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The Energy Crisis I’m (Still) Not Solving

July 24, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Department Of Things That Hold Up Overtime

MH and I have been re-watching the TV series ER.   Aside from some older technology artifacts – the hospital records and procedures are not fully computer-integrated (e.g.,  the staff keeps index card files on certain patients! ) – the issues, both medical and personal, remain, IMO, compelling and contemporary. Except for wanting an old-fashioned schoolmarm’s stick to whack George Clooney’s character on the back (  “Stand up straight!  Look people in the eye!  You’re a doctor, FFS!” ), the performances are spot-on.  Although (for moiself  at least) Clooney’s hangdog/horndog, mannered performance as Dr. Doug Ross takes some getting used to, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how… fresh… everything seems.  It’s fun to rewatch a great episode I haven’t thought of in years, and turn to MH and say, “Oh, wait, I think I remember this…no I don’t/no, wait – something weird is gonna happen here….”

 

Someone who’s on the cusp of being a ginormous movie star and making an obscene amount of money should have better posture.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why Isn’t This A Thing Yet?

Percussive energy is the thing that isn’t, yet.  And it should be.  After all, moiself  blogged about it four years ago ( The Clean Energy Source I’m Not Yet Inventing ). And yet the eyes and ears of the scientific community remain blind and deaf to my far-fetched ranting well-thought proposals?

I wrote about percussive energy as the counterpart, or rather compliment, to solar and wind energy. Short recap:  utilizing all that  tap, tap tap  [1]  of raindrops – as in, designing a surface, which could capture that energy find a way to use or store it (an answer to the old school people who decry “clean” energy by saying,  “Yeah well solar only works when it’s sunny/wind power only works when it’s windy….” ).

The world is still waiting for, still needing, youth science fairs and contests to challenge and/or incentivize their entrants to…basically…save us from ourselves.   Or at least help us out with our existing problems, rather than translate their budding scientific and entrepreneurial skills into designing yet another mind-numbing gaming/entertainment app.

 

Lilly Downs, eighth grader from Osteen, Florida, wins Lemelson Early Inventor Prize winner at her 2025 science fair.   [2]

 

*   *   *

Department Of Gems Discovered While Seeking Something Else

That would be a blog segment from five years ago, specifically 8-20-21 ( The Butt I’m Not Kicking ) where in moiself  wrote about MH’s colonoscopy:

Department Of Post-Procedural Updates

Background info: MH has never been able to roll his rs, which is the main reason, he told me many years ago, that he took German as a foreign language in high school.  He’d thought Spanish would be more useful/practical, but he simply could not roll his rs as is required for the correct pronunciation of many Spanish words, and he was somewhat intimidated/embarrassed by his lack of being able to perform that particular linguistic feat.  And it’s true: over the years, I’ve tried to get him to do it (or trick him into it), and he simple cannot roll his rs.

Dateline: Thursday, 10:50 am. MH is back home after his colonoscopy.  He thinks he’s fine, but it’s obvious to moiself  that the effects of the Versed (the sedative used during the procedure) are still reigning.    [3]    He’s… goofy

He stands at the kitchen counter, looking at the color printout he was given at the hospital, which includes a map of the lower intestines. He begins reading off the “map sites” to me:

MH (in a voice much higher than his usual range):
“The ilium!
The cecum!
The rrrrrrrrrrrectum…”

Moiself:
What?!?!?!  Holy crap; did you hear yourself?!  You rolled your rs!

MH (in miffed toddler mode):
“No I didn’t.”

Moiself:
“Oh yes you did!”

MH proceeds to say “rectum” over and over, drawing out the r sound without rolling it.  But for one glorious, Versed-induced moment, them rs were rolling like a river.

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Not Completely Different
But Similar, As In, Involving A Memory

 

MH and I met in a Lutheran Church.  Yep; yours truly the flaming atheist, Humanist, Freethinker, Skeptic, religion-free apostate/heretic was raised by Lutheran parents and was herself, like her now equally religion-free (  but less flaming  [4]   ) spouse was once an active church member.  But that’s a story for another day (preferably, a day involving cosumption of gin and tonics by both the storetellers and story listeners ).

A momentary digression for Educational Purposes®:  moiself  has been referred to, by other active and former Christians, as both a heretic and an apostate.  Neither word is one I consider pejorative; both are arguable as to their applicability as labels for my beliefs and experiences.  [5].  In general, both labels refer to someone’s rejection of the religion they are/were “in” and/or were raised in.  The difference is in the degree of rejection.  Apostates totally reject or renounce their religion; heretics stay (or attempt to stay) within their religion and/or religious community but openly hold and assert beliefs that contradict their religions’ theologies and doctrines. [6]   (interesting factoid: at some point in time, every new religion/demonization has been accused of heresy/apostasy by their onetime co-religionists).

 

 

Moiself  recently overheard a tidbit of a conversation in which one person was relaying to another their experience of being challenged as to their worthiness of ascending to a certain position in their work. This reminded me of a story shared with moiself  by one of the pastors at Grace Lutheran Church in Palo Alto, the church where MH and I met.

