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The Headline I’m Not Walking In

March 27, 2015

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, music, Oregon, politics, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life) , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Headline I’m Not Walking In

 

“Is it hot in here, Gov. Scott, or is it just me?”

What follows is not something made up by The Onion.

*   *   *

Department of No Comment

From salon.com:  “A slew of unconfirmed reports indicate that Florida Governor Rick Scott has banned state officials from using the term ‘climate change’…. Despite Scott’s repeated denial that such a law exists, in a new video released by climate activist organization Forecast the Facts, Director of Florida Division of Emergency Management Bryan Koon clearly tries to avoid using the phrase in a public hearing.

*   *   *

On Second Thought : Comment

Climate Change! Climate Change! GLOBAL WARMING WARMING
WARMING Climate Change! Climate Change! Climate Change!

Dang…there goes my career in Florida politics.

Now that I’ve nothing to lose: Gov. Rick Scott – this ass hat award’s for you.

AHat

*   *   *

The Rhythm Method

K and Belle were home last week, for their Spring Break. After they returned to college it took two days for me to realize that the schools here (Oregon) are on Spring break this week. Is there some holiday/teacher contract day I don’t know about? I wondered to moiself during my morning walk on Monday, when I noticed the absence of students waiting at the curbside bus stops. I noticed the same thing Tuesday morning, and subsequently my brilliant powers of deduction that sense of oh, gee, school must be out kicked in.

I’d heard about this from other parents, about how when your kids go off to college and/or work, the rhythms of your personal/professional life and family schedule – which revolved in large measure around your children’s school schedules – seem to disappear.  [1]

*   *   *

Department of Education

I think I learned a wee lesson in compassion this week.

A marketplace has emerged, where public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry. How is the money made? Clicks.  The more shame, the more clicks; the more clicks, the more advertising dollars.
We’re in a dangerous cycle. The more we click on this kind of gossip, the numb we become to the lives behind it. And the more numb we get, the more we click. All the while, someone is making money off of someone else’s suffering.”

If, like me, you were fascinated/angered/bemused/repulsed by the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal of seventeen years ago, you need to hear Monica Lewinsky’s TED talk on The Price of Shame.

Lewinsky was the same age then as my son is now when she began an affair with her boss which led to, among many other events, the first national case of what we now call cyber bullying and/or slut shaming. Listening to her speech, I realized for the first time (a) how young she’d been when she (admittedly and profoundly regretfully) did something really, really stupid, [2] and (b) how painful the consequences were, for herself and her family, of having her mistake made public.

Even if you think you had/have little interest in the pathetic affair, you heard the stories and the jokes, and we all formed opinions on the ensuring events based, at least in part, on the ensuing gossip.

Listen to her speech. We – the American public – owe it to both Ms. Lewinsky and ourselves to imagine, as she puts it, “walking a mile in someone else’s headline.”

*   *   *

Blast From the Past

Whatever prompted the following stroll down Memory Lane, [3] I cannot recall, but I am grateful to the whimsical brain breezes which produced it.

Dateline: a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away – a galaxy which happened to have a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Friend LU and I were cruising the B & N stacks, looking for – surprise! – a book (the title of which escapes me now..I think it was something by Stephen Jay Gould).  As we passed by the religion section stacks I noticed a display rack in the Christian Nonfiction section for books whose titles proclaimed the glories of “Submissive Womanhood.”

Naturally, I decided an act of guerrilla feminism was called for.

LU stood as lookout for B & N employees (a task she performed admirably, despite almost pissing herself with laughter) while I moved the entire submissive pile of shit stack of books to the section labeled Christian Fiction.

“Dear Lord Jesus,
does having a brain make my ass look big?”

*   *   *

The Problem With Inspirational Quotes

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
(Eleanor Roosevelt)

Uh…okay.

BTW, Ellie – may I call you Ellie? – here are just a few of the things that scare me:

* sticking my hand down an active garbage disposal
*running over my neighbor’s “un-schooled/free range” kid when he darts into the street from between parked cars
* stepping into an open septic tank
* boarding the light rail and realizing, after the train takes off, that the car is filled with rival gang members
* eating a carton of yogurt that is years past its expiration date
* encountering a pissed-off ____ (bear; cougar; moose) when I’m hiking and have to go off-trail to take a leak.

Hmmmm. Which one shall I do today?

Got it; this is your spot – I’ll just move on.

