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The Common Ground I’m Not Forging

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Department Of This Is Beyond Depressing
Sub-Department Of Are We Abetting A Nation Of Crybaby Snitches?

“As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items….
Everything was ready, but Wood didn’t leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.

Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me,’ a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.

The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students ‘feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress’ on account of their race.”

( excerpted from, “Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?: Mary Wood’s school reprimanded her for teaching a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now she hopes her bond with students can survive South Carolina’s new laws.”
By Hannah Natanson, The Washington Post, 9-18-23 )

 

 

I read Between the World and Me.  I think every American should read Between the World and Me.  I wish that a book like Between the World and Me had been published when I was in my American History and social studies classes in high school, and if it had been, I know we would have been able to read and discuss it.

Gaaaawwwwd, it makes me feel old, to read about this shameful South Carolina policy.  Old in a different way than the usual, “In my day…” story, which is often the tag line for a Good Old Days ®  conservative cultural sentiment.

Why does it seem as if we are going backwards?   [1]  Moiself  was able to benefit from so many high school classroom topics and discussions that some people, apparently, would find “controversial” (read: threatening) today, but that which we students managed to deal with.  Isn’t that the point of education?

 

 

I remember when a couple of friends of mine, who were taking the Logic class given by one of our high school’s most respected teachers, told me about how they were frustrated after a classroom discussion wherein a student brought up the topic of religion: this student thought that some idea(s) presented in the class threatened his religion in particular and/or dismissed the idea of taking something “on faith” in general, and wanted the class to discuss it.  Being a class on logic, i.e., a class on learning to employ and evaluate different kinds of arguments   [2]   and learning how to recognize good or bad arguments, students who made illogical and or unsubstantiated claims re their religion were challenged, and the mistakes in their arguments and claims were pointed out to them, by both the teacher *and* by fellow students.

( I sooooooooo wanted to be in that class!   [3] )

I listened to my friends’ recounting of the class’s discussion; I pointed out where I thought the other students and teachers had made excellent points, and gave my friends the, “Hey, chin up – this is good for you!” support.  My friends accepted my feedback – one of them had to pout for a minute, as she was initially put out by the fact that I didn’t just jump to her defense, no matter what, but she was thoughtful and gracious about it.

And that was that.

It never occurred them to run whining to their parents like a tantruming toddler:

“Mommy, Daddy, that mean Mr. Guggenheim made me feel uncomfortable!
My teacher corrected me when I made false assertions
and used faulty reasoning!
My teacher introduced me to new ideas!
My teacher attempted to teach!
WAAAAAAHHHHHH! “

 

 

What’s with students – in an *Advanced Placement* class –  turning into narcs?  WTF  ?!?!?!  Coate’s book is just the kind of thought-provoking material “advanced” students should be reading and discussing.

This is yet another sad example of the wimping out by and dumbing down of the American student, and it is happening on all sides of the cultural and political spectrum.  Those college students who essentially put their hands over their ears and assume the nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah I can’t hear you posture, as they bleat, “We feel threatened! We need safe spaces in order to learn!” while they shout down and/or attempt to censor professors and guest speakers with whom they disagree?  Same coin; opposite side.

And what kind of parents would report a teacher for…..arrrrghhh.  My own parents were conservative, both with regards to politics and religion, but it never would have occurred to them   [4]   to presume to tell my teachers what and how to teach.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Don’t Give A Rat’s Ass About What Percentage Of Tag Fees Go Toward So-Called “Conservation Efforts,”
I Wish All Hunters Would Hunt Each Other And Leave Other Creatures Alone

Yet another misguided attempt at forging common ground. Because, yeah, what can unite us human beings – despite our differences in skin color, origin, religion, ethnicity, etc. –  is the All-American ® desire to kill other living beings for the sheer, bloodthirsty fun of it sport.

“Hunters of Color, founded in Corvallis in 2020…is a nonprofit intent on diversifying the outdoors, specifically hunting. The organization has flourished since its inception, with ambassadors in Texas, Washington, New Mexico and many more states. It offers a mentorship program, hands-on restoration opportunities and anti-racist education services. The organization aims to confront and remove barriers for people of color interested in hunting.”
( excerpt from “The outdoors are for everyone:
Oregon nonprofit aims to diversify hunting,” Oregonlive.com )

 

 

*   *   *

The Podcast I’m Looking Forward To
(Sub-Department Of Note To Moiself:
Time To Stop Complaining And Appreciate Something)

Moiself  has a long line of podcast episodes in my listening queue, but the one going to the top of the list will be the one that was previewed on the last Clear + Vivid podcast I listened to, which was C+V host Alan Alda’s interview with Maya Shankar. Shankar, a gifted violinist, had her hard work and dreams smashed by an injury which ended her dream of a musical career.  Yet it was the end of that dream, and that career, which led Shankar down another path: to a PhD in neuroscience…which led her to being appointed to science advisory posts with both the Obama administration and the United Nations.

As if that episode wasn’t interesting enough (and it was), here was the teaser for the next C+V episode, featuring Matt Walker, the “…go-to expert on everything to do with sleep, from how it keeps both mind and body healthy to why we dream.

(Walker speaking; my emphases):
“I often think of dream sleep as a Google search gone wrong.  Let’s say that I type into Google, ‘Alan Alda,’ and the first page is all of your…accomplishments, but then I go to page twenty, it’s about a field hockey game in Utah, and I think, ‘Hang on a second, that’s not…’  but if I read it and I look, there’s a very distant, very non-obvious association.  When you start to collide things together that shouldn’t normally go together, it sounds like the biological basis of creativity.
And no wonder, as a consequence, no one has ever told you, ‘Alan, you should really stay awake on a problem.’

 

 

How can I not resist a preview like that?

Sometimes I feel as if Alda and his C+V staff write their podcast episode previews for an audience of one: moiself.  The podcast’s focus is on communication; host Alda has a passion for the subject, both as an actor and as a lifelong science devotee (Alda hosted Scientific American Frontiers, and founded Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.)

Here is the mission statement for C+V:

“Learn to connect better with others in every area of your life. Immerse yourself in spirited conversations with people who know how hard it is, and yet how good it feels, to really connect with other people – whether it’s one person, an audience or a whole country.
You’ll know many of the people in these conversations – they are luminaries in our culture. Some you may not know. But what links them all is their powerful ability to relate and communicate. It’s something we need now more than ever.”

Alda’s guests include many scientists, but not exclusively.  He interviews people from across the spectrum of professions, including music and art.  One of his most memorable guests (IMO) was Paul McCartney.  Alda spoke with McCartney about communicating through music and the process of composing a song.  Some of Paul’s songs he crafted deliberatly:  When Paul was struggling with his grief over John Lennon’s death, Paul’s late wife Linda, knowing music was the vehicle through which her husband dealt with emotional issues, suggested he write about his feelings for his childhood friend and former Beatles bandmate…and that prompt resulted in McCartney’s heartfelt song, Here Today.  [5]    Other times, McCartney noted, although he would still apply his musical skill and experience in fine-tuning a song, the original idea for a song appeared organically, or out-of-the blue, as when he awoke one morning with the complete melody for Yesterday in his head, after having “composed” it in a dream.    [6]

Here are just a few of the guests and subject titles of recent C+V podcasts. 

* Adam Mastroianni: Why You So Often Get It Wrong
* Nancy Kanwisher: Your Brain is a Swiss Army Knife
* Dan Levitt: You Are Stardust. Really.
* Adam Gopnik: The Joy of Getting Good at Something Hard
*  Brenna Hassett: Why We Are Weird

So, if you haven’t already…check it out!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Reasons To Read Your Junk Mail

Because you may just stumble upon gems like this:

Robyn, you’re invited to a FREE Seminar and Meal!
Presented by
SMART CREMATION – your local pre-planning experts.

*Smart* cremation.  As opposed to, uh, foolish or stupid cremation, where you, like, stumble into the crematorium chamber when you’re not really dead yet?

Also head-scratch worthy: the invitation’s envelope was addressed to, “The Robyn Parnell Family.”  Hmm.  Does my family have plans for me, to which I am not privy?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you not “stay awake on it” when contemplating your next challenge;
May you occasionally, actually, read your junk mail;
May you creatively “collide things which shouldn’t go together”;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Perhaps because WE ARE.

[2] Such as categorical syllogistic logic, propositional logic, predicate logic….

[3] But, alas, I was never able to fit it into my schedule, which was weighed down with everything else I either wanted to or had to take, and the class was offered only once a semester, at one time of the day.

[4] And I did ask them about it – about what they would do in similar circumstances –  years ago.  This was when I’d read an article about students complaining to parents about a teacher teaching something that the student didn’t like – something which was not factually incorrect, or presented in a rude or condescending or nasty way, but a mere fact, which made the student (translate: a fact which their parents had told them was not a fact, as in something about religion and/or the civil War) uncomfortable.

[5] from the album, Tug of War

[6] The song, with over 1600 cover versions, is the most covered song in music history.

[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 Existential Concepts I’m Not Debating

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Department Of My Work Here Is Done
Exhibit A.9995

Can anything match the parental pride such as that experienced by moiself, when son K’s first reaction upon reading the name of the offender in the news article, Serial flasher gets long sentence for exposing himself… was, “It’s the role he was born to play.”

“Washington County Circuit Judge…handed down a sentence…to Michael G. Dick, who pleaded guilty to two counts of felony public indecency…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Spending Too Much Time Thinking About
An Existentially Inconsequential Concept.

As heard on a commercial for Saatva dog beds ( the ad was in a recent Hidden Brain podcast, “Be kind to Yourself “):

.”…these dogs beds are not your typical slabs of foam covered in polyester.  They are true inner spring mattresses that provide unparalleled back support and proper spine alignment for dogs of all sizes….”

I can’t remember if it was on an earlier HB episode or a different podcast where I also heard an ad for Saatva dog beds, in which it was claimed that a Saatva dog bed is the mattress “your dog deserves.”

This sterling example of the sentimentally manipulative capacity of marketing got me to wondering: How can a dog *deserve* a certain kind of dog bed?

 

 

deserve
transitive verb: to be worthy of : MERIT
(“deserves another chance”)
intransitive verb: to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital
( from Merriam-webster online dictionary )

I can understand a dog wanting something (a tummy rub) or needing something (a drink of water); I can understand a person wanting or needing something for their dog (a trip to the dog park; a leash).  I can understand a person rewarding their dog for a specific act – with the reward directly connected to the act so that the dog understands that it did what was asked of it (e.g., giving the dog a treat for obeying a command to sit or heel…), and thus you can say the dog “earned” or merited the treat.

But how does a dog merit a piece of furniture that will be given to it – *must* be given to it (it’s not like the dog can take its Mastercard and go to Petsmart) –  by its human?

 

 

I don’t know about that superlative.  A dog meriting a bed is perhaps not the greatest mystery.  But it does get me to wondering, about other mysteries of life and human behavior (this dog bed thing has everything to do with human motivations and almost nothing to do with dogs),  including….

 

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Department Of Existentially Consequential Concepts Which Deserve All The Time In The World To Contemplate…
Despite My Doing So Not Making A Damn Bit Of Difference

Sub-Department Of I Blame Vladimir Putin,
For Everything…

…including the fact that beloved friends are going through a grueling Something which has afflicted them, for reasons unrelated to them personally and/or anything they may have done.  Like Putin vis-à-vis the Ukrainians, there is this Something out there which is trying to torment and kill them, for no rational reason.

The cosmos is full of beauty and wonder and misfortune and pain, all of it unevenly and randomly distributed.  Understanding this phenomenon is the key to equanimity…along with being able to tell the truth in all circumstances.  Say, this is dreadful, when it is dreadful; cry when you have to and laugh when you can. 

 

 

Moiself  knows that disease organisms, like all primitive of life forms, just do what they do: try to survive and replicate.  Got it.  But, dammit it, you flaming asshole tumors, pretend for one nanosecond that you have sentience.  Get some self-awareness here:  if you kill the host, you die, too, HELLO !?!?!?.

We humanist/religion-free folk know that such afflictions are not personal: we know we’re not being punished when illness and injury occur, nor are we being rewarded when we somehow avoid or recover from the same calamities which afflict others.  Still, as human beings; we suffer when hurt.  At least we are spared the suffering from cognitive dissonance and the mental gymnastics that come with trying to live with and justify concepts such as karma and fate and believing the existence of deities which are supposedly all-powerful and thus *could* choose to alter the Something…but simply *don’t.* 

So, we can admit upfront that contending with lethal illnesses et al sucks, as in,
“This is massively, putridly, ginormously, donkey-dong sucking….”

 

“Hey! I thought you weren’t going to get personal?”

 

….even as we live in a world where, come yet another day, there will also be the mixture of the profound and the mundane to be appreciated, in, say, the sight of the morning dew sparkling on the araneus diadematus’s web, which she’s anchored between the raspberry bushes and the recycling bin. And neither phenomenon – the simple but stunning example of the splendor of the natural world, and the specific ordeal of the illness we battle in that same world – is one we either caused or merited.

 

 

The late great Roger Ebert, noted film critic and freethinker,   [1]    shared his thoughts about his then-imminent death in his blog post, Go Gentle Into That Good Night.  This was during a time when Ebert’s mental faculties were as sharp as ever despite his body having been ravaged by both his disease and the treatments for that disease.  His perspective is one that is shared by many humanist/religion-free thinkers.  It is a lovely meditation (excerpted here), the entirety of which is worth reading and rereading, no matter what your worldview is regarding your own mortality or that of a loved one. 

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear… I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris…

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Because I Was Trying To Avoid Something I Need To Work On,
And For Some Reason Had A Flash Back To This Topic

That topic, broadly speaking, would be co-worker relationships.  Most of us have had a combination of ups and downs in that category, but have you ever had a coworker for whom your mere presence was apparently so annoying that it motivated them to play a petty (but delightfully so) prank on you?

Last week my remembrance of one such “relationship” resulted in a FB post from moiself.  And now, my social media secret is revealed: the main reason for almost any story I post (or tell at the dinner table) is related to what inspires 5-year-olds to play doctor:  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.  I love to hear and read the stories of others, so I share one of mine, as a prompt.

 

 

My post:

“Okay, it’s another thinly disguised story prompt (I’ll show you mine if you show me yours): please share any similar stories you may have re a really poor relationship you had with a petty, nasty, bigoted, misogynist, and/or just plain stupid coworker, which led to an amusing incident.
Here’s mine: On my first day back on at second season of a summer job (Disneyland; The Hungry Bear Restaurant), one of the kitchen crew clicked the play button on a mini-cassette recorder he had in his pocket, and serenaded me with Elton John’s, ‘The Bitch is Back.’

