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The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

March 29, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

Department Of My Phone Dictation Transcriber Knows Me Too Well

Dateline: Sunday, circa 3:30p; out for a walk.  Moiself  discovers this delightful agricultural (in my mind) scene, takes a picture, and sends it to friend CC, with a caption.  In the caption I mean to say “crop;” only when CC reacts do I see what my phone decides the translation should read.

 

my caption “Looks like a good crap this year.  They are usually ready for picking by June, but with global warming, we may be harvesting in May.”

 

I explain the mix-up to CC.  Her response: “I guessed that could have gone either way.”

*   *   *

Department Of I Wish It Were Just A Coincidence…

…but, unfortunately, it’s a timely issue.  Again.  *Still.*

That coincidence would be my friend Suzanne Mathis McQueen’s sharing of an article on Tuesday, which she wrote in 2019 It’s our fertilized eggs they want, and which today she says might be retitled, Fair Warning; thus, she added a 2024-worthy addendum.  Check out the article, and while you’re at it, you might want to check out SMM’s other writings and ventures.  An “author ~ publisher ~ nature nerd ~ dragon tamer ~ womb wisdom educator ~ reproductive rights protector,” she is a person of many hats and talents.

Oh yeah, the coincidence:  on Monday, apropos of too many news nudges, moiself  had been thinking…*once again*  [1] …about how attempting to control/legislate the ways a woman uses her reproductive parts is the most fundamental violation of human rights.

I was thinking about how this right for human beings to be in charge of their own bodies is of paramount importance, and that for all of humanity, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy should take precedence – even over a man’s right to do the same.   [2]   Why, you may ask rhetorically?  Because yon uteri is where we all come from.

AI  hasn’t completely taken over everything;   [3]   a pregnancy is still launched and nurtured inside a woman’s body.  But, according to the forces of evil,    [4]   although a woman is somehow capable enough to conceive in the first place, how she handles that bundle o’ DNA…well, she’s just not competent or principled enough to do it without governmental guidance interference.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Timely Reminder For A Timeless Admonition

Timely as in what SCOTUS is considering this week (a case related to contraception), timeless in that the wisdom of Christopher Hitchens warns us even today, from his way-too-early grave, about the dangers of fanaticism encapsulated in one very misunderstood foe of a woman’s – of any person’s – physical (or spiritual) autonomy.

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty.   [5]  She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
(Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice )

If you have ever uttered a kind word/held a generous thought for MT – and why wouldn’t you, based on the Catholic Church’s very successful propaganda about her ? – you owe it to your intellect to read The Missionary Position…or just read the Cliff Note’s version in my post from three years ago ( The Lot I’m Not Accepting; Department Of Name Dropping And Saint Shaming ).  Or watch this documentary:  Hell’s Angel.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Seriously, What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Here is the earwig which awakened moiself  early last Saturday am: Cher’s number one hit from *fifty* years ago, the now cringe-worthy, non-PC song, Half-Breed. 

Of all the things to reflect on at 3 am….

 

 

I remember assuming at the time the song was popular (~ 1973) that the song must have been written by a White man.   [6]   Even as the child I was, I didn’t think then, and don’t think today, that the song was “racist” and/or “bigoted ” –  kneejerk epithets that would certainly be flung at it now.  It wasn’t racist; it was just stupid.  Like most “Indian” stories told from a White perspective, the song’s lyrics (and music) used clichés for how cliché’s typically are used for: to present a viewpoint that is simply and profoundly wrong.

The lyrics portray the lament of a young woman, the daughter of a White father and a Cherokee mother, who is rejected by both sides of her lineage.  But the opening verse about that rejection is inaccurate.

“My father married a pure Cherokee/
My mother’s people were ashamed of me/
The Indians said that I was white by law/
The White Man always called me ‘Indian Squaw’….”

Many North American native peoples, particularly those of the Southeast and Southwest tribal nations, were/are matrilineal – that is, tracing their lineage on the mother’s side – as are the Cherokee.  Thus, the tragic mulatto of the song, while she may have been subjected to White Man pejoratives, would have been accepted as a Cherokee, by the Cherokee.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Calling Out People Who Are On Your Side

Comedian Patton Oswalt so profanely described, in one of his comedy specials (“Talking for Clapping”), getting in trouble for using “the wrong words.”  Even way back X# of years ago (six, to be precise), he appears to be a kindred spirit with moiself  in terms of being frustrated with progressives who not only kick themselves in the foot but also kick other so-called progressive’s feet, by focusing on the wrong things.  Translation: Calling out people who are on your side – are you nuts?  

“…And it’s really hard now because, look: I could not be a more committed, progressive, feminist, pro-gay, pro-transgender person, but I cannot keep up with the fucking glossary of correct terms, goddammit.  I’m trying…I want to help but holy fuck, it’s like the secret club password, they change it every week, and then you’re in trouble:   ‘That’s not that’s the word we use.’  ‘Fuck you – it was last week!’

Ru Paul – RU PAUL, got into shit for saying tranny. Ru fucking Paul!!!  Ru Paul, she laid down on the barbed wire of discrimination throughout the seventies and eighties so this new generation could run across her back and yell at her for saying tranny?  WTF?!?!”

 

“Don’t even think about siccing your word cops on Saint Ru.”

 

A bit later in his routine, Patton expands on a central point of his, which is that you should try to discern a person’s heart and intentions when they mess up on the vocabulary, because the thing is….

“…BTW, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, if you get hung up on words, then you’re going to let a lot of evil MFers slip through.
Because evil people learn the correct terms very quickly.  They’re the first ones to learn it so they can smuggle their evil shit through, by saying everything correctly even though they’re hiding really bad shit in it.

And a lot of times, the good guys, eh, they fuck up a couple of words, but listen to their hearts.

All right: I’m gonna give you two guys right now. One of em’s is a good guy and one of em’s is a bad guy – I’m not gonna tell you which one….

Here’s guy #1: ‘While I happen to be heteronormative and certainly respect people who have alternative lifestyles including gay, bi, lesbian, omni or transsexual, I still think that heteronormative behavior is a biological imperative for propagating the species and I believe that does deserve the highest priority….’

Here’s guy #2: ”Well a couple of fags wanna get married or some dykes they wanna be men, how the fuck does that affect you, asshole?

