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The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

October 27, 2023

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, music, politics, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

Department Of Here They Come

Halloween (aka All Hallow’s Eve); Samhain; All Saint’s Day; El Dia de los Muertos; Mischief Night, Diwali…

In the USA and in northern hemisphere countries around the world, there are multiple holidays with a relationship to “our” Halloween.  The relationship is as per the time of year and/or the theme, underlying beliefs, customs or origins of the various celebrations.

Many of these holidays originated as dual celebrations, acknowledgments of times of both death and rebirth, as celebrants marked the end of the harvest season and acknowledged the cold, dark winter to come.

And after Halloween, the holiday season really gets going.

 

 

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Department Of Life Is Tough But It’s Even Tougher If You’re Stupid
Chapter 22467 in a (never-ending) series

“The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity….

Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from?

The most organized attack on Christmas came from the Puritans, who banned celebrations of the holiday in the 17th century because it did not accord with their interpretation of the Bible….”

(“How the ‘War on Christmas’ Controversy Was Created,” NY Times, 12-19-16)

 

 

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Department Of If Something Seems Familiar, That’s Because It’s Time For
My Annual Holiday Traditions Explained ® Post

What do we vegetarians, vegans, non-meat and/or plant-based eaters
do on Thanksgiving?
( Other than, according to your Aunt Erva, RUIN  IT  FOR  EVERYONE  ELSE.   [1]  )

The above question is an existential dilemma worthy of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, who wrote eloquent discourses on the subjective and objective truths one must juggle when choosing between a cinnamon roll and a chocolate swirl.   [2]

 

 

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Department Of I’ll Take Those Segues Where I Can Find Them

Four weeks from today will be the day after feasting, for many of us. Then, just when you’re recovering from the last leftover turkey sandwich/quiche/casserole/enchilada-induced salmonella crisis and really, really need to get outside for some fresh air, here comes the Yule season. You dare not even venture to the mall, lest your eardrums be assaulted from all sides by  Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,  Feliz Navidad, ad nauseum.

This observation provides a convenient segue to my annual, sincere, family-friendly,  [3]

Heathens Declare War On Christmas © post.

 

 

As to those Henny Penny/Chicken Little hysterics proclaiming a so-called “war” on Christmas, a rational person can only assume that they are not LGBTQ, or Jewish or a member of another minority religion, or an ethnic minority – in other words, they’ve never experienced actual bigotry (or actual combat). If they had, it’s likely they would not have trivialized discrimination (or war) with their whining.

The usage of  “Happy Holidays” as an “attack on Christianity” is an invention of right-wing radio talk show hosts.  Happy Holidays is nothing more nor less than an encompassing shorthand greeting – an acknowledgement of the incredible number of celebratory days, religious and otherwise, which in the U.S. is considered to start in October with Halloween, moving on to November with Thanksgiving (although our Canadian neighbors and friends celebrate their Thanksgiving in October) and extends into and through January, with the various New Year’s celebrations.

It is worthwhile to note that while many if not most Americans, Christian or not, celebrate Christmas, there are also some Christians who, on their own or as part of their denomination’s practice or decree (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Worldwide Church of God), do *not* celebrate Christmas   [4]   (nor did our much-ballyhooed forebears, the Pilgrims).  Also, the various Orthodox Christians use calendars which differ from most Protestant and Catholic calendars (a biggie for them at this time of the year is the  Nativity of Christ, which occurs on or around January 7).

Happy Holidays — it’s plural, and for good reason.  It denotes the many celebrations that happen during these months.  People in the northern hemisphere countries, from South Americans and Egyptians to the Celts and Norskis, have marked the Winter Solstice for thousands of years, and many still do.  And some Americans, including our friends, neighbors and co-workers, celebrate holidays that although unconnected with the winter solstice occur near it, such as Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

 

In 2023 the Chinese (lunar) New Year began on Jan 22; In 2024 it will begin on February 10 )

 

Most folks are familiar with the “biggies”- Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. But don’t forget the following holidays, many of which we’ve learned about (or celebrated with) via our children’s teachers and fellow students, and our neighbors and co-workers.

* The Birth of the Prophet (Nov. 12) and Day of the Covenant (Nov. 26) are both Baha’i holy days  (our family has had Baha’i teachers, childcare providers, and neighbors).

* St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6).

* Bodhi Day.  Our Buddhist friends and neighbors celebrate Bodhi Day on December 8 (or on the Sunday immediately preceding).

* Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12).

* St. Lucia Day (Dec. 13) Our Swedish neighbors and friends celebrate St. Lucia Day, as did one of Belle’s and K’s schools, when they were in grade school (Belle, as the oldest 3rd grade girl, got to play St. Lucia).

* Bill of Rights Day (Dec 15).

* Pancha Ganapati Festival (one of the most important Hindu festivals, Dec. 21st through the 25th,  celebrated by many of MH’s coworkers).

* The Winter Solstice (varies, Dec.  21 or 22, this year on the 21st ).

* Little Christmas Eve (Dec.  23) Celebrated by my family, LCE was a custom of the small Norwegian village of my paternal grandfather’s ancestors.

* Boxing Day (Dec. 26), celebrated by our Canadian-American and British-American neighbors and friends.

*Ramadan and/or Eid, the Islamic New Year (as Islam uses a lunar calendar the dates of their holidays varies, but these holidays are usually November-December)

* The Chinese New Year.  I always look forward to wishing my sister-in-law, a naturalized American citizen who is Cantonese by birth, a Gung Hay Fat Choy.  (The Chinese Lunar calendar is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BCE.  The New Year is celebrated on second new moon after the winter solstice, and so can occur in January or February).

This is not a complete list. See why it’s easier to say,  “Happy Holidays?”