And dammit, although I got comments, for the first time no one shared a similar story.    [2]

As you can imagine, this workplace incident didn’t happen out of nowhere.  A friend requested the backstory; and so:   [3]

 

 

At the end of my senior year in high school, anticipating the need to earn college tuition money, I began working weekends at Disneyland.  I obtained “seasonal” worker status, which was the status of the majority of my male and female coworkers with whom I shared summer shifts at  Disneyland’s Hungry Bear Restaurant (HBR).   [4]   Once we were hired by The Happiest Place on Earth®, if we seasonals worked the entire summer season and at least one other holiday season (winter or spring breaks; Thanksgiving…) we were guaranteed a job for the following summer. 

The serenader in question – moiself  will refer to him as Kid Rock  [5]  ( who wasn’t a thing then, but if he had been, I think my serenader would have been a *big* fan ).

Kid was a boor from the moment I met him.  His square-jawed face’s limited repertoire of expressions were all variations of a smirk, and he oozed dumb jock attitudes and mannerisms.  Moiself  initially experienced a wee bit o’ guilt for judging him at first glance, until my second, and third, and one hundred seventeenth glances and encounters (as well as my observations of his interactions with others) confirmed my stereotyping assessment astute perception of who and what he was.

With his male coworkers, Kid was constantly jockeying for position, ingratiating himself with his kitchen shift managers, and attempting metaphorical pissing matches with the other kitchen guys.  [6]   He considered himself to be above his peers (although they were all doing the same job, at the same pay scale), even as he courted their respect (or fear) for being a “player,” with an edgy (read: mean and stupid) sense of humor.  The nice guys in the kitchen crew (and there were several) earned Kid’s contempt, because being a nice guy meant being well thought of by the HBR females (we were “the girls,” of course).

 

“I can smell that creep from here.”

 

No surprise, Kid also had a binary way of relating to the HBR females: they were either objects of his sexual desire or not worthy of it.  His preferred mode of communication with female co-workers was a combination of peacock preening, barely-masked sexual come-ons, and furtive insults (aka, “jokes”).  He got giggles from some of the girls, but, as I observed, those girls seemed to be giggling to mask their unease, and trying to prove that they could “take a joke” and weren’t prudes.  If Kid’s thinly disguised sexual banter was rejected by a girl, he’d let it be known that he hadn’t really wanted her at all – he’d just been trying to make her feel better, because she was unattractive.  I saw him behave this way with *every* female at HBR, with the exception of one of the counter area managers, whose slight but noticeable physical disability effectively neutered her in his eyes.

And, as was typical of many guys of the time (even the not-so-loathsome ones), when Kid complained about his male coworkers he was able to do so using specific language re what bothered him about their actions:  they’d been slow on the grill, had been late to their shift, had burned a batch of onion rings, had neglected key steps in their closing shift, had acted too passively, or aggressively…..  Any complaints he had about a female coworker came under the cover-all of critiquing her very essence, with no particulars as to behavior:  “She’s just a bitch.”

 

 

Kid’s attempts at titillating braggadocio didn’t impress moiself  (SURPRISE !), and I limited our interactions as much as possible.  Whenever possible, I ignored him.  Therefore, of course (and, yay!), he had to announce to one and all that he didn’t find me appealing.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  It took me awhile to figure out the source of his irritation with moiself  because I didn’t spend much time considering it – which was, for him, the issue.  He seemed continually annoyed by my lack of interest in what he had to say, about anything.  

 

 

In Kid’s eyes, I had committed the worst sin possible for a female:  I’d indicated, not by saying so but by merely not engaging with him, that I had no interest in his opinion of me.  I did not wear his taunts and insults as a badge of honor (as did a couple of my bad ass, feminist HBR colleagues), I simply stopped hearing them.  I realized for the first time what it meant to hold someone beneath contempt.  Strong emotions, including contempt, require effort and time to maintain.  To moiself, Kid was just…macho flotsam.

I did not engage Kid in the repartee – playful, and with occasional double-entendre overtones –  that I did with the “nice guys” and my female colleagues. We were all mostly within three years of one another, age-wise; naturally, there was workplace banter and casual flirtation and good-natured kidding bordering on insults.  With regard to the latter I punched up, never down, with both male and female colleagues.  The few guys who harbored a nasty streak stayed clear of me, after one of them, the Assistant Shift “Chef,”   [7]   tested my limits on my first week on the job.  He did this with (what I later found out was) his standard routine with which he teased the new counter girls:

Assistant Shift Chef summoned me to the kitchen area, informing me that it was SOP to give counter girls a tour of the kitchen facility, even though they’d be working out front (later I was told that he always did this “tour” with others present, as having an audience was a key component of his routine.)  Under the pretense of wanting my opinion about a possible flaw in Disneyland’s chef’s apron design, which seemed to have pockets and a seam or something no one could quite figure out, he reached down, fingered the outline of his crotch, and ask Newby Counter Girl ® moiself, “Do you know what this is?”

I’d been informed re the HBR hierarchy on my first day at work.  Despite his title, Assistant Shift Chef had no authority over me (or any female HBR female), so I decided to go for it.

“Hmmm.” I assumed a wide stance, one hand on my hip and the other slowly stroking my chin in a gesture of solemn deliberation.  “Wait; don’t tell me, this is familiar…Oh!  I know!  It looks like it a penis, only smaller.”   [8]

Assistant Shift Chef guffawed heartily, as if he had collaborated with me on the joke.  Still, I noticed (and savored) the nanosecond of terror and humiliation which flashed across his eyes, just after my line sunk in and before his crew began to whoop it up.

Once again, I digress.

The first day I returned to HBG for my second summer season (after my freshman year of college), I was delighted to see that several of my favorite seasonal employees had also returned…oh yeah, and there was also the Kid.  Although, maybe he’d been there all year?  I can’t remember if Kid had been a year-round employee or was another seasonal worker (all of whom were college students – the idea of Kid in any institution of higher learning never occurred to moiself).

Anyway, Kid had obviously been alerted to my return.  He waited at the rear of the pack welcoming me back, and after the rest of us had exchanged greetings, he removed the mini cassette player from his pocket and pressed play.  This time, I was the one with the genuine smirk on my face.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Entertaining The Donations Dude

Dateline:  Monday; 1:30 pm-ish; Goodwill donations center.  The guy helping me unload the donations from my car engages me in small talk about the current mugginess and upcoming weather forecast.  I hand him a bag full of books; he points to a book at the top of the bag, whose title is something like, Staying Sane In An Irrational World.

“Well now, what’s that about?” he asks.

“Who knows,” moiself  shrugs.  “It’s a book of empty pages.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
( Christopher Hitchens,  God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything )

 

 

*   *   *

May your pets somehow obtain the furniture (you think) they deserve;
May the book of your life not be filled with empty pages;
May you live long enough to find out that which makes you happy;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Ebert, who grew up Catholic, chose not to define his religious beliefs, saying he is not an atheist and not a believer. He clarified his religious views in a blog post called “How I believe in God.” He said, “I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist — which I am. If I were to say I don’t believe God exists, that wouldn’t mean I believe God doesn’t exist. Nor does it mean I don’t know, which implies that I could know.”  (from Roger Ebert entry, ffrf.org  )

[2] Perhaps there were none to share; perhaps all of my FB friends have been beloved (or at least tolerated) by even the most neanderthal of their colleagues.

[3] Thanks, RU, although I’d already considered sharing more of the details.

[4] Which, as more than one dissatisfied patron told me (as if I were responsible for the name or had any influence in *any* Disneyland policy) : “Shee-it, girl, this ain’t no restaurant, this is a burger and fries joint.”  Or a glorified fast food place, with no table service…aka, in Disney-speak, a “quick service eatery.”

[5] I am happy to report that although I’ll never forget his face I cannot recall that co-worker’s name (nor would I used it in this space, even if I did remember it).

[6] At that time, D-Land’s various food attractions staff were sex-segregated with respect to responsibilities: males in the kitchen, running the fryers and grills and stocking the food wells, and females upfront – the “counter girls”, taking the guest’s orders, receiving payment, and “boxing” and giving to guests the food and drinks.

[7] I can’t believe that title (chef?) was given to the dude who was in charge of the run-the burgers-through-the-grill machine line.

[8] A thousand thanks to seventh grade PE teacher Mrs. Ewing, who suggested a version of that response to flashers and other harassers.

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

The Godzilla I’m Not Colorizing

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Department Of Let Me Say This About That

Dateline: Tuesday morning 6:59 AM listening to the Fresh Air interview with Christopher Nolan, director of Oppenheimer.  FA  host Terry Gross began her interview with a “getting something out of the way” question (  [my notes]  ):

TG:
“Before we talk about the film, let’s talk about the writers’ and actors’ strikes, which have shut down TV and film production….”

CN:
“……it’s an important moment in our business
[Nolan is both a director and a writer and a member of the Writer’s Guild] ….
The ways in which we’re compensated have to be updated
to reflect the current world….”

 

 

Moiself’s reaction:  what took them (the writers and actors) so long?

The issues involved ( including AI and streaming ) can seem complicated, at first.   They’re not.   Consider what’s at stake; it’s fairly basic.  There is a central issue:

The ways in which writers and actors
are compensated have to be updated to reflect the current world.

I’ve been on strike for years – as in, not writing for publication – for (many of) the same reasons.    [1]   Only in my case, no one powerful cares enough to rectify the situation.

 

 

The ways in which ______
(writers and actors…or insert waitstaff, teachers…almost any profession)
are compensated have to be updated to reflect reality.

That’s it.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of And Now, On A Totally Unrelated Note…

…except, maybe not.  This anecdote moiself  is about to share *is* related, in that it also was prompted by listening to the afore-mentioned Fresh Air interview.

Later in the interview, Terry Gross and Christopher Nolan were talking about dreams, as in, the dream-like narrative and/or pictorial quality of many films (including Nolan’s), and one of them (TG?) brought up the age-old question of whether or not people dream in color or in black-and-white.

 

 

One night when I was in high school I had a dream which started out to follow the usual pattern for my dreams: it was a colorful (I always dreamed in color), intricate, adventure saga, with a cast worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille film.    [2]   What made that particular dream noteworthy was that it used a chronological narrative (the plotlines in my dream world tended to vault around in time) until the middle of the dream, which suddenly switched to…something else  (“We now pause our regular programming for this important digression”). This center piece was an approximately three-minute segment wherein Godzilla made a cameo appearance.  When Godzilla was terrorizing people on a raft in the ocean, my dream switched from color to black and white; after the Godzilla short feature, my dream resumed its original setting and story, in color.

The next day I told a couple of school friends about my dream.  Their reaction was almost identical to mine:  they were fascinated by my subconscious mind’s ability to construct some sort of cinematographic cohesion within the total fantasy that is a dream: up to that point, Godzilla movies were filmed in black and white. I’d never seen a “color” Godzilla.

However, I’d also never seen a full-grown man, dressed in a vaudevillian striped shirt and straw boater hat and carrying a cane, jump out of a jar of peanut butter and start doing a song and dance routine – yet my mind inserted that scenario in one of my dreams.

 

It was my dream to be in one of her dreams.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Enough About How Moiself  Dreams;
Let’s Carp About How Some Other People Want To Change How Everyone Talks   [3]

Have y’all heard about “equity language”  (aka what moiself  thinks of as “compulsory euphemisms”)?  You probably have, even if you haven’t thought of it in those terms.  Either way, I highly recommend George Packer’s recent article in The Atlantic: The Moral Case Against Equity Language.  Here are excerpts from the article ( my emphases ), which makes this case: although the point of language is to clarify, well-meaning attempts to cleanse language “of any trace of privilege, hierarchy, bias, or exclusion” tends to obfuscate, and can also have the unintended consequence of dulling rather than sharpening awareness and empathy.

“The Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide discourages using the words stand, Americans, blind, and crazy. The first two fail at inclusion, because not everyone can stand and not everyone living in this country is a citizen. The third…even as a figure of speech (‘Legislators are blind to climate change‘), is insulting to the disabled….

In its zeal, the Sierra Club has clear-cut a whole national park of words. Urban, vibrant, hardworking, and brown bag all crash to earth for subtle racism. Y’all  supplants the patriarchal you guys, and elevate voices replaces empower, which used to be uplifting but is now condescending. The poor is classist; battle and minefield disrespect veterans; depressing appropriates a disability; migrant—no explanation, it just has to go.

Equity-language guides are proliferating among some of the country’s leading institutions, particularly nonprofits….  The guides also cite one another. The total number of people behind this project of linguistic purification is relatively small, but their power is potentially immense….

 

 

Which is more euphemistic, mentally ill or person living with a mental-health condition? Which is more vague, ballsy or risk-taker? What are diversityequity, and inclusion but abstractions with uncertain meanings whose repetition creates an artificial consensus and muddies clear thought? When a university administrator refers to an individual student as “diverse,” the word has lost contact with anything tangible—which is the point.

The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually easier to say people with limited financial resources than the poor. The first rolls off your tongue without interruption, leaves no aftertaste, arouses no emotion. The second is rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad. Imprecise language is less likely to offend. Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.

The liturgy changes without public discussion….  A ban which seemed ludicrous yesterday will be unquestionable by tomorrow…. in the National Recreation and Park Association’s guide, marginalized now acquires ‘negative connotations when used in a broad way. However, it may be necessary and appropriate in context. If you do use it, avoid ‘the marginalized,’ and don’t use marginalized as an adjective.’  Historically marginalized is sometimes okay; marginalized people is not. The most devoted student of the National Recreation and Park Association guide can’t possibly know when and when not to say marginalized….

But this confused guidance is inevitable, because with repeated use, the taint of negative meaning rubs off on even the most anodyne language, until it has to be scrubbed clean. The erasures will continue indefinitely, because the thing itself—injustice—will always exist. “

 

 

I encountered a pertinent example of the smokescreen effects of using equity language in a recent episode of Serial’s The Retrievals podcast (summarized below   [4]. )  Episode four deals with the aftermath of patients’ lawsuits against the Yale hospital fertility clinic, where a clinic nurse had stolen drugs meant for fertility procedures.  The hospital, in its papers addressing the issue, used the term drug “diversion” instead of theft.  Oh gee, that doesn’t sound so bad –  a diversion.  Like, the drug was merely diverted – relocated – from this clinic to another one, or one patient to another?