Grace Lutheran was a congregation in the ELCA synod, the most liberal synod or wing of the American Lutheran churches.  At that time (when MH and I were attending) Grace Lutheran had two co-pastors, one male and one female.  I became friendly with both of them, in particular the female pastor, SK.  This was in 1986, and although the ELCA had been ordaining women pastors since 1970, their acceptance was a slow process, and women pastors were not automatically welcomed with open arms.  One afternoon a few months after I’d joined the church SK and I met for tea in downtown Hillsboro.  During our wide-ranging conversation the subject of her being called    [7]  to Grace Lutheran came up.  Specifically, I asked her how smooth the process had been:  did she feel accepted by all of the congregation, or at least the majority?

SK told me that her call to Grace Lutheran went smoothly, although she was aware that the final vote of the congregation (to accept her call to be one of their pastors) was not unanimous.  On her first Sunday at Grace Lutheran, the leaders of the congregation held a reception for SK in the church’s Fellowship Hall, after the worship service.  The reception wound down after about two hours, which was a relief to SK, who, although grateful for the warm greetings she’d received, was beginning to think her petit frame could not bear another well-meaning handshake or congratulatory hug from the throngs of parishioners who introduced themselves to and welcomed her.

SK headed to the Fellowship Hall kitchen, intent upon helping the staff with KP duty, when one of the few parishioners remaining in the Fellowship Hall approached her.  A Tall Elegantly Dressed Older Woman (TEDOW) smiled broadly at SK, introduced herself as a “long-time” Grace Lutheran member, and said, in a friendly tone of voice that belied the rebuffing sentiment she was about to utter, that she would like to take SK to lunch to tell SK why she had “voted against your call, as I don’t think you belong here.”

SK kept her composure, smiling in return as she thanked TEDOW for the lunch invitation…which SK declined.

Moiself  was impressed by SK’s graciousness under fire, so to speak, and even more so by the rational simplicity of her response:

“No, thank you.  I *am* here; I don’t have to defend my being here.”   [8]

 

“Someone hand me the mic so I can drop it.”

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

*   *   *

May you have fond memories of a loved one’s post-colonoscopy rantings;
May you enjoy binging an old favorite TV series;
May you never have to defend your being where are you;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] And oft times, stomp stomp stomp.

[2] Society for science; Courtesy photo from Lilly Downs.

[3] I suggested he go upstairs and sit or lie down, as he was rather wobbly standing.  He wanted to go up the stairs by himself; I insisted he hold on to the handrail, which he did, while vaulting up the stairs two at a time.  When I snapped at him to slow down he said, “It feels better this way!”

[4] Except when he’s high on Versed and flamboyantly rolling his r’s….

[5] But, I’ll take ’em!

[6] For example, some Unitarians consider themselves Christian, but were/are rejected by other Christian denominations because Unitarians affirm the “unity” of the “one god” and reject the Christian doctrine of the trinity established by the apostle Paul.  Thus they are (in Christian eyes) heretics, not apostates.

[7] Being called refers to the process by which churches find and employ their pastors.  It varies between denomination and churches; here’s the link to ELCA call processes.

[8] I never met TEDOW.  She (and her husband) left the congregation before I began attending.  According to another congregant whom I quizzed about the incident, TEDOW and her husband were opposed to female ordination and also had problems with the other ways in which they felt their church was embracing heresy/leaning more liberal, and when they left Grace Lutheran they made sure that certain people knew they were leaving and were “taking their money” with them (implying that they were generous financial supporters of the church, which, that person I spoke with said, they were *not.*).

[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 Safe Driver I’m Not Raising

July 10, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, radio & podcasts, school, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Safe Driver I’m Not Raising

Department Of My Work Here Is Done

MH and moiself  recently received this text from daughter Belle:   

“Mom and Dad; you guys raised me to be such a safe driver that I am being urged to drive more dangerously by my friends.”

She then sent a copy of a message from a coworker…

 

…and added, to us:

“but don’t worry, you also raised me to not give in to peer pressure “

*   *   *

Department Of The Things We Rarely Do Via
Venues Which Could End Up On Social Media

That would be tell the truth about knotty issues – truths that may not present ourselves and/or our loved ones in the best of light.

Sub-Department Of The Unflattering Memories I Did Not Write
On The Post Right Before And Then Right After My Late Mother’s Birthday…    [1]

That was because it felt wrong to complain about her on or near that day…although my truth-telling was not so much complaining as it is realizing.

 

 

Department Of Self-Analysis

Dateline:  a weekday some time ago; circa 7:30 am-ish; morning walk while listening to NSQ ( No Stupid Questions ) podcast.  It was a repeat episode:  How Can You Stop Comparing Yourself With Other People?      [2]   The main topic the hosts   [3]  were discussing was – wait for it – comparing yourself to other people. They of course mentioned social media, where it’s very easy to feel yourself dull and/or unfulfilled   [4]  when you look at the posts of other people, and see their pictures of them and their well-mannered, high-achieving children travelling to beautiful, exotic places …

These images came through my earbuds as I was about to take (and then post) a picture of the morning sunlight glistening off the top of the waves at Manzanita beach.  I snickered at moiself,  and resolved to do my part to fight this trend:  Instead of posting a picture of this enviable costal sight I’ll return home, take a picture of the cat litter box, and post that instead.   But before I could make a note to moiself  to actually do that, the  NSQ  hosts distracted me with their comments on aspects of Social Comparisons Theory   [5]  (specifically  upward and downward comparisons).

