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The Healthy Skepticism I’m Not Having Trouble Applying

April 10, 2026

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life) , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Department Of But First, Set Aside The Skepticism For:
More Proof That Everything Circles Around

Dateline: Tuesday 4:29p, reading a blurb in The Week magazine’s “guide to what’s worth watching.” I come upon a blurb that makes me shriek with joy, and search my blog history for the story I know is there.  Here, from 10-27-17 (   The Studio I’m Not Touring ), is an excerpt of my relating a Parnell family story to my family

Remember the story I’ve told you, when I was in grade school, and one night at the dinner table my dad was teasing my mom about her name….

For the benefit of those not related to me or who haven’t heard the story,   [1]  a wee bit o’ background info: my mother’s birth surname was Hole.   [2]  Yes,  Hole.  I sometimes teased her, about why her own mother didn’t keep her surname Moran but instead was willing to take on her husband’s…unique…family name: It really must have been love, or desperation….

Yeah, so, the story.  At the family dinner table, occupied as per usual by my parents and their four children (on this particular night oh-so-many years ago, my older sister, younger sister and I were all in grade school, and our brother was an infant):

After my father’s customary  So, tell me about your day? query, we dove into yet another round of thematic banter. Our family dinner table dialogues tended to focus on one subject, which was never (or rarely) intentional or pre-planned, but rather tangential from something which had happened to one of the Parnell siblings  [3]   at school. On that evening, I shared a story about a kid who had been teased on the playground about his name: the combination of his first name and last name made for some tease-worthy rhyme schemes.   [4]

Marion Parnell said she felt sorry for the poor boy. Growing up with her particular last name, she knew exactly how he felt:

“My father was always telling my sisters and I how, in Norway, Hole was a respectable, upper class, landowners’ name. I lost track of how many times he told us we should be proud of our name. He just couldn’t understand how it was for us, because in America, it was just HOLE.  Oh, I heard it all the time, the jokes: ‘Look, here comes Marion Hole, hole-in-the-ground…don’t fall into a hole!’ “

(I had also lost count of how many times I’d heard about Hole-is-a-proud-Norwegian-name assurances, and had come to think that our maternal grandfather had made that up to make our mother feel better.  I’d never heard of anyone, of any ethnic background, with that name.)

 

Still with me? You deserve The Order of the Pretty Purple Toe ® award.

 

My mother took little comfort from me telling her that her peers had been pretty lame in the joke department:  ” ‘Marion Hole-in-the-ground’? I can think of a lot worse things to do with a name like…”

Chester Parnell jumped in, to save me from embarrassing my mother. Or so I thought.

“Well, Robbie Doll, you know what your mom’s middle name is?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Alberta?”

“That’s right,” Chet nodded enthusiastically. “But you know, she was so beautiful, I never had any second thoughts about marrying an  A. Hole.”

This produced shrieks of delight from the three Parnell daughters – first from me (my shriek decibel count was boosted by my pride in being the first one to “get it”), followed a few seconds later by my older sister, and then by my younger sister, who probably didn’t get the reference but knew something hilarious must have been said by the way her older sisters and father were reacting.

Mom had that tense/amused, try-to-be-a-good-sport look on her face.  Dad gazed across the table at her with impish affection – I knew something even better was coming up.

Chester B. Parnell: “Tell them about your cousin.”

Marion A. Hole Parnell (baring her teeth): “I don’t want to tell them about my cousin.”

Chet:  “Tell them about your cousin. What was his name?”

Marion: (muttering) “His name was Harry.”

Chet: “And it wasn’t a nickname – his real name wasn’t Harold? And he didn’t have a middle name – just a first and last name?”

Marion: “That’s right.”

Mom, of course, knew where this was heading. She tried to act as if she were miffed, but I could see the corners of her mouth beginning to twitch.

Chet: “And so his name was…?”

Marion (deep breath): “Harry Hole.”

Professional stand-up comics would kill to get an audience response akin to that which erupted that evening, in the smallest of venues, the Parnell kitchen dining nook.

*   *   *

Back to the present; specifically, Tuesday, when moiself  comes across the blurb in The Week magazine and shrieks aloud, My mom’s cousin!!

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Post Easter Reflections

It’s the week after the weekend of the most holy Christian festival that ironically   [5]  has the most un-Christian name.  What we call Easter, as with most Christian holidays, consists in large part of the ancient rites and myths of paganism and other spiritualities which were incorporated into the Christian myths  (see this Longest Blog Footnote So Far ® for details, should that float your boat.  [6]  )

Three years ago, around this time of year, this was included in my blog:

Department Of Uh, Since You’ve Asked, That Would Be, “No”

Last Sunday a FBF (Facebook Friend) began her post thusly:

Happy Easter, everyone! Can I share what it means to me?

FBF went on to – surprise! – offer her testimony for Jesus, without waiting for an answer to her question.

 

 

Moiself   remembered that post on Monday, when I saw a different post on social media – a post which, if I had a different relationship with that FBF, I would forward to her, and possibly even ask for her reaction/opinion.   

For my Christian readers, family and friends – and yessirreeebobsurprise! I do have them –  I assume they call themselves Christian because they go to a Christian church and/or believe they have committed to “follow Jesus.”

Having been raised in that background, it has always – and especially around this time of year – been a source of forehead-bonking wonder to moiself  that there seems to be little understanding by Christians that their Jesus is never quoted in their scriptures as saying,  “Oh, yeah, along with the teachings and good deed admonitions I’m leaving y’all with, here’s the most important thing: please remember to start a new religion, and name it after me.”

Former Christian evangelical divinity student Jim Palmer’s new ministry seems to be to “minister” to former literalists such as himself ( from Palmer’s  writings moiself  has seen so far, I gather Palmer would still claim to follow [some]  words/example of Jesus, but not Christianity).  For the sake of relative brevity, moiself  will assume that most Christians accept their Biblical scriptures as reliable.  [7]  It is to those Christians that I’d like to direct to one of Palmer’s writings, which contain some abundant food for thought (an entire life’s rations, I’d say) about how Christianity ≠ Jesus ≠  Christianity:   

It still surprises people who haven’t looked closely that Jesus and Christianity are not the same thing. Not even close. Jesus was not a Christian. He didn’t start Christianity. He didn’t write a creed, build an institution, or outline a belief system that would later dominate empires. You can’t blame Christian nationalism on Jesus. You can’t even cleanly blame Christianity on him. What exists today under his name is something that formed after him, around him, and in many ways, in spite of him.

What we call Christianity is largely shaped by the Apostle Paul and later by the political machinery of the early church. Most of the New Testament isn’t Jesus talking, it’s Paul interpreting. Then you have centuries of councils, debates, and power plays where theology gets hammered into place by people trying to stabilize a movement that was never meant to be stabilized. Read the creeds. They are packed with metaphysical claims about Jesus, yet strangely quiet about the actual things he taught. It’s a lot of doctrine, very little Jesus.

Then Constantine shows up and everything shifts. After the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Christianity goes from a grassroots, disruptive movement to a state-sanctioned tool. Legalized, institutionalized, and eventually weaponized. What began as something subversive becomes something that props up empires. By the time you get to Nicaea, Jesus is being defined in ways that would likely leave him scratching his head. The question isn’t just who Jesus was. It’s who needed him to be what they said he was.

Christianity didn’t just elevate Jesus. It insulated people from him. Turning him into God conveniently removes the pressure of actually following him. If he’s divine in a way you can never be, then you don’t have to wrestle with his humanity or your own. You can worship instead of embody. You can believe instead of live. It’s a brilliant move if your goal is control. Not so great if your goal is transformation.

Strip away the layers of theology, politics, and institutional spin, and you find something far more dangerous than what Christianity preserved. Jesus wasn’t executed for starting a religion. He was executed for disrupting one. He challenged the alliance between religious authority and political power, and he did it without holding any official position himself. That’s what made him dangerous. He didn’t oppose the system by building a rival system. He made the existing one look unnecessary.

The Romans didn’t crucify nobodies. Jesus mattered. Not because he held power, but because he exposed it. His message stirred hope, and hope is not harmless. Hope destabilizes systems that rely on resignation. It wakes people up. It makes them harder to control. Jesus told people to stop outsourcing their authority, to stop deferring to religious gatekeepers, and to trust what was alive and true within themselves. That’s not religion. That’s a direct threat to anyone who benefits from people staying dependent.

Every time Jesus spoke, he was pulling another block out of the structure holding everything in place. He didn’t need an army. He didn’t need a platform. His clarity did the damage. He revealed that the system people thought they needed wasn’t necessary in the way they had been told. And once people start to see that, the whole thing begins to wobble.

What’s ironic is that the religion built in his name ended up doing the opposite of what he did. It rebuilt the very structures he exposed. It reintroduced authority, hierarchy, and dependency, then stamped his name on it for legitimacy. And now, two thousand years later, Jesus is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Talked about endlessly, but rarely recognized.

Jesus might be the most famous missing person in history. Not because he disappeared, but because the institution built around him made sure you wouldn’t find him.

(excerpts, my emphases, Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy  )

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [8]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [9]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago April to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 4-10-25 ( The Bird I’m Not Calling  ).

Department of Seasonal Poor Taste

Content warning:  Well, duh.

My (belated) Easter sex joke:

He is risen!
He is risen, indeed!  [10]

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“I HAVE AN EASTER challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born.

Believers should eagerly take up this challenge, since without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. Paul wrote, ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain…. ‘ (I Corinthians 15:14-15)

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul’s tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened….”

 

 

Protestants and Catholics seem to have no trouble applying healthy skepticism to the miracles of Islam, or to the ‘historical’ visit between Joseph Smith and the angel Moroni. Why should Christians treat their own outrageous claims any differently?…

[Thomas] Paine points out that everything in the bible is hearsay. For example, the message at the tomb (if it happened at all) took this path, at minimum, before it got to our eyes: God, angel(s), Mary, disciples, Gospel writers, copyists, translators. (The Gospels are all anonymous and we have no original versions.)

But first things first: Christians, either tell me exactly what happened on Easter Sunday, or let’s leave the Jesus myth buried next to Eastre (Ishtar, Astarte), the pagan Goddess of Spring after whom your holiday was named.

( Excerpts, Leave No Stone Unturned: an Easter Challenge for Christians
Freethought Today, by Dan Barker )

 

Then, like now, you’d think somebody at the time would have noticed zombies walking around….

*   *   *

May you enjoy the rites of spring, no matter what natural processes and/or mythical beings you attribute them to;
May you apply a healthy skepticism to all supernatural claims;
May you always notice when zombies are walking around;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The latter group would not include anyone within a twenty mile radius of my dining table.

[2] Which is why, once my feminist worldview began to develop, I told her it was completely understandable that she never even considering retaining her birth name upon marriage

[3] Which translates into, usually moiself . Things were always happening to moiself .

[4] And although I remember with vivid clarity the conversation that ensued from me sharing that story about the kid being teased re his name, to this day I cannot recall what the kid’s name was – something along the lines of Bart Katz, which of course got turned into Barfing Cats or Fart Cats or the like.

[5] Or fittingly, according to your POV.