The USA is one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world.  To insist on using the term “Merry Christmas” as the all-encompassing seasonal greeting could be seen as an attack on the religious beliefs of all of the Americans who celebrate the other holiday and festivals.  At the least, it denotes the users’ ignorance of their fellow citizens’ beliefs and practices.

 

 

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Department Of Did You Know…

…that the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that, “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”   [5]

…that because of its known pagan origins, Christmas was banned by the Puritans, and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts until 1681.   [6]

 

 

 “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

We Heretics/apostates non-Christians Happy Heathens often hear this question at this time of year.  The inquiry is sometimes presented in ways that imply our celebration (or even acknowledgement) of Christmas is hypocritical.  This implication is the epitome of cheek, when you consider the fact that it is the early Christians who stole a festival from our humanist (pagan) forebears, and not the other way around.

Who doesn’t like a party, for any reason? And we who are religion-free don’t mind sharing seasonal celebrations with religious folk – sans the superstition and government/church mumbo-jumbo –  as long as they accept the fact that the ways we all celebrate this “festive season” predate Christianity by hundreds of years.

 

 

Early Roman Catholic missionaries tried to convert northern Europeans to the RC brand of Christianity, and part of the conversion process was to alter existing religious festivals. The indigenous folk, whom the RC church labeled “barbarians,” quickly discovered that when it came to dealing with missionaries, resistance is futile. The pagans intuitively grasped the concept of natural selection and converted to Christianity to avoid the price (persecution, torture, execution) of staying true to their original beliefs.  But they refused to totally relinquish their traditional celebrations, and so the church, eventually and effectively, simply renamed most of them.    [7]

Pagan practices were given a Christian meaning to wipe out “heathen” revelry.  This was made official church policy in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory the First issued the now infamous edict to his missionaries regarding the traditions of the peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than try to banish native customs and beliefs, missionaries were directed to assimilate them. You find a group of people decorating and/or worshiping a tree? Don’t chop it down or burn it; rather, bless it in the name of the Church.  Allow its continued worship, only tell the people that, instead of celebrating the return of the sun-god in the spring, they are now worshiping the rising from the dead of the Son of God.

( Easter is the one/odd exception, where a pagan celebration was adapted by Christians without a name change. Easter is a word found nowhere in the Bible. It comes from the many variants (Eostra, Ester, Eastra, Eastur….) of a Roman deity, goddess of the dawn “Eos” or “Easter,” whose festival was in the Spring.)

The fir boughs and wreaths, the Yule log, plum pudding, gift exchanges, the feasting, the holly and the ivy and the evergreen tree….It is hard to think of a “Christmas” tradition that does not originate from Teutonic (German), Viking, Celtic and Druid paganism.   [8]   A celebration in the depths of winter – at the time when, to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears to stop its southerly descent before gradually ascending north – is a natural instinct. For thousands of years our Northern Hemisphere ancestors greeted the “reason for the season” – the winter solstice – with festivals of light and gift exchanges and parties.  The Winter Solstice was noted and celebrated long before the Roman Jesus groupies pinched the party.

But, isn’t “Jesus is the reason for the season”?

The reason for the season?  Cool story, bro.  Since you asked; actually, axial tilt is the reason for the season.  For *all* seasons.

 

 

And Woden is the reason the middle of the week is named Wednesday.   [9]   My calling Wednesday  “Wednesday” doesn’t mean I celebrate, worship, or “believe in” Woden.  I don’t insist on renaming either Christmas, or Wednesday.

 

“Now, go fetch me the brazen little sheisskopfs who took the Woden out of Woden’s Day!”

 

The Winter Solstice is the day with the shortest amount of sunlight, and the longest night. In the northern hemisphere it falls on what we now mark as December 21 or 22.  However, it took place on December 25th at the time when the Julian calendar was used.  [10]   The early Romans celebrated the Saturnalia on the Solstice, holding days of feasting and gift exchanges in honor of their god Saturn (Other major deities whose birthdays were celebrated on or about the week of December 25   [11]   included Horis, Huitzilopochtli, Isis, Mithras, Marduk, Osiris, Serapis and Sol).  The Celebration of the Saturnalia was too popular with the Roman pagans for the new Christian church to outlaw it, so the new church renamed the day and reassigned meanings to the traditions.    [12]

In other words, why are some folk concerned with “keeping the Christ in Christmas”  [13]  when we should be keeping the Saturn in Saturnalia?

 

 

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Punz For The Day
The Approaching Holiday Season Edition

What is a jack-o’-lantern’s favorite literature genre?
Pulp fiction.

My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes right now,
but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.

My cousin is terrified by all of the St. Nicholas displays at the shopping mall.
You might say she’s Claustrophobic.

 

“I told you not to encourage her.”

 

*   *   *

Whatever your favorite seasonal celebrations may be, moiself   wishes you all the best.

May you have the occasion to (with good humor) ruin it for everyone else;
May you find it within yourself to ignore the Black Friday mindset;
May you remember to keep the Saturn in Saturnalia;
…and may the fruitcake-free hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] You have an Aunt Erva, somewhere.  We all do.

[2] Damn right I’m proud of that one.

[3] Well, yeah, as compared to the usual shit I write.

[4] And a grade school friend of mine, whose family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, considered being told, “Merry Christmas” to be an attack on *her* beliefs.

[5] “Increase Mather, A Testimony against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New England” (London, 1687).  See also Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday,” New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

[6] Stephen Nissenbaum, “The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday.”

[7] “Paganism in Christianity.”

[8]  “Learn not the way of the heathen…their customs are vain, for one cuts a tree out of the forest…they deck it with silver and gold…” Jeremiah 10:2-5

[9] Wednesday comes from the Old English Wōdnesdæg, the day of the Germanic god Wodan (aka Odin, highest god in Norse mythology and a big cheese god of the Anglo-Saxons until the seventh century.)