 

“Having more fun than you’ll ever have – I mean, wish you were here.”

 

“…the upward comparison is what people worry about with social media. You go on Instagram and it’s always sunset, and the wind is always blowing just so, and everyone looks amazing…. that is the dark side of upward social comparison.
‘…

schadenfreude, the idea of taking pleasure in somebody else’s misery, is kind of a form of downward social comparison. When we look down on other people and that, at least temporarily, boosts our self-esteem…”

The talk of upward/downward comparisons brought back a not-so-pleasant memory.  Since I have included in this space ( in, e.g., The Summers I’m Not Forgetting, 6-28-19 ) an epic moment of my mother’s parenting (making me my favorite “fresh” apricot pie for my December birthday), equal time will now be given to an epic parenting failure of hers.

 

 

Backstory: From junior high through high school, the girls in my circle of friends were good-looking.  As in, ranging from beautiful/cute to down-right-gorgeous, in both the face and “figure” departments.  I didn’t befriend them for that reason; that was merely a fact, which was born out by another fact: they each had several of our guy schoolmates either lusting after or sincerely smitten with them.  Moiself, I had conversations, and phone calls.  Initiated by those guys.  About my friends.  With the phone calls, it would typically take the guy who called me many minutes (sometimes over an hour – no exaggeration) to get around to the real reason for his call.

The most memorable of those calls went on for two hours, during which time Guy Friend® AC and I discussed, among other pointless diversions topics, the possible interpretations of the rock group Chicago’s song, 25 or 6 to 4.   [6]    AC was the most prolific phone caller: from his first call,   [7]  to every single time he called, I found out I had to talk around the reason he’d called me.  If I asked him to directly confirm why he’d called, it would take even longer to get to the point – I would finally get around to dragging out of him what he was really after.  [8]  Which was always something along the lines of:  was (my friend) RR going to be at the JV basketball game after school tomorrow, and if not, could I figure out a way to get her to stay after school and watch the game with me, so AC could at least see her there and maybe even get up the courage to talk to her by coming up to the stands after the game to talk with me ( he had no qualms in doing that because, he said, I was “easier to talk to” )?

 

 

After that 2 hr marathon of a call I had a case of dry mouth and brain.  I schlumped into our kitchen, shaking my head to (I thought) moiself  as I reached into a cupboard for a water glass.  My mother was at the sink doing something.  [9]   She noted the puzzled look on my face and asked me what was up.  I told her about AC’s most recent phone call (she was aware of his series of calls), and my other conversations with male friends about my female friends whom they had crushes on/wanted to date.  I told her that I found it all so…odd, and silly.  I couldn’t understand the obsessions; certainly, my friends had positive – and in some cases, outstanding – qualities, which is why I was friends with them.  These guys are missing so much!  They’re intimidated by, for example, LM’s and RR’s beauty or MB’s body…if they’d just talk to them, they’d see how much more they have to offer than their…uh, pulchritudinous-ness….

I was just sharing (what I thought of as) the cluelessness of my male friends and acquaintances.  My mother either misheard or misunderstood the situation, and jumped to the conclusion that instead of being bemused on behalf of my friends I was disappointed by the fact that moiself  was not the object of the same kind of attention.   In an oh-so-awkward, cringe-worthy, kinda-joking-but-kinda not  manner, she began to give me advice I’d not asked for, which began with: Perhaps I needed to find myself a less attractive group of girlfriends?….

 

 

 

Oh yes, she did.

I didn’t let her finish all of her thoughts. I walked away, once again gobsmacked by how someone I’d lived with for all of my life could seemingly not know me at all.  Was I adopted by aliens, or I was I the alien, whom my parents had adopted? 

A tender motherly insight, shared with her daughter: 

If you hang out with homely girls you’ll look more attractive by comparison.

Gotcha.  Message received.

Gee, thanks Mom!

When contemplating the phone call scenarios, never-had-I-ever thought about my own appearance vis-à-vis that of my friends’ until *you* brought it up.  But now, I certainly (and forever, gawdammit, ’cause that’s how memory works    [10]  ) will.

 

 

Decades ago, when I first heard (what was to be a series of comments from friends and family) someone mention my mother’s and moiself’s  facial similarities, I blurted out, “Yep, I got my mother’s bones – she’s 65 now, and I’d like to give them back.”   My mother and I were the two in our family (of six) who looked the most alike, in terms of general facial structure.  When I look back on her boner-of-a-mother-daughter-moment, it is because of this physical similarity   [11]  that I can forgive her ham-handed comments.  I interpreted them as a reflection of her insecurities about *her* own appearance.

All these years later I realize how significant her blundering “counsel” was to me at the time.   Fortunately, all these years later it doesn’t sting with freshness of that moment, but now and then I still feel the wispy, wistful regrets, re the fact that she never really knew me…and it’s too late now.  There can be no answers to the questions I would like to pose to her, given the chance.

