The Connection Newsletter 35 - Post-Thanksgiving

The Connection Newsletter 35 - The Itis

November 26, 2018

Hello!

This is edition #35 of

The Connection

, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!)

Glad you're here. If you live in the US, hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. I've been taking a family portrait at Thanksgiving for the last five years now, and it's wild watching the family grow.  

Let's jump into some good reads from this week:

Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics. 

Kevin Alexander talks about the weight of responsibility “Best Of” authors bear when they know their articles can have an outsized effect on the establishments they write about.

In this case, Mr. Alexander chronicles his experience in facing the man who’s burger restaurant he closed by telling the world how amazing it is (was).

Have you ever had to make a phone call you’ve absolutely dreaded? Have you ever had acute stress dreams relating to that phone call for weeks, and found yourself visualizing scenarios in which it would go poorly while absentmindedly preparing your children’s dinner? Have you ever stared at an elderly woman with weepy eyes and arthritic hips walking her dog down your street and felt irrational pangs of jealousy because you knew she didn’t have to make a stressful phone call that day?

…

Trevor McKendrick eloquently points out that most “success origin stories” are bogus… then tells the riveting tale of how Sam Walton’s success story started 17 years

before

he opened his first Wal-Mart store.

Sam spent the next 12 years in what I call narrative limbo. It’s the crucial part of any “overnight success” that doesn’t get covered in the Successful Entrepreneur genre. No one writes about all the random tangents and mistakes you make here.

Like, say, that time Sam tried to start a shopping mall 10 years too early and lost $25,000?Or what about the time a tornado destroyed his best performing store? All he had to say was “we just rebuilt it and got back at it.”This is important to know if you’re trying to learn from Sam, but it doesn’t fit into any narrative.

…

Viet Thanh Nguyen explores what it means to be American in America today. If you're an immigrant or from an immigrant family, I strongly recommend.

Most Americans will not feel what I feel when they hear the Vietnamese language, but they feel the love of country in their own ways. Perhaps they feel that deep, emotional love when they see the flag or hear the national anthem. I admit that those symbols mean little to

me, because they divide as much as unify

. Too many people, from the highest office in the land down, have used those symbols to essentially tell all Americans to love it or leave it.Being immune to the flag and the anthem does not make me less American than those who love those symbols. Is it not more important that I love the substance behind those symbols rather than the symbols themselves? The principles. Democracy, equality, justice, hope, peace and especially freedom, the freedom to write and to think whatever I want, even if my freedoms and the beauty of those principles have all been nurtured by the blood of genocide, slavery, conquest, colonization, imperial war, forever war.

And yet, when I was growing up, some Vietnamese Americans would tell me I was not really Vietnamese because I did not speak perfect Vietnamese. Such a statement is a cousin of “love it or leave it.” But there should be many ways of being Vietnamese, just as there are many ways of being French, many ways of being American. For me, as long as I feel Vietnamese, as long as Vietnamese things move me, I am still Vietnamese. That is how I feel the love of country for Vietnam, which is one of my countries, and that is how I feel my Vietnamese self.

…

A terrifying story of a neighborhood stalker who drew inspiration from Keanu Reeves, Jon Snow, both or neither. You’ll never look at a house in the suburbs the same way.

Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too [sic] me.

…

I’ve read dozens of these money diaries before. This was the most visceral. Incredulous, infuriating, and sad all at once.

“I don’t think we ever really have fun though. There is no real true

joy,

because even if we were to do a family trip or if we go out to dinner, we’re eventually going to pull out a credit card.”

Thanks for reading!

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