[10] The Julian calendar, adopted by Julius Caesar ~ 46 B.C.E., was off by 11 min/year, and when the Gregorian calendar was established by Pope – wait for it – Gregory,  the solstice was established on 12/22.

[11] The Winter Solstice and the Origins of Christmas, Lee Carter.

[12] In 601 A.D., Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his missionaries regarding wooing potential converts: don’t banish peoples’ customs, incorporate them. If the locals venerate a tree, don’t cut it down; rather, consecrate the tree to JC and allow its continued worship.

[13] And nothing in the various conflicting biblical references to the birth of JC has the nativity occurring in wintertime.

The Spell I’m Not Casting

October 20, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Spell I’m Not Casting

Department Of Yeeeeeesssssss! Thought Of The Week

Dateline:  Tuesday morning 7:45 AM-ish; morning walk, stomping through wet leaves, on what promises to be a blustery day. Listening to a Clear + Vivid podcast episode (Laurel Braitman: Writing Wrongs).  Braitman is a writer whose interests and topics include grief, mental health and medicine, and the importance of self-expression and storytelling, especially for doctors and others working “on the frontlines of humanity.

At the end of every C+V podcast, host Alan Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all connected with the concept of communication.  When he asked Braitman question #6, What gives you confidence?  She answered that being outside, in nature; “non-human nature” gives her confidence, and moiself  was intrigued by the way she phrased it:

“I never feel better than when I’m walking through a forest, with no mirror.”

 

 

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Department Of Surprising Moiself  By Honoring This Dead Celebrity

That would be Suzanne Somers, who died this week, on the day before her #77 birthday.

Among Somers’ many ventures in life, her Wikipedia bio lists actor, author, businesswoman, and “health spokesperson.”  Let moiself  get that last, dubious moniker out of the way.  I don’t know whether or not that title was self-proclaimed, but Health personified certainly didn’t ask Somers to speak for or represent her, in any way.  And Somers’ crazy-ass nonsense controversial stands on the risks and efficacies of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, her conspiracy-laden critique of the ACA/“Obama care” (a “socialist Ponzi scheme,” really?)   [1]  and promotions of alternative cancer treatments raised the red flags among people who have studied those issues for decades – read: scientists, doctors, medical researchers – people who actually know what they are talking about.  (note: Somers died of a recurrence of breast cancer, for which she had refused the recommended chemotherapy).   [2]

However, she had moiself’s  admiration for two things: her ground-breaking (at the time) fight for salary equity, and her sense of humor.  As per the former, Somers is best known for playing Chrissy Snow, the (not-quite-so) Dumb Blonde®  on the sitcom Three’s Company.  TC was one of the highest rated TV shows in the late 70’s early 80’s, due in most part to the interplay of the three lead actors, and in particular, the between Somers’ and John Ritter’s characters.  When it was time for contract re-negotiations in season 5,  Somers demanded an increase in salary to match what co-star Ritter was making: $150,000 per episode (her salary was $30k/episode).  Nothing against Ritter, but he did not have five times the screen time nor five times as many lines to memorize as Somers – who had at least five times the magazine covers and other publicity ventures for the show.  Nevertheless, he was being paid *five times* what she was, for doing the same thing: costarring on a sitcom.

 

Sound familiar, ladies?

 

Those In Charge Of Such Things® (the network execs) set an example of what happens to women who seek salary equity: they offered Somers a $5k salary increase…and eventually fired her.  Somers went on to score other acting gigs and ascend the throne of informercials and entrepreneurship – she hawked everything from jewelry, clothing (the “Three-Way Poncho,”  [3]  skin care products….  Most memorably, she became the spokeswoman for the toning muscle exercise devices with the memorable names of the Thighmaster and the Buttmaster.  Her promotion of the latter was responsible for my admiration of her humorous timing.

 

 

In the early 90’s, when Somers was promoting the Buttmaster, she took the device everywhere with her. She promoted it on talk shows, in interviews, etc., even when she was doing the gig to ostensibly promote some other aspect of her life (e.g., her Las Vegas stage act). This was also around the time when then Pope John Paul II was touring the United States.  I remember reading about her interview with a reporter who, knowing Somers was raised Catholic, asked Somers what she would do if she were invited to meet the Pope – would she bring along the…uh…exercise device?  Somers said that she would.  Okay, the reporter pressed, but what would she do if the Pope noticed the device and asked her what it was?  Her reply:

“I’d say, ‘It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness.’ ”

 

“I swear to God, ‘Buttmaster.’ ”

 

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Department Of The War I’m Not Avoiding Writing About

Except that I kinda/sorta am…because it makes me want to abandon all hope; because it makes moiself  want to apply a Buttmaster to the craniums of some very sincere, well-meaning, rubbish -spouting people, when I hear their responses to Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

“…excellent English translations of both the original Hamas Covenant and its successor can easily be found on the internet.

… the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions. Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives….

The covenant opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan…the document proclaims, ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it’….

After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about,’ it proclaims, ‘until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ ”

( “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology:  A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions.”
The Atlantic, 10-10-23 )

Truth#1: It is possible for reasonable, good-hearted folks to hold multiple opinions and feelings about this war; it is possible to empathize with a repressed minority, and realize that the injustices experienced by the Palestinians are a breeding ground for violent zealots to recruit hearts and minds to promote and carry out acts of terrorism.

Truth #2: The latter does not excuse the former; never never.  NEVER.

Still, the foreboding admonition (variously attributed to leaders, from President JFK to  MLK, Jr.) comes to mind:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible,
make violent change inevitable.”

