November 27, 2014

Drove to Smith Mountain Lake for family Thanksgiving, delayed for a day by the snow further north.

Listened to the first couple of episodes of Serial in the car. OK, yeah, it’s pretty compelling radio. I have seen (but not read) some bloggers talking about their discomfort with Koenig’s whiteness vs her subjects’ non-whiteness. Perhaps I will seek some of those critiques out & read them.

I’m less concerned about racism or cultural tourism than I am about her frequent foregrounding of her lack of distance, though. But at least she gives her subjects the opportunity to call her on that.

We are in cabins in the state park, so we’re blissfully free of TV (and Wi-Fi), and plenty far removed from the world of commerce. Best of luck to everyone out in Ferguson and elsewhere who are actively protesting at stores, and to everyone else who is boycotting.

Our family is small, and all of my grandparents are dead. Even when they were alive there wouldn’t have been much in the way of heated political arguments around the dinner table. I was picked on plenty at school growing up, for being a smartass and then a nerd and then kind of a freak, but I never had to argue with my own family about politics or society or anything else, and for that I’m eternally thankful.

November 27, 2014