Hey, if there’s some tranny out there it’s like, ‘Hey I don’t want a dick no more, I want a vagina,’ then boom, guess what – it’s a she now, or whatever the fuck, she, it – I don’t know, whatever they wanna call themselves, that’s it, it don’t affect you.

If you see some guy, I don’t care if he’s got a chooch that looks like a Boris Karloff horror movie, I don’t care, you gotta share the planet with that guy, or that girl, I don’t fucking know – they’ll tell me, right?’

The second guy was the good guy….who probably looks like an asshole, probably is wearing kinda rednecky shit.  The first guy is probably at a nice coffee bar….”

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when something reminds me of a really bad/good pun sequence moiself  hasn’t thought of in ages.

 

 

*   *   *

May you try not to confuse crop with crap;
May you differentiate discernment and distraction; specifically: try to discern what someone says rather than be distracted by how they’re saying it;
May your early mornings not be haunted by Cher songs from the 70s;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I hate hate, hate, hate, hate the fact that these thoughts can and will occurs to me at all, but given the political climate….

[2] Despite the fact that these rights are not in competition, no matter what the withered, Pope-sucking, Holy Joe windbags on SCOTUS may want you to think.

[3] Yeah, I know, the century is young….

[4] Read: The religious right, and extreme social and political conservatives of any religion or worldview.

[5] There is a BIG, big difference, and if y’all don’t already know about it, you should learn.

[6] Actually, a White songwriting couple, Mary Dean and Al Capps.

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

The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

March 22, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

Department Of Read This Book If You’ve Ever Watched TV/Seen A Movie  [1]

Ed Zwick, he of the multi-slash identities, who as a creator/producer/writer/director  brought us iconic/groundbreaking, continuing storyline TV series (thirtysomething; My So-Called Life) and epic movies (including Glory; Legends of the Fall; Courage Under Fire; Courage Under Fire ),  has written an perceptive and entertaining memoir about his years in “the business.”

In Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:  My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, Zwick presents a behind the scenes peek into how the Hollywood sausage is made.   [2]   ‘Tis a world far removed from my own…or so I thought.  Then I read Zwick’s book, and found moiself  identifying with many of his observations and insights.  His articulations of the hazards of filmmaking echoed much of what I found loathsome about the business end of writing fiction.  I’ll share just two of those, and leave the rest for y’all to discover

“Praise makes you its prisoner.  It’s the spike in your arm where the first taste is free.  And when it comes from the critics, it’s the hangman saying you have a pretty neck.  If I choose to read the good reviews, I’d better read the bad ones, too.”

In this second excerpt, replace “executives” with “publishers” and/or “editors,” and include in his crop of new phrases “content provider” and “author’s platform,” and “cultural appropriation,” and you’ve got my take of the current culture of book publishing.

“After fifty years of getting their notes, the sum creative contribution from all but a few truly gifted executives might be reduced to four words:  ‘Faster. Dumber. More likable.’  Every script ‘needs work,’ every first cut is ‘eighty percent there.’  In the new millennial Hollywood, the legacy of Silicon Valley start-up culture is felt everywhere.  Everything is decided by ‘the group.’  An idea needs to be ‘socialized.’  But since when is consensus the best way to judge art?  Is homogeneity really the goal?  Each year they introduce a crop of new phrases:  ‘edge it up,’ ‘backload it,’ ‘unpack it,’ ‘lean into it’…”

( excerpts from Ed Zwick’s,
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:  My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood )

 

*   *   *

Department Of Questions That Can No Longer Be Answered

A recent No Stupid Questions podcast has an interesting (and perhaps ultimately unanswerable) question for a title: Is It Good Or Bad To Keep Secrets?

That’s a fascinating topic for discussion, moiself  thought.  As I began to listen to the episode it was clear that the focus was on keeping secrets that you were holding about yourself.  Nevertheless, from the first moments of the podcast, when I heard the episode’s title, my hippocampus and other temporal lobe structures   [3]  fixated on the idea of keeping “secrets” (or information) that, as the saying goes, aren’t yours to tell.  As in, Other People’s Secrets ®.

Dateline :

… which would be my junior year in college, at UC Davis.  Late one weekday evening my friend Logan   [4]   called to ask if I wanted to go “Jazzcuzziing.®”  Backstory:  Jazzcuzziing ®  was a verb amongst a certain group of my friends.  Founding members of this friend group had scoped out apartment complexes in Davis which had swimming pools and hot tubs (Jacuzzis) and sometimes even saunas   [5]   that anyone could use (translation: those facilities were intended for the renters, but the apartment complex grounds were inadequately fenced, and it was easy for non-renters who knew the layout of the complex to gain entry).

A group of us would do this about once a week, later in the evening before the facilities’ official closing times (midnight on Mondays-Fridays).  Experienced Jazzcuzziers knew to only accept a Jazzcuzziing ®  invitation when you were done with your homework/paper writing/exam prep, or had decided you were done with such academics for the night…because after the watery relaxation session your mind wasn’t good for anything related to scholarly assignments.

When Logan picked me up, something felt…different. I’d assumed there would be at least three others in Logan’s car, but me getting into the passenger’s seat made only two of us. I asked where brothers Nick and Mick were, and JJ, etc. – were they meeting us there? As Logan drove away from my apartment complex and headed toward our Jazzcuzzi destination he said,

 I wanted to tell you…something.  Privately.

He spoke in a subdued, I’m serious manner that I hadn’t known he’d possessed.  I turned in the passenger seat to look directly at him; when he made eye contact with me I saw no trace of the amiable, waggish, even flirtatious look that seemed to be his default mode.

Logan began telling his something by asking me what I knew about (his former girlfriend), Kathleen.

I put his former girlfriend parenthetically because I’d never been sure what Logan’s and Kathleen’s relationship was.  I was vaguely aware that, months earlier, Kathleen had seemingly disappeared from UCD; the story was that she’d transferred to another college to change her major?  Yes, Logan confirmed, Kathleen had left school.  But not because of her major.  She’d gone up north, to Montana.  A week ago Friday Logan had received a phone call from her, after which he drove all night to where Kathleen was staying.  He arrived “just in time,” which was shortly before Kathleen gave birth to a child – their child – which she was going to put up for adoption.

 

 

“I have a daughter,” Logan said, almost inaudibly.  He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

When he spoke about how he and Kathleen had found out she was pregnant and how they’d deliberated their options I asked if they had considered keeping and raising the child, or having an abortion, or…. “Oh, no.” Logan adamantly cut me off when I mentioned the A-word. “I wouldn’t allow that.”