[6] When early Christian missionaries encountered the tribes of the north, they attempted to convert them to Christianity and, of course, alter their existing religious observations.  They did so in a clandestine manner, as suggested by church authorities and finally “officialized” in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory I issued an edict to his missionaries regarding the customs of peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than banish native customs and beliefs, the pope had his missionaries incorporate them (e.g., if people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, Greg I advised missionaries to consecrate the tree to Christ).

 

Early Christians holy day observances coincided with celebrations that already existed.  And as with almost all “Christian” holidays, Easter was originally a festival of another religion, and derives from a variety of pagan celebrations.  It made sense to Christians to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian celebration.   Still, every Easter, many Christian parents are put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain to the kiddies why the torture, execution, and supposed resurrection of Jesus is celebrated with colored eggs and cute widdle bunnies.  Uncomfortable, in that most adult Christians have only a vague clue about the connection.  Some grant that Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover celebration.  However, seeing as how Yahweh didn’t send a plague of egg-hiding rabbits into Egypt, the link seems rather feeble.

 

The name of the holiday, “Easter,” is the name of a pagan goddess, and was identified as the source of the holiday’s name by “The Venerable Bede” (672-735 CE), a Christian theologian (in his book De Ratione Temporum.) The name “Easter” has many variations (Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Ester, Eastra, Eastur, Austron, etc.) but all of these come from the same Roman deity, the goddess of the dawn, named “Eos” or “Easter.”

 

[7]  The refutations of that assumption, along with the problems which come from assuming such veracity and/or the reliability of scriptural sources, are just a google search away.

[8] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[10] For those not familiar with churchy stuff, this is the traditional Paschal greeting.

[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Matchmaker I’m Not Playing

April 3, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, Wow, Yikes! Leave a comment

 

Department Of Getting All Zen On Y’all’s Asses

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something,
loves something,
and has lost something.

 

And everyone feels better after looking at a picture of a baby sloth wearing pjs.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Theory Of Let Them

I’m not sure if this can – or should – apply to politics in the wider sense; e.g., when it comes to the depredations of The Mandarin Turd Führer and company, we don’t just want to let them.  But in one’s personal dealings, I have found this to be helpful.

 

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of Dude Doesn’t Waste Time
Getting Down To Brass Tacks   [1]

Sub-Department Of Things I Learned From The Older   [2]   Man  Who
Approached Me As I Was Waiting For The Door To Zumba Class To Open

Dateline:  Monday; circa 10:55 am.  An affable, petite, elderly man,   [3]  whose appearance and accent indicated he came from a culture different from mine, approached me and wished me a good morning.  He looked familiar; I’d seen him in class at least once.  Thus, after I returned his greeting, I passed on the information a staff member had given me when I first entered the Rec Center: the Zumba class was going to start a few minutes late, as another group was using the facility.

He nodded, said he’d just come from another Zumba class at Hidden Creek (another Hillsboro Parks & Rec facility), and asked if I was married.

The casual ease with which he spoke his question – which I found to be both a straightforward query and a non-sequitur, given the circumstances – took me by surprise…but not in a threatening way.

“Yes,” I said, “I am married.”

He looked at my left hand, his eyes widening and sparkling with mischievous disbelief when he beheld the modest band on my ring finger (MH and I currently choose to wear plain but colorful silicon bands, which, I have been told, “…don’t look like *real* wedding rings” ).

 

 

“You are married?” he asked again.  I laughed, repeated my marital status affirmation, and decided to return the straightforward-ness: “I take it you are not married, and are looking to meet someone?”

He seemed pleased by my supposition.  Yes, he enthused, he is looking to meet a woman for dating!   He reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved a piece of paper that had his name and phone number on it, and asked me if I would be so kind to take down the information and pass it along to any women I know who might also be looking for companionship.

Moiself  was feeling generous, and said that I would.  As I reached for my phone to take a picture of the paper, I asked if he was using his family for matchmaking ( a common practice in his culture ).  He said he’d decided not to go that route.  I asked him what he sought in a date, and what should I tell prospective dating partners about him?  He told me…

*  He is 78 years old, a retired chemical engineer originally from ____ (another country);

*  He was married for 43 years, has been widowed several years;

*  He frequently visits his daughter, who lives nearby;

*  He doesn’t ask his daughter to “fix him up” because she isn’t happy about him wanting to date;

*  He has looked at online dating apps but is not impressed by them (and he doesn’t do social media);

*  The age of the woman doesn’t matter to him;

*  He offers companionship, kindness, and affection, and seeks the same;

*  He has found that there are two things which people think are important to control in their life:  their diet and their religion.  But he wants people to know that he doesn’t care “about any of that;”

*  “Everyone” at the Hillsboro Recreation centers knows him (he said that after an employee passed by and greeted him by name), because he is so friendly;

* He is open to meeting a woman from any background, *but* not from ____  (his home country).  This is for several reasons, including the “fact” (as he put it)  that after they (women from his culture) are widowed, they don’t look to date or remarry; rather, they join their children’s families and spend their time looking after their grandchildren.

 

I guess I won’t be passing his number on to June.

 

He asked me to stress that he is monogamous (“Not like many other men who,” he said, “flip around”  [4]  ), and that he goes to exercise classes and takes care of himself, “even though with age…” he glanced down, patted his protruding belly, and chuckled.  He then complimented me – “And you obviously take care of yourself” – and touched my upper arm, very lightly and quickly squeezing my bicep.  It was a gesture I might have found insulting and/or icky from someone else, but from him, it was almost…sweet?  Is that ageist, or patronizing of me?  

I found him wistfully charming; not creepy or threatening, and there was an air of both optimism and loneliness about him.  As the Zumba classroom door opened I said something positive about networking ( “Well, that’s how you do it – let others know you’re looking” ) and wished him well in his search.  We shook hands and he bid me farewell.  It turned out he was not going to class.  It also turned out (surprise!  As in, not) “He does that to every woman,” I heard from another female class member, after she asked about the bemused look on my face and I told her about my gentleman solicitor.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes I Feel Like Moiself  Should Wear
A Black Arm Band For My Country

Context: recently messaging a friend from high school, who has lived now for decades overseas, about The State Of Things In My (and formerly, his) Country ® .  My friend’s past experiences include being in the US military and working in health care with mentally ill –  life experiences which, along with being bicultural and multilingual and an expat ( a stranger in a strange land which he has now made his own) – give him a keen and unique perspective on what he sees going on in his native land.   His pithy articulation shredded my heart.  

“Do I miss my homeland?  No, not really, but I do mourn for it.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received

While listening to the rebroadcast of the No Stupid Questions podcast, What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received   [5]  moiself  didn’t immediately come up with my alternative (as in, Ah, yes, and the best advice I ever received was….”  Instead, I was intrigued by how many possible answers there might be to that question, perhaps as many different pieces of advice as there are advice givers, and seekers.

Podcast host Angela Duckworth:
“The first thing that leaps to mind is I was about 19 or 20 years old. There was a professor named Kay Merseth, who I’m still in touch with. And I remember being unhappy and going to Kay for advice. I can’t exactly remember whether it was another romantic breakup…or more that I was struggling with a career decision. Like: should I go into education, which I really wanted to do, but my dad wouldn’t speak to me after that, or should I become a doctor like he does want me to.

And I remember she said this: ‘Angela, it sounds to me like you really want to make the right decision, the best decision.’ And I nodded. And she said, ‘But life’s not like that. Life is a story. And your job is not to tell the ‘right’ story or even the best story. It’s just to tell a story that you can be proud of.’ And I went away from that day thinking, ‘What the hell did Kay mean? This is too deep for me.’

But I have actually used that advice when I talk to undergraduates in my own course. Now they’re the 19 or 20-year-old, and I’m the professor. And I do think the reason why Kay gave that advice to me — and why I pass it along — is that I think I was a little bit paralyzed by, like, ‘What’s the absolutely correct or best decision?’ And we can’t know. I mean, life is just mostly uncertainty. All we can do is act in a way where we can use the intuition we have. There are many, many paths in life, and who knows how this is going to turn out? But am I doing something that — at the end of the story, will I look back and say, ‘I’m proud of that?’

( Excerpt; my emphases,  No Stupid Questions podcast,
What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received ),

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“No myths need to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No person god needs to be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need to be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.”

( Neuroscientist, philosopher, meditation teacher, podcast host, author Sam Harris,
excerpt from The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And The Future Of Reason )

 

*   *   *

May you discern when or when not to just  Let Them;
May we do more than wear a black armband for our country;
May your life be the best advice someone else has ever received;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Whence that phrase, which means getting down to the basics or serious business?  And can the tacks-one-is-getting-down-to be of an alloy other than brass?  Getting down to pewter?  Bronze?  Sterling silver?

[2] As in, older than moiself.

[3] Not stooped with age; he had good posture but couldn’t have been more than 5’2″ (and even smaller, were he barefooted).

[4] I think he meant, flit around?

[5] originally aired 8-29-21

[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Streets I’m Not Renaming

March 27, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, travel , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Streets I’m Not Renaming

Department Of Yet Another Reason Why I Love Norway

I have immensely enjoyed the times moiself  has had the opportunity to travel to/around several European countries.  Each of those times involved at least one  embarrassment-by-association experience, wherein Some Otherwise Enlightened World Citizens ® that one finds in, say, a Rick Steves travel group feel compelled to bray about the high taxes of, for example, the Scandinavian social democracies.   [1]  This typically happens after visiting a country’s house of parliament or other such facilities:  we visitors are chatting amongst ourselves, comparing and contrasting, say, Norway’s standard of living with that of the USA, and SOEWC will feel compelled to remind everyone how the people who live in those countries must pay “far too much taxes to  *the government.*“

 

 

This triggers moiself  and others to remind the braying ignoramous Ugly Americans SOEWC that, it’s the people of those countries, not some random/arbitrary “government,”  who understand that the government is not some far away entity.  It is them; it is *their* government.  This is how they vote to collect and spend *their* money, on a system which runs on the premise (read: reality) that a higher standard of living for everyone benefits everyone.  [2]

Why is it that so many folks in the USA seem to forget what they pay for later ( is it simply that, the timing? ) rather than up front?  By not having a portion of their taxes fund a system of national health care they think they get to keep more money in their pockets; they have financial amnesia when it comes to what later flies out of those same pockets, sometimes seemingly at light speed, for medical insurance premiums and copays and care and medications and visits and “conditions not covered” and…and…and….

Fortunately, we have level-headed (if bemused by USA obliviousness on the subject) Norwegians to explain it to us.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of History To Keep In Mind

Several years ago I found this old employee status board in an antique shop.  It’s currently in my office, keeping track of the comings and goings of my imaginary coworkers.  These coworkers are people, real or fictional, whom I admire in some way.  When the Cesar Chavez sexual abuse scandal broke, I reminded Mark about that board – I asked him to go into my office and take a look at it, and notice whose name was #7 from the top.  [3]

 

 

I always thought Dolores Huerta was the un- (as in, lesser) sung hero of the farmworker’s movement.  Little did I suspect what Huerta endured – what she felt she had to endure and keep silent about – for a cause she put above her own mental and physical health.

