Department Of Moiself Could Do Much Better. So, I Did.
The 26 across clue for the New York Times Saturday crossword puzzle was “a bad look.” Neither MH nor I thought it was a good match for the answer to 26 across, which turned out to be, “the eye.”
Say what?
According to a study I just made up, everybody knows that a bad look is not the eye, it’s the evil eye, or the stink eye, et al. We both agreed that the phrase the eye is rarely used, but when it is, it may be neutral as in, that person‘s giving you the eye, as in, they’re checking you out, perhaps in a curious or flattering way (because they find you interesting or attractive)…but it isn’t necessarily “bad.”
The Saturday NYT crosswords are the most difficult of the week, often incorporating obscure clues and/or answers. Thus, I was proud of moiself for coming up with what I thought would be the perfect Saturday (difficult/obscure) crossword clue, if you want the answer to be, the eye.
Clue: “___ ___ of Laura Mars” (if she only had one). [1]
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Department Of Siri (Or Whatever Is Listening) Doesn’t Like How I Enunciate
…a phenomenon for which I am mostly grateful, in that it often provides moiself (and my fortunate/unfortunate textees) with cheap entertainment.
Dateline: Saturday, late morning. Moiself has been exchanging texts with friend LH, whom I invited to Sunday dinner and with whom I’ve been discussing menu possibilities:
What was spoken/dictated, by moiself: “…you’re a yes for dinner?”
What was translated as a text: “…your ass for dinner?”
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Department Of And The Oscar Goes To…
The afore-mentioned mistranslation blooper is, so far, runner up for Best Mistranslated Text Ever. First place goes to a text of mine from of years past. Setting: MH and I were on a crowded light rail train. I received a text from friend JWW, asking if she could come over to our house to collect some plants MH had promised her, for her yard. I dictated my answer, letting her know that we were not at home, and that I was texting from the Max train, as we were on our way to Portland.
What was spoken, by moiself: “…we’re on our way to attend the Portland Folk Festival.”
What was translated: “…we’re on our way to attend the Portland Fuck Festival.”
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Department Of A Book To Distract From Politics
After reading Patrick Stewart’s recent memoir, Making It So, I’ve been thinking about moiself’s favoriteStar Trek: The Next Generation episodes, after Stewart named his. [3] As of this moment, they are, in dyslexic alphabetical order (with commentary by guest commentator, moiself )
* The Inner Light (an entire life lived in 20 minutes – even sci fi legend Ursula Le Guin was impressed [4] )
I love it when moiself watches a show I’ve seen a bajillion times before, and at a particularly poignant moment, even though I know *exactly* what’s ahead, I still cannot stop myself from crying.
* * *
May you never serve…uh, you know what…for Sunday dinner; May you send the NY Times crossword editor your own “better” clues; May you enjoy a good cry from your own favorite poignant TV episode;
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of OK Right Now Everybody Drop What You’re Doing…
No; wait – first, finish reading my blog.
Then listen to this NYTimes The Interview podcast (or read the transcript) to learn the difference between bonding social capitaland bridging social capital, and how joining a bowling league – or a running club, or hosting a regular games night – can save democracy…or just make us all a little less lonely and isolated…which we probably are. Even if we think we are not.
(And you know all the people – and by people moiself means Single Angry Men® – who call themselves Incels or join the Proud Boys and other extremist groups? They do this in part because they’re lonely.)
“The author of ‘Bowling Alone’ warned us about social isolation
and its effect on democracy a quarter century ago. Things have only gotten worse.” (intro to “Robert Putnam Knows Why You’re Lonely”; The Interview )
In the dialogue between Putnam and the host there is an intriguingly pertinent question:
“Are we isolated because we are politically estranged, or are we politically estranged because we are isolated?”
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Department Of Adventures In Babysitting
I’m not sure what sparked the memory which sparked the ensuing stories in this department. [1] I think it was a convoluted chain, one that in this case began when I read an article about a climber/snowboarder who fell into the crater at Mount Saint Helens. Dude actually survived the 1200-foot fall, but died when he fell again as he was trying to climb out of the crater. Moiself was thinking about the poor guy, alone, in the cold….
