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The Grumpy Grandpa I’m Not Correcting

June 26, 2020

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, hiking, movies, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Yikes!, Zoo , , , , , , 2 Comments

Another Fact Abscess Feminist Ruins A Family Outing  Enlightens A Grateful Grandpa

My offspring, K and Belle, successfully fledged several years ago. When they were young (ages 1-5), their respective daycare/preschool teachers knew that, rain or shine, they wouldn’t be in class on Wednesdays, as that was our zoo/museum outing day.  Nine out of ten times, we’d go to the Oregon Zoo.

Those zoo trips were before the massive, community bond-supported revamping, updating, and expansion of the zoo and its animal habitats. There weren’t many visitors then – particularly on windy/rainy days, which were our favorites, because it often seemed if we had the zoo all to ourselves.  [1]  Several of the zookeepers got to recognize us, and we them. The staff were impressed and amused by K’s and Belle’s flourishing interest in animals and wildlife conservation and liked that we always greeted the keepers by name and asked (or tried to ask) interesting questions about the animals.

That the zookeepers took the time to speak with us (often quite extensively, and when it was obvious they had *real* work to do) is one of several factors moiself  credits for both K and Belle going on to be in the Zoo Teens program while in high school and then majoring in the Biological Sciences in college.

I’d also like to think that I “modeled” or that K and Belle inherited (nature?  nurture?) that interest from me. Moiself  was quite the animal nerd growing up, particularly in grade school.  My parents recognized and encouraged that interest, and for years I always received at least one nature-themed/animal facts book for my birthday and Christmas presents.  Thus, informed and armed, I was able to spoil the fun of many a prepubescent boy – who was trying to be naughty by teasing his female classmates about this AMAZING animal he’d come across – by explaining that a titmouse was in fact *not* a well-endowed rodent, but a petite North American songbird.

 

 

As always, I digress.

One of my interests at the zoo was not only watching my kids watch the animals, but watching the other zoo visitors. In that older version of the zoo, near the Penguin House, there was a habitat wherein dwelt a solitary, enormous, beautiful, Alaskan Brown bear named Marcia  (Marsha? Or Martha? Don’t know the spelling; her name was not on the information card on the habitat; we’d learned about her from the zookeepers   [2] ).

On days when there were many other zoo visitors and we stopped by Marcia’s habitat, inevitably – I mean, without fail – other adults would “mis-identify” the bear.  Always the male visitors (and also quite a few of the females) would remark, to themselves or to the kids who were with them, something along the lines of,

“Wow, get a load of that bear, he’s so big! Look at his paws…”

I would then take the opportunity to say, “Actually, her name is Marcia.” My comment/correction  would oftentimes lead to brief but interesting, personal-connection type conversations about the zoo and the animals, and sometimes my kids and I would learn something new, from a visitor who had talked with a zookeeper at another exhibit and had an interesting animal fact/behavior tidbit to share.  If the person seemed receptive, I would sneak in a factoid about how a zookeeper told me that the majority of the zoo’s resident animals were female…and how another zookeeper, and more than one biologist I’d met, told me that the majority of the world’s biomass is female but that an individual animal’s gender is usually misidentified by non-biologists when they use a pronoun other than “it” to refer to the animal.  For example, if you espy a wild animal when you’re out and about – say, a garter snake when you’re hiking the Wildwood trail in Forest Park – it is most likely a “she snake,” even though you or your hiking companion(s) will probably call it, or think of it as, a “he.”

With two exceptions moiself  can recall, these interactions at Marcia’s habitat were always positive (which is why I kept engaging in them).  In exception #2, an older dude got his grandpa tighty-whities in a knot when I spoke up after he’d pointed out the bear to (what I assumed were) his two grandkids, as well as to moiself and my two kids, and exclaimed, “Look at that HUGE bear – can you guess how strong he is?”

“She sure is something – she’s one of our favorite animals at the zoo!” I cheerfully chirped. “And, actually, her name is Marcia.”

The man’s face slowly but surely morphed into Grumpy Old Man, get-offa-my-lawn!  territory, as his granddaughter waved to the bear and called out, “Marcia – she’s Marcia! Hi, Marcia!”

“Why does that matter?” he said to me. 

“What do you mean?” I asked, not knowing if the “matter” he was wondering about was the bear’s name or its sex.

“Why does it matter?” he repeated, now looking full-blown irritated, as if he thought I were trying to show him up in front of his grandkids (neither of whom were paying any attention to the adults, but were standing with my kids, waving to the bear). “Does it matter if it’s a he or a she?”

Moiself  donned my best, well-practiced, kill him with kindness visage, raised my voice to a perky, non-threatening octave above my usual tone, and delivered my reply with bared teeth pretending to be a smile a friendly grin:

“Well, obviously it does, or you wouldn’t object to being corrected about a simple fact.”

He muttered under his breath and herded his grandkids away from the exhibit. The little girl turned back and called out, “Marcia!  Marcia! Bye, Marcia!”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Telling Grandpa Why It Matters

If Grumpy Gramps had stuck around and showed an ounce of amiable interest in the subject, I might have told him that I also would have offered a corrective comment had he misidentified the bear’s species, or its coloration or predation habits or dietary needs (“Look at that black bear/purple grizzly bear/orange sun bear – you know, in the wild, polar bears climb trees to hunt penguins  [3]….”), or any other basic fact about it. An animal’s sex or gender   [4]  is just another one of those basic facts.

The most obvious “proof” as to how important this is, Gramps, is that when I pointed out this particular, simple, factual error, did you notice how many of your feathers got ruffled?

I have taken it upon moiself  to be a “Squirt Gun Ambassador” re the natural world, hoping to incorporate the playfulness/good humor that this childhood summer toy brings to mind, when dealing with this particular issue, which is of importance TO THE ENTIRE WORLD (whether the entire world realizes it or not).

 

 

The SQUIRT gun issue to which I refer is my Sex Question Identification Reparations Therapy ®  crusade, regarding peoples’ tendency to apply male pronouns to all animals they see, unless the animal is obviously female (e.g., nursing its young).  I go the other direction, and use “she” instead of “it” (which I used to always do, and which I’ll get back to doing some day, when people stop defaulting to using “he”) to refer to an animal whose gender is unknown.  My crusade is somewhat analogous to, and in part inspired by, actor Geena Davis’ campaign on gender inequity in entertainment media.

