Five Star Friday's 196th Edition Is Brought to You By Ken Burns

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by sensationalism of our lowest common denominators, being alone with two boys for a week for the first time, van nostalgia, an enlightening perspective on sex work and the people who do it, what alcoholic parents give to their children and grandchildren, and Ken Burns:





Happy Friday!

"The Outside is the New In. Five Observations." from Jane Devin:

The Outside is now In. Celebrities are being made of gold-chained pawn shop owners, spray-tanned children, polygamists, pregnant teens, single-minded narcissists, and those who are rich or famous by birth or marriage. It's a strange phenomena and one that I suspect is connected, in some loose, sideways fashion, to the ever-expanding and often bizarre divisiveness of politics, which seems to have forsaken intelligence for the potential to be controversial.

"The Lost Boys" from Mama Non Grata:

Small one is collecting bugs in the backyard, big one is reading by himself upstairs, and I am making roast chicken with Greek salad and corn on the cob. All seems calm and normal. This is how horror films begin.

"The Mobile Home" from Julie C. Gardner:

So we passed the time playing games on the nubby carpet that left imprints on the backs of our legs. We waved out the back window at the passengers of other cars under periwinkle skies dotted by whipped-cream clouds.

We were a model of efficiency, a single family in an orange house on wheels that could transport us anywhere we wanted while we dreamed.

"A Complicated View of Sex Work" from Girl With the Most Cake:

A trafficked woman is not a sex worker any more than a woman is sexually active because she's raped. You harm both sex workers and trafficking victims by grouping us together. And by harm, I mean you're trying to kill us.

"Stop the Merry-Go-Round, I Want to Get Off" from Momalog:

When you’re an alcoholic, you rob yourself of all spirituality. The bottle replaces whatever God you may have believed in and that bottle becomes your altar. Whether or not you can admit it, alcohol is what you worship. So over time, every single thing you love gets sacrificed at that altar: your reputation, your mind, your job, your money, your driver's license, your dignity, your health, your potential, your ability to reason, your sanity, your relationship, your children — it all gets sacrificed on the altar at the foot of that bottle. My relationship with my sister is one of the costs of my parents' alcoholism, one of the things they sacrificed. I have accepted it and for about eight years, when I had closed the door and bolted it shut, when we couldn't even bring ourselves to speak to each other, I was relieved.

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Comments

[Ado]

So tickled to see my post up here with these 5 (amazing) other posts. Thank you, Shmutzie, for introducing me to some *beyond great* blogs w. truly excellent content and for including Momalog here. PS: Congrats on your 5 years since your surgery! Celebrate with a big piece of pie or something...! (-:

[deborah quinn]

I love five-star thursFridays. And that Ken Burn clip is fantastic. It's all about story - always has been - no matter if your story gets told in fiction or non-fiction, image or word, sound or shape. We are creatures driven by narratives, which is, perhaps, why we can so often be moved to act & react from fear of those who challenge the narratives we have decided to see as "truths."

[Maggie May]

That article by Jane Devin is such good writing.