Iliza Shlesinger drops her sixth Netflix special with a message for guys who can’t get a girl. This is her respond to the mass-shooting tragedies, in which the guys who murdered women because they couldn’t get sex: “It is so easy to get a girl. All you gotta do is show up. Just be good at something.” She is talking about a passion, even something dumb like fishing. I wholeheartedly concur with her because there were times in my life I thought I couldn’t get a girl and I would be alone for the rest of my life. Then I found the love of my life because I had a passion for reading, which she thought might rub off on our kids.

In the beginning of her special, I find her acting a bit too much, but her writing eventually wins me over. Shlesinger is a brilliant comic and she uses her microphone to voice women issues, including abortion. Of all of her Netflix specials, this one is definitely her most personal, in which she talks about her husband, kid, and miscarriage. I have nothing but respect.

That’s my man, anytime I holler, holler with me
We shared chicken sandwiches—they were a dollar-fifty
Budget: seven dollars, nickel bag, and White Owl
I hope the chicken sandwich last us through the night, child
We ain’t care; we ain’t sleep; we were night owls
Insomniatics, our lifestyles compatible
Magical, Pops gone, shit tragical
Moms gon’ miss you; my house is where the addicts chill
I’m like a teacher; I need me a sabbatical
It’s not irrational; I grew up radical.

Cam’ron (An excerpt from “Get Down”)

On Thursday, we went to the skatepark after school as usual. As I was blading, I heard Xuân cry. He fell off the ramp and busted his chin open. We immediately took him to the ER to have his chin stitched up. He told me he needed to take a break from scootering for five days when his stitches were taken out. On Friday, we went back to the skatepark. I told him he didn’t have to scooter, but he decided to get back into the game.

I told him to avoid the ramp that he had fallen off. It’s a straight ramp, but has a gap at the bottom, in which you have to jump off. He did this ramp in the past with his old scooter. The new one is a bit faster. I didn’t see how he fell. I tried this ramp three times and I fell every time. I couldn’t keep my balance. Fortunately I know how to fall on my guards; therefore, I was not hurt. Out of all of us, Đán is the only one who can pull it off and he does it with effortlessness.

Seeing Xuân fall made me realize how dangerous skating at the park can be. We need to be more cautious. For a while, I hadn’t thought much about it because we had been doing fine. I worry about Đạo the least because he has always been careful. Xuân has been careful as well until this incident. I worry about Đán the most because he is confident and somewhat fearless. The trade off is that he advances very quickly. I haven’t learned new tricks because I just don’t want to take risks like I used to.

Cuối tuần vừa rồi, vợ đi xa để tôi ở nhà trông bốn thằng con. Tôi cũng muốn thử sức một mình nuôi con ra sao. Dĩ nhiên tôi không mong điều đó sẽ đến nhưng vẫn luôn chuẩn bị tâm lý nếu vợ chồng không thể nào cùng đi chung đường đời nữa. Những năm gần đây tôi với vợ dường như đã rẽ ra hai lối đi khác nhau.

Trong cuộc sống chúng tôi hoàn toàn khác biệt. Ngoài việc nuôi nấng con cái, chúng tôi không có sở thích chung. Vợ thích ở nhà trồng trọt và thư giãn ngoài công việc làm. Ngược lại tôi thích ra ngoài rong chơi. Những ngày cuối tuần vợ ở nhà còn tôi đưa đám nhỏ lang thang từ công viên trượt (skateparks) đến sân chơi thể thao (playgrounds). Những lúc phụ huynh trong hướng đạo tụ tập ăn uống, phần đông họ đi có vợ có chồng, còn tôi thường đi một mình vì vợ tôi không mấy thích đám đông. Hoặc những lần đi cắm trại qua đêm cũng chỉ mình tôi đi với hai đứa lớn còn vợ ở nhà với hai đứa nhỏ.

Lúc đầu một vài lần không sao nhưng rồi khoảng cách càng ngày càng xa hơn. Tôi và vợ làm tất cả cho gia đình và dành hết thời gian cho con cái, nhưng chỉ làm những công việc cần thiết cho nhau. Trong cách cư xử với nhau những lời ngọt ngào êm tai giờ đã thay vào những lời lẽ châm chích khó nghe. Hậu quả của việc chung sống với nhau mười mấy năm qua.

Những lúc thời tiết trở lạnh, tôi mong muốn được hơi ấm của vợ. Có những đêm thèm được trò chuyện với vợ vì đã lâu không nói với nhau ngoài những lời lẽ trách móc nhau. Một hôm nỗi đơn độc lạnh lẽo khiến tôi trằn trọc mãi không ngủ được và cuối cùng tôi lấy được can đảm để tâm sự với vợ. Tôi chia sẻ những gì tôi cảm nhận giữ tôi và vợ và ngược lại vợ cũng sẻ chia những gì muốn nói. Thì ra vợ không lạnh lùng như tôi nghĩ. Tình cảm vợ chồng tuy mòn mỏi theo năm tháng nhưng vẫn sâu đậm. Trong cuộc sống vợ chồng đôi lúc cũng phải trò chuyện và tâm sự với nhau để hiểu được tình cảm dành cho nhau.