Dateline: A Friday afternoon, early June, some twenty five years ago. KH and JJ, two eleven-year-old girls, lived in our cul-de-sac and were best buds. I had used their child watching services during the previous summer, paying them to play with my kids, at my home, three days a week for several hours, while I was at home working on whatever writing I was working on at the time. [2]
On that afternoon I got a call from KH, who proudly announced that she and JJ had, just that very morning, passed the final test in the Baby Sitter Certification training class they’d been taking. “We were wondering,” KH said, “if maybe you and MH would like to go out and have a date night tonight – maybe to the movies – and we could babysit for you?”
Although we hadn’t made any such plans, of course, moiself had to say yes. “This is amazing,” I told MH (and anyone I knew who would listen, for three weeks afterward). “Babysitters who call *you!*
I’d actually intended to look for a sitter for Saturday night so that MH and I could go to the movies; thus, we ended up using KH’s and JJ’s two nights in a row. On Friday we saw Titanic (I trust no description is necessary). On Saturday we saw, The Ice Storm, the Ang Lee-directed film wherein a winter storm is a metaphor for two upper-class Connecticut couples who use drugs and adultery as an escape from their bleak, dysfunctional, lives in the socially turbulent 1970s and whose children, while seemingly contemptuous of their parents, reflexively begin to mimic them. Not exactly the Heartwarming Family Drama ® of the year. [3]
After leaving the theater on Saturday evening, I told MH, “I never want to see a movie involving cold, and water, ever again. No cold in any form; no cold water, no snow; no ice; no ice water….”
Department Of Adventures In Babysitting, The Prequel
Way back when, like many teens and preteens (mostly the female ones), I made spending money by babysitting. I had a few regular gigs: the most frequent one was for the two little boys of a young married couple who lived two houses down the street from my family. I babysat for them once or twice a month, then it began to be a regular gig, as in every Friday night and sometimes Saturday night as well. This happened after the wife, whom I’d deemed the first time I saw her as she-married-way-too-young, [4] had apparently begun to feel that she indeed had married too young and had missed out on…certain rites of passage. She asked her husband to leave their house – which he did, with grace and patience, hoping she’d come back to him after she’d gone through her “phase” – and started dating on a regular basis.
I was thirteen, and really didn’t understand such things. All I knew is that that that was one of my favorite gigs: the boys were adorable, sweet, well-mannered, and amazingly clean (the mom was quite the clean freak, and bathed them every night, right before I arrived, so that they would be ready for bedtime). And just as my parents began to wonder aloud about the frequency and length of my sitting jobs with that family (I often did not get home until after 1 am), the husband came over to our house one evening to explain the situation to my parents. It was a move I found at once strange and unnecessary, yet also somehow….gentlemanly?
Most babysitting gigs came out of referrals from established gigs, or recommendations via my older sister and friends who also babysat, and who would pass along my name when they were unavailable for a certain jobs.
Three such referral jobs stand out in my babysitting career.
The first involved a family of five children. I never would have agreed to watch five children as the only sitter; frankly, I was lied to, by omission, when the father contacted me over the phone and I asked him about the gig’s parameters and rate of payment.
And the kids were horrible. Just awful. Ranging in age from about four to ten – yeah, those breeders barely took a breather between pumping out insolent brats – they fought amongst themselves, made a mess of the house, and mocked me when I tried to enforce the rules their parents had written down for the babysitter. After an hour and a half of that shit I did something I’d never had to do before when babysitting: I called the emergency phone number the parents had left me.
No words were minced as moiself told the parents about their children’s behavior. As I was on the phone, I saw by the expression on the oldest child’s face that she feared she and her sisters and brothers were going to be grounded for life. Yep, I’d called her bluff. When I’d warned her that I would call her parents unless she could help me corral her younger siblings, she’d replied, “Ha! Yeah, so what? I know you won’t!”
I sat sulking in the father’s car as he drove me home, counting my measly $1.50 for just over two hours (I thought I should have been paid for the hours agreed upon – and double, for the number of kids. But at that point I just wanted to get away from all of them, and didn’t argue about it).