Media is one of the most important factors influencing our values. Women and girls are 51% of the population, but entertainment media is bereft of female characters, with a ratio of approximately 3:1 male characters to female characters since the 1940s.
(Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media )

……When her…daughter was a toddler, and (Davis) started watching movies with her, she realised how woeful the depictions of women in family movies really were.
She was particularly struck by just how few speaking characters in these films were female. She took this point to industry colleagues, but most denied it. Well-meaning and sincere, they couldn’t see a problem.
Davis pressed on – she wanted to see the numbers….she sponsored the largest study carried out on gender depictions in family-rated films and children’s television…and found that for every female speaking-character, there were 2.5 or three male characters – a figure unchanged since 1946.
Furthermore, the vast majority of those female characters were stereotypical or highly sexualised, with ambitions largely related to romance. Even crowd scenes were only made up of 17% women….

 

Hollywood thinks women just don’t like to “gather,” or flee from monsters….

 

“What if we are inculcating generation after generation to believe that low representation of women is the norm?” (Davis) asked her audience.
So her institute commissioned more research: this time, a global study of gender in film in the 10 biggest film markets in the world. The findings were “bleak”: of those characters seen to be holding a job, 77.5% were male and 22.5% were female. Women in leadership and science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM fields were dramatically underrepresented in film, she said, and of the 127 characters that held political office, only 12 were women.
This lack of onscreen depiction contributes to symbolic annihilation, Davis said, by which those that don’t see themselves reflected on screen believe they are unimportant. She quoted damning statistics that show the more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life.

(“How Geena Davis became a champion for women on screen,”
The Guardian, 3-5-17 )

*   *   *

Department Of And While I’m On The Subject…

Can we agree to get rid of those dreadful feminizing/diminishing suffixes appended to people, animals, and professions?

If you come to a party at my house, I am your host, not your hostess.

 

And I won’t be serving these, BTW.

 

Your doctor, if she is a woman, is your doctor, not your doctress. Lions are male and female; there is no need for “lioness” as an identifier. If you name your Aunt Erva in your will as the person who will manage your estate, she should be called your executor, not your executrix.

Still with me, Grumpy Gramps? Since you asked it’s important, to know the animal’s correct gender because girls need to know that what is female is present, in the world, everywhere.  Girls often grow up into women who lack the confidence to move through the world as easily and powerfully as men do, because they don’t think that the world belongs to them.  Unintentionally and sometimes deliberately, girls get presented with skewed perceptions of their “place” – even of simply how many of them there are  [5]   –  in the world.  In the images and examples girls *and* boys are shown, the default for everything is male, especially if the thing in question is perceived as being big and powerful.

It’s important because a person will want to care for the world and that which is in the world, to seek education and take action – from studying to be a geologist to learning to do their own basic auto maintenance and repairs – if they think these things are truly and equally theirs.  If it belongs to you, then you feel a sense of responsibility for it. Despite the progress made in the past few decades, girls (and boys) still look at the world, at the images and descriptions presented to them, and see it as primarily belonging to, and inhabited and ruled by, boys and men.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Remember That Which Will Eventually Kill Those Of Us Who Survive The Rest Of This Ca-Ca?

Global warming/climate change – the human-induced warming of the planet  – has been getting our attention span short shrift these days, what with the pandemic, poor policing of POC and other parts of the panoply of poop parading past.   [6]

After my pitch for gender label inclusivity, I’ve not much energy left for another harangue.

 

 

I’ll leave y’all with this analogy on the subject. At many a dinner party discussion, I’ve listened while friends have lamented the conundrum of how and why otherwise rational-seeming people can ignore the evidence  of climate change and/or that some “aware” people tacitly admit that the evidence is real, but find ways to avoid thinking about it and/or don’t want to act on this evidence because they view any such actions as impeding their current lifestyle, or that they believe that individuals cannot make any significant changes to the problem.

I’ve had to bite my tongue when well-meaning people whom I admire and even love have sincerely claimed not to understand such willful ignorance…because they do the same thing, with regards to the same issue. They are all willing and enthusiastic participators in the environment-razing, carnivore fodder industry.

They all eat (factory-farm grown and processed) meat.

I’ve decided to be silent no more.  I will try my Girl Scout Best  [7]  to *not* be of those self-righteous scolds, but the next time someone starts with the, “How can those people ignore the evidence ?!?!?” wail I will gently point out that their lament is not only rhetorical, but disingenuous. They know, or *should* know, exactly why “those people” want to ignore the evidence of climate change because they themselves use the same rationale for ignoring the evidence on meat consumption:

* because they don’t want to alter their current way of life;

* because they don’t want to make the necessary changes, which they view as making sacrifices and being inconvenienced;

* because they just don’t want to be bothered.

Some of the most thoughtful people I know find ways not to give the problems of animal agriculture any thought, just as I find ways to avoid thinking about climate change and income inequality….
Animal agriculture is now recognized as a leading cause of global warming….
We cannot protect our environment while continuing to eat meat regularly. This is not a refutable perspective, but a banal truism….cows produce an enormous amount of greenhouse gas. If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.
According to the research director of Project Drawdown — a nonprofit organization dedicated to modeling solutions to address climate change — eating a plant-based diet is “the most important contribution every individual can make to reversing global warming.”
Americans overwhelmingly accept the science of climate change. A majority of both Republicans and Democrats say that the United States should have remained in the Paris climate accord. We don’t need new information, and we don’t need new values. We only need to walk through the open door.

 ( “The End of Meat Is Here: If you care about the working poor,
about racial justice, and about climate change,
you have to stop eating animals,” Jonathan Safran Foer,
 NY Times 5-21-20 )

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider which evidence you are choosing to ignore;
May you remember that I’m a writer, not a writress;
May you enjoy an adolescent’s misunderstanding of “titmouse;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I remember at least two occasions where we saw no other human beings, with the exception of the zookeepers and other zoo employees.

[2] And two keepers told me two different names for that bear: “Martha” and “Marcia.”

[3] Despite all the cute cartoons you may have seen, polar bears and penguins never interact. Polar bears are northern pole denizens while penguin species all live south of the equator. And neither of them climb trees.

[4] I realize these are loaded terms, used interchangeably and not always in the same manner, by humans.