What a cheap and insulting diversion in and of itself: to rebrand the theft of a vital medicine; to divert attention away from the horrific pain patients experienced during a procedure involving having a long needle inserted into their most private body cavities and through their abdominal walls.   [5]

Diversion; schmersion – patient’s pain medication was *stolen.*

These and other examples of equity language raise my hackles, both personally and professionally via my “AS A” credentials.  As a writer (and a reader), I esteem communication which uses words and phrases that illustrate, elucidate, and clarify, rather than those which attempt to soften or divert or confuse or disguise. 

(Confession: moiself  also likes words and phrases that provide a visually evocative substitute for the normative term – such as

* for vomiting:
calling the dinosaurs; de-fooding; feeding the fish; whistling carrots; driving the porcelain bus; inspecting the chowder; barking at the ants….

* for fart and/or the act of emitting flatulence:
cheek sneak; breaking dawn; carpet creeper; deviled egg; duck stepping….

All of these are, of course, euphemistic…and are also just plain fun.)

 

 

As Packer notes, the term the poor is “rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad,” while people with limited financial resources…leaves no aftertaste, arouses no emotion.”  I think the provocation of emotion is good, particularly when it spurs action to address what caused the provocation.  Y’all ever been poor?  “Poor” should provoke emotion, because Being. Poor. Sucks.

Certainly (read: IMO), all linguistic rebranding needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis.  There are words and phrases which could use a good makeover if they originated from and reflect times of ignorance and prejudice.  Here’s one of the best examples (again, IMO) of a renaming which could (and I think, does) help reframe the way we view a fellow human being:  “She is confined to a wheelchair,” vs. “She uses (or rides) a wheelchair.”  The first is a rather patronizing description, painting a picture of dependency and pathos…but most of all, it is simply inaccurate.  For someone whose physical condition requires it, a wheelchair is *liberating* – it provides the ability to move about when one’s legs, whether on a temporary or permanent basis, cannot.

Then, there are the others:  the dreadful, weasel-word-filled, furtively-trying-to-slip-one-past-us euphemisms.  Trying to rebrand “He served a prison sentence” into “He had an encounter with the criminal justice system” makes me think you’re trying to hide something.  A person using such a circumlocution may intend to be helpful, but that kind of window re-dressing does nothing to reform, acknowledge, or even address the reality of the brutality of the American penal system and the obstacles faced by parolees.

Some of the most well-meaning folk never seem to get it.  Calling bullshit “bovine ejecta” does not make it smell like morning at the bakery.

 

Preach it, sister!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Stuff That Is Out Of My Control,
And Keeps Me From Having A Good Night’s Sleep

It was almost two decades ago, I think,    [6]   that the actor Susan Sarandon expressed what turned out to be some rather prescient concerns re what was to come in her field. Although she didn’t use the term AI, her a particular concern is at the heart of the current writers/actors strike.  Sarandon gave this example:  Let’s say a producer likes her face, her voice, her overall presence, whatever they find distinctive and/or appealing about her as an actor, and wants to hire her to act in their movie…but she doesn’t want to do that role.  Perhaps she doesn’t like the script or the politics conveyed via the plot; maybe she doesn’t trust the director’s experience or intent, or she just thinks it’s a stupid storyline.  And, Sarandon noted, she had turned down acting jobs for all of those reasons – she just said, “No thank you” to the offers.  However, she knew that there were people working on technologies which would allow them to essentially replicate her and use whichever of her qualities they wanted – they could make “her” do things that she didn’t want to or never would choose to do.

No doubt some folk dismissed or pooh-poohed her concerns. Yeah, what does a mere actor know – she probably one of those anti-tech, Luddite types, right?

 

 

More and more, I come across warnings, from People Who Know What They’re Talking About ®, re what is to come with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and its many applications.  One of these PWKWTTA has articulated his warnings in a way that made me think he’d been inside my head, when he used the exact term that keeps coming to my mind:

AI = Counterfeiting

This person is American cognitive scientist, writer, and philosopher Daniel Dennett, whose recent guest turn on Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid podcast is as fascinating as the topic they discussed is foreboding.  As per the podcast’s summary:

“Counterfeit people, the seductively appealing Deep Fakes made possible by AI, are just the beginning of what the distinguished philosopher Dan Dennett says is a threat to humanity. This spring, he joined hundreds of other thought leaders in signing a starkly scary statement:
AI threatens to make us extinct.”
( excerpt from “Dan Dennett: Fake People Aren’t Funny”
Clear + Vivid, July 24, 2023 )

Dennett was so concisely articulate that I had to stop listening for a while – it was too much to take in.  In particular, his comments about the people who are involved in AI development and research made me squirm.  I know such people.  And I know that they are (or seem to be) good people.  And I know how seductive it can be, to think of yourself as working on the cutting edge while also thinking of yourself as a good person with good intentions…which leads to rationalizing away any critique of your work:

* Well, if I don’t/we don’t do it, someone else will….

* At least this way I know that *I* am involved, and I am a good person with good intentions…”

These are the go-to justifications of people involved in, for example, designing and building assault weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear bombs….  And the agencies and businesses making such products rely on their employee’s instinctive, defensive, self-justification.  Or, both the businesses and their employees may dismiss any criticism with, “This is just what people have always said with every new idea;” or, “People who say that are anti-technology,” and other deflections.

 

 

We all tend to rationalize away such threats.  *I* know I’m not a lil old lady who’s gonna be conned into sending her savings to Nigerian prince to save her kidnapped grandson – they tried it with email and it didn’t work on me!     [7]

But that’s the point Daniel Dennett makes:  we *know* AI *is* going to be used for nasty purposes, because of what already happens *without* AI.  Counterfeiters and scammers have always used the latest technologies; now, here comes AI, something that is so far above, so much more sophisticated than the usual techniques, that soon nothing will be able to be trusted except for face-to-face interactions   [8]…which are simply not possible for many of us in this world of globalization and mobility.  A phone call or Zoom message from my child, who is in obvious distress – how will I know that it isn’t a fake?

I’m not saying y’all working on developing anything AI-related should exit the business. I’m saying, with all the conviction my non-AI heart and mind can portray, that:

* You should summon the guts and hearts to realize that what you are doing, no matter your original intent,
is enabling the counterfeiting of human beings; thus…

* You should be advocating for the strongest possible watermarks (to continue the counterfeiting analogy Dennett used).  The least you can do is to also develop legitimate technologies and strategies which will allow us humans to recognize the counterfeit.

 

 

This is yet another thing over which moiself  feels like I have so little personal control (thus, the “department” title of this segment).  And how do I know it’s even me who is writing this – that is indeed moiself  who is thinking these thoughts?   Maybe I am an AI human prototype which was released years ago…

 

This might explain her taste in t-shirts.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

 

*   *   *

 

May our work and compensation reflect the current world;
May we weight the pitfalls and benefits of equity language;
May we consistently be able to recognize the counterfeit;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Non-Hollywood writers – members of the Authors Guild (movies and TV writers are Writers Guild members) have a few similar and many different concerns with their contracts, including publishers eschewing the traditional/basic functions of a publisher (editing, design, distribution, marketing [e.g., publishers are increasingly demanding authors do the bulk of publicity] ) and not modifying royalty percentages and otherwise updating contracts to reflect the realities of the internet and e-books.

[2] The term used to describe DeMilles’ epics was “A cast of thousands.”

[3] But am I somehow dissing those oily freshwater fish by using carp as a verb?

[4] “ The Retrievals is a is a five-part series about the patients who say their pain was dismissed, a nurse who was hiding something, and the institution that failed to protect its patients.  It tells the story of a dozen women who underwent egg retrieval procedures at the Yale Fertility Center. For months they complained of severe pain. But nobody caught on to exactly what was wrong, until one day…the truth was revealed: A nurse at the clinic had been stealing the pain medication and replacing it with saline. Eventually the nurse has her own story, about her own pain, that she tells to the court. And then there is the story of how this all could have happened at the Yale clinic in the first place.” (excerpts from “Introducing ‘The Retrievals,’ a New Podcast From Serial Productions.” NY Times, )

[5] I try not to pass out and/or vomit (or, bark at the ants) just thinking about it.

[6] This interview I read (heard?) was not with a large organization or prominent reporter, and was pre-internet; thus, I didn’t bother searching for a link. 

[7] Or whatever the latest scam is.

[8] Until the replicant technology takes over.

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

The Standard Of Care I’m Not Upholding

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Department Of Before I Get To The Complaining Thoughtful Expositions On Topics Of Importance To All Humankind…

First, this observation of appreciation:

I’m not a coffee drinker,    [1]   but I would like to thank the person who, somewhere on Necarney Boulevard (Manzanita, OR)  at approximately 7:30 am Tuesday morning, was either out on their porch or deck with their morning cuppa Joe, or brewing it in a nearby kitchen with the windows open.  Whatever grind or blend they were using, its enticing aroma wafted onto the bicycle/pedestrian path as I walked by.  In combination with the morning mist, which carried the scent of the salty ocean…Aaaahhh.  What a delightful sensory experience.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Gut-Wrenchingly Devastating, Throwing-Heavy-Objects-Against-The-Wall-Anger-Inducing Thing To Hear…
And Yet Also, Ultimately, Am I Surprised?

Unfortunately, the answer is, fuck no.

This  Gut-Wrenchingly-Devastating-Throwing-Heavy-Objects-Against-The-Wall-Anger-Inducing-Thing-To-Hear  can be heard in the latest Serial podcast, the capper to their five-part narrative series, The Retrievals.  Moiself  has written in this space about this podcast, which I can’t recommend strongly enough.  In Episode 5: The Outcomes, former patients talk about the lasting effects of their experiences at Yale’s fertility clinic, wherein an IVF procedure caused them excruciating pain, both during the procedure and for hours and even days afterword (…and for “good reason” – it turns out a narcotics-addicted clinic nurse had been stealing the analgesic used for the procedure and replacing it with saline).  But the patients’ reports of pain, even to the doctors and clinic staff who heard the patients screaming during the procedure, were discounted and/or minimized.

 

 

The following podcast excerpts (Episode 5: The Outcomes, transcript) are from conversations between Serial producer/investigator Susan Barton, and Kelly Fitzpatrick, one of the attorneys representing the patients in their malpractice lawsuits against the Yale clinic,   [2]  and Barton and Cecelia Plaza, an attorney who wrote a paper cited in the conversation (my emphases):

Fitzpatrick:
“These women were repeatedly ignored….that sets it apart from a regular medical malpractice case. These women were gaslighted. They weren’t believed. …And that makes it different.”

Burton:
“…So how do you do that? How do you sue for ignoring pain?… It’s not like that, another one of the (patients’ lawsuit) attorneys told me. You can sue because they should have investigated reports of pain…


And then I came across the perfect paper. It was called, ‘Miss Diagnosis – gendered injustice and medical malpractice law.’ ….
The paper…(didn’t say) ‘Here’s how you sue for ignoring pain.’ What it did do is explore how this issue of women not being believed in medical settings plays out in court….


The (paper’s) author was a young attorney named Cecilia Plaza… She set out to answer a specific question about the gender gap in medical malpractice outcomes, which essentially is a question about whether women can be fairly compensated in the medical malpractice system. And what she found is that women likely cannot.


Because the foundation of this system is, did what happened to you meet the standard of care? If it did, you’re out of luck. Like, you’re a woman, you think you’re having a heart attack. You go to the ER.  The doctor says, ‘it’s just your anxiety,’ and sends you home. Then it turns out that you really were having a heart attack. Can you successfully win a case against this doctor in court?


Maybe not. Because doctors misdiagnose so many women’s heart attacks as anxiety that sending a woman home could actually be interpreted as a reasonable choice that an ordinary doctor would make.

Just to be clear, Cecilia’s paper is not a work of opinion. It is an empirical analysis based on a ton of data. And what Cecilia found is that women cannot expect to get as much money as men in this system.
Because dismissing women doesn’t necessarily fall below the standard of care.”

Plaza:
“You would have to basically make the argument that not believing your patient’s report of symptoms or of pain is de facto below the standard of care. That’s not currently the case, which is a little bit mind boggling. But you would have to make that argument, and the court would have to agree with you.”

 

 

Got that, amid the legalese?

* Because so many doctors misdiagnose women and have done for so long and for so often, it is considered to be routine.

* Because discounting, minimizing, ignoring women’s pain, and *not believing them when they report severe pain,* is so common in the medical field, it is considered to be the standard of care.

 

 ( Here Are 29 Stories From Women Whose Doctors Did Not Take Their Pain Seriously )

*   *   *

Department Of While I’m Getting Uppity….

Recently, while re-reading Roxane Gay‘s collection of essays,  Bad Feministmoiself was reminded of my conflicted feelings on whether or not people ultimately care about, or learn from, the lives and stories of others.

RG’s essays – specifically, Blurred Lines, Indeed –  took me back to last summer, when moi-blog-self  mulled over issues of freedom/personal liberty after the SCOTUS Roe V. Wade ruling.  We religion-free folk have taken a page from the LGBTQ playbook; thus, many of us so-called atheists, Freethinkers, Skeptics, Brights, et al, encourage “outing” ourselves as such, and not only for reasons of truth-telling (religion-free folk tend to be fans of reality), but also with the thought/hope that that increased visibility helps to break down barriers, open minds, increase participation in the civic arena, and counter stereotypes.  Thus I outed moiself, in one sense,   [3]   by briefly mentioning my reproductive history:

(excerpt from The Liberty Loss I’m Not Accepting, 7-29-22):
So.  A dimwitted busybody curious person may wonder, If it’s personal/no one else’s business, why am I making it yours by writing about it here? Moiself  does this for reasons that are not so original and yet are nonetheless pertinent. 

“In 1972—when abortion was illegal throughout most of the country—53 well-known U.S. women courageously declared ‘We Have Had Abortions’ in the pages of the preview issue of Ms. magazine.
‘To many American women and men it seems absurd, that in this allegedly enlightened age, that we should still be arguing for a simple principle: that a woman has the right to sovereignty over her own body,’ they declared.
Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, Susan Sontag, Nora Ephron, Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Judy Collins were among the signers. The women spoke out ‘to save lives and to spare other women the pain of socially imposed guilt’ and ‘to repeal archaic and inhuman laws.’ They invited all women to sign in order to ‘help eliminate the stigma’ of abortion.”
” ‘We Have Had Abortions’ Petition Relaunches 50 Years Later—With Support From Original Signatories.”

