TheListServe Blog

Listserve winners are supposed to avoid cliches. Here are some haphazard (random means something else) things you won't hear just anywhere. Google "learn acbl". This will show you how to learn to play bridge (the greatest card game of all). You'll thank me once you turn 80. There are two kinds of friends: those who are friends when you need them, and those who are friends when convenient. I don't judge, since I think each kind is valuable. I do think it's important to distinguish between them. Spend as much as you can on your reading glasses. Seriously, get the most attractive frames in the world. Then, each time you wear them, you won't think "I can't believe I need reading glasses!". Understand apologies (particularly if you want a long, happy marriage). In particular, this is an apology: I shouldn't have done what I did. I am sorry. I know better now. It won't happen again. How can I make things better? This is NOT an apology: ...

I speak more than 8 languages. But that wasn't obvious at all from the start. My parents don't know any foreign language and my first contact with another language was at high school. Classes were not particularly effective either - how could they be, with 45 minutes of speaking time divided between 25 students and a teacher?! I got C's and D's mostly. Until I discovered the internet. I found that I really wanted to be able to talk to people from all around the world. German (my native language) didn't get me very far. English helped me make friends in the UK, Canada, USA and even as far as Australia. It was tempting to stop there, but I noticed that most of my contacts still came from Western countries and I didn't hear many voices from poorer parts of the world. Learning French, I suddenly had more contacts in many parts of Africa and the Middle East, where French is the language of higher education. Spanish opened up South America for me. Esperanto gave me a ...

An organizer of the Climate March in New York City over this past weekend said the following: “Organizing a big march is like throwing a rock in a pond: The splash is exciting but the real beauty is in the ripples”. The Internet is the ocean and even the tiniest of pebbles will create ripples. Each Listerv posting is a pebble with ripples that reach many thousands all over the world. The question for us Listservians should be what can we accomplish together to begin to engineer change that does not involve governments or corporations? My concern for the past six years has been with the ever growing crisis of families and their creatures becoming homeless, including myself and the cats. The cats, Charlie in particular, have not been impressed with my efforts to obtain justice in a clear case of foreclosure fraud by a major bank acting as a trustee for a Mortgage Backed Security (MBS). So, Charlie has made a video “Calling All Cats The Series”. Charlie will shortly be launching a fund ra...

I wrote this a few weeks ago in response to an Uncommon "prompted." Uncommon is another listserve email and I highly recommend it. Google uncommon in common and you should find it. On June the 11th, my boyfriend and I were offered jobs in Belize. The catch....they needed us there on July 10th. We had 29 days to divest ourselves of our home and a very large portion of our stuff and things. We never really considered ourselves particularly acquisitive or consumerist but my 37 years and his 42 years of accumulation added up rapidly. As we had only a general idea of where we would be living when we arrived in a country we had never before visited, we didn't really know what we would need. But we did know that customs duty would have to be paid on anything we brought. So things had to go. The furniture was returned to my great-grandmother's country home for the most part or sold. The bulk of our clothes went to the goodwill (I wasn't going to need my "lawye...

Dear Listserve Readers, I had a message all prepared ages ago and of course I lost it. So I am having to wing it now that the moment has arrived to write something. No life message here. I am asking for tolerance of you all. I am Transgendered, which means in my case I was born a male and I feel and present myself (sometimes) as Female; I prefer to describe myself as a "Non camp feminine male". All I want is to be able to wear the clothes that make me happy wherever I happen to be, home, work, social places, everywhere. I ask only for the same freedoms of expression that the majority of women (in the western world) enjoy. Without fear of censure, ridicule, prejudice or violence. Is that so bad? Most of what we consider the socially normal Male/Female split in appearance has evolved and sometimes swapped over the development of our civilisations, many “Aboriginal” cultures accepted the different varieties of sexuality among their populations and it is only recently and in west...

It's a simple idea. There are so many people and so many different lives. I'm curious to find out more about you and the other 25,000 others on the list. So.. Where are you and what are you doing in the moments around reading this e-mail? If you want to play along and put it out there for me and others to see, then upload a photo to Instagram right now and use the hashtag #TheListserveAndMe. I'll go first. Vibeke vjx088[AT]gmail.com Jutland, Denmark

I had to pick a song, during my first week of my freshman year in high school, that was supposed to represent me. Most of the class picked ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor, aka the Rocky song. I remember being particularly annoyed because I didn’t think these 14 year olds had a lot of ‘straight to the top’ survivor material, but perhaps it was more aspirational. I was never really able to do that, to say “this is how I’m going to succeed and just watch it’s going to be amazing.” I was more of a Little Engine That Could: I think I can, I think I can… During college, I discovered someone else who had a similar style: the 16th President of the United States, better known as Abraham Lincoln. When running for the Illinois legislature, he wrote the following: “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall suc...