The second memorable referral gig was actually three gigs. The referral came from another babysitter who lived right across the street from the four-year-old boy I came to think of as That Weird Kid Up The Block. On my first night as his sitter TWKUTB was described to me, by his parents, as “quite intelligent and very precocious.” While his parents were commenting to me re their son’s brilliance TWKUTB was arranging letters on one of those magnetized alphabet screens. His father proudly noted that, although TWTKUTB was only four years old, he was already composing stories on the board and writing complete sentences. “Show her,” the dad said to TWKUTB. The boy raised the magnetic board and pointed at the two “words” he had formed with five magnetized letters. “Pan Am!” TWKUTB said. He tapped his chubby fingers on the board for emphasis. “Pam Am!”
I was somewhat confused and just nodded, until I realized a response was expected of me. “Oh…uh…as in…air travel?” And the father confirmed that yes, the name of that (now defunct) airline was what his genius son had written. TWKUTB kept repeating “Pan Am,” insistently tapping the alphabet board in a way that made me realize that my reaction had unintentionally indicated to TWKUTB that I was not as impressed as he thought I should be.
After TWKUTB’s parents had left for their evening, it was just like any other night with any other less-than-gifted, entitled, grumpy, annoying child. I tried to entertain TWKUTB but he’d seemingly taken a dislike to me, and so I gave up and read my own book/did homework until his bedtime. It wasn’t the best babysitting experience, but his parents threw in an extra buck when they paid me, so I agreed to another gig.
On my third (and last) night babysitting TWKUTB, he was the one who answered when I rang the doorbell. TWKUTB peered at me through the screen door and snarled, “Oh, it’s *you* again.” His mother, two steps behind him, tried to hide her mortification…and later paid me double the hourly rate for what most parents offered at the time. [5] But it wasn’t enough to earn more of my time – I’d already decided that no compensation was adequate for a mere mortal having to abide her gifted spawn.
I’ve often thought back to how incredibly underpaid I was as a sitter (the going rates at the time were something like fifty cents – yep, $.50 – an hour, a dollar an hour after midnight). On the other hand….
On the other hand, after the kid(s) bedtime I got paid for being there and doing my homework… or after finishing the homework and being bored, I was essentially paid for watching TV and/or looking at the reading materials that the parents had in the house. It was amazing, what people would leave out on their coffee tables, end tables, etc.
Which leads me to Memorable Gig #3.
It started out like another other referral gig from someone-else-who-knew-someone-else: I got a ride, from a stranger – usually the dad, sometimes the mom – to whom I’d spoken on the phone, to their house. Today, in 2024, that’s an arrangement I can’t imagine the parents of a babysitter agreeing to.
But this is now and that was then, and then, after I’d put Gig# 3’s two children to sleep sans incident, I realized I’d neglected to bring my homework or any reading materials of my own. A quick check of the channels revealed that there was nothing on TV I wanted to watch. I sat in an armchair in the living room, harumping with anticipatory boredom, until I espied a large pile of magazines on the armchair’s side table. There was one of those “housewife” periodicals — BORING – atop the pile.
Underneath that magazine was another magazine, which – I can’t exactly remember the cover, but it had drawings on it that indicated to me that it was going to be some kind of comic book. Thinking I was picking up a cousin of MAD Magazine, I began turning through that pages, only to discover it was…gulp…my first ever glimpse of pornography. [6] I mean, way beyond erotica – that stuff was crass.
I cringed, gingerly slipped that magazine under the bottom of the pile, and looked for something else. Nope; it was porno after porno after porno, with a few of the smut rags pathetically and ineffectively “hidden” between months-old copies of Family Circle. I snorted and tossed the magazines across the room…then realized I was going to have to cover my tracks so the parents wouldn’t think I was snooping. I picked up the magazines and tried to arrange them on the table as I’d found them.
I was totally creeped out; I refused to sit back down in that chair, or on any of the furniture, and looked around the house with an increasing sense of dread, not wanting to touch any of the surfaces. My paranolia was problematic as I really had to pee, but *no way* was I going to use their bathroom. Fortunately, the couple soon returned home. The sound of the front door opening woke up their son, who called out from his room. The mother went to comfort her boy, first paying me for the evening, and the father drove me home. I remember scooting as close as possible to the car’s passenger side door; instead of making my customary chitchat with a babysitting parent about how their evening had been, I was silent, save for monosyllabic yes or no grunts in response to his attempts to make small talk. All I was thinking was, DON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME YOU PERVERT. I practically left skid marks jumping out of his car when it pulled into my driveway.