Amid the rush to cancel the memorials to Chavez’s name (and in some cases, rename them for Huerta), moiself  offers this suggestion:  how’s about we stop naming public facilities – from roads to recreation centers to parks and preserves – after people?  Our idols *always* turn out to have feet of clay (or in Chavez’s case, feet of…festering ICK).

As for the legion of progressives who feel let down/betrayed by and disgusted with Chavez, I am almost one of them.  But, not really, as in, not fully.  And if you are, I ask you to consider…why?

 

 

Progressive male leaders were/are still…male leaders.  Male leaders’ sexism in the 1960s-70s anti-war and civil rights movements helped motivate what has become known as Second Wave feminism, and was an open secret among activists of the times.

When Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee activist Ruby Doris Smith presented a paper on at a SNCC staff meeting on “The Position of Women in SNCC,” SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael infamously declared,

“The only position for women in the movement is prone.”

Decades later    [4]  a few SNCC members pointed out that Carmichael was known to be supportive of women activists; thus, perhaps what he said was a “bad joke” taken “out of context.”  No matter what Carmichael’s intentions might have been,   [5]  that statement is merely one example of  “the entrenched misogyny of 1960s activist movements, which prompted the feminist critiques of the New Left that would later develop into the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s.”   [6]

 

 

This embedded misogyny was arguably/most blatantly on view during the Counter-Inaugural Protest,  [7]    a series of speeches and marches organized by the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam.  When antiwar activists and feminists Marilyn Webb and Shulamith Firestone tried to address the crowd about the realities of sexism outside of and within the anti-war movement, they were booed and sexually harassed by men in the crowd (including fellow/male activist leaders), some of whom hurled a memorable taunt revealing the true feelings of many male leaders re what place women activists should occupy in the movement:

“Take her off the stage and fuck her.”

How’s that for progressive leadership?

 

 

In the late 1970s I read an article   [8]  about (or by?) the feminist, “Lavendar Menace” and LGBTQ rights activist and author Rita Mae Brown, in which Brown discussed her involvement in the (then) nascent Gay Rights movement.  When Brown spoke/wrote  [9]   about the threats and hassles she and other lesbian activists received from men, and what it was like was working alongside men in civil rights organizations, she used a phrase that has haunted me ever since.  Moiself  cannot now recall verbatim the first part of the phrase, but I’ll never forget the second.  When asked to describe men’s reaction to lesbians’ participation in human rights activism, she said something about how the strait men tried to break our spirits (which was not unexpected), but that

“…the gay men broke our hearts.”

 

 

Gay women made the heartbreaking discovery that although gay men were their supposed allies in the struggle for civil rights, gay men were still, first and foremost, men.  As in, they interrupted, talked down to, belittled or just plain ignored the women in the movement, took credit for their female peer’s ideas and activism, and expected the women to get their coffee, answer the organizations’ phones, and type the groups’ memos.  One lesbian activist wrote that, when it came to dealing with men, women in the gay rights movement had even less power than women in the civil rights/anti-war movements, because in the former, “…since they (gay men) don’t have to pretend to be nice to us and respect us in order to fuck us, they don’t even pretend to.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Among The Many Things I Don’t Know…

This department title might scare readers into thinking,  Holy crap – this is gonna be the longest blog post ever.  Not to worry.   [10]

Dateline: Two Tuesdays ago; 8 a.m.-ish; morning walk.  As I pass by one of the two banks in Manzanita I look through the bank building’s side wall of windows.  Moiself  sees two people, sitting at what I presume are their desks.  One has her arms wrapped around a coffee mug; the other is slowly flipping through the pages of…a report or manual of some sort?  I find moiself  thinking thoughts I do not typically entertain; that is, thoughts about banks, and the people who work in them.

 

 

* Are they called bankers, or bank employees?

*And what exactly  is a banker versus a bank employee?

* Is a bank teller a banker – what constitutes being a banker?

* What is there even for bankers to do, now that people can do so much of what they used to do in their bank at the ATM, and/or online?

*Are those two bank worker/people I saw sitting there, looking forward to a great day of Exciting Bank Work® …or are they just sitting there, resigned with casual dread to their lot: “Great, another eight hours where I have to justify my existence, look busy look busy look busy…”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“[On religious dogma] …It’s funny, I’ve always been told that peace comes through Christ. That leaving or letting go of my faith would lead only to guilt and sadness. But here I am, finding the truest joy I’ve ever known in all the places I was told not to look.”
( Author and audio book narrator Natalie Naudus,
quoting her own experience, in “Gay the Pray Away” )

*   *   *

May you never idolize leaders of any social movement;
May you never have to look busy to justify your existence;
May you find joy in all the places you were told not to look;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland.  Ireland and Great Britain also came under fire for their respective nationalized health care.

[2] I appreciated, during MH’s and my RS tour of Ireland, the Canadian nurse who was able to enlighten the Some Otherwise Enlightened World Citizen who started dissing the Canadian system of (gasp)  socialized medicine ( despite SOEWC never having any experiences with that system).  Canadian nurse graciously but firmly corrected the blatant falsehoods and distortions SOEWC attempted to attribute to Canadian health care.

[3] They are listed alphabetically by their first names.

[4] This happened in 1964.

[5] He died in 1998 and so can’t defend (or admit) anything now.

[6] Excerpt, Bryn Mawr College Flexner Book Club Blog, “The only position for women in the movement is ‘prone’”, 10-27-11

[7] Washington, D.C., January 1969 

[8] In Rolling Stone magazine?

[9] Again, I can’t recall if she wrote the article or was the subject of the article.

[10] Yet.

[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Drug I’m Not Ready For

March 20, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, TV, Wow, Zoo , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Drug I’m Not Ready For

Department Of Consider Yourself Warned

Moiself  has been in a reflective mood; which should not be surprising.  According to a study I just made up, everybody knows that within three days of a holiday referencing the Irish, a writer’s brain is capable of little output which does not involve humorous anecdotes of family and friends and kneecapping British soldiers and scatological puns and Chuck Norris “facts”  (psst – this is what is known as foreshadowing ).

*   *   *

Happy Belated St. Patrick’s Day

This – a belated SPD-related memory – is from 3-18-16, when daughter Belle was in college  ( The Common Ground I’m Not Seeking ):

Department Of Parents Are Never Too Old To Go Apeshit
Over Reminders of Childhood Cuteness

It has been a week of many celebrations, both national and personal. Belle is home for Spring Break. Pi day. The Ides of March. That Irish-American Thing.     [1]  Many if not all of these festive days call for special feasts.  I asked Belle if there was any special dinner she’d like, in honor of…whatever.  While she was pondering her options, MH showed me a list Belle had made, quite a long time ago. He found it written on a (unfortunately, undated) notepad he discovered as he was going through old papers in the attic:

 

 

I told Belle all she had to do was say the word and we would endeavor to come up with a  speshl desert and froot salid…and lots of Yum.

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of No, Wait – That’s A Lie.
Regular Programming Continues To Be Disrupted.

Department Of Even-Ing It Up   [2]

After sharing a blog-posted memory involving my daughter, it’s time for one involving my son.  During one glorious phase in his life   [3]  son K was notorious (within our family) for getting moiself  helpless with laughter by telling me Chuck Norris puns and memes.  Moiself  shared this memory on 1-14-22 ( The S-Words I’m Not Mispronouncing ):

Punz For The Day: Scat Edition

Did you hear about the monkey who was arrested for throwing its feces at zoo patrons?
The monkey was charged with turd debris assault.

Why did Packy the elephant    [4]   bring toilet paper to the zebra’s birthday bash?
Because Packy was a party pooper.

Remember, dog owners, when you walk the dog you have to pick up its poop.
It’s your doo diligence.

Why is Chuck Norris’s dog trained to pick up its own poop?
Because Chuck Norris doesn’t take shit from anyone.
Chuck Norris doesn’t flush the toilet.
He scares the shit out of it.

Yeah, I know, scat is typically used to denote animal feces.  But I’ve heard that making at least one Chuck Norris Joke ®  – aka, reciting a Chuck Norris “fact” – at the beginning of the year is a guarantee of good fortune in the weeks to come.  [5]

 

 

Department Of The Bonus Round Of You-Know-Who Jokes

(Happy New Year to son K, who once brought me to helpless tears of stomach-cramping, snotty-nosed laughter when he loaned me his Chuck Norris Factbook to read while we were seated in a booth in a restaurant, waiting for our lunch to arrive).

* Chuck Norris doesn’t read books.
He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

* The flu gets a Chuck Norris shot every year.

* When Chuck Norris plays dodgeball, the balls dodge him.

* Chuck Norris doesn’t worry about high gas prices. His vehicles run on fear.

* The Dead Sea was alive before Chuck Norris swam there.

* When Chuck Norris was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.

* There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.

 

* Death once had a near-Chuck-Norris experience.

* There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

* MC Hammer learned the hard way that Chuck Norris can touch this.

* Chuck Norris has been to Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life there.

* Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless phone.

* If Chuck Norris traveled to an alternate dimension in which there was another
Chuck Norris and they both fought, they would both win.

* Chuck Norris’ farts smell like freshly baked cinnamon rolls.

Okay; I gotta get control here.  Seriously; somebody stop me; this could go on forever.

* Chuck Norris counted to infinity — twice.

*   *   *

Department Of This Time It’s True

*   *   *

Department Of Don’t Ask Questions
(But Do Ask Your Doctor For Drugs…Just, Any Drugs)

Dateline: last Tuesday; 9:25 pm-ish; sitting in The TV Chair®…although not watching whatever show was on TV that MH had left on while he went to load the dishwasher. I was about to check something on my phone….

 

 

…when moiself  heard a TV advertisement.  The ad caught my attention with its opening question, which I found rivetingly nonsensical:

Are you ready for Vivaldi?    [6]

Uh…golly gee…I…don’t know.  How *would* I know?  What the heck is Vivaldi?

The advertisement continued with what’s become the standard prescription meds come-on, encouraging viewers to ask their doctors about whether or not they could benefit from using this prescription medication…. But, for what?  Why would you take this medication?  There’s gotta be a reason, right?  For no other reason than you fall into the category of,  Hmmm, I’m currently not taking any prescription medications and all my friends and family are and I feel kinda left out….?   I kept waiting, but:

 There. Was. No. Mention. Of. What. That. Drug. Would. Be. Used. For.

 

Really. 

Nevertheless, you’ve been advised.  Call your primary care provider, now.

Patient:
“Doctor, am I ready for  Vivaldi?”
Doctor:
“What makes you ask? What are your symptoms, or health concerns?”
Patient:
“None at the moment; I’m fit as a fiddle.  Still, could I benefit from taking  Vivaldi?
Maybe, like, if I bought stock in the company?”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

If life has no meaning for someone unless they pretend to know something they don’t know, then I would strongly and sincerely urge extensive therapy and counseling.  This is particularly true if feelings of meaninglessness and lack of purpose lead to depression, which is a serious illness.  Absent a mental disorder, or head trauma, there is no reason an adult should feel life is meaningless without maintaining some sort of delusion.
( Dr. Peter Boghossian, American writer, philosopher, professor )

Or, maybe that Someone should ask their doctor about Vivaldi.