*   *   *

I recently finished reading two rock musician memoirs. The first was Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, the byline of which reads Marky Ramone with Richard Herschlag. Most of my fellow writers know full well what “with“ means in a byline. The name that follows with (aka as told to) is the name of the person actually wrote the book – it is the name of the writer who cobbled together a coherent narrative after the famous-person-who-is-not-a-writer spent weeks or days downloading their thoughts to a tape recorder.

Despite having been ghostwritten, the Marky Ramone book was an enjoyable read. IMHO, with managed to capture the self-deprecating charm, boyish enthusiasm and generous spirit the Ramone’s drummer had and still has, after all these years, toward his music and his bandmates.

Then, there was Kim Gordon’s Girl in a Band.  Which was written all by her lonesome, apparently, as there is no with listed.

Pity.

Let me just say that I am not going to make it through this book was my mantra (until I actually finished it).

Yeah, I get that Gordon never intended to be in Sonic Youth, or in any band (or so she proclaims in every other chapter) – I get that ART (always capitalized, in intent of not punctuation) was her goal and muse.

Oh, the names she drops and hoists, again and again, of the art crowd, curators and gallery owners, the painters, the showings, and the paintings… There was a _____   ! [4] in the gallery, imagine that.

Gordon does make some interesting observations about feminism in the music and art worlds, but the performance art-style posturing tone of the book was a little too precious for moiself.  It made me want to invite her to my house and show her my art collection – a variety of works, from sculpture to pottery to paintings, by talented Pacific Northwest artists unknown to the Manhattan bozos bohos but nonetheless talented.  I may not have a Richard Prince in my “gallery,” but I do have a have a Tucker, a Henson, several Haworths and a Gabriel and another Gabriel and two Bonofiglios and a Grover and a Visse and Aukshunas and a Pickering [5]…and my pride and joy in my original pieces by S. Wagnell and E. Wagnell.

Original drawing by E. Wagnell

Original sculpture by S. Wagnell

*   *   *

Department of Over Compensating

On the subject of art and pretension, after my outing to Portland’s Pearl District last week, I have an open suggestion to the vertically-challenged man wearing a leather biker jacket and an ill-fitting rug who paused to check his reflection in the driver’s side mirror before he locked his Lamborghini:

Dude, why not just get a vanity plate that reads, TINYPNS ?

Another thing that don’t make no sense: Duuuuuuuude, if you can afford a car like that, what’s with the Dollar Tree toupee?

Now, that’s more like it.

*   *   *

May your automobile choices be compensation-free,
may your life choices scare the crap out of Eleanor Roosevelt,
and may the hijinks ensue.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1] However, having worked for a private OB/GYN practice and several Planned Parenthoods, I have nothing good to say about the rhythm method or those who practice it.

[2] …and how lucky I and my peers were, to have committed our youthful indiscretions out of the internet’s/social media’s/cell phone’s all-seeing, all-blabbing eyes.

[3] Which is also the real name of a real street near where I lived in Santa  Ana, CA. Strange, that I can’t recall much about Memory Lane….

[4] Insert name of any artist unknown to those outside the Manhattan bohemian scene.

[5] Jimmy Pickering also illustrated my picture book, My Closet Threw a Party. So there’s my name dropping for the day.

The Offer I’m Not Accepting

March 20, 2015

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, politics , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

A Nice Way To Start The Week

Dateline: Monday, ~ 7:50 am, out for my morning walk. On my way back home I approach a path that cuts through a local park. The path starts near a sidewalk which is a school bus stop for one of the local high schools. Three groups of kids wait at the stop:

* two Latino boys to the far right of the sidewalk, their laughter carrying a block away.

* three girls “in the middle” of the sidewalk, about ten feet away from the boys, are talking with each other. The girls, who appear to be Asian and Latina, are slim, fashionably dressed, and gorgeous.

* and one…well, not a group, but one student stands far to the left of the others. The one is a very tall, very chubby, very white and very lonely looking boy, hair and clothing by Nerdstyle. His gaze is fixed downward at his ratty, generic sneakers.

The dynamic seemed obvious.

One of the girls glances over her shoulder at Lonely Boy. She looks back at her group, at the other two boys, then leaves her friends and sidles over to Lonely Boy. As I approach and pass by them I hear her ask him about his project.[1]  I also catch the look on Lonely Boy’s face – the shy but noticeable, hopeful, gleam in his eyes.

Someone is paying attention to me.

The act and consequence, however fleeting, of a moment of connection and kindness…. It stayed with me the rest of the day.