There is one thing, and only one thing I want you to take from this email, and that's the idea of consent. It makes me really happy to hear stories on National Public Radio and other places talking positively about the general response to all these problems on college campuses. But sexual assault doesn't just take place in college. It doesn't just take place between strangers. Our ideas about justice need to shift radically. Look into Philly Stands Up. Look into "transformative justice." Look into a book called "The Revolution Starts at Home." "Wherever you go, however you dress, no means no and yes means yes." I want to take a moment to address my male-identifying audience more specifically. You may think this issue doesn't affect you. It does. 1 in 3 women are the survivors of sexual assault. And most sexual assaults go unreported. Do you have a sister? A mother, an aunt, a niece, a cousin, a grandmother, a partner, a friend? 1 in 3. You ...

I wrote this to my close friends exactly one year ago, when I first arrived to the Bay Area from far, far lands that I often miss. Consider this my tribute to all those who cross oceans and seas to seek and lose, and then find themselves, maybe. ~~~~~~~~~ I’m happy to report that I am spending considerable amounts of time in the kitchen now that I’m a grad student without a job (yet), and operating on limited ingredients sure makes whipping up a meal worth looking forward to on par with working on an art project in terms of the innovation required. I gotta tell you though, I’m in love with the skies. Here they feel a lot closer to the ground, a moving canvas that draws you in while it rearranges its parts. San Francisco welcomed me at dusk. And as I sat in a speeding car on the highway with my back to the airport, I marveled at the beautiful eeriness that accompanies fog as it proceeds to envelop mountain tops and skies. It rolls in like a soft avalanche everyday at dawn, and I wait fo...

Hello everyone. I only had one idea for this email that I thought would be any good but then I decided it was condescending and dumb. Also I found out the night I'm writing this (well, about a half hour ago) that my girlfriend of almost four years may be ending things with me very soon and I'm pretty depressed. I haven't had to deal with this before. I don't want to be alone. I wish I had made different decisions. I'm guessing I'll feel better within a few days. I hope so, because it's really raw right now. I don't want to waste my opportunity to send out a Listserve email though, so I'll give you some of my favorite quotes. There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. -Ogden Nash, poet (1902-1971) In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for ...

Spent most of your adult life away from your family? I have. I live a few thousand miles away from my birth family, so having another family close by is a welcome gift--I married into one, for certain values of "married"--but it's a gift I'm still learning to appreciate, since I've been living this far away from my birth family since I was 17 and only got engaged much more recently. I guess the only thing that makes this all noteworthy is that I'm gay, and obviously so is my fiance, and we're going to get married in Hawaii at the end of the year because our families will both be there at the same time. Also gay marriage is legal there, but that's kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, we can just do it in California first and then have a stress-free ceremony on the beach in Oahu since we'll all be there anyway. It's also all because of Justice Kennedy's opinion in Windsor, ultimately, I guess. So bravo, Justice Kennedy, and the s...

Hello everyone on the listserve!In my brief time with you, I have two things I'd like to ask you to help me with. First thing, you're getting this just around my 32nd birthday (10 Sept). I've never really liked my birthday and I'm sick of feeling miserable every time this day comes around. As a child my birthday was so close to the start of school that it often was forgotten by all my friends in the hubbub. As an adult my birthday has been over shadowed first from year after year of memorial reporting about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, than as my grandfather passed away right as I should have been celebrating 30. Help me reclaim my birthday, please! Second, I'm about to graduate with my MBA with a marketing concentration and am now looking to change my career path with my new degree. I'd like to break into marketing research or data analysis, but am finding that even with the MBA, everyone wants related work experience, even for entry level jobs. Any tips would b...

I’d like to encourage all of you (myself included) to make more things. I don’t care what kinds of things you make, but make something. You can do it by yourself, or you can work with someone else, or you can make something based on someone else’s work. Here are some suggestions of things you can make: A bowl of pasta with homemade sauce and meatballs A robot that you can play catch with A story about a girl and her pet rat A webpage that generates new, exciting, and sometimes nonsensical jokes about noses An edit to wikipedia about a topic that interests you A quilt for someone you care about like a pet I enjoy every part/phase/stage of making. There’s the planning stage, where you try and come with ideas, turn them around in your mind and tweak them until you can bring it into the world. There’s the scavenging phase where you find and bring together all of the pieces/thoughts/feelings you need to make the thing inside your head(s). There’s the doing phase, where you take something li...