Msmagazine.com 1-20-22 )

It can be easy to ignore or discount issues that are critical for other people, if you think the issue doesn’t affect you or anyone you know.  If you (mistakenly) think that you don’t know anyone who’s gay/atheist/has had an abortion, then LGBTQ rights/religious discrimination/reproductive freedom may be an abstraction to you.  You can allow yourself to be on the fence about the issue – or even on the compassionate side of the fence but not really involved – if you think it doesn’t affect you or anyone that you know.

I’m not sure about my mother’s stance on abortion, but I know she went to her grave not knowing about her older sister‘s harrowing experience.   [4]  My parents were as loving and considerate as could be to all of my different friends, and they knew of (and even occasionally discussed with me) my political opinions.  However and sadly, judging from the publications and mailers I espied on their coffee table during my infrequent visits to their house, it is likely that they could have fallen prey to fear-mongering politics of The Billy Graham Association and other conservative religious organizations.

During one of my visits, California had an “anti-homosexual” proposition on the ballot (I can’t remember which proposition, nor exactly when– there’ve been several, over the years), and I saw a GAY  TEACHERS  ARE  AFTER  YOUR  KIDS -type flyer on their kitchen table.

 

 

I asked them if they took such hyperbole seriously.  One of them (can’t remember if it was Mom or Dad) said they realized it was over-the-top, then said, “Actually, we don’t know anyone who is gay.”

“No,” I said, “Actually, you *do* know gay people.  You just don’t know that they are gay because you don’t know them well enough to be privy to their personal lives, or they have chosen not to reveal this to you…” – I indicated the flyer atop the mail pile – “…because of crap like that.”  (My mother later assured me that that the flyer had just come in the mail, and that they hadn’t “requested it”).

I proceeded to give them the names of friends and teachers of mine, whom they’d met and liked, who were gay.  They seemed genuinely surprised“Mr. Haffner is gay?  He was one of your and your sister’s favorite teachers….” (Still is, Dad.)  “That nice friend of yours from college – he’s so sweet and smart and funny, he was a premed student, I think – he’s gay?” (Yes, Mom.  He’s still the nice young man – nice doctor, now – who impressed you.  You simply know something about him that you didn’t know before).

Did it make a difference in how they thought, or voted?  No idea.

*   *   *

I’m still wondering: when it comes to knowing the personal stories of others, what does and doesn’t make a difference?  Still wondering after reading these excerpts from RG’s essay, Blurred Lines, Indeed  (my emphases):

“On June 30 2013 in the Room for Debate section, the NYT asked, ‘Would support for abortion rights grow if more women discussed their abortions?’  When I first saw the question, I bristled. Women shouldn’t have to sacrifice their personal histories to enlighten those who are probably uninterested in enlightenment.

…what if she doesn’t want to tell her story?  What if it’s too personal, too painful?  What do these confessions really do?  Some people will be moved, but those are rarely the same people who support legislation to erode reproductive freedom.  Immovable people will not be moved by testimony.”

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Different As In, And now For Something More Light Hearted:
We’ll Always Have Paris…

A classic line from a classic movie.  [5]   There are lists of such – “best” or “most memorable” movie lines – compiled by the American Film Institute, et al.  Last week moiself  overheard two people discussing classic movie lines.   [6]   I got to thinking about those lists, which, if I remembers correctly, tend to be skewed toward films released before the mid-1970s.  So, off the top of moiself’s  pointy little head…

 

Not *this* pointy.

 

…I started my own list of memorable lines or dialogue from films released since 1975.  I’m not claiming these are the “best” lines; they’re just, IMO, marvelous.

In no particular order, I present you with the lines, in this format:

“Line/dialogue “
characters/actors who speak the lines
( movie in which the lines appear )

“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”
Matty/Kathleen Turner
( Body Heat )

“I have been and always shall be your friend.”
Spock/Leonard Nimoy
( Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan )

“KKKKHHHHAAAANNNN !!!!”
James T. Kirk/William Shatner
( Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan )

“Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?”
Soldier #1/Michael Palin
( Monty Python & the Holy Grail )

“You sit on a throne of lies!”
Buddy/Will Ferrell
( Elf )

“Louise, I don’t know how to fish.”
“Neither do I, Thelma, but Daryl does it – how hard can it be?”
Thelma & Louise /Geena Davis & Susan Sarandon
( Thelma and Louise )

“That is one big pile of shit.”
Ian Malcolm/Jeff Goldblum
( Jurassic Park )

 

 

Look, I have ONE job on this lousy ship.
It’s STUPID, but I’m gonna do it, OKAY?”
Gwen DeMarco/Sigourney Weaver
( Galaxy Quest )

“Fuck you Mars.”
Mark Watney/Matt Damon
( The Martian )

“Into the garbage chute, flyboy!”
Leia Organa/Carrie Fisher
( Star Wars: A New Hope )

“Better get a bucket.”
Mr. Creosote/Terry Jones
( Monty Python: The Meaning of Life )

“How do you like your eggs?”
Emma/Sally Field
( Murphy’s Romance )

“It’s comin’ outta me like lava!”
Megan/Melissa McCarthy
( Bridesmaids )

 

Before 1975; still one of my favorites of the classic movie lines:

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [7]

 

 Actually, there are hundred of reasons…
but all you need is one, and this is a good one.

*   *   *

May you not be an immovable person/uninterested in enlightenment;
May you find a way to incorporate a classic movie line
into at least one comment of yours during the upcoming week;
May you be pleasantly surprised by enticing aromas;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Moiself  will occasionally treat myself to a latte-dah type drink, but tea is my hot beverage of choice.

[2] Fitzpatrick herself has been through an IVF procedure.

[3] The other sense – my religion-free status – has been out for some time.

[4] A few years before her death, at the request of one of her nieces (who suspected, correctly, that there were family stories to be told), my mother’s eldest sister revealed that the reason she and her husband never had children was that she was unable to, after having undergone an illegal abortion (that almost killed her) .

[5] Casablanca.  Please don’t tell me if you didn’t know that.

[6] As in debating which were the best, or most-overrated or under-rated lines or dialog couplets….

[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 Childhood Memoir I’m Not Publishing

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But if moiself  did publish such a book, it would have a chapter titled, “The Girls of Summer.”  Said chapter would be devoted to describing the elaborate role-playing [1]    games my grade school friends and moiself  played, in my backyard and/or garage, during summers, on the three-point-five days a week when we were *not* at the beach.  

The games we played on a regular basis included

* Dracula
(we were – surprise! – vampires, although no one ever played the titular Count.   [2] );

* Haunted House
(we transformed my family’s garage – in which my parents did not park their cars because doing so would have taken away a vital part of our play space – into a haunted castle, wherein we would haunt [read: terrorize] our younger siblings, aka “The Little Kids ®,” who were so desperate to play with us Big Kids ® that they’d do anything we’d say);

* Leopards
(we were a family of leopards, living harsh lives on the African plains and forests)

* Amazonian Women
( explanation forthcoming)

.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Hitherto Unexplained Connection
Between Barbies And Nuns

First, the Amazonian Women game explained, or at least outlined.

My childhood home’s backyard was a vegetation paradise, particularly during summer.  Our fruit-producing trees and shrubs included a lemon tree, a peach tree, a plum tree, a pomegranate bush, several banana trees,   [3]   and five apricot trees.  A huge, great-for-climbing pine tree of some sort (the sort that produced so much sap my mother kept a jar of Crisco, soley dedicated to sap removel, by the kitchen sink) was behind the garage.  The pine tree provided a good access point to the garage roof, which we kids were technically forbidden to climb onto, due to our (read: *my* ) tendency to play WWII paratrooper and jump off of the roof holding an umbrella.   [4]   Summer night bonus: If you climbed far enough up in the pine tree you could see the halo at Anaheim’s Angel Stadium light up when an Anaheim Angel hit a home run.   The view was definitely worth the sappy hands, arms, elbows, knees….

 

 

The perimeter of our yard’s back and side fences was lined with a variety of shrubbery.  Cascades of bougainvillea flowed up and down and around the backyard fence, and the vines’ vibrant magenta-colored flowers provided the perfect tropical aura for our Amazonian game:  we would drape a garden hose at the top of one of the vines and adjust the hose’s sprayer to the finest mist setting, which provided the proper, lounging-by-the-waterfall atmosphere, and also kept us cool.  You could work up quite a sweat in the summer as an Amazonian warrior, canoeing from island to island, hunting and fishing and gathering tropical fruits, fighting off dangerous wild animals, and planning excursions to either visit or plunder neighboring islands.

Our brothers and other neighborhood boys were welcomed for the tag games    [5]  my girl friends and siblings and I played on balmy summer evenings, but with the exception of having one boy join the Dracula or Haunted house game on a few occasions, the other games were all-female.  There were no literal male occupants of our Amazonian island; there were a never-specified number of men that we’d taken from neighboring islands and whom we kept in captivity.  My friends and I knew enough about mammalian reproduction to know that our species could survive as a single gender, so we kept these imaginary male captives for “breeding purposes” – the ultimate meaning of which was lost on us, but somehow, we knew we had to acknowledge that aspect of our culture.

 

 

My notes for my SoCal girlhood memoir have gathered dust; moiself  hadn’t thought of the Amazonian game in ages, until Monday, when friend CC and I saw the Barbie movie.  During our après-cinema lunch when we were discussing the movie,   [6]  I told CC about the Amazonian game, and how it fit into my theory of why so many girls  (especially those whose girlhoods were 40+ years ago) – girls who would either then or later identify as feminists – liked playing with Barbies, and also sometimes pretended to be nuns.

Hold on to y’alls wimples: it’s the long-awaited for, Barbies-Nuns Connection. ®

 

 

Like all the girls I knew when I was in grade school, my sisters and I were given, and played with, Barbie dolls.  I never received, nor wanted, a Ken doll.   [7]   I did have a few male dolls: I asked for, and received for Christmas one year, a G.I. Joe doll and a Johnny West cowboy doll (which came with a palomino steed, and a plastic vest and chaps and spurs wardrobe for Johnny!).  But as I discovered, a boy’s G.I. Joe was not to be called a doll, but an “action figure.”  You’d best not refer to any of a boy’s male play figurines as what they were – dolls –  lest the boy’s little dingus shrivel up and snap off at the mere suggestion that he played with a kind of toy commonly associated with girls.

Like many most of same girls with whom I played let’s-pretend we’re _____  games, we also played the We Are Nuns games.  This was not a The Sound of Music fantasy thing,    [8]  and with one exception these friends were *not* from Catholic families.  But there was a similar appeal to the world of Barbies, Amazonian island women, and nuns.

It’s not a complicated connection, not in the least.  The appeal was that those worlds (Barbies; Amazons; nuns) were composed solely of females.  Thus, girls got to do *everything.*  This was not the case when we played games with the neighborhood boys.

One of a bajillion examples:  One summer day I agreed to play “The Smith’s Home” (or some other family name) with my younger sister and our next-door neighbor boy.  Next Door Neighbor Boy and I were The Smith Family.  We were a recently married couple, with a dog and a cat and two hamsters and no children.  After we’d discussed the game parameters, NDNB announced that he was leaving our house (a fort we’d built in my backyard) to “go to work.”  I wanted to head out as well, but NDNB boy-splained to me that things didn’t work that way: as the wife, I had to stay home.  When he insisted on taking the family pet, a German Shepard (played by my sister), to work with him, I in turn explained to him that things didn’t work that way.  Husbands do not take the family pets with them to work – name one husband in the neighborhood who does that?!  And that was the end of The Smith Family game.

Now then: NDNB was a nice boy, of whom I was genuinely fond re his gentle disposition and kind heart.  But he, like the other neighborhood boys and the brothers (whether older or younger) of my friends, always tried to take over during the few times we let them join our games.  If the girls were starting a game of Blackbeard’s Buccaneers you didn’t want the boys to join in because they’d insist on being all of the pirates and you had to be…something else.

 

Who you callin’ a scullery maid?

 

As young females, we grew up seeing a world where males were in charge, of just about everything.  In television and movies men were the primary (if not the only) protagonists, with the women there as domestic/romantic supporting players.  I was no fan of Catholicism and steadily (if secretly) came to despise almost everything about any religious doctrine (including my own family’s moderate Lutheranism); still, nuns held a peculiar attraction for many girls such as moiself .   [9]

A convent, while admittedly mimicking the patriarchal structure of a hierarchical society, was an all-female world.  Nuns did everything in their society; being a nun was one of the few options for women wherein they could leave their parents’ (read: their fathers’) homes without having to go to another man’s home; i.e., marry and have children.  Women could have a “calling” – an occupation, a life’s work – that did not involve (and in fact precluded) tending to the needs of a husband and children.  Nuns (seemed as if they) had a life outside The Home. ©

 

 

Sure, nuns were “cloistered,” but at least a nunnery was a cloister of choice.  Girls grew up seeing few-or-no female counterparts to the much-envied, free-livin’, swingin’ bachelor: whether by choice or circumstance, females who remained single were portrayed as objects of pity.  “Spinsters” and “old maids” were the only terms for women who remained single and childfree.

Similarly, when you played with Barbie dolls, you could be the good egg, the louse, the protagonist and the hero and the side player and everything in between.  Our Barbies ran the house, earned the paychecks, planted and harvested the crops, designed fantastical machines, drove the stagecoaches between the OK Corall and Santa Fe, flew to the moon in shoebox rocket ships – whatever you wanted them to do, with no Ken to tell you that you couldn’t, or yeah, maybe just this once but you gotta ride…

 

“Sidesaddle my PVC ass, Ken.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait A Minute…

“The battle over legacy and donor admissions to college — the practice of giving special treatment to family of alumni and contributors — is about to heat up in California as critics take aim at what they see as a long-standing barrier for less privileged students to access elite institutions.

State Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) plans to renew efforts to deny state financial aid to any college or university that gives an admissions advantage to such applicants, who research has shown are overwhelmingly white and affluent.”
( “Battle over legacy and donor admissions preferences to heat up;
USC, Stanford could take hit.” LA Times 7-31 )

What the….

Moiself  is, of course, *highly* in favor of such a bill, even as I’m stunned (naive? ) by California’s need for it.  Since when did state financial aid go to private universities?

