rambling ramble and selling socks

What happened to trainwrecks.net? Someone finally get fed up with them?
I did find an interesting blog to read whilst surfing around, trying to find out about some old trainwreck issue.

If anyone reads the Hartford Advocate, there might be an article about my ladies sometime soon. We had the big event this evening. The ladies sat in the spotlight and talked about their lives while Lajla the Magnificent translated. It's so obviously difficult for the ladies to do this in a big crowd...I want to thwack some of the people asking questions. Right longside the head. Jeebus.

And I caught someone trying to tell R she should try to work toward forgiving the Serbs. Sure, she should--anyone who's read any advice column on the internet knows that "hate only hurts the hater," but Christ on a cracker, who the heck has the right to give advice like that to R? She'd just finished telling the crowd how the Serbs marched into her village one sunny day in June and killed every single person in her life except her daughter. Every. Single. Person. She. Loved.

I can't begin to imagine and I don't want to and I sure don't want to tell her how to lead her life. Especially not someone who has the strength to keep on leading any kind of life at all after that. Talk about clash of cultures.

I always end up feeling rather pissy after we do these sorts of events. About 3-5 times a year, I end up going to these things, so it's not like a routine event. You want to help them? Give them a goddamn job, buy all their goods, and stop telling them you feel their pain. Heh. As if I'm any better.

I guess anger is a reasonable emotion--just ask R--and there's no one else around to direct it at.

Some day soon, there will actually be someone coming to ask way, WAY scarier questions at an events, like "who's in charge of all this sock selling?" The ladies never make a lot of dough, but still, today with the basically uninterested reporter lurking, it felt sneaky.

And yeah, it's rather strange that we pulled Lajla aside and asked her to point out that the ladies make the rugs and socks to maintain their cultural identity (hey, it's true. Kinda).

I have zero interest in actually trying to set up something more formal, but I suppose if they get well enough known, and we sell enough of their goods, there will have to be more official records kept, etc.

Ugh.

I'll only do that stuff for pay--I've had a business before. I was a partner, and we hated it. Right Leslie?? We loathed it. I think all three of us did, but some of us are still not in communication after that experience. UGH.

And if I get paid, then the ladies will get a penny an hour for their work, instead of the huge 2 cents they make now.

Triple Ugh.

Hey, seeeeeee, L? I can whine about dumb crap even after spending a few hours listening to war and death stories. That's what ten years will do for you. Ten years and good old drugs.

Comments

  1. Anonymous8:08 AM

    Poor R. We are lucky not to have known the horrors of war, which is why it's so important to do everything possible to keep the peace, I suppose.
    Maybe if our brain dead president hadn't skipped his service and gone to war, we wouldn't be inflicting the horrors of war on so many innocent people.
    Hugs and lots of sock sales.

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  2. Anonymous4:46 PM

    The woman who told R. how she ought to live her life deserves a self-righteous bitch-slapping. How dare she.

    unrelated note: did you see the spoof I did on your Ellora's Cave cover? Scroll down, you won't miss it.

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  3. Anonymous9:21 PM

    I saw that trainwrecks was down and immediately thought of you. Did you kill em off? Because if you did, I need them back now, please.

    I was very very lucky to have an Armenian refugee as a grandfather. His grandmother died on the trip, refusing to eat to save the life of his little brother, who died two days after the grandmother. But he told us these stories just as something that had happened. I'm not sure how he did it, but he never overlaid them with emotions of hatred for the people who turned them into refugees.

    On the other hand, he had no patience with people who told him how he should have behaved or how he was supposed to live his life as a former refugee. He'd say, "You starve for two years, and then we'll talk."

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