[5] The world human population male/female ratio consistently hovers around 50-50,   but you wouldn’t know that if your only statistic in this matter came from your consumption of popular media, where the male characters consistently and overwhelmingly outnumber the female.

[6] I counted at least eight Ps there.

[7] Well, in my case, Girl-Scout-drop-out best….

The Police Officer I’m Not Judging

June 19, 2020

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Police Officer I’m Not Judging

Department Of The Calm Before The Storm
Sub Department Of Something Sweet Before The Ranting Thoughtful Consideration of Provocative Subjects Begins

We celebrate half-birthdays in my family – not my family of origin, but the family MH and I created. This is MH’s doing. When he found out that our first date was the day after my birthday, he expressed mild disappointment that he had missed helping me celebrate. I thought nothing of it until six months later, when I received a small gift from him and a birthday card with its pre-printed “Happy Birthday” altered to read, “Happy (half) birthday.”

I found that delightful.

And I did the same for him, when his half-birthday rolled around. And we’ve kept doing it all these years,  also with our children, K and Belle.

What makes it such a simple pleasure is that although we/ve been doing this for decades (!?), every year, without fail, I forget when it is my own half-birthday, until, for example, like Tuesday morning, when I came downstairs and found a card and small package and realized, “Oh yeah – it’s my half-birthday!”

This year’s card is arguably the best ever. The inside message, “Hope Your (Half) Birthday Is This Much Fun!” is an almost impossible wish, given the expression of unsurpassed, mischievous joy on the puddle jumping girl. It is a familiar expression, one I’ve seen in many a picture pasted in my parents’ old photo albums.  It makes me think of them fondly, knowing if they were alive they’d both laugh in recognition when I’d show them the card, and my father would exclaim,


“Where did MH find it?! Robbie Doll, that is *you*!”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Much Ado About Nothing You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me
Sup-Department Of The Hidden Book In A Beloved Fantasy Series:
Happy Potter And The People Who Play Their Nitpick Fiddles
While Hogwarts Is Burning Down Around Them

What a fun past couple of weeks we’ve had. And because there is not enough injustice to keep us all busy, several self-appointed transphobia warriors have Twitter-twisted their rainbow panties in a knot because they felt excluded – even, “erased” – due to a 21-word tweet from author JK Rowling.

 

 

Bear with me as I make a related association.

One of my favorite podcasts,Alan Alda’s “Clear and Vivid,”  focuses on connections we make via communication.  The response to Rowling’s tweet reminds me of one of the issues brought up in Alda‘s recent podcast interview with cognitive scientist, linguist, professor and author Steven Pinker. In the latter half of “Talking About Talking,” Alda and Pinker discussed the “pr” problem science currently has, in that many (non-scientist) people seem to have little idea how science and scientists actually work, and thus fall for pseudo science and conspiracy theories. These science doubters don’t trust science and scientists, partly because they think scientists cannot really speak out due to academic orthodoxy and the “cancel culture”  (which, moiself notes, is a problem typically more associated with the liberal arts and social sciences).

Pinker:
The backsliding in universities – away from free speech and open ideas, the ideological conformity, the political correctness, the policing of ideas – can be corrosive, precisely because it erodes that knowledge of what the rules (of science) are – mainly, you shouldn’t be able to get away with claiming something false, because someone will call you on it.
But when the impression the public has is that the universities are just another cult, where you really can’t speak your mind or you’ll be drummed out or you’ll be cancelled or you’ll be shut down by protests, that feeds the conspiracy theories….”

As my offspring would verify (with a modicum of eye-rolling, moiself dares to hope), I reminded them at any opportunity – when they were young and especially later, when they were talking about their college classes where they sometimes felt discussions about pertinent or controversial issues were was stifled because someone said something that another person did not want to hear or claimed was “offensive” –  of the following:

The reason I have the opinions I have today, opinions that keep evolving and adapting to new information, is that (particularly during my school/observing-how-the-world-works-and-how-) I get to hear and read about ideas and events that the Someone Else ®  chorus found dangerous, offensive, blasphemous, destructive.
For example, my lifelong feminism has been possible because I got to hear people argue with and debate the various “sides” of the issue.  And the idea that males and females should have equal value, rights and opportunities but that powerful cultural, governmental, religious and academic structures are designed to prevent that and preserve patriarchal status quo – that was highly offensive, to many, many people.    

I will never forget the reaction of the charismatic, good looking, Nice Christian Boy ® in my high school’s gifted math class when the teacher brought in a recently published academic study on gender bias.  The study showed how school’s math textbooks, from an early age through the upper grades, discriminatorily portrayed boys and girls when presenting “story problems.”  For example, the study showed pictures of grade school math workshop books, where boys were overwhelmingly/statistically over-represented and were portrayed as active agents in the story problems, while girls, if mentioned at all, were in domestic scenarios or doing housework. This NCB’s boy’s way entering the discussion on this issue, which another girl and moiself were having with a couple of our male classmates, was to interrupt, and name-call us (the two girls) and dismiss our concerns and observations:

“This is ridiculous!
Stuff like that doesn’t matter – I can’t believe you’d fall for….”

Later in the school year this boy, in his yearbook graduation notes (where seniors got to list favorite activities, friends, future aspirations and what they wanted to be remembered for, etc.) wrote that his life goal was “to tactfully convey to those around me what the Lord has done for me.”  The Very. First. Things. I thought of at the time, when I read what he’d written – and the first thing that comes to mind today, on the rare occasions I have to recall him – is the “This is ridiculous” incident, and several others involving the ridiculing of classmates, wherein NCB demonstrated (what would later be defined by stand-up comics as) the phenomenon of “punching down.”

Once again, I digress. Thank you for bearing with me.

 

“You’re welcome. Now, as you were saying….”