*   *   *

Department Of  And In A Related Story…

A long time in a galaxy far far away:   In the summer after son K’s junior year of high school, he began the first of several rounds of visiting colleges he was interested in applying to. Moiself  accompanied him on the first three campus visits, which were in California.   [11]   It was late June when K and I flew down to Sacramento, rented a car, then in the next three days toured UC Davis, Stanford, and UC Santa Cruz.

My Oregonian born and bred son, who was known to complain when the temperature rose above 72°, seemed to have had an weather-influenced relationship with the colleges we visited on that trip: the closer we got to the coast, the more he liked the school, inversely conflating the temperature of the area with what his academic experience would be.

When we deplaned in Sacramento the heat blast hit K in the face, and I remember thinking, “Yep, this is familiar…”  I am a UCD alum.  A couple of summers I stayed in Davis to work expanded hours at the student job I had during the school year.  I assured K that if he went to UCD he would probably not be staying during the summer, and that Davis had winters an Oregonian would appreciate. Nevertheless, looking back, I think all he “saw” of UCD was the heat.

 

 

Neither MH nor I were the kind of parents who lobbied (nor even encouraged) our offspring to consider attending our respective alma maters. But in the fall of K’s junior year, one winter weekend afternoon when he and I were hiking in a local nature preserve, K mentioned his interest in studying entomology.  I told him there were not many colleges which offered an entomology major, and of those that did…things may have changed, but when I was at UC Davis it had the top-rated entomology program in the nation (when we returned home I did an internet search and confirmed that that was still the case).

I forget the reasons K had an interest in Stanford (his aunt, my younger sister, was a Stanford alum, but I don’t know if that was the influence);  he was curious about UC Santa Cruz for its connection to the Human Genome Project.  So: we planned our trip, signed up for the campus tours of and presentations by the respective colleges, and moved from east to west, starting with UC Davis, then Stanford, then UC Santa Cruz.

As moiself  mentioned, I don’t think K saw much of Davis but the heat.  UC Santa Cruz – he liked many things about it, although he agreed with my observation, as we did a bus tour around UCSC’s verdant campus, which is situated in the forested hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay, that it might be like going to college in summer camp.

 

 

As for Stanford, our visit there provided the most indelible, visiting-a-campus story.

We both enjoyed the Stanford campus tour, which was led by an enthusiastic student who was personable and articulate and knowledgeable and proud of his campus.  K was quite keen about Stanford after that tour.  Next on the agenda was a sit-down presentation for prospective students and their parents, given by Stanford’s Director of Admissions.  In 20 minutes K went from, “Wow, I really like this place; it’s definitely going to be on my application list,” to, “I wouldn’t go to this snobby, elitist, self-aggrandizing institution if *they* paid *me* to do it.”

One of many statements the Dude of Admissions made which K found off-putting was a dyad of contradictory statements, which he kept repeating:

” *Any* person can get into Stanford! “
(After saying this, he would give examples of students from lower income, and/or nonwhite and/or non-big city backgrounds who were Stanford alums)

” Stanford, as one of the top rate universities in the United States,
is very selective, and has one of the, if not THE, lowest acceptance rates
of any college in the world! “

 

 

Several times during his presentation Admissions Dude said that he wanted parents or students to ask questions at any time, about any Stanford-related subject.  After AD’s third repeating of his anyone-can-be-here/almost-no-one-gets-in couplet, a student raised his hand and asked how he might increase his odds of getting accepted to Stanford.  AD answered with what he obviously meant to be a humorous story:  “First of all, don’t do this….”  He proceeded to tell how a high school senior had marched into AD‘s office, unannounced, hours before the admissions deadline.  The student dismissively flung an admissions packet onto AD‘s desk and said, “Take care of it.”

I looked around the room, noting that both parents and students were snickering with “Oh, can you believe that arrogant wiseass?!” amusement.  Moiself  raised my hand, and when AD called upon me I asked him, “Was that student a legacy?”

Admissions Dude turned an impressive shade of white.   [12]   In a Very Serious Voice he stammered, “I can’t give any names; I can’t – uh, we can’t reveal any personal information about an applicant…”

To which I perkily replied, “I didn’t ask for his name; I asked if he was a legacy.”

Admissions Dude was quite flustered that I’d brought up an apparently taboo subject – as if no one present in the room had ever heard of legacy admission preferences before the big-mouth Oregon lady brought it up.  He squirmed with discernable discomfort – I thought he was in danger of pissing his Trussardi trousers.  The more the AD tried to act “plussed” the more nonplussed he became.  As he strove to change the subject, several parents seated in front of K and I turned around and flashed me knowing, sympathetic, and/or incredulous looks.

K ended up applying to six of the seven schools he visited that summer. He was accepted at all six, and chose to attend the University of Puget Sound.  He did not apply to Stanford.

 

Stanford LegacyGuide (The Koppleman Group)

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month 

 

 

It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself .  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [13] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [14]

“If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
( Anatole France 1844 – 1924, Parisian poet, journalist, writer )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have fond memories of your own childhood summer games;
May you be mindful of what popular foolish thing you believe;
May you enjoy your own reign as Employee of the Month;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] No, not today’s RPG.  It meant something different back then.

[2] For us, Dracula was synonymous with vampires.

[3] Probably akin to the Blue Java varietal, which we never let come to full ripeness before we’d pick (and ruin) them.

[4] Which did nothing to slow my descent.

[5] “Green Monster” was the favorite.

[6] As were three women sitting next to us at the sushi train bar counter…from what I could hear of their conversation.

[7] One of my friends was given a Ken doll by her parents, and she brought him to a few Barbie play sessions, but he stayed mostly on the sidelines.

[8] We were never, ever, singing nuns.

[9] One that was romanticized, of course, but what other options did we see?

[11] MH did the next three visits with K, to colleges in Washington, British Columbia, and Minnesota.  And K and I later made an overnight trip up to Tacoma to visit the University of Puget Sound, which is where he decided to go (as did his sister, Belle, three years later, and for similar reasons: they both had the experience, upon touring the campus, of “Oh, this is my place.”)

[12] Made even more impressive by the fact that he was not white.

[13] 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.

[14] “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 History I’m Not Finding Surprising

Comments Off on The History I’m Not Finding Surprising

Happy Summer Solstice to all!  And to my fellow yogis, if this tradition is in your practice, I hope you had a memorable 108 Sun Salutations.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Hearing What Is Arguably The Understatement Of The Millenia
While Listening To A Fresh Air Podcast

“There is a very dark part of the Catholic church’s history…”

“No shit, Sherlock,” moiself  snorted, before FA host Terry Gross could finish her opening sentence.  Nevertheless, Terry persisted…with her interview of journalist and professor Rachel Swarns.

“There is a very dark part of the Catholic church’s history, that has only recently come to the attention of the public. For more than a century, the church financed its expansion and its institutions with the profits from the enslaved people the church bought and sold.  Without the enslaved, the Catholic church in the United States as we know it today would not exist…

‘…the priests prayed for the salvation of the souls of the people they owned, even as they bought and sold their bodies.’ “

( “How the Catholic Church Profited from Slavery – the ‘272’ explains how,”
Fresh Air, 6-13-23 )

 

 

For anyone shocked by the idea that religious folk and/or those under their sway would do such a thing, may I remind y’all that we’ve been warned about this for centuries:

“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities.”
(Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer and philosopher, who somehow managed to escape the guillotine despite his anti-religion pronouncements.     [1]  )

Subdepartment Of An Excerpt From The FA Podcast Which Demonstrates Why I Am Not Terry Gross Nor Am I The Host Of Any Other Interview Show:

Terry Gross:
“You’re Catholic and you’re Black. When you first found out about the church’s role in slavery…you certainly didn’t learn that in school. What was your reaction?”

Rachel Swarns:
“I was astounded…. I have a better than average familiarity with the 19th century and slavery….This history was certainly familiar to historians, but it is not well-known…. I am Black and Catholic. I had no idea. And the reason why is that…enslaved people have been largely left out of the origin story that is traditionally told about the Catholic Church….”

TG:
“Has it changed your relationship to the Catholic Church?”

RS:
“…it has, but perhaps not in the way that you might expect. I am…a practicing Catholic.”

Moiself , in my dreams, standing in for TG:
WHY  ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

RS (my emphases):
“…in a lot of ways, it has actually deepened my connection to the church…. as a Black Catholic, I didn’t always see myself in the church. I think I saw the church as it’s often portrayed, as kind of a northern church, an immigrant church. But now I see myself in the church. And these families who were so determined to hold onto their faith and to make the church true to what it said it was – a universal church, a church that welcomed and accepted everyone….”

 

 

Swarns’ phrasing, re (Black) people “determined to hold on to their faith,” both frosts my butt and breaks my heart.  The basic idea – clinging to the religion you’ve been taught – is understandable with regard to desperation and survival instincts.  But to hold on to a faith that was not theirs to begin with – a faith forced upon enslaved Africans after they’d been kidnapped, forcibly shipped across an ocean and stripped of their own faiths and spiritual traditions? This is not, IMO, something to admire, but to lament.

 

 

Again, the human instinct to survive, and the psychological phenomenon known as The Stockholm Syndrome – a coping mechanism wherein people in a captive or abusive situation develop positive feelings toward their captors or abusers over time –  make such choices understandable.  But it is this very same, naïve, survivalist, WTF ?!?!? mindset which allows myth and superstition (and the resulting abuses that accompany such beliefs) to also survive, and even flourish.  Teaching those they enslaved to lean upon Christianity –  with its scriptures authorizing, rationalizing, and even promoting slavery  [2]  and its admonitions for slaves to obey their masters   [3]  –   proved to be a most effective antidote to that which slaveholders feared most: a slave rebellion.

 

 

*   *   *

Yet Another Illustration Of The Reasons Why…

…in this “everyone is offended” literary atmosphere, moiself  considers it a wise marshalling of my mental health faculties, to no longer be submitting work for publication.  Witness what has just happened to author Elizabeth Gilbert, she of White Women Whine  Eat Pray Love renown.

” US author Elizabeth Gilbert is pulling her novel The Snow Forest from publication, in response to a backlash from Ukrainian readers unhappy about the book being set in Russia….”
( “Gilbert withdraws Russia-set novel from publication,” Books+publishing 6-14-23 )

Worse than what happened to Gilbert is her reaction to it.  She fell into the ultimate trap for a writer: she didn’t wait for publishers to censor her; she censored herself.

 

 

“The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech… is not the direct interference of any official body. Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face.…
The sinister fact about literary censorship… is that it is largely voluntary.”
( George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984 )

 

The ALA’s trendy button may soon have a companion: “I write books and ban them myself before anyone else can.”

 

Excerpt from a PEN America’s town hall-style discussion on writers and self-censorship (described on their website as “…a sprawling, impassioned but overwhelmingly civil conversation among four prominent writers about art, identity, appropriation and the state of free expression…”):

“John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University and author of the new book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, opened the discussion…on a blunt note. ‘To be a writer today, in the current climate, is to be someone who certainly probably censors themselves in some way,‘ he said.

…he recalled an academic talk he gave in the mid-1990s, about Creole languages and women, which some in the audience chose to interpret as offensive and sexist.

Listening to their criticisms, he said, ‘I thought, I don’t deserve this. And I decided I would never again say or write anything about issues having to do with women or sexism.’ “

(“Is Self-censorship a problem for writers?”  NYtimes 12-9-21 )

And another rational voice is silenced…or at least diverted.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Is Zen Enlightenment for Real?

A Freethought Today blog post, Is Zen Enlightenment for Real?, caught my attention with its provocative title.  I’ve been reading about Buddhism for many years – not for the sake of personal practice (although I do use Buddhist-informed techniques via mindfulness meditation) but for the same reasons I read about Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant forms of Christianity, and other religions and/or spiritual traditions:  to try to comprehend how fear/ignorance superstition have ruled the world for so long my fellow human beings.

As I understand it, the answer to the oft-posed question, Is Buddhism a philosophy or a religion?  is, *yes.*  Buddhism can be – and is – practiced as both, around the world.   [4]

Many years ago, I attended an annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation at the FFRF’s headquarter city, Madison WI.  I was attending solo, and struck up conversations with another “solos,” one of whom I’ll call Dan.  I can’t remember how we got on the topic, but Dan told me that his wife, Evelyn, who was from China, and that Evelyn was raised, as she put it, “both Buddhist and (nominally) Christian,” as were her family and neighbors.

Evelyn had said this when she and Dan were first dating and had begun sharing their respective family stories.  When Dan asked her how that was possible – to be both Buddhist and Christian – she told him how.  Her story caused Dan to look at missionary “conversion” statistics with a keen, if jaundiced, eye:  Evelyn and her family, and many people from their village, were “Rice Christians.”  The RC term is something I’d heard before; nevertheless, my foreknowledge of the phenomenon did not lessen the impact of what Dan told me.

Evelyn’s family, like most families in her rural Chinese village, were very poor.  In the early through mid-1900s, Christian missionaries came to her village.  The villagers, many of whom were closet skeptics as to their own culture’s spiritual traditions, were not impressed by the missionaries’ proselytizing; thus, once their curiosity re the strange Americans had been slaked, they avoided the church services the missionaries invited them to attend.  However, the villagers ended up signing the missionaries’ religious enrollment forms, because if they did so the missionaries would give them huge sacks of rice (and send pictures of the enrollment forms – proof of success in converting Chinese heathens! –  back to the American churches and individuals funding the missions).

 

How many pounds of rice?  Hell yeah – I mean, Hallelujah! – I believe!

 

Dan attended FFRF events solo because Evelyn was not interested in any organization which had even a remote connection to religion.  She was dismissive of “American religions,” and held her greatest scorn for Americans who, while not born into a Buddhist culture, claimed to be Buddhist and/or revere the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist teachers.  Dan said Evelyn cringed whenever she encountered non-Asian Buddhist Americans (Amerboos she called them).  In Evelyn’s experience, such people knew nothing but “Buddhism light:” a Westernized version of Buddhism which had little relation to the superstition-laden, reality-denying religion of her homeland.  Evelyn said Amerboos had no idea that, beyond the mindfulness techniques which have been scientifically demonstrated to be useful, Buddhism is just another religion/superstition in many places around the world.  For example, in the rural China where Evelyn was from, upon the death of family members and for other major life events, villagers felt pressured into paying Buddhist priests to perform ritual house cleansings and/or blessings.

