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The Cocktail I’m Not Drinking

April 24, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, politics, reproductive rights, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Cocktail I’m Not Drinking

                                                                                                

Department Of Seriously, Chef?
Sub-Department of Something Light (The Calm Before The Storm)

Dateline: late last week; perusing my latest copy of  VegNews: The Best of Vegan issue.   Moiself  is happy to note the good travel news about Iceland, which the magazine selected for their category of Best Countries To Travel To for being the country with the highest percentage of restaurants that include vegan options on their menus.   [1]  Then I come upon the Best Restaurant awards, which has many, many categories.  I’m looking for the local winners – Portland is renowned for its many plant-eater-friendly restaurants and cafes – and in the Best Mexican restaurant category I find…this listing.

Would you like a side of identity politics with your salsa?

This is too special, even for Portland.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of And Now, The Storm
Department Of This Is How Easily It Can Happen
Department Of What Do You Call Something That Almost Happened,
That Makes You Realize How Easily It Could Have Happened?
Department Of Not All Men But Yeah…A Lot Of Men
Department Of Not All Men, But Even Men Who Are “Nice Guys®”
Department Of How Many Departments Will One Blog Department Get?

I’m not 100% sure what sparked my recollection of the story moiself  will share here, but it’s likely related to certain news story that has been much in the headlines.  I had been trying to do the seemingly impossible: avoid the news about CNN’s investigation of a  “Rape Academy“ – a global network of online forums and chat groups where men advise, encourage and even teach other men how to drug, sexually assault and then film women and girls, including their own wives and girlfriends.

How I wish I were making this up.  How I wish that the news of the existence of this global network of How To Become A Sexual Predator shocked moiself.

 

 

I snorted the third time I scrolled past a reference to the “Rape Academy”  I saw on several friends’ FB posts, then heard a voice – which turned out to be my own – thinking loudly and derisively,

 “Like this is anything new – no need for an ‘academy’
or any type of school, what with
the tried-and-true methods guys have been using for years….”

Then came another thought:  the tried-and-true methods…does that include what was tried on me which, fortunately, was not ultimately true?  I will never know for sure.  But I will also never forget.   [2]

Dateline:  last Saturday night.  MH and I are getting dinner at a small café/bar in Manzanita.  We’re enjoying a comfortable, slightly breezy night on the café’s outside porch, playing card games with the mini card deck I always carry in my purse, and talking about various subjects (to distract from the fact that the cards seemingly favor MH, and he is winning EVERY HAND). 

The subject of dates comes up, and I share a story about four amusing dates I had, way back before I met MH, with a Stanford MBA student.  Our fourth date was my first (and so far, only) time at a professional ice hockey game.  It turned out to be our last date because of something that struck a sour note for me. Nothing “bad” happened, but I was irritated that Mr. MBA seemed at first mystified, then annoyed, at my asking him about the rules of the game.  Ice hockey was a sport with which I was unfamiliar, and I wanted to watch it more perceptively: those different colored lines on the ice must mean something, and the ref keeps blowing his whistle for reasons I can’t discern; I played field hockey in high school, and perhaps there are some analogous rules….?  His reply to all of my questions was some variant of, Nobody knows the rules of ice hockey, and nobody cares.

 

 

After he’d said that for the fourth time, I got the translation:  Mr. MBA, you mean, *you* don’t know and/or don’t care about the rules.  And that’s not a good look, blaming it on nobody.  By date #4 I’d already figured out that we were a mismatch, what with him majoring in “MONEY” (his word and emphasis, not mine).  Looking back, I felt fortunate, I told MH, in not having had many bad dates.  “But there *was* one….”

It came to mind; I took a couple of yoga breaths and told MH about it.

 

 

In the mid-1980s I had a job at Vendtech,   [3]   a company whose core workforce was people around my age (early through late twenties), most of whom also socialized after work. One early night I was visiting friend and Vendtech coworker Ann, [4]   whose apartment was directly across the street from a condo I rented with my friend Marie.   [5]  Ann and I were shooting the shit about whatever, when her phone rang.  It was Ray,  [6]  a fellow Vendtecher.  Ray had tickets to a concert at a local club and was calling to invite Ann to go with him.  She amiably declined, briefly chatting with him before hanging up.  When she told me why Ray had called we both laughed and I said, “Well then, I better hurry back home to answer the phone.”

Ray had a (well-known, among Vendtechers) crush on Ann.  Ann, like most of our female Vendtech coworkers, considered Ray a Nice Guy®, and a friend.  She had socialized with him in the small work group gatherings, and also one-on-one (e.g. a couple of movie dates), but had no romantic interest in him.  I also got along with Ray,   [7]  and had been to the movies with him and to a couple of other outings which, when Ann and I had shared  What-did-you-do-this-weekend? stories, always coincided with him having first asked Ann to see that particular movie, or whatever. 

It never bothered me to be his second (or third, or…who knows?) choice.  Ray was not a romantic choice of mine, nor I of him, I’d assumed, due to his frequently confiding in me re his interest in Ann (and also in another woman at Vendtech).  Ray and I got along well, had overlapping taste in movies and music.  Other than his always insisting on paying no matter what the outing (which I appreciated, as his salary was *way* higher than I mine), Ray was easy to be around.