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember to even it up;
May your loved ones serve you speshl desert and froot salid and yum;
May you not ask your doctor, any doctor, about TV advertised drugs;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] On March 17 real Irish people in Ireland apparently do not affix paper shamrocks on their foreheads, don Kiss Me I’m Irish underpants and drink until they vomit green beer on their faux Leprechaun shoes and call it a celebration of their heritage.

[2] A phrase of my father’s, used for when he had done something for one of his four children who had a particular need, and then found a way to “even it up” by doing something for the other three.

[3] Which is presently dormant but which I’m certain could be resurrected at a moment’s notice….

[4] Explanation for non-Oregonians:  Packy the elephant (1962-2017) was an Asian elephant born who was and lived his life at the Portland’s Oregon Zoo. Famous for, among other attributes, being the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere for five decades , growing to be among the tallest of Asian elephants in the world, siring seven calves, and being beloved by zoo staff and visitors, having a quirk about hats…. ( I wrote about that here, in The Elephant I’m Not Freeing ).

[5] That is something I just made up.  But it makes as much sense as any of the “Doing _____ will guarantee good luck in the new year!” prescriptions I’ve ever heard.

[6] Not the product’s real name.

[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Best Picture Award I’m Not Voting For

March 13, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Best Picture Award I’m Not Voting For

The only reason I’m not casting my vote for the 2026 Best Picture Oscar is because moiself  is not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences…either that, or the Academy misplaced my ballot.  Not that it would matter, because I’d do a write-in; that is, I’d vote for a movie that didn’t win last year, because it was egregiously mistakenly not on the ballot: 2024’s The Life of Chuck.

If you hold as truth, as I do, the idea that  we all contain multitudes,   [1]   then all of the movies which existentially and ultimately mean more than diddly-squat   [2]   can be contained in The Life of Chuck.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Helpful Reminders

Tomorrow is Pi Day.  Do you have your recipes ready?  Seeing as how it’s AEDD   [3]   month, y’all can guess what my entrée will feature.

 

“I think she means us!”

*   *   *

Department Of Tomorrow Is Pi Day And Today…

…is a significant day for my circle of loved ones.  Moiself  wasn’t going to mention the significance until I made a…perceptive  typo, if there is such a thing.   [4]

Background info:  every Friday I write and send two letters ( yep, “snail,” in the mail), one to each of my offspring.  I begin each letter with either a haiku or limerick, rotating every week.  This week is a haiku week. The two letters I sent today began by noting the birthday of someone dear to us, who was taken from us way, way, way too soon.  [5]

A Haiku For SEH
A wise life guide is
to “Love ’em while you got ’em.”
And she was so loved….

I can’t write about anything else today, which is SEH’s birthday.  She would have turned 35 today.  She’d have had finished her residency; I like to imagine her working…in one of her several specialties: family medicine; wilderness medicine; reproductive medicine?  She loved the outdoors so much, and was concerned about this country’s eroding reproductive rights and access to medical care in underserved communities….  I like to think she might have stayed in Utah to provide women’s health care there, or in other more restrictive states.  She shone bright in her brief but significant life, and her fabsence is keenly felt.

Yikes, did you see what I just did typed? I decided to let the typo stand; certainly her absence is keenly felt, but IMO she also had a keen  fab sense.

 

“Sarah Elizabeth” English tea rose

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Guess I’ll Never Know The Answer
If I Never Ask The Question

Dateline:  Sunday, ~1p.m., returning from lunch with MH.  As MH steers our car into our driveway an oldie begins playing on the car radio.  I recognize Jimmy Soul’s bouncy 1962 hit,  If You Want To Be Happy.  The song begins with its chorus:

“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/
Never make a pretty woman your wife/
So for my personal point of view:
Get an ugly girl to marry you…“

The song goes on to extol the virtues of marrying an unattractive woman.  The singer proclaims that, among other plusses, an ugly woman won’t ever leave you ( as per the stereotype, she’ll be grateful for any attention she receives, ’cause no one else would want her ).  Oh, and she’ll be a great cook.

 Har de har har!

The first time I heard that song ( Junior high?  It was already an oldie) moiself  was appalled.  When I expressed my distaste for the lyrics, a guy friend accused me of being a Women’s Libber With No Sense Of Humor® ( “Oh c’mon, it’s an old song; a light-hearted joke of the times… “ ).

Skip to decades later, to the day when daughter Belle came home from high school in a grumpy mood.  She told me about a boy who’d been sent home to get a change of clothing because he’d shown up to school wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it that another boy objected to as being racist.  What gave Belle the grumpies was that the previous week, when she and another girl had gone to the administration to complain about a couple of troglodytes male students who harassed female students and wore t-shirts with misogynistic slogans (e.g., with a drawing of a boy ordering a girl to “Shut up and make me a sandwich”   [6]  ), they were told by said administrative spineless lackies personnel that what those boys were doing wasn’t “illegal” and that there was nothing the school could ( read: would ) do about that.

 

 

I sadly confirmed to my daughter what experience was already teaching her.  Yep, you are not imagining things: there’s a hierarchy of political and cultural concern with discriminatory  isms and ists.  Something deemed as racist is seen as worse than something deemed as sexist.  It’s not (or shouldn’t be) a contest; still, isms/ists are often pitted against one another, as many a Black feminist has attested.

“As a black woman I’ve been told that…I’m supposed to be black first and stand in solidarity with black men. Focus on the impact of racism, specifically on racism that negatively impacts black men. Stop bringing up sexism so much.”   [7]

If the student at Belle’s school had worn a short with a drawing of a white boy ordering a black boy to Shut Up And Go Pick Me Some Cotton, he’d be sent home/ordered to change his shirt and possibly even suspended.  But wearing a shirt with a slogan meant to put a female in/remind her of “her place” – somehow, that was acceptable, or at least tolerable.

On the rare occasions when I hear that Jimmy Soul song – which still receives airplay on Oldies stations – I think of what moiself  has long wanted to ask someone who whistles along to the up-tempo ditty:  What if, instead of referencing a sexist stereotype of the early 60s, the If You Want To Be Happy song contained a 1962-ish, “light-hearted” reference to racism?  Would the song have even gotten airplay, then or now?  If it got airplay today, would its dodgy lyrics be excused as a relic of the times? Ala….

“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a light-skinned woman your wife,
So for my personal point of view,
Get a colored girl to marry you…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [8]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [9]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago March to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it,  WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 


Here is an excerpt from my blog of 3-14-14 (  The Book I’m Not Stealing ) – two excerpts, actually, both of them book-related:

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away….

Okay, it was 1971.  American anti-war activist Abbie Hoffman wrote and published Steal This Book.  As intrigued as I was at the time – by the “counter culture” and social activism of the late 60-s–mid 70’s in general and by Hoffman’s cheeky chutzpah in particular – I declined to pilfer Hoffman’s prose.  Stealing anything was not something I was inclined to do.  I also did not buy his book because how in good conscience could I lawfully purchase a book that was, essentially if puckishly, advising me not to do so?

Thirty-three years later I find myself wondering: who, if anyone, bought that book?

 

*   *   *
(  second excerpt   [10]  )

Belle leaned against the doorway to my office, respectfully but insistently reminding me that I’d agreed to donate copies of two of my books (my short fiction collection This Here and Now and my juvenile novel, The Mighty Quinn) to her friend A’s senior project…and…uh… A needs those books, now.  Up in the attic, searching for a box to put the books in, I remembered I had copies of another book of mine – “mine” in the sense that my writing was in it, even if my name wasn’t on the cover – to donate.

 

 

Feminist Parenting: Struggles, Triumphs and Comic Interludes (The Crossing Press, 1994) – has it really been twenty years since its publication?  My contribution to the anthology was an essay  [11]  wherein I juxtaposed the naming of my soon-to-be firstborn, K, with how I chose names for my fictional characters.  I was honored to have my contribution included along with a variety of essays, stories, and poems – selections from literary luminaries like Robin Morgan and Anna Quindlen, [12] and literary ordinaries like…well, like me.

The publisher-arranged publicity for the book consisted of readings by the anthology’s contributing writers, held at select locations throughout the country.  There were enough contributors from the Pacific Northwest to do a reading in Oregon, which took place one stormy January evening in Eugene, at the erstwhile vanguard of independent feminist bookstores, Mother Kali’s.  [13]

 

May Mother Kali recommend some light reading-perhaps a political satire or a wacky historical romance?

 

MH, sitting in the in audience with our son K on his lap, later noted that I was the only one of the speakers F-parenting in what (used to be) the normative child producing/rearing relationship:  I was a woman married to a man with whom I was raising our child.  There were four of the anthology’s contributors present: One lesbian mom, two divorced/single moms, and moiself -mom.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

*   *   *



 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [14]

 

 

*   *   *

May you find a way to use diddly-squat in conversation today;
May you know what it feels like to be the least normative in a crowd;
May you remember to love ’em while you got ’em;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As per the movie’s “I contain multitudes” reference, from the Walt Whitman poem, “Song of Myself“.

[2] Sorry to get with all the graduate-level philosophy concepts.

[3] Asparagus Every Damn Day, as noted in the previous week’s blog.

[4] And now, I think there is.

[5] She was murdered, seven years ago.  I wrote about it here: “The Life I’m Not Mourning”  and here: The Speculation I’m Not Endorsing; and here: The Reality I’m Not Denying.

[6] The phrase has various attributed origins ( including a 1995 SNL skit ); whether it is aimed at feminists in particular or women in general, it plays off the sexist idea that it’s a woman’s place to be in the kitchen serving her husband or boyfriend.

[7] ( [Why] Do you think Black Men aren’t trusting of Feminists or on-board with Feminism as a movement?  Reddit.com/r/AskFeminists )

[8] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[10] I wasn’t (consistently) using the Department Of format then)

[11] “What’s in a Name?  Ask My Pal, Barry.”

[12]  I particularly enjoyed Quindlen’s essay, “What About the Boys?”

[13] I know, I know.  The bookstore was named in the 70’s, okay?

[14] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Nails I’m Not Perfecting

March 6, 2026

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, community, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of Can It Already Be Day Six Of AEDD?

AEDD.  No, it’s not some type of learning disability…you could think of it as a culinary learning (or experimentation) opportunity.

It stands for Asparagus Every Damn Day ® .  To honor both the impending arrival of Spring and my love for asparagus, I challenge moiself  to cook and/or eat asparagus, in some form, every damn day of March.  Last year I had some favorites creations; mostly, I defaulted to what’s-easy-but-I-still-love-it (e.g., oven roasted lemon garlic asparagus spears, creamy   [1] asparagus and green pea soup….).

Gird your proverbial loins and let the wild rumpus begin.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of My Favorite Blast From The Past

Were I asked by Someone to come up with an example of carefree bliss, I would show that Someone this picture.

 

Moiself, son K and daughter Belle (and Mt. Neahkahnie in the background), on Manzanita beach, circa…two decades ago. Picture taken by MH, existential protection provided by Mt. Neahkahnie.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Asshat Tag Line Of The Year [2]

Dateline: last Friday; driving to the Oregon coast, listening to one of my science podcasts.  At the end of the podcast there is an advertisement from one of the podcast’s sponsors.  The ad is for…some kind of service having to do with manicures.  Repeated at least three times during the ad is the service’s enticement/slogan, something about how  “…we all deserve to have perfect nails.”