Tôi không muốn đi đến hoàn cảnh vợ chồng sống chung một nhà mà đường ai nấy đi và việc ai nấy làm như một người bạn tôi quen biết. Hai vợ chồng vẫn ở chung nhà vì con cái nhưng mạnh ai nấy sống. Ông tìm đến rượu để giải sầu và tìm một mối tình xa tận ở quê nhà. Vài tháng ông bay về Việt Nam thăm người yêu trong khi người vợ sống ngay trong ngôi nhà. Cuộc sống thật khó hiểu. Tôi vẫn yêu vợ nồng nàn như ngày nào. Hy vọng rằng “đừng buông tay âm thầm tìm về cô đơn”.

Amanda Loudin, writing for the New York Times:

Shaking up your fitness routine with in-line skating has big physical payoffs, said Esther Goldsmith, a London-based exercise and sports physiologist with the bio-analytics firm Orreco. “Depending on how you’re skating, you can reap both aerobic and anaerobic benefits,” she said. “But you also engage a wide variety of muscles you might not from a sport like running or cycling.” You’ll pull in stabilizing muscles from your abs and calves, for instance, as well as inner and outer thigh muscles.

What sets in-line skating apart from sports like hiking, running and most types of swimming is that you move in a lateral plane of motion, rather than just front and back. Over time, these types of functional muscles — those we use in daily life — decline if not challenged in this manner. “Skating takes your body side to side, involves your core, and improves your balance,” Ms. Goldsmith said.

Skating also trains your nervous system by requiring your body to do several movements at once, like squatting and pushing off to the sides (particularly if you’re mixing up your style). This is helpful in both athletic and daily activities, said Ms. Goldsmith. “When your muscles and nerves are more prepared, it reduces the likelihood for tweaking your back, for example,” said Ms. Goldsmith. “Skating trains your body for these daily activities without even realizing it.”

Careering around on tiny wheels can have additional benefits later in life. For one, it provides an equal aerobic benefit to running, but with lower impact on the body, presuming you don’t fall.

The payoff from learning to glide balanced on one foot at a time is also valuable. “Our balance peaks in our late 30s and begins to decline in our 40s,” Ms. Goldsmith said. “Many accidents happen over the age of 65 because of trips and falls. Skating regularly adds balance to the routine and that can help slow down that decline.”

That doesn’t mean skating is without risk — falls happen, and sometimes sprains or broken bones accompany them. But by mastering foundational skills and padding up with helmets, wrist and knee guards, you can mitigate your chances of injury.

I have been drinking and eating steak quite a bit, but my gout hasn’t flared up. I suspect because I have been rollerblading everyday.

Thư từ bạn TN:

Dạ em chào anh Donny Truong, em muốn mua cuốn sách Vietnamese Typography thì mua qua đâu ạ.

Em thấy có phần đóng góp, thì đấy là đóng góp bao nhiêu cũng được hay nó có một giá nhất định ạ. Em cảm ơn anh.

Chào TN,

Cám ơn bạn đọc Vietnamese Typography. Sách không có bản in vì mình vẫn tiếp tục cặp nhật trong phần giới thiệu phông chữ có dấu Việt (type recommendations) và phần mẫu thiết kế (samples). Mình muốn đây là một dự án tiếp tục hoạt động chứ không dừng lại. Quyển sách khi in rồi thì không còn bổ xung được nữa.

Trong dự án này có phần đóng góp tùy theo bạn đọc không có một giá nhất định. Hy vọng của mình là giúp sức trong công việc làm cho nghệ thuật chữ Việt càng ngày càng phong phú hơn.

Cheers,

Donny

Think the American Civil War,—
…followed by a century of Jim Crow.

If you do not become a master
you are a slave.

The voice of What had to be built leaves certain
words bodiless. The Lost Cause, strange

fruit, was lost, for us, in a song about lacerated flesh.

When a master stares at himself in the future

what he fears is that the world will do to him what
he did to the world when he was the world.

Frank Bidart (an excerpt)

We went down the Perfume River by dragon boat
as far as the pagoda of the three golden Buddhas.

Pray here. You can ask for happiness.
We light joss sticks, send votives downriver in paper sacks,

then have trouble disembarking from the boat.
Our bodies disembark, but our souls remain.

A thousand lanterns drift, a notebook opens in the dark
to a page where moonlight makes a sound.

These soldiers are decades from war now:
pewter-haired, steel-haired, a moon caught in plumeria.

We are like the clouds that pass and pass.
What does it matter then if we are not the same as clouds?

There was then the whir of stork wings, and bicycle chains ringing.
It is still now the way the air is still just before the mine explodes.

Once we fired at each other. Now we pass silence back and forth.
On the ten thousand graves, we lay chrysanthemum.

Carolyn Forché

An excerpt from “At First”:

We became paid professionals of pain.
Specialists in suffering,
Aces of the ache,
Masters of the moan.