*   *   *

The preceding warm fuzzy was brought to by The Treacledown Theory. We return you to our regular shit-talking programming.

*   *   *

Department of Burning Bridges

This week I received the following offer for publication:

First, let me apologize for the serious delay in my response.  Second, we would love to publish “____________” (name of my story) in ___________ (journal name), for publication in 2016.  I understand there is a good likelihood this piece been picked up elsewhere.  Please let me know if it’s still available.
Thanks so much for your submission. ____________(Editor name)

I had long ago written off that submission (which I do with any submitted work when the editors have not replied within their journal’s stated length-of-reply period) as an assumed rejection.

The story Redacted Journal Name wants to publish was sent to them, by moiself, in January 2012. No, that is not a typo. Longest reply ever. One thousand fifty-four days to consider a 3000 word story. [2] Also, this journal “pays” their contributors only in copies of said journal. [3]

I think I’ll wait…oh, maybe three years or so…to decline their generous offer.

*   *   *

More From The Wacky World o’ Literature Files

I’ve been a writer for some time, submitting my work, having it be both accepted and rejected. In years of doing so I’ve had many Interesting Experiences, ®  and two Standout Experiences this week alone (one of which is the afore-mentioned longest reply ever).

Interesting Experiences include having manuscripts returned to me that I neither submitted nor penned. That is, I’d sent a manuscript of mine to a publisher, and that publisher returned to me a manuscript that was not mine – one that had been submitted to the same publisher, by another author.

Really.

These mistakes I found both amusing (okay, my manuscript was not right for you, but you couldn’t just say “No, thanks,” – you had to send me someone else’s rejected work?) and alarming (Yikes – is this the attentive care you take with all of your submissions?).

In each case of errant manuscript return, the other authors’ last names also started with a P or were vaguely similar to mine (I assume the errors were blamed on overworked or alphabetically-challenged editorial assistants). After alerting the publishers of their respective mishaps, at their request I destroyed the manuscripts…but not before reading the opening pages or chapters, [4] and doing so has given me a high appreciation of what publishers and editors must wade through on a daily basis, and an even higher suspicion of self-published works. [5]

So. On to this week’s Standout Experience #2.

Never have I been addressed as Mrs., nor have I ever used that title, either personally or professionally. This week I received a reply to a query, from a publisher who addressed me as Mrs. Parnell. That is something I’d expect from junk mail/catalog come-ons, not from a publisher…who, BTW, who knows nothing of my marital status, which should be irrelevant in professional correspondence, anyway.

Professionally or personally, it is wrong to refer to me as Mrs. Parnell. I have been, and always shall be your friend.  Dammit, Spock – cease the mind meld at once!

Live long and apologize when necessary.

I’ll try that again. I have been, and always shall be, Ms.-Parnell-please-call-me-Robyn.

MH, renegade trendsetter that he is, kept his birth surname when we married. So did I. I have never been a Mrs. Anyname.

In over twenty-seven years, editors and publishers have always addressed me as Ms. Parnell. It just struck me as…odd. I was annoyed by that salutation coming from a publisher, then annoyed by my own annoyance.

*   *   *

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
(George Bernard Shaw)

Now that I have Mr. Shaw’s permission, I shall spice my conversation:

Our purpose in life isn’t outsourced.
(Robyn Parnell, re how the religion-free create meaning in life)

“…all ministers are slave-traders – all Christian ministers (Paul called himself a slave, Jesus said you should become captive and you should submit and deny yourself ). They are preaching a backward message about life and about purpose.”
 (excerpt from an interview with Dan Barker, Freethought Today radio podcast, 3-14-15 [6])

Yep, that’s  Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Dan Barker, himself a former evangelical minister, referring to megachurch pastor Rick Warren and other such pastors as slave-traders, in an interview about Barker’s new book, Life Driven Purpose. LDP, published by Pitchstone Publishing, aims to be “the first atheist book shelved in the inspirational section” of bookstores.

According to Barker, the whole point of the book is to “flip everything around,” as per the message from books like the Rev. Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and other “inspirational” titles which claim people cannot have a life of meaning without (their particular brand of) religion. More excerpts from Barker’s interview:

The good news in a nutshell is that there is no purpose of life – and that is great news! Because if there’s a purpose of life, that means we are secondary; we’re having to look up somewhere for someone to hand it to us – ‘here’s what you are’ – we’re like slaves, we’re like servants to whoever this boss is, as the Bible teaches. But the really great news is that although there is no purpose of life – and we shouldn’t want there to be, because life is its own reward – that doesn’t mean that there’s no purpose in life…. Atheists and nonbelievers have immense purpose in our lives….