I have strong opinions as to the wrongness, both morally and strategically, of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and have been frustrated for – crap, how old am I? – for as long as I can remember,   [4]  about the fact that the so-called leadership on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute attains and maintains power by fomenting fear of and hatred for The Other.  Each side also appeals to their respectively held tenets of their so-called Divine Right to occupy that disputed part of the world.  Neither side seems to fully comprehend that the *only* true security for both sides, for all sides, will be peace.

 

 

But, although left-leaning moiself  has done as much as I can to avoid exposure to such things, I still have heard and read about leftist groups and individuals declaring themselves pro-Palestinian in ways that seem to excuse, via “understanding,” the terrorist attacks by Hamas.  Again, I have been trying to avoid most of this butt-frostingly naive rhetoric, and cringe with embarrassment on behalf of those who lack enough self-awareness to know what they are supporting, when I hear them sanitize the barbarity of the Hamas terrorist attacks as, “anti-colonial resistance.”

To those who think they are supporting a repressed/colonized people: do not fool yourself for one moment into thinking that Hamas is pro-Palestinian.  Palestinians suffer greatly under Hamas.

Poor Palestinians; they can’t catch a break.  While “Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continued to face Israel’s oppression, domination, fragmentation and segregation under its brutal occupation and apartheid,” the Palestinian authorities continue to “…heavily restrict freedom of expression, association and assembly,” and hold “scores of people in arbitrary detention and subjected many to torture and other ill-treatment,” have carried out executions and committed war crimes, such as those in 2022 during three days of fighting with Israel, when Hamas used “…unguided rockets in populated civilian areas and killing at least seven Palestinian civilians.”    [5]

 

 

Good people of the Earth:  absolutely, advocate for the right of Palestinians to be able to have a homeland and to determine their own destiny.  And absolutely *open your eyes* and know that the radical régime of Hamas will have none of the latter, for anyone, least of all their own people, whom they oppress under the guise of governing.

What are the values you want to support, for all people, everywhere?

 * Civil rights; women’s rights; LGBTQ rights?

* Freedom of – and *from* –  religion?

* Democratic enfranchisement of all citizens?

* The right of children – boys *and* girls –  to be educated
(in subjects other than memorizing the Quran and Islamic doctrine)?

* The right of all people to live in peace?

Hamas supports None. Of. That.

Hamas supports Islamism, and sharia law.   [6]  But just not any kind of Islamism – it must be *their* flavor (Hamas are Sunni, and they have harassed and assaulted Palestinian Muslims who are Shia).

With Hamas, as with other extremist groups, the world is entirely binary.   [7]      You must be Muslim – and not even being Muslim is enough – you must be the right kind of Muslim,  [8]  you must *their* kind – or you are an infidel, worthy of death.

 

 

 

“If you’re an LGBTQ+ parent, you should worry about Hamas gunning down your kids. Did that get your attention? Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Guess what? Hamas feels the same way about LGBTQ+ people and their families as they do about Israelis. Let me make this crystal clear: If an LGBTQ+ family moved into Gaza, Hamas would kill them. LGBTQ+ Palestinians are afraid to let their families know they are gay for fear that they will be murdered. Many have been killed — or successfully escaped — as reported in PGN and in media around the world.

Hate is hate.

Like many of you watching the carnage in Israel this week, my sorrow and outrage were too much to bear. Seeing the bloodshed of toddlers having their throats slit; pictures of mothers, children, and Holocaust survivors being kidnapped; and whole villages being gunned down was more than any civilized person should witness. But it’s not just Israelis that Hamas hates. They hate you as well. And when I say ‘you,’ I mean ‘LGBTQ+ people.’ Much like how they feel about Israel, they believe we should not exist as well.

Yet, there are members of our community who are so full of self-hate or are so masochistic that they would love the person that would kill them? They praise Hamas and make apologies for their actions this week. Some go as far as to support what Hamas did this week. Think about that: Supporting the kidnapping of a woman who survived the Holocaust. Supporting an organization that wants, and has always wanted, the genocide of an entire race.”

( “Hamas hates you as well,” Philadelphia Gay News, 10-11-23 )

 

 

As I type this, the world awaits Israel’s responses,  short and long term.  Hamas gave no warning before their assaults upon Israeli civilians, because civilian carnage was what Hamas intended.  The Israeli government and military will go after Hamas – they *have to* go after Hamas.  Sadly but inevitably, there will be heavy civilian Palestinian casualties, despite Israel’s warning for civilians to evacuate.  The Hamas operatives will embed/hide among the civilian populace of their own people, because that’s what terrorists do.

 

 

A day or so after the Hamas attack I saw that someone had posted the above, an “inspirational” picture on FB – a picture which has been making its way around social media.  The picture showed three tween-age-ish boys, each looking somewhat awkwardly into the camera (as in, “my parents made me do this”), each dressed in the garb of and/or holding icons of their respective family’s religion:   [9]  Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the three monotheistic faiths which have historical ties to Jerusalem.   Somewhere in the text accompanying the first post moiself  saw was a request for “prayers for peace.”

Yeah, knock yourself out hearing those prayers, Yaweh, Jesus, and Allah.  Because that’s been working so well for seventy-five years.   [10]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If I Were A Witch And Had The World’s Most Powerful Wand
And The Greatest Spell-Casting Ability In History…

I’d wave my wand in the direction of the Middle East while muttering, Absurdum religioso evanesce, and turn all of its hatred-holding residents into a bucket full of gentle, contented baby sloths.

 

 

*   *   * 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

 

( Luke 12: 49-52 for context )

 

*   *   *

May you walk through a forest with no mirrors;
May you never excuse barbarity, even when enacted on behalf of the oppressed;
May you sieze the opportunity to say, “It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] see The New Republic’s  Susanne Sommers is a dangerous medical hack for an entertaining summary of her stands on those issues.

[2] She did, however, allow some “conventional” treatment of her disease, including radiation therapy.

