"Why don't you ask Hillary? She's Jewish." I said, "Ask me what?" and after a bit of hemming and hawing, one of the other girls asked me, "Are you offended by the Confederate flag?" I said yes. She said, "OK, but are you offended as a Jew, or are you offended as a Yankee?" I was a bit stunned, as I'd never thought of the word "Yankee" to describe myself, but that was how they saw me.

And obviously there's no reason to be bothered by a symbol of solidarity with Jim Crow that's not about being Jewish or from the north. @@

[Edited to be more clear about who I'm rolling my eyes at.]

Drive by picspam!!

Me and Em on Halloween: [link]

Emeline as Sleeping Beauty: [link]

MWAH!!!

waves wand

t poof!

Drive by picspam!!

Wow, you look fabulous. Great costuming there.

Great pictures, Aimee! You and Em both look great.

Dog ~ma for Darcy. Poor thing.

When we had our cocker spaniel when I was a kid, he got out one year on Christmas Day and came back with a gunshot wound (superficial graze). That sucked but he recovered quickly. I hope Darcy isn't too busted up.

I am posting prone from the most comfortable hotel bed I've ever slept in. 7 hours of undisturbed sleep go a looooooong way. I'm loathe to leave its comfy confines, even to find some breakfast. But I need to get on the road and get home to help DH with the kids. The painter is coming back this afternoon so we need to keep them out of the way.

I'm a Protestant from Mississippi, and am definitely offended by the confederate flag. I was never so embarrassed to be from MS as the day we voted to keep it in its current form, such a massively shameful symbol of hate and intolerance. I had already been accepted to Caltech, but that was the day I knew I would not be going back.

Also, I'm sick. And there's a mouse under my bed. Do not want!

And there's a mouse under my bed.

Clearly you need a cat. Then there would be a dead mouse on your pillow!

Lots of healing ~ma for Darcy. Poor doggie. People stink sometimes.

Cass, your niecelet is very luck to have someone like you, to whom she can run.

Jars, Sox and I have fathers who are brothers and yet I suspect we both culturally identify more with our mothers -- mine is all Yankee and hers is distinctly Southern. I certainly think of her as having a Southern sensibility that is totally foreign to me, and I'd bet she sees a certain stoicism in me and my sisters that she'd assign to my mother's influence. One wonders what we'd be like had we been boys, because our fathers probably would have been much more interested.

IOW, it's a damn big country and our disunity is all we have to unify us.

Now I much check on Aimee's pictures...

The pictures are awesome.

I would love a cat. Not really a dead mouse, but a cat. However, I'd then be much more sick than I am. Stupid allergies. I want a Lifestyle Pet, but I don't want to pay $6000 and wait 18 months for it.

I'm a bit worried I won't be able to find a pumpkin at Thanksgiving, as they're really only a Halloween thing over here. Maybe I can make a squash pie and just lie aout it...

Go for it! Almost nobody in the States has real pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving anyway since the canned "pumpkin" that almost everyone uses is actually a similar (but cheaper) orange squash whose name eludes me at the moment. (It's not butternut, I don't think - IIRC it's a variety whose sole purpose is to be canned as pumpkin for Thanksgiving.)

Cultural identity as a Yankee story: my grandparents spent most of their adult lives in Boston and currently live in New Hampshire, but my grandmother's family originally comes from Tennessee. As part of their annual book-buying tour of the East Coast (they're antiquarian book dealers), they always meet up with a group of women booksellers in Atlanta who my grandmother has become friendly with, to buy books and chat and such. On one occasion I don't know what the topic was, but one of them made a comment along the lines of "You're such a nice person/have such good manners, you know, for a Yankee." And my grandmother (who does have very good manners) said, well you know my mother's family is from Tennessee. At which one of the women in the group looked pointedly at one of the others and said "I told you so."

DH and I do identify as Jewish even as atheists who haven't set foot in a synagogue since my brother's bar mitzvah. It wasn't something we gave much thought to until we had the baby, but as soon as we found out I was pregnant we both realised we did want Dylan to be raised as a Jew, whatever that turns out to mean.