Never told my parents about it; never accepted a babysitting job for that family again.
I love it when I realize that moiself never, ever again has to babysit for strangers in order to earn money to go to the movies with my friends.
* * *
May you pay your babysitters (if you have them) well; May you join (or form) something like a bowling/social league; May you not develop a loathing for cold water movies; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] I should have a rubber stamp with that phrase on it…or, a tattoo. The stamp might date me (at least, the reference does).
[4] As in, the first time I met her, I assumed she was her husband’s younger sister or other relative, and not his wife.
[5] I later found out, from their former sitter who’d referred them to me, that the parents were having problems – surprise! – finding a sitter who would sit for them more than twice.
[6] I’d seen some of the neighbor boy’s girlie magazines. This stuff made Playboy look like Ladies Home Journal.
[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
Department Of You Can’t Make Up This Shit (Therefore, This Shit Must Have Come From A Deity?)
Regular readers of this blog are likely aware of my disdain for religious thought and supernaturalism but may also notice that I don’t often avail moiself of the opportunity to pick on religious minorities. This is partly because it’s the American Way ® to pick on one’s own “kind;” thus, I usually stick to trashing the absurdities of the dominant religion (Christianity) and culture from whence I hail. But thanks to the alertness of MH, who recently entertained me at the breakfast table by reading this, No – really…what?!?!? story, [1]moiself gets to diss some Jews.
Q: I live in a co-op in New York City that doesn’t have a doorman. The front door to the building locks automatically every evening at 9 p.m., and there is an electronic keypad outside that requires a code to open the door. I observe the Sabbath, and cannot use this keypad from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. There is a side door to the building with a keyed lock that leads to the basement, which has a staircase to the lobby. I requested a key to this door but was told it is not for use by any tenants. What responsibility does the co-op have to accommodate residents’ religious practices?
A: Your request for a key to enter a side door in order to adhere to your sincerely held religious belief of Sabbath observance should be honored by your co-op, unless there is a credible reason why tenants’ use of that entrance is dangerous…. “If the co-op flatly rejected your request, you can sue for discrimination because they are effectively making the building unavailable to observant Jews,” said Andrew Lieb, who practices discrimination law in New York….
( excerpts, “I Can’t Use My Co-op’s Keypad Entry on the Sabbath. Am I Entitled to a Side Door Key? Because of your religious beliefs, your co-op could face legal liability if it fails to accommodate your request.” NY Times, Real Estate, 6-29-24 )
Pressing a keypad, that’s forbidden “work.” But the work of inserting a key and turning the doorknob, hey, that’s kosher.
Adherents of conservative/observant Judaism have for centuries dumbfounded the world with their interpretation of their god’s demand for slavish observations of absurd personal and social restrictions – what a surprise! Y’all never would have guessed that unless moiself pointed it out, right?
After reading the above-mentioned article MH was curious as to where the restrictions come from and how they are interpreted. The World o’ Google provided several ludicrous helpful explanations, including the fact that the door keypad uses electricity, and “…the spark which causes electricity is, technically, the kindling of a flame,” and sure enough there is a flame-prohibition in the Torah (Exodus 35:3, ” Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.”).
Hmmm…yeah…okay. That thing about the flames? I wonder how the ultraconservative Jews, who are the driving force behind Israel’s current military policies, feel about kindling the most lethal kind of flame – bombing Palestinians – on the sabbath?
* * *
Department Of It Gets Even Better
I am familiar with one of the more ingenious ways ever invented re getting around religious restrictions : that of theShabbat Goy. The SG is a non-Jew hired by Jews to perform services (such as turning lights on and off) which are forbidden to orthodox Jews on the Sabbath. Thinking of this made me, once again, miss my dear/sweet “best bud” from high school (whose initials were [2] conveniently SG), with whom I would trade observations and giggles about the tenets of our respective religions. SG was Jewish (his family was not strictly observant ), and one lazy school afternoon he tried to get me to you’ve-got-to-be-kidding stage by telling me stories about outlandish Jewish Sabbath requirements and restrictions, after which I offered to be his Shabbat Goy, no charge. But he missed the mark by keeping this one from me:
“It is forbidden to rip toilet paper on Shabbat, and doing so may be a violation of several melachot. [3] This is true whether one cuts the toilet paper along the perforated lines or in between them. Most authorities classify tearing toilet paper (or attached tissues) under the melachot of koraya (tearing), mechatech (measured cutting), and/or makeh b’patish (finishing touches).[ As such, one must be sure to cut toilet paper before Shabbat or use tissues that are dispensed one-by-one. Indeed, a roll of toilet paper is muktza [4] on Shabbat and may not be used or moved unless one is faced with no alternative….
