Here’s a more serious Passover question for you. Passover celebrates the journey from slavery to freedom, and marks the cost of that journey, as well. (This is why we deny ourselves certain foods during the holiday, and eat matzoh — “the bread of affliction” — instead.)

I posted this on Facebook a day or two ago, and liked the responses I got, so I thought I’d take it public: What have you been freed from in this past year, and what has the price of that freedom been?

I have been freed from my self-imposed pressure to become rich and famous. That joke I used to make about “All I want is my own talk show and my face on a bus”? It wasn’t a joke. I’d still be happy to have those things, but I’ve come to realize that what is valuable about the work I do — doesn’t necessarily depend on how many people I can reach, or on the way American society keeps track of success. I write things I’m proud of, I start conversations that I think help people learn from each other, I get and give some good laughs. That really is enough. The price of that freedom was a little bit of post-publication madness, and giving up certain illusions about myself.

I have been freed from a friendship that had gone very sour, and that was leading me to censor myself in both my private and public life. The price of that freedom has been realizing that not everyone is going to think I’m one of the Good Guys. For some folks, I’m part of the problem, not part of the solution.

What about you? What have you been freed from, and what price have you paid?

My all-time favorite kosher food ad:

And for those of you who are simply interested in high-quality food, kosher or not, may I recommend Wild Idea Buffalo: meat from buffalo that live grass-fed, unconfined lives and never hear a discouraging word until the day they are humanely slaughtered. (Does anyone else find “harvested” even more disturbing than “slaughtered”? Sometimes euphemisms are a lot worse than the actual word they are intended to replace. I ordered some last week and was very impressed with the pastrami.

(No, I am not getting any kickbacks from either Kosher.com or Wild Idea Buffalo. As delighted as I would be to have free bison brisket and crates of macaroons and matzoh delivered to my door, I’m only sharing the ad for its humor value, and the buffalo recommendation as a solution for those who, like me, need red meat in their diet but can’t stomach, as it were, factory-farming practices.)

Workin’ on a link farm
Trying to raise my hit rate
Plowing through my RSS
Pokin’ your posts.

Yes, I’m feeling silly. It’s Monday, I’m allowed! Besides, I’m married to the only Baby Boomer in North America who does not think “Spinal Tap” is funny. I have to work it in when I can.

Links!

First of all, tonight is the first night of Passover — and apparently the President and First Lady will be celebrating. I like it. Passover is probably the most universal of the Jewish holidays, and except in ultra-Orthodox circles (I assume), it’s very common for Jewish families to invite non-Jews to share in their celebrations. I also like that the first seder in the White House happened under the administration of the first African-American President and First Lady. If anyone has the right to the Exodus story in this country, it is African-Americans who, like Michelle Obama, are the descendants of slaves. Chag sameach, Mr. and Mrs. Obama.

And speaking of matters faith-related, check out this fascinating article: “Is Hearing God Like Being a Skilled Athlete?” Without making any claims for or against the existence of God, the article looks into the capacity for religious experience, and how that capacity is developed.

From God to dog: an excellent resource on why the “dominance theory” practiced by Cesar Millan, et al., is misguided and potentially harmful. Lots of good advice here. Thanks to Vera Wilkinson at The Cooperative Dog for the link. (You can become a fan of The Cooperative Dog on Facebook, and Vera posts some terrific stuff — a nice mix of the fun and the educational.)

In more doggie news, this headline from the Sacramento Bee may seem odd on the surface: “UC Davis Study Shows Dogs Can Help Youngsters Read,” but the story itself is quite nice. Apparently kids who have problems reading aloud improve significantly if they can read to an attentive, affectionate, yet wholly nonjudgmental audience: dogs!

“Avatar” is apparently the film I am most interested in talking about, and least interested in seeing, this year. Here’s another article that addresses the points some commenters were making about the appeal of the film being partly in its evocation of how biologists see the world. I don’t agree with all the writer’s points, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.

And here’s one article I do agree with, by Peter Straub, about genre and, specifically, horror. As you all have probably figured out by now, I am a great horror fan, and have always found particularly annoying the notion that 1) there is something psychologically wrong about wanting to read horror, and 2) horror isn’t “real” literature. Mr. Straub lays the smack down. (And perhaps later on I’ll discuss in more detail why I’ve been on a particular horror kick lately.)