 

So: JK Rowling’s tweet was in response to a May 28 article,  [1]  from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council,   [2]   titled,

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world
for people who menstruate

At first glance, I thought the article’s title was a headline from The Onion. It would seem JK Rowling did as well, and she beat me to the satirical punch (as easy thing to do, as moiself  is not on Twitter).  Here is Rowling’s tweet in its entirety:

” ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and resulting economic recession, with the largest unemployment figures since The Great Depression and uncertain options for recovery, while simultaneous grappling with nationwide civil unrest after the horrific death of yet another black man murdered by police officers,  [3] with demonstrations in a few cases turning to riots and sparking even more shocking displays of police brutality …which seems to be leading us toward a long overdue reckoning of our country’s entrenched system of political, judicial, financial, educational and cultural racism, the (grudging, in the case of many white folks) acknowledgement of which is fueling calls for the Herculaneum and potentially divisive (as counter-protests by white supremacist terrorist groups – which have yet to be labeled as such by our federal law enforcement agencies – indicate) tasks of addressing systemic racism, which includes reforming – or some cases, even dismantling– our nation’s law policing agencies….

And does even *one* of y’all think Rowling’s tweet is a fight worth picking?  Are you having a really bad period – excuse me, are you a Person On The Rag?

 

 

The denizens of the Transphobia Determination Committee and their special friends, famous and otherwise, began to pile on. One Twitter-er responded to Rowling with a judgmentally terse, “Why did you do this?”

Rowling doesn’t need me to defend her (she explains her wider concerns with gender and feminist issues, including the censorial tyranny of “wrongthink,” here).  But, As A Writer, ® I understand exactly (at least one) reason why Rowling “did that.” Because she wrote   [4]  just what I was thinking – and likely would have mentioned in this space, had I come across the article’s title before this silly controversy began…because the phrase “People Who Menstruate” is a stand-up comic’s wacky, face-palming, WTF?!? gift…not to mention grammatically ungainly.

Oh, and, Et tu, Daniel Radcliffe?

“Who, moi?”

 

For those of you who’ve been off-planet for the past nineteen years, actor Radcliffe played the title character in the eight movies made from Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series.  In his intro to a piece he wrote for the Trevor Project blog site, Radcliffe opined on Rowling’s tweet.  He stated that he feels compelled

“…as a human being…”

(nice of him to clarify that, for those people who may think he is actually some kind of non-human wizard, or something)

“…to say something at this moment.
Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people….”

Oh, Danny boy. Do you really think that JK Rowling possesses what would be the most powerful magic ever: that she could, in a mere 21 words, cast a wizarding spell which “erases the identity and dignity“ of any of your fellow human beings?

Identity erasure, schmasure.  Rowling said no such thing – who is trying to attach this “erasure” identity onto her? Just as she called out conservative evangelical Christians who accused her of promoting Satanism and the occult in her Harry Potter books, Rowling is calling b.s. on the transphobic accusation.  You supported her re the former “charges;” why are you so quick to accept the latter?

Rowling’s tweet poked fun at a comically cumbersome phrase. Harry Potter  (whoops! sorry for the unintentional erasure of your true identity)  Daniel Radcliffe, you owe your career to this gifted writer, who created a seven book series filled with wonder and adventure and, arguably more importantly, interspersed with nuanced portrayals about individual and group reactions and responsibilities vis-à-vis recognizing and responding to good and evil.  Now here you are, forsaking even a modicum of nuance in jumping on the *Someone is Offended!*  bandwagon. Did you even think to contact Rowling privately, before joining the social media pile-on?

What is happening to Rowling frosts my butt.  At best it’s snippy – and at worst can be confusing, angering, and frustrating and sometimes dangerous – to be labeled as something that you are not.  Hmm, this phenomenon seems somehow…familiar.  Other people trying to force an unwanted  and inaccurate identity upon you – hey, y’all “transphobic” accusers: double standards, much?

 

 

Humans are mammals. In mammalian species all females have uteri, most have an estrous cycle, and the females of ten primate species, four bats species and a couple of other rodent species have a menstrual cycle.  Human females are generally referred as women (although as per gender identity theories a small percentage of people who identify as women are not born female).

Pick your battles, folks.  Don’t alienate those who are your allies, or who would like to be allies but who are hesitant to go public with their support because they fear you might rip ’em a new one if they use terminology you don’t like or “misuse” pronouns, etc.  

Where is Monty Python at a time like this?  [5]  Imagine the Ministry of Silly Terminology or Argument Clinic-style skits they could get out of this Twitter tantrum.

You who want to pick fights over what should be non/the smallest of issues – pick away. Meanwhile, #45 ( aka Chief Little Bunker-Bitch  [6]  ) and his minion of bigots keep pulling this shit while they notice we’re busy picking at ourselves:

“The tRump administration announced (on 6/12… it is eliminating an Obama-era regulation prohibiting discrimination in health care against patients who are transgender.”

Moiself can hardly believe how many keystrokes I’ve wasted on this brouhaha.  It’s errand time;  my essential supplies are getting scarce. There are some chili bean-loving dudes coming for a visit in a couple of weeks, so I’m off to stock up on toilet paper for when the guys – excuse me, I mean, People Who Shit – stop by.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Can’t Resist This Segue: Speaking Of Labeling….
Sub-Department Of Message To Police Officers Everywhere
(That They Are *So* Likely To Read….)

I’ve seen several Facebook posts linking to an article published recently in The Baltimore Sun. In ” An open letter to a protester from a Baltimore County police officer,” officer Seth Templeton, a five year police veteran who views himself as “one of the good guys,” writes with sincerity, articulation, and heartfelt regret about his pain, as a police officer, of being tainted by the actions of a few bad cops.

“I would ask that you judge me not by my uniform,
but by the content of my character.”

To the “good guys” (and good gals) in police forces across the nation:

Do you not see what an *amazing* gift this tainting is?

I don’t mean to dismiss your pain; if you can’t understand my explanation of why this tainting is actually a gift, please take a breather and read it again…then, if you still don’t get it, moiself  humbly but seriously suggests that, for the good of the nation and your own sanity, you should find another profession.

Most of us think we have the ability to do, or are presently doing, what in fact is one of the more difficult tasks human being can undertake, in our journey to be Better People ®:  to put ourselves in another person’s place. You remember the axiom about not judging a person until you have….