[3] Does that sound vaguely… suggestive…or is it just moiself ?

[4]  “As in, why is this fucking mess still such a fucking mess?!?!?!”  And in my less noble moments, I confess to having thoughts like “Put a dome over the entire area, let those who want/agree to live together in peace get out, and enclose the others and let them hate themselves to death and leave the rest of the world out of their violence and chaos….”

[5] Amnesty International, Palestine (state of).

[6] Islamism in the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia) The Islamic group Swords of Truth threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they didn’t wear strict Islamic dress. “We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation,” their statement said.

[7] And good luck being “gender queer,” or political or cultural queer, in that world – they allow for no such gray areas in sexuality (or just about any aspect of life). They will, however, allow for a red area, which will be around your throat or other parts of your body, after you are executed for “moral turpitude” (the Hamas term for homosexuality).

[8] Sunni, and not Shia, Whabbi, Salafi, Berelvi, Sufi, or Deobandiite….

[9] Notice I don’t say, “*his* faith…even though there is a 90+% chance those boys will take on the rites and superstitions of their parents, especially in that part of the world.  I think it’s a form of child abuse, to declare a child is a certain religion, when, realistically, children have no say in it, no independent choice in the matter.  It’s equally abusive/absurd to say, that an 11-year-old boy is a Republican, when he is a child of two registered Republican parents.

[10] The modern state of Israel was established by a UN resolution in 1948.

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

The Important Life Decision Change I’m Not Regretting

October 13, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Important Life Decision Change I’m Not Regretting

Department Of Do Something Guaranteed To Make You Feel Smarter
(Or Maybe Just A Little Less Oblivious)

It’s much easier than you think.  Just listen the Ologies podcast (Cosmology: the Universe, Part I, with Katie Mack) in which host Alie Ward chats with theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack about way cool things about the universe and how cosmologists study them, including by using The Large Hadron Collider.

You’ve heard of the LHC; you vaguely recall that it’s that huge, circular, underground, atom-smashing thing, somewhere in Switzerland.

 

 

But wait, y’all protest:  “Uh…trying to understand that stuff will definitely *not* make me feel smarter – I remember atoms but haven’t been required remember specifics since high school.”  Not to worry.  Writer, actor, science geek and podcast host Ward has got your back.  In her own entertainingly profane inimitable way, she makes it easier for you, with her Cliff Notes® take on the LHC, which includes a story offering a bit of cosmic perspective (my emphases):

Alie Ward:
“… The Large Hadron Collider is…a circular tunnel…over 500 feet deep in some parts and is 17 miles around. It is the largest machine in the world. This thing consists of over 1,200 magnets, and they’re cooled to a temperature colder than outer space. The magnets accelerate protons to almost the speed of light and then the protons are bashed together….

…Matter is stuff. Molecules are some atoms stuck together. Atoms are made of a nucleus – a little cluster of neutrons and protons. Protons have a positive charge – pro. Electrons have an equal negative charge, and electrons are…zooming around…outside the nucleus. The neutrons and protons…in the nucleus, those are made of smaller particles called quarks. The quarks come in a couple different varieties.

What gives these particles their mass? What are they? Where do they come from? We’ve got all these tiny things that make up matter….
there is a field called the Higgs field….How a particle interact with the Higgs field gives it its mass, kind of like drag in water. Higgs bosons are particles that are an excitation of the Higgs field, kind of like a drop of water splashing from an ocean. The Large Hadron Collider smashed protons together to see if they could prove that the Higgs boson exists, and guess what, bitches? It does.  The Large Hadron Collider, one of the things it does: smashes protons together in to smaller things to figure out why matter has mass. There you go.

Also, the Large Hadron Collider accidentally has its name spelled wrong on its own website as ‘Large Hard-on Collider.’ Once would be mortifying, but what if they did it more than once? Like twice? Or five times? That’s impossible. Is it? Because a search on their site revealed they’d spelled it “Large Hardon Collider” ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE times!… . So whenever you’re like, ‘I don’t understand this stuff. Maybe I’m just not smart enough.’ Just think: someone typed in ‘Large Hardon Collider’ over 150 times. And they built the thing.”

 

(I decided against googling for a picture to illustrate a ‘large hard-on collider.’  Y’all will have to settle for this image of a hard-headed objects collision, which (fingers crossed) won’t get my internet search history forwarded to the FBI.)

 

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Department Of Sometimes Say Never To Never Saying Never

“Dyanna Volek was never someone who dreamed of becoming a mother.
From an early age, she knew deep down that she didn’t want children…. ‘I’m always looking forward to the next thing,’ said Volek, who works in local government in San Francisco. ‘Being a parent was never one of them.’ ”
( excerpts from “Why more women are choosing not to have kids,”
CNN 9-25-23 )

* I’m afraid that I’m going to end up like my biological mom.
* I don’t like the idea of giving birth and changing my body.
* I feel like I am too selfish to have a child.
* I don’t want to lose myself as an individual.
* Having kids would mean having to be in that caring position for the rest of my life.
* I think the world is going to shit.
* I don’t want to subconsciously become like my mother.
* Honestly? I don’t like most kids.
(excerpts, 19 Women Got Brutally Honest About Why They Don’t Want Kids; )

 

 

“I can’t stand the way social media has idealised motherhood
at the expense of women and children.”
( wearechildfree.com )

“There should be no guilt in choosing a life path without my own children, yet I still…can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing some vital part of womanhood because I have never felt ‘baby fever.’ … I will not have kids, and I believe the decision is the right one for me, full stop. ”
( excerpts from “I don’t want children, but sometimes I want to want them,”
insider.com )

“____explained that the main factor for her (in not wanting children) was the disproportionate amount of work she would have to do as a mother compared to if she was a father.  She explained that dads get to be the ‘cool parent’, while mothers are categorized by any number of misogynist tropes like being overly smothering or nagging.  And also, just having to do a lot more work.
‘People have always asked me, do you have kids?…they love asking me if I have kids.  And I say, ‘No, I will not be having kids. And would you like to know why?’  And they say, of course.  And I say, ‘I would love, love, love to be a parent. I would love to be a dad. I don’t get that choice.’ ”
( excerpts from Single Woman Explains why she doesn’t want kids…;   )

 

 

Moiself has been seeing a lot of these kind of articles recently.  [1]  Is it just my imagination, or is there an increase in stories written about young women deciding not to have children,   [2]  and articles written by the young women in question, defending/explaining their decisions to be childfree?