Sure enough, it wasn’t five seconds after I entered my condo when the phone rang.  It was Ray, asking if I’d like to go to the concert, which was this coming Friday night.  The show started early (8 pm, early for a rock concert) and probably wouldn’t run that late, what with only one band on the bill.  Sure, I said.

 

 

The concert venue was in a large hall set up to resemble nightclub, where the attendees were seated at small tables.  The club had waiter/table service, and there was a snack bar at the back of the club.

Contextual info: I wasn’t much of a drinker.  More than one Vendtecher had “accused” me (really; it was said in an accusatory tone of voice) of being a “teetotaler,” which I found bemusing and baffling.  Apparently, this was because at work-related parties or events where alcohol beverages were offered,  [8]  over the course of the events (which often lasted four or more hours) I would have one or at most two drinks, while my hard-partying comrades downed five or six (or more).

Meanwhile, back at the club: as soon as we were seated a waiter came to our table.  Ray ordered some chips for us and a pint of beer for himself, and asked me what’d I’d like to drink.  I’d been to the club and knew that their vino selection was limited to three corky-tasting house wines, in shades of white, red, or pink.  I didn’t drink beer and had limited experience with the so-called hard spirits. Gin and tonic was my go-to order, but I thought I’d try something different.  I really liked the taste of tonic water with lime…hmm, what else to try?  I ordered a vodka tonic.

 

 

The concert began; the band was good (and loud); the server returned to our table.  Ray asked for a glass of water and another beer, but a half instead of a full pint.  I declined Ray’s offer of another vodka tonic, and told our server that I’d like a glass of tonic water with lime only – no vodka – and a glass of water…I remember seeing Ray out of the corner of my eye making some kind of gesture to our server after I had ordered.  This sequence repeated itself several times (however, I never got my glass of plain water, even though Ray got his), with Ray drinking smaller and smaller amounts of beer and me specifying plain tonic water and lime.

As the concert got to the obligatory,  band-pretends-to-play-their-last-number-but-is-really-just-waiting-offstage-for-the-audience-to-call-them-back-for-an-encore, it hit me.  Borrowing poetic license from Miley Cyrus, it came in like a wrecking ball.  All-of-the-proverbial-sudden, I was blurry.  The room was swirling; I told Ray I didn’t feel well and wanted to go home.  He stood up, said he needed to use the bathroom, and that I should stay put and he’d be right back and take me right home.

I didn’t understand.  How could I be…intoxicated, was it?…via one cocktail that I’d had almost two and a half hours ago?  I looked at what was left of my fourth (or fifth…or sixth?) glass of tonic water, which was mostly ice cubes at that point.  I sniffed it just as our server arrived, and I asked her ( I remember trying to *not* sound like an idiot, and forming my words carefully, as I felt my tongue was too big for my mouth ) What was this drink?  Was there something else in my tonic water and lime?  It was so loud in the hall — had she misunderstood me, or had she gotten my order mixed up with someone else’s?

She gave me an odd look, and told me that at our first drink refill, my “friend” had told her that I’d changed my mind, and wanted the full vodka tonic(s).   Which is what she’d been bringing out to me.

 

 

I was too fuzzy to be angry…I was mostly confused.  Huh?  Why would he do that – why would he “override” my order?

I don’t remember walking to Ray’s car, or the drive to my place.  I remember him helping me up the stairs of the condo I shared with Marie, who was not home yet (Marie managed a retail store, and worked a late closing shift on Fridays).  He helped me to my bed, where I collapsed, face up…and then, he was kissing me.

I remember laughing at him – what was he doing?  It’s not like we were…   “What are you doing?”  I giggled aloud.  He pulled back and looked down at me; I remember my upper lip and chin feeling ragged, almost burned, as though instead of kissing me he had dragged a rasp over my skin (the Miami Vice stubble was a popular look for guys at that time, and Ray had a two-three days’ worth of beard growth.)   “No,” he said softly, and stood up.  He said he’d let himself out, and left my bedroom.  I fell asleep (blacked out?), and didn’t hear the sound of the front door closing.

The next morning I awoke, fully clothed, shoes still on.  Marie said she’d noticed that I’d forgotten to lock the front door when I’d come home.  I said I didn’t remember that, and apologized.  Ann came over later in the day, and asked me about the concert.  I told her what I remembered of it; I was still confused about the mysterious (to me) drink situation.  She wrinkled her nose and exclaimed, “That’s like…attempted rape!”

Ray and I never spoke with one another about what had happened.  I ended up working for Vendtech for a few more months,  [9]   and continued to attend group activities with other Vendtech employees, which sometimes included Ray, but never went to another movie or one-on-one activity with him. 

 

 

*   *   *

As I finished telling MH the story, it dawned upon me that I’d never really reckoned with what almost/could have happened:  That someone I considered a friend – someone whom everyone knew as a good guy – had, essentially, poisoned me.  This man didn’t (as far as I know) slip a mickey into my drink, but he might as well have.  And this is how many women are raped.