In addition to being a horror fan, I am also a girly girl. Which is why I am annoyed with the “Pink Stinks” campaign. We don’t empower women by disparaging femininity. This campaign reminds me of a bizarre incident that happened when I was a college professor: another instructor complimented me on the sweater I was wearing, and asked what color it was. I replied, trying very hard not to look at her as though she’d lost her mind, “It’s pink.” I mean, this sweater was flat-out Pepto-Bismol pink, no possible option of “light red” or “dusty rose” or “burnt peach” about it. My colleague immediately replied, “Oh, it can’t be pink, it’s too nice!” Clearly, she had such a negative mental image of pink that the idea of an independent, intellectual, professional woman dressed in the color was literally unimaginable to her, even as I stood before her in all my peppermint glory. (Here is another article on pink, by a delightful writer I met at the New Haven event.)

This article in the New York Times has haunted me, though it gives no real answers. But we have all known people determined to sabotage their success through whatever means, people who define themselves by their failures, their resentments, their illnesses, their weaknesses.

Finally, I’ve been meaning for some time to write an ode to my new favorite television show, “Parks & Recreation.” Procrastinate long enough, and someone else will do it for you! You can ignore the inside-baseball aspect of whether Leslie Knope is a “good feminist” or not, and focus on the rest of the entry. So many sitcoms today are based on cynicism and the cringe factor, including the increasingly unwatchable “The Office.” “Parks & Recreation” is about people who genuinely care about their jobs, each other, and their beliefs, but it completely avoids sentimentality. It’s darned smart, too: a recent episode took on the liberal versus libertarian positions on food policing, in a way that made a good argument for both sides, and all this in 23 minutes of television that included a B and C plot. Not bad.

UPDATE: Whoops! Apparently some of my edits were not saved when I posted this. Sorry!

Today’s column is online here. Not having kids myself, I checked with a good friend who has wonderful common sense, and two small boys, before I sent this one in. She agreed with all my advice, and added the following good tips, as well:

1. Once the kid is beyond carrier stage, YOU, i.e., parent, are responsible for keeping him/her entertained. This means not just bringing along books/crayons/cars, etc., but also talking to and engaging the kid. Unless the patrons at the next table are absolutely besotted (and don’t assume most people are – be honest with the situation here) don’t let your kid invade/engage them all night along. Goes double for the waitstaff, whose job is to serve food, not entertain or be delighted by your kid.

2. Brunch is often better with young kids than dinner. Kids are generally at their best earlier in the day and decline as the day winds down, with the “witching hour” starting at 6 until bed time. Also, restaurants are more informal (and cheaper) earlier in the day, and more likely other folks with kids will be there.

3. FYI: one of the best baby gifts we ever got: a $100 gift card to Dining In, so we could order and have restaurant food delivered to us in the first few months. Not as good as going out, but good hot food when you have a newborn is almost as valuable as piles of clean laundry and diapers (and certainly way more valuable than any stuffed animals or bottle warmers).

Makes bit more sense in context (as most things do), doesn’t it?

So earlier this week I went down to New Haven to give a reading. I was paired with Susan Barr-Toman, whose debut novel, When Love Was Clean Underwear, is absolutely wonderful. It’s like an Anne Tyler novel, only not horribly, horribly annoying.

The train ride down was largely uneventful, until about 10 minutes before my stop. I’d finished the work-related reading I’d brought with me, and was reading a horror novel (Dan Simmon’s Carrion Comfort, which I am also enjoying greatly). I was wearing a grey turtleneck and tights, a red tweed skirt, an olive pashmina scarf, and black pearls. I am telling you this so you can get a visual image of me: an unaccompanied woman in early middle age, conservatively dressed and made up, reading a horror novel. I don’t know what it was about this combination that made the young man approach me.

He was in his early 20′s, appeared to be Latino, and was obviously gay. He came down the aisle and stopped by my seat.