I remember thinking, Oh, so *you* wouldn’t allow it?  But you will “allow” yourself to stay here, continuing with your life as if nothing has changed, while you “allow” Kathleen to put her life on hold, leave the state and her friends and her studies….  But I kept such thoughts to moiself.  Logan was agitated and distraught, and on the verge of tears at several points.  For reasons he never revealed to me he’d chosen to share his pain with me.  It was no time for me to lecture him on society’s (and his) sexist expectations for what Kathleen should be “allowed” to do with her life.

 

 

One Saturday night, a few weeks after Logan’s revelation, I was with a group of friends, including Logan and the usual Jazzcuzziers, at JJ’s apartment, playing backgammon and other board games and shooting the shit.  Someone said something about how they hadn’t seen Kathleen around, and Logan mentioned the college transfer cover story.  Logan was sitting directly across from me; I was beyond careful *not* to make eye contact with him.  I felt a tightness in my throat and gut as I thought, not for the last time, “I wish he hadn’t told me.” I wished he hadn’t momentarily relieved part of his burden by placing it on me….  And I immediately regretted having such harsh thoughts.

A few months later Nick told me that Kathleen had returned to UCD, and he repeated the story he’d heard from Logan: Kathleen had transferred to another university, thinking it would be better for her major, but after a couple of quarters she realized that Davis was the place to be. As far as I know, Logan and Kathleen did not resume their relationship.

Nick and I kept in touch after college, with phone calls and letters and occasional in-person visits.  Fast-forward 20+ years, to one of the rare but wonderful times when I was reunited with Nick in person.  I was visiting Nick and his family at their San Francisco home; his delightful   [6]    wife gave us her blessing (read: shooed us out of their house so as not to bore her and their kids) to go out and have dinner at an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks away and yak about our college days.  As we were sharing antipasti and chianti and what each of us knew about what mutual friends were doing, Nick announced that he had some juicy news to tell me.  He’d seen Logan recently, for the first time in years, and he’d learned something about Logan and Kathleen.

Nick:
“They had a kid, junior year – Kathleen left school, and had a baby!
And they kept that from everyone!”

Moiself  (nodding my head as I reached for a kalamata olive and took another sip of the wine which impeded my intention to don my Oh-Wow-Really?!?!?! face):
“Yeah.”

Nick (looking across the restaurant table at me, surprised by my lack of surprise at what he’d just told me):
“Yeah.’?  Did you hear what I said?”

Moiself:
“Yes, I know.  I knew.”

Nick (incredulously):
“How did you know?”

Moiself:
“Because Logan told me.  The weekend after Kathleen gave birth.”

I’m not sure which emotion was strongest on Nick’s face: shock, disbelief, pain, or disappointment.

Nick:
“He told *you*????!?!?”

Moiself:
“Yep.  I was as surprised as…”

Nick:
“Why didn’t he tell *me*?!  Or ….”
( He named his brother, Mick, and two more of their Close Guy Friends.® )
“We were so close – he didn’t tell his best friends?”

Moiself:
“Maybe that’s why he told me – because I wasn’t his closest friend.
I figured he just needed to tell someone, and he pegged me as empathetic, or…
I don’t know.  I don’t know his reasons for confiding in me.  He never told me why, and I never asked.”

Nick:
“You kept this secret, all these years?  Why didn’t *you* tell me?”

Moiself:
“Because Logan asked me not to tell anyone.”

It was as simple as that. I could tell Nick wanted to press it further, but didn’t know how do so without…well, without looking like a jerk who was disappointed in one friend for not betraying another friend’s confidence.

I don’t know if Nick ever asked Logan about the part of the secret that seemed most important to Nick – why Logan had confided in me, and not his “closest” guy friends.  A year or so after Nick’s and my conversation, it was too late to find out.  Logan died, far too young,   [7]   and took whatever remaining secrets he had with him.

 

Well, okay.  How’s about poetry?

*   *   *

Department Of The Poetic Form I’m Not Appreciating

 

 

I’ve read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.
( John Barrymore )

 I have no desire
to fit in. 

No plans to walk with the crowd.

I have my own mind,
heart and soul.

I am me

 And it 

has taken me years
to realize

how important that is

  

  

Moiself  saw the above poem recently (posted on FB).  I’m not the first nor the last writer or non-writer who scorns   [8]   free verse as anything other than what it seems to me to be: an attempt to be poetic (for whatever reasons, perhaps to obtain what the writer feels is the artistic cred/prestige of the title, “poet,”) without being willing to put in the work of crafting poetry.

That’s not to say that I do not appreciate or understand the sentiments expressed in the above poem, or ones like it.

I just ask myself,

why is that labeled as a poem?

Why is it not,
simply and straightforwardly,
evocative
and beautiful
prose?

Is
it the

arranging?

if so, you can take any opinion,

sentiment,
or statement, and make it poetic
due to spacing
and punctuation

and
general
formatting.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

“Christianity is the religion of love and forgiveness. And if you don’t believe that
you’ll burn in a pit of hell for all eternity.”

( Moiself, x years ago, when asked to give a summary
of Christian witnessing in 25 words or less )

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when the rhodies (by the pear tree that daughter Belle planted) decide to burst forth on the first day of spring.

 

 

*   *   *

May you choose well those in whom you confide your secrets;
May you keep
Your free verse
To
yourself;
May you appreciate the behind-the-scenes tales of art;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] A little more subtle entreaty than “Everyone Should Read This Book.”

[2]  Vegans beware; it’s a backstabbing meat market in many aspects…and now I’ll stop with the butchered (oops!) food metaphors.  You’re welcome.

[3] The parts of the brain currently thought to control long term memory.

[4] All names in this story are not the characters’ real names.  They are, of course, some people’s real names…just not the people mentioned in this story.

[5] Or sometimes, all three!  I wonder how many capillaries I burst, going from swimming pool, to jacuzzi, to sauna, to pool, and back again.

[6] Don’t you love it when your friends marry someone that you think is simply mahvelous?

[7] Cancer; lymphoma, I think.

[8] Or as a fan of the genre might say, just doesn’t “understand.”