 

 

This is your chance for change and growth, a chance to start your own mindful practice of empathy.  If you consider yourself a good/honest/upright police officer, if you took your oath *to protect and serve* seriously, please do the following:

Every time you feel tainted by the actions of a few of your “brothers in blue,” put yourselves in the shoes of another of your could-be brothers and sisters – of just one of the countless black men and women whose entire lives are tainted by the assumptions and prejudices of others.  They are

* pulled over for minor traffic infractions – or for no reasons at all – because they fit a stereotype in some cop’s mind of what a criminal is/does/looks like

* pulled over while driving and questioned because they do *not* fit the police officers’ image of what kind of person drives a luxury car/lives or works in this wealthy neighborhood/has a car with MD license plates…

*stopped, questioned and frisked, in their neighborhood or on their own front porches, by the police, who are looking for drugs, while their same age white peers living on college are told by the campus police to move their marijuana plants away from their dorm windowsill so that parents attending Homecoming Weekend won’t see them

* arrested for breaking into your own home, by an officer who ignores the proof that it *is* your own home, and you forgot your house keys

* questioned, hassled, or even taken into custody by the police for doing an innocuous activity (having friends over for a bbq, attending a grad party in your friend’s backyard, bird watching, jogging, napping in your own dorm room, sitting in a Starbucks, using the pool in their own gated community, golfing “too slow,” mowing the lawn or playing on a Slip n’Slide, for going to work, eating at a Subway – and other ways of “living while black”) because it upset some white person’s judgement of who can do what in “white spaces.”….

 

 

Here’s the thing: those people who judge you, who do not know you personally but who put you in the category of “bad cop,” because of your uniform? Those people do not have the weight of your gun, night stick, taser, squad car and fellow officers and police union to back you up, along with a judicial system predisposed to believe your word (even when there are eyewitnesses and objective evidence – including video footage from street cams, stores, cellphones, and even your own body cam – to contradict you).

Those people who judge, fear and/or slag on you have…what? Merely their scorn, their fear that you are “one of *those* cops.”  Do you realize how skewed the power dynamics are?  Even as I’m hoping you take this opportunity to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, the shoes are hardly the same size, are they?

It’s a big culture to reform; police officers are part of their communities and do not operate in a vacuum. Rather, the violence, prejudice and corruption we see in policing stems from the systemic racism promulgated by the mythology of white superiority that has plagued our nation since its founding, and which permeates *every* aspect of its power structures. This is your opportunity be part of the solution…or get out of the way if you’re not up to it.

But, I hope you don’t leave. Your essay gives me hope that you have the strength to do the right thing, even if it means bearing the sting of false accusations (while remembering that so many others have borne and continue to bear so much more than mere false accusations). I’d rather you stay and work for change, and justice. Because that is what a good cop would do.

 

 

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

My aunt urgently needed a transfusion…
but she died before we could remember her blood type.
Her last words to us were, “Be positive!”

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion  Evolution  [7]

And here’s what I made for ours, one day this week.

Featuring this week’s Theme Day and recipe:

Sushi Saturday:   Green maki and nigiri rolls (made with jade pearl “bamboo” rice, avocado, cucumber, scallions, roasted red pepper).

My rating:

Recipe Rating Refresher  [8]

*   *   *

 

May you surprise someone by celebrating their half-birthday;
May we all try to be the good cops;
May you enjoy making your own damn dinner;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] in Devex, a “global development media platform.”

[2] The WSSC is a global organization advocating for “…poverty eradication, health and environmental improvement, gender equality and long-term social and economic development.”  The article deals with the worldwide requirements, pandemic or no, for safe access to “menstrual materials, toilets, soap, water, and private spaces in the face of lockdown living conditions that have eliminated privacy for many populations.”.

[3] Or should I say, George Floyd was murdered by “People With Guns and Badges.”

[4] I can’t bring moiself to use, “tweeted.”

[5] Dying off, one by one, I know….

[6] Belle sent me this epic video, with the insistence that I heretofore use a new moniker for #45.

[7] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 1 of April 2020, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go themes as listed in the 4-3-20 blog.

[8]

* Abject Failure:  I’ll make a canned wieners & SpaghettiOs gelatin mold before I make this recipe again.

* Tolerable:  if you have the proper…attitude.

* Yep: why, sure, I’d share this with my cat.

* Now you’re talkin’: Abby the support Avocado ® approves.

* Yummers: So good, it merits The Purple Tortilla Chip Of Exclamation ® !

 

The Dad Jokes I’m Not Telling

June 12, 2020

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Dad Jokes I’m Not Telling

Department Of Trying To Remember How I Organized This Bookshelf

Dateline: a week ago; 7 am-ish. Moiself  is on my elliptical exercise thingy,  [1] which is in the corner of our family room next to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. I open the podcast app on my cellphone and place the phone on the second-from-the-top bookcase shelf.  After five minutes I want to listen to a different podcast, and as I reach for my phone I notice, as if for the first time, a row of book titles on the top shelf.

All of the book case’s shelves are – or were, I think – organized as per some kind of theme. Thus it gives me no small amusement to look at the following titles on the top shelf and wonder to moiself who arranged these books…knowing full well it was moiself…and having no memory of why I put those  titles there ?

* The Complete Works of Mark Twain, Volumes I and II (Mark Twain)

* Ball Four (Jim Bouton)

* I am Spock (Leonard Nimoy)

* My Antonia (Willa Cather)

* The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula LeGuin)

* The Thurber Carnival (James Thurber)

* The Odyssey of Homer  (Homer Simpson)  [2]

* The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Jane Wagner)

* Candide (Voltaire)

* Tarzan of the Apes (Edgar Rice Burroughs)

* Go the F*** to Sleep (Adam Mansbach, Ricardo Cortés, illustrator)

 

*   *   *

Department Of Following Up

The relative risk of mental health problems following a single elective first-trimester abortion of is no greater risk to mental health than carrying a pregnancy to term.
(APA American Psychological Association, “Abortion and Mental Health,”)

“Most antiabortion activists oppose abortion for moral and religious reasons. In their effort to win broader public support and legitimacy, however, antiabortion leaders frequently assert that abortion…harms women physically and psychologically….
Likely because the science attesting to the physical safety of the abortion procedure is so clear, abortion foes have long focused on what they allege are its negative mental health consequences. For decades, they have charged that having an abortion causes mental instability and even may lead to suicide, and despite consistent repudiations from the major professional mental health associations, they remain undeterred. For example, the “postabortion traumatic stress syndrome” that they say is widespread is not recognized by either the American Psychological Association (APA) or the American Psychiatric Association.
 (“Abortion and Mental Health: Myths and Realities,”
GPR – Guttmacher  Policy Review )

As per in last week’s post, here is the follow up I mentioned in this post:

“Apparently, there are some people who are shocked and/or disappointed to learn that Norma Jean McCarvey, aka “Jane Roe” in the 1973 Roe V. Wade SCOTUS decision, admitted she was paid for her notorious “flip-flop” – from pro-choice to anti-abortion – by the anti-abortion side….
Such tactics are no surprise to many of us who have worked in women’s reproductive health care.  The anti-abortionists  [2]  use the ends-justifies-the-means excuses for their deception, propaganda, and outright pants-on-fire lies.
Moiself  has more stories than I care to recall, from both my days at Planned Parenthood and a private OB-GYN practice, having to do with women’s encounters with anti-choice exploiters activists. One of the ickiest stories I will detail in next week’s post.”

