Five Star Friday's 204th Edition Is Brought to You By Eudora Welty

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by the value of relationships whether online or off, consciousness, the brevity of life, the threat to masculinity presented by women and gay men, what choice really means when it comes to women and pregnancy, homelessness and hope, maintaining your humanity during this American political season, grief and moving forward, what it can be like to be a pretty girl living in a mysoginist society, the difference between faith and religion and what that means for your politics, and Eudora Welty:

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

     — Eudora Welty

Happy Five Star Friday on a Thursday night!

"Unfollow: Social Media and the Sliding Scale of Friendship" from The Kids Are Alright:

Sometimes we exchange virtual business cards or a laugh at a conference and then enjoy the simple space we take up in each other’s online life.

And sometimes the lines become more blurred; our relationships become harder to contain, harder to compartmentalize. We begin to see people simply as chattel, as numbers, as lists, to be contracted or expanded according to whim or want.

"Akin, RNC Comments and Polices Remind Us: Abortion is a Gay Issue" from Owldolatrous:

Together, Kelsie and I challenge the idea that manhood means sex with women, and that women must participate in the ancient social system we created–the demand that men own their progeny and, through that ownership, control the (until recently) unknowable: lineage, parentage, inheritance, the mystery of who a woman slept with and how the baby in her belly came to be.

Kelsie and I put the potential for emasculation into the atmosphere. We tempt the order of things. By having sex with whom we choose, when we choose, we shake the unstable ground on which they stand.

"Social Media and the Fight Against Homelessness" by Charlie O’Hay at Type-A Parent:

I urge others: if you have an idea that might help the disadvantaged, even if you do not see it as a national or global initiative, please do not quit. Keep going. Help one person at a time. And if it seems to be working, tell others of its success. Use the social media avenues open to you. You never know how far a dream can go.

"Quick Note About The Bridge Between My Daughter Brushing Her Hair And Me Making My Bed" from Black Hockey Jesus:

When you consider — really consider — how well your plans go, any plan whatsoever, you'll begin to detect that your will doesn't carry much weight in this world. The easy mistake here is to take charge, try harder, to hunker down like those southern men and get'r done. That's okay. The world will wait.

"To Everyone I Know During This Election" from RambleRamble:

...maybe that doesn't matter to you. Maybe it doesn't matter that you're saying I'm stupid, unAmerican, deserve to be kicked out of the country, deserve to die, don't have any compassion, don’t care about my fellow citizens, or am a moron...

But to me it does. Because when this political season is over, and the races have been decided, the non-stop political nonsense will die back down to a low boil. But you and I? We’ll still know each other. And I'll know what you really think... of me.

"How to Solve Everything" from Breed 'Em and Weep:

She moved for you. She always moved for you. No ache or pain was too much to keep her from making you a snack, not even if you protested, which sometimes you did, though probably not as often as you should have.

You loved her, in some ways, the way you love your daughters: fiercely, protectively, with a realization that she was only going to be yours for a short time.

"Knocked Over: On Biology, Magical Thinking and Choice" by Martha Bayne at The Rumpus:

I was not raped or victimized. I am not 13, uneducated, or impoverished. I do not live in Kansas or Alabama or North Carolina or Arizona. I did have some excellent consensual sex without benefit of wedding ring or adequate health insurance. And then I got pregnant and the choices at my disposal threw me into a monthlong tailspin until, in a few painful hours, those choices vanished, through a very nonmagical physiological process.

No one has unlimited choices; that’s a fact. So what lingers after this long, hot, confusing summer is this: With so many forces legitimately outside our control – forces of biology, history, geography, age — why is every woman in the United States not running blue-faced onto the field to do battle with those who would take what choices she does have away?

"Of Loss and Orphans and Measuring Sticks" from Find Your Stillness:

Little boxes demanding the name and telephone number of my Emergency Contact sit blank with blinking cursors in them.

They're staring back at me.

"Orphan," my brain says.

"I Debated Whether or Not to Share This Story" from {UnWinona}:

...when people (men) want to talk about "legitimate" forms of assault, tell girls they should be nice to strangers and give men the benefit of a doubt, tell them to consider it a compliment, tell them to ignore the bad behavior of men, I want them to be forced to feel, for even one minute, what it feels like to have so much verbal hatred and physical intimidation thrown at them for nothing more than being female and not wanting to share.

"This Land Is Your Land" from A Deeper Family:

I don't want to bow to We're Right, so I'll never tell my children that this is our land and it's founded on our beliefs and now the other side and the bad people are trying to change it and make it bad. That's religion talking, not faith. It can be confusing, because it's a lot like deciphering some weeds from some plants. The leaves look so much alike, but then when you take a good look at the vine, you can tell the difference.

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.

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Comments

[monstergirlee]

Just read UnWinona's post. Wow. Another one that hits really close to home for me.
Just the other day I was at Walgreen's near my house, walking around picking up a prescription and some milk. There was a man standing in front of the dairy case but I took no notice of him because why should I? Next thing you know, he says "Why you gotta be so cold to a brother? Can't I at least get a Hi from a pretty lady?" And it went on from there, after I said Hi, using more aggressive language and finally hurling one last abusive phrase at me while I was standing in line to check out, and he was on his way out.
WTF did I do to deserve that? Just because I didn't want to talk to a total stranger in a store. I don't want to be rude but I also don't really care to be friendly, I have enough friends.
Thank you for letting me rant. I had two very unnerving incidents that day, and they still bother me.

Thank you for 5 Star Friday, I enjoy the posts.

[schmutzie]

monstergirlee, that kind of thing baffles me. How is it that you owe them anything at all?!

[Heather]

Thank you for sharing the Deeper Family post. I'm honored in a big way to be here in the midst of these powerful posts. Thank you.

[Laurie]

I need a book for Grace's house -- I think I'm going for some Eudora. Fits. Happy Friday.

[Ginger]

I'm honored to be listed with such amazing writers. Thank you!