MH listened quietly and thoughtfully to my story, and said, “I’m glad it didn’t happen,” when I was finished telling it.  “Me, too,” I replied, and wondered why I hadn’t told him the story before.  It had just faded into background history

 

 

I’d almost told K and Belle about it years ago, when they started going out with friends.  MH and I had talked with both of our offspring about the existence of Rohypnol® and other so-called  “date rape” drugs, and cautioned them to never accept a beverage at a party or any venue, from someone else, unless it was an unopened can of, say, soda, or unless you could be sure of what was in (or not in) the drink.  I thought perhaps I should personalize that advice for Belle, about how this is not theoretical and it is not something that just happens “to *other* people…”  But I didn’t.

I don’t know what stopped me.  I don’t like thinking of moiself  as a victim, of anything, in any situation – was that it?  Was I protecting my daughter and my son, or me, or MH, from having the opportunity to have even a fleeting thought that I’d been naïve, or stupid, or….?  I didn’t blame moiself, then or now, and it isn’t something that haunts my existence.   [10]   And again, it happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…which, unfortunately, when it comes to male predatory sexual behavior, resembles a lower tech version of the galaxy we’re still living in today.

 

I don’t know about y’all, but I’d like some sloth peekaboo therapy right now.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

( Katha Pollitt is an American author, activist, poetic, social critic )

*   *   *

May you never get a free meal due to your ethnicity or gender expression;
May you never have someone override your food or drink order;
May you use your bare hands to rip the spleen out of anyone you see who
poisons the food or beverage of his “friend,” or anyone else;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which bodes well for our upcoming trip there, this summer, to watch the eclipse…and eat good food (including non-vegan Icelandic cod).

[2] And by,  I will never forget, I do not mean that I constantly remember what happened.  I have lived my life for years, decades even, without thinking about it.  I am not scarred; just aware.

[3] Not the company’s real name.

[4] Not her real name.

[5] Noticing a pattern?  Not her real name.

[6] You guessed it: Not his real name.

[7] No big accomplishment, as everyone at Vendtech, male and female, executive and rank-and-file employee, got along with Ray.

[8] And booze was always plentiful at company events.  The company’s co-founder and president was a raging if functioning alcoholic.

[9] My total time there was just under a year.

[10] Or didn’t, until I had reason to think of it and told MH… then I realized I was going to have to write about it, because that is how I process things.

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

The Breath I’m Not Holding

April 17, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Breath I’m Not Holding

Department Of Reasons For That Take A Deep Breath Truism

“The way we breathe has a direct and immediate impact on the state of our mind, emotions, and nervous system.  When we’re agitated or anxious, our breath is often quick and shallow.  When we’re calm, and grounded, it tends to be long and deep.  So, it’s helpful to remember that we can deliberately alter our breath when we want to soften stress or anxiety.…
we can always call on this tool, lengthening our inhales and exhales, in order to regulate our stress response, and gain a sense of calm.”
(   Calm meditation, app, “Breath in Three Acts,” 4-6-26 )

*   *   * 

Department Of Powerful People Have The Privilege Of Ignorance
Sub-Department Of Reasons To Use The Calming Breath Tools

“It is an old truism that knowledge is power. The inverse — that power is often ignorance — is rarely discussed.
The powerful swathe themselves in obliviousness in order to avoid the pain of others and their own relationship to that pain. There’s a large category of acts hidden from people with standing: the more you are, the less you know….”
( excerpt, Rebecca Solnit, “Nobody Knows,” Harpers Magazine )

 

 

A few days ago, when moiself  ran across Rebecca Solnit‘s above cited article, I was reminded of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor’s recent and right-on critique of her colleagues’ obliviousness to the realities in daily lives of non-one-percenters such as themselves.

( excerpts, my emphases/additions, “Supreme Court’s Sotomayor slams colleague Kavanaugh for ICE ruling,”  USA Today, 4-9-26 ):

“Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took a swipe at fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh… for his recent opinion in an immigration case….

Sotomayor spoke about the court’s divided decision in September 2025 that allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration-related stops….

Over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices, including Sotomayor’s, the court blocked a lower court ruling that said federal agents need to have reasonable suspicion that the person they’re questioning is in the country illegally….   [1]

‘I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,’ Sotomayor said, referencing Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion…. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.’

Sotomayor added, ‘Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,’ she said of those detained. ‘And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.’ ….

In his opinion for the court, Kavanaugh lied  blew smoke out of his prep school Ivy League ass  made up crap about something he knows nothing about said that legal residents’ encounters with immigration agents are ‘typically brief,’ and impacted individuals ‘promptly go free.’

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of New Great Term From A Book I Might Read

*Might read,* as in, Get in line with the 158 books ahead of you on my list.  But, as is often the case with my reading list, the lastest, newest/shiny entry kicks the others to the rear.  Sigh.  There’s no fighting evolution.

 

 

Oh yes the term:  safetyism.  Before I even read the definition I suspected what it was;…moiself  knew it was a name for something I’d previously had no name for – a phenomenon that both alarmed and infuriated me when I saw it creeping into my children’s college experiences.    [2]

This term came from a book review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.  I’ll post my favorite excerpts of the review, with moiself’s  sincere apology for my boneheaded neglect to note where I saw the review and thus give proper attribution.   [3]

The Coddling of the … reviewer admitted being skeptical about a book whose title could have heralded a tirade from middle-aged professors about how “today’s students are too soft and whiny.”   Instead, the reviewer noted, the book’s authors point out the disturbing data of what is happening on college campuses:  the rise of trigger warnings, safe spaces, disinvited speakers, student protests shutting down debate – linked with the dramatic and documented rise in anxiety and depression among young people. The book does not blame young people for these particular problems; rather, it lays responsibility on the bad ideas that youth are being taught by well-meaning adults.