In the event that one did not prepare toilet paper or tissues before Shabbat, one may hint, or if need be, directly ask a non-Jew to cut some toilet paper….” ( excerpts, my emphases, from Tearing Toilet Paper on Shabbat, by Rabbi Ari Enkin )
Restrictions on tearing toilet paper. Toilet paper. A hygienic invention which didn’t even exist when those Iron age desert sheepherders decided to codify their ignorance. And considering the friction-producing urgency with which some people are known to…uh…employ…toilet paper, might its usage also put you in danger for violating the rule against kindling a flame?
No; seriously. And how much would you have to pay a Shabbat Goy to kindlewipe …uh, perform that task for you?
And as for the Attorney who counseled the tenet to sue on the grounds of discrimination against his religion? Oy, oh, for a forthright lawyer, who would get to the point:
“Dude, the only discrimination here is that your religion is discriminating against your brain.”
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Department Of Here Come The Games
I don’t watch many sports on TV, but moiself looooovvvvveeeeessssss watching the Olympic Games. Both the winter and summer versions turn me into a Happy Sloth couch potato. I have withdrawals when they are over, when, after the summer Olympics for example, I realize I no longer have the opportunity to watch highlights from a volleyball game [5] every night.
And I love watching as the teams playing for country of my ancestors, Norway, win more medals per capita in the winter games (and no awaads for fashion sense).
However, the nationalism (read: obnoxious chants of USA! USA!) of the fans and the media coverage gets to me. I couldn’t put it better than travel guru Rick Steves, in his recent monthly newsletter:
“Even as I root for Team USA, as a traveler, I also find myself getting caught up cheering on athletes from distant lands. Whether it’s Hungarians at water polo, the French at team handball, a Norwegian rower, or a Bulgarian weightlifter, it’s fun to venture beyond the Simone Biles du jour — and pick a few non-American athletes to get behind, too.
And then there’s the medal count. Each evening, the news ranks the countries of the world based on the total number of medals they’ve collected…which Team USA always seems to dominate. (In the 2021 Tokyo Games, we snagged 112 medals, besting China with 84, Russian athletes with 71, and Great Britain with 62.)
Every time I see that list, I’m reminded of years ago, when a Dutch friend pointed out that while the United States usually wins the most medals, we also have a huge population and the biggest GDP — which means more athletes to choose from, and more money for training and equipment. If the playing field were leveled, the results would look quite different.
Consider this back-of-the-napkin math: At the Tokyo Games, the USA grabbed the most gold medals with 39, followed by China, Japan, and Great Britain. But if we look at the ‘medal count’ on a per capita basis — golds won per citizen — Team USA is wayyy down the list (between Ecuador and South Korea). We won one gold medal per 8.6 million citizens. And who’s at the top of the per capita list? Bermuda (a gold for every 72,000 people), followed by the Bahamas (a gold for each 176,000) and Slovenia (a gold per 700,000 Slovenes).
Of course, I don’t mean to take anything away from the remarkable accomplishments of our American athletes. But when you approach the Olympics — or, really, anything — with a global perspective, it’s more honest…and more insightful. That’s why, as good travelers and thoughtful global citizens, with each Olympic Games we can imagine how smaller countries cheer on their teams — and have some extra fun by seeing things from their point of view.”
Department Of The Next Book On My Reading List [6]
That would beThe Science Of Weird Shit. Can’t imagine why moiself would be attracted to a book with that title, can you?