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

The Pranks I’m Not Playing

March 15, 2024

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

Content Warning: Contentious World Affairs

“…if Israel is going to be accused of genocide
(which is a misuse/misunderstanding of the term, as the writer explains in the article)
regardless of its actions, it has that much less incentive to show restraint in its effort to defeat an enemy that is *avowedly* genocidal.   [1]
Indeed, it’s worth noting that those loudly calling for a cease-fire to stop Israel’s genocide typically fail to call for Hamas to surrender.
That would stop the bloodshed, by any name, immediately.

( excerpts (*my comment);*  my emphases, from:
“This is what’s wrong with the rush to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza”
The LA Times 3-5-24 )

 

 

Department Of Why I Am Not Hopeful For Peace In The Mideast,
Even If Hamas Surrenders And Israel Stops Being A Butthead About The West Bank And Pursues A Palestinian Homeland/Two State Solution

Because: religion and regional history (which are one and the same).  Remove both sides’  adherence to their primitive scriptures which enshrine their “you are special/I gave this land to you” xenophobic deities’ proclamations, and there might be a chance….  As the late great Christopher Hitchens put it, “people will kill each other’s children for ancient caves and relics.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of “It’s Mine!  No, it’s Mine!”
Oh Crap, Do Y’all Have To So Brazenly Prove My Point?

“Carrying planks of plywood, a group of Israeli settlers pushed past soldiers guarding the barrier surrounding the Gaza strip and quickly got to work.  Within minutes, the young men had erected two small buildings – outposts, they said, of a future Jewish settlement in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Their movement had hungered for this moment for years, but now, after Oct. 7, they felt is was just a matter of time before Jews would be living in Gaza again.  ‘It is ours,’ said David Remer, 18.  ‘[God] said it is ours.’  “

(from “Israel’s religious right has a clear plan for Gaza:
‘We are occupying, deporting and settling.’ ”
Los Angeles Times, 3-13-24 )

“…This manifestly shows that the true heirs [of Palestine] will always be Muslims, and if it goes into the hands of some else at some point, such a possession would be similar to a scenario in which the mortgagor gives temporary control of their property to the mortgagee. This is the glory of Divine revelation, [and it shall surely come to pass]….”

(“What does the Quaran say about Israel and Palestine?”
 The Weekly Al Hakam )

 

 

*   *   *

Dateline Tuesday morning 7:50 AM, morning walk, listening to a No Stupid Questions podcast. At the end of each NSQ episode, the hosts play two to four comments that listeners have recorded and sent in regarding previous NSQ episodes, then give the names of those who sent in their comments. That episode had two comments, from (1) “a person who prefers to remain anonymous,” and (2) “Julia Roberts.”

My first thought upon hearing the commentor’s last name was, no – that’s incomplete.  That was her full name at some point in her life, perhaps when she was a wee lass.  But now, when answering the what is your name question, her full answer is likely, “Julia Roberts, yeah/no.”    [2]

 

“What do you mean, ‘Am I *that* Julia Roberts?’  I thought the name of the podcast was no stupid questions….”

 

*   *   *

Department Of…You Know….

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Fun With Podcasts: The Question I’m Not Asking

At the end of each episode of Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid blog, Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all of which have some relation to the idea of communication.  The questions have varied slightly over the years; the current crop:

* What do you wish you really understood?

* How do you tell someone that they have their facts wrong?

* What’s the strangest question anyone has ever asked you?

* How do you stop a compulsive talker?    [3]

* What gives you confidence?

* What book changed your life?

* How do you strike up a real, genuine conversation?

My favorite is the last question, which Alda often prefaces with a scenario: “Let’s say you’re seated at a dinner party next to someone you don’t know.  How do you strike up a real, genuine conversation?”

 

 

Moiself  was pleased to recall that, in my years of listening to the C+V podcast, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they ask the other person, “What do you do?”  That is a question I propose we eliminate from our introductory conversations.

I’ve had a lifelong distaste for that question, but first gave serious thought as to why over two decades ago, when a friend told me about his recent business trip to Europe, during which he had some interesting conversations with “the natives.” He shared the story of how, when he’d gotten to know a few of his foreign colleagues well enough, they felt comfortable enough (over a meal, comfort abetted by multiple glasses of the local red wine) to ask him some version of two “Why do Americans do this?”  questions.  The first, which I heard later on during several of my own European adventures, was,

“Why do Americans use the question, ‘How are you?,’ as a greeting. Why don’t they just say, Hello; Good morning; Good afternoon; Nice to meet you; etc.?  Because when I answer their question, it turns out they don’t really want to know how I am….”

 

 

That cracked me up – it’s something I’ve noticed for years (and I strongly agree with the Why Do Americans… questioners’ befuddlement on this issue).

The other question was why do Americans, within seconds of being introduced to or meeting you, ask what most Europeans considered to be a personal, even rude question:

“What do you do?”

My friend’s European colleagues said that the answer to the what-do-you-do query  – “do” meaning, your career/occupation – is seen as intrusive, and as a way of determining status.  And if you are temporarily/currently unemployed – as was the case for many at that time (when my friend was there, most countries in Europe were going through an economic downturn) then you are ranked lower on the totem pole.  Or, if their job is one they think Americans won’t respect or understand, they don’t know what to say to you.

I agree with those observations, have experienced them moiself…but mostly I think that what do you do is just not an interesting question, conversation-enhancing-wise.

 

 

Since the pandemic times I have mostly, but not exclusively, been around people I’ve known for years; thus, moiself  can’t remember the last time someone asked me what I do.  I do know that if asked What do you do?  I probably probably responded with one of my two stock answers:

(1)  When?

(2)  I call 911, then put out the fire as best I can.

Depending on how well I know the person asking the question, I usually hedge about revealing that moiself  is a writer.  This is due to years of experience; read: because of the responses that the I-am-a-writer answer usually produces – responses I’ve seen my artist friends endure receive as well. 

That is so wonderful – you’re a creative!?!

Uh…yeah?  The first time my writer-admission was met with that response,   [4]   moiself  kept waiting for the subject which usually follows the adjective.  Nope; it seems that creative has been noun-i-fied.  And yeah, I realize that that response is (usually) meant to be a compliment.  The thing is, I loathe that word being applied only to the artistic fields, and it usually is.  Some of the most creative people I’ve met/known/read about have been scientists, engineers, teachers, health care providers….

 

 

Then there is the ick/uncomfortable factor: many if not most people, immediately after finding out you are a writer/artist, heap praise upon you and ask you questions whose answers you have no way of knowing:

That is so great – I wish I could be that talented!
Have I read anything you’ve written/seen any of your paintings?