 

 

As someone even wiser than moiself    [4]  wrote,

“…despite their theoretical benefits, protected educational experiences [safe spaces]  often fail to instill the most important attributes of a liberal education: critical thinking, persuasive argumentation, close reading, and cultural understanding. Indeed, students’ desire for safe spaces can limit their ability to traverse the real world—where strong disagreements and challenging experiences are part of life….  I know my campus is not a protective bubble that can shield students from reality. Rather, it’s a microcosm of the real world—and I’m not doing my job as an educator if I perpetuate the illusion of safety at the expense of challenging students’ ideas and beliefs.

As a Black man who teaches Shakespeare at a predominantly white institution, I realized years ago that the classroom can never be a safe space. When I teach Othello, a tragedy replete with anti-Black racism and misogyny, am I safe from silent criticisms that I’m an assimilated Black person with a ‘white voice’ teaching a white author? If there is only one Black female student in the class, is she safe? Rather than asking a non-Black colleague to teach the play for me, I lean into discomfort and use it to my pedagogical advantage. I carefully address whatever arises from the class’s collective exposure to the text and its racist moments, because that is my job as a professor.

In my classroom, I eschew safe space rhetoric—such as the truism that all opinions are equally valid—in favor of a pedagogical practice I call ‘productive discomfort.’ This practice leans into difficult discourses on a variety of contentious topics and fearlessly engages students’ personal backgrounds, identities, and experiences. It uses the learning process to expand the boundaries of students’ comfort zones by challenging their existing assumptions and biases.”

(  excerpt, “Discomfort Is the Point: Why ‘safe spaces’ do a disservice to students,” by David Sterling Brown, AAC&U, Winter 2024 )

 

“Education should disrupt the status quo and promote critical thinking.”

 

Yet again, I digress.

What follows are excerpts from the The Coddling of the American Mind review, with my emphases. I have not yet read the book; thus, my emphases of the reviewer’s statements mark *my* concerns – ones I’ve amassed over the past decade, from my offsprings’ experiences as well as from my own readings and observations.  One example: although content/trigger warnings and attempts to establish colleges as safe spaces where students are promised refuge from being “offended” may feel like a kindness in the moment, IMO these policies impinge on free speech, suppress open discussion of complex issues, throttle academic and intellectual diversity, and ultimately (and perhaps most importantly) hinder young people in building resilience.

“Lukianoff and Haidt [the books’ two authors] are not conservatives….both lean left politically. That matters, because this book is not a right-wing attack on campus culture. It’s a liberal critique of things that have gone wrong inside liberal spaces….

The central argument is simple: three bad ideas have spread through American universities (and increasingly through K-12 schools, workplaces, and families). These ideas sound good on the surface. But they are toxic. They make students more anxious, more depressed, and less prepared for adult life.

The three bad ideas are:

  1. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.’  This is the opposite of the old saying. It teaches that discomfort, emotional pain, and offense are dangerous. So, we must protect people from them. The problem is that avoidance makes anxiety worse, not better. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety, teaches the exact opposite: you have to face your fears to overcome them.

  2. ‘Always trust your feelings.’  This sounds empowering. But your feelings are not always reliable guides to reality. Anxiety tells you there’s a threat when there isn’t. Anger can be based on a misinterpretation. If you always trust your feelings without questioning them, you become a prisoner of your own emotional reactions.
  1. ‘Life is a battle between good people and evil people.’  This is the us-versus-them mindset. It divides the world into oppressors and victims. It leaves no room for nuance, context, or good-faith disagreement. And it makes every conflict into a moral crusade where compromise is betrayal….

Here are four things the reviewer learned from the book ( again, excerpts from the review, my emphases ):

“1. Safetyism is not the same as safety.

The authors coin the term “safetyism” to describe a culture where emotional safety is treated as more important than intellectual freedom. Actual safety protects you from physical harm. Safetyism protects you from ideas that might make you uncomfortable. The problem is that you can’t learn in a discomfort-free environment. Learning requires challenge.

2. The rise in anxiety and depression is real and alarming.   [5]

3. Antifragility is a real thing.

The book borrows Nassim Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragile’ things    [6]  that get stronger when they’re stressed (e.g. bones, muscles, immune systems) Minds can be antifragile too. But only if they’re exposed to manageable challenges. Protecting kids from every stressor makes them fragile, not safe.

 

 

4. You can be compassionate and still allow discomfort.

One of the book’s most important distinctions. Compassion does not mean removing every obstacle. Sometimes compassion means letting someone struggle, fail, and figure it out.

The book ends with a line that has stuck with me:
‘Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.’

That’s it. That’s the whole argument. We have been so focused on smoothing the road, removing every bump, every uncomfortable idea, every moment of potential distress, that we forgot to prepare the child. And now we have a generation that is more anxious, more depressed, and less resilient than any in recent memory.”

 

I’ll drink to that.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember that discomfort is the point of learning;
May you call out mind-coddling when you see it;
May you always have room for nuance, context, and good-faith disagreement;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Other than what they’re doing now, which is blatant racial profiling.