 

 

Also, once and again/as she was wont to do, my mother had failed at Communications 101.  That could have been an intimate, kitchen-sink-conversational-moment between the two of us.  I was not asking for her guidance; why couldn’t she have just listened, instead of providing the totally unsolicited (and truly  wretched, ego-deflating) advice that in order to make myself seem more attractive –  which BTW was not my goal in life (which she would have known had she paid the least bit of attention to *who* I was, and what kind of person I was striving to be) –  I should hang out with homely females, or at least ones even less attractive than moiself.

For that incident, and a few others which followed over the years, I am soooooo grateful for not growing up in the world of social media.  I mostly put that situation –  and my mother’s unintentionally   [12]  yet nonetheless degrading comment – out of my mind.  Although it later reared its ugly head several times.   [13]

 

 

Particular head-rearing examples from the After College Years®:  on more than one occasion a man with whom I had a passing acquaintance/lives-down-the-apartment-hallway/met at a mutual friend’s party/co-worker  kind of relationship, asked me about a friend/acquaintance/coworker of mine (or in one case, my younger sister).  As in, he found her attractive and wanted my advice re asking her out.

Not for the first time I was bemused by the request, and not for the first time, my answer was hardly earth-shatteringly original: I encouraged him to approach her directly.  Strike up conversations in the hallway and/or at the mailboxes; pay attention to cues…DUDE, just ask her.  And not for the first time, such basic, straightforward advice of mine was countered with, You just don’t get it, followed by his confession that he found talking to “girls” difficult, to the point of being intimidated.  “But, we are, at this very moment, are talking,” I would point out.  To which he and all the other he’s over the years, would respond with a version of:

“Yeah but, this is different.  I don’t know what it is,
but I can’t talk to a girl I find attractive.
Sure, I can talk with *you,* no problem….”

 

Each time it happened, I decided not to further enlighten the clueless Date Fail Men –    [14]   all of whom, with their obliviously demeaning comments, reminded me of my mother, in ways I didn’t see at the time.

Another reminder came from the source itself, from a letter my mother sent me when I’d been married for less than two years. Not long after MH and I had visited my parents at their home in Santa Ana, I received a four-page letter (two pages of a yellow legal pad, written on both sides) from her, the gist of which is that she and my father had found my then-current hairstyle unattractive.

 

 

Really.  Four pages.

Some of the page space was devoted to examples of people she knew (mostly her age) who’d found a flattering hairstyle in their twenties and stuck with it.     [15]  Was it a matter of money, she posited?  If so, she offered that she and my dad would be happy to pay a competent stylist….  Also, after my and MH’s visit, she felt moved to get out her favorite picture of me, the one where I’m waving goodbye to her and my father after they’d helped me move into the UC Davis dorms the fall of my freshman year.  How sad, she wrote, that I now looked “ten years older” than I did in that picture.

 

 

Holy epitome of obliviousness.  I look ten years older?  Uh, yeah, I’ll take that.  Mom – I am, as of this writing, almost *fourteen years older* than I was when that picture was taken.  Cutting/styling my hair in *any* way ain’t gonna change that.

(And that wasn’t the worst comment/jab.  She also wrote that the way I was currently wearing/styling my hair wasn’t how I had it when MH first met me…and implied that if I looked then how I looked now, he wouldn’t have been attracted to/married me).

After I got over my initial WTF!?!?!? shock, I xeroxed her letter, circled and numbered the major points she made ( so that she could see – and not deny – what she’d written), and wiped the floor with her obtuseness addressed them all in a letter of my own, which I attached to the copy of her letter.  I was brutally upfront:  Your opinion about my hair is the forest you can’t see for all the straggly trees in your way.   Imagine how I felt, getting a four-letter page from my parents essentially telling me how old and unattractive they find me.

I reread the letter one more time before I sent my response, and realized what was at the root of the hairstyle red herring.  Of their four children, I was the one who lived farther away from my parents.  Several times I’d discussed with my siblings how, when I saw our parents in person, I was very cognizant that they were getting older.   [16]   This can be jarring for an adult child to realize, but it is also the Natural Order of Things ®.  What we don’t often think about is that it can happen the other way.  When I’d made the trip to SoCal (which prompted the haircut-diatribe letter) it had been almost a year since I’d seen my parents.  For whatever reasons,  I  looked older to  them.  Now, if a parent notices that their adult child is getting older, what does that say about *their* own aging?

 

 

Here is the gist of how I ended the response to my mother, followed by my signoff:

I get it, Mom, even though you obviously don’t.  Since we share some bone structure/facial similarity, if you notice that I seem older to you, well then, what does that say about *you*?  I hate the be the one to break it to you, but you are – surprise! – getting older.  And you need to deal with whatever issues you have about that before dumping your own insecurities onto one of your children.

I love you because you’re my mother,
but I don’t like you very much right now.

She telephoned me as soon as she received my letter.  She apologized, said she was so embarrassed for having sent the letter; she asked me to throw it away, and she promised that she would throw away her copy.

I can’t remember how I phrased my bald-faced lie.   [17]  I agreed with her request, even though I had NO intention of throwing that letter away –  Are you effin’ kidding me? This is exhibit A.  No way was I giving her the nonexistence of the letter as a proof of her likely denial ( “I never said, would never say, such a thing” ! ), should the subject ever come up again.