“I think we atheists are truly in-spired, while (religious) believers are out-spired. They don’t have any in-spiration; they have to get it all from someone outside of themselves telling them, ‘Here’s your marching orders; here’s your rules to live, don’t think for yourselves – it’s not about you,’ like Rick Warren says. We atheists and non-believers find purpose and meaning, we create purpose and meaning within ourselves.”

Whenever I run across a reference to Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, I find myself wondering what purpose drove Warren when he visited Uganda in 2008, where he supported Ugandan Anglican’s bishops in their boycott of other Anglican’s  support for LGBT/human rights  and declared that “homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus is not a human right,” after which the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (originally called the “Kill the Gays Bill”) was introduced in the Ugandan parliament.  [7]

Anyway….

Dan Barker’s book will be released in April, and can be pre-ordered from the usual outlets.

*   *   *

Department of There Needs to Be Such A Thing

After friend SCM brought her yummy-yum-yummers potatoes to our Sunday St. Patrick’s Day-The Ides of March-Pi Day-Mardi Gras-Spring celebratory dinner, I suggested she and I form PLASMA, which is a scrambled acronym for what would be the Lumpy Artisinal Mashed Potato Appreciation Society. [8]

While I appreciate pureed foods in many forms, I am suspicious of mashed potatoes that have no lumps or “substance” whatsoever. Totally smooth mashed potatoes are a template for lefse but, IMHO, have little purpose outside of that. I prefer my MPs to have texture; i.e., chunks of delicious potatoes.

I volunteer to assume the duties and responsibilities of PLASMA’s The Dowager Lumpy. I will gladly accept suggestions for the title to be bestowed upon the genteel (and gentile, to boot) SCM.

Mashed potatoes without lumps? How middle class.

*   *   *

Department of It’s Obvious, Dude

To the residents of the really-needs-the-lawn-mown-and-siding-painted house, every window of which is covered with aluminum foil and/or an American flag:

Wouldn’t it just be easier to hang a sign on the front door that says, We cook meth here?

nothin’ to hide in here, no sir, officer sir.

*   *   *

May your salutations be appropriate, may your mashed potatoes be lumpy, may your view stay foil-free, and may the hijinks ensue.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1] The high school they attend has a mandatory Senior Project for graduating students, and this would be the time of the year students would be working on their projects.

[2] That’s 2.6 words a day. Of course I did the math.

[3] I no longer submit work to publications that offer no monetary compensation to writers.

[4] I at first thought they might be my works, and each time this happened I wondered why the publisher had taken the time and expense to return my ms., despite my having clearly requested in my cover letter that the publisher follow the industry standard on hard copy submissions (which is to destroy/recycle the ms. and reply via the enclosed SASE).

[5] I cringe to think that those would-be books I read could make it to publication without having gone through the “gate keepers” (i.e. they were in need of severe editing)…and suck writing can, nowadays, thanks to the self-publishing industry.

[6] Yes – almost the best Pi day date ever!

[7] Rick Warren was not the only American conservative minister to export their anti-LGBT propaganda to Africa.

[8] Artisinal because you can’t spit without hitting artisanal something in the Portland area.

The Toast I’m Not Serving

March 13, 2015

Robyn Parnell current events, exercise & fitness, family life, freethought/humanism, hiking, nature, politics, reproductive rights, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Toast I’m Not Serving

I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’.
So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
~ Steven Wright ~

*   *   *

If This Catches On, Our Culture Is Toast

Its’ a Thing, apparently. And, like with so many Things, I’m far from the first to catch on.  It’s Artisanal toast.

Yes, the apocalypse is at the gates and I’m in my sweatpants.

*   *   *

Yet Another New Thing
Aka Department of Pack it in, Pack it out

Content warning: a lotta shit-talking ahead

Last Sunday MH and I hiked the Angel’s Rest trail in the Columbia Gorge. I was thrilled to see my first trillium of the season…

…and then I was not-so-thrilled to see the first of what would be many, many, many, plastic  baggies by the side of the trail, their lumpy shape indicating they were filled with what my father genteelly [1] used to refer to as dog dirt.

This seems to be a new thing with People Who Take Their Dogs Hiking.® The optimistic part of me [2] would like to think that the owners, hiking uptrail when Rover does his business, place Rover’s doggie doody bag in a spot they think they will remember and intend to retrieve the bag on their way downtrail.