Name: Cattie Email: cattie.price[AT]gmail.com Current Location: Missouri, USA Subject Line: For the Tired People Email body: So, I'm a brand-new 7th grade English teacher. I work in a school where something like 80% of the kids live below the poverty line. Many of them have families who are barely making it. Many of them wear the same clothes to school multiple days in a row. For many of them, school lunch is the only meal they will eat that day. Many of their parents struggle with drugs, alcoholism, or are incarcerated. And here I am, some 25-year-old white girl who saw Freedom Writers and wanted to make a difference. Want to know a secret? Some days, I feel like I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Yes, I do know some of what they're going through, I guess - I grew up in a similar situation, at least financially. My single mom worked three jobs while going back to school, raising me, and supporting my great-grandma who has Alzheimer's, but then she got cancer and...

There are three things that I love doing over the internet; website developing/designing, watching anime and reading other people's articles. Hi, my name is Eriko, I'm a 20-year-old IT student here in the Philippines. I've been watching anime ever since I was a kid and up to now I'm still doing it. I'm thankful to the internet because it gave me free access to new anime episodes straight from Japan. It's pretty awesome to still continue a hobby that I have from when I was a little lamb. I started watching anime over the internet back when I was in middle school, it's probably over 6 years ago. I pity myself back then because I always thought that I have no talent. In our family of 5, I have two older brothers, both of them can draw anime very well, same goes with my pops. Me, on the other hand, can't even draw a proper stick man. This self-pity continued up until high school. High school came and I got myself into a forum about a particular game. The for...

1) Obligatory OMG I WON YAAASSSSSS 2) My thoughts on a Sunday night: - I like Sundays. -I like that football season started today and the Bengals beat the Ravens. - I love Cincinnati. I moved away about six years ago, but I know that's where I'll probably settle back down. - One guy I went to high school with was killed about a week and a half ago. I wish I could say he's the first. A different girl I went to high school with's son was killed by her boyfriend around the same time. He was two. If you're the praying type, Big Ant's and little Josiya's families would appreciate it. If you're not that's cool, just try to do something to decrease world suck today with them in mind. Actually, even if you do pray, try to do something concrete too. -Slight tangent: I realized awhile back that many of the people I met in college had never known anyone who died violently, or even just died young. I once had a conversation with a girl and noted...

So how do I describe or connect my tiny little corner of reality with the 20K+ individual listserv'ians spread out across the globe? I fundamentally do not know. But in my case, the acts of both reading and listening to music have made my life more enjoyable than it may have been, and have helped see me through both good and challenging times. So here are some of the highlighted works running in and through my life; ones I have found solace and joy with over the years. books/authors Paul Auster – I have enjoyed all his fiction and believe he is one of the best and most creative/inventive writers around (if interested try Moon Palace, Leviathan, or the Brooklyn Follies to start) Ann Patchett – Again I have enjoyed all of her fiction. Some of her books are outstandingly & stunningly great – i.e. Bel Canto Winters Tale – by Mark Halprin (excellent book – lousy movie) In the Skin of a Lion – by Michael Ondaatje (Sooooo much better than the English Patient) Poet/Philosopher Gary S...

Hey guys! My name’s Emmalee, and I’m a second-year behavioral neuroscience student at Northeastern University, in Boston. Back home, in Raleigh, North Carolina, I have a pediatrician mom and a pharmaceutical-chemist dad, a 16-year-old brother who’s already seven inches taller than me, and a ten-year-old tortoiseshell cat who opens all our cabinets. This past year has, overall, been a great one. Northeastern is a fantastic school, with all these completely unique opportunities, and I have more close friends than I’ve ever had at once in my life, some of whom I’m certain I’ll still be friends with decades from now. And Boston is such an incredible city. It’s easy to get around, there are delicious restaurants and interesting things around practically every corner, and nearly everyone I’ve met has been welcoming and friendly. People back home told me I was going to hate it up here because of how rough the winters are, and admittedly this past February tested my resolve a little, but it ma...