“Excuse me, miss?”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any cover-up?”
“What?”
“Cover-up.” He turned and bared his neck to me — interesting choice, given that I was reading about vampires. “I just realized I have a hickey, and my parents are coming to pick me up at the train station, and they will kill me. Do you have any cover-up? I’ll pay you.”
I shook my head. “I have concealer, but that’s lighter than my skin, and look”–I pushed sleeve up and put my arm against his–”you’re darker than I am anyway.”
“Oh, it doesn’t have to be perfect, I’ll be sitting on the passenger side”–the hickey was on the right side of his neck–”just enough to hide until I get home.”
“Oh, wait! I have eyeshadow primer! That’s darker and it stays on longer anyway. Okay, get yourself over here.” I moved my bag and motioned to him to sit down. I dug through my cosmetics bag and pulled out the primer. “Here we go.”
I applied primer all over the hickey, dabbed it with my finger to blend it in, and put some powder on to set it. I turned on the overhead light and showed him the mirror of my compact. “There. How does that look?”
“Oh, that’s perfect! You’ve saved my life!”

We exchanged names and he offered to buy me a drink, and I’d have been so happy to have taken him up on it, were we not approaching my station. I wonder how amused he would have been to know that getting people out of sticky situations is my business, though rarely do I get to do so in such a concrete fashion?

Wherever you are, Eric, I hope you got home safely. And I hope that some day you can come out to your parents, or go far away from them, and live the life you need to live without concealment or concealer. And in the meantime, let us both cherish a moment of the kindness of strangers on a train.

UPDATE: Thank you for the love, you all, but I seriously did not write this as some kind of tribute to myself. It was just a moment that struck me as both profoundly human and profoundly odd — and, given the whole vampire angle, a bit amusing — and I wanted to share it. My deepest hope, actually, is that one of my creative-writing friends will use this little vignette as the inspiration for a short story!

Teabag tag du jour:

“Without realizing who you are, happiness cannot come to you.”

Okay, happiness. I’ll be at the Rialto at 7pm Friday night. At the end of the bar, sipping a Manhattan and wearing a pink rose pinned to the collar of my dress.

For the history of the teabag-tag wars, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Many of you responded enthusiastically to my use of the word “POSSLQ” in Sunday’s column, and Molly was delighted by the use of “Hoodlum” in the bad spam I received yesterday.

So what are some other underused, archaic, or eccentric words you are fond of?

I use the word “interlocutor” a lot, which Mr. Improbable says he has never heard anyone use it in conversation before. But it’s such a useful word: it basically means “someone you are having a conversation with.” And since I often talk in a meta- kind of way about conversational strategies, it does save me sometime.

What odd words do you like?

I’m back to regular programming at the boston.com blog. This one will take a bit longer, but please hang in there.

In the meantime, I must share with you the worst spamscam ever. This one got past my regular account’s spam filter. The subject line is “Get back to me ASAP” and the sender is “false.” (No, really.) The body of the text goes like this:

I hope you receive this message on time ? Sorry I didn’t inform you about my trip to the UK England for a program,I am presently in England,something extremely dreadful happened to me,I was mugged at gun point on my way to the Hotel by some Hoodlums and they made away with my Bag and other valuables. I called my bank for a wire transfer but it has proven almost Impossible to operate my account from here as they made me understand international transactions take 7 working days to be effective which i can’t wait.

I feel so devastated,now my passport and other belongings are been retained by the hotel management pending the time I pay my hotel bills.This is shameful,I need you to help me with a loan of (1,850 pounds= $3,350) to pay my hotel bills and get my self home.I will reimburse you soon as I get back Home.I will appreciate whatever you can assist me with.Can you help?

All hopes on you
Bob

I have to wonder: how would anyone who could fall for this have accumulated $3,350 to begin with?

… is online here.

Maybe you do, too. From my favorite beauty blog, Already Pretty:

And sometimes, when I’m curled up in bed listening to the alarm clock yammer at me about getting up, I think, “Why bother? Why not just throw on a sweater and jeans, put my hair in a ponytail, and slog into work un-showered? Who would care, or even notice a difference?” Sometimes when it’s 30 below and I’ve had a long day at work, I look at my gym bag and think, “Why bother? One less workout isn’t going to make a difference.” Sometimes I look at my unruly and deeply high-maintenance mop and think, “Why bother? I’ve got hats.”

Read the whole thing. I am starting to have a serious girl-crush on this woman. Michelle Obama, you have been warned. Your days as my fashion icon are numbered.