“I love children…. But I don’t plan on having any of my own.
It took me a long time to be able to say that out loud. And by ‘out loud’ I mean whispering it with a hint of uncertainty so as not to offend. Because when you’re a married woman of a certain age with no kids, people have questions. Fertility advice. Pity. Judgment. Lots of judgment….

…the pressure to procreate comes from so many directions I’m considering pitching a ‘Walking Dead’ spinoff where the child free are the living and everyone else are zombies trying to turn us. But it’s a comedy so no one dies, except on the inside….
My mom-friends often confide in me the inequities of motherhood — how the childcare duties fall mostly on them and their bodies have shifted to the side and down. They lament the loss of time for personal, career or creative pursuits of their own. So, when I told one friend in an uncertain whisper that I wasn’t planning to have children, I was shocked by her reaction: ‘Telling people you don’t want kids is like telling people you’re vegan. It’s not about your healthy choices. It’s about making other people feel bad about their choices.’ And then she prayed I’d change my mind because having kids is the best.

I promise she’s not a monster. She’s a zombie, and that’s just what zombies do….

Life is about choices. Having them (or not). Owning them. And sometimes regretting them — but I would argue even that’s a choice. Because often there’s really no right or wrong decision, there’s just the one you make and you do your best to be happy.”
(excerpts from Opinion: “I chose to be child free. (The correct response is ‘Congratulations!’)”  LA Times 8-19-23 )

I read these articles about and by young women explaining themselves – and BTW, it’s *always* women doing the explaining.  Men, too, can struggle over the decision to have children, but there are nowhere near the same cultural pressures and expectations for men to become fathers – it is not locked up with society’s definition-as-a-person as it is with women.

 

 

I understand, and agree with, many if not most of the reasons and observations, both personal and societal, that the I-am-not-going-to-procreate women recount in these articles.  And while I am supportive of these decisions, many of them often seem to be…missing something…in their reasoning.  And moiself  can’t help but compare and contrast the stories they tell to my own situation and decisions.

For the first three decades of my life moiself  declared (and honestly believed) that I did not want to/was not going to have children, and probably would not get married.  Then, I went and did both.  I met MH when I was 28; we married when I was 31, and welcomed our son K and then our daughter Belle    [3]   when I was in my mid-late thirties.

As MH and I raised our very-much-planned-and-wanted   [4]   kids, when it was age-appropriate to do so, moiself  shared with them Robyn’s Realities ®  about marriage and family:  There are no Everyone-must-do-this/live-like-this-to-be-fulfilled rules:

* You can be single and be happy;
* You can be single and be miserable;
* You can be married and be happy;
* You can be married and be miserable;
* You can be happy if you and your spouse have children;
* You can be happy if you and your spouse are childfree….   [5]

But it wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized something key about my earlier, I-will-not-be-a-parent mindset.  It was not that I merely changed my mind about a major life issue.   [6]  It was that I had based that decision on my life – from my teens to early thirties, and how I viewed the trajectory of that life – as the single person I was. It was a decision made totally out of context of being in a committed relationship, which is the only way I would have even remotely considered having and raising a child.  It was a decision based on what I (thought I) knew about moiself, and not moiself-and-MH…because there was no moiself-and-MH.   [7]

 

 

There are people, men as well as women, who claim to have known from an early age that being a parent is what they’ve always wanted.  There are women I’ve known who said they’d “always” wanted to have children, and if that opportunity did not arise within a relationship, they vowed to pursue single parenthood.  Then there are the rest – the majority, in my opinion and experience.  When it comes to having or not having kids, these not-yet-married-or-partnered girls and women express slight to strong preferences either way, but acknowledge their decision might ultimately depend on their relationship with their potential parental partner.

Let’s say you’re one of those women:  you are single, and when you consider parenthood or are asked by friends/family/coworkers/your doctor/your barista about your procreative plans,    [8]  you say that you would do so only within the context of marriage/a committed partnership.  As in, even if you had a strong preference for having and raising a child someday you know you will never pursue that as a single parent.  So, if you are single and you consider the option of having children and conclude, “I’m not going to have kids,” you are making the decision sans complete data.  That is, you are imagining something you would never do, so your imaginations are going to be negative – what you think about what being a mother would be like could only be about what it would be like for you, alone, because you have no parent-partner.  There is no Other Parent (yet), to imagine how you would be a family, together.

Am I making sense here?

 

 

When I met the man-who-would-become-MH, as our relationship deepened we began to talk about Such Things ®.  MH married me with the understanding that, although he would like us to have children, for moiself  it was not a sure thing.  I married MH with the understanding that, while I’d always thought being a mother was not for me, MH and I would consider this parenthood adventure thing.

Our decision to have children was an outgrowth of *our* relationship.  It was vital to moiself  to see how we worked together, as life partners.   [9]  In my years of working in women’s reproductive health care, I saw too many  [10]  married women who were essentially single moms, with regard to their husbands’ participation in the physical, intellectual, time and emotional investment in child-rearing.  After five years of marriage to MH, I was assured enough to take the reproductive plunge.  More significantly, I also anticipated the rewards, the adventure, of being “part of it all” with him, part of the circle of life (take it away, Elton!), which is why all of us are here in the first place.