Subtitled, Why Our Minds Conjure The Paranormal, TSOWSis the latest book by British professor, psychologist and researcher Chris French, a recent guest on Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid podcast . French is a leader in the field of anomalistic psychology; [7] his research centers on the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences (including, e.g., the claims of psychic abilities, ghosts, UFO abductions, and astrology). French, at once both entertaining and serious, emphasized to Alda the importance of understanding why people believe in the paranormal, and why he thus supports taking these claims seriously to explore the underlying psychological factors involved.
French studies the science of the paranormal not because he believes paranormal phenomenon are true – he doesn’t; he identifies as a skeptic who used to believe in such things when he was in his 20s. No matter how such studies turn out, French holds that studying the paranormal may help to further explain how the human brain works – as in (my interpretation) may answer the question about how and why so many of us fall for this crap despite decades and even centuries of scientists debunking psychic readers, seers, spoon-bending illusionists, astrologists and the lot.
Alda: “…what about being skeptical – why is it important? Some people get support from beliefs like this: Why is it important to be skeptical, and to spread that skepticism?”
French: “My own personal position is I’m happy for people to believe whatever they want to, as long as it doesn’t have negative repercussions for other people. And as you say, a lot of people do get great comfort – particularly from religious beliefs…maybe believing in life after death – then, I wouldn’t want to take that away from them. But….science is all about how the world really works, and I’m afraid that is not a question then of just thinking, ‘Well, how would we *like* it to be?’ It’s a matter of trying to figure out, as best we can, what the truth is, about the universe, and it may be that the truth is something that we wouldn’t feel all that comfortable with… “
Alda and French go on to discuss famous/historical cases of the paranormal wherein the practitioners either admitted, years later, of their deceit (including that of Kate and Margaretta Fox, the two sisters responsible for the birth of “spiritualism” and the séance craze of the 1800s, admitted their fraud after 40 years, and said that they started out just wanting to prank their mother) or had their methods and results disproven either by scientists or fraud exposers…. And yet, some true believers, even after their palm reader or seer (or pastor) has been proven to be a charlatan, continue to hold to their particular paranormal beliefs. What purpose(s) does it serve the believers, that they want to continue to believe that, say, their beloved, long dead uncle Roy was communicating to them in the séance, answering yes or no questions via making rapping sounds, when the Fox sisters admitted that the rapping was them cracking their joints under the table?
When it comes to those who take paranormal seriously moiself vacillates between the attitudes of whatever floats your boat (just as long as you’re not teaching my kids or trying to influence public policy) and No way, reality matters, and those willing to accept fuzzy thinking in one matter are likely to fall prey to it in other areas. I want to be compassionate for those who take comfort in illusions, even as I question how that compassion can be condescending, because illusion is the ultimate example of short term thinking: your illusions are likely, sooner or later, to break down under the weight of reality, and thus illusions do not benefit either the individual or the culture and society. Being willing to set aside reality for what you have been told are the comforts of illusion and supernaturalism can be devastating, as evidenced by what happens when a growing number of individuals believe, or accept – and elect – frauds and charlatans.
“Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.” ( French Enlightenment writer, philosopher Voltaire, 1765 )
“But wait – this means that observant, non-flame-kindling Jews can’t be superstitious on the sabbath?”
* * *
Parting Shot: I love it when/I hate it when…
I love it when I think about the Olympic games in Paris, and wishing they would have a special event – the fastest and most stereotypically Parisian waiter’s disregarding of an Ugly American ® tourist who is asking for the check.
The first one to overlook the request for l ‘addition wins.
* * *
May you enjoy watching at least one obscure (to you) sport during the Summer Olympics; May you never put money into a paranormal practitioner’s pocket (even for “entertainment” purposes); May you never believe that there are divine restrictions on tearing toilet tissue; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] As contrasted with those who suffer from constipation.
[2] SG died way too young, when he was in his 30s.
[3] Melachot are 39 classes of activities which Jewish law prohibits on the Sabbath.
[4]Muktzeh (“separated” or “set aside”) refers to items that are forbidden or whose uses are restricted on the Sabbath (Shabbat) or other Jewish holidays.
[5] I prefer the indoor, six person per team version, but beach Vball will do – the men’s teams, that is. Having played volleyball on the beach moiself, I cannot abide the women’s vball team’s “uniforms” of bungee cords up the butt. Why can’t they wear shorts, like the men’s teams? That sand gets everywhere….