[2] I don’t know if it went as far back as high school – I don’t recall K or Belle mentioning “safe spaces” or “trigger/content warnings” then –  but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was already there.

[3] I copied/wrote down portions, so it must have been online…Facebook?  One of my many newspaper online subscriptions? ACVATTWAFNB  (All Cat Videos All The Time With A Few News Breaks)?

[4] Gasp – they exist.  By the thousands…..

[5] Most of us have heard about the skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression; the book presents data linking this to social media, the decline of free play, and the rise of safetyism.

[6] Nassim Taleb is a Lebanese-American author, professor, mathematician.  His book cited here is  Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,

[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 Healthy Skepticism I’m Not Having Trouble Applying

April 10, 2026

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life) , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Healthy Skepticism I’m Not Having Trouble Applying

Department Of But First, Set Aside The Skepticism For:
More Proof That Everything Circles Around

Dateline: Tuesday 4:29p, reading a blurb in The Week magazine’s “guide to what’s worth watching.” I come upon a blurb that makes me shriek with joy, and search my blog history for the story I know is there.  Here, from 10-27-17 (   The Studio I’m Not Touring ), is an excerpt of my relating a Parnell family story to my family

Remember the story I’ve told you, when I was in grade school, and one night at the dinner table my dad was teasing my mom about her name….

For the benefit of those not related to me or who haven’t heard the story,   [1]  a wee bit o’ background info: my mother’s birth surname was Hole.   [2]  Yes,  Hole.  I sometimes teased her, about why her own mother didn’t keep her surname Moran but instead was willing to take on her husband’s…unique…family name: It really must have been love, or desperation….

Yeah, so, the story.  At the family dinner table, occupied as per usual by my parents and their four children (on this particular night oh-so-many years ago, my older sister, younger sister and I were all in grade school, and our brother was an infant):

After my father’s customary  So, tell me about your day? query, we dove into yet another round of thematic banter. Our family dinner table dialogues tended to focus on one subject, which was never (or rarely) intentional or pre-planned, but rather tangential from something which had happened to one of the Parnell siblings  [3]   at school. On that evening, I shared a story about a kid who had been teased on the playground about his name: the combination of his first name and last name made for some tease-worthy rhyme schemes.   [4]

Marion Parnell said she felt sorry for the poor boy. Growing up with her particular last name, she knew exactly how he felt:

“My father was always telling my sisters and I how, in Norway, Hole was a respectable, upper class, landowners’ name. I lost track of how many times he told us we should be proud of our name. He just couldn’t understand how it was for us, because in America, it was just HOLE.  Oh, I heard it all the time, the jokes: ‘Look, here comes Marion Hole, hole-in-the-ground…don’t fall into a hole!’ “

(I had also lost count of how many times I’d heard about Hole-is-a-proud-Norwegian-name assurances, and had come to think that our maternal grandfather had made that up to make our mother feel better.  I’d never heard of anyone, of any ethnic background, with that name.)

 

Still with me? You deserve The Order of the Pretty Purple Toe ® award.

 

My mother took little comfort from me telling her that her peers had been pretty lame in the joke department:  ” ‘Marion Hole-in-the-ground’? I can think of a lot worse things to do with a name like…”

Chester Parnell jumped in, to save me from embarrassing my mother. Or so I thought.

“Well, Robbie Doll, you know what your mom’s middle name is?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Alberta?”

“That’s right,” Chet nodded enthusiastically. “But you know, she was so beautiful, I never had any second thoughts about marrying an  A. Hole.”

This produced shrieks of delight from the three Parnell daughters – first from me (my shriek decibel count was boosted by my pride in being the first one to “get it”), followed a few seconds later by my older sister, and then by my younger sister, who probably didn’t get the reference but knew something hilarious must have been said by the way her older sisters and father were reacting.

Mom had that tense/amused, try-to-be-a-good-sport look on her face.  Dad gazed across the table at her with impish affection – I knew something even better was coming up.

Chester B. Parnell: “Tell them about your cousin.”

Marion A. Hole Parnell (baring her teeth): “I don’t want to tell them about my cousin.”

Chet:  “Tell them about your cousin. What was his name?”

Marion: (muttering) “His name was Harry.”

Chet: “And it wasn’t a nickname – his real name wasn’t Harold? And he didn’t have a middle name – just a first and last name?”

Marion: “That’s right.”

Mom, of course, knew where this was heading. She tried to act as if she were miffed, but I could see the corners of her mouth beginning to twitch.

Chet: “And so his name was…?”

Marion (deep breath): “Harry Hole.”

Professional stand-up comics would kill to get an audience response akin to that which erupted that evening, in the smallest of venues, the Parnell kitchen dining nook.

*   *   *

Back to the present; specifically, Tuesday, when moiself  comes across the blurb in The Week magazine and shrieks aloud, My mom’s cousin!!

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Post Easter Reflections

It’s the week after the weekend of the most holy Christian festival that ironically   [5]  has the most un-Christian name.  What we call Easter, as with most Christian holidays, consists in large part of the ancient rites and myths of paganism and other spiritualities which were incorporated into the Christian myths  (see this Longest Blog Footnote So Far ® for details, should that float your boat.  [6]  )

Three years ago, around this time of year, this was included in my blog:

Department Of Uh, Since You’ve Asked, That Would Be, “No”

Last Sunday a FBF (Facebook Friend) began her post thusly:

Happy Easter, everyone! Can I share what it means to me?