*   *   *

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [18]

 “If the veil of self-condemnation, inherited shame, religious fear, and psychological self-rejection were finally pulled back, we might discover something terrifying to systems built on control: that human beings are not cosmic mistakes in need of metaphysical cover-up. We are expressions of existence itself, carrying immense depth, creativity, consciousness, relational capacity, beauty, and becoming within us.”

( Jim Palmer, Author, Professor, “Post-Religion Spiritual Director,”
Founder at The Center for Non-Religious Spirituality,
excerpt from his FB post on sin and shame and control )

 

*   *   *

May your safe driving inspire (or intimidate) your friends;
May you talk to people you’re crushing on directly, instead of going through mutual friends;
May you share the hidden meaning (if you figure it out) behind Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Those blog posts would be either the last Friday of June or first Friday of July.

[2] Originally aired 8-9-2020.

[3] Psychologist and author Angela Duckworth and economist and Author Stephen Dubner.

[4] The FOMO experience…which sometimes seems to be the primary purpose of social media.

[5] Nutshell presentation: Social comparison helps us evaluate ourselves by comparing our traits and abilities to others.  The upside: – upward comparisons may push us to improve; downward comparisons make us feel better about ourselves.  Either way, comparing ourselves can also lead to misleading judgments about our abilities.

[6] (aside from it’s amazing guitar solo, what was the song really  about?)  

[7] We were somewhat friendly and were in a couple of classes together.  The first call came as a surprise, as he’d never asked for my phone number.  He must have gotten it from that retro form of information dissemination, the phone book.

[8] I never hung up on him; the calls – thanks in great part to MY conversational skills –wandered into some really interesting and entertaining territories (e.g. music and art and politics)…. Or so I thought when I was seventeen.

[9] Not the dishes – that was my after-dinner chore.

[10] Many a psychological and/or neurological study has shown that “…insults linger longer than praise or compliments….”  (“Spoken Insults Stir Up More Brain Activity Than Compliments And Linger For Longer, Too,” sciencealert, 9-4-22), and that humiliation is the strongest emotion we can feel (“Does This Brain Research Prove That Humiliation Is the Most Intense Human Emotion?  Wired.com)

[11] Which I always found ironic, once it surfaced, as we were the two least alike (re interests, personalities, worldview) in the family.

[12] Gaaaawwwwd, I hope so.

[13] yes, times plural, as in, this happened more than once.

[14] Several of whom later tried asking me out, perhaps as a form of practice.

[15] even in their sixties, which I found hidebound, and not flattering

[16] Even so, I never wrote to them, telling them how old they were looking….

[17] Framed by an unattractive hairstyle!

[18] “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 Enlightenment (Still) I’m Not Ingesting

June 26, 2026

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, sports, The Write Stuff (literary life), Uncategorized, Wow, YEE HAW! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Enlightenment (Still) I’m Not Ingesting

Department Of My Favorite I KNEW IT Headline

That would be from this book review:

The guru who loved to lie:
The wild celebrity and dark secrets of author Carlos Castaneda

 ( review excerpt ):“The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.

That book (…and those that followed) seduced millions of readers….That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Casteneda, reveals the depth of his deception — and…how easily people can be taken in by it.

‘He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,’ Marshall writes. ‘He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.’…

Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s…he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books.

His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of The Teachings spoke effervescently about both.

It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups… were massive bestsellers.”

 

 

The writings of trained   [1] anthropologist Castaneda, in particular his Don Juan series, were all the rage during my early college years.  If often seemed that, when walking down the residence hall hallways, you couldn’t spit (and I did try) without encountering a fellow student, slumped outside their dorm room, taking a break from cramming for their chemistry midterm by searching for some stoner wisdom from the mythical   [2]  Yaqui “Man of Knowledge” Don Juan Matus.  Castaneda’s books portrayed Don Juan as a shaman (of the indigenous Yaqui people) who imparted his wisdom to Castenada via a purported apprenticeship Casteneda had with Don Juan in the early 1960s.

I tried to understand the appeal by reading  [3] the first and some of the second of what would eventually be a series of quasi-spiritual drivel nine books.    [4]   My reaction to what I read was further evidence to moiself  that I would never be as hip as my comrades…and I was relieved to be so.

I only said, You realize he made up all that shit?!?!  a few times to Castenada/Don Juan true believers.  The reactions my skepticism received made me realize that if the reason for my lack of mystical illumination after reading the books – the reason moiself  couldn’t understand the deep spiritual enlightenment wisdom of the books’ teachings –  was that I wasn’t stoned while reading them (as one devoted Castenda follower informed me), then that was a burden I was willing to shoulder.  I got more enlightenment, and a better use of my time, via playing a game of racquetball with friends.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes The Analogy Can’t Be Stretched

Dateline: Sunday 2:52 pm, listening to a TED Talk podcast, Sports Psychology For Everyone: The Psychology of Winning (and Losing).  Some interesting stuff there, including interviews with sports stars and behavioral scientists.  The hour-long podcast is divided into four segments:

* Soccer legend Abby Wambach reflects on the most iconic goal of her career

* Why we choke under pressure, according to a cognitive scientist

* Why we love watching sports

* Don’t be afraid of failure. Instead, embrace the near-win

The third segment had some key insights into why some sports develop and maintain a loyal audience while others – e.g., women’s sports – have a harder time doing so.  Obstacles include good old-fashioned sexism…

 

 

…coupled with cultural traditions, familiarity, and generational inheritance.