 

 

Despite having no time travel/alternate reality technology with which I can confirm this belief I am about to state, I believe that I would have had equally significant – just different –  highlights and low points in my life if I’d remained childfree (whether with MH, or another partner, or as a single person).  That being said, raising my offspring – watching them become the kind, intelligent, curiosity-filled, artistic, witty, science-oriented, free-thinking, compassionate, nature-appreciating, cat-loving, do-the-right-thing people that they are – has been a, if not the, highlight of my life.  I look forward to knowing them for as long as I can:  it has been has been and is a challenging, rewarding, exhausting, energizing, surprising, sometimes agonizing, and more often kick-ass-fun, pee-your-pants-with-laughter  experience, and remains an ongoing source of joy. 

When I read these I-am-never-going-to-have-kids articles, having been there moiself  I can identify with many if not most of the sentiments expressed therein.  I also understand that few things can be more irritating that the smug, condescending responses which are all too commonly flung at the declared child-free woman:  “Oh, you’ll change your mind, after all I/she/they did….”  I moiself have had those experiences and heard those comments (and I moiself  have changed my mind, moiself ).  Even so, I’d advise any young woman who would ask to keep an open mind: never say never….and congratulations, on whatever you decide.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

“The main goal of education should always be to learn how to learn, to become an independent thinker….
…evangelism of children seeks to cut off the process of independent thought before it begins. It’s this aspect of religious indoctrination that is most unacceptable—the idea that doubt is bad, that unquestioning acceptance is good, that there is only one possible right answer, and that someone else has already figured out what that answer is…
(1) Always question authority;
(2) when in doubt, see rule 1.”

( professor, writer, philanthropist Dale McGowan; excerpts from
Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion )

 

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider the contexts of your major life decisions;
May you enjoy your own particular dance steps in The Circle of Life;
May you be daring enough to do an internet search for “large hard-on collider”
(and discreetly let moiself  know the results);
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Some of these articles are written about demographic studies that show that “nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s.” (Pew Research center)

[2] As opposed to having no children due to infertility issues.

[3] They are three years apart, lest you think this was some kind of Irish twins situation.

[4] More than one longtime acquaintance of myself, knowing I’d never expressed any interest in parenthood, when hearing the news of my pregnancies had a kneejerk reaction of spewing something along the lines of, “Uh, was this intentional –oops, sorry, of course it was, or must have been…I mean, she worked for Planned Parenthood…okay, I’ll just shut up now….”

[5] And I always refer to the state thusly, instead of the vile (IMO), lacking-something label, “childless.”

[6] as I have done throughout my life and doubtless will do again.

[7] I had other boyfriends/potential life partners pre-MH, most of whom made it known that they wanted, eventually, to have kids.

[8] And if you are a grown-ass woman who has not yet had a child, someone will always ask you.

[9] And If I had married someone else, it is entirely possibly I’d also be happily married at this point and be childfree.

[10] Any is too many.

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

The Graduate Degree I’m Not Googling

October 6, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Graduate Degree I’m Not Googling

Department Of The Most, And Most Profound, Information Contained In Four Words
I’ve Come Across In A Long Time…

…or maybe ever:

Google  isn’t  grad  school.

 

 

Well, of course, we say to ourselves.  But how many times have we fallen into the I-looked-at-this-for-five-minutes-and-now-I-get-it  trap?

“The internet has fed a huge reservoir of good information, but it has also created an explosion of nonsense: technical-sounding nutrition advice about a new dietary supplement that miraculously stimulates the body to convert fat into muscle, financial jargon pushing dubious investment tips, health guidance that promises a miracle treatment your physician doesn’t know about….

Practically everywhere you look on the web, you can find technical information of dubious accuracy. This is not necessarily because we are being deliberately lied to—although *plenty* of that is going on there too—but because the internet is a free, democratic platform. This very freedom and accessibility causes many people to succumb to the illusion of explanatory depth, confidently sharing their newly acquired expertise in some technical information gleaned from reading a single article or watching a couple of videos…“

 

 

“… psychologists noticed in experiments that when people are first exposed to technical information, they usually overestimate how deeply they understand it…. The phrase illusion of explanatory depth was what researchers dubbed their finding. The phenomenon is similar to the famous Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how people with low levels of skill in an activity tend to overrate their competence. One explanation for this is ‘hypocognition,’ that people don’t know what they don’t know…

The overconfidence of people laboring under the illusion of explanatory depth can lead to the spread of misinformation. As researchers have shown, when a person’s confidence is highest though their actual knowledge is low, they become very believable to others—despite not being reliable. And the more inaccurate people are—or perhaps the more they want to believe the validity of their perception—the more they tend to be swayed by their own underinformed overconfidence….

…Just remember: Google isn’t graduate school. Learning about novel ideas is a thrill, and indeed, many researchers believe that interest itself is a positive emotion—a source of pleasure rooted in the evolutionary imperative to learn new things…. But beware your own susceptibility to the illusion of explanatory depth. If you think you understand something technical and complicated after cursory exposure, you might be able to put the knowledge to good use in your life, but you almost certainly don’t understand it well enough to hold forth on the topic.”