FBF went on to – surprise! – offer her testimony for Jesus, without waiting for an answer to her question.

 

 

Moiself   remembered that post on Monday, when I saw a different post on social media – a post which, if I had a different relationship with that FBF, I would forward to her, and possibly even ask for her reaction/opinion.   

For my Christian readers, family and friends – and yessirreeebobsurprise! I do have them –  I assume they call themselves Christian because they go to a Christian church and/or believe they have committed to “follow Jesus.”

Having been raised in that background, it has always – and especially around this time of year – been a source of forehead-bonking wonder to moiself  that there seems to be little understanding by Christians that their Jesus is never quoted in their scriptures as saying,  “Oh, yeah, along with the teachings and good deed admonitions I’m leaving y’all with, here’s the most important thing: please remember to start a new religion, and name it after me.”

Former Christian evangelical divinity student Jim Palmer’s new ministry seems to be to “minister” to former literalists such as himself ( from Palmer’s  writings moiself  has seen so far, I gather Palmer would still claim to follow [some]  words/example of Jesus, but not Christianity).  For the sake of relative brevity, moiself  will assume that most Christians accept their Biblical scriptures as reliable.  [7]  It is to those Christians that I’d like to direct to one of Palmer’s writings, which contain some abundant food for thought (an entire life’s rations, I’d say) about how Christianity ≠ Jesus ≠  Christianity:   

It still surprises people who haven’t looked closely that Jesus and Christianity are not the same thing. Not even close. Jesus was not a Christian. He didn’t start Christianity. He didn’t write a creed, build an institution, or outline a belief system that would later dominate empires. You can’t blame Christian nationalism on Jesus. You can’t even cleanly blame Christianity on him. What exists today under his name is something that formed after him, around him, and in many ways, in spite of him.

What we call Christianity is largely shaped by the Apostle Paul and later by the political machinery of the early church. Most of the New Testament isn’t Jesus talking, it’s Paul interpreting. Then you have centuries of councils, debates, and power plays where theology gets hammered into place by people trying to stabilize a movement that was never meant to be stabilized. Read the creeds. They are packed with metaphysical claims about Jesus, yet strangely quiet about the actual things he taught. It’s a lot of doctrine, very little Jesus.

Then Constantine shows up and everything shifts. After the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Christianity goes from a grassroots, disruptive movement to a state-sanctioned tool. Legalized, institutionalized, and eventually weaponized. What began as something subversive becomes something that props up empires. By the time you get to Nicaea, Jesus is being defined in ways that would likely leave him scratching his head. The question isn’t just who Jesus was. It’s who needed him to be what they said he was.

Christianity didn’t just elevate Jesus. It insulated people from him. Turning him into God conveniently removes the pressure of actually following him. If he’s divine in a way you can never be, then you don’t have to wrestle with his humanity or your own. You can worship instead of embody. You can believe instead of live. It’s a brilliant move if your goal is control. Not so great if your goal is transformation.

Strip away the layers of theology, politics, and institutional spin, and you find something far more dangerous than what Christianity preserved. Jesus wasn’t executed for starting a religion. He was executed for disrupting one. He challenged the alliance between religious authority and political power, and he did it without holding any official position himself. That’s what made him dangerous. He didn’t oppose the system by building a rival system. He made the existing one look unnecessary.

The Romans didn’t crucify nobodies. Jesus mattered. Not because he held power, but because he exposed it. His message stirred hope, and hope is not harmless. Hope destabilizes systems that rely on resignation. It wakes people up. It makes them harder to control. Jesus told people to stop outsourcing their authority, to stop deferring to religious gatekeepers, and to trust what was alive and true within themselves. That’s not religion. That’s a direct threat to anyone who benefits from people staying dependent.

Every time Jesus spoke, he was pulling another block out of the structure holding everything in place. He didn’t need an army. He didn’t need a platform. His clarity did the damage. He revealed that the system people thought they needed wasn’t necessary in the way they had been told. And once people start to see that, the whole thing begins to wobble.

What’s ironic is that the religion built in his name ended up doing the opposite of what he did. It rebuilt the very structures he exposed. It reintroduced authority, hierarchy, and dependency, then stamped his name on it for legitimacy. And now, two thousand years later, Jesus is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Talked about endlessly, but rarely recognized.

Jesus might be the most famous missing person in history. Not because he disappeared, but because the institution built around him made sure you wouldn’t find him.

(excerpts, my emphases, Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy  )

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [8]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [9]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago April to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 4-10-25 ( The Bird I’m Not Calling  ).

Department of Seasonal Poor Taste

Content warning:  Well, duh.

My (belated) Easter sex joke:

He is risen!
He is risen, indeed!  [10]

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“I HAVE AN EASTER challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born.

Believers should eagerly take up this challenge, since without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. Paul wrote, ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain…. ‘ (I Corinthians 15:14-15)

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul’s tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened….”