[6] The list which has about 100 books already ahead of it… Unless I put it to the front of a line which I often do with the new shiny thing, and so the poor other books get, once again, pushed down the line…
[7] Anomalistic psychology is the study of human experiences and behaviors that are often called paranormal, without making many assumptions about the validity of the reported phenomena. It aims to explain these experiences and beliefs using known psychological and physical factors. (Goldsmiths University, “What is Anomalistic Psychology?”)
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Moiself be typing this on July 4. [1] And I am typiing this at a time when most if not all of my fellow villagers are heading to procure their seats for Manzanita’s annual 4th of July parade. As close friends and family know, I am a notorious Parade Loather. ® Even as a child, I found parades boring, not to mention downright confusing. Why are a bunch of people sitting on either side of a street, watching other people walk down the middle of the street? But the small-town-ness of Manzanita’s parade has a certain charm, I was told. Still, after watching it once to confirm that bit o’charm, I found that once was enough.
In 2018 I devised a way to tolerate the parade, and that was by walking in it. [2] Since I find parades to be nonsensical, a non sequitur outfit and ITAL raison d’etre seemed appropriate, and the legend of Orange Hat Woman With Spatulas ® was born.
For the years after that, when the pandemic forced the cancellation of the parade, on the 4th of July 4 I donned my OHWWS outfit and accoutrements, and marched in a circle in the street outside our house while MH playedStars and Stripes Forever[3] from our house’s stereo speakers and neighbors tossed paper airplanes across the street. [4]
Someone who knows I was in the 2018 parade asked if I was going to this year’s parade. I told them the unvarnished truth: “(IMO), parades are still inane; they’re only not inane when I’m marching in them; thus, this year’s parade will, once again, be inane.”
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Department Of Quote Of The Week
“When people are in a mindless state, they’re typically in error but rarely in doubt.”
That quote comes from a recent People I Mostly Admire podcast, wherein host Steve Levitt says about his guest, “I cannot think of an academic whose research findings have more consistently surprised me than my guest today.”
That guest (from PIMA’s episode, Pay Attention! (your body will thank you) was Ellen Langer, the psychologist and researcher who studies the mind-body connection. As per the Harvard Department of Psychology’s website, Langer “…is considered the mother of mindfulness…
Listen to your mother.
…and has written five books on the topic…. The Langer Lab conducts research on health, happiness, decision- making, education, business and culture all through the lens of mindfulness.”
Langer told the following story while talking with Levitt about the studies involving the alignment of Western scientific perspective with the eastern Buddhist perspective
Langer: “Someone once called me, someone doing her PhD, and wanted to know, was mindfulness a fad?… I said, ‘OK, let’s say you burn your toast every morning. And then somebody comes along and shows you that all you need to do is turn the dial down a slight bit and then the toast is no longer going to burn. Is it a fad?’ I mean you’re not going to go back to burning your toast unless you prefer it that way.
It (mindfulness) is not just paying attention. Because although attention is necessary, it’s not sufficient. There has to be the activity of coming to understand something that is novel, something that is new.
When I started to paint, prior to that, if someone had asked me what color are leaves, I would have said – mindlessly forgetting about the fall when leaves change colors – that leaves are green. Then I start painting, and I start seeing more. You look at trees, and there are hundreds of different color greens that change as the sun changes in the sky, changes in the seasons and so on. Once you wake up, there’s just so much more. Everything feels new and potentially exciting.”
Moiself loves that sentiment. A long-time Oregonian, I thought I knew green colors. Then I traveled to Ireland, and saw in the land and flora a panoply of greens I didn’t know existed.
No picture can do it justice.
Even more thought-provoking was Langer’s response to Levitt’s question about the process of opening people up to the state of taking a mindfulness approach to life. She listed three key steps:
(1) The respect for uncertainty ( as in, nobody knows everything for certain thus, everything is there to be found out); (2) Noticing new things, particularly regarding surroundings and people you think you are familiar with (e.g., notice three new things about the person you live with; three different ways of doing whatever you’re doing. Look for multiple answers to any question that you’re asked….)
