Search Results for: marriage

How Not to Get Your Kid into Kindergarten

Longreads Pick

Playing the DC Public Schools Lottery is a crazy, soul-crushing pursuit:

Consider the car-less Columbia Heights couple who applied to 16 schools and only got their kid into one, requiring a trek that adds two hours to their daily commute. Or the Mount Pleasant parents who went 0 for 6, four years running, for their eldest child, then lucked into one of the hottest schools in the city on their first lottery entry with their youngest. One mother I spoke to spent the first four years of her son’s life in her cramped premarriage one-bedroom apartment (and indefinitely delayed having another child) just so he’d have the right address when lottery time rolled around. Then there was the woman who seriously contemplated signing a lease on an English basement that was in-boundary for Maury, to increase her child’s chance of getting in there. (All right, I admit this last person was me.)

Source: Washingtonian
Published: Mar 24, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,802 words)

For Love & Money

Longreads Pick

Same-sex marriages could add $43 million in wedding spending to Wisconsin’s economy in three years if they were legal. But the real economic impact goes far deeper than veils, venues and vows.

On a day in late December 2013, Roger and Indy Arteaga-Derenne sat, marriage license in hand, waiting for a 12:15 p.m. appointment with Judge David Piper of the Hennepin County court system. They had driven 350 miles from their home in Bayside to Minneapolis, and they were nervous. They had plenty of questions for this judge, whom they had never met. Would he marry them? Would he waive the required five-day waiting period for all would-be newlyweds?

Published: Mar 5, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,690 words)

Swiping Right in the 1700s: The Evolution of Personal Ads

Noga Arikha | Lapham’s Quarterly | 2009 | 13 minutes (3,200 words)

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I.

In 1727, a lady named Helen Morrison placed a personal advertisement in the Manchester Weekly Journal. It was possibly the first time a newspaper was ever used for such a purpose. As it happens, Morrison was committed to an asylum for a month. Society was clearly not ready for such an autonomous practice, especially on the part of a woman. But personal ads quickly became an institution. Heinrich von Kleist’s celebrated novella The Marquise of O, first published in 1810 (and said by Kleist to be “based on a true incident”) opens on the newspaper ad placed by “a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought-up children,” to the effect “that she had, without knowledge of the cause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; and that she was resolved, out of consideration for her family, to marry him.” Read more…

Seduced and Abandoned

Longreads Pick

The full, gossipy story of how Rupert Murdoch met Wendi Deng, and how their 14-year marriage fell apart amid rumors of affairs:

The passionate note surfaced amid the flotsam of a shipwrecked marriage. It was written in broken English by a woman to herself, pouring out her love for a man called Tony. “Oh, shit, oh, shit,” she wrote. “Whatever why I’m so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt … And he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage … and what else and what else and what else … ”

The woman was Wendi Deng Murdoch, the Chinese wife of the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The note, not revealed until now, could have been one of the few pieces of evidence in their surprise divorce last year, had the case come to trial. “Tony” was the former prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair.

Author: Mark Seal
Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Feb 19, 2014
Length: 45 minutes (11,473 words)

The Millionaire Couple Who Will End Divorce

Longreads Pick

Inside couples counseling with Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt:

Harville and Helen take turns talking and clicking through a PowerPoint that includes slides in both English and Spanish. Helen explains that half the people here tonight are the “draggers,” the other half are the “draggees,” and that it will actually be that second group that’s more excited by the end of the workshop. “See,” she says. “Your partner already decided that you’re the problem.”

Harville goes over what couples generally want from a relationship, which he boils down to: safety, a connected feeling, and joy. Helen explains that even if we forget everything else, they hope we remember three things. One idea: that childhood influences marriages. One skill: the ability to have safe conversations. One decision: a commitment to zero negativity.

We both bristle a bit at that last one.

Source: D Magazine
Published: Feb 11, 2014
Length: 19 minutes (4,893 words)

Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List

Unfinished hotel rooms, terrorist threats, egregious human rights violations and thrilling athletic feats: Sochi’s got it all. But Russia’s dangerous, government-sanctioned homophobia precedes and extends far beyond this year’s Olympic games.