Dan and moiself  had an interesting discussion about the subject, including the idea that yes, Buddhism can be just another superstition/religion exploiting the poor and ignorant…but can’t it also be practiced in a more modern way, ala those who claim to follow Buddhist teachings as a secular philosophy?

 

“But those westernized Buddhists always want to put me on a carb-free diet.”

 

And after that long-winded introduction, on to that Freethought Now blog post, which provoked this portion of moiself’s  post.  The author wrote “please share this article,” and I shall do so in its entirety (my emphases):

“I’m intrigued by Zen meditation as a supposed path to enlightenment.

I’ve tried repeatedly — lying silent in bed, blanking out my mind, hearing nothing but the rhythm of my breath, seeing nothing but dark blurs behind my eyelids. But all it does is put me to sleep. In the end, I never get a smidgeon of enlightenment. I’m still just the same old me.

I wonder whether anyone finds enlightenment — or whether the quest is self-deceptive, a fantasy leading nowhere.

American Buddhism is a mushrooming field with many gurus. It’s followed by intellectuals such as brilliant atheist Sam Harris. Researcher John Horgan wrote some years ago: ‘The number of Buddhist centers in the United States has more than doubled to well over 1,000. As many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism, surpassing the total of Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have post-graduate degrees.’

Horgan wrote in Slate that he plunged ardently into the exotic pursuit, but … ‘Eventually, and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much more rational than the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth. Buddhism’s moral and metaphysical worldview cannot easily be reconciled with science — or more generally, with modern humanistic values.’

Buddhism’s insistence that suffering is an illusion theoretically could make followers less concerned when bigoted police kill unarmed Black men, or women are victimized by predators, or other outrages occur.     [5]

Horgan added that supposedly enlightened gurus can be unappetizing: ‘Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987.’

Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College, made an intense study of meditation gurus and their adoring followers. Writing in Psychology Today, he summed up: ‘Getting a close look at several individuals who were advertised as enlightened led me to conclude that there’s a lot of hype and hypocrisy in the business. A good many of them, not unlike a fair number of academics I’d known, seemed to be in it primarily for the lifestyle. Many gurus are treated like deities and hold absolute power over their devotees. As ‘enlightened beings,’ they’re accountable to no one, and their foibles, appetites and excesses are given a pass.’

‘The language of enlightenment tended to be esoteric, obscurantist and elitist, and the teachings attracted more credulous dabblers than credible seekers,’ he continued. ‘In my quest, I did not come across anyone who could be said to dwell in a state of permanent enlightenment.’

I’ve never known any meditator who seemed enlightened. Have you? Have you ever seen amazing insights or remarkable creative output by an enlightenee?

( “Is Zen Enlightenment for Real?” By James A. Haught, Freethought Now blog, 6-8-23.  Longtime editor at the Charleston Gazette, Haught is a senior editor of Free Inquiry. )

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

“When you’re black there’s like no religion to turn to. Christianity? I don’t think so. White people justified slavery and segregation through Christianity, so a black Christian is like a black person with no fucking memory.”
(Comedian Cris Rock )

 

 

*   *   *

May you examine those mindsets with which you may have
a Stockholm Syndrome-relationship;
May you never be described as a person “with no f****** memory;”
May you smack upside the noggin any literary lunkheads who conflate setting a book in a particular country with supporting that particular country’s politics;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Which included sharing his opinion that priests of every sect are those who. “…rise from an incestuous bed, manufacture a hundred versions of God, then eat and drink God, then piss and shit God.”

[2] Numbers 31 tells the particularly galling story of sex slavery: how the taking of female captives is encouraged by Moses, who, after being instructed by Yahweh to take vengeance upon the Midianites, tells the Israelites to kill Midianite male children and nonvirgin females but take the young virgins for themselves.

[3]    “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.”  (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

    “Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed.  If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful.  You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts.  Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them.”  (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)

   ( Using the following parable, Jesus approves of beating slaves even if they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong):

     “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  (Luke 12:47-48 NIV)

[4] To relate one personal experience, years ago I attended a Buddhist “church” service in Portland (with a friend who had practiced Buddhist meditation for years and wanted to check out the church).  The structure of the service was very reminiscent to me of various Protestant services…perhaps, to match the comfort or familiarity level of (non-Asian )white attendees, who comprised ~ 50% of the attendees, I wondered?

[5] I have those same thoughts myself, and have heard them from people born into a culture that held some belief in “karma,” and/or reincarnation, such as a man from India who said that he rejected his family’s hindu beliefs when he saw saw how practicing Hindus justified their not helping fellow citizens out of poverty because their suffering wasn’t real, or was brought on by their own deeds and if they live a good life they can be reincarnated under better circumstances….

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

The Food Seasoning I’m Not Afraid Of

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Dateline: Monday, 5:40 AM scrolling through a newsfeed to get to one of the columnists moiself  reads every morning.  I skip past many ads, then find moiself  scrolling back to one in particular, as my brain needs conformation that…no… it didn’t just say what it said, right? Sure enough, there is a drawing of a brassiere, accompanied by the following WTF/seriously what does this have to do with anything? product descriptor:

“These bras are designed to empower those with smaller chests.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Back To The Future

“We have serious problems and we need serious people to solve them.  And whatever your particular problem I promise you ______ (right wing candidate) is not interested in solving it.  He is interested in two things and two things only:  making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

( excerpt from speech in the final scene of “The American President” )

 

 

My latest quest for sanity maintenance is to ignore the news as much as possible.  I do open my news apps on my phone in the morning, to scroll past the headlines to get to my games (Wordle; the mini crossword; Letterboxed; waffle…). While doing so I glimpse the headlines, streaming… And lately it seems to be a lot of screaming headlines, as in anti-LGBTQ parents and protesters screaming at school board meetings.

Regretfully, this sounds quite familiar to moiself.  Some readers may not be old enough to remember California’s Briggs Initiative of 1978. Those who are and do…ay yi yi.  Once again, Conservative Christian Voters ® are being manipulated.  If you are a CCV, someone is exploiting you; someone is trying to make you fearful.  Why do the Someones use such tactics?    [1]   And why do *you* continue to fall for it?   [2]

I’ve lost track of how many people I ‘ve met – from relatives to friends to acquaintances and coworkers and neighbors – who went to Catholic schools, and guess what? Not one of them went on to become nuns or priests.   [3]     Lest you think that is merely anecdotal, look up the statistics for yourself.

No public school teacher is “teaching” your kids to be gay (or trans, which is the right wing politician’s bogeyman of the moment).  If teachers had that power, whether by their words or the mere example of their existence, there wouldn’t be a shortage of nuns in the Catholic Church now, would there?

 

*   *   *

Department Of That Which Delights

That would be, “The Show of Delights,” on one of my fave podcasts, This American Life.  Starting at Act II, starting ~16 minutes into the podcast, is a delightful story (well  duh, as that is what the episode was all about).  Do yourself a favor and listen to the story of Cole, a delightful five-year-old, who is oh-so-very excited about an everyday task – commuting – that most adults merely tolerate.  Ah, but this is Cole’s first bus ride to school.

Cole’s story brought me back to when both of my offspring attended our local elementary school.  The school was a half mile/eleven-minute walk from our house; thus, they did not have the option of riding the school bus.  In my school years in So Cal, neither did I. My elementary school was a half mile walk from our house, junior high a little over a mile, and high school 1.6 miles.  School buses weren’t a thing then, I guess.   [4]

It came as a surprise to me that my kids were so eager to ride a school bus and so disappointed to learn that wasn’t an option for them.   For some reason, they’d decided that riding the school bus was an iconic, essential part of the school experience. Later, when they were in high school, there was the option (which they took until they made carpooling and other arrangements) of riding the school bus… But by then it had lost its magical appeal. I’m wondering, do they remember this?

Once again, moiself  digresses.  Cole’s delight…

 

 

Yes, I know, but it’s just so dang appropriate.

Delightfully precocious Cole shares his enthusiastic anticipations (and trepidations) about as he walks to the bus stop with his mother.  When was the last time you said, or even thought of saying, something along the lines of “I can’t wait – I’m a bus rider now!”

If your delight is not satiated by the story of Cole’s first bus ride, stick around for the story which follows, wherein an adult daughter interviews her mother, who has finally discovered the joys of doing what she wants to do in her older years.

“After the kids are gone, and your dad is gone, finally, I can live my life.”

Chapter III of the podcast centers around a Japanese-American woman who lived her life as a wife and mother of six children, and who now at age 72 has created joy and delights in the most profound and simple aspects of life, from the discoveries of world travel to the humble comfort of the “warm Japanese toto toilet” she uses first thing in the morning.

 

Whose heart – and other regions – wouldn’t be warmed by such a device?

 

Also delightful to me, about that segment, is the rarity and clarity of the mother’s description of her present state of mind vs. that when she was younger.  With regard to her family, she says to her daughter that although she was “glad you [her children] were born, and safe,” raising her family and caring for her husband never gave her joy. This is quite an admission, particularly for an older person, but also for any woman in this “your-family-is-the-be-all-and-end-all-you’ll-never-know-true-joy-or-love-until-you-have-them” world.

As this newly joyful woman tries to define her feelings, she mentions several times that she “feels light.” I thought perhaps that was the best and most succinct of the definitions I could think of, for the word, delight. That which lightens your heart, or your burdens – that which makes you feel… light?

 

Sometimes the most delight is when the light is “setting.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Another Thing To Do For Yourself

Moiself  can’t begin to explain it; just trust me, watch The History Of The World, Part Two, the follow-up to Mel Brooks’  History Of The World Part One.  My fave is the skit, “Khancestry.com,” which features a variety of purported descendants of Kublai Khan in a satire of 23 and me, ancestry.com, and other DNA-using genealogical services…

Oh, never mind the promo – it’s got Wanda Sykes in it, as both a performer and a writer.  What else do you need to know?

 

 

*   *   *

Depart Department Of STFU And Stop Pandering
Sub Department Of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Dateline: last week; 8 am-ish; returning from a walk; listening to ologies, a podcast moiself  usually finds quite entertaining. This episode began that way, then turned into an exception.  The episode is  Black American Magirology (Food, Race, and Culture).  [5]    Here’s the episode’s description from the podcast website:

“What’s the difference between Southern cooking and ‘soul food?’ Is there a correct type of mac and cheese? And whose business is it what you eat? (Hint: no one’s). Culinary historian, scholar of African American life and culture critic Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson is a professor at University of Maryland College Park and department chair in the Department of American Studies. She also authored the books Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America, and Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power. We chat about everything from oral traditions to ‘soul food’ in popular culture, gendered roles in cooking, hyperlocal produce, systemic oppression and why someone would make chicken without seasoning it…”

Podcast host Alie Ward and her guest and talked about the racism which they see as implicit or subtle in criticizing the unhealthfulness of soul food (to which I’m thinking, Sorry, but *any* cuisine style laden with saturated fats and sodium are unhealthful, no matter who is doing the cooking or consuming), and the difference of the white and yellow cornmeals used in cornbread and what culinary historians say about the matter, and, as Ward put it, “how people judge each other” based on ingredient usage…. Then  there is this gem of an exchange:

Alie Ward:
You know, from an historical and anthropological perspective, so many European nations colonized other areas under the guise of looking for spices.  Why are white people so afraid to season their food?  We can’t flavor for shit – what’s up with that?  How does someone go on Oprah with an award-winning chicken recipe and no salt or pepper?  Do you remember this clip? Tell me you remember this clip?

Psyche Williams-Forson (laughing):
Yes…yes…yes..yes…..

Ward plays a clip of an Oprah show guest (a cook of some kind) who is asking of Oprah, in almost a pleading way, “Do you like it?” Oprah equivocates, finally saying, “I do like it…I like it very much…did we add salt and pepper? I think we needed salt and pepper.”  Guest: “Nope; there’s no salt and pepper in it.”

Ward and Dr. W-F go on to talk about co-opting foods, as if the usage of mere salt and pepper, those all-over-everywhere ingredients can be co-opted.

Yeah; it’s supposed to be funny.  But imagine a pronouncement like, “Why are white people so afraid to season their food?  We can’t flavor for shit,” reversed:  “Why do black people over salt their food?  They can’t control their blood pressure for shit.”

Also, speak for yourself, Ms. Ward, and not *we*, as in, all “white people.”  Moiself  has never been “afraid” (seriously?) to season my food.   [6]    Also also, I for one do not consider slathering a casserole with salt and pepper to be adequate “seasoning.”   [7]

 

So, there.

I’ll probably pout for a week, then check out next week’s ologies podcast.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [8]

“This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort
to be less horrible to one another.”

Elliot Page, nee Ellen Page, actor and LGBTQ activist

 

 

*   *   *

May you delight in feeling light;
May you never conflate empowerment with undergarments;
May you enjoy scrolling past screaming headlines;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Because it works, at least for a while.

[2] This “you“ is rhetorical, as I am not sure of that many, if any, right-wing/conservative Christians read my blog.

[3]  Or even “good” as in becoming believing in practicing Catholics, for that matter.

[4] I don’t think they were mandated by law, most of the kids had to make their way to school themselves, whether through walking or biking or carpooling with other families.

[5] Magirology is the art of cooking.

[6] I don’t even consider salt to be a spice.

[7] And I’ve read cookbooks and essays by many non-American chefs who complain that the American palate – of all Americans of all skin colors – has been ruined by the over-usage of salt as the primary (and ofttimes only) seasoning, thus rendering many Americans incapable of appreciating the subtleties of spices other than salt).

[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

The Word I’m Not Overusing

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Department Of The Universe Is Telling Me I Should Stop Writing And
Run For The Border Take The Next Shuttle To Mars

Moiself  just found out that this is a thing: Taco Bell Quarterly.  A new “literary” journal.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why Does This Question Need To Be Answered, Let Alone Asked?  [1]

“Is it morbid to take selfies with the deceased in their casket at a funeral?”
(from a letter to advice columnist Dear Abby, The Oregonian, 6-3-23 )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Question Worth Answering, Or At Least Pondering.

As posed by the No Stupid Questions podcast:

Do you have a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset?

Some parameters might be useful. As per the NSQ website:

“…a scarcity mentality refers to people who see life as a finite pie – a zero-sum game. If you have something, I can’t have it…. people with a scarcity mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit, whereas someone with an abundance mentality has the idea that there’s plenty out there for everyone. The rising tide lifts all boats. Let’s not just give me a bigger piece of the pie; let’s make the pie bigger….”