 

 

Protestants and Catholics seem to have no trouble applying healthy skepticism to the miracles of Islam, or to the ‘historical’ visit between Joseph Smith and the angel Moroni. Why should Christians treat their own outrageous claims any differently?…

[Thomas] Paine points out that everything in the bible is hearsay. For example, the message at the tomb (if it happened at all) took this path, at minimum, before it got to our eyes: God, angel(s), Mary, disciples, Gospel writers, copyists, translators. (The Gospels are all anonymous and we have no original versions.)

But first things first: Christians, either tell me exactly what happened on Easter Sunday, or let’s leave the Jesus myth buried next to Eastre (Ishtar, Astarte), the pagan Goddess of Spring after whom your holiday was named.

( Excerpts, Leave No Stone Unturned: an Easter Challenge for Christians
Freethought Today, by Dan Barker )

 

Then, like now, you’d think somebody at the time would have noticed zombies walking around….

*   *   *

May you enjoy the rites of spring, no matter what natural processes and/or mythical beings you attribute them to;
May you apply a healthy skepticism to all supernatural claims;
May you always notice when zombies are walking around;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The latter group would not include anyone within a twenty mile radius of my dining table.

[2] Which is why, once my feminist worldview began to develop, I told her it was completely understandable that she never even considering retaining her birth name upon marriage

[3] Which translates into, usually moiself . Things were always happening to moiself .

[4] And although I remember with vivid clarity the conversation that ensued from me sharing that story about the kid being teased re his name, to this day I cannot recall what the kid’s name was – something along the lines of Bart Katz, which of course got turned into Barfing Cats or Fart Cats or the like.

[5] Or fittingly, according to your POV.

[6] When early Christian missionaries encountered the tribes of the north, they attempted to convert them to Christianity and, of course, alter their existing religious observations.  They did so in a clandestine manner, as suggested by church authorities and finally “officialized” in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory I issued an edict to his missionaries regarding the customs of peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than banish native customs and beliefs, the pope had his missionaries incorporate them (e.g., if people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, Greg I advised missionaries to consecrate the tree to Christ).

 

Early Christians holy day observances coincided with celebrations that already existed.  And as with almost all “Christian” holidays, Easter was originally a festival of another religion, and derives from a variety of pagan celebrations.  It made sense to Christians to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian celebration.   Still, every Easter, many Christian parents are put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain to the kiddies why the torture, execution, and supposed resurrection of Jesus is celebrated with colored eggs and cute widdle bunnies.  Uncomfortable, in that most adult Christians have only a vague clue about the connection.  Some grant that Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover celebration.  However, seeing as how Yahweh didn’t send a plague of egg-hiding rabbits into Egypt, the link seems rather feeble.

 

The name of the holiday, “Easter,” is the name of a pagan goddess, and was identified as the source of the holiday’s name by “The Venerable Bede” (672-735 CE), a Christian theologian (in his book De Ratione Temporum.) The name “Easter” has many variations (Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Ester, Eastra, Eastur, Austron, etc.) but all of these come from the same Roman deity, the goddess of the dawn, named “Eos” or “Easter.”

 

[7]  The refutations of that assumption, along with the problems which come from assuming such veracity and/or the reliability of scriptural sources, are just a google search away.

[8] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[10] For those not familiar with churchy stuff, this is the traditional Paschal greeting.

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

The Matchmaker I’m Not Playing

April 3, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Matchmaker I’m Not Playing

 

Department Of Getting All Zen On Y’all’s Asses

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something,
loves something,
and has lost something.

 

And everyone feels better after looking at a picture of a baby sloth wearing pjs.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Theory Of Let Them

I’m not sure if this can – or should – apply to politics in the wider sense; e.g., when it comes to the depredations of The Mandarin Turd Führer and company, we don’t just want to let them.  But in one’s personal dealings, I have found this to be helpful.

 

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of Dude Doesn’t Waste Time
Getting Down To Brass Tacks   [1]

Sub-Department Of Things I Learned From The Older   [2]   Man  Who
Approached Me As I Was Waiting For The Door To Zumba Class To Open

Dateline:  Monday; circa 10:55 am.  An affable, petite, elderly man,   [3]  whose appearance and accent indicated he came from a culture different from mine, approached me and wished me a good morning.  He looked familiar; I’d seen him in class at least once.  Thus, after I returned his greeting, I passed on the information a staff member had given me when I first entered the Rec Center: the Zumba class was going to start a few minutes late, as another group was using the facility.

He nodded, said he’d just come from another Zumba class at Hidden Creek (another Hillsboro Parks & Rec facility), and asked if I was married.

The casual ease with which he spoke his question – which I found to be both a straightforward query and a non-sequitur, given the circumstances – took me by surprise…but not in a threatening way.

“Yes,” I said, “I am married.”

He looked at my left hand, his eyes widening and sparkling with mischievous disbelief when he beheld the modest band on my ring finger (MH and I currently choose to wear plain but colorful silicon bands, which, I have been told, “…don’t look like *real* wedding rings” ).

 

 

“You are married?” he asked again.  I laughed, repeated my marital status affirmation, and decided to return the straightforward-ness: “I take it you are not married, and are looking to meet someone?”

He seemed pleased by my supposition.  Yes, he enthused, he is looking to meet a woman for dating!   He reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved a piece of paper that had his name and phone number on it, and asked me if I would be so kind to take down the information and pass it along to any women I know who might also be looking for companionship.