And now, the Icky Story ®.

One of the largest studies about women’s emotions after an abortion finds most feel relieved and don’t regret their choice, even if they struggled beforehand or worried about stigma. The study, one of the largest to date on the topic, was published Sunday in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
( CNN, women-emotion-abortion study 1-15-20 )

Whether a girl or women terminates her pregnancy because it was unwanted (unplanned; the result of contraceptive failure; the result of rape/incest/molestation)… or it was dearly wanted and anticipated, until maternal and/or fetal health anomalies arose, she most likely experiences situationally-appropriate sadness. And then, she moves on…unless she has the misfortune of getting involved with an organization like WEBA which, perversely, seeks to convince the woman that she cannot move on, and that she has been physical and emotionally damaged will be haunted by shame and guilt.  [3]

What’s the number one emotion women experience after getting an abortion? …New research has found that most women feel relief after an abortion.
Nearly all women in the study — including those who had difficulty making the choice to end their pregnancy — said it was the right decision 5 years later.
The report, which was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine on Jan. 12 (2020), debunks the assumption that women regret terminating their pregnancies — a notion that’s been used by anti-choice activists to lobby for mandatory waiting periods and abortion counseling in many states.
(“99% of Women Say They Feel Relief, Not Regret, 5 Years After Having an Abortion,”
Healthline, cnn)

When I worked for Planned Parenthood clinics in the Bay Area, one of the clinicians I knew volunteered to do some espionage for us, by “infiltrating” a WEBA group..

 

Not nearly this glamorous…or entertaining.

 

PP administrators and clinicians didn’t want to destroy the group from the inside, or do anything that dramatic or nefarious. Rather, after public encounters with WEBA groups, which had started to appear alongside right wing religious groups demonstrating at certain PP clinic sites, we were curious as to what WEBA was saying – about both Planned Parenthood in general and women’s reproductive health care in general – in private.

WEBA (“Women Exploited By Abortion”) was   [4]  founded in the 1980s by anti-abortionists who claimed they wanted to find a more emotionally violent way to lie to women “expand the anti-abortion conversation.” They did this by promoting the (unsubstantiated) idea that women who have abortions experience substantial emotional, mental, and physical distress and regret as  a direct result of the procedure itself and the lack of information given to them regarding “post abortion syndrome.” [1]

PP clinician MT volunteered to go underground, as a woman who’d had an abortion and was interested in joining WEBA. She offered to do so after encountering a group of WEBA  sign-carrying women (at first, always led by a man   [5] ) at an anti-abortion protest.

MT noted that the WEBA group seemed to be connected with a couple of church groups.  She called the churches and, after being screened by receptionists, was able to attend WEBA meetings over a period of several months.

The stories MT told…oh, if only we had cell phones back then!  For fear of being found out MT did not carry any kind of recording devices, but wrote down her experiences in a notebook immediately after each meeting.

When I learned of MT’s adventures and asked her to recount them, the first thing she said to me was that the group’s acronym should be changed, from WEBA to WEBMEFWMH, as in,  “Women Exploited By Men Exploiting Fragile Women’s Mental Health.”  However, MT agreed with my observation that the latter wasn’t as catchy an acronym as the former, nor even pronounceable to most Americans, who might think it was some kind of Czechoslovakian skin disorder.

MT said she was angered and disgusted by what she saw at the meetings. Although the misinformation and outright lies told about medical issues did not surprise her, what did surprise her was how the dominant emotion for her was *not* anger and disgust, but sadness. She was saddened to see a group of obviously unhappy and depressed (some dangerously so) women (whom I called the “WEBA waifs”) who needed professional help…and who were obviously not going to get it in WEBA.

Numerous studies  (at that time, and now) showed that “post abortion syndrome” does not exist.  Rather:

* if you were a woman who had mental health issues before having an abortion, you would have them afterwards – abortion wouldn’t change or solve that.

* if you were a woman who was mentally and emotionally stable before having an abortion, you would remain so afterwards, even as you might be temporarily angered/saddened/frustrated by the circumstances of your life which led to your choice to terminate your pregnancy.

While MT couldn’t say whether the WEBA waifs she encountered were emotionally fragile before they’d had abortions, they were obviously fragile in the present.  Not once did MT hear any offers made, by the WEBA facilitators, for the chronically disturbed WEBA waifs to seek medical/psychological counseling.  The depressed and agitated WEBA waifs were made even more so by their participation in WEBA, a group which purported to embrace them and their experiences, but which in fact kept them whipped up in an emotional frenzy about the “sin” they had been sucked into.  This (in MT’s observation) was so that they could be deployed like rabid dogs at anti-abortion protests…and MT noticed that the WEBA leaders would stoke their rhetorical fires – i.e., ramp up the hysterical rhetoric – just before the group was deployed to a protest site.

Calm and serious folks offering pamphlets and chanting slogans is run of the mill, but a pack of sobbing women, pulling at their own hair, holding signs with dead baby slogans and screaming about sin (“Planned Parenthood forced me to murder my baby – JESUS please forgive me!”)…now, *that* is an attention-getter.

Shy, even-tempered woman that she was, even while “undercover,” MT did not at first merit much attention from the WEBA leaders, which was fine with her. MT’s main interest was the in plight of the WEBA waifs.  One such WW whom MT befriended, “DF,” was obviously, as per MT, “on the edge.” DF confided to MT about being bullied into carrying a sign with “pictures of hell” – a sign DF had adamantly told the WEBA leader she did *not* want to hold – at a recent anti-abortion rally.  DF spent a lot of time mumbling to herself during WEBA meetings and rocking back and forth, like an autistic child.  MT was so concerned about DF she approached one of the WEBA leaders after a meeting and suggested that not only was DF was in acute distress, DF had confided to MT that being on the front lines of demonstrations only exacerbated her pain: “I think DF needs more help than we can give her, perhaps a medical evaluation and professional counseling….”

