I am so sorry to hear about your struggles. I know that you just feel so alone. The process is so personal that it can become isolating because it limits how much grief you can share with your loved ones. Have you tried finding a support group of other women or couples with this struggle? I had two friends who went…

I don't think very many of the witches were theological outliers. More like social ones.

Homer's works weren't written by Homer! They were written by another man with the same name!

Were heretics executed that often in the North American colonies? There's obviously the execution of "witches" but I hadn't heard of heresy-based executions.

Edna's rich-lady whining and anger at the happiness of other women was seriously irritating to me. Of course, I was 16 when I read it, so I might have missed her point. But I think there are too many awesome books to read to bother going back.

Anna Karenina? Madam Bovary? Hard Times? So many choices for sad fallen women…

Sure. Melville was boring to me. The Awakening was my example of a book I disliked for other reasons than being boring.

Yeah. I was an attentive reader but I remember my attention seriously drifting during Moby Dick.

You seemed to have to do a lot of reading to get anywhere interesting in his stories.

Most boring? Melville I guess. I hated The Awakening, but not because it was boring.

Nah. I prefer our way where all our religions moosh together and our mostly vaguely-Protestant presidents know how to make nice with cardinals and rabbis and scientists. When it's working well it's lovely. Politicians grovel for the favor of the powerful and influential. That's just the way things work.

It's also traditional. It would be weirder if they hadn't attended.

This is a traditional event. Nominees do it every election.

I also thought of this one: http://www.theonion.com/art…

Well as I said, over-correction. And I'm not willing to dump all adjectives or even rhetorical flourishes because they can be abused - people use language to persuade, that's just the way things work. And I think you're kind of ignoring the "young woman" and "young lady" language that is also often used in relation to…

Maybe some of that though is a drive to lash out at the countervailing impulse to sexualize girls younger and younger? There are people who argue that boobs make that hypothetical 12-year old somehow emotionally mature enough for sexual relationships (for example). People might be over-correcting (as it were) to try…

It's possible I'm just not noticing. I was the oldest sister with two younger brothers, so I heard "little brother" and "baby brother" a lot during my childhood. And are you sure you're not noticing the Little Boy stories? Like that dying little boy who wrote poetry? Cloying sentimentality seems to apply to…

How is saying, "Don't touch my kid," overly defensive?

I don't get what further "action" was called for than telling the guy not to touch her kid. She did that. Do you think she should have yelled or something?

I mean I guess everyone's experiences are different. I haven't noticed any huge difference in the use of "little boy" or "little girl" as a term.