(  excerpts from, “Google Isn’t Grad School: Having so much information at our fingertips is useful but seductive, easily fooling us into thinking we know more than we do,”
The Atlantic, 7-6-23.  my emphases. )

 

Are y’all falling prey to the illusion of explanatory depth by thinking you understand the illusion of explanatory depth by reading these excerpts?  Tricky of moiself , eh?    [1]

 

 

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Department Of A Recent Article Which Ties In To A Previous Blog

That would be my post from 8-25, which dealt, in part, with the social and environmental consequences of street camping.   [2]

“On a scorching July morning, (Bureau of Environmental Services security manager) Keith Moen checked the steel barrier gate at the West Lents Floodplain, a natural area just off the Springwater Corridor Trail in outer Southeast Portland…. Moen noted a steel bollard missing at the entrance to the Springwater trail, meaning cars could again illegally drive onto the paved path and into the natural area.

As he inspected the floodplain, Moen walked past a shopping cart brimming with garbage and over a metal bridge spanning trash-strewn Johnson Creek….

…since the advent of the pandemic, the bureau’s land managers and environmental advocates have sounded an alarm about the escalating human-caused degradation of the city’s wildlife habitat zones, floodplains, rivers and streams, wetlands and wildfire hazard zones and are seeking ways to protect them….  Policies meant to address homelessness have exacerbated the damage in natural areas….   …the encampments and their detritus have kept people away from nature, especially in neighborhoods that are home to large numbers of low-income residents, people of color, immigrants and refugees, whose use of natural areas already tends to be limited.

‘The ecological damage from the camping is tremendous – decades of work, millions and millions of public dollars wasted,’ said Bob Sallinger, the former conservation director of Portland Audubon and now urban conservation director for the nonprofit Willamette Riverkeepers.  ‘Trees have been cut down, vegetation has been trampled, water quality has been degraded…The amount of garbage, including hazardous waste, on these natural sites is remarkable’….

city land managers said they have seen a sharp increase in the number and size of encampments in protected wooded properties and along waterways….

Many of the spots fall under special city zoning and are considered ‘critical green infrastructure,’ said Ken Finney, a supervisor with the Bureau of Environmental Services who oversees the natural areas restoration program. …‘We don’t see them as just empty open spaces, but as fully functioning, complex systems…They provide specific ecosystem services to our city, including reducing flooding, managing stormwater and improving water quality. They also improve the air we breathe, protect us from extreme heat and sequester carbon….‘ “

( Hidden toll of homeless crisis: Portland’s prized natural areas ,
Oregon live.com, my emphases )

 

 

Seven years ago, (then) Portland mayor Charlie Hales enacted his controversial plan  to allow overnight tent camping in certain city locations.  Hales’ plan, like so many policies and proposals regarding homelessness, was well-intentioned but poorly-thought out.  Hales eventually reversed his policy (saying it was “misunderstood”), but – surprise  – word had gotten out (“Hey, let’s hop the freight to Portland – they let you camp on the sidewalks and natural areas.“).

Does moiself  risk being called heartless or NIMBY or other pejoratives by pointing out that allowing encampments in wildlife corridors is stupid, stupid, stupid?  Bring it on.  It’s not a contest (“Do you care about environmental degradation or do you care about homelessness?  It’s one or the other.”). We are not the only creatures on this planet; all species need clean air/water to survive.

“Camp Serenity” was part of a homeless population along the Springwater Corridor Trail.  Moiself  remembers watching an interview    [3]   with one of the camp’s self-proclaimed “leaders,” who made lofty claims about how the camp was self-policing: “Camp Serenity/Zero Tolerance – as in no tolerance for hard drugs  [4] – has a code of conduct. Campers choose a leader and others for chores such as security and trash cleanup.”

 

 

At the time moiself  was a wee bit abashed by my cynicism re the leader’s proclamations; my skepticism was verified several months later, when I watched and read other interviews, this time with those in charge of cleaning up Camp Serenity and other sites along the wildlife corridor. Not only had residents of neighborhoods abutting the corridor been harassed and attacked by occupants of the camps, when the camps were finally cleared out the workers who did so had to wear hazmat protective gear as they cleaned up the corridor.  The trash and filth – including discarded syringes and other hazardous drug paraphernalia –  and damage to the erstwhile wildlife corridor/former encampment was so intense, cleanup workers were consulting EPA guidelines for advice on toxic waste site management.

 

 

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*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month 

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [5] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

“We all know there are all kinds of things that religion is incompatible with — democracy, science, social equity, rational debate, blind justice.  But it is sometimes thought that being an environmentalist is compatible with religious belief. That you could divorce irrational beliefs about imaginary friends, the subordinate role of women, and the importance of neoconservative government from rational concerns about the state of the planet. Sorry, can’t be done.      [7]

To be a greenie concerned about the future of the planet, you have to, well, be concerned about the future of the planet. Religious people, even putting aside the Left Behind loonies, aren’t really concerned, because they have an imaginary friend who will look after them if they are good and pray hard and wear the right clothes…”

( “Green and Atheist: The Incompatibility of Religion and Environmentalism,”
Davis Horton,   [8]   huffpo.com )

 

*   *   *

May you stay free from the illusion of explanatory depth;
May you keep in mind that you don’t know what you don’t know;
May you celebrate your own term as Employee of the Month;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I’d advise reading the entire article.  You still won’t be an expert, but that’s okay.

[2] Whether by homeless persons or “van life” aficionados.

[3] On the local news, one of the network channels or Oregon’s PBS?

[4] And what was the definition of  a “hard” drug – any drug someone else was using, but not you?

[5] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg.  Until I did.

One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens.  No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.

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

[7] Time for another footnote!

[8] From huffpo biography:  “David Horton is a writer and polymath with qualifications in both science and the arts (BA, BSc, MSc, PhD, DLitt), and has had professional careers (and done research work) in biology, archaeology, publishing and farming, extending over 30 years. He has published some 100 scientific papers and a number of books on biology and archaeology. Now retired to become a professional writer and farmer, he screams often at the tv news bulletins, blogs, writes columns for local newspapers, gives talks to environmental groups, lectures occasionally in local colleges, and continues to work on his interest in the environment.”