Hello Listservants, This Wednesday my wife and I will be taking a 4 week honeymoon in Europe! This is my first time leaving the USA so I am an inexperienced traveller. The plan is to take the rail from Portugal to Germany and I have arbitrarily picked stops based on Anthony Bourdain, Rick Steves, history class, and word of mouth. A little about me: 25, just married, born and raised in Seattle (USA), Computer Scientist, love nature/adventure, very active, don't care for touristy things, love to be amused and do/see things out of the norm. Europeans or European travellers reading this, - If you were in my shoes, what would you do/see on this trip? - Any advice on the trip? Things I am missing or things not worth seeing? - If you live along my Europe Route and want to meet up, let me know! Itinerary: Sept 11 - Lisbon (Sporting Lisbon Match, Sintra, drink porto/green wine) Sept 15 - Seville (Tapas, Flamenco, Alcazar!) Sept 16 - Valencia (Oranges, Beaches, Future buildings, Paella) Sept...

Well, I'm P. Mothi Venkatesh completed B.E in Computer Science and Engineering at Thiagarajar College Of Engineering, Madurai. I was fascinated by doing creative things and ventured into various unique areas when my fellow classmates were memorizing math formulae. I’m based in Dindigul, and did my Schooling at SMB Matriculation School, Dindigul. During my second year of engineering (2012), I stumbled upon blogging. I wrote about technology and when there was necessity to drive more traffic to my blog, I found SEO as an efficient way to do this. I started analyzing on Google’s search engine algorithms and found out the mechanisms by which it ranks web-pages. Like every other SEO person my aim was to make my posts appear in the first 3 results shown by Google. Since I'm doing it for the past two years, I'm proficient in SEO techniques. When I was came to know about the job openings for SEO Analysts at Zoho, my joy became boundless, I got a chance to chase my dream but I was n...

I''ve learned that's how we say hello in South Carolina in the two years I've been here. "Hey there." Having lived in New York, New Hampshire, Texas, England and now here, I found I needed to pick up the local language each and every time, if only to understand what people were saying to me. In New York it was "pass the peas," but the same request in Texas goes something like this: "Um, Leann, I see you got the peas sitting there by your right elbow." The meanings are the same. Exactly the same. But back to hello. My favorite greeting is in College Station, Texas where my kids went to school. It's "howdy." If you ever head to Texas A&M, remember that one word and you're golden. Everyone will say it to you and you will say it back. It's automatic. It will make you smile. What you've probably surmised is I am about three times as old as most of you who read this list. But from what I've been absorbing over th...

Hello Listservers, This is not a typical email, but try and read through it. There's a poem at the end. It will all make sense (hopefully)! Somebody who I'm close with once read me a six word memoir that went something like; 'Religion is meaningful, irrational, convince me.' I agree with the first two parts of his statement, but this idea of convincing doesn't always sit well with me. Religion does grant meaning in regards to providing a context for social interaction as well as life-cycle meaning to the human condition. I also firmly believe that belief in the divine is to a certain extent irrational, because of a few inherent contradictions (good things happen to bad people etc). However, the attitude of the last two words of “convince me” is not necessarily the best way to go about approaching religious, education, and honestly any sort of education. I worked as a writing tutor. I had one student who would bring in these fantastic concept...

A teenage boy is getting ready to take his girlfriend to prom. First he goes to rent a tux, but there's a long tux line at the shop and it takes forever. Next, he has to get some flowers, so he heads over the the florist and there's a huge flower line there. He waits forever but eventually gets the flowers. Then he heads out to rent a limo. Unfortunately, there's a large limo line at the rental office, but he's patient and gets the job done. Finally, the day of the prom comes. The two are dancing happily and his girlfriend is having a great time. When the song is over, she asks him to get her some punch, so he heads over the the punch table and there is no punch line. Noah noahnewfriends[AT]gmail.com Boston, MA

My grandfather whom I spend my childhood with, passed away more than one year ago. Though it is anticipated because of his illness, the pain and sadness is worse than I expected, I might have imagine, predict, forecast but when the reality comes, it is worse. There is no time you will be ready to lose someone that you love and there is no words can describe how heavy the pain is. This whole experience also teaches something new, so heavy sadness can paralyze you, literally, it is true. Like I am trying to standing when I come in to the room where my late grandfather lied but I cannot because the wave of sadness is so big. Paralyzed. Numb. Weak.I am a true believer that the best regret in life is for the things that you didn’t do rather than something that we did. My biggest regret with regards to my grandfather departure is I don’t spend enough time to know about his childhood, his teenage life, his young adult life, his ambitions when he was young, his achievement when he was young,...