My bet is that every person is  a combination of the two, and that some folks will definitely skew one way or the other. Scarcity and abundance not just in terms of economics, but in regard to relationships, time management and perceptions, emotional self-regulation, creative endeavors….

 

 

The No Stupid Questions podcast on the scarcity/abundance mindset took me on Lyft ride down memory lane.  In particular, this happened when NSQ  co-hosts Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth were discussing research addressing the origins of the scarcity mindset concept:

NSQ cohost Stephen Dubner:
“…Shankar Vedantam, (host of the Hidden Brain podcast, speaking in a piece he made for an NPR show)…says: ‘When you’re hungry, it’s hard to think of anything other than food. When you’re desperately poor, you constantly worry about making ends meet. Scarcity produces a kind of tunnel vision, and it explains why, when we’re in a hole, we often lose sight of long-term priorities and dig ourselves even deeper….’
So he’s making the argument that scarcity — real scarcity, not a scarcity mindset — can impose an even additional burden because it forces you to spend a lot of your attention and resources on just getting enough.”

NSQ cohost Angela Duckworth:
“…I’m going to read you the end of the first paragraph [of the research paper, Some Consequences of Having Too Little ]: ‘Resource scarcity creates its own mindset, changing how people look at problems and make decisions.’

The first line [of the paper] is, ‘The poor often behave in ways that reinforce poverty…. For instance, low-income individuals often play lotteries, fail to enroll in assistance programs, save too little, and borrow too much…. But we suggest a more general view. Resource scarcity creates its own mindset, changing how people look at problems and make decisions.’ “

SD:
“…there’s a lot to untangle here….low-income people often compound their low-income-ness by making choices that contribute to a furthering of that pattern…. So, there are people who say, ‘Well, there you go. Poor people are poor because they make bad decisions.’ And what this line of research is saying, if I’m understanding correctly, is that poor people are poor for any number of reasons. And then it’s easy for poverty itself, for scarcity itself, if we want to call it that, to essentially compound on itself.”

AD:
“…I think it would be easiest to actually explain some of the research…a summary of a series of laboratory experiments…to basically create a fake [game] world where [researchers] could randomly assign people to be rich or poor and experimentally figure out what the heck is going on with decision-making that is different for those who are rich and poor…”

SD:
“…the idea is to measure how good or bad a decision is when you’re under different stressors?”

AD:|
“…you want to see if you randomly assign people to be poor in these games, do they accumulate more debt than people who are randomly assigned to be rich?….what [the study did] is create a microcosm of society, except they get to choose who’s rich or poor….they can show that you can take people who have…nothing wrong with their decision-making faculties, assign them to have fewer resources in a game, and show that they’ll accumulate more debt than rich people…

the key insight is that there seems to be a shift in attention. When you are assigned to be in the poor condition and you have fewer resources…your attention is going to these urgent problems that are right in front of you, and you’re not making decisions that are good for you in the long term. Whatever you want to call it, that focus of attention on the urgent [is] the landmark finding. And immediately, you can change the way somebody’s brain is functioning just by putting them into a situation where they have scarce resources.”

SD:
“So there’s this snowball effect, which is when you’re dealt a bad hand, there are a number of cards within that hand that will lead to further bad cards, essentially.”

AD:
“That’s the vicious cycle that would logically ensue…. you’ve got fewer resources and more stress and less time, and you’re making even worse decisions with each round of life.”

( excerpts, my emphases, from “Do You Have a Scarcity Mindset
or an Abundance Mindset?”  NSQ, 5-7-2023 )

 

 

 

When I was in college I took a class   [2]  on The Sociology of Poverty.  Decades later, when I first heard the term “scarcity mindset” (coined by academics, so hey, it’s a thing!) my mind immediately flashed back to one of the required books for the class.  The book consisted of chapters presenting studies of the roots and realities of poverty alternating with chapters telling the story of a woman and her family (her husband and four children) who lived in New York City.    [3]    The wife and husband were each born into and continued to live below what was called the poverty line.  Both adults were marginally educated; the wife raised the children and tended their home (a rental apartment); the husband was sporadically employed in a series of low skill/low wage jobs.

While I was taking that class I was cobbling together different jobs to put moiself  through college, and was well acquainted with stretching a dollar until it tore in half. Which is perhaps why moiself  found it depressing and frustrating to read the family’s story, to see how they seemed to defeat themselves on a day-by-day basis.  The woman (the main focus of the story) and her husband were functionally passive, drifting through life, like human flotsam at the mercy of the tides of fate (and the whims of their capricious deity, which the woman mentioned several times, ala, “God will provide”…except, of course, he didn’t).

 

 

She lived for the day, instead of planning not only for today but for the tomorrows which would, inevitably, become the todays.  One of many examples: instead of getting her family to walk with her further in (or out of) her immidiate neighborhood, just once a week, to a larger, discount grocery store where they could buy rice and beans and other staples in bulk to last an entire week’s worth of meals, each afternoon the woman would go to the (expensive) corner bodega, getting the ingredients for whatever she’d decided to make for dinner that night, spending two or three times the amount for items that would last one meal, at a cost that would have lasted for six meals if she’d purchased the same items at another store.  

When I finished the book I realized there was something else going on; something I didn’t have a word for until I heard the term, scarcity mindset.  When I was growing up my family, although not below the poverty line, had to be quite careful (read: things were “tight”) with money.  However, unlike the adults in the book, the parents around me (both mine and those of *most* of my peers    [4]  ) set a good example with regard to planning, budgeting, and spending.  From day to day the Book Woman ®  didn’t know for certain if her husband would bring home enough money to buy a half-pound box of rice and a can of beans and some vegetables, and she was surrounded by people living the same way – people who had developed and/or were born into the same mindset.  On a day when there was money, they ate a little better.  On a day when they had little money (and/or the rent was due), they ate a little worse.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Word To Stop Over Using

Seems like moiself  can’t spit without hitting   [5]   a news app or story wherein someone, in a letter to an advice columnist or in a first-person essay, writes about their “toxic

* in-law
parent
*
sibling
* extended family
* friend
* next door neighbor
* spouse
* children
* coworker
* barista…

Speaking of spitting, what’s the name of that reptile which can gob its venom?  Ah, yes, that would be the aptly dubbed, spitting cobra.

 

 

“A ‘spitting’ cobra is any of several species of cobra that can intentionally, defensively shoot their venom directly from their fangs….
Most spitting cobras’ venom/toxungen is significantly cytotoxic, apart from the neurotoxic and cardiotoxic effects typical of other cobra species….”
(excerpts from Wikipedia entry on the spitting cobra )

Note the repeated usage of the word toxic, as per its original/primary definition,    [6]  referring to a substance being poisonous and capable of causing death or serious debilitation, or that which exhibits symptoms of a deadly condition caused by a toxin.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know – language evolves.  I moiself  enjoy many a repurposed or expanded usage of an old term; still, IMO, the widespread and often hyperbolic application of toxic (or any adjective) lessens its potency.

Sure, there are people who behave nastily and/or whose (intentional or incidental) malice seems to be a part of their very essence.  But you and your sister strongly disagreeing about politics and religion and memories of who did what to whom in childhood – does that mean your relationship is comparable to a paralytic venom?   [7]    The guy in the cubicle next to yours who rummages through the break room refrigerator, pilfers and consumes half of your avocado hummus sandwich, then blames your disappearing lunch on the new HR intern –  is that guy really “creating a toxic work environment,” or is he merely (and effectively) acting like an immature, entitled, inconsiderate asshat?

 

Whenever possible, I opt for the Asshat of the Week ® Award.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Veggiepalooza

Dateline: a couple of weeks ago, outside my neighborhood’s cluster unit mailboxes.  Exchanging what-have-you-been-up-to?s  with a neighbor, and when I mentioned I’d just returned from picking up my CSA share,    [8]   he said that he and his wife are trying to eat healthier (“more vegetables and all that”).  Of course, I had to put in a plug.

Even before MH and moiself  joined our first CSA (over a dozen years ago) I was already more than halfway toward a whole foods plant-based eating life.  But the introduction to foods I’d never or rarely seen in the local markets was a special benefit of CSA membership. Before that, how would I know that I would have liked, for example, shishito peppers, Chinese broccoli, celeriac, and kohlrabi so much?

 

I’m intrigued by any plant which resembles a jellyfish-Russian spy satellite hybrid.

 

Speaking of kohlrabi, I came up with this recipe many years ago, when moiself  was craving Indian-spiced food and had leftover tomatoes & kohlrabi from our CSA share.  I told my father about my creation, and he said that he looked forward to me cooking it for him the next time he and Mom came up for a visit..  Alas, I never got to make this one for him (he died a few months after that foodie conversation of ours). Here’s to you, Chet. And here’s the recipe for Kohlrabi Dal.

KohlRabi Dal (Serves 4)
The recipe name is a play on words for the root veggie, and dal (in Indian cuisine, dal are dried, split legumes),
and honors my father, whose nickname for me was Robbie Doll.

Ingredients:
– ½ t  each of whole brown mustard seeds and cumin seeds|
-1T neutral oil
– 1 medium yellow onion, diced
– 2 garlic cloves, minced
– ½ T minced ginger root
– 1 large green jalapeno, stemmed & seeded & finely chopped
– 1½  T pomegranate molasses (or tamarind paste –  you want a tart, tangy taste)
– 1 packed t dark brown or coconut sugar
– scant 1 t chili powder (New Mexico, if possible)
– ¼ t ground turmeric
– ½ c masoor dal (red lentils), picked through   [9]  and rinsed
– 2 medium tomatoes, chopped (or canned, to equal ~ 6 oz/170g)
-3-4 med-large Kohlrabi (~675 g or 1 ½ lb) – peeled & diced small
-Salt to taste
-Chopped fresh cilantro and cooked brown or white rice
-Drained unsweetened soy/other plant-based yogurt OR soft silken tofu, to equal 1 c,
blended with 1/8 t salt and 2T lime juice

Instructions:
– Heat oil in a Dutch oven or other high-sided pan. Add the seeds; sauté until the seeds pop (30 sec to 1 m).  Add the onions and sauté for 5m.
– Add garlic & jalapeno & ginger; sauté until fragrant (30 s – 1m).  Add the molasses and the remaining spices; stir for 15 sec.
– add dal to the pan.  Sauté for 1-2 m stirring, until dal is covered w/oil & spices.
– Add tomatoes and 1 ¾ c water, bring to boil; turn heat to low, cover pan & simmer 20 m.
– Meanwhile, prep kohlrabi: steam or nuke the pieces 5-6 m or until tender.
– Add steamed kohlrabi to pan, continue to simmer, uncovered ~ 10 m or until lentils are cooked through and sauce thickens.  Add more water if necessary for desired consistency.
– Add salt to taste.
-Serve: atop rice of choice, with dollops of lime/yogurt sauce and sprinkles of chopped cilantro.

 

Chet Parnell and his Robbie Doll, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [10]

 

 

 Ali Rizvi is a Pakistani-born, Canadian, atheist ex-Muslim
and secular humanist writer and scientist (oncologic pathologist)
who explores the challenges of Muslims who leave their faith.

*   *   *

Of all the selfies you may be tempted to take, may none of them be at a funeral;
May you maintain a healthy disance from actual toxins;
May you discover (if you haven’t already) the joys of kohlrabi;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I didn’t read Abby’s advice.  Didn’t need to; the question itself was so grotesquely entertaining that I couldn’t imagine any answer which would top it.

[2] A class which eas required for my major.

[3] I cannot recall which borough, but it was one of the B’s – Brooklyn, or the Bronx.

[4] Except the wealthy ones, who just did and bought whatever the hell they wanted to.

[5] I’m not sure if I’m mixing metaphors here or just misusing or abusing one. Would that make me a toxic metaphor-ist?

[6] ( see Merriam Webster online dictionary )

[7] And I’m not casually dismissive of the label, nor do I think it has no legitimate application.  I know more than one person whose close family member(s) have poisoned their relationships with continual, malicious, soul-crushing words and deeds.

[8] Community Shared Agriculture, or CSA, is a farming model built on fairness and transparency for both the farmer and the consumer. Traditionally, a consumer buys a share of a farm up-front, which provides financial security to the farmer for that season. In return, the consumer receives a regular box of fresh produce. ( What Is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?, The Spruce Eats )

[9] Any dal or dried beans can sometimes include small bits of chaff or even pebbles.

[10] “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 Babies I’m Not Sleep-Training

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Department Of Two Words, Which Bother Me, To The Same Degree

Those would be: selfie, and panties.

Selfie.  Why is that necessary, when you have perfectly good words like narcissist?

Panties. Seriously? Grown ass females, even little girls, do not wear panties; they wear underpants or underwear.  Fetishists and pedos   [1]   want women and girls to wear panties.

*   *   *

Department Of Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned

To maintain a pretense of sanity, moiself  has been trying to stay away from the news.  But some gems still sneak on through.  Attention, all ye Book Banning Cretins, especially the ones in Florida: isn’t there some other classic Florida Man® thing you need to do, maybe throw an alligator through a fast food franchise’s window, to protest…something?

Apparently, among the books the BBCs have banned from their own narrow minds are anything involving the history of

* freethought and expression

* the exchange of information

* the kind of people who ban books and what happens to them and their society afterward.

 

 

And the bans are being defended by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

I know; y’all will need the smelling salts to believe that an elected official who took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution would support banning books.

 

 

If requested to offer sage counsel, moiself  would advise that DeSantis and his ilk should avoid pissing off us cranky, feminist authors.  The older we get, the less the phrase “life-in-prison” is a deterrent.

*   *   *

Department Of Belated Yet Timely Information

“…an anthropologist from Utah State University, David Lancy, performed (an) analysis on parenting. The conclusion was….clear-cut: When you look around the world and throughout human history, the Western style of parenting is WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies..). We are outliers.

In many instances, what we think is ‘necessary’ or ‘critical’ for childhood is actually not present in any other cultures around the world or throughout time.

‘The list of differences is really, really long,’ says Lancy…. ‘There may be 40 to 50 things that we do that you don’t see in indigenous cultures.’

Here in the U.S., many parents don’t have…firsthand experience before having children themselves. Instead, we often learn…through parenting books, Google searches and YouTube videos. But this information comes with two big caveats….

For starters, parenting advice can give the impression that the recommendations are based on science. But a deep look at some studies reveals that the science is more like smoke and mirrors. Sometimes the studies don’t even test what the parenting expert is purporting they do.