Oh, sure, I trust ’em all to remember the exact spot on the trail where they left their dog’s bag, among the 523 bags left by the hikers before them.

Doggie-waste collection bags used to come in two shades: black, or very dark green. Perhaps on the advice of a Poop bag PR firm (which, I imagine, proposed that having a different colored bag will allow you to spot it more easily along the trail or hillside), the bags now come in a variety of colors. As MH and I ascended out of the fern-filled forest, past Coopey Falls and up to a ridge crest which offered a spectacular Gorge view, our view of the trail itself included

* pale pink poop bags
* purple poop parcels
* fuscia feces fetchers
* tangerine turd totes
* shadow  blue shit bags
* strawberry stool satchels
* burgundy buttload bundles
* cream crap carriers

I’m glad (at least some) dog owners are bagging their furry friend’s feces instead of leaving it for other hikers to slip on/trip over (although we did see some free range dog turds). Still, why don’t they just take the bags with them?  If you’re one of those dog-hikers who doesn’t, because you think hiking while swinging a sack o’ shit would ruin your Nature Experience ® or whatever your reason is, please consider the experience of the your fellow outdoor lovers who are subject to the sight of your litter.

I spotted several hiking couples who carried their babies with them in backpacks. With the way my mind works, I began to wonder: why don’t they do the same as the dog owners? [3]  As a veteran parent of two long-ago-housebroken-children-now-young-adults, I remember the prodigious poop production of infants.  Yet I didn’t see any baby diapers, solo or bagged, on or near the trail.

I did see one Responsible Dog Owner, © whose dog wore one of those vests that have pockets and/or clip on gadgets which allowed the dog to carry its own poop bag.

Attention, puppy possessors who simply must take your faithful canine companions on the hiking trail:

First of all, make sure your dog actually enjoys hiking and is up to it.  Those of you who take along your foo-foo yipsters  and other petite breeds [4] – do you realize that:

(1)  not all dogs enjoy or have been bred for hiking;
(2)  your legs are four times as long as theirs;
(3)  as your dog struggles to keep pace with you, we who approach you on the trail can see the miserable, winded look on your dog’s face, that you apparently can’t (or choose to ignore)?

And second of all, most of all, get and use one of those Turd Tote [5] vests for your dog.

The rest of us nature lovers will appreciate it, so much so that we will serenade you with a special version of the hiker’s anthem, The Happy Wanderer Song:

♫ I love to go a-wandering,
 Along the mountain track,
 My dog’s with me, and he’ll carry,
 His crapsack on his back.  ♫

C’mon, all you Girl Scout and Boy Scout dropouts – join in on the chorus:

♫  Val-deri,Val-dera, Val-deri,
 Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
 Val-deri,Val-dera
His crapsack on his back  ♫

*   *   *

Department of Well, That’s a First

The song I woke up to Sunday morning that was playing in my head – I have previously blogged about my mind’s propensity for earworms – was the Ramones’ The KKK Took My Baby Away. Which is, aptly enough, from their album Pleasant Dreams.

*   *   *

Department of What Could Be Better for Your Brain Than Earworms

Reading this, that’s what:

It’s Time To Fight Religion:
Toxic Drivel, Useful Media Idiots, And The Real Story About Faith And Violence.

In this searing opinion piece for salon.com, The Atlantic contributing editor and Russia correspondent  Jeffrey Tayler rips news outlets and religious apologists and other a new one for their “misguided notions of tolerance” in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders. Tayler takes these “unwitting recidivist useful idiots” to task for evincing more political correctness than guts when it comes to defending – even understanding – the need for questioning and truth-telling in a free society.

“We need to turn the tables and refuse to let the faith-based or their smooth-talking accomplices set the terms for debate; refuse to cower before the balderdash term Islamophobia; refuse to let faith-mongering fraudsters, from the Pope in the Vatican to the pastor down the street, educate our children or lecture us on morals or anything else. If we do not believe the Bible is true or the Quran inerrant, we need to say so, loudly, clearly and repeatedly, until the “sacred” sheen of these books wears off. And it will.”

And if you enjoy that thought-provoking religion smack down, check out another article by Tayler. This one is about how the assumption that the so-called “Good Book” is actually good– i.e., that the Jewish and Christian scriptures offer nice, morally uplifting and instructional stories and firmly proclaim temperance and chastity – rests on grossly false premises. Also, the article’s title should be worth some kind of journalism award:

The Bible should be X-rated:
The Good Book is loaded with sexy sin – someone tell Mike Huckabee.

