Those Crazy Fundies

Today (May 21, 2019), Jessa (Duggar) Seewald posted on IG that “Seewald #3 will be 38 Weeks tomorrow.”  Assuming that’s true, which is probably is (?)—at the very least, it would be absurdly patronizing to assume it’s untrue—then, we can do the math and calculate Jessa’s due date as…  June 5, 2019.  But wait…  Previously, she said she was due on June 6, 2019!  (She told Jinger a due date of June 6 on Counting On, “A Bachelor No More.”)

So I’m confused.

Also, in the comments on today’s IG Post, someone asked Jessa whether she thinks she will go early or late.  Jessa responded—

… again, I’m slightly confused.  Spurgeon was due November 1, 2015, and was born on the 5th (4 Days Late).  Henry was due on February 2, 2017, and arrived on the 6th (4 Days Late).  And, in both cases, I’m getting the due dates directly from the Seewalds.  (With Spurge, they put ‘11.01.2015’ on the announcement onesie.  With Henry, Jessa said he was due on February 2nd, on Counting On!)  But, if they were actually both 5 Days Late, does that mean they were actually due on October 31 and February 1?  Should I adjust my spreadsheets?    

Instead I will be reading and thinking about Ted Bundy’s victims. I wonder where their movies are. I wonder why their names aren’t raised.

I wonder why we don’t hear about Lynda Ann Healy, a 21 year old psychology major about to graduate that semester. Lynda worked with handicapped children and got up early every day to report on the skiing conditions for local radio.

I wonder why we don’t hear about Debra Kent, a 17 year old aspiring social worker who was known for always having change to feed parking meters for strangers.

I wonder why we don’t hear about Susan Curtis. Susan was only 15 years old and was riding her bike to church that day. She was a star on her high school track team.

In a world filled with kind, beautiful people, I wonder why we all know Ted Bundy’s name. I wonder if that isn’t giving him and people like him exactly what he wanted. And frankly I’m sick of hearing people talk about him.

I’d like to talk about 12 year olds Lynette Culver and Kimberly Leach, neither of whom turned 13 because Ted Bundy stole their innocence and their lives from them. Kimberly had just been elected first runner up “Valentine Queen” by her peers and never got to wear that pretty new dress. Do you think her parents still have that dress, hanging in the back of a closet? I bet they do. I bet her dad sits with it in his darkest moments. You ever thought about him when you hear the name Ted Bundy?

Let’s talk about 19 year old Susan Rancourt, who had a 4.0 GPA. 17 year old Laura Aime. 18 year old Georgeann Hawkins. 23 year old Janice Ott. 26 year old Nancy Wilcox. 23 year old Caryn Campbell. 17 year old Melissa Smith. 19 year old Donna Manson, who was an excellent flute player and by all accounts a bit of a goth. 20 year old Kathy Parks. 22 year old Brenda Ball. 20 year old Lisa Levy. 21 year old Margaret Bowman. 25 year old Denise Oliverson, who had just gotten into a spat with her new husband and had gone for a walk to clear her mind. Denise weighed 105 pounds. She was bound, gagged, raped, mutilated and thrown from a fast moving car. Have you ever considered what HIS life has been like since that day? How many hours of his life do you think have been spent on the floor, clutching the ring he had given her, apologizing into thin air?

These stories are real. These people are REAL.

I get that Ted Bundy was handsome and his eyes were very blue but please. Please stop glamorizing him like this. He ended and ruined lives. Nothing about him is cool or worthy of emulation. Ted Bundy raped, tortured, mutilated and strangled over 30 females, including 12 year old girls. None of his victims weighed more than 115 pounds.

Ted Bundy was a pathetic man.

Emulate Lynda. Emulate Debra. Raise their names and their voices to those around you. Honor them. They were very real people with promising lives and futures stretched ahead of them, stolen.

Please don’t elevate or whitewash this kind of rampant violence against women. I assure you the world is harsh enough for us without a new generation thinking Ted Bundy is a cool, fascinating guy.

Thanks.

It depends on the wedding and what the bride and groom want. I’ve been to weddings where there are full sit down meals with serving staff, and others were there are just snacks. It all depends. 

Sit down meals are so expensive. Personally, I think weddings are about the people, and I would never spend money on catering because it’s just so crazy expensive (and from my experience, the food isn’t normally that good…not worth what you paid for it at least). I would never spend more money on food at the expense of not inviting people, simply because I couldn’t afford their plate. 

Full wedding invitation.

A vast majority of Japanese people actually enjoy other people making an effort to spread and enjoy japanese culture, and encourage it. Many make businesses in deliberately taking pictures of people in kimono. A common omiage (gift) for foreigners from japanese people is traditional japanese things such as kimonos, tea seats, shisa dog statues, ect.

And to top it off, basically 80 percent of japanese customs, traditions, and food, came from other countries. Japanese is an integration of different cultures, like america. Japan takes influences from places like korea, china, russia, and europe. If japan stuck to itself, there would be no tempura, japanese tea, tea ceremonies, kabuki, japanese bread, japanese curry, j- pop, anime, cars, or modern fishing techniques. The picture is not “yellow face” they are not making fun of asians. In fact, it looks like they put extra care and research into their work.

