Five Star Friday's 242nd Edition Is Brought to You By Javier Marías

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by love for a father over the years, parenting through childhood mental illness, accepting truth of your emotional needs, a car accident, a history with phone tapping, using your time to do greater things, loving simply, food and recovery, the joy in amateur passions, and Javier Marías:


photo credit: Carmen Alonso Suarez

To think of posterity nowadays is ludicrous because things do not last. Books seem to last more than films or records but even they do not last very long. Now more than ever, we depend on the mercy of the living.

     — Javier Marías, in "Javier Marias, The Art of Fiction No. 190", interviewed by Sarah Fay in The Paris Review

Happy Friday!

"A Father's Frown" by David Leite at Leite's Culinaria:

At that moment, I no longer cared what he had done or said years ago. All that mattered was that he loved me and I loved him. There wasn't time for tears, though. I had work to finish. Because I knew that when I put a plate of blintzes before my father and he took his first bite, we'd show our love in our old familiar way.

"How to Keep It Together When Your Child Is In Crisis — Or Not" by Amanda Jette Knox at The Maven of Mayhem:

He's a superhero, that one. His cape might be a little tattered at the moment, but I can't wait to watch him fly again.

"You're Not Needy. You're Starving" by Rachel W. Cole at RachelWCole.com:

So you're starving. That's okay.

You can begin there. Begin bit by bit. or bite by bite.

Begin by renaming this 'neediness' with a more accurate term: hunger.

"The Bruising Will Come Later" by enderFP at The Red Monkey Blog:

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things that you get ashamed of because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size they they're brought out.

"Tapped Out: Phone Monitoring, Young Love, and Me" by Dan Sinker at DanSinker.com:

I wish I could say I was outraged by the NSA PRISM project, by the collection of cellphone metadata, by any of it. I am disturbed by all of it, disappointed for sure, but outrage would imply that my worldview was shattered. But the world I've lived in for a long time is the world we've all been plunged into with the revelations this week.

"Part 5: Thousands of "Wrong!"s Do Make a Right, After All." by Jennifer Gilbert at The Trephine:

If you regret something, you should fix it if you can, even if it will take a while. I’m with my mom on this one: That time is going to go by anyway.

"Six Words You Should Say Today" by Rachel at Hands Free Mama:

When simply watching someone makes your heart feel as if it could explode right out of your chest, you really should let that person know.

It is as simple and lovely as that.

"Life Without an Oven" by Elissa Altman at Poor Man's Feast:

In the coming months — eighteen of them, before I moved back to Manhattan to get on with the business of my life — my grandmother's ancient aluminum pots clattered on the stovetop, their bottoms rounded and dimpled with age. I chopped with my great-grandmother's hockmesser — the four pound, wood-handled cleaver she carried over from Romania; I steamed what needed steaming in a white enameled colander set over a pot of boiling water; I wine-braised spatch-cocked pigeon in an old Teflon fry pan covered with a warped cookie sheet; I dredged Branzino in seasoned egg and flour and slid it into a hot, butter-coated 1930s oval metal casserole that had baked decades of kugel; I drank cheap red wine out of the tiny four-ounce milk glasses of my childhood Sunday afternoons; I drizzled warm, sectioned figs with the dregs of my grandfather's Slivovitz that I found in the depths of the hall closet, buried behind torn shopping bags bursting with the fading letters that my father had written to his parents from the Pacific during World War II when he was nineteen.

"For the Love" by Kent Lassman at Radical Immersion:

I believe we are all amateurs. Learning, striving, improving, and critically, competing. All of us get paid when we do well. The means of payment vary and the measure of a good performance is highly personal, but we all get back as much or more than what we put into the sport. That is how love works in other aspects of life too. When you give it freely, it multiplies, enriches and is paid back.

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. Submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

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Five Star Friday's 241st Edition Is Brought to You By A.M. Homes

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by a frank talk about sexual shame, violence in Turkey, a close-minded mother-in-law, missing a dear grandmother, feminism in Cuba, watching the end of parenthood arriving, the reality of adoption, and A.M. Homes:


photo credit: David Shankbone

I think of writing anything, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, as almost like writing a piece of music. You have to hit the pitch correctly. Part of the very beginning of something is finding what those first sounds will be. And that helps guide you through the rest of it, whatever it is.

     — A.M. Homes in "Out of the Darkness, Richard Wolinsky interviews A.M. Homes", Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Happy Friday!

"I Still Have Shame About Sex and I Hate It" by Queerie Bradshaw at QueerieBradshaw.com:

I think I am ashamed of my sexuality.

