Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

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Department Of The Reason It’s Time For The Partridge Of The Week
Is Because It’s The Day After That Most Problematic of Holidays   [2]

That holiday would be Thanksgiving.  So, you can enjoy a heartfelt rant thoughtful narrative about how we non-indigenous Americans grew up with a preposterous narrative, as summarized by moiself  in the Department Of The Big Day Next Week, segment of this blog.  Or, take it from the professionals:

 So, what exactly is the harm in this school-sanctioned account of history? Understandably, the untrained eye may not notice the harm in such a myth, as most Americans are victim to the same whitewashed lie as the rest, and dismantling a centuries-old myth certainly does prove challenging.

But the first lesson for educators and adults to digest is the fact that this narrative is egregiously whitewashed and Eurocentric on many levels. Moreover, it is a lie, which serves to rob American children of valuable historical lessons.

Truth be told, this beloved lie was packaged solely for nationalistic consumption when, following the bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. Back then, Americans were desperately in need of unity and inspiration. Hence, the myth of the first Thanksgiving was born to inspire and unite.

Beyond the myth, and the seemingly good intentions of Abraham Lincoln (who actually despised Indians) the actual story of pilgrims and indigenous people went down much differently.

( The Thanksgiving Myth: Reflecting on Land Theft, Betrayal and Genocide
Colonialism is great for the colonizer, and disastrous for the colonized. )

 

 

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Department Of ‘Tis The Season…

…to take your brain cells for granted.  Thus, moiself  has been sampling Netflix’s steaming pile of treacly feces plethora of Christmas movies, as the perfect diversion while I’m doing my morning treadmill or elliptical warmup.

I find the formula – and there is a formula, even if it isn’t a Hallmark  production – amusing in a way that’s hard to describe.

 

 

On Monday I called out to MH as he walked past my office, “The Meet Cute ® in this one is the fastest so far – in the first five minutes!”

I forget the title of whatever one I had on my computer screen; something to do with a male dance revue.    [3]     The one I’m currently…watching (I don’t know if that is the correct word, as I never seem to finish them) is titled, Christmas in Notting Hill.  In a rip-off nod to the actual movie, Notting Hill, there is a Meet Cute ® in which the has-been English soccer player bumps into the visiting American teacher, spilling her orange juice all over her blouse crushing the Christmas ornament against her chest, the ornament which reminds her of her deceased mother and which she’d just found at a Notting Hill market.  Will the perky, idealistic American, who is the kind of person who has always done the right/sane/responsible/staid thing, take the scholarship offered to her by an American college, or will she accept the offer to travel around the world teaching special ed to…special ed kids around the world?  You’d need a mosquito’s dental floss  chainsaw to slice through the plot tension!

 

 

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The Department Of Yes, Sometimes It’s That Simple

Exhibits A through Z, of why the elected leader of the Roman Catholic Church (or any religion, for that matter) is where he is due to church traditions and theologies – read: politics – and not because of any special anointment by a deity:

The existence of the Popemobile.

 

 

If the pope truly is the representative of (someone’s) god, why does he need to ride in an armored vehicle with “…bulletproof glass windows and roof, both able to withstand explosions, and reinforced, armored side panels and undercarriage designed to resist bomb blasts…” and other security enhancements to protect him from assassination? If the pope were truly doing his god’s work, wouldn’t his god protect him?

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Department Of Blog Title Explanation

Those music lessons I’m not taking are for learning to play the ukulele.

Moiself  has a ukulele.  Quite a nice one – a Kamaka, size 26″ (tenor), with a koa wood body and a mahogany neck.  It was a gift from my father, three decades ago.  He got it for me for my birthday, not long after we’d joked about our family’s checkered history in terms of music lessons (all of us Parnell kids had at least one session at some point; none of us stuck with it for long).

A series of school music teachers    [4]   told me I had smaller than average hands for a person my size, and due to an almost-needed-amputation accident as a child (recently blogged about here), I have a differently-abled pinkie finger on my right hand.

 

 

Maybe, my father suggested, an instrument for me should be smaller, and one that can be played with less than five fingers?

Once considered a quirky or niche instrument, the ukulele has had a surge in popularity in recent years.  But at the time my father gifted me with mine, there were no uke teachers around,   [5]    and I knew I wasn’t naturally gifted enough to have the discipline for self-taught lessons.  So I stored the instrument…and forgot about it. 

 

 

Several recent events conspired to jog my memory (including cleaning out a closet), and I found the uke.  I had it restrung by the local music shop proprietor and signed up for beginning ukulele lessons given through the Parks & Rec Department.  As the first day of the class approached, I got out my uke, practiced tuning it and attempting basic/beginning chords…then had an epiphany.

 

 

After said epiphany I phoned in my cancellation for the class.  I’d realized I had less than zero interest in wanting to practice – in wanting to devote even a mere 10 minutes per day to practicing.  I realized that I didn’t really want to take ukulele lessons, or music lessons of any kind – what I wanted was to *want to* take music lessons.

 

 

I think I wanted to *want to* take music lessons in part because playing a musical instrument is supposedly something well-rounded, intelligent, creative, cultured, curious persons should want to do.  We’ve all read that script:

“In no particular order, learning to play an instrument:
* Reduces Stress
* Produces Patience and Perseverance
* Develops Music Appreciation
* Cultivates Creativity
* Uses Almost Every Part Of The Brain
* Strengthens Your Immune System
* Increases Time-Management Skills
* Increases Memory Capability
* Allows You To Share With Others
* Increases Emotional Perception
* Increases Personal Discipline
* Enlarges The Brain
* Breeds Confidence….”
(excerpts, Sixteen Benefits of Playing an Instrument )

I’ve a lifelong love of listening to music and hearing musicians perform live.  Perhaps my role in the music world is to be that of the appreciative audience.  Perhaps someday I will feel more motivated to try music lessons again.

And yes, I understand you can get better at anything via persistence, and that hard work trumps innate or “natural” talent any day….  Nevertheless, you could tattoo a description of moiself’s  natural aptitude for music on the tip of my pinky finger and still have room for the Declaration of Independence. 

 

 

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

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May you find your own version of frothy, formulaic diversions
to lighten repetitive endeavors;
May you want to (and not just want to want to)
do things that are good for you….and fun;
May you have everything to live for
because you’ve nothing to die for;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago.

[2] MH and I typically put up our Solstice/Christmas decorations on the day after Thanksgiving.

[3] *not* strippers, they’d have you know. 

[4] As well as school PE teachers and my high school volleyball coach

[5] I searched  high and low for group lessons; a few guitar teachers offered individual lessons, at exorbitant (to moiself’s  budget) fees.

[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