Recently a museum in Boston came under a lot of fire for allowing visitors to wear a ‘kimono’ (it was featuring a painting my Monet of a girl – a white girl – in a kimono, and the museum had replicas made that guests of ANY RACE could wear to mimic the painting, Pageant-of-the-Masters style). After protests and heated debate, the museum closed the event.

I was living in Japan at the time, and out of all the *actual* Japanese people I asked, not a single one was offended by the event. Rather, they were excited that people half a world away were showing interest in their culture, and were sad that visitors could no longer enjoy the event.

This party, though somewhat silly in application, is an attempt at experiencing and appreciating another culture. The mom who put this together is not an expert on Japan, but she did her best. She got a lot of things right: there are few things Japan loves more than tea, Pocky, and sakura. 

Where do you draw the line for who is “allowed” to learn about Japan? If the girl were of Japanese descent, would that make it ok (even though her citizenship would be the same as the girl from the photo)? If one of the girl’s parents were from Japan, then would it be ok? 

Are you only allowed to make pizza if you live in Italy? If you’re an Italian immigrant? How do we decide these things??

You can’t say you want to dismantle racism and then in the next breath make rules – based on race – for who people can wear, try, or eat, especially when the intent is obviously to have fun experiencing a culture (as opposed to having fun by making fun of a race or culture, like blackface does). 

Okay, take this argument.

I’m sorry, but mine is a culture of sharing and exchanging. So I don’t think she is derespectful. For example, Cooking is a part of my culture, not just a looking into the fridge and decide what to eat for the day. I know many people in the world like and try italian cooking. For me, for my family, for my country, cooking is a ritual. Is that part of the day your family is united. Eating is a form of appreciation of the life, we are strongly convinced that when you eat good, your day is better, your health is better, your life is better. We follow recipes our grandma told us, it’s like our mothers and grandmothers living in what they taught us. When you say: “It’s my nonna’s recipe” is not just a sentence like another. It’s like we saying: “She taught me with love to cook this. This is hers recipe.” It’s something to hand down to our offspring. For us cooking is very important. We look to the world and sometimes someone takes one of our cultural points and try to reinterprets our recipes, sometimes with good results, sometimes with bad results. People everyday cook pasta. They Cook pizza. They Cook lasagna. I saw things, guys. I saw pizza with ananas, without tomato sauce and with a mountain of cheese on it, I saw pasta al pomodoro cooked with ketchup and without salt, I saw pasta with chicken, meatballs and people put pesto into the salad or onto the meat. Ask one of these plates to an italian and you can see them make a facepalm. But, you know? We know you don’t totally understand this point of our culture. You probably think it’s just a meal and you can try to change our grandmas recipes. We can get annoyed by some requests in a restaurant. We can get offensed (And believe me, we really did) about people say our is a bad pizza because there’s too less cheese for you. I mean… it’s like to say to a Japanese their sushi isn’t the better one. We can. But we can’t force you to stop cooking italian food. Because it’s something we share with pleasure, even if you sometimes can’t cook it well. This is why we can invite you to Italy. To eat the real recipe. You can find it great, you can find it awful, (because it’s too different from what you always ate.) And it’s okay. Maybe coming in Italy and still finding great our cooking, you understood why for us is so important, why we remember with love our grandmas, why cooking is so italian. Do you know this is cultural appropriation? Yes, it is. For what I said before. It can sound lame, but as I said, cooking is a strong part of our culture, so… We share it. With your trying, you made a step to the understanding of our culture. You made a bad starting, guided by stereotypes and ignorance about us, but then you understood us better. This is why I don’t condamn a girl wearing (badly) a kimono. Because… Yes, she tried with a bad result, but she had fun and probably she will understand her fails while growing up and studying. She appreciated a culture and she tried to enjoy it. She didn’t want to make somebody angry or uncomfortable. She didn’t want to jeer your culture, she just had appasionate about it so much that she would to enjoy it. Why do you condamn her? She is just a naive child…

BY THE WAY, TALKING ABOUT THE GENERAL CULTURAL APPROPRIATION…

Without sharing, there wouldn’t be an Italy. Do you know the italian history? Do you know our origins? We can’t too. Because we are a big mix of cultures. Celts,  Arabs, Africans, Greeks, Etruscans, we are not one of these, we are ALL of these. Japan too is a country made of “cultural appropriation”. Not only from US but also from China, Korea and Europe. Study just a bit of Heian history and learn. Study about Portuguese pelgrins, the catholic religion in Japan. I mean… In Japan there’s a Christ’s tomb. In Japan. “The tomb of Jesus Christ”. How do you think this can be even possible without the cultural appropriation? Japanese writing is based from a mix of ainu, various altaic and austronesian languages, how can this be even possible without appropriation? The music is made by cultural appropriation, the clothing is made by cultural appropriation, the cooking is made by cultural appropriation. Stop talking about dominating cultures and submissive cultures. This is not anymore a cultural fight about who is stronger, this is SHARING.

This is sharing, people, and this is what the mankind is made of.

I don’t wanna say anything more of this. So… Please don’t contact me anymore to convince me I’m wrong. It’s everything I have to say.