… Ben Bradley argues…: ‘Scientific observations about babies are more like mirrors which reflect back the preoccupations and visions of those who study them than like windows opening directly on the foundations of the mind.’

And sometimes the data supporting the recommendation are so flimsy that another study in a few years will come along and not only overturn the first study but completely flip the advice 180 degrees…”

( Excerpts from “Secrets Of A Maya Supermom: What Parenting Books Don’t Tell You,”
Reprint of an NPR story from 5-18 )

 

 

‘Twas a wee bit past Mother’s Day is when I saw this article, and Father’s Day is just around the proverbial bend.  After attending a family wedding this past weekend, wherein with two of my nephews were new and/or about-to-be fathers, I found this article most noteworthy. [2]

Reading the article made me think about way back when,   [3]  to the baby books MH and I were given/bought, and how eventually I set them all aside (in one case, I threw one across the room, yelling, “Oh seriously, fuck this!”) in dissent and frustration).

The book that became a frisbee was one of those dreadful, “how to get your baby to sleep” screeds books (which had been either recommended by or gifted to us by a family member).  Several of the parenting books contained “advice” and “expertise” which didn’t sit well with either MH or moiself  and which seemed contrary to both logic and the reality of our babies.  I began to look up information about the authors of those books, and when moiself  did so I found that they were penned by – surprise! – stealth conservative evangelical Christians.  [4]  This explained much of which I found questionable about their advice:  *control* was the overriding and underlying issue.

William and Martha Sears, just two of the stealthers, have co-authored several books peddling their attachment-style parenting theories, and one of them was given to me by a friend.  Guess what the Sears’ also wrote:  The Complete Book of Christian Parenting and Child Care: A Medical and Moral Guide to Raising Happy Healthy Children.  The word “medical” being included in the title both cracks me up and disturbs me.    [5] 

 

 

Once again, I digress.

The sleep advice books were the worst of the parenting manuals authored by conservative evangelicals. In the Conservagels    [6]   world, there is a supposed, divinely ordained, patriarchal hierarchy:  On top of the pyramid is a (male pronoun-using) deity, followed by a father, followed by a mother, then children.  Parents *must* be “in control” of their children, from birth to young adulthood.  The takeaway was that your children, yes, even that six-week-old infant, are sneaky little buggers trying to control their parents, and will manipulate you unless you set the rules and routines *from the get-go.*

Creepy. That’s the word which comes to my mind as I recall the gist of those books: You must set a routine early on for sleep-training and other despicable concepts  practices to let the little pea brain precious gift from above know that just because he cries it doesn’t mean he’s going to get a response from you if, in your opinion (which you will form using the criteria in the book), his vocalizations are not for a legitimate need (e.g., he’s hungry, or has a wet/poopy diaper).  He needs to learn self-control; he needs to learn to self/soothe cry it out, and not have his parents (read: the female one) at his beck and call.

 

 

*From the get-go,* from the moment we escaped from the hospital,  [7]   K wanted to eat, lightly, around the clock (every three hours, for many, many months).  That was just how he was – eat a little, sleep a little.  Three years later, on the evening when his newborn sister Belle and I came home from the hospital, I had to go in to wake Belle up to nurse, after she’d slept for five straight hours and I feared she’d succumbed to SIDS or something.  [8]  *From the get-go,* Belle was a different infant.  She would nurse heartily, then sleep heartily.  After Belle was weaned, she and K seemed to switch sleeping patterns for a little over a year – she became the night owl and he in turn liked a good 8-10 hours.   [9]

 

 

After two weeks (ha!) paternity leave, when MH was home from work he did the lion’s share of our babes’ care, except for feeding them.  We figured it made no sense for *both* parents to be sleep-deprived, and since I was the one with the human milk glands, I was the one getting up to feed them.   [10]    Several months into a brutal sleep deprivation, I tried a sleep training book’s advice: after feeding K and changing his diaper and rocking him for a bit, I’d put him down in his crib, and let him cry and cry.  It did not set well with either of K’s parents, to put it mildly.   I usually went back to K’s room after an hour, fed him/changed him/rocked him again, and he’d go back to sleep.

One night, the third or fourth in a row when we were trying the sleep training advice, MH and I were in bed, attempting to read our respective books, while K was wailing away in his bedroom.  MH, frustrated with the “let him cry” advice, announced that he couldn’t take it anymore. He got up and headed to K’s room, with moiself  trailing behind.  “He’s a baby,” MH said, as he picked up and cuddled our son, who immediately stopped his wails. “He’s just trying to tell us…something…in the only way he knows how.”

I came to the conclusion that my son may have been channeling the spirit of one of the bajillion pet hamsters I had as a child (K seemed to be nocturnal)…or maybe he was just bored and/or lonely, and guess what – he doesn’t speak yet.  Other than that, no, this 3-month-old infant who doesn’t even know his top from his bottom is not trying to manipulate me, and no thank you – and by no thank you I mean, F-off –  to the rigid asshats who are trying to convince me that he is.    [11]

 

Eventually, both K and Belle learned to speak English.

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month  

 

 

It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [12] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [13]

 

*   *   *

May your pictures of yourself be just that, and not selfies;
May you shun panties: go commando, or put on underwear;
May you ban book banning and read banned books;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Hum these three words to the tune of Winnie-the Pooh’s “Heffalumps and Woozles.” You won’t regret it.

[2] The story would be interesting even if I had no kinfolk on the cusp of parenthood; the timing of my seeing the article merely coincided.

[3] Okay; thirty years ago, anticipating/after the arrival of our first born, son K.

[4] Stealth as in, they were attempting to fly under the radar by not identifying themselves as such.

[5]  Because, as we know from SCIENCE, babies born to Christian parents will have different physiologies (digestive tracts;  REM patterns…) than babies born to Humanist, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Jain parents.

[6] Forget selfie; here’s a neologism which begs to be coined.

[7] That’s kind of how we viewed it – a concept shared by many new parents, as we discovered later when we compared notes.  We left the hospital, where we and our baby were being cared for by professionals…and they’re going to just let us get in the car and take our baby home, when we’ve never done this before?!?!

[8] Plus, by then, *I* needed her to nurse. Nursing mothers understands the old farm idiom of why the  cows come home.

[9] Which translates as nothing resembling a regular sleep pattern for moiself.  For the first five years of motherhood, I often felt like I’d fallen out of the zombie tree and hit every branch on the way down.

[10] K and Belle were breast fed exclusively – no bottles – when it came to liquid nourishment. They went from me to a sippy cup, which had its advantages when we saw other parents deal with the fight to get their kids to give up the bottle.

[11] K later became a fine sleeper, thank you very much.

[12] 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.

[13] “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 Vocals I’m Not Frying

Comments Off on The Vocals I’m Not Frying

Department Of, Like, Just Give It A Fancy Name, And It’ll Be, Like, Less Annoying

It’s been a noteworthy past few weeks for my podcast listening obsession hobby, with several different podcasts focusing on a subject of particular interest to moiself : language and usage.    [1]    Clear + Vivid podcast is on a roll re that topic.  Yet another thought-provoking episode:  English evolves, like it or not.

Podcast guest Valerie Fridland, researcher and author of Like Literally Dude: Arguing for the good in bad English, says that those likes and so’s and you knows, ahs, ums and other language tics that annoy us so much are inescapable, and actually linguistically useful.  In this excerpted exchange, Fridland and C+V host Alan Alda discuss what many people decry as one of their most annoying language peeves, the use of the word, “like.”

 

 

Valerie Fridland:
One way that we’re using like in a new way is as an approximating  adverbial.   [2]  And I think when you think about it that way it makes it sound so much more intellectual that it will convert people into like likers…

Alan Alda (laughing):
It’s so intellectual I can’t understand it….

VF:
I’m gonna break it down for you; I just want you to know that it’s doing something important.

AA:
…you got me halfway there, with the fancy name.

VF:
So when you are talking about something that you’re estimating…you need to indicate to your listeners somehow  that what you’re saying – you’re not trying to be exact; you’re not trying to lie to them if you’re wrong about the number you’re giving them, but you’re just estimating.  Usually in standard English we use  “about” as what we call an approximating adverbial.  Which would mean, I would say something like, “He’s about five years old’ or ‘it’s about twenty pounds.’ That’s an approximating adverbial – the ‘about’….

‘Like’ has simply become a new approximating adverbial: “He’s like ten pounds;” or, ‘It’s like a hundred years old.’ So ‘like’ has become a one-to-one substitution for something that’s already well-accepted and serves a purpose.   It’s just not as well accepted, but it still serves that same purpose.

 

 

They chat about other linguistic topics, including vocal fry.

AA:
Your mission, if you should accept it, is to show me why that (accepting vocal fry) is a good thing.

VF:
I want to clarify something:  none of these are better necessarily than things we used to do, they’re just different. That that’s basically the evolution of language…. Things don’t necessarily change because they’re better, they change because there is a cognitive desire or an articulatory desire from our evolutionary standpoint to move that direction and a social trigger to make it happen.

 

 

And although I understand Fridland’s defense of language evolution, why do certain evolutions – vocal fry, as a prime example – have to be so effin’ annoying?  In moiself’s opinion, it’s like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.  Speaking of which….

*   *   *

Department Of Good And Bad Anticipations

Good anticipation:  a family wedding later this month.

Bad anticipation: the probable harangue/entreaties for those attending to participate in extended family photos.  Not a big deal for many folk, and perhaps even anticipated by those in the selfie-obsessed/must-document-every-moment-of-ME crowd.  However, such entreaties are the equivalents of fingernails on a chalkboard for those of us who are fotografizophobic. ®

And no, we’re not just camera shy.

 

 

It’s not the lack of “fear” which bothers moiself  about (some) photographers, it’s their lack of boundaries.  Exemplified by the person – whom I had just met and who thus falls into the virtual stranger ® category – who, long ago in a galaxy far far away, actually told me, when they’d asked me to be in a picture they were taking and I politely declined, that they were “offended” by me not wanting them to take my picture.

The subject came up after a trip many years MH and daughter Belle and I made, to visit son K in college.  I’ll let moiself  explain as per a previous blog several years ago:

Saturday night, after dropping off K at his dorm, Belle, MH & I had dinner at Pomodoro, in Tacoma’s Procter district.   Not long after we were seated Belle removed her sketch pad and pencils from her purse. She and MH were seated across from me, and Belle looked in my direction as she began to sketch. I turned around to see if perhaps a cute waiter or bus boy was lurking behind me.  Nope.  This put me into a rather mild existential panic.  I tried my best not to sound like a bad Robert DeNiro imitation as I asked, “Are you sketching *me*?”

 

 

“Yes,” Belle replied.  “Hold still.”

I didn’t hold still.  None of us held still.  We were doing restaurant-things: eating, drinking, lifting napkins to our mouths, answering questions from our server, as well as allegedly conversing with one another.  Belle said nothing more, but from her heavy sighs and eyebrow gymnastics it was apparent that she was disappointed with my lack of stillness, and other attributes that render me unfit for sketching.

I do not translate well to photos.  I am not a still life, and loathe having my picture taken in any form and for any cause. The reasons for this are not particularly complicated or interesting; they are known to those supposedly closest to me, and in a kind and just world (calling Mr. Rogers!) would be respected, even if not “understood.”  This is rarely the case.

From the POV of a fotografizophobic   [3]  when people gaze at you intently and allegedly dispassionately, judging the contours (read: inadequacies) of your bone structure and other facial features, hearing them say, “Hold still so I can sketch you/take your picture” is the emotional equivalent of hearing, “Hold still so that I may throw acid in your face.”

Unsolicited, adult-to-adult advice: when any sentient being declines to have their picture taken by you, respect their wishes and move on.  Do not whine and wheedle; do not attempt any form of emotional blackmail  ( “The family reunion shot will be ruined if you’re not in it, and who knows if Uncle Anus will live long enough to attend the next one!” ).  Unless I am renewing my driver’s license and you are the DMV camera dude, or you are the hospital’s medical photographer sent to document my Mayo Clinic-worthy, bulbous axillary tumor, back off.  It’s that simple.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of New Things To Think About

Moiself   had a pull-over-to-the-curb moment  [4]  last week, the kind that made me all tingly inside.

 

 

Relax, Countess, it’s not that kind of tingly.

It’s the even better kind, prompted by the realization of This  is something I’ve rarely – if ever – thought about before.

This was thanks to a recent Clear + Vivid podcast:  Susan Goldin-Meadow: Thinking with your hands.  From the podcast teaser:

Decades spent studying the way we use our hands when we talk has convinced Susan Goldin-Meadow that not only do gestures help our listeners understand us; gestures help us understand ourselves. They help us think, and as children, even to learn.

Susan Goldin-Meadow is a Professor in of Psychology, Comparative Human Development, and Education at the University of Chicago.  Her specialties and areas of research include exploring the impact of environmental and biological variation on language development – such as homesign, the unique, gestural languages created by children who lack language input (e.g. deaf children born to hearing parents who do not sign).  She is also fascinated by how our own gestures help us think and learn and communicate above and beyond the spoken word.

 

There’s a chart for everything.

 

We’ve all made the jokes about other people – or in moiself’s  case, I’ve both made the jokes and have had them applied to moiself – about people who “talk with their hands.”   [5]   As in, those who tend to gesture when talking, especially when telling stories or speaking with resolution and passion.  I tend to do this, and those who have pointed this out to me usually follow their observation with one of two attributions:

“It’s due to your Irish blood!”
(Yep; 50% on both sides of the family)

“You *must* be Italian!”
(Scusa; not a drop).

But I’ve never considered what place gestures and gesticulating plays in language (nor extensively thought about the fact that gesturing as a form of communication likely preceded both oral and written language), or that studying this fascinating topic is even an academic thing.

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon…moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.  [6]

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [7]

“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?”
 ( Stephen Fry, British English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have happy reasons for pull-over-to-the-curb moments;
May you keep your fingernails away from chalkboards;
May you refrain from vocal frying “like” within earshot of moiself;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] (as moiself   wrote about last week).

[2] Approximating adverbials are “…used to show that something is almost, but not completely, accurate or correct: ‘The trip takes approximately seven hours. The two buildings were approximately equal in size. The flight takes approximately three hours.’ ”  Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries.

[3] Fotografizophobia is the fear of having your picture taken.

[4] Well, except for the fact that I was not driving.

[5] but *not* referring to people who actually communicate with their hands; i.e., deaf and hearing impaired people who use ASL.

[6] 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.

[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

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