It’s one thing to go from complete strangers to friends – people do that every day. But to go from strangers to spending two holidays together in nine months? That right there is an accomplishment worthy of celebration.

Which, speaking of celebration, how about that wonderful Fourth of July weekend? I dare say it was my favorite version of the holiday since FDR’s epic bash in 1938. [Redact] offered the perfect mix of structure and freedom, of catching-up and exploration on one’s own. Those balances are oh so challenging to pull off well. Not so for the [Redact]. Or, I guess I got a little ahead of myself in the excitement of recollection, for the [Redact] may be a glorious group of people, but they aren’t gods. So, executing [Redact] had to have been challenging (damn mortality), it was just that they made it look easy.

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For the first time since October ‘17 and possibly since spring of ‘12, I feel normal. 

I can’t be sure of the date because time is fickle and memories are unreliable. This, I’ve learned, is especially true with bad memories: a natural defense mechanism shades the past in a positive light (i.e., when you are not sick it’s damn near impossible to accurately recall the feeling of being sick).

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There are many things that have always bothered me about, as you called them, “bumper sticker Christians.” Near the top of that list was a notion, demonstrated through their behavior, that faith alone was all that mattered; just believe in Christ, ask for forgiveness (when it’s convenient) and all was good. Now, perhaps this is all that’s truly required for salvation, but it strikes me as a terrible waste of our time on Earth.

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Oh, how easy it is to be negative, to derive meaning through complaint and pessimism. Perhaps even easier is responding to such behavior with ever more negativity. You think that’s stupid?!? Well, you are the one who’s stupid!!! And on and on it goes: an endless cycle where positions harden in confrontation with contrary perspectives.

But of course this makes sense. For who would actually change his/her mind while being called “stupid”? Even if that word is never uttered, it’s the undercurrent of all the negativity. Only an idiot would see it differently.

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that there is tension between account management and network.

Account management (AM) probably thinks network should be better. And network probably thinks the same about AM.

What interests me most, though, are the opportunities for AM to participate in the network process that are essentially ignored.

Now, I have no doubt that you and AM are busy. Still, given the legitimate complaints about being left out of past network decisions, I’m surprised when new attempts to involve AM reach such unsatisfying (for all parties) conclusions.

I’d like to know what I can do to fix it.

Thanks.

As one’s brain on waking in the morning may hold a shadow of the dream that it experienced in sleep.

…41

was rapidly informed of the full strength of this argument by the dictates of self-interest

…49

He had neither the opportunity to resit nor any intention of doing so.

…74

He soon felt that some light was once again penetrating his brain: all his vague and almost indefinable ideas resumed their place on that marvelous chessboard where perhaps a single extra square is enough to ensure the superiority of men over animals. He was able to think and to strengthen his thoughts by reasoning

…138

Full of hope, he ate a few crumbs of the bread, swallowed some mouthfuls of water and, thanks to the powerful constitution with which nature had endowed him, was more or less restored to himself.

…139

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It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately – the object seemed incidental to this will to give one-self away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms blandly filled with excrement and meat? To what purpose? This was why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the question why and to what grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way. Modern German is better equipped for combining gerundives and prepositions than its mongrel cousin. The original sense of addiction involved being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually. To devote one’s life, plunge in.

–Infinite Jest p.900

I too share your (and Sports Illustrated’s) interest in noticing and understanding gender inequity. Perhaps just as fascinating, though, are instances where no such inequity exists, or the inequity is entirely reasonable, and yet a story of girls having an unfair time compared to boys is told.

Now, I had never heard of Olivia Moultrie before reading the enjoyable xxxxxxxxx So, I freely concede that you may know how Olivia and her parents face backlash in ways male childhood prodigies don’t. But judging by merely the journalism itself, I saw no such inequity and I’m curious if you reached an alternate conclusion.

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