Indeed, someone tell Mike Huckabee. Tell him something. Anything.

*   *   *

Department of One More Shot

While I’m on the subject of Hucka-dissing, let’s say you somehow survived years of intellectual deprivation and traumatic brain injuries and thus have decided that Huckabee is your dude for the Republican presidential nomination.  Setting aside his platform of theocracy pandering, LGBT fear-mongering, sexually active women-bashing, science-denying, anti-choice, mandatory pregnancy-supporting and other unmedicated, Fox News-parroting, mythomaniac political positions, consider this:

Would you want This Great Land of Ours © to be led by someone who’s name brings to mind a chain of eateries whose greatest contribution to American food culture (read: the obesity/Type II diabetes epidemic) is their $13.99 “riblet” special?

“Casual, arterial and colon clogging dining since 1980.” (Not their official slogan)

 

*   *   *

Department of Let’s Think of Helpful Things For a Change

Panhandlers, and the frustration faced by most good-hearted people: to give or not to give? Actually, for me it’s easy. After doing volunteer work with the people who were professionals in the helping profession – experienced, non-starry eyed workers with the homeless and people living “on the edge” – I follow their advice.

Do not give cash. By doing so you may give yourself one minute of warm fuzzies, but true compassion does not abet or enable. Your money will most likely be going toward addiction of some kind (from nicotine to alcohol to meth to heroin and back again [6]), or you are funding one scam or another and some you’d never thought of.

Let’s say the guy asking for change says he’s doing so because he’s hungry. On the off chance he really is hungry, if you’ve the time, head for the nearest food cart or deli or corner mart and bring him back a burrito or a sandwich or a salad or ___. [7]  But most of us don’t have the time – we’re on our way to work or an appointment or whatever.

So. If you care about such things, tonight or some night soon, when you’re binge watching your latest BBC series, start to put together a Panhandler Kit.  Make a list of what you need for such a kit – some of the items you may already have around the house (we always keep a supply of Max tickets on hand), and some may take a little searching out. You may think of more additions, but here is the very basic kit I keep in my purse.

Panhandler kit:
* All day public transit tickets
* Meal vouchers for local soup kitchens (Sisters of the Road (Portland Area)
* lists of social services in your area (organizations that provide meals, shelter, showers, food, clothing, health and employment assistance – google them, make a document that can be printed out and scaled down to a wallet-sized card)

All items can fit in a business card holder-style wallet, or an envelope you reserve for that purpose. When solicited by a street person, kindly reply that no, you do not have/are unable to offer spare change, but…** and you remove your kit from your purse, pocket, backpack.

** In this day and age I do feel compelled to add “if you feel safe to do so.” Of course, you must use your judgment as to the wisdom of stopping and speaking with someone who gives off dangerous and/or unstable vibes. I, for example, would hesitate to engage a Klingon panhandler.

 

*   *   *

 

 May all of your encounters, on the streets or the trails, be turd-bag free and worthy of the artisanal fad food of your choice, and  may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

 

[1] He had not-so-genteel words, which he reserved for yelling through the kitchen window when he spotted people who walked their dogs and let them poop indiscriminately on other people’s lawns and sidewalks and – on one infamous (in my family, at least) occasion – on our garden hose.

[2] Yeah, the same part that would like to think Pol Pot had been bullied on the playground and was not merely or intrinsically evil.

[3] I actually began to plan my next guerilla art project: get disposable diapers, fill them with a lumpy substance, tie them neatly, take them along on our next hike and leave them next to dog poop bags.

[4] I’m talking to you, Pomeranian people, and also to owners of the other short-nosed, flat-faced, Brachycephalic breeds which are prone to respiratory distress and/or low endurance (e.g. pug, bulldog, boxer, chihuahua, shih tzu).

[5] Not the official name. But it would be, if I were the Marketing Queen.

[6] Or just to staying on the street and not seeking alternatives if you’re making enough by panhandling to get by.

[7] I’ve done this many times, and have shared stories with others who’ve done the same. The reactions from the food recipients clue you in as to whether the request was sincere. My favorite honest response: “Yeah, I was hungry, but for A BEER.”

The Green Armband I’m Not Wearing

March 6, 2015

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Green Armband I’m Not Wearing

I am no longer wearing it. I wore it for three days, starting last Friday, when Leonard Nimoy died. Green is the color of Vulcan blood. You knew that.

