This past Sunday, the first day of National Singles Week 2012, was such a fun day for me. A journalist from Taiwan who had read the Chinese translation of Singled Out asked if he could come to Summerland to interview me for his series on various forms of discrimination. He was from the United Daily News, the newspaper with the largest readership in the Taiwan area.
Just after I posted Undeterred, Rush Limbaugh bashes another single woman, Yasmin Nair sent me a heads-up about her own post on the Rush stuff. It is long, so I’ll post the first few paragraphs here, then give you the link so you can read the rest of it at her site. Yasmin Nair, by the way, contributed that wonderful essay, “Singular Friendships,” to the Singlism book.
[Bella’s intro: Rajiv told me this story by email and I asked him if I could share it here. Thanks, Rajiv, for agreeing. ]
[Bella’s intro: If you have not yet read Part 1 from guest blogger and Navy veteran Roger Morris, you can find it here. Now, on to Part 2 and the conclusions, with my thanks to Roger Morris!]
[Bella’s intro: Recently, a retired Navy veteran, Roger Morris, wrote to say that while he believed there was some singlism in the Navy, he also thought there were advantages to being a Navy single. I asked if he would elaborate on his perspective and share his wisdom with “All Things Single (and More)” readers and he very kindly agreed. In fact, he has so much to say that I’m presenting his essay in two parts. This is the first. Many thanks to you, Roger Morris, for the time you took to do this important research and writing. By the way, readers, see all that red on the map image accompanying this post? It shows all the places Roger Morris has been!]
Mid-February is supposed to be all about couples – treacly, dewey-eyed, Valentine’s Day lover couples. In a phenomenon that even surprised me, this February the media has been all about singles – and mostly in a good way.
Check out the image below for a contrast between the rise of singles in the United States over the past half-century, and the second-class citizenship of those same single people with regard to benefits and protections. Thanks to the UK infographics group for creating the graphic.
On Monday October 17 at 2 pm, I’m giving a talk on singles at Loyola University in Chicago. It is open to the public. Here are the details.
What’s happening? Two things – National Singles Week (Sunday September 18 – Saturday September 24) and the new website that will aggregate feeds from enlightened singles blogs, provide resources, and more. I’d love to have a few words of wisdom from readers to include in a blog post to run during Singles Week, and I welcome one more round of feedback on the name and contents of the new site.
Writing about singles has been an enormously meaningful experience, but it has not been a lucrative one. I’ve had fantasies about making a mint on Singled Out or Singlism or from blogging. Not gonna happen.
What I fantasized about is not stuff like buying a yacht or traveling around the world. What I really wish I could do is support single people and singles activism and advocacy. So here I’d like to share some of my starry-eyed ideas that will never come to fruition from my meager royalties or paychecks. I hope you will add some of your own.