MT’s observation was quickly shot down.

“That’s what WEBA is for – these women receive the best counseling available, from the group and the church pastors!  If you are suggesting a need for psychological counseling – which, BTW, if you don’t know yet you should know, is a tool of the devil – you need to get yourself right with God. Only Jesus  [6]  will help these women heal, and to suggest otherwise  shores up the atheist’s clever secular agenda disguised as in the medical profession…”

The reaction MT received from the WEBA leaders – when she suggested that obviously distraught women should not be deployed at protests but should be devoting their time and energy to getting healthy – made MT think that her cover was about to be blown.  She only went to two more meetings after that, each one sadly confirming her suspicions that those WEBA waifs and their individual psyches were not important to the church leaders – the only thing that mattered was the “work“ that they were doing on the picket lines.

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Inquiring Minds Want To Know

How can I *not* be a thing, or display a certain characteristic, if I can’t be that thing/exhibit that characteristic in the first place?

If I am impatient, I can also be patient.  If someone judges an action of mine to be undisciplined, there is some standard by which I can display discipline.

What this is leading up to is the burning question I had in my mind, after doing a New York Times word puzzle game, in which I got points for one word but was informed that its “root” is not a word:

If I can be unruly, why can’t I be ruly?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Righteous Causes About Which I Have One Minor Reservation

I fully support equal/gay marriage and the rights of LGBTQ parents. Moiself  does have one particular concern re the latter issue – perhaps psychologists have already studied this, and can reassure me about my qualms?

Specifically, I am concerned about a child growing up with two fathers and thus being subject to *twice* as many Dad Jokes.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Let’s All Go To The Biffy

In a recent post to his Facebook page, a buddy of mine used the term “biffy,” which warmed the cockles of my heart.  My Aunt Erva used to say that word (“Excuse me, I’m off to use the biffy”).  No one else did that I knew of. Thus, I thought it was one of her own peculiar euphemisms, until, when I was around 11 years old, I asked my mother about it. She told me it was a term favored by “older folks” and that no one really uses it today.

Now, I say, let’s bring it back.  Given our alternatives:

bathroom; restroom; loo, the facilities; powder room; W.C..; shithouse, tRump closet; outhouse; ladies/gents room; dumpster; privy; back house; can; john; lavatory; House of Wi; bum chapel; crap castle; coffee house; dingleberry creek; relief station; temple; Parliament plumbing; bog; house of easement;

isn’t biffy a wee bit (sorry) more festive?

 

“Whatever you call it, your bum will shine in my crap castle.”

 

*   *   *

Bad Poetry Written In My Head While Walking On A Drizzly Manzanita Morning
Past The Golf Course, Which Is Open, And Where I See Two
Rain Gear-Clad Persons About To Tee Up

I think I could tolerate golf in the rain,
My usage of “tolerate” I must now explain.
Some people love golf, but as I understand,
golf courses are harmful to water and land.

Ground water, habitats, wetlands and more
fouled by chemicals and fertilizers galore
which must be applied to maintain the course grass….
I think of the waste, and it just chaps my ass.

And yet, on this morning, I pass the course by,
Caught by surprise as I feel myself sigh
at the sight in the mist, on a morning serene,
And I’m struck by my feelings – they’re quite unforeseen.

I’ll rethink for a moment a “sport” I disdain,
and maybe, one day, I might golf in the rain.

 

 

 

Mark Twain supposedly  [7] called golf … a good walk spoiled.”
It’s a good thing elk don’t read.

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

Broken pencils are pretty much pointless.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion  Evolution  [8]

 

 

And here’s what I made for ours, one day this week.

Featuring this week’s Theme Day and recipe:

Tofu/tempeh Tuesday: Kimchi spice roasted tofu with mango red pepper lime salsa

My rating:

 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher  [9]

*   *   *

Department Of We Need This Sentiment, Now:

 You Can Do This Hard Thing

 

 

*   *   *

 

May you stop whatever you’re doing and reorganize your bookshelf into categories which will flummox cultural anthropologists of the future, as well as anyone who knows you;
May you try a sport you think you disdain (preferably in the rain);
May you know that, eventually, you can do this hard thing;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Aka, “device.”

[2] Just seeing if y’all were paying attention. Homer Simpson is a cartoon character, and not the Homer who wrote The Odyssey of Homer. ( Homer Simpson wrote the much neglected third book in the saga, The Iliad of Idiocy.)

[3] And, they turn out to be correct – she will be filled with shame and guilt because WEBA will make sure to shame and guilt her, even under the guise of helping her.

[4] I use the past tense, as I haven’t heard much about or from them in some time and don’t know if they are still active, or have been absorbed into/by other anti-abortion groups.

[5] MT discovered that, although WEBA was ostensibly for women, it was “sponsored” by conservative Christian evangelical churches, whose dogma also decreed that men must hold all positions of leadership. When some pro-choice advocates pointed out that, at the WEBA rallies it was a man holding the megaphone and directing the WEBA women, at the very next rally (and for all subsequent public appearances by that WEBA group) an older woman was put in front on the group and given the megaphone. Another PP “spy” who attended the rallies thought it was rather comical, and obvious, that this newly appointed woman “leader” hadn’t been well-trained: when she was asked direct questions she couldn’t help but hide her reflexive deference, and she would look to the man in charge of the group – now off to the side, pretending to be just hanging around and * not*  in charge – as if to get his approval  before she said anything.

[6] Eventually…allegedly. When he makes up his mind to get around to it…’cause he sure wasn’t helping any of those poor women at the time.

[7] Sounds like something he *would* have said, and yet the first traceable printing of that quote comes from the post WWII years, and Twain died in 1910.

[8] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 1 of April 2020, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go themes as listed in the 4-3-20 blog.

[9]

* Abject Failure:  I’ll make a canned wieners & SpaghettiOs gelatin mold before I make this recipe again.

* Tolerable:  if you have the proper…attitude.

* Yep: why, sure, I’d share this with my cat.