Leonard Nimoy was, of course, best known for his portrayal of the iconic Star Trek character, Mr. Spock. [1] Nimoy was also a talented writer and screenwriter, director and photographer and singer. [2]

Oh yeah, and he also appeared in the “The Challenge,” which is arguably the Best. Automobile Commercial. Ever.

In late 1979 or early 1980, my parents drove up from So Cal to visit me and check out my first post-college apartment in the Bay Area. A week before the trip they asked me if I wanted them to bring along their old black and white TV set, which, they said, was mine if I wanted it (they’d recently purchased a new color TV, and they knew I had no TV set of any color.). I said thanks, but no. I didn’t watch much television at the time, except for the occasional special event (e.g. The Olympic Games). [3]  I called them back in a couple of days and asked them to bring the set along – I ‘d just found out that Star Trek reruns were going to be broadcast on some local channel.

Upon hearing the news of Nimoy’s death, my siblings and I exchanged a series of emails, in which we reminisced and recommended our respective favorite Star Trek “Spock-centric” episodes, which got me to thinking about the impact a piece of art and an artist [4] can have on one’s life.

I have never attended a Star Trek (nor any fan) convention nor have I ever had the slightest interest in doing so (other than having a fleeting curiosity about attending a ST convention with a cultural anthropologist’s mindset to observe the behavior of obsessive social misfits devoted fans). Still, the Star Trek series and its television and movie sequels and prequels and spinoffs have been an important part of my “entertainment life” for over forty years. That’s worth at least three days of official if casual, armband-wearing mourning. And a lifetime of memories.

My friend MM, when he heard the news, posted the most succinctly appropriate sendoff or tribute I’ve seen:

One to beam up.

*   *   *

Department of My Brain Hurts

Sometimes once something gets in print or gets in a textbook or gets on people’s public radar, it just sticks around, even if there’s reason to suspect that the idea’s just wrong.
(Laurie Santos, professor of psychology at Yale University,
Director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory)

The latest episode of Freakonomics, the radio show that explores “the hidden side of everything,” is inspired by the book This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress. Freakonomics’ 3-5-2015 podcast, “This Idea Must Die” is both a treat and torture for idea junkies, and features interviews with a variety of Notable People ® from a variety of professions, all of whom were asked to propose answers to the same question:  “What (scientific) idea is ready for retirement?”

My head felt ready to explode as I began to consider the various propositions, which included

* A professor of cognitive science at University College London would like to kill off the idea that people are either right-brained or left-brained (“an idea that makes no physiological sense”);

* A professor at Harvard Business School wants to retire the idea that that markets are good…and the idea that markets are bad;

* A professor of quantum mechanical engineering at M.I.T. professor of quantum mechanical engineering at M.I.T. would like to retire the idea of “the universe;”

* An oncologist, professor of medicine and director of the MDS Center at Columbia University wants to retire “mouse models” from use in drug development for cancer therapy…

And how about the following for an apoplectic, [5] contemplation-o-rama:

“I think an idea that is bad, that’s really detrimental to society, is the idea that life is sacred.”
(Steve Levitt, Freakonomics co-author, economist at the University of Chicago.)

You owe your brain a listen.

*   *   *

It’s Flicker Time

No no no no no no no. That’s Flicker Time, not Hammer Time.

But while I’m on the subject, I’m standing here, in my office, staring at this parcel that was delivered  to our house by mistake. I just don’t know what to do. I know I should return it, but it’s addressed to MC Hammer, soooooo, I can’t touch this.

Thank you, Ladies and Germs, you’re too kind.

Back to Flicker Time.

One of the harbingers of the spring-that-shall-soon-be-here is the sound produced by a Northern Flicker, when s/he [6] is declaring territory with the help of technology.

Northern Flickers (along with most woodpecker species) “drum” on objects to declare territory, warn off rivals and attract and communicate with their mates. Before humans came along to muck up alter the environment, Flickers had to be satisfied with mere tree trunks to drum. They want to make the loudest noise possible from the highest spot possible, which is why, for suburban-dwelling Flickers, paradise is a neighborhood filled with houses that have metallic vents, chimney guards and flashings on their roofs.

I love to hear the sounds of Flicker housetop-drumming when I’m out for my morning walk. The part of me that enjoys petty irritations inflicted upon other people loves to imagine the reactions of the occupants whose houses are selected for Flicker drumming. I speak from experience: the first time you hear that noise, reverberating down your chimney and bouncing off the walls, it can be quite disconcerting until you figure out what the heck it is, where the heck it is coming from and who the heck is doing it.

