Thursday roundup

Poland's democracy was only skin-deep.

RIP Jeremy Stone

“With a free press,” Mr. Stone wrote recently, repeating what his father had told him, “if the government does something wrong, it will become known and the government can fix it. But if something goes wrong with a free press, the country will go straight to hell.”

And Clare Hollingworth.

This is the country I know.
 
It's good that the women's march has raised intersectionality as an issue (though I agree that finger-wagging isn’t best way to have that conversation), but someone please explain to me how reproductive rights are for well-off white women, as per the article:

For too long, the march organizers said, the women’s rights movement focused on issues that were important to well-off white women, such as the ability to work outside the home and attain the same high-powered positions that men do. But minority women, they said, have had different priorities. Black women who have worked their whole lives as maids might care more about the minimum wage or police brutality than about seeing a woman in the White House. Undocumented immigrant women might care about abortion rights, they said, but not nearly as much as they worry about being deported.

I care about the minimum wage and police brutality, too, but it's insulting to black women who work as maids to assume they don't care about other issues. Presumably, some of these black women have children or relatives in other career fields where equal pay matters. Similarly, who thinks "Well-off white women" have the most to lose in restricting abortion rights? Well-off women (of any race) will always find a way to get an abortion.

Much of these musings about class resonated with me. I, too, grew up among "white ethnics," though my family's circles were more diverse. I'm not sure when exactly my family went from living frugally by necessity to living frugally by choice (or at least habit).

It's always interesting to me when a letter-writer is really far off, as is this misguided women worried about her sister's kitchen reveal party. I had a party to try out my grill. So what?

Fashion is art, and by extension, a political statement.

Yeah, I wouldn't even apologize for not taking dietary advice from obese people (yes, there are obese people in my life who think they are in a position to critique my eating habits).

Sigh. I agree that we have to balance our own sanity with activism, 

So I don’t read the news as much as I did. I don’t go on social media as much as I used to. I’ve started to retreat inwards. I read books and walk my dog and try to ignore the dumpster fire going on outside, the smell of democracy burning.

but self-care as I define it isn't self-coddling; it's taking care of ourselves because we do everything better--activism included--when we're well. Self-care, then, means eating and sleeping well, exercising, and whatever else it takes to stay strong. It's not some fru-fru "treat yourself to a pedicure and forget don't bother calling your elected representatives."
 
There's no joy in starving artistry (or writerdom).

I've long written about how food informs who we are, even as it doesn't define us. I, too, couldn't date someone boring enough to prefer boring food. But this piece is terribly written; I hope her food writing is better.