 

 

And I find moiself  thinking, do these people understand the target audience of this podcast?  And how can the proverbial  we all – or just moiself –  deserve anything having to do with our fingernails?  And is it deserve as in, how we all deserve basic human rights and to be treated with dignity (and not harassed about our less-than-perfect nails)?  And what, exactly, constitutes perfect nails?  And is there a committee, a governing board, which establishes and oversees such a standard of perfection?

And the sheer inanity of this ad is provoking way too many, And and and and questions – which made me want to (should moiself  be offered a free sample of the product) take whatever was being advertised and heave it off the rim of the Grand Canyon.    [3]

Important Note To The Advertising Industry, whether large scale Commercial/Industrial And/Or Small Business Owners: Struck as I was by the astounding vacuousness of the ad’s tag line, I can’t tell you what service it was for.  Which is the ultimate failure of an advertisement, the very purpose of which is to get you to want (or at least remember the name of) the product.

 

I’m assuming these were not the top choice of the Fingernail Perfection Police.

*   *   *

Speaking Of Mormons…

…which I was, two weeks back ( 2-20-26, The Documentary I’m Not Inspired By, re the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping documentary)….

Department Of And Now Some Words About Witnessing

 

 

Relax; it’s a story about Porch Proselytizing®.  There will not be pamphlets left on your front doorstep.  [4]

The prompt for this story is…moiself  saw an article online having to do with someone complaining about having to shoo Porch Preachers away from their front door.

 

 

The above is the sign I made and had laminated 10+ years ago, a larger version of which is on our front porch below our doorbell.  The sign, in my estimate, keeps ~98% of solicitors away.  Before I did the rewording I had another sign up, a cartoon illustrating how we do not want solicitors, but – surprise ! –there was always a Someone who thought it didn’t apply to him.  When moiself  answered the doorbell, realized who the stranger was on my porch/what he was up to, and pointed toward our no soliciting sign, that Someone would say, “Oh, I’m not *selling* anything.  I have good news that’s free…”

 

 

Even before the signage, religious solicitors – Mormon “Elders”   [5]  in particular – left skid marks getting away from my porch, after I’d engaged them and they realized What Kind Of Uppity Woman They Were Dealing With ®. 

 

 

What used to surprise moiself, about the solicitors I personally encountered as well as those I’d known over the years who’d engaged in such activities, was their seeming befuddlement re overwhelmingly receiving less-than-hospitable reactions from those whom they sought to evangelize.  I had to wonder:  from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons to Evangelicals, in their witnessing training, was there not even a smidgen of attention paid to the basic human psychology behind someone not in *your* group being presented with *your* group’s message, with no request from them for your thoughts and/or opinions?

Was there no mention of the reality that it is highly likely that what you are indoctrinated trained to think of as informative/friendly/useful information, will be seen by others as presumptuous?  And that’s because it *is* presumptuous.  A friendly demeanor and/or beatific smile on your face does not dilute the ultimate cluelessness and arrogance of your mission:  you are approaching a stranger, unsolicited by her, knowing nothing about her save for the (likely   [6] ) fact that she does not share your spiritual worldview, which therefore in your worldview means her worldview is deficient…and you think you can (and even should) enlighten her!

 

I bet she can’t wait to hear the good news from white boys wearing even whiter shirts!

 

I remember seeing and hearing my mother deal with the Mormon “Elders”  ( nine out of ten of the proselytizers we got were Mormon ) who would, every couple of months or so, ring the doorbell of our Santa Ana home.  First off, no one who knew our family came to our front door (when I was a young child I didn’t even know if our front door “worked,” or if it was just for show).  We all entered and left the house, along with our friends and neighbors, via our side door or backyard door.  Thus, when there was a ring/knock at the front door we knew it was from a stranger; i.e., someone who didn’t know us.  This Someone, experience taught us, most likely wanted to sell us something, and would ask to speak to “the adult of the house,” so I and my siblings would call for our mother to answer the front door.  But I liked to lurk in the background, to…watch.

 

 

My mother would never confront the Porch Preachers, despite my advice that she should tell them the truth ( that you think they’re whack-doodles ) and not waste anymore of your or their time.  But Mom came of age in the 1950s, meaning she was raised to be a Nice Woman®.  She would listen to their opening spiel, then give her standard, gentle-but-firm, “No thank you; we have our own religion,” response, and wish them a nice day while she gently shut the door.

There was one exception (that I know of) to my mother’s unperturbable niceness with solicitors.  This happened during a weekday, the summer before I entered eighth grade.  A pair of Elders knocked on our front door.  I heard the customary/brief exchange between my mother and the elders, then noticed it was going on longer than usual at the front porch.  I was surprised to hear the rising pitch of a young male voice, followed by my mother sputtering, “Blasphemy!” before slamming the door. 

After commending her display of backbone, I asked what they had said to her.  Instead of simply accepting her brushoff, that pair of snot-nosed albinos   [7]   didn’t do what they should have done at that point – thank her for her time, apologize for disturbing her, and get the fuck off her property.     [8]   Instead, one of them challenged her.   Yes, you may have your own religion, the cadaverously pale, just-past-post-adolescent pompous primnose   [9]   preached to a woman twice his age, but only *our* faith has the “true revealed truth“ (I can’t remember the verbatim exchange, but I remember that phrase, and how I’d guffawed at the redundancy). 

 

“Yes, God is beyond our understanding…but let me tell you about him….”

*   *   *

Department Of And Now For Something (Not So) Completely Different

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week        [10]

( excerpt a scene from the movie  The Big Kahuna.  Three industrial lubricant salesmen, Larry, Phil, and the evangelical Christian Bob, are at a convention in Wichita.  In this incisive scene, Phil is speaking to Bob,  emphases mine.)

“You preaching Jesus is no different than Larry, or anybody else, preaching lubricants.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha, or civil rights, or how to make money in real estate with no money down.  That doesn’t make you a human being.  It makes you a marketing rep.
If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are — just to find out — for no other reason.  Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation, to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore — it’s a pitch — and you’re not a human being.  You’re a marketing rep.”

 

Or perhaps you prefer the wisdom of *this*Big Kahuna (on the far right) from the world of Gidget surfer-movies.

*   *   *

May we all have our own favorite example of bliss;
May you never give a thought to the quality of anyone’s fingernails;
May you enjoy all that damn asparagus;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yet, without cream.  Yep, it’s those dastardly plant-based cooking tricks….

[2] Or more…the century is young.

[3] Please do not take this as any form of encouragement to litter in our beautiful national parks.

[4] At least, not metaphorically, from moiself.  Who knows what happens in *your* neighborhood?

[5] I just love that title, once reserved for revered people of great age and wisdom in the community, now doled out by the LDS to pimply-faced boys who get the respected title simply by being a male age 18 and up, while a kick ass, grown-ass woman like moiself  who is twice their age could never be an Elder in their world.

[6] It’s more than a likely fact, if you are a Mormon missionary.  Mormon missionaries are given a list in the neighborhoods they canvas; they don’t waste time showing up at the houses of other Mormons.  They know whether or you are not Mormon, because they are given that info by the local Mormon church.  Unlike other brands of Christianity, if you are Mormon you do not go to whatever LDS church you like, you go to a certain church – “chapel” –  that has a specific geographical area assigned as “their area.” If you live in that geographical area, you are supposed to go to services at that chapel, and your address is noted.

[7] You’ve never seen how white the white boys can be until Mormon missionaries come to your doorstep.  I used to think they were selectively bred for their lack of melanin.

[8] I probably don’t need to explain that that was *my* 12-year-old-smartass’s interpretation of their responsibilities as uninvited solicitors, and not my mother’s thoughts.   

[9] Yeah, I made that up.  But, you know, right?

[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Moral Consideration I’m Not Granting

February 27, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, music, nature, politics, radio & podcasts, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Moral Consideration I’m Not Granting

Department Of Now That The Winter Olympics Are Over I Can Get Back To
Considering Issues Of Profound Ethical And Existential Importance®

Host David Marchese:
“What do you think we should *do* with the increasing awareness that more animals might be conscious than we previously thought?  ….we *know* human beings are conscious and we exploit the hell out of other humans all the time.”

Guest Michael Pollan:
“…there’s this whole conversation…that if A.I. is conscious, then we’re going to have to give it moral consideration.  Well, really:  have we given moral consideration to one another?  Have we given moral consideration to the chickens and the cattle that we eat?  The answer is no.  It doesn’t automatically follow.  So, we’re going to have to sort out the ethics.”

 


Michael Pollan:
“Maybe it’s around the ability to suffer.  Maybe that’s where you draw the line…but it’s not as easy as:  Ital you’re conscious, therefore you have all these rights…. Who we grant personhood to is a very subjective human decision.  We give it to corporations, oddly enough, which are not conscious, but there are all sorts of creatures we don’t give it to.  I don’t think we’re entirely rational or consistent in our granting of moral consideration.”
( excerpt from journalist and professor Michael Pollan’s interview with David Marchese,
“Michael Pollan says humanity is about to undergo a revolutionary change,” 2-7-26, NY Times podcast The Interview )

So yeah, there’s that.  Or….

 

 

 I could search the incredible volume of available videos online and perhaps find an entire channel devoted to showing a continuous loop of All Races Won By Norwegian XC Skiing Æsir-god  Johannes Høsflot Klæbo® . 

 

You know what you need to do.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Five Words You Don’t Hear Me
 (Or Anyone) Saying Very Often…Or At All

  “This Norwegian salad dressing rocks!”

Holy Hel   [2] and Herring Heritage – it seems moiself  is producing a (unintended) Norski theme blog.   [3]

Dateline:  last week.  I finally got around to making this salad dressing, from the innovative mind of Norwegian chef Andreas Viestad.  I’d been intending to do so for some time; now, I want this dressing on every lettuce-based salad I eat, for the rest of my life.

Viestad, who also hosts the PBS show  New Scandinavian Cooking,  pissed off impressed the European gastronomic world by when his cookbook on Norwegian food was selected the “Best Foreign Cookbook in the World” and also was awarded Special Prize Of The Jury at the 2008-2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.  

 

 

Norwegian Salad Dressing
(moiself’s  adaptation of Andreas Viestad’s recipe; serves 2-3)

Viestad’s recipe uses juice from the lettuce offcuts to make a dressing with an intense lettuce flavor. Use your best lettuce for the salad, and the dressing (which will be an intriguing dark green color).

  • 2 to 3 small heads of your favorite/most flavorful lettuce
    – one small head of radicchio or other bitter salad green  [4]
    – 1 t Dijon mustard
    – neutral oil (I use avocado)
    – splash of lemon juice or any vinegar (optional)
    – ground black pepper; and a pinch of fresh or dried dill
    – sea salt to serve

(1) Rinse and tear the greens into bite-sized pieces; dry them in a salad spinner. Set aside the “cutoffs” (inner stems, core, and outer leaves) of the greens.
(2) Juice cutoffs in a juicer; strain juice ( you want  ~ ¼ c ).  [5]
(3)  Add juice to a jar along an equal amount of oil as juice (or less, as moiself  prefers) the Dijon, the spices, and lemon juice/vinegar; shake well to combine.  Mix dressing into the salad leaves, serve w/sea salt sprinkled atop greens.