* Now you’re talkin’: Abby the support Avocado ® approves.

* Yummers: So good, it merits The Purple Tortilla Chip Of Exclamation ® !

 

The Breath I’m Not Holding

June 5, 2020

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, politics, reproductive rights, Yikes! , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The right of citizens to peaceably assemble and petition their government was so vital to the framers of our constitution, it was included in the First Amendment. Thus, one of the worst things #45 has done – the photo op stunt he pulled on Monday at the DC Episcopal church – may turn out to be one of his “best,” in that more Republicans are starting to publicly declare just how demented and law-breaking #45 is, re his blatant desecration and violation one of the U.S. Constitution’s most important principles.

What say we take that impeachment vote now, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Keeping It Real

I am becoming acutely aware of the Passage of Time ® (translation:  like every living thing around me, I’m getting older). However, I have been unaware of any corresponding increase in moiself’s  personal maturity index, a phenomenon which, I was assured by my elders, was one of the benefits (the only benefit, according to my perennially grumpety  [1]   Aunt Erva) of aging.

I think they lied.

Dateline on Monday morning circus 7:55 AM, returning from morning walk. I passed the house of our next-door neighbors, who have been doing some lawn-decorating things the past few weeks, and noticed that they’ve placed two bronze Great Blue Heron statues in the corner of their yard closest to our front yard berm. Moiself’s  very first thought upon noticing the gap in the beak of heron #1, was a gleeful, “There’s just enough space to put a toy cigar in there!”

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Thought That Surprised Even Moiself

This festering hemorrhoid of a human being…. 

Such are my usual thoughts about the Current Occupant of the White House, whom moiself  variously refers to in these posts as #45 (when I’m feeling magnanimous), or The Mandarin Mussolini and The Cheetos Hitler (when I’m feeling realistic).  Imagine my surprise when on Monday eve, while scrolling through the news stories reporting the latest divisive shit you-know-who has flung, my quavering intellectual commitment    [2]  to the principle of Radical Empathy chose that moment to raise its pointy little head and ask a question that, actually and literally, tugged at my heart:

Does anyone love this man?

It was the saddest of questions, posed from and to moiself, and accompanied by a flood of melancholy. 

Does anyone love this man?

This Man, from all accounts ranging from the objective to the slavish, seems to have led the kind of life for which the answer to the question would be an easy, *No. *Of course not.*

His family: women and wives and children, collected and curated, tolerated and paraded about by him, then ignored/cast aside when it suits him…these “family” members seemingly tolerate the situation (do they even have what could remotely be called a “relationship”) for status and monetary gain.  This Man has no verifiable friends; he does have paid staff, and minions and political “associates” (I think frenemies, rather than associates or allies, is the more accurate term for what they are), all of whom seem willing to sacrifice whatever principals they may have convinced themselves they hold for the perceived benefits of being in his circle of power, publicity, and influence.

But does anyone really love him, personally? Does anyone really love him enough to say what they would say to any other person they loved who was in a similar situation?

What you are doing– it’s not good for you.
You are hurting yourself; you are obviously in a great deal of pain…

Forget concern for their country (if they have any), for the moment.  If someone, anyone, truly loves This Man – even if they support his politics and think he is handling things “correctly” – wouldn’t they advise him that, for the sake of his physical, emotional and mental health, he needs to quit his toxic job, get some rest, and work on his well-being?

This Man is palpably, all-encompassingly, wretchedly, miserably, unhappy. I can’t think of a word strong and deep enough to convey what I think he “feels,” about his position in the world.

His faux gloating and/or triumphant expressions are just that – fake, a simulation of smirking indifference to hide his genuine  [3]  distress.

Like an addict, This Man doesn’t know how to stop what he’s doing.  And unlike many addicts, there seems to be no one who loves him, who will intervene and tell him the truth, and care about what he is doing to *himself.*

 

I would try to love him and tell him the truth if I could, but I’m just an adorable baby sloth in pajamas.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things I Meant To Do, But Couldn’t

Last week, in my post mentioning how “Jane Roe” was paid by the anti-abortion crowd to publicly flip her pro-choice position, I stated that the tactics used and falsehoods told by anti-abortionists don’t surprise many of us who’ve worked in women’s reproductive health care. I also wrote that I would tell a very specific story (my WEBA story) related to that in next week’s post, which – due to the earth’s rotating on its axis while it also circles the sun – is now this week’s post.

That was my intention last week. Then, there was this week, which made me feel this weak.

 

 

Given the blatant *murder* of yet another black man by yet another white police officer, yet again bringing our country’s inadequately addressed, systemic racism to the forefront; given the misunderstood-by-those-who-most-need-to-pay-attention protests, starting out peaceful then in some cases being hijacked by misdirecting looters; given, once again, the rhetoric of inflaming tension rather than calling for unity coming from the White House occupant, along with his subsequent, blasphemous   [4]  and constitutional-trashing church “visit”…. I barely had the emotional energy to type anything of interest.

Tune in next week for the story of the WEBA (hint: it is not a Smurf or other animated character). In hopes of a better next week, moiself  shall move on to what has become a barely tolerated highly anticipated blog feature of 2020.

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid, but he says he can stop any time.

 

Can you, like, just tell me when I’m, like, supposed to laugh?

 

*   *   *

 

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder”…
“…or a whoopee cushion.”

The quote is from the Persian poet Rumi,   [5]  the addendum courtesy of comic Paula Poundstone.  Sage advice from the timeless philosopher poet, with a jester’s timely codicil regarding our need for balance.

Yes, take what’s going on very seriously; take yourself not so seriously…  Also, take *care* of yourself, and someone else, if you can.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

May you love someone enough to (at least) notice when they are hurting;
May you be a part of the solution by realizing you are a part of the problem;
May you be the whoopie cushion life so desperately needs right now;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] As in, grumpy and crotchety.  The world needs this adjective. You’re welcome. And we all have an Aunt Erva in our lives (even if she sometimes assumes a form and/or gender other than that of your aunt).

[2] Which is in contrast to my gut reactions to This Man and what he does, which can be along the lines of, “This person needs to be ground underneath a stormtrooper’s boot….”

[3] And totally self-absorbed, of course.

[4] A term used by many Christians re the stunt he pulled at the DC church.

[5] Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, who today is one of the best selling (dead) poets in the USA.