Bloggy Linky Goodness – My 500th Post
Second, this is my 500th blog post. And I want you all to be properly impressed by this feat because it was done with children climbing all over me. I’m not even kidding – last fall, Olivia was channelling the spirit of a cat and kept sitting on my head and neck while I typed. Be impressed, damnit. According a guesstimation based on the usual length of my blog posts, this means I have written approximately as many words here at The Upside Down World as are in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Hobbit. And I’ve only occasionally repeated myself. So, yay me! Too bad I don’t have any rum to have a celebratory drink with. I guess you’ll have to have one for me. But only if you’re old enough and not a recovering alcoholic. In which case, just grab some water and say, “yay Rebecca!” with that instead. B-b-b-b-but, but wait – it gets better! In honor of my 500th blog post, I’m offering 5 days of free-ness on the Kindle version of The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress. From Wednesday through Sunday of this week, you will be able to download my book from Amazon free of charge. I’m giving you a few days advance notice so you have time to inform your family and friends and arrange your downloading parties to take advantage of this amazing offer.
Third – and this is really the best news of all – I think I finally reached spiritual home today. The long journey I’ve been on is complete and I’m ready to start a whole new leg of the adventure. It’s good. I know some of you have been worried (hi, Mom!), but I’m finally OK. I can’t begin to guess when my non-spiritual life will pick up, but that’s just piddly stuff compared to where I’m at now. However, the details are all stuff I’ll have to be getting into over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
Oh – and speaking of my mom, today is my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary! Yep – that’s them on their wedding day up at the top there. They are traveling through the Canadian Rockies where they took their honeymoon right this moment. Only this time, I’m pretty sure they are using hotels and not a tent. So, if you still have that drink handy say, “congratulations, Rebecca Trotter’s mom and dad!” (I’m sure that’s how they want to be addressed these days – as “Rebecca Trotter’s mom and dad”! LOL) If your drink’s already gone, pour yourself another and maybe think about cutting back on the sauce, will ya?
At any rate, I suppose the only bad news I have for y’all is that this week’s edition of Bloggy Linky Goodness is a little less linky. It’s been a helluva week. So, now that all that ado is done, here’s this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness:
Mom and Dad: There’s a BIG Problem with America’s Justice System This is actually a post I read months ago and looked up again this week during a discussion of race in America.The author (I forget his name and I’m too lazy to look it up. He writes for cracked.com though.) takes us through reasons that our justice system is completely borked. I’m not going to try and summarize it, because I can’t do it justice. It’s long, but TOTALLY worth it. Go read it. Pass it on.
The 1 Thing You Really Have to Know About Your Family I must tell you that I usually avoid Ann Voskamp’s site. It’s one of those sites that automatically plays music in the background and I can’t find the button to mute it. Sites that play music drive me nuts – even when it’s nice music like Ann’s. Probably because the sound brings all of my kids running to ask me what I’m doing. BUT, this post was totally worth it. The title doesn’t begin to do it justice. Ann and her family just got back from visiting Haiti and beautifully shares her experiences and the whiplash experience of going from first world to third world and back to first world again. I can hardly recommend this post enough. It made me cry.
This Child’s View of Single-Motherhood Over at the American Conservative, Michael Brendan Dougherty shares a touching examination of single parenthood through the eyes of someone who grew up with a single mom. Loved it. BTW, if you are conservative (or conservative-ish) but are sick of the feces encrusted pap that comes out of the usual conservative channels, I highly recommend checking out The American Conservative. It’s smart, creative and not party or ideologically driven. Good stuff.
Being Good For Nothing Lynn Ungar offers an excellent rebuff of the idea that we ought to encourage fear as a way of getting everyone to behave themselves. As Einstein said, “If people are only good because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
Gospel Coalition, Rachel Held Evans and The Missionary Position Those of you who hang out around the Christian blogosphere could hardly help but catch wind of a real doozy of a dust-up between the complimentarians and the egalitarians. Some idiot man decided to give his opinion of the 50 Shades of Grey phenomena* by saying that rape and BDSM are the expected outcome of not allowing for the natural order of things – men in charge, women submitting – to occur as they were meant to. No I’m not making that up or exaggerating. He really said that. His claim was that when this natural ordering was denied, frustrated people will seek to act out their desires through more deviant means. Rachel Held Evans offered a forceful rebuttal, an argument ensued, apologies had to be issued, particularly offensive posts were removed, Ms. Evans graciously accepted said apologies, so on and so forth. I personally avoided the whole thing since I don’t really have much sway or anything unique to add and I can have a hard time being nice in the middle of such conflicts. But, I did read Elizabeth Chapin’s wonderful response to the issue and think that if you go read it, you will know all you need to know about the whole deal. The take away: sex and power should not be colliding in God’s economy.
Finally, I’m a bit slow-on-the-get-go and I just watched Brene Brown’s wonderful TED talk on Vulnerability this week. I’ve embedded the video below if you missed it or want to revisit the joy that it is. You can also check out her beautiful website and blog Ordinary Courage. In fact, her blog was where I came across that Raymond Carver poem which inspired a rather lovely blog post earlier this week.
*About 50 Shades of Grey – I don’t know why everyone feels compelled to offer some opinion about it any ways. You want my opinion? Here it is: I wish people would stop telling me on facebook that they are reading the damn thing. Really. Stop. The world does NOT want to know.
So, there’s this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness. I hope you enjoy. Now, go forth to click and visit. And a reminder: if you are a blogger who has a post you’re especially proud of or a reader who’s read something you think everyone else should read too, send the link to me. You can email me at ratrotter73@yahoo.com or go to the contact page above and fill out the form there.
Pass It On!
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