3 Favorite Things I Saw This Week (and Last)
[Note: I wrote this post during the last week of 2017]
This was last week’s selections but is just as blog-worthy to note. So here they are:
- Mirai Nagasu’s Redemption Skate: How to Fail Forward
Figure-skating was a huge part of my life when I newly relocated to the USA. How “huge”? A rough measurement would be to take a count of the number of Winter Olympics’ women’s berets I own. Thus, when the US Figure-Skating (FS) Championships came on TV last Friday, I was riveted to the screen; although I haven’t been following the latest developments too closely after the passing of an era in FS where Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen dominated.
#USChamps18 What an inspiration @mirai_nagasu You deserve to be in the 2018 Winter Olympics 👏👏
— Yin Wah Kreher (@yinbk) January 6, 2018
One after another, the hot favorites came on the ice: Mariah Bell, Ashley Wagner, Karen Chen, and then Mirai Nagasu. The past came back to mind as the commentators provided background information on how Mirai was left out of the 2014 Olympics despite coming in third. (I remembered the scenes when she used to be in the Kiss-and-Cry with Frank Carroll who had coached Michelle.) The US Figure-Skating Association gave fourth-place Wagner the third and final spot in the 2014 Winter Olympics FS team because of her stronger international competitive record. Mirai was devastated. But this setback has motivated her to work harder to fight for a berth in the 2018 Olympics. Her skate that Friday night earned her a standing ovation. Despite a wobbly landing of the triple axel, we were rooting for her. When she landed the final jump, a triple flip, I was almost in tears and overwhelmed with emotion. Instead of quitting, Mirai rose from the ashes to clinch a place in the 2018 Winter Olympics FS team and she also added the difficult triple axel to her program. She.fought.back. These four long years must have been a long wait. Mirai, you are a true athlete and my heroine! You showed us how to fail forward. Now, go get them at Pyeongchang.
2. A Blind Twitter User Speaks Up
I’m a blind twitter user. There are a lot of us out there. Increase your ability to reach us and help us interact with your pictures, it’s really simple and makes a huge difference to our twitter experiance allowing us to see your images our way. Thanks for the description 😎 pic.twitter.com/hCsjoFdmev
— Rob Long (@_Red_Long) January 3, 2018
Thanks, Rob Long, for advocating for blind users, for reminding us that there are a lot of you out there, Something which we tend to forget when we tweet images, when we use gifs, when we post text embedded in images. Thanks for teaching us to be inclusive and to create a truly participatory web.
3. To Walk Invisible: Bronte Sisters
A favorite just because it reminded me to write, to keep working on the things that I’m passionate about and one day, it will grow into something bigger than myself. I read books and watched movies by the Bronte sisters a long time ago — Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But I had no idea of the struggles they had to go through until I watched this series on Amazon Prime. They had to adopt male pseudonyms to get their works published; they died young because of poor health care and sanitation. It struck me that I was fortunate to have so much despite the lack of time to indulge in my favorite pastimes of writing, painting and theater. Isn’t it time to just get back to writing and the arts?