Langer’s third suggestion is the most intriguing, and most problematic for all of us, I’d guess. It has to do with trying to learn conditionally and to *not* learn how we have been taught to learn – with absolutes, and with memorizing what we are told are unalterable facts. The “fact” is that even facts are context dependent. Any first grader will tell you that one plus one equals two. Langer points out (my emphases) that one and one may be two, but if you’re using a base-two number system one plus one is written as 10. And if you have one pile of sand and add all of that pile of sand to another pile of sand, you don’t have two piles of sand, you have one.
Langer: “How much is one plus one?… If you add one wad of chewing gum plus one wad of chewing gum, one plus one equals one. So now you have one plus one can be one, can be two, can be 10. ….
Imagine a teacher asks young students, ‘How much is one plus one?’ And little Stevie says, ‘One.’ What’s going to happen? In most classrooms, a teacher is going to try not to look at you like you’re stupid. You’re going to feel uncomfortable, and possibly set the stage for a lifetime of feeling stupid. Where if the teacher were mindful, the teacher would say, ‘Little Stevie, how did you come to that?’ And then you’d say, ‘If you add one pile of sand to one pile of sand, one plus one is one.’ And now everybody would have learned something. So everything we’re learning as absolutes makes us think we know, and we don’t know. And when you think you know, you no longer pay any attention. It makes us evaluative of other people who may see a different world.
Wait; if I combine these two bowls of guacamole I end up with only one bowl of guacamole?
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Department Of More Podcast Jewels Sub-Department Of You’re Not The Only One This Happens To
In the most recent Hidden Brain podcast, Befriending Your Inner Voice, host Shankar Vedantam discusses with his guest, Psychologist Ethan Kross, that most human of conditions: the annoying, negative voice that goes round and round in your head. That voice, which Kross calls chatter, is the one that keeps you up and night and makes it difficult to think of anything else once it gets switched on
Vedantam: “…the phenomenon of self-doubt (which) in some ways that is also connected to chatter, the ways in which people who are actually very good at doing some things can start to second guess themselves. You tell the story of Mr. Rogers, on TV he came across as serenely self-confident, but behind the scenes it was another picture altogether?”
Kross: “Yeah, there’s this wonderful chatter artifact of sorts that the New York times published several years ago. Fred Rogers had gone on a sabbatical a while from his show, and when he came back, he was filled with self-doubt, about whether he’d be able to perform at the same level that he did prior to taking this break. And in this letter he writes to himself, he very, very candidly expresses that vulnerability. He writes, ‘Am I kidding myself that I am able to write a script again? I wonder. Why don’t I trust myself? After all these years, it is just as bad as ever. I wonder if every creative artist goes through the torture of the damned trying to create? Oh well; the hour cometh, and now *is* when I’ve got to do it. Get to it, Fred; get to it.’
So, this is really remarkable to me…we’re talking about Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers helped teach *me,* and countless other kids and adults too, how to manage my emotions growing up…and yet here we see him admitting to struggling with his own self-doubt at times…. This is such an important message to convey…it really says, ‘Hey, if you’ve ever experienced chatter; if you’ve ever experienced self-doubt, welcome to the human condition.’ “
“Please won’t you be my human condition neighbors, boys and girls?”
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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]
I hate it when those whose rhetoric and actions indicate that they know almost nothing [7] convince their followers that they know everything.
* * *
May we recognize when one plus one equals something other than two; May you pay attention to that which you think you know all about; May you appreciate the piccolos’ part in arguably the best march ever written; [8]
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] y’all be reading this on the 5th or later. Thus, belated.
[2] Manzanita allows basically anyone to walk in the parade, by showing up at an assembly point for walkers (as opposed to those riding in vehicles or performing with groups)
[3] I hate parades, but I LOVE Stars and Stripes Forever.
[4] the latter in place of the Oregon Air National Guard, which, on that day, does a flyby over as many of Oregon’s July 4 parade towns as they can.
[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
[7] Or that if they don’t know something, that something must not be worth knowing.
[8] All together now: in Stars and Stripes Forever!
Active, reliable, sarcastic, affectionate, bipedal, cynical optimist, writer, freethinker, parent, spouse and friend, I am generous with my handy supply of ADA-approved spearmint gum and sometimes refrain from humming in public.