Without seeing or reading any of your work, the non-writers/non-artists make false assumptions, including that you must be some kind of celebrity and that you and your work are worthy of adoration and somehow “above” what they do…which indicates how very little they know about your profession.  This might seem petty, to complain about how revealing what you do gives many people an immediate positive, “You are so special/what you do is more interesting than what I do,” assessment of you, but it has always made me feel uncomfortable.

If your work/career is a passion and you chose it for interesting reasons, that will come out eventually.  The more interesting conversations are, IMO, initiated by something that gets you to know a person on a more personal level without being too personal.  Does that make sense? 

Finding out what people think is usually more interesting than finding out what they do for a living (unless the “do” answer is something really esoteric, like, “I repair the no-gravity toilets on the International Space Station.”).  Try variations on these questions:

* What are you thinking about lately/ What occupies your thoughts these days?

* What are you surprised by?

* Tell me about the last time you were surprised/scared/overjoyed/disgusted?  [5]

Or, simply start out by finding a commonality, as with the dinner table scenario (“So, what’s your connection to _____ [the host] – how did you meet?” )

Moiself  delights in hearing peoples’ stories, and over the years I’ve found the most efficient way to do that – to elicit stories from people, especially those who, by their temperaments might not initiate telling them – is to tell a story of your own.

 

 

In particular, try either sharing a story that doesn’t exactly put you in the best light or sharing a vulnerable moment – both kinds of stories preferably bracketed with self-effacing humor.  So, moiself’s  secret is out: my ulterior motive for posting family stories and personal experiences on Facebook (the only social media I am involved with), or relating them at dinner, parties, or other social engagements, is to be able to hear the stories I inevitably get in return. 

*   *   *

Department Of Technology Is Groovy, But There Are Things It Stifles…
And Some Of Those Things I Miss

Dateline:  last week, returning from morning walk, noticing a new (to moiself)  security camera affixed to a neighbor’s garage door.  For some reason my first thought was,

Dang!  Nnow their kids’ friends can’t toilet paper the house
without everyone knowing who did it.

I think of the (harmless, I swear) pranks of old (e.g., TP-ing a friend’s house; playing ding-dong ditch), as well as acts of intrigue and kindness (leaving May flowers and notes on the doorstep), that depended on anonymity.  I still think of/get inspired to pull such fun pranks, but am deterred by the fact that everyone has a camera everywhere (whether on their doorsteps or in their ever-present cellphones), and I don’t want to end up on someone’s youtube video.

 

But creating such a masterpiece might be worth the risk.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cogent Warnings…

…found in my offspring’s alumni magazine.  As far as I know, my kids don’t read their college’s alumni publication, but I do.  Moiself  found a profound statement in the Ask the Expert feature in the latest issue of Arches, the quarterly magazine of  UPS.  The expert being asked was Ariela Tubert, a philosophy professor studying the ethics of AI.   In the interview Tubert was asked to explain the pros and cons, or the promise and pitfalls, of artificial intelligence and machine learning.  Her comment and cautions were sorted into five categories:

  1. Bots are not people;
  2. Separate the serious stuff;
  3. A force for good;
  4. Tools to try;

And the one which contained, IMO, the most crucial warning/reminder,

  1. Beware of biases:  “A system created and trained on human data can amplify biases…Historical data is not ethically perfect.”

 

( graphic from These robots were trained on AI. They became racist and sexist.
The Washington Post, 7-16-22 )

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“I never believed in God. No, I didn’t even as a little kid. I used to think even if he exists, he’s done such a terrible job.
It’s a wonder people don’t get together and file a class action suit against him.”
( Bob Dandridge, played by Alan Alda, in the movie Everyone Says I love You. )

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I hate it when people think I’m Julia Roberts, even when they hear my correct name.  Happens all the time.

 

 

*   *   *

May you not have to explain, when stating your name, that you are not a famous person;
May you strive to ask what someone thinks rather than what they do;
May you dare to, just once more, TP a friend’s house;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The introduction to Hamas founding covenant:  “This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious … It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.”  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.” (from “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology: A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions,” The Atlantic, 10-10-23, by Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University professor, Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations and Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.

[2] As in, “Julia Roberts; yeah, like the actor; no, I’m not her.”

[3] One of the best answers to this question – and probably one of the most effective strategies – came from writer/actor/comedian Sarah Silverman, who said she excuses herself, explaining that she has diarrhea. 

[4] It’s happened more than once.

[5] Yes, moiself  has posed these questions, to “total” strangers.

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

The “Karen” I’m Not Judging

March 8, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The “Karen” I’m Not Judging

Department Of First Things First

Happy birthday to Son K.

K at age 29 9, demonstrating both his flexibility and artistic sensibility, neither of which
led to the career in interpretive dance he was considering at the time this photo was taken.

*   *   *

Speaking of a delightful person’s birthday, which only happened because his mother gave birth to him, let moiself  segue to….

Department Of Don’t You Want To Listen To The Entire Podcast Now?

Now as in, after reading this delightful quote, from Cat Bohannon, PhD, researcher on the evolution of narrative and cognition and author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, from her interview on the People I Mostly Admire podcast.

“…I talk a surprising amount about penises
for a book about the evolution of the female body.
But because the penis and the vagina co-evolve,
naturally we’re going to have to talk about dong.”

Naturally.

 

 

Here is PIMA host Steven Levitt’s intro to the episode featuring Bohannon:

I did not expect to like this book. I’m generally just not that interested in things that happened 200 million years ago, or even 10,000 years ago…. But in chapter after chapter, Cat Bohannon offers such a fresh and surprising perspective that I couldn’t put the book down…. Are her hypotheses right? I have no idea….But one thing I’m pretty confident about, you will not listen to Cat Bohannon and say she’s boring.

The PIMA episode’s title, Is Gynecology the Best Innovation Ever?, refers to Bohannon’s intriguing proposition re human evolution:  more than our discovery of fire, agriculture, the wheel, and other inventions, human’s survival and flourishing was due to reproductive choice and midwifery, the forerunner to obstetrics/gynecology.  As our Homo habilis ancestors’ brains (and thus their brain buckets – i.e., heads) expanded, the females’ pelvises did not.  Women assisting other women in labor allowed the human population to survive and increase.