 

 

Many people who eat salad don’t tend to care about (or even notice) the flavor of the lettuce – it’s all about the dressing.   [6]  Viestad came up with a dressing that uses the bits and pieces of the lettuce that we tend to throw away but where the lettuce flavor is concentrated – almost more lettuce-flavored than the lettuce itself – which is why the greens you use should be your favorites.  Y’all foodies may be thinking, Why would you *trust* any salad recipe from a Norwegian?  Growing lettuce in the high north might sound like a bad idea, but as one Norski “salad farmer” explained to Andreas,   [7]  the far northern farms of Norway have good soil, good water, good light, and the cold night temperatures help the salad greens to grow  “strong, crispy, and tasty.”

The only reason our household now has a juicer is because moiself  wanted to properly make this dressing  [1]  .  I *love love love* this dressing; please try it out, and I must emphasize again that you should do so using the best, flavorful lettuce you can find.  On that subject, I hope I don’t have to remind anyone that storebought   [8]  iceberg “lettuce” is anything other than nasty and flavorless.  My favorite description of iceberg lettuce came from an anonymous post on a food-related bulletin board, from a former restaurant worker:   “…with the experience I got being an employee I can tell you that iceberg lettuce tastes as poor as my life’s decisions….at the end of the day it’s just water with a cell structure.”

 

 

In moiself’s  opinion, it was the preponderance of iceberg lettuce in the Titanic’s food storage holds that actually sank the ship (there was a miscommunication when the first mate radioed for help…and the rest is history).

*   *   *

Department Of Every Senior Person Should Be Taking This Class-
Dang, That Means Me As Well…

Moiself  is having a hard time identifying with that label, as, according to the various demographics (depending on which ones you consult), you enter senior territory at age 55, or not until 60, or 65, or 70, or 75….  I recently took a Zumba class labeled for that (“senior”) demographic.  And now I’m thinking that every person, regardless of age, should also be doing so, if only to provide reason/excuse to get up and shake it instead of sitting on your ass all day  commune with your fellow human beings.

I was trying to think of some activity something to stretch or even test my foot recovery.   [9]   At my most recent postop check (two weeks ago) I asked my doctor if a Zumba class might be good; I’d been searching for something other than what I do at home (neighborhood walking; elliptical and treadmill workouts; yoga; weights and core routines) to give my foot some new challenges.  He asked if I’ve done any Zumba before my surgery.  No; but I used to do a lot of Jane Fonda workout tapes back in 1990s.

 

I did the tapes, but not the spandex.

I told the doc that the classes were held at the local community/senior center, so it’s unlikely they’d include ski jump landing preps or ice-skating quadruple jumps or extreme…whatever.  Thus, I told him, unless he said no, I was planning on checking out the Zumba class.  After briefly examining my foot he gave me his thumbs up–  “Feel free to resume normal activities but don’t push till it hurts/do anything stupid.”

So:  moiself  had my first class on Monday.    [10]   What can I say?  I found it to be so delightful and stimulating that it’s probably banned in countries that frown on people of any age (read: females) moving in ways that distinguish them from infrastructure.

 

“Now, move to the music…can you even hear the music?”


And by moiself  thinking that everyone should take the classes, I don’t mean only the specific brand of class called, Zumba – I’m referring to any exercise class incorporating movement/choreography/what might be called dancing.

Most of us have heard and/or read about how dancing is “good for us;” and most of us don’t have the time or inclination to take formal dance classes, often because we think that you must have a dance partner to do so.  And the latter is not the case in a dance fitness class.

Research on multiple levels of study (involving brain health, psychological and social well-being ) suggests that dance-based workouts help protect against the cognitive decline that can happen as people age.  From what I’ve read, learning dance/choreography workouts (I’m going to invent the acronym DCW   [11]  ) reduces stress by boosting your mood through the release of endorphins, providing an outlet for emotional expression, and, when it’s done in a class with other participants,  [12] creates and strengthens social connections and a sense of belonging.  DCW require focus as you listen to the beat, follow steps, and feel the rhythm – DCW require you to be mindful, as in, putting your mind in the present moment, or more colloquially, paying attention to what you are doing. 

So, DCW aren’t just good for your mood – they’re also also great for your brain and your physical coordination. DW enhance cognitive functions, such as memory and spatial awareness and concentration…and yeah, all that’s fantastic, but it’s also just plain fun.

 

This move is not done in Zumba; still, I challenge you to be in a bad mood when you’re imitating a dog about to pee on a fire hydrant.


Oh yes, the class itself:  the instructor (who was a sub for the usual class teacher) was excellent – both chill and enthusiastic.  Also, it turns out she has a really great name (even though she spells it wrong   [13]  ).   After the first two dance sections, in the five or so seconds of pause before the instructor queued up the next music, moiself  inadvertently blurted out,  “Oh, this is fun!” Apparently, in-class out-bursts are not the norm, as the teacher immediately assured the rest of the class, “She’s new.”   [14]

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [15]

 

( Emma Goldman was Russian-born, radical anarchist activist and lecturer who opposed capitalism and fascism and promoted equality for women, workers’ rights, and free education during the Progressive Era. )

*   *   *

May your lettuce (or your life) be more than just water with a cell structure;
May you find make room for both Issues Of Profound Ethical And Existential Importance® *and* Norwegian sports videos;
May your revolution (and exercise) always encourage dancing;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I tried it with a high-speed blender – nope.

[2] In the Norse pantheon, Hel is the god (female – let’s do away with this “ess” notation, as if the male gender is the default and the female is the decorative afterthought) of death and the netherworld.  Just in case you’re thinking of getting on her good side, Hel’s favorite offerings are tea, chocolate, dried meats, preserved flowers, mead, and raw honey.

[3] Just for a couple of issues.

[4] Soak radicchio or other bitter greens in ice water (helps tame the bitterness) for at least 15m  while you prepare the rest of the recipe, or scroll online for cat videos .

[5] You could also use a heavy duty/high speed blender, like I did the first few times, but this takes some time and it doesn’t work as well, IMO.

[6] Except for MH, who, much to many people’s bewilderment, has always preferred his green salads sans dressing ( he thinks that dressings are or can be a cover for less-than-tasty-greens/other salad ingredients.

[7] In this episode of New Scandinavian Cooking (for which you need a PBS account, I think)

[8] Some home veggie gardeners say that there are varietals that are more palatable.  I think they lie, or at least, exaggerate.

[9] I had surgery on my left foot in Mid-November.

[10] The second today.

[11] For Cance Choreography Workouts…but perhaps for a catchier acronym, Damn Cute Wiggling?

[12] As opposed to doing it alone in your home, to a dvd or online class.

[13] Robin.

[14] Her explanation was probably not necessary, as, from what I could see, all I got was enthusiastic smiles, and no Debbie-Downer Stop Having Fun looks from the other participants.

[15] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Documentary I’m Not Inspired By

February 20, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of The Lunar New Year

Happy Year of the Fire Horse, to my SIL and to all who celebrate the Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year).   [1]

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things You’re Not Supposed To Say Or Even Think About When Watching A Supposedly Inspiring Documentary;
Specifically, Netflix’s Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart
Sub-Department Of, Why Isn’t She Pissed Off?

And by “pissed off” moiself  means filled with white-hot rage, the throwing-chairs-out-of-the-windows-of-a-high-rise-building  kind of fury.

The Elizabeth Smart documentary came recommended for me on my Netflix feed last week, and I started watching it one morning as I did my elliptical workout.  It took me several days to get through it; I could only take 15 m or so at a time.  As the days went by, moiself  got more and more angry.  Angry as in, Why Did I Watch This Shit®?  Not that the subject of the documentary was shit; I refer to the integral bullshit contained within the story – the bullshit of religion and religious theology lurking behind the tragedy, the bullshit that is and was, IMO, responsible for it.

Look up the story if you have been living under a rock are one of the few American adults who does not know it.  The basics: Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old, one of six children in a prosperous and respected Mormon family, when she was kidnapped from her family’s Salt Lake City home.  Her abductors, a self-described religious prophet and his wife,  [2]  held Smart captive for nine months.  Smart was sexually assaulted by “the prophet,” and subjected to emotional assaults and physical deprivations by her abductors.  She endured nine months of this until she was rescued by police (after receiving a citizen’s tip) when she and her captors were walking down a street in Sandy, Utah.

At one point in the documentary, after Smart was rescued and returned to her family, there is footage of Smart being referred to as  “… the most prayed-for person in America.”  And that just wrenched my stomach.  I had to turn the documentary off at that point, and returned to it another day. 

 

 

 “… the most prayed for person in America.”  Fat lotta good those hyper-abundant prayers did.  I’m sure Smart herself was the most prayer-ful person in American during her captivity, praying at least fifty bajillion times a day to be delivered from her anguish, each and every time “the prophet” was assaulting her.

People who engage in intercessory prayer seem to do so with the assumptions that (a) their god is listening to them, and (b) their god is capable of acting in our world.   And yet it took their god nine months to get off his holy ass, while a 14-year-old girl was daily – daily – raped by an adult man.  Prayers didn’t stop that.    [3]

BTW: Questions were raised, both in the documentary and in news articles at the time of Smart’s release, about the adult woman (the wife of the “prophet”) complicit in Smart’s kidnapping and abuse.  And I’m thinking, Really? You find this surprising?  The woman was the product of abuse herself – she was a captive within a paranoid, patriarchal religious mindset, where the man is in charge and his word and will ultimately prevails…. Yeah, there’s always the question of one’s own internal sense of right or wrong.  But what happened to that woman, and to Elizabeth Smart, was not a *perversion * of conservative, patriarchal religion, but a sadly logical (if appalling) part of the spectrum.

 

 

Of all the frustratingly heartbreaking situations detailed in the documentary, the “near” rescue got to me the most.  This happened when Smart’s abductors had taken her into a small town   [4]  with them when they needed to purchase supplies.  Smart and the prophet’s wife were always shrouded in Burqa-like garments the few times they were in public, and on this outing, the three of them were stopped and questioned on the street – by a police officer looking for Smart (! ).  The “prophet” abductor answered the officer’s questions about why he refused to let Smart show her face by telling the officer that the girl was his daughter, and that their religion decreed that his daughter must not show her face to any man save for her father and her future husband.

!! The officer accepted that answer, and left without questioning Smart !!

 

 

Smart’s captor’s excuse answer was accepted because he phrased it in terms of “our religion says…”  And in Utah, it’s likely that religious excuses are allowed even more privilege (read:  religion is allowed to excuse a multitude of “sins” and abuses)  than in society as a whole, given the state’s history as a Mormon stronghold and the Mormon religion’s history of polygamy and patriarchy.

Although Smart was eventually freed from almost a year of horrific fear and abuse, I would argue that the cognitive abuse still lingers.  I don’t think Smart has left either her religion in specific or religion in general; thus, IMO, she continues to participate in the system that ultimately spawned and tolerated her abuse in the first place.

I was reminded of a quote by Butterfly McQueen, the actor and civil rights and Freethought activist.  I wish Smart a similar epiphany.   