My favorite Listserve email was from Luke Neff on June 7, 2012. It was the fifth Listerve I ever got, and I loved it so much that I decided I would do something similar if I ever won the lottery. A little over two years later, here I am. Thanks for the idea, Luke. :) --- 09-04-11 "What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person." …56 translations later we get: "I think I am kind." --- 07-28-12 Comic idea Workers are clearing a road. They start bulldozing through a hill and bones start spilling out. “What do we do, boss?” Boss shrugs. They’re on a timetable, so they should keep going. Later, a worker cuts into a steak. Tiny bones start spilling out. A worker does laundry. When he lifts up a portion to put in the wash, a skull tumbles out. A workers mows his lawn. Instead of grass clippings, bones spray out. The road is abandoned. --- 08-16-12 Simon Says alarm clock --- 09-11-12 What actually drives happiness: relationships, unique experiences,...

I have a travel blog. I was on the show Survivor. I killed a bear chicken with my hands. Two truths and a lie is a game I love to play with strangers. It's a great icebreaker. When I play with friends, I have to get creative, as they usually know what actually happened and what's a figment of my imagination. But with strangers, it is easy to pull from the archives. A year ago, to this day, I found myself in the company of four other strangers, who quickly became fast friends on our eight-day trek to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. We had reconvened in the tent after hours of hiking thru the picturesque Tanzanian terrain. Oddly, I must have given a different impression to the group, as the immediate and general consensus was "No, you don't have a travel blog." My adventure travel companion and best friend, Jackie, sat in the tent tight lipped trying her best not to reveal any clues. I clarified to the group that I meant to say that I k...

So I received this email and I was having the most difficult time thinking of what to write. I hope I made the deadline. I still don't know what exactly to say, so here goes (basically a random bunch of tidbits that I compiled between the time that I received the email to this moment. Major procrastinator. Regular, anything but. 21, but can't handle kickbacks/"parties". I've looked up ways to avoid drinking simply to avoid drinking at social gatherings, but I end up making things extremely awkward. I'm a backseat driver that enjoys the front seat. I really like self check outs. I've never dated, but I've had a boyfriend. I really like cheese, I like collecting socks, but not wearing them. If I could have it my way, I would wear flip flops everywhere. I enjoy long naps on the floor. Dalmations are really cool. I want someone provocative and talkative. I really hope I get a second chance at this... Email me if you'd like to hear more from me: valenti...

It all comes down to choices. As I reflect now, a few months from entering a new decade - my 30's, I realize that I've made a lot of poor choices in the past. I've chosen to disregard certain friends' feelings when making reckless decisions. I've chosen to do stupid, unsafe things even when completely unnecessary. For those choices that hurt others, I am deeply and sincerely sorry. (Do you also find it harder to forgive yourself for your mistakes than to laud yourself for your successes?) I've also made some good choices. I've worked my ass off to go to school and law school and pass the bar exam (twice!) and cultivate some relationships and try hard to be a good daughter/sister/wife/mother/friend. Some of my choices, I feel guilty about. I'm a fairly new mom, who chose to work from home. I could have focused more on growing my law practice helping those in need of good afforable legal help, or worked more hours at the startups that me, my husband and on...

Hello! Firstly, thank you Listserve! I look forward to these emails everyday! I see many of the emails here are from people (mostly younger than myself) who are on the verge of some great adventure, leaving for school, traveling the world, starting a new business (that surely will someday change world) I'm here to say that some parts of life are not as exciting, and that's ok to. It's ok to live in a small town, not travel the world, or be the next big business venture, it's ok to work the same job for many years or be a stay at home parent. These are the people that make the world tick, these are the nurses, and garbagemen and factory workers, the cops and firemen and salesclerks, they are the volunteers and fundraisers and hot lunch makers. These are the people who keep things running and clean, and keep the safeguards in place, they are the steady, and the quiet population that give the travelers, and dreamers, and the transient and upcoming youth of the world a pla...

What is your passion? We all have at least one; you just have to find it. Mine is travel and in just a few short months, my husband and I are embarking on what could be the biggest adventure of our lives. We are selling our house and most of our possessions and getting on a plane to travel the world. We don't know how long we will be gone or where we will go or where we will stay or what we will do. We are jumping off a cliff into the great unknown! But we have talked, planned and saved. And, at some point, you just have to say "I'm ready. Life is only getting shorter and it is time to take it by the reins." Find your passion and run with it. But, first, please do tell me your favorite city/activity/hotel/restaurant -- the place you would most want to revisit if you were off to see the world. Thanks! Chloe Chloelistserve[AT]gmail.com United States