 

 

Excerpts from PIMA host Steven Levitt’s interview with Cat Bohannon:

LEVITT:
If you ask people’s opinion about the most important discoveries that humankind has made, common answers might be harnessing fire, agriculture, the advent of language, but you give a different answer…gynecology? How can gynecology be our most important human invention?

BOHANNON:
… Tool use is all about manipulating something in your environment to overcome some inherent problem….  What was our most important innovation in our ancestral line? Well, what were our biggest problems? In evolutionary biology, there’s something called a hard selection. That’s when you have problems with your reproduction because evolution, of course, works by generations building over time, literally making babies, having them survive to have their own babies, and maybe produce more bodies that have this trait that your body has.
Well, if you have something that messes up your reproduction, if it’s hard for you to make a baby, then your line is probably headed for extinction. If human pregnancies are the absolute shit show that they are, that is hard selection. That is our biggest problem.
A chimpanzee, one of the animals that we are most closely related to, both obviously and genetically — a chimp mom’s labor is about 40 minutes. A first-time human mom is about 12 to 16 hours….And that’s before we even try to start squeezing out the actual giant-headed babies that our species likes to make. It’s also true that our pregnancies are longer than you would expect for an animal our size.
And it turns out, the threshold for when we give birth is not necessarily how big the head gets, to get out the small lemon-sized hole, which as we know is problematic. No, it’s actually a metabolic threshold. At what point would building this body any further actually be deleterious to the mother’s body because it’s simply too costly to keep doing it? In other words, we give birth, we go into labor when we do, typically at full term, because doing it any longer would kill us.

 

 

LEVITT:
Yeah, marginal cost becomes greater than marginal benefit. It’s interesting how biology and economics are basically the same thing.

BOHANNON:
Yeah, exactly. So if it’s the case that you end up with a lot of moms that are crippled for life, that die in the process, (then their) offspring die in the process….
But it isn’t just the moment of giving birth that matters for the advent of gynecology, because there’s a long ramp of reproductive history that comes before, and a long tail of a woman living in a female body that comes after….
…the most important thing we ever did was get our hands on the levers of reproduction to overcome our most basic problem, which is that (humans) suck at making babies.
We should be like the giant panda. We should be a curiosity in somebody else’s zoo. We should never have gotten to eight billion people in the world.
But we did. And the only way we did, to be honest, is by building societies that could support the kind of interdependence that helped females give birth in ways that didn’t kill them and cripple them.

 

 

 

*  *   *

Department Of There’s (Usually More Than) Two Sides To Every Story…

Some stories are octagonal, when you get right down to counting the sides. The story of the “Central Park birding incident” has at least four sides, including that of
* the birder
* the news media’s shameful failure to accurately report and follow up on the incident (read: correct their mistakes and oversights),
* social media’s (surprise!) rush to laud and reward the party deemed “innocent” while labeling, judging, and tormenting the party deemed “Karen,”
* the Karen who turns out not to be one.

” ‘Slit your wrists,’ strangers texted me.

‘If anyone deserves prison rape, it’s you,’ people I had never met called me to say.

‘The noble thing to do is to remove yourself from society…so please kill yourself.’

I’m Amy Cooper, but you probably know me as ‘Central Park Karen.’ You may not know my name, but you probably know my story—or at least the two-minute version of the story that was broadcast all over the world without key facts or context. “

 

 

Amy Cooper’s opinion piece was published in Newsweek (their “My Turn” feature) in November.  I just got around to reading it now.  IMO everyone who passed judgement upon her – read: everyone who heard the story as portrayed on your media of choice (including moiself ) –  should read it.

Most people think they know what happened:  the widely promoted narrative was that a racist White woman walking her dog in a Central Park birding area threatened and then called 911 on a Black man, after he told her she needed to leash her dog and began recording her with his cell phone.  Most people don’t know who threw the first punch, so to speak –i.e., who made the first threat – in this incident; most people, in their rush to judgement, don’t know that the story they heard and/or read about left out so many crucial details.

“On May 25, 2020, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when anxieties ran high, I took my dog—whom my life revolved around—for a walk.

I visited Central Park in the morning, during the hours when dogs were allowed off-leash.   [1]   On my way home, I chose to take an unfamiliar path, landing in ‘The Ramble,’ a secluded area of Central Park.

Seconds later, I heard a voice boom: ‘Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.’ I saw a man who began yelling at me that my dog should be on his leash.

Before recording me, Christian Cooper yelled out: ‘If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.’

Those were his exact words. Words Christian admitted to saying, on Facebook, the very day of the incident.

And yes, I was scared.”

I was a female, alone in a secluded area of Central Park, with a man yelling at me and threatening me. As a victim of a sexual assault in my late teens, I was completely panicked for my safety and wellbeing.”

Right there is a situation most women can understand.  Unfortunately, far too many of us (and one is to many) have had experiences with male strangers who’ve yelled at/threatened us.  Skin color, schmin color – the fact that Christian Cooper (the man who confronted Amy Cooper; no relation) is Black did not enter my mind when I read Amy Cooper’s report of their initial encounter.  Instead, what came to mind were the incidents I’ve faced over the years, as a woman hiking/running/walking – simply daring to exist – outside, “alone,” and facing a man’s harassment and threat, regardless of whether or not he thinks I did something to “deserve” it.

Fuck the man’s skin color; fuck his age, or height, accent, apparel….  Because here is an unfortunate truth that women live with:  even without a personal history of sexual assault, most women’s radar would be up in the same situation as Amy Cooper found herself in (my radar went up just reading her account).  And although I might not be as “completely panicked” as she was, I’d be urgently strategizing as to how I could protect moiself  from a man who is threatening, (Jaysus Fecking Keerist!)  I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.

 

 

“Then Christian, who did not own a dog, bizarrely tried to lure my dog to him with treats, immediately raising a red flag.   [2]   News stories of poisoned dogs quickly came to mind.

My mama-bear instincts kicked in. I immediately pulled my dog tight by his collar, fearing that something would happen to him.

Acting from a place of panic and vulnerability, I told Christian that I was going to call the police and what I planned to say, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him from his earlier threat.

Instead, Christian taunted me to call the police. Seeing no other choice, I called 911 and described the man who was threatening me. But due to very spotty service in the park, I had to repeat my description of Christian multiple times.

The 911 tape makes it very clear that the dispatcher couldn’t hear me due to the poor connection—yet this fact went unreported, skewing perceptions of my actions.    [3]

There were never any racial implications to my words. I just felt raw fear, and desperately wanted help.

