April 13, 2018

My meditation teacher says that for spring to truly be here, it has to snow on the daffodils three times. Have we made it?

1. Why Brands Market the Day Sunday. Buckwild. “But the new Sunday psychology is about reframing these impulses as attempts towards healthiness instead of evidence of unhealthiness.” She notes that because women oftentimes associate feeling guilty about what feels good, we oftentimes believe that self-care needs to come at a cost, sometimes quite literally: “Self-care often centers around spending money.”
2. The Natural Enemy of the Librarian. Is it bad that I didn’t know the history of library design and when certain functions (like a reference section, or reading rooms) came to being? I guess not, since I studied archives – but this is an interesting history of libraries, librarians, and their tempestuous relationships with architects. And priorities have certainly changed: “The use of open space as designed results in being too public and bustling a place, which should be a place for quiet study. Here the business of the library is done.” Our library is going to be renovated, and open space and a bustling place it is to become!
3. Never Going to Bed: Children Rewrite House Rules. This was a cute read – the kids set the house rules and the parents live with them for a week. Lots of free-for-all sweets and screen-time binges, and a little perspective at the end of each each.
4. How Meditating Before Eating Changed My Relationship With Food. I love this, especially the simple practice of taking three deep breaths before taking your first bite of something. “Engaging our senses allows us to make genuine changes to our diet and sense of well-being instead of being so easily led by our pangs, stress, emotions, and cravings.”
5. The Problem With Not Caring About Pop Culture. “In her talk “How the tech sector could move in One Direction,” startup investor and diversity advocate Sacha Judd explains how pop culture snobbery helped to obscure the creativity, resourcefulness and sheer technological nous of the Directioner fandom. “I was spending all this time trying to think about how to engage women with technology, and I was ignoring the fact they already were,” she says. “They were essentially already video editors, graphic designers, community managers…front-end developers, social media managers. They were absolutely immersed in technology, every day, and we weren’t paying attention, because they were doing it in service of something we don’t care about.” Fascinating!

Have a beautiful weekend.