Journalist Kate Fagan:

“When I worked at ESPN…I was always pitching women’s sports stories.

It almost never worked. Every once in a while, it would work. But this thing would happen when we would do a women’s sports segment.  Many of the other men on the segment – they didn’t really do their homework.  So they were kind of blah, then the segment would be kind of blah. There’s actually a term for this.  It’s called  gender bland. And then the segment would end, and the producer would be like, ‘See, this is why we never do women’s sports, ’cause they’re boring.

When a men’s segment fell flat, the problem was us. We would redo it.  All right, come on, do your homework. Pick it up. We’re doing that again. When a segment on women’s sports fell flat, the problem was women’s sports.
The reality is that, just existing in our culture, you will know a dozen men’s storylines… these things are literally push-notified to your phone. Or you’re at a bar or a doctor’s office, and the talking heads are giving you the latest NBA drama. In America, osmosis will have you knowing men’s sports storylines…”

 

 

Fagan:

“There’s so many veins of generational inheritance in sports. There’s the one that does take time and literal family generations where you can actually say, Why am I a New York Met fan? Well, ’cause my grandpa was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And then they left for LA. And then the next team that we got was the New York Mets…. And there’s something bigger than yourself about that.
I think why we love sports at its core is for the culture and community of it. And whether it’s your literal community, it’s like your city team, or you live out of state, and it’s your grandmother’s favorite team…That’s all part of community as well.

And then pair that – and they often go hand in hand – with cultural value….We want to be in on what culture is talking about.”

 

 

Fagan and other podcast guest spoke of factors that get people interested in more obscure/not-so-popular-in-our-culture sports  – factors such as when we understand the stakes to the games and the storylines within them (e.g., the underdog USA ice hockey team battling the heavily favored USSR team; the Romanian gymnast struggling in poverty…).  Then Fagan shared a story of how her father, who taught her basketball, guided her with two pieces of advice about the game, which she applies to life today:

” ‘Always make your last dribble the hardest’….

The other one I loved was…‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’
And that’s a standard basketball one, but…my wife and I will say it to each other all the time when we want to do something we’re not sure we should. It’s like, ‘Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ “

Moiself’s  mind immediately began trying to analogize that shot-taking adage to other sports and activities.  For some reason, rock climbing was the first one I thought of:

“You survive 100 percent of the cliffs you don’t fall off of
from the mountains you don’t climb….”

Hmmmm?  Needs more work to reach pithy aphorism status.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why AI Sucks

Moiself  looks forward to AI applications that can assist doctors to more quickly distinguish between benign and malignant tumors, and which can also help medical researchers fine-tune existing/invent new treatments and for illnesses from cancer to tuberculosis…and help scientists discover non-toxic ways to eliminate air- and waterborne pollutants and develop non-toxic, renewable energy sources…

As for the rest, this sums up my feelings and fears.  When it comes to writing (both fiction and nonfiction/journalism) and the creative arts, don’t be fooled by a seemingly bland term like, Artificial Intelligence.  It’s counterfeit coding ; it’s plagiarism software.

 

 

BTW, that ingestion of written output…without consent, compensation, and credit…?  It’s happened to moiself.

BTW 2.0: for any other published writers out there, whether or not you are involved in one of the many class action lawsuits re AI-enabled pirating,    [5]   AI-enabled pirating of your work has already happened or will happen to you, whether or not you are aware of it.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

May you be able to spot spiritual flim-flam;
May you not be the easiest person to fool;
May you not fall off of the cliffs you do not climb;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] But never professionally employed as an anthropologist.

[2] As in, Casteneda pulled Don Juan (and their encounters) out of his ass.

[3] By the second book, it was more like skimming, as I found it so uninteresting I couldn’t concentrate on paying actual attention to the twaddle.

[4] The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power, The Eagle’s Gift, The Fire From Within, The Power of Silence, The Art of Dreaming.

[5] I am one of the many parties to the Anthropic CA lawsuit. 

[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 Belly Button Deodorant I’m Not Using

June 19, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Belly Button Deodorant I’m Not Using

Department Of Yep, This Is It:
Succinctly Brilliant Life Advice (Before The Inevitable Snark)

“You’ll regret it if you get married.  You’ll regret it if you don’t.
You’ll regret it if you have kids, and you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

The following is attributed to Kierkegaard  [1]   (my emphases):

“Regret is inevitable because the human mind
will always romanticize the life it didn’t live.
It’s not about making the ‘perfect’ choice;
it’s choosing which regret you are willing to make peace with.”

So.  Choose your path.

 

*   *   *

Department Of, And Now, On To The Snark:
Could This Be The Sign; Is This The End Of The World?