Later that day, Christian took to Facebook to proudly describe to his followers that he instigated the encounter and boasted that he keeps a bag of dog treats to lure in off-leash dogs.

Consider that for a moment. He admitted to instigating the incident.”

 

 

I’m not a “birder” but I play one on TV but I know a few bird-watching enthusiasts.  I like them, and I like birds.  I like to look at birds and other fauna and flora and have loved hiking in and exploring “natural areas” and nature preserves since moiself  was a wee lass.  I’ve been frustrated innumerable times when I’ve encountered people whom I judge as not being respectful of the protocol when recreating in a woodland, desert, mountain, and/or beach environment (e.g., going off trail and thus contributing to erosion; allowing their dogs off leash where it is not permitted; not cleaning up after their dog; dropping trash, etc.).  Thus, I think I can understand CC’s frustration with what he saw as yet another scofflaw ignoring the rules of a birding area.

There is another protocol worthy of consideration:  how you handle your first encounter with a stranger whom you think/know is violating some kind of rule.  Why assume the worst from the beginning – where does that get you?  Why did CC assume AC was a scofflaw, instead of considering that perhaps this was her first time in the area and/or she didn’t see the signs about leashing dogs in that area?  Why go from zero to 120 at the get-go?  Who appointed CC as The Ramble’s protocol enforcer?

 

 

“I was not the first or only person Christian Cooper had threatened in Central Park.

Jerome Lockett has stated that Christian also aggressively threatened him, luring in his dog. Jerome said he knows of two fellow dog owners who experienced the same behavior from Christian, but they don’t want to come forward because they are white, and Christian is Black. They fear being canceled—as I have been.

None of this was reported.
Stark omissions in coverage completely altered my life.
and there is no correcting after the fact.
I, and others affected by this incident, could only live in the false, hateful narrative.”

( excerpts, emphases mine, “I Was Branded the ‘Central Park Karen’. I Still Live in Hiding.”
Newsweek, My Turn, 11-7-23  )

There are more details in Amy Cooper’s article which deserve your consideration, including the fallout for her life.  After CC’s video went viral, AC had her personal information posted online by trolls, received “hundreds of threatening graphic images, death threats, and hate mail,”  [4]  was fired from her job by her PR-conscious employer (without a chance to defend herself), has had long stretches of unemployment, had to go into hiding, was falsely accused of filing a false police report…. [5]

Meanwhile, Christian Cooper has parlayed his headline-making experience into a career as “The Black Birder,” including a book contract, numerous video and television appearances, a guest essay with the NY Times, and a gig as a host on a National Geographic show, Extraordinary Birder.

Now then: Black men in the USA face a different world than white women and men, no doubt about it.  Shouldn’t Amy Cooper have realized that, given the world we live in, her reporting to the police that she was being harassed by a Black man might put that man’s life in danger?  That is certainly what moiself  thought, at first.  However, if she feared that *she* was in danger, that probability-of-danger-for-him would take a back seat to the urgency of her – of any person’s – instinct for self-protection.  And when you call the police to report that a person is threatening you, guess what they want to know?  A description of the person, which includes gender, ethnicity, age, height, attire….

Also….

Something that seems to have been forgotten, or at least brushed aside, from the Central Park Birding Incident, ® is a something which has gnawed at me even before I read Amy Cooper’s article:

All women walk through a different world than men of any skin tone.
Why are men not cognizant of that reality –  because it’s not theirs?

Why is no one holding Christian Cooper accountable for failing to realize
that yelling at/threatening a lone woman in a secluded area
will cause her to fear for her safety?

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when an Expert In Her Field ®  sez, “we’re going to have to talk about dong.”

 

*   *   *

May we appreciate that we are not “a curiosity in somebody else’s zoo;”
May we wait for the story behind the story before we pass judgement;
May we appreciate the times when we’re going to “have to talk about dong;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] “Off-leash hours in Central Park are from 6:00 am–9:00 am and 9:00 pm–1:00 am.” (from  A Dog’s Guide to Central Park. )

[2] When I read this sentence of her article to MH, before I could go on to the next sentence he said that he’s fear/assume that the guy was intending to poison his dog.

[3] The New York Times reported in October 2020 that Amy had made a second 9-1-1 call against Christian, in which she alleged that Christian had tried to assault her.  However, the Times later made a correction, saying that the second call was when a 9-1-1 dispatcher called *her* back.

[4] Which she still gets, to this day.

[5] The NY prosecutor’s office, feeling the media and political pressure, filed the charges, which were quickly dismissed because Amy Cooper had done no such thing.

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

The Patient I’m Not Taking

March 1, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Patient I’m Not Taking

Department Of Another Great Moment In Inclusion/Diversity

The story behind the story:  The Inclusion/Diversity story moiself  is about to share came to my mind when MH and I were recently talking about the respective rhinoviruses…

 

“Yeah baby!”

 

…sorry, dude, I refer to the virus most responsible for what we call the “common cold.”

I’ll begin again.

A week or so ago MH and I were talking about the colds we’d each had at the end of last year.  When we were comparing how long each of us had had symptoms, I snickered (to moiself , or so I thought) to recall The Great Cold Debate®  which I inadvertently became a part of, during my time working at a Planned Parenthood clinic.  MH asked what I was snickering about, and thus I shared this memory, which was entagled with another….

 

 

As mentioned previously in this space (e.g., here, and more specifically, here) I worked as a Family Planning Specialist for Planned Parenthood, including several shifts per week in their Bay Area clinics which offered abortion services.  Dateline: one morning in one such clinic, when I was doing intake procedures with a patient, who was accompanied by her husband.  [1]    I’d reached the point during the intake where I would ask them about the contraceptive method(s) the patient had been using and bring up birth control options with them, if they were open to discussing the issue.

Important Background Detail ®, for both this story (and the one which follows): the patient and her husband were from India.  They had come to the USA a year earlier, for the husband to pursue his graduate studies at Stanford University.  

After we’d discussed what had worked, or not (ahem…   [2] )  for them re contraception, and the different options available, I asked if either of them had any questions.  The wife said no; her husband looked at me and asked:

“What is it about American colds?”

 

 

He phrased his non sequitur of a query in tones which seemed more accusatory than questioning.  “Excuse me; *American* colds?” was all I could muster for a response.

His wife glanced at me, rolled her eyes without really doing so, and excused herself to use the restroom.