“Everybody look at meeee! I’ve got my own drumming spaceship!”

*   *   *

Happy (early) 22nd Birthday to my son, K.

Hard to believe that my adorable “leaf boy” is twenty-two.

October 1995, near the Mackenzie River.

*   *   *

My Daughter the DJ

Keep it locked on the sound, 90.1 KUPS.

Excuse me for yet another a parental pride freak-out, but that’s my daughter on the air, announcing her college radio station’s motto.  All together now:

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Cat’s Got Your Tongue is what Belle is calling her show on KUPS, at the prime slot of Wednesday mornings, 6 am.. Her focus is “Indie folk,” which means that lucky listeners such as moiself get to hear songs about how “the robots are going to help us find our crystal” (after the pirates have stolen it). [7]

KUPS is a college radio station and sounds like one – interesting if sporadic programming, there are gaps in their schedule, and their website needs updating (Belle’s shift is not listed, ahem). Oh, and apparently no one at the radio station can agree about why their mascot is…what it is.

*   *   *

When I’ve completed a new project and am researching publishers, one of the first things I do is check out the manuscript submission guidelines that are found on the publishing houses’ websites.  I am not a writer of genre fiction; thus, I rule out publishers that specialize in genres (unless they also publish literary fiction).  Sometimes, even when it is obvious from first glance that a publisher is genre-specific, I linger at the site, just to get an idea of how many ridiculous sub-categories there are and imagine the minds of people who read that shit genres are out there.

Such lingering occurred early this week, when I ran across a relatively new publishing house that specialized in the Romance genre. I was struck by the extensive sub-categories of Romance, some (okay; most) of which I had no idea existed:  Adventure Romance; Dark Fantasy; Futuristic; Gothic; Interracial; LGBT; Medical; Military; Paranormal; Regency; Rock ‘n Roll; Science Fiction; Time-Travel;Urban Fantasy…

Oh, and the publishers noted they were particularly interested in Amish Romance.

Amish Romance?

I’d heard of the Christian – aka Inspirational – Romance genre, the guidelines of which are fairly strict: protagonists must behave according to “Christian tenets” and shun alcohol, tobacco, profanity and drugs; sexual desire and content is only hinted at or avoided entirely and must be heterosexual in nature; no nookie before marriage, and romantic encounters must lead to marriage or the promise of it somewhere in a golden horizon that is planned by their god; relationships with non-believers are either forbidden or presented in a negative light unless the plot involves the heathen love interest being “led to Christ.” A typical blurb for a mainstream Christian romance novel:

Bethany La Chasteté and  Rick Granarbor are not ready for the feelings that may blow apart their plans for their lives. Can they learn to trust that God has his own?

Once again, I digress.

An Amish romance novel? Who would read it – certainly not an actual Amish person. So then, who is the target audience? The comparatively frisky Mennonites?

Are those bees in the girls’ bonnets or are they just happy to see us?

I’m trying to picture what, exactly, might constitute conflict and tension in an Amish Romance novel. An exchange of longing gazes over buttonhooks; the gentle stroking of a beard while sneaking surreptitious glances at an apron string fluttering in the sultry summer breeze; the coveting of the neighbor farm boy’s well-endowed buggy….

Joseph, Samuel and Jacob – is it hot in here or is it just me? Excuse me while I lie down and loosen my bonnet.

Although Rebecca’s temper had driven away every suitor, Reuben was ready to plow the fallow fields of her heart.

 

*   *   *

May you live long and prosper, may you be the target audience of the genre of your choice, and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

[1] Nimoy was also instrumental in developing the character’s history, distinctive body language and personality, according to Star Trek writers, producers and fellow actors.

[2] No…he was not a talented singer, as evidenced here.

[3] During my college and Young Adult Working Years © I missed many television shows now considered iconic (Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, ad nauseum) and had to learn about them in other ways, to fill the gaps in my popular culture knowledge, which is important for doing crossword puzzles.

[4] Yes, I’m counting a television show as art.

[5] Well, perhaps, if you’re religious, just that idea might send you into fits. I fully agree with retiring the idea that life – that anything – is “sacred,” but not for the (economic) reasons Levitt cites.

[6] Both sexes will drum and call to declare and protect their territory.

[7] Dillon’s Hey Beau.