1. “Closed, Destroyed, Deleted Forever.” (Dmitry Pashinsky, n+1, February 2014)

Incredible interview with Lena Klimova, founder of Children 404, a social networking resource for the oppressed LGBTQ community in Russia. As a result, Klimova has been accused of disseminating “gay propaganda.” Now, Children 404 faces deletion and Klimova faces thousands of dollars in fines, all for attempting to create a supportive community of teenagers, parents, psychologists and other advocates.

2. “Inside the Iron Curtain: What it’s Like to be Gay in Putin’s Russia.” (Jeff Sharlet, GQ, February 2014)

The police bring cages to Pride parades. The right-wing fringes have their children beat LGBT activists. Violence is acceptable, even appreciated. Homophobia is sanctioned by the government and the Orthodox church. One gay man compared Russia today to Germany in the 1930s.  (I wept while reading this story.)

3. “On Holding Hands and Fake Marriage: Stories of Being Gay in Russia.” (David M. Herszenhorn, The New York Times, November 2013)

Heartbreaking, powerful personal testimonies from LGBTQ folks living in Russia today.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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What It’s Like to Grow Up Gay in Russia

Edited by Masha Gessen and Joseph Huff-Hannon | OR Books | February 2014 | 11 minutes (2,575 words)

 

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This week we are proud to feature a chapter from Gay Propaganda, a collection of original stories, interviews and testimonials from LGBT Russians both living there and in exile. The book was edited by Masha Gessen and Joseph Huff-Hannon, and will be published by OR Books in February. We’d like to thank them for sharing this chapter with Longreads Members. 

 

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TATIANA ERMAKOVA

“I had a career in Russia, a nice apartment, friends, family. 

I sacrificed all that to be with Ana.”

I was born and grew up in Saratov, Russia. It’s a provincial town, built on a mix of old-fashioned Orthodox Christian values (which condemned homosexuality as a sin) and Soviet beliefs (when most people thought that homosexuality didn’t exist in the Soviet Society at all).

Both of my parents worked, and I was on my own a lot. I was a good kid, though. I did my homework, stayed home, and didn’t get into trouble. I was also shy and sometimes had a hard time socializing. My father was a history professor at the university, and my mom worked for a non-profit organization. Read more…

A Brief History of Class and Waste in India

Rose George | The Big Necessity, Metropolitan Books | 2008 | 28 minutes (6,900 words)

Below is a full chapter from The Big Necessity, Rose George’s acclaimed 2008 book exploring the world of human waste. The book will be reissued later this year with a new afterword. George’s 2013 book 90 Percent of Everything was featured previously on Longreads, and we’re thrilled to spotlight her work again.  Read more…

Children Are the 'Forgotten Grievers'

The standard of care for decades for children who had suffered a loss did not help. Thinking it was best, adults urged children to move past their loss as quickly as possible. Mourning was broken.

“Children have always been the forgotten grievers,” said Andy McNiel, executive director of the National Alliance for Grieving Children. “The idea was that they would forget about it. That it was too much for them to handle, that they would be better off if we pretended it didn’t happen. None of that was true. They may stop talking about it, but they are always thinking about it.”

This, McNiel said, could make children withdraw or become angry. They might work through their feelings in unhealthy ways. Then, as adults, they might not trust people. They could become stuck in their grief.

“You hear about it all the time from adults who lost their parents when they were kids,” McNiel said. “It impacted my marriage, it impacted how I raised my kids, it impacted my work. It doesn’t stop.”

The Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Faherty looked at grief counselors at an all-boys school who work with teens who have lost loved ones. The counseling has helped the boys process their feelings.

Read the story

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Photo: Eric Chan

The Secret That Became My Life

Longreads Pick

On the secrets we keep from and for others, and how it warps our identities:

I was so lonely it hurt. I hadn’t told friends the secret of our marriage. The keeper worries about being found out. The keeper also tries to create an internal story that keeps self-judgment at bay. So we rationalize, and we explain, and we cover over the bright shiny truth. We tell ourselves stories about how much better off everybody is if they are ignorant. The keeper is afraid of change, of retribution, and of being judged.

Author: Jane Isay
Published: Jan 6, 2014
Length: 18 minutes (4,669 words)