I think I am ashamed that I write about sex.

I think I am ashamed that I like sex.

How could I not be? We live in a culture that puts a price tag on women for how desirable they are, then bankrupt them for having desire.

"What Is Happening In Istanbul?" by Sumandef Hakkında at İnsanlik Hali:

I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because at the time of my writing most of the media sources are shut down by the government and the word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.

"From Your Little Horrors" by Hannah Curious at The Ideal Wife Giveaway:

"But I am white, and I speak English!", I mock-protest at my hubby with a little amused moue every time Mom gets mentioned, because if we didn't laugh at how much this hurts then it would crush us.

"Things" by Erika at Be Gay About It:

I spend hours each day in the same light as her and, somehow, this feels more meaningful to me than any thing she wrapped for me in paper in the 34 years we had together as grandmother and granddaughter.

"From the Washtub to the Washing Machine" by Yoani Sánchez at Generation Y:

In a country where a washing machine costs an entire year's salary, we can't talk about women's emancipation.

"It's a Lot" by Lisa Marie Harvey at Empty the Well:

As soon as I confronted the limits of my role in their lives, I tried to take the world apart, to understand which forces I'd need to surround my children with. I needed to raise people who would not be eaten by the machinery of existence but who would become real contributors to their communities. I chose lessons in compassion and kindness over sight words and arithmetic. I chose free play outdoors over organized sports. I made all these choices and I second-guess them still. Of course I do.

"Just Adopt" by Harriet Fancott at See Theo Run:

There is no such thing as just adopting.

You craft a story of how you became a family, a story of love and sorrow, and you cry when you tell it: You cry for the crushing grief of the mother, and the motherland, that lost a child, a child whose smile lights up a room, whose skin glows with health and whose potential seems vast and limitless.

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. Submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

And because you are a fan of finding good new writing on the internet:

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Five Star Friday's 240th Edition Is Brought to You By Philip Pullman

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by the crazy shit that doesn't kill us, feedback gut punches that work, being really kick ass at something weird and cool, figuring out how to find your ice cream, becoming greater than they knew, the preservation of integrity, opening up to a new way of seeing things, and Philip Pullman:


photo credit: Adrian Hon

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

     — Philip Pullman

Happy Friday!

"Catastrophe" by Keply Pentland at Carpe Whatever:

I've been thinking a lot about catastrophes. I've been thinking about controlled burns, about smashing mirrors, about broken systems. I've been thinking about that moment when everything is smoking rubble around your feet.

"The Fight Club Method to Feedback" by Demian Farnworth at The CopyBot:

Listen, this fantasy has nothing to do with a lack of self-respect, but a preferable aura of brutality in writing, in everything. A sadistic attitude towards productivity. In other words, you don’t truly create unless you suffer.

It's an entirely romantic vision I confess. But think of it as the Fight Club method to feedback.

"How to Be Legendary" by Andrea Scher at Superhero Journal:

They love him.

And my guess is that they love him because he was brave.
They love him because he was human.
He was afraid and he went for it anyway.

"‘Think Light’ to Get the Most Out of Your Time on the Mat" by Gail Rice at Pramoda Yoga:

The idea of placing my forearms on the mat, kicking up and finding balance without using a wall has, to this point, been an idea of unattainable grandeur.

A few nights ago, however, my teacher Alyson D’Souza threw us a curveball and instead of having our palms face down on the mat like usual, she asked us to spin our palms face up. This totally new change (however minor it may appear) set my expectation meter back to zero.

"This Week In Gratitude" by Mr Lady at Shannonigans:

In second grade I learned that adults can be very cruel, and I am grateful for that, and for her, because in so many ways she taught me exactly would grow up not to be.

"In the End Was the Word and the Word Was the Sponsor's" by Jeff Jarvis at Medium:

If we're doing what we do to fool the public, to sell them crappy content or a shill's swill, to prioritize paying customers' interests over readers', then we will cannibalize whatever credibility, trust, and value our brands have until they dry up.

"Unlearning How To Be Strong" by Linda at Outrunning the Storm:

When I was in middle school, I came home from a sleepover one Saturday morning to find an empty house. On my bed was a note scribbled in black marker in my mother’s familiar gently looping handwriting that read simply.

I just can’t take it anymore. I loved you.

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. If you have read a really good piece on someone else's weblog, submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

And because you are a fan of finding good new writing on the internet:

• Subscribe — Subscribe to this website to keep up with us every week.
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