Dateline: Monday morning; 7:54 AM; watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding III   [2] while doing an elliptical workout.  During the commercial break I behold an advertisement moiself  has never see before – it’s from    [3]   a series of ads for Cottonelle toilet paper known as the  Come Clean campaign.   [4]   The ad begins with a discreet shot of some guy sitting on a toilet, then we see him (after he has presumably done his business and hiked up his trousers)    [5]  walking into a family/TV room in a (his?) house, where friends and family wearing team jerseys and eating copious amounts of snacks are watching a football game on the room’s wide screen TV.  The man has a beatific smile on his face, as if he’s just received enlightenment from a guru or had another kind of spiritual experience.   Apparently, after having used Cottonelle toilet paper to wipe himself post-deuce-dropping he has the cleanest hindquarters he’s ever had.  [6]   He is so overcome with the bliss of butt cleanliness he decides to “come clean” with his friends, confessing, among other things, the fact that he doesn’t really “get” football….

 

 

*   *   *

The Saga Continues: Department Of Bodily Functions Sell Products,
The Neverending Story

Back to moiself  on the elliptical, continuing to watch  My Big Fat Greek Wedding III  (which primarily takes place in – surprise! –  Greece).   [7]   After fifteen minutes, there is another commercial break:  three ads in a row featuring products related to those pesky bodily functions:

* #1:   [8]  It’s one more Cottonelle  come clean ad, this one featuring a woman, who, after having the tush mop of her life, comes clean to her homework-doing child about the fact that she never “got” algebra;

* #2:  Yet another ad for that    [9] ( “doctor-developed!” ) whole body deodorant, Lumē.  And by whole body, the Lumē folk mean your entire body – including parts you maybe didn’t realize you had, much less had to worry about being…reekified.

“Anywhere you have odor but wish you didn’t….just a pea-sized amount rubbed in like a lotion…all over your body:  “pits, privates, underboob, belly buttons, tummy folds, thigh creases, feet….”

 Underboob?

 

 

You name it, if it’s a body part, Lumē wants to you to be concerned that it might stink.

feet; tummy folds; thigh crease….  I think they left out that space between your fingers – for which there should be a name.  Actually, there is: the interdigital folds. But, moiself  suspects there’s a better word for it in German, like FingerSchlitzen….

Ahem.  That omission aside, the not-so-subtle message these Lumē advertisements convey is that your entire body is an odiferous swamp in need of aroma-masking.  As for the bemused skeptics who ask, “Um, why not just take a shower?”

 

Silly geese!  If you feel felt cleaner after taking a shower, they can’t sell you anything.  Check here if you’d like An Expert® to explain why you’re so stupid as to think that bathing is better than using Lumē products.   [10]

Just in case you’re not sure how the product should be applied to someone’s, er, privates, here are the handy instructions (found here; my emphases):

“For privates – the short story:
A little goes a long way. Using fingertips, swipe onto thigh folds, undercarriage,
and sweep up between the butt cheeks to the tailbone.

For privates – the full story:
Working front to back (never work back to front due to increased risk for urinary tract infections), apply to the clitoral hood & labia majora (not inside the vagina or around the urethra), continue back further to the perineum (the space between the rectum and vaginal opening), and sweep up between the butt cheeks to the tailbone.
Apply around the base of the penis and between the folds of the legs, work back to the space between the scrotum and rectum, and finally sweep back between the butt cheeks and up to the tailbone.”

 

 Undercarriage.  In all my years in health care…

 

 

… moiself  never heard the word at word undercarriage – heretofore used for the structural and mechanical foundation supporting the body of an automobile or truck – to refer to human anatomy.

 

 

Listening to this insulting shill ad, moiself  be getting my undergarments in a knot ( this could be a job for Lumē! ) as I consider the commercial’s underlying premise: your entire body is a stinkpit.  Yeah, thanks for the empowering message, brought to us by a woman OB/GYN ( a fact much touted in the product’s various ads).

Ah; once again, moiself  digresses.  On to Advertisement #3, which was concerned with infant and baby number two – specifically, with the idea that not all baby BMs are manageable ( as in, containable ) – via the average disposable diaper.  And this certain brand of diaper – damned if I can’t remember the name, [11]  is for “…people who’ve seen some sh*t.”   [12]  Translation:  it can handle your biggest baby’s biggest poop!

Now then:  although moiself  wasn’t paying close attention to My Big Fat Greek Wedding III, I’m fairly certain it contained no overt nor clandestine themes of cleaning up after defecation and/or malodorous body parts.  Thus, I’m forced to conclude that the clustering of these particular ads during  MBFGWIII  commercial breaks was just a happy coincidence.

 

 

*   *   *

Speaking Of Products Related To Crap…

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [13]

Notes I wrote to myself a few years ago after someone, who’d discovered my “unbelief,” tried the What-you-need-is-a-personal-relationship-with-Jesus crap on me:

What I do not need is a “personal relationship” with Jesus,
or the Christian god, or any deity.

What religious believers need is a personal relationship with reality – the same reality to which they appeal when they critique the tenets and validity of Scientology, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism – of any faith but their own.  The same reality they use when they evaluate evidence to make any important decision in their life: such as, which investments are sound, which physician to see for an illness, etc.

Oh and by the way:  How is it that, for all their much-touted (but in reality, scantily practiced   [14]  ) reading of their scriptures, Christian fundies never seem to recognize that their “personal relationship with their personal savior” rhetoric never occurs in the Bible.  Jesus is never quoted as speaking this way in the gospels, nor does the founder of Christianity, Paul, do so in his epistles.  This “personal savior” piety is no older than 18th century Lutheran Pietist movement in Germany.