 

 

Back to the praying for Elizabeth Smart thing.  I recall reading news stories, after Smart was found, reporting that thanks were being “….given to God” by people around the country.  This god was being credited for Smart finally being found.  Now, if you attribute agency to the deity for somehow enabling Smart to be found, you should also acknowledge that that same god set aside its agency to act – that same god sat on its pedophile-observing ass for nine months – while a fourteen-year-old-girl was being tormented, and while her family endured the torment of not knowing where their child was nor what she was going through.

If Smart’s abduction happened today our social media pages would be filled with requests to “pray for Elizabeth and her family.”  Meanwhile, we Freethinkers, atheists, skeptics, and other rational, religion-free folk metaphorically bang our foreheads against the walls of ignorance and superstition as we ponder why, for nine months after Smart was abducted, so many people pled for assistance from their omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, every-caring/ever loving deity who was either absent or stood by  (translation: who did *nothing*) when he was truly needed – when a child was being dragged from her bedroom, her atttacker holding a knife to her neck, at 2 am.   [5]

 

 

Years later, as an adult, Smart became an advocate for survivors of sexual violence.  I kept waiting for the mention of her advocacy work – there was just a sliver of it at the end of the documentary.  Moiself  was not surprised by this; still, I was infuriatingly disappointed that there was not even a cursory forensic analysis, or mention, of why Smart needed to do such advocacy work in the first place.   [6]

I was disappointed that Smart’s feelings of guilt and shame, and of being  “dirty” due to being raped, were only briefly mentioned in the documentary, and that there was little mention of either the specific or general cultural influences of Smart’s – of any person’s – patriarchal conservative religion that is related to – or as moiself  would put it,  directly responsible for – Smart having those feelings.  IMO, almost as sickening as Smart’s abduction/rape is the culture of religiously ordained male dominance which allows such acts to occur in the first place.

Years after her rescue,  [7]   Smart has critiqued the purity culture she was raised in, and which surrounds girls in conservative/evangelical religious families.   This culture implies (read: overtly teaches) that a woman’s/girl’s ultimate worth is not what’s in her heart and head, but between her legs.

“In 2014, during a poignant and emotional speech at Johns Hopkins University, Elizabeth Smart revealed she had received this abstinence-only sex education lesson prior to her being kidnapped from her room as a child. While in captivity, she was then repeatedly raped by her captor. And that lesson – that teacher who told her that she would be a worthless, old piece of gum if she engaged in premarital sex – not only stayed with her, but it also made her wonder whether there was any point in trying to escape.

‘For me, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m that chewed up piece of gum,’ Smart told the audience of gathered listeners. ‘Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away. And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued, if your life still has no value?’ ”    [8]

” Even though male students are encouraged to take these (purity) pledges too, the lessons often focus on young women. For example, a way in which purity pledges are done is where gold rose pins are handed out at Christian youth group events, with a small card attached that says: ‘You are like a beautiful rose. Each time you engage in premarital sex, a precious petal is stripped away. Don’t leave your future husband holding a bare stem. Abstain.’ ”
 (excerpt, “The Negative Implications of the Purity Movement on Young Women.” The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research 15 (2014): 9-18. Paul, Amanda )

 

 

-” ‘ If you have premarital sex you become a ‘chewed up piece of gum.’  ”
Anyone else hear this rhetoric growing up? As a guy I even remember hearing this shit. My poor wife has so much emotional baggage to work through because of the whole impurity bullshit.”

-“Yeah. Just imagine being gang raped as a little girl and then hearing this. And yes, I was dumped by someone who couldn’t stand ‘thinking about the men who already used me’ when he found out about my childhood.”   [9]

– “I got the ‘chewed up piece of gum,’ ‘duct tape that loses its stickiness,’ and was told that as a woman, I start with a jar of M&Ms. Every person I have sex with gets some of my M&Ms. If I’m not careful, I’ll run out of M&Ms and have none left to give my future husband.
I think the one that disgusts me the most is when people talk about women dressing ‘provocatively’ and being assaulted, and make the statement ‘well you wouldn’t expect a dog to stay away from a raw piece of steak.’ So…Women are objects and men are animals. Thanks.”

( excerpts, social media threads on ex-Christians and their experiences
with the purity movement )

 

 

“Where does a woman’s value lie? In her brain? Her heart? Her spirit?

According to right-wing culture warriors, ‘between her legs.’  That’s what underlies the emphasis on virginity as ‘purity,’ and the push for abstinence-only education.  And it has very real consequences, most recently articulated by Elizabeth Smart.

Smart, who was kidnapped and held for months while her captor repeatedly raped her, recently discussed how her religious background made her feel worthless after the first rape – how she understands why others wouldn’t even try to escape, if, like her, they were taught that a sexually ‘impure’ woman had nothing to offer.

“I think it goes even beyond fear, for so many children, especially in sex trafficking. It’s feelings of self-worth. It’s feeling like, ‘Who would ever want me now? I’m worthless.’

That is what it was for me the first time I was raped. I was raised in a very religious household, one that taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other. And that’s how I’d been raised, that’s what I’d always been determined to follow: that when I got married, then and only then would I engage in sex.

After that first rape, I felt crushed. Who could want me now? I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand so easily all too well why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone.”

(  excerpts, “‘Purity’ culture: bad for women, worse for survivors of sexual assault,”
The Guardian, May 2014, by Jill Filipovic )

*   *   *

Department Of Quote Of The Week

“I saw a guy walking down the street, wearing a football jersey.
So I tackled him, because he was asking for it.”
 ( Anonymous )

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

“I’m an atheist, and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I’m puzzled that so many people can’t see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry.”

(  Butterfly McQueen, quoted in Warren Allen Smith’s
Celebrities in Hell. Barricade Books. p. 75. )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have a favorite Celebrity in Hell;
May your life’s worth never be compared to a piece of chewing gum;
May you fight the good fight against patriarchal religion everything;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Except, of course, there are many more countries/cultures that also celebrate the Lunar New Year, primarily but not exclusively Southeast Asian, including Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia….

[2] Whose names are not worthy of taking up column space in this blog.

[3] Perhaps they weren’t specific enough.

[4] They moved frequently, but mostly stayed in an encampment not far from where Smart was abducted.

[5] Exact time unknown; generally referred to as “in the early morning.”

[6] Well, duh/of course not.  This documentary was made with her cooperation, and it needed/wanted a “feel good” ending.

[7] E.g., in speeches during her sexual assault survivors advocacy work.

[8] Exact Reference lost…there were so many, from stories of her speeches…

[9] The poster had been sexually abused.

[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Olympics I’m Not Continually Trying To Reference

February 13, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Oregon, radio & podcasts, Recreation, sports, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Olympics I’m Not Continually Trying To Reference

Department Of More Ways To Make Olympic Connections:
Best Name Ever (For Star Trek Fans) For A Ski Jumper

I can’t tell y’all how much I love love love this.

 

 Japanese ski jumper Ryōyū Kobayashi

 

Let me guess: is his signature style called the Maru?

*   *   *

Department Of Nominations For Worst Name
For A Game Or A Sport,
Entry 22 In A Continuing Series

 

 

In this moment of Olympic fervor,  [1]  let us pause for a moment to ponder perhaps one of the most unfortunate names that has ever bestowed upon a non-Olympic sport   [2]   in the English-speaking countries.

Among the many sports beloved in Ireland which have ancient Gaelic origins  [3]  is a game where the objective is for players to use a wooden stick (called a hurley) to hit a cork-cored, leather-covered ball (called a sliotar) either between the opponent’s goalposts or under the goal’s crossbar into a net guarded by a goalkeeper.

This sport is called Hurling.

 

 

I find it to be a joyously unfortunate name for the sport, in its inappropriate/stereotypical appropriateness, given the reputation of the Irish for…how you say…prodigious consumption of alcoholic beverages.  Moiself  supposes that, when it came time to name the game my Irish forbears enjoyed, one of the players suggested,  Why don’t we name it after the stick?  And no one thought to consult their Gaelic crystal ball to realize what the term hurling would come to mean to the euphemism-disposed English language speakers of the future.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of  Nothing To Do With Sports:
When Did It Come To Be That Instead Of Simply Reporting The News,
We Expect Officials To Editorialize About It?

” ‘My heart is with the victims, their families, and all who were impacted by the deadly crash,’ Bass said in a statement thanking first responders and asking the public to avoid the area.”

Tha’s from an LA Times article from last week, quoting LA mayor Karen Bass. who waswas commenting on an accident wherein an elderly driver, who reportedly suffered a medical incident, plowed into a popular area in Westwood, killing and injuring several pedestrians.

Now then: yours truly has been reading the news since I was eight years old, and it seems to moiself  that at a Certain Point In Time®  I cannot definitively mark, a line was crossed.  Where public officials used to merely be the conveyors of  This Something Has Happened, now these officials are also/seemingly obligated to be the public face of mourning and/or personalizing the incident (if it is tragic), for lack of a better term.

“My thoughts are with all of the blah blah blah
who have been impacted by the blah blah blah…”

Which leads me to think…

 

 

Just tell us what happened; don’t think you can make us to feel better about it because of what you say you feel about it.  You’re an elected official with serious responsibilities; I hope you are mostly thinking about those responsibilities, and get on with solving what you could be solving.  Fix the damn potholes; let your heart hurt, if it truly does, in private.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

“Yes, you are.  Drop and gimme fifty, you heartless bastard.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January, last year.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a  YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [4]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [5]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago February to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 2-8-13 ( The Awards I’m Not Winning ):

Women in combat. No, I’m not referring to the battles women face in trying to get standard, life-saving treatment at Catholic hospitals.  It’s the military thing, courtesy of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s lifting the military ban on women in combat.

I still can’t wrap my mind around the phrasing: “lifting the ban on women in combat.” Women have been participating – and dying – in wars, in combat, ever since the sorry concept was constructed by some pissed off Neanderthal.  Only now, they can get credit? Lifting the obliviousness about the reality is more like it.

The old saw about protecting the women and children flies and spits and shakes its impertinent ass in the face of the fact that, during wartime, civilian deaths always outnumber military casualties.  And who are the civilians?  The much-vaunted “women and children,” whose protection from the evil, encroaching ___ (insert enemy of choice) is cited as justification for combat.

Objective consideration of a person’s ability to do a job, any job, should be gender-blind.  Most of us civilians – and even a few former and active soldiers, it seems – forget that the majority of those in the armed services never set foot on what used to be called the front or battle lines;   [6]  the majority comprise the support staff, on which the “warriors” depend. Every soldier has to be prepared to fight, but most contribute to the fight through transport, medic, food, equipment procurement, distribution and maintenance positions. Or, as Napoleon Bonaparte, famous military leader and infamous sufferer of Short Man’s Syndrome put it, “An army marches on its stomach.”

Not every male soldier makes the cut (or desires to) for combat positions, and the wash-out rate for the so-called elite combat units is high (the all-volunteer paratroopers units, in which my father served during WWII, had a wash-out rate of over 80%).  Review the standards for the job. Keep the physical and mental standards truly appropriate to the job, and have only those who meet the standards, men and women, young and old, gay and straight, qualify for those positions.