Moiself  was feeling generous, and said that I would.  As I reached for my phone to take a picture of the paper, I asked if he was using his family for matchmaking ( a common practice in his culture ).  He said he’d decided not to go that route.  I asked him what he sought in a date, and what should I tell prospective dating partners about him?  He told me…

*  He is 78 years old, a retired chemical engineer originally from ____ (another country);

*  He was married for 43 years, has been widowed several years;

*  He frequently visits his daughter, who lives nearby;

*  He doesn’t ask his daughter to “fix him up” because she isn’t happy about him wanting to date;

*  He has looked at online dating apps but is not impressed by them (and he doesn’t do social media);

*  The age of the woman doesn’t matter to him;

*  He offers companionship, kindness, and affection, and seeks the same;

*  He has found that there are two things which people think are important to control in their life:  their diet and their religion.  But he wants people to know that he doesn’t care “about any of that;”

*  “Everyone” at the Hillsboro Recreation centers knows him (he said that after an employee passed by and greeted him by name), because he is so friendly;

* He is open to meeting a woman from any background, *but* not from ____  (his home country).  This is for several reasons, including the “fact” (as he put it)  that after they (women from his culture) are widowed, they don’t look to date or remarry; rather, they join their children’s families and spend their time looking after their grandchildren.

 

I guess I won’t be passing his number on to June.

 

He asked me to stress that he is monogamous (“Not like many other men who,” he said, “flip around”  [4]  ), and that he goes to exercise classes and takes care of himself, “even though with age…” he glanced down, patted his protruding belly, and chuckled.  He then complimented me – “And you obviously take care of yourself” – and touched my upper arm, very lightly and quickly squeezing my bicep.  It was a gesture I might have found insulting and/or icky from someone else, but from him, it was almost…sweet?  Is that ageist, or patronizing of me?  

I found him wistfully charming; not creepy or threatening, and there was an air of both optimism and loneliness about him.  As the Zumba classroom door opened I said something positive about networking ( “Well, that’s how you do it – let others know you’re looking” ) and wished him well in his search.  We shook hands and he bid me farewell.  It turned out he was not going to class.  It also turned out (surprise!  As in, not) “He does that to every woman,” I heard from another female class member, after she asked about the bemused look on my face and I told her about my gentleman solicitor.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes I Feel Like Moiself  Should Wear
A Black Arm Band For My Country

Context: recently messaging a friend from high school, who has lived now for decades overseas, about The State Of Things In My (and formerly, his) Country ® .  My friend’s past experiences include being in the US military and working in health care with mentally ill –  life experiences which, along with being bicultural and multilingual and an expat ( a stranger in a strange land which he has now made his own) – give him a keen and unique perspective on what he sees going on in his native land.   His pithy articulation shredded my heart.  

“Do I miss my homeland?  No, not really, but I do mourn for it.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received

While listening to the rebroadcast of the No Stupid Questions podcast, What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received   [5]  moiself  didn’t immediately come up with my alternative (as in, Ah, yes, and the best advice I ever received was….”  Instead, I was intrigued by how many possible answers there might be to that question, perhaps as many different pieces of advice as there are advice givers, and seekers.

Podcast host Angela Duckworth:
“The first thing that leaps to mind is I was about 19 or 20 years old. There was a professor named Kay Merseth, who I’m still in touch with. And I remember being unhappy and going to Kay for advice. I can’t exactly remember whether it was another romantic breakup…or more that I was struggling with a career decision. Like: should I go into education, which I really wanted to do, but my dad wouldn’t speak to me after that, or should I become a doctor like he does want me to.

And I remember she said this: ‘Angela, it sounds to me like you really want to make the right decision, the best decision.’ And I nodded. And she said, ‘But life’s not like that. Life is a story. And your job is not to tell the ‘right’ story or even the best story. It’s just to tell a story that you can be proud of.’ And I went away from that day thinking, ‘What the hell did Kay mean? This is too deep for me.’

But I have actually used that advice when I talk to undergraduates in my own course. Now they’re the 19 or 20-year-old, and I’m the professor. And I do think the reason why Kay gave that advice to me — and why I pass it along — is that I think I was a little bit paralyzed by, like, ‘What’s the absolutely correct or best decision?’ And we can’t know. I mean, life is just mostly uncertainty. All we can do is act in a way where we can use the intuition we have. There are many, many paths in life, and who knows how this is going to turn out? But am I doing something that — at the end of the story, will I look back and say, ‘I’m proud of that?’

( Excerpt; my emphases,  No Stupid Questions podcast,
What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received ),

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“No myths need to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No person god needs to be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need to be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.”

( Neuroscientist, philosopher, meditation teacher, podcast host, author Sam Harris,
excerpt from The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And The Future Of Reason )

 

*   *   *

May you discern when or when not to just  Let Them;
May we do more than wear a black armband for our country;
May your life be the best advice someone else has ever received;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Whence that phrase, which means getting down to the basics or serious business?  And can the tacks-one-is-getting-down-to be of an alloy other than brass?  Getting down to pewter?  Bronze?  Sterling silver?

[2] As in, older than moiself.

[3] Not stooped with age; he had good posture but couldn’t have been more than 5’2″ (and even smaller, were he barefooted).

[4] I think he meant, flit around?

[5] originally aired 8-29-21

[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