Hosting an event takes effort. Many people start with the logistics, say a venue they want or a guest list they have in mind. Parker instead recommends focusing first on the guest experience. What purpose does your gathering serve? How do you want people to feel? How can editing down our guest list make the event more meaningful to the people we invite? Parker makes the case that if we’re going to put in all this effort to host an event, we should want people to have a good time.

As my number of recovery days neared zero, I began to appreciate them more. When would I ever get to experience time off like this again? I was so fortunate to have the gift of time set aside for healing. For some reason I wanted to squander it on (yuck) being productive.

Now, eight weeks later, I am here. I’m grateful that I’m nearly complete on a full recovery. I’m getting back into my routine, including my fair share of the cooking and cleaning. And I’m better prepared to meet whatever comes next.

The CEOs note that many food banks of the future will draw their revenue from people in poverty. “This is the first time that we have a model where we’re charging people for food.” This is a nasty idea I fought at my food bank every year I was there. Here’s a summary of their plan: food banks buy huge volumes of food at a discount. Some of that food goes up for sale in the many food deserts around their region. The rest of it goes to food pantries to distribute for free. Poorer communities may pay for food that wealthier communities get for free. How is that justice?

Some people in the united states are still reeling from election results they didn’t believe could happen. But I find the results to be another example of how people seem to vote or act against their own interests. I sometimes encounter white-affirming, status-quo-loving, Black and brown people. I know of gay and lesbian folks who try to peel off the T in the doomed hopes they’ll appear “normal” to their enemies. For me, that can make it hard to know who to trust. Our many identities, not all visible, make up at least part of the understanding we have of the world. How we respond to that understanding is left to each of us to decide.

Jeanne Dielman doesn’t work any other way. The length of the film itself, its near-tedium, is crucial to Akerman’s message. There’s no way it would have the same impact on a viewer if it lasted, say, 90 minutes. We in the audience may not have felt Jeanne’s existence with the same impact. Yet we stayed with Jeanne through a mere fraction of her offscreen life. Told any other way, could the story have given the attention that being a mother, thankless as it can be, deserves? Would we have given her that attention?