One bubagoo the silly voices raise:  okay then, all of you miss smarty-panties, if all military positions are open to women, what about women registering for the draft?  Well, what about it?

The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8) authorizes Congress “To raise and support Armies…” and goes on to permit the regulation and training of such armies.   [7]   Nowhere is the gender (or age or ethnicity) of these Armies mentioned.  Of course, we can assume that the framers assumed an all-male (and Caucasian) army; nevertheless, but all it says is Congress has the power to raise Armies.

If it served Congress to do so, I have no doubt that women would be drafted in a heartbeat.  Or so was my argument in the late 1970s-early 1980s, when some of us were still trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed.   Register for the draft?  Pass the frigging ERA and I’ll register for your friggin’ draft.

About the appropriate standards.  Police academies used to have minimum height standards which effectively screened out most female – and Asian and Hispanic male – applicants. Thirty-plus years ago I remember reading an article in The Orange County Register about a Vietnamese-American man who desperately wanted to be a cop.  This was at the time when police and fire agencies in California were desperate to increase the number Asian and Hispanic officers.  The man was intelligent and independent   [8]  and eager to serve, kept himself in awesome physical shape – he did everything he could to qualify, and he would have, except that he was ~ an inch shorter than the minimum height requirement.  And, okay, so maybe this part of the story tempers the previous remark about his intelligence, but he decided to re-apply to the academy, and before taking the next physical exam he had his wife repeatedly bonk him on the head with a wooden plank, to try and raise a bump that would get him to the minimum height level.

I don’t know what happened to the bonkers-for-cops dude, but it wasn’t long before anti-height discrimination lawsuits provided the nudge for the police to evaluate their policies, and most agencies subsequently, eventually, eliminated the minimum height requirements.  Unlike the cinematic shoot-’em-up image, the majority of police work involves negotiation skills, keeping cool under pressure, the ability to quickly evaluate and de-escalate dangerous situations…and, yes, kick ass if and when necessary. As police departments around the nation have discovered, if you can pass the police academy training, assessment and examinations (including lifting and dragging a 160 lb dummy, weapons and marksmanship training, tolerate getting pepper-sprayed and tasered), the fact that you’re lacking an inch doesn’t matter.

Which, of course, women have been telling men for years.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May the sports you play have no direct or euphemistic references to puking;
May your work never involve public statements about bad news;
May you enjoy finding obscure connections between the names of Olympic athletes
and your favorite TV shows;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] At least – or only – in my household.

[2] Although, “distance plunging” and “live pigeon shooting” were once Olympic sports, so who knows what the future holds?

[3] Others include Gaelic football, Rounders, and Gaelic handball.

[4] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[5] Was it really over thirteen years ago?

[6] with today’s increasing use of kill-from-afar technologies, and wars of terrorism and insurgencies, “front line”-style warfare may soon be an exhibit in the Smithsonian.

[7] Interestingly, it also states that “no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;” which seems to make our maintaining of our standing armed forces unconstitutional.

[8] He defied his relative’s wishes by wanting to become a cop, a profession seen as dishonorable by many Asian immigrants, who came from countries where the police forces were corrupt.

[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Hidden Power I’m Not Doubting

February 6, 2026

Robyn Parnell family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Me so happy, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of First Things First

One of my favorite dates is today.  Happy Birthday, She-Who-Was-Not-Intimidated-By-The-Rope-Swing-On-The-Treehouse-Deck.   [1]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why I Will Be A Couch Potato (Luger?) For The Next Three Weeks

The Winter Olympics begin today.

 

Bring on the Norwegians!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Human Interaction Is Sometimes Disguised As
– or Enhanced By – a Non Sequitur

Dateline:  Tuesday morning; circa 10 am; The Dollar Tree Store‘s Birthday greeting cards section.  [2]   Moiself  is picking out birthday cards, a lot of ’em. To an uninformed observer it might seem that I am choosing them at random, dumping them in my handbasket…but this is not so.  There is method to my madness.  As I grab one card two envelopes come with it, and the extra envelope flutters to the floor.  Only when I reach down to retrieve it do I realize that a woman is standing next to me, in front of the Valentine’s Day card section.

“Excuse me,” I say, as I lean over to pick up the miscreant envelope, which has landed just to the right of her right foot.  “I didn’t mean to fling an empty envelope in your direction.”

She smiles, looks at my handbasket, and I expect her to remark on the number of cards in it (which will eventually total 30).  Instead, she replies, “My daughter was unable to have children, so she adopted four dogs.  I get them all cards for every holiday and special occasion.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Few People Say It Better Than Greta Christina   [3]

“Dear Republicans,

Apparently some of you are having second thoughts. Recent events have led you to question your commitment to Trumpism, and even move away from it. A line has been crossed for you, and you can no longer accept the direction the country is going in.

Am I glad about this? Yes. Do I want you to step away from Trump and the Republican Party, to rethink the path you’ve been on and walk it back? Yes….

But as you walk back this path, you need to realize that it’s not going to be covered with rose petals. A lot of people are extremely angry with you, and we have every right to be. You have done a great deal of harm. The Republican Party has done a great deal of harm — not just in the last month, it’s been doing great harm for a long time — and you’ve been part of that. When you’ve hurt people badly, you need to do more than just say “Oops” and expect to be forgiven. You need to work to fix the harm you’ve done. And the greater the harm, the more work you have to do….

 

 

We warned you this was coming. Even the Republican Party warned you this was coming: the Project 2025 document spelled out their plans in detail. You chose not to listen. Moving forward, you need to be willing to listen. You need to do the kind of listening that involves not talking. You need to not get defensive, not try to justify your actions. You need to stop saying, ‘I didn’t vote for this!’  You absolutely voted for this.”

( excerpts from author, activist, blogger Greta Christina’s
Dear Republicans 1-28-26, my emphases )

*   *   *

Department Of The Hidden Power Of Doubt

“What do you do when you’re not sure?”
( from opening monologue, Doubt:  A Parable, a play by John Patrick Shanley )

 

Last week the podcast Hidden Brain concluded their You 2.0 series   [4]  with, as per the podcast website’s intro,  “…a look at the hidden power of doubt — not as weakness or indecision, but as a tool that helps us make better choices and navigate an uncertain world.”

The episode opens with the story of the little known letter General Eisenhower wrote on the eve of the allied invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, aka, D-Day. There were so many factors at play – including the weather – and an allied victory was far from certain.  Eisenhower drafted what he dreaded, should he have to announce that the mission had failed.  When it became apparent that Operation Overlord was succeeding, Eisenhower crumpled the letter and tossed it in his office trash can.  His military secretary retrieved the letter and kept it, allowing history to see what (IMO) was the true leadership of the man.

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”   [5]

 

 

Time machine to the present:  can you imagine the so-called leader we have today ( The Tantrum-Throwing-Toddler-in-Chief ) writing something like that – taking responsibility so succinctly and directly?  #47 will go to his corpulent casket carping and whining and kicking, blaming others for the political, moral, financial and cultural devastation he leaves in his wake.

Yet again, I digress.

HB podcast host Shankar Vedantam and his guest go on to talk about the power of doubt, which is something we tend not to associate with the stereotype of leadership (confident; decisive; never wavering; unwilling to back down).

“We don’t think of strong leaders as hesitant, doubtful, or unsure of the right answers.   Confidence and determination are admirable traits.  But they also have drawbacks.  Confidence can lead to overconfidence; decisiveness can make leaders less likely to be tolerant of dissent; determination can blind us to risks.
At the University of Virginia’s Darden College of Business, [Bobby] Parmar studies the value of doubt.  He says that by avoiding uncertainty, we miss out on opportunities for growth.”
(excerpts, You 2.0: Trusting Your Doubt,  Hidden Brain Staff / January 26, 2026  )

It’s a thought-provoking presentation of a compelling subject.  Two thumbs up for podcast listeners.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Learning To Lie In Another Language

 Ég  skil  íslensku.

Funny how one of the first phrases I learned in my Plimsleur language app, which I’ve been struggling through like a stuttering pig using daily since last Wednesday, is a total lie:   I understand Icelandic.

 

Yeah, fluency is just around the corner.

 

Adding to the hoax is that five minutes after learning how to say,  I do not understand Icelandic, I have forgotten how to say, I do not understand Icelandic.

Just about every Icelander speaks English ( Ninety-eight plus %! English is a compulsory subject in Icelandic schools ), but still, I want to be a gracious visitor when we go there this summer.  I think this trying-to-learn-some-conversational-Icelandic is going to be one of those things where I have to repeat lesson one seven times before moving on. 

About speaking Icelandic. Knowing that fact (that Icelanders speak English), then bothering to learn to say in Icelandic, Excuse me, do you speak English?  while perhaps respectful in intent, could easily come off as, to an Icelander, Why is this doofus butchering my language when it is totally unnessary to do so?  Obviously, if I’ve bothered to learn anything about the country (including from when MH and I were there three summers ago), I should know that any Icelander whom I address will speak far better English than I speak Icelandic. 

I wish the language course would start off by teaching Icelandic cusswords.  That would be more inspiring.  Of course, there is the internet, where I discovered, farðu í rassgat, which you would hurl as an insult when you are in the kind of situation where you want to advise someone to crawl up your own asshole.  Perhaps I’ll save that one for the United States customs agents.

 

“May your urine burn, you cowardly goat,” will be my backup curse.

*   *   *

Department Of Cool Story, Bro…    [6]

When I recently saw this spot-on summation of Christian theology I was reminded of an acquaintance who, when I came out decades ago as religion-free, resorted to the believers’ last tactic:  when you can’t counter facts and logic and rationality, use fear ( of something only the religious believe in – hellfire/damnation  [7]  ).  He was not amused when moiself, using the following synopsis to do so, laughingly confirmed that I was indeed rejecting his god’s plan for “salvation.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?   [9]
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad
has made the world ugly and bad.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.”

(  Friedrich Nietzsche , as quoted in  The Very Best of Friedrich Nietzsche: Quotes from a Great Thinker, by David Graham,)

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember to fix the harm you’ve done when you realize you’ve done harm;
May you, as much as possible, not find yourself in farðu í rassgat situations;
May you resolve not to find the world ugly and bad;
…and may the hijinks ensue.    [10]

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Belle can still give you the badass, stinkeye look, should the occasion call for it.

[2] Two for $1!

[3] GC is an author, blogger, speaker, LGBTQ and atheist activist.

[4] The podcast does an annual series, at the end of the old/beginning of the new year, exploring the latest in evidence-based understandings offered by behavioral scientists – understandings which may help people improve their lives via establishing good habits/getting rid of bad habits, overcoming emotional, romantic, career-related, and cognitive challenges, etc.

[5] Note that the draft was dated July 5th. In 1966, when the question about this date was put to him, Einsenhower indicated that it was a minor mistake on his part and that he had actually written it on June 5, 1944.  (from D-Day Overlord, Encyclopaedia of the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy )

[6] Not.

[7] It’s a knee slapper, when you think about it:  they try to make *you* afraid of something  that is in fact *their* greatest fear, something which you don’t thing about at all, like pissing off Santa claus.

[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[9] This is serious stuff; no need for a footnote.

[10] See previous footnote.

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