Heritage

I'm lucky enough to know a language professor who talks about heritage languages. How the languages that were spoken in your household become a little easier for you to pick up later, even if you yourself never spoke them because there are bits you absorbed even if you didn't fully understand all the grammar reasons. 

I was visiting family a had a chance to play mahjong. I took to it immediately and eventually showed up at a library mahjong event where I had the great fortune of being picked up by a threesome whose fourth had gotten stuck at work. They were less new than me, but not playing for points, and very patient with my missteps. I loved it. Did it help that I won once? For sure. 

I went back and played at an instructor table which was helpful if slower. And then I found an event with tea and Mahjong and a friend and I went and played for hours. 

Now I would love to tell you I plugged into the ancient heritage of my family's mahjong history. But honestly, the thing that helped us my immediate family used to play hours and hours of gin rummy. Every summer we'd sit around the table and play. It helped that we'd be in a house with minimal TV reception and no cable. It helped that we had no bedtime if we kept playing cards. 

We were ruthless, we learned how to observe what cards the others were picking up and discarding. We trash talked. 

And so mahjong feels like an extension of that. Members of my family do play mahjong. And maybe I am also tapping into that heritage in some way. 

I am having a lot of fun. Even when I don't win. Though winning is a lot of fun. 

Happy Banned Book Week

Happy Banned Books Week, I got you a rant. 

Yesterday I was at a book event and a person got up, walked over to one of the authors, took their mic and then spoke for several minutes without stopping. The gist of what he said was, he wanted more kids books for Filipino kids. 

Now this is a delightful wish. And not about banning. But the energy of taking the mic from the person speaking and then declaring there are no kids books for Filipino kids and that these five on the panel should personally fix this is the same kind of energy we get from book banners. Yes, I'm being a little mean about someone who wanted to help kids. But here's the thing. There are kids books for Filipino kids. This panel (which was not about kids books, to be clear) had two authors who have also written YA. This person could have asked the panel if they knew any kids books, and maybe learned about Newberry Award Winner Erin Entrada Kelly. A librarian (did I mention we were in a library) could have told home about the Asian Pacific American Librarian's Association awards given to books about Asian Pacific characters. 

Where I'm going is that librarians are trained to be aware of a wide range of books, be aware of the needs of their community, and to balance those with the funds available to them. 

Book banning interrupts this process. Especially because book banners these days are just copying lists they've found online. (You can tell when titles from 20 years ago, that probably no kid has asked for because it's so dated, what were texting minutes? keep showing up on the lists.) And of course when they keep banning picture books. 

I do think that parents can make choices for their children about the books they bring home. But I get mad when the book banners try to take the books out of the library altogether. Your kids may not get to read it, but what if I want to. 

Support the freedom to read. Tell your electeds you like books. Want libraries funded and able to serve the entirety of their community. Happy reading.

Non-Smoking

There's an essay floating around that is probably bait, but here we are. It speaks fondly of smoking. The thing is, I lived through the same period the author did and it, in the way nostalgia often does, leaves out some things. Smoking was allowed many places. Not schools, but that was kind of it. Restaurants had sections. There were fans or ventilation to try to keep the smoke contained. 

If you went somewhere like a concert, you had to plan for your clothes, your hair, your coat, your pores to reek of smoke. They sold basically hair Febreeze that you could spritz in your hair. Sure you could wash your hair. But sometimes, arriving home at 3am, I wanted to sleep first, but the smoke smell of my hair would be distracting while I was trying to fall asleep. I had a washable coat I wore to concerts, because I didn't want to go to work smelling like smoke all winter. 

Sure I had friends and coworkers who smoked. Sure, sometimes it was nice to dip outside with them and chat while they smoked. Unless it was rainy, or windy, or cold. 

And here's the thing. I didn't smoke. But smoking was so pervasive, that I had to plan my life around it. 

So the indoor smoking bans changed my life completely. My asthma got better. I didn't have to buy scent neutralizer for my hair. I didn't have to shower more often just because I'd been to see a concert.

Now, I assume most people are familiar with the possible dangers of smoking, to themselves and others. But it is worth noting that smoking can help with ADHD. 

But honestly, the thing I really miss from those days is not smoking. It's going to concerts for $20. Nowadays that's the surcharge tacked onto your concert ticket. 

And if what you really miss, is having an excuse to step outside of work or parties, I have great news. You can just do that. 

7 Things About the Kennedy Center

First,  disclaimer. I am not related to anyone the theater is named after.

1. Like many theaters, it is really multiple theaters. There's an opera house, concert hall, millennium stage, the terrace theater, the theater lab, a family theater, and a jazz club, all with different capacities from small to large.

2. I have had the chance to be backstage in the rehearsal areas too, and there is so much behind where the average visitor goes. 

3. Some things there are quite fancy, and some are very much not. Also some things are quite pricey, and some things are free and or cheap. 

4. Having grown up in the area, my first memory of going there I think I was about five. My aunt and uncle took me and my cousin to see "Peter Pan". 

5. "Shear Madness" was the second longest running non-musical in the US, until it recently had to close. (The longest was also "Shear Madness" in Boston. DC could have overtaken it since the Boston one closed, if recent events hadn't forced the closure of the DC run. I had every intention of dragging people to it, because I have a new group of friends I have not yet dragged to it. (In my defense, the last person I dragged to it, came with me to see it like three more times.)

6. The rooftop has a truly gorgeous view of both the city and the river.

7. DC has a lot of theaters compared to some other locales. But the loss of any is still a loss. Not every venue is suited for every kind of show. They put on things that won't all easily fit somewhere else. And the ecosystem is better and healthier with more options, not less. 

Don't Leave

One of the interesting things with the rise of so many websites employing an AI chat bot who follows you around the site offering to help, even though typing up your question is not often faster than just clicking through the pages, is they attempt to mimic sounding human. They attempt it by being overly polite and friendly. Imagine if you entered a store and a store employee offered to help and you said no I'm fine, and then you turned the corner around an aisle and there they were again. It would be weird. You would consider leaving the store without your items. 

I also once asked the chat bot to help and it told me my question required a human, which it then offered to summon for me. That summoning took so long the chat session timed out and kicked me off the site. 

One of my friends has bemoaned the ride of every site on earth asking you if you forgot something when most times you knew you hadn't checked out. Had intentionally not checked out.

Today I woke up to an email with the subject line, Don't leave. First, it was weird because it was a website I had not logged into. Of course I know they track you more ways than that, but I had hoped the social fabric was such that we could pretend they don't know who I am. Second, I found the answer to my question. I left because I was done. I'm not mad at anyone or anything, but our interaction has come to an end. But apparently now the clingy chat bot will follow you off the site to, to beg you to come back. 

I really hope stores start to re-evaluate how obnoxious and hard they've made using their sites for anything. Full disclosure, the site that followed me was my vet's site. A site I am usually not required to make any transactions on, short of arranging a vet appointment. 

Modern day shopping. Full of chat bots coded to be clingy and annoying.