling a show one week after its debut, he’d probably be hard-pressed to find an answer. But ESPN’s divorce this week from the very-short-lived late-night show, “Barstool Van Talk,” may not even be the worst news coming out of Bristol, Connecticut this week. Sporting News reported late Thursday that ESPN staff was bracing for another round of layoffs, six months after an unprecedented purge of 100-or-so employees, many of whom were on-air talent.

All this comes along with the still-ongoing controversy over how the network treated SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill after her twinned series of controversial tweets criticizing President Donald Trump and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Some slammed ESPN for overreacting, when it handed down a suspension to her. Others pilloried it for not firing her. Given that the network perhaps needs her more than she needs it, its inability to handle the situation in a graceful way points to a nagging inflexibility and just how precarious its position truly is.

These were just the latest setbacks for a network struggling in the new media landscape. Combating cord-cutters and costly programming rights to air NFL and NBA games, ESPN has seen lower profits in recent years, which motivated the media behemoth to make some drastic changes, including massive turnover in the personnel department. From Jayson Stark and Ed Werder to Dana O’Neil and Andy Katz, ESPN has shed some of its most prominent journalists and front-facing talent to accommodate the ever-shifting sports broadcasting industry.

“Dynamic change demands an increased focus on versatility and value, and as a result, we have been engaged in the challenging process of determining the talent — anchors, analysts, reporters, writers and those who handle play-by-play — necessary to meet those demands,” Skipper said in a statement after the layoffs in April.

It was this transition that likely led to ESPN’s unlikely partnership with Barstool Sports.

“ESPN and Barstool Sports have teamed to create a new program ‘Barstool Van Talk,’ featuring Barstool’s Dan “Big Cat” Katz and PFT Commenter,” the first sentence of ESPN’s press release said.

This sentence alone should have sounded the alarms in Skipper’s head. ESPN, one of the most formidable media empires in the world, would now rely on personalities named Big Cat and PFT Commenter to anchor its late-night slate.

That’s not to disparage Barstool’s well-respected “Pardon My Take” podcast. Katz and PFT Commenter know how to entertain their target audience, and the podcast obviously provided Barstool Sports enough cachet to attract ESPN to its brand. Nevertheless, this partnership was doomed at the outset, so it should be of no surprise that ESPN decided to cancel “Barstool Van Talk” after one episode.

When ESPN announced its new show earlier this month, it did not go well internally. Many ESPN employees complained of the partnership, most vocally network host Sam Ponder, who has been the subject of scorn and ridicule on Barstool’s platforms.

Welcome to the ESPN family @BarstoolBigCat (& welcome to all ur minions who will respond to this so kindly) pic.twitter.com/AzgfdDx2FK

— Sam Ponder (@sam_ponder) October 16, 2017

Ponder’s gripe with Barstool Sports ultimately prevailed. On Monday, ESPN abruptly canceled the 10-day-old partnership with Barstool Sports. Skipper belatedly realized his network could not separate itself from Barstool’s controversial reputation.

“Effective immediately, I am canceling Barstool Van Talk,” Skipper said in a statement. “While we had approval on the content of the show, I erred in assuming we could distance our efforts from the Barstool site and its content.”

Beyond the “Pardon My Take” podcast, Barstool’s content is a jumbled mix of college humor, female objectification and sports talk. The website, for example, curates an Instagram account called Barstool Smokeshows, a collage of white girls rocking bikinis and sports jerseys.

Although ESPN desperately wants to court the highly-desirable 18-34 demographic, it’s hard to imagine this kind of baggage was worth it, especially given the timing of the partnership. With Hollywood and cable news facing a flurry of sexual assault and harassment allegations, ESPN decided to wed the most crude brand in the sports world.

To make matters worse for ESPN, a young yet well-financed startup called The Athletic has just poached another respected sports journalist from traditional media. Former Associated Press reporter Jon Krawczynski announced this week that he would be joining The Athletic, a new sports website whose sole business plan is to pillage talent from newspapers and then charge a subscription fee to its readers.

“We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing,” Alex Mather, a co-founder of The Athletic, told The New York Times in an interview that came out this week. “We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”

It is this attitude that has alluded ESPN and its parent company, Disney. An investment in talent should be the No. 1 priority for a media company, not outsourcing content making to a tainted brand.