An excerpt from “Fugue”:

We added a thousand false steps
To our walk tracker today
Because every step we’ve taken
Has required more than we had to give.

An excerpt from “Another Nautical”:

We, like the water, forget nothing,
Forgo everything.
Words, also like the water,
Are a type of washing.
Through them we cleanse ourselves
Of what we are not.
That is to say, words
Are how we are moored & unmarred.
Let us rouse & roar
Like the ancient beasts we are.

An excerpt from “In the Deep”:

Yes, nostalgia has its purposes—
Transport from the spectered,
The jobs never coming back,
The mothers’ primal screams,
Our children’s minds shuttered from school,
The funerals without families,
Weddings in waiting,
The births in isolation.
Let no one again
Have to begin, love, or end, alone.

An excerpt from “Compass”:

The pain pulls us apart,
Like lips about to speak.
Without language nothing can live
At all, let alone
Beyond itself.

Lost as we feel, there is no better
Compass than compassion.
We find ourselves not by being
The most seen, but the most seeing.
We watch a toddler
Freewheel through warm grass,
Not fleeing, just running, the way rivers do,
For it is in their unfettered nature.
We smile, our whole face cleared
By that single dazzling thing.
How could we not be altered?

An excerpt from “Hephaestus”:

We labor equally
When we fall as when we rise.
Always remember that
What happened to us
Happened through us.

We wonder how close
Can we come to light
Before we shut our eyes.

How long can we stand the dark
Before we become more than our shadows.

“Every Day We Are Learning” (full poem)

Every day we are learning
How to live with essence, not ease.
How to move with haste, never hate.
How to leave this pain that is beyond us
Behind us.
Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.
It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.

An excerpt from “Cordage, or Atonement”:

No.
We are the whale,
With a heart so huge
It can’t help but wail.
We can’t help but help.
If given the choice, we would not be
Among the Chosen,
But amidst the Changed.

Unity is its own devout work,
The word we work in,
That leaves us devastated to be delivered.

The future isn’t attained.
It is atoned, until
It is at one with history,
Until home is more than memory,

Until we can hold near
Who we hold dear.

What a marvelous wreck are we.
We press out of our cold
& separate crouching.
Like a vine sprung overnight,
We were reaching & wretched
Upon this mortal soil
& even so we are undiminished.
If just for this newborn day,
Let us take back our lives.

“Life” (full poem)

Life is not what is promised,
But what is sought.
These bones, not what is found,
But what we’ve fought.
Our truth, not what we said,
But what we thought.
Our lesson, all we have taken
& all we have brought.

An excerpt from “_____[Gated]”:

Never forget that to be alone
Has always been a price for some & a privilege for others.

We have yielded
Centuries of sidewalk,

…

To be kept to the edges of existence is the inheritance of the marginalized.

“Rose” (full poem)

Riots are red
Violence is blue
We’re sick of dying
How ’bout you

An excerpt from “We Write”:

We write
Because you might listen.
We write because
We are lost
& lonely,
& you, like us,
Are looking
& learning.

Today marks my 11^th year working at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School. As Director of Design and Web Services, I wear many hats, but my main focus is the law school website. It feels as if I had adopted and raised my own child and watched it grow from a toddler to a teenager.

When I first inherited the site from my predecessor, I had never worked with MODX before. The site was still running on the old codebase from MODX Evolution. To familiarize myself with the platform, I ripped the site apart and built everything from the ground up. I cleaned up the back-end codes and made sure the front-end markups were well structured. At the time when responsive design was still new, I implemented responsive layout starting with mobile first and progressive enhancement.

All the work I put in from the start had paid off in the long run. As the site grew over the years with countless iterations and several redesigns, the solid foundation on the backend, the clean markups on the frontend, and the visual presentation never spawned out of control. Under my watch, I maintained and nurtured every part of the site. I valued our visitors and respected their privacy. I pushed back when being asked to implement third-party trackers, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google. I enhanced the user experience based on user studies, accessibility guidelines, and usability recommendations. I improved the design with new technologies such as CSS Grid and web fonts. I worked with developers to upgrade from MODX Evolution to MODX Revolution. I worked with the MODX team to migrate to MODX Cloud.

The site had been through different visions from three deans. The first dean and my supervisor gave me the freedom to shape the look and feel of the website. The second dean entrusted me to build a branding system for his vision: Learn. Challenge. Lead. Based on the University’s branding guidelines, typefaces, and colors, I implemented bright colors, bold typography, and inviting graphics. The site was vibrant and distinctive, yet still compliant with the Mason branding. The third and current dean wanted to tone down the look and feel. We went through several redesigns and ended up with what we have now.

Designing and developing the law school website has been not only my profession, but also my passion. I loved the web when I first discovered it many years ago and that love hasn’t changed. Between my professional and personal projects, I want to continue to make the web a better experience without tracking, wasting time, and frustrating users. my hope is to continue to maintain and to grow the law school website for many years to come.