I’ve come across books that didn’t work at the time (I tried Anne of Green Gables with my kids too early) and they worked great later. I built up to Wind in the Willows by reading a graphic novel version with him first. If you wanted to do it later, maybe an audio book version or a read-aloud from you? But, I worked up to it because I like the book. If you find it dull, don’t hesitate to leave it and just move on. Hope My side of the Mountain works out well!

Not trying to discourage you from putting aside a book that isn’t working, but I found there was a section in the middle with less action and that it picked up from there again. I like the book quite a bit, though, so if you aren’t personally liking it then it’s probably best to find something else. I read Wind in the Willows aloud this year with my 11 year old and it took a month, so it is a long (and challenging) book. I would not give my son this book to read himself. He enjoyed the adventures of Toad chapters the most. We really like Farmer Boy here, as well as many of the Narnia books and the Book of Three.

Wales is gorgeous too, I hope she has an amazing time!

Chester is well worth a stopover/visit, it’s a very beautiful and interesting city.

It looks like Llandudno may have better connections to Manchester Airport. That would be far closer than Gatwick, at the opposite end of the country to North Wales.

Yes, I hate the time changes, so pointless and makes everyone grumpy. More light in the evening does not at all make up for it being darker in the morning for me.

I was there about 10 years ago and I used the trains a lot then (almost daily for several years). I’m not sure about the rail strike situation but it wouldn’t change things for the better. The 5 min connection is very tight and the 13 min could also go wrong if there are any delays. She’ll quite possibly have to change platforms, so that requires quickly figuring out where she needs to get to for the next train in an unfamiliar station. If there is a chance to give herself a little more time, I would recommend she take it. If there are substitute busses when there’s a rail strike, she’d still be able to get through, but I don’t know how they are handling this. If there aren’t rail replacement busses (and a quick search makes it look like there probably aren’t), leaving for London a day early may be wise. One possibility would be to rearrange the Wales itinerary to end in a place with easier rail service to London, or to be able to make it shorter if the strikes are going to affect it.

I’m pretty good with Welsh pronunciation rules since I’ve been learning Welsh for a few years, but the audio would definitely help if not. I used the printed book and found the footnotes really useful for some things - the lists of names sometimes contain a number of jokes, for example.

I hope you had a good night’s sleep and that something good, even a small thing, will come out of today. I’m also an introvert and I find that walking helps a lot when I’m in hard situations, both the repetitive motion and the idea of having my feet on the ground (not barefoot this time of year, of course, but the mental image still helps me feel grounded). It sounds like you really are doing your best, and also something really significant.

A couple of books on here are on my Want to Read list (Count of Monte Cristo, Moby Dick, and A Farewell to Arms), but the only one I have read is How Green is my Valley, which I recommend as a somewhat shorter book than some of the others. I really enjoyed the depiction of the way of life in the southern mining communities of Wales. If you are interested in Welsh literature, I would also highly recommend Sioned Davis’ translation of The Mabinogion.

I don’t know if this is generally useful, but I often feel more positive in the morning and it’s when I’m tired in the evening that things feel the heaviest and most daunting. So, I hope you’ll all feel a bit better tomorow.

We used the AAR readers without the curriculum too, and found them gradual and decodeable. I thought the stories were amusing.

My kids loved the Brambly Hedge books (great illustrations!) and Pippi and Beatrix Potter books, and recently enjoyed Skunk and Badger. Also Apricots at Midnight and Little House Books.

@Not_a_Number, wishing you all strength and healing.

I was wondering whether young people with trans-supportive local communities would be more likely to only socially transition because they are getting at least some of their information on range of possible options from people they know in real life, while people in areas where they can’t be open are getting their information more from social media alone. The social media influencers may be presenting medical transition as the main way forward and the young people have no local references to compare that idea to. I’m speculating, and could be way off.

Yes. I think in No is a complete sentence in English. In Welsh, there is no overarching word for No or Yes, and so a response to the question “Do you like bananas?” is “I do” or “I don’t”. “Can I borrow the car?” “You can’t”. Welsh grammar generally requires a response to have a verb, but English does not, and so I think No is a complete English sentence.

No stories to share, but wishing your relationship and your family well. I hope things get better for you all.

Absolutely, there were a dozen other ways it could have gone, and nearly all of them not as well as this. I was very pleasantly surprised.

I sent the podcast folks an email today (and this discussion helped so much in writing that and explaining the issue clearly, thank you all!). I got a response back within a few hours stating that they had edited out the joke, and with a very kind apology from one of the hosts. Letting them know was definitely the right approach - it has made me willing to consider that the way that section of the podcast came across doesn’t reflect their general attitudes, and the editing prevents anyone else from stumbling upon it.

My word for last year was notice (sylwi in Welsh, my family comes from Wales in part), which was intended to focus on noticing how I felt, noticing my friends, etc., but turned into noticing the war in Ukraine. This year I’ve chosen the Welsh word noswylio (in English, to stop work at the end of the day) to strengthen daily rhythms of work and rest and to pay attention to times when I should and shouldn’t be working.

Yes, I plan to update if/when I hear something. I’ll write it after Christmas.

Thank you so much, Pam, for your description of how Seinfeld and the changes in time fit in. I remember that it did feel historical then, and from a North American perspective, it also felt over somewhere else. My partner is from Germany, and my extended family members take Nazism and the Holocaust very seriously, I think because they realize that extreme right ideas that target Jewish people can quickly spread throughout your country and in your neighborhood and even in your family (they are not Jewish). I’ve learned to take it more seriously from them, where it was always closer and not only historical. And also from the Stolperstein memorials on the sidewalks outside the doors throughout the city from where Jewish neighbours were deported to death camps. Thanks also for clarifying this for me. I was trying awkwardly to say that it wasn’t German people who I saw as the target of the HH..punchline, but couldn’t do it clearly, because of the nested, eye-roll-but-move-on, stereotypical joke about the German language. The punchline, however, twisted it firmly to be against people who were and are Nazi/neo-Nazi targets. This last part is what shocked and dismayed me, not the stereotype about Germans. This whole thread was amazingly helpful, thanks to all who posted and helped to work through this incident. I’m going to send the podcast people an email. I hope I get positive info back, that they can edit this out, for example, but even if I get no reply it’ll help inform whether I continue to listen.

Yes, I am…that is good context, thanks. It’s also probably an issue I take more seriously than I used to. ETA: This still may have put me off this podcast/host even if I better understand where it might have come from. With things I’ve learned in the meantime between Seinfeld airing and now, no going back.

This didn’t sound like how it was used in this case, but there’s a possibility that use earlier in life (estimated age maybe 55 or 60?) or that they heard others using it this way made them able to use it in a much more casual way that makes me really uncomfortable.

I didn’t really take it that way - not to extend to German people, though I can see how it could be interpreted that way. The way I heard it, the initial buildup was making fun of the sound of the German language, and the half-shouted word could have been Gesundheit, or sauerkraut, or Bier or whatever commonly known, probably goofy, German word to make a kind of stereotypical but not too serious joke. But instead, the German phrase is one that’s shockingly inappropriate (to me) to use as a joke, which ultimately meant death to millions of people. It’s not something you would ever say that way in my family.