So: the husband began to whine tell me that he’d had several colds since coming to the USA, and in fact he had a cold right now, at the present time, a cold which was going on two weeks now, and this had never happened in India.

Ummm,  ooookkkkaaaayyyy….

Now, this was a (supposedly) educated person; I can’t remember the exact name of his graduate program, but it was in the biological sciences.  As briefly as possible I mentioned that the viruses which cause what we call “a cold” can typically last from 7 to 14 days…

“No; not in India.”

…and that being ill in a new/different country can seem like a different experience, and when you travel you will be exposed to different cold viruses….  I tried to steer the conversation to the subject at hand, but he would not be deterred.  I realized he really didn’t want an answer.  He just wanted to complain, and found it necessary to repeat himself several times:

“There’s something wrong with American viruses!
Colds in India *never* last this long.”

 

 

It was bizarre; I got the feeling he wanted me to apologize, to him, on behalf of those disrespectful, persistent, American microbes.

The patient returned from her pee break and the three of us settled the contraception issue.  I asked, again, if either of them had any questions about the procedure.  The wife said no; the husband said, “Can you tell if it…

During his micro-pause I could feel moiself’s  arteries icing over — he’s not going to ask me that, is he?  Yep.  

“Can you tell if it is a boy fetus or a girl fetus?”

“No,” I replied, gritting my teeth.  I managed to restrain moiself  from adding,

…but I can tell if its father is an asshole.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of And Now For The Story In Front Of The Story
Behind The Story….  Or Something.

The Planned Parenthood clinics where I worked had many student-couple patients from other countries, who were in the Bay Area for either their and/or their husbands’ college and graduate educations.  Several of my fellow PP clinicians who’d been working for PP much longer than moiself  had noticed certain patterns with – and thus had developed certain opinions about –  patients from certain countries and cultures.   [3] 

Dateline:  Another morning (circa 1989); another clinic.  After finishing my first intake of the day, I escorted the patient to the waiting room, then headed for the lab to chart her hematocrit results.  Hanging on a wall outside the entrance to the lab was the file holder which held the charts of patients who had checked in to the clinic and who were in the reception area, awaiting intake.  When a Family Planning Specialist had finished with her intake she began the next intake, taking whichever chart was on top in the file holder.  Which is what I was going to do, after charting the lab results for my previous patient.

CR, DD, and ML, the other Family Planning Specialists who were working at that morning’s clinic, were gathered around the file holder, quietly but passionately discussing a chart DD was holding in her hands. 

 

 

More IBD ® (just to be clear, that’s Important Background Details, not…er…the other acronym) for this story:

 (1) my fellow FPS’s respective ethnic backgrounds:  CR (the lead for the morning’s clinic) was White; DD was Black; ML was Latina;

(2) Our clinic personnel had recently undergone our first of what would be several days of (not well-planned or executed, IMO    [4]  )  Diversity Awareness training seminars;

(3) There is no background detail #3.

 

 

CR, DD, and ML were gathered around the file holder, quietly but passionately discussing a chart DD was holding in her hands.  So intent were the three of them that they did not notice my approach.  They seemed oblivious to my presence, even when I was standing three feet behind them, listening to their discussion (recalled here to the best of my ability, but not verbatim…duh).

CR:
“Nope, it’s yours.”
(CR shook her head and put her hands out, as if to push away the chart DD had thrust in her direction)
“I know what you mean, I’ve had the same experiences,
but that’s the chart on top, DD, and you’re up.”

DD:
“Please, I  can’t.  I had the last one – I’m serious.  ML, would you take this?”

ML:
“No, oh no, I just don’t – I know this sounds bad, it’s nothing personal, but that culture is so – well you know how the women can’t say anything direct, so they whimper and cry to punish their husbands and make them feel bad….”

DD:
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I get woozy with the odor – I’m not prejudiced, I’m serious.  It’s from their diet, the curry or whatever, and it comes out of the skin and the breath and the last Indian patient I had, it was so strong, I thought I was gonna pass out in the procedure room….”

ML (changing her tone from pleading to teasing):
“CR, you’re the lead, you should set a good example, and help out DD….”

CR:
“No way.”

My snort-laughter caused them to turn around, and their collective expressions changed in a flash, from obstinacy to hope (“Maybe Robyn will take this patient?!?!)…a hope which crashed and burned as I declared,

“Oh, how I wish I had a recording of this moment!
My faith in the equality of humanity is restored, with this prime example of diversity before me:  a White woman, a Black woman, a Latina woman, all arguing about not wanting to help an Indian woman.”

 

 

*   *   *

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]

“Religion is man-made.
Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.”

(  Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything )

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when men mansplain teach about sexism and misogyny to captive audiences.

 

 

*   *   *

May your colds (caused by proud, American viruses) last less than two weeks;
May you never have to explain sexism and misogyny to captive audiences;
May you never have cause to wish, maybe someone else will help this patient;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] At some point during the intake, if a client seeking an abortion was accompanied by another person – whether their partner, or friend, or parent or family member –  we made sure to speak to the patient *alone,* to make sure she wasn’t being pressured into any decision.

[2] Considering where they were (a Family Planning clinic, for an abortion), the husband’s idea of birth control – “I’ll wear a condom when I feel like it” was infuriating…but, unfortunately, not uncommon, as I learned.  I was to witness, during my time at PP, the disturbing phenomenon wherein couples from countries/cultures where The Husband Is In Charge Of Such Things ® often had a dynamic where the wife was subject to her husband’s whims of whether or not he wanted to wear a condom every time they had sexual intercourse (even if he was adamant about *not* wanting his wife to get pregnant, he would not consistently use protection!).  But, he didn’t want her to use oral contraceptives (“The Pill”), or an IUD, or a diaphragm. To have her be the one using and choosing birth control would take her out from under *his* control.  And her option of saying no to sex if he refused (“no glove; no love”) – ha!  Not an option, for her, or for far too many women (and any woman who does not have that option is far too many).

[3] I never, never, ever, saw any instance of them allowing their opinions to affect their care of their patients.  That said, working in such a stressful environment, yep, they would discretely blow off steam by commiserating with their fellow clinicians.

[4] That kind of employee education/seminar was in its developmental stages, and not A Thing®  like it is now, and it seemed obvious to moiself  that those leading the training were well-intentioned but didn’t exactly know what they were doing.

[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, ffrf.org