 

 

*   *   *

May we all have a personal relationship with reality;
May you not romanticize the path you didn’t take;
May we give our respective undercarriages the honor they are due;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Søren Kierkegaard, (1813 – 1855), Danish philosopher.

[2][2] It was either that, or some May Day Airline disaster show…which I actually like – the parts about the investigations and the problem solving involved (not the crash reenactment).  

[3] Yep, I googled it afterward.

[4] Slogan: “We are coming clean: your booty deserves gentle care.”

[5] I could have written pants, but I think trousers is a work we should all use more frequently.

[6] doesn’t say much for the character’s potty hygiene and/or showering skills, does it?

[7] So I don’t really mind or pay attention to the plot; I just enjoy the scenery.

[8] Shouldn’t this have been add #2, since it’s about cleaning up about number…you know?

[9] I say that because you’ve likely seen at least one of those ads – you can’t spit (or sweat) without hitting one.

[10] BTW, the company is facing several class action lawsuits accusing Lumē’ of false advertising/deceptive marketing of their products.

[11] Which I attribute to my brain being overloaded, at that point, with this ad shit.

[12] The word is bleeped in the ad

[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

[14] The bible is a huge collection of writings; still, it’s mind-boggling how many Christians cherry pick their readings to “the happy” or familiar, G-rated stories stuff.  Most of them seemingly have no idea what is in their scriptures, from the three different version of The Ten Commandments ( Version 1: Deuteronomy 5:6-21; Version 2: Exodus 20:1-17, differs slightly from the Deuteronomy version; Version 3: Exodus 34: 14-28 – Hmmm, these commandments are wildly different than the first two versions, although the writing claims it is the LORD speaking.  Guess he’d forgotten what he’d said the first two times?  Also, although this list is never referred to when religious leaders and politicians talk of the Ten Commandments, this version – in verse 27- is the only version referred to in scripture as the “ten commandments” ) ,to the passages where Jesus contradicts himself, to the scriptural guidelines for killing and raping women….

The Catalog I’m Not Ordering From

June 5, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Catalog I’m Not Ordering From

Department Of The OSITY File

As I live my life…

Moiself  changed that from, “As I age,” when I remembered that As We Age was the name of a mail order catalog with which the-gods-I-don’t-believe-in pranked me, by sending said catalog to me a on a quarterly basis.  The catalog’s pages were filled with pictures of women (in their late twenties-early thirties pretending to be in their fifties and sixties) alternatively modeling sensible beach coverups, loud floral-patterned loungewear and the like.

 

 

Moiself  was mildly intrigued by receiving this publication, and flipped through the first issue I received.  Doing so provided me with several minutes of petty satisfactions, as in, getting all snarky re the catalog’s, Oh crap you’re getting older,  “be your best“ products, all counting on proving their worthiness for purchase by magnifying the cultural current/subtext of Celebrate Yourself ® Because You’re Going Downhill And You’ll Slide Even Further Unless You Use This Rejuvenation Cream/Powder/Supplement/Slimming regimen/Thigh Tightener….

Then, in the very middle of the catalog, I stumbled upon two pages of…well, dildos. Some of them were described euphemistically as “massage wands”  while the other Bobs    [1]   and selfie sticks were more wink-wink-nudge-nudge about it.

Yet again, I digress  (which, BTW, happens as we age to everyone).

 

 

As I live my life, as I observe myself and my fellow members of my species – what (IMO) “works” and what doesn’t; what I admire and what I frown upon; what I think is helpful, both personally and society, and what I think is no fucking way are you serious? – I have developed an OSITY file.

 

 

 

Clarification: The OSITY file isn’t a material folder of any kind.  Rather, it is a mental accounting of the characteristics I find essential to Being A Good Person® – characteristics I hope to maintain and hone…most of which I think can be broadly classified into two categories: curiosity, and generosity.

Yep; I think that covers just about everything.

 

 

*    *    *

Department Of I Don’t Mind…

That when I’m looking for something on youtube, somehow – most likely because The Internet ®  knows that I have the heart and soul of a 11-year-old – my search window defaults to this:

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [2] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [3]

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
( François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name, Voltaire  [4]   )

 

 

“If something does not look odd, it is less likely to be investigated.
That is precisely why ‘normalcy’ serves as such a protective covering for so many patriarchal institutions.”
 ( Cynthia Enloe, American author, political theorist, and professor, quote from her book,
Seriously!: Investigating Crashes and Crises as If Women Mattered )

 

*   *   *

 

May you cultivate your own osity file;
May you maintain (or at least appreciate) the heart and soul of an eleven year old;
May you judge people by their questions and not (necessarily) their answers;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Battery Operated Boyfriends.

[2] 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.

[3] “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

[4]  Voltaire was “… a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.”  (Wikipedia entry)

The Rerun I’m Not Rerunning

May 15, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, health & wellness, Holidays, music, Oregon, Recreation, The Write Stuff (literary life), travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Rerun I’m Not Rerunning

Department Of This Week’s Blog Title Is A Lie

Because moiself  be doing a rerun.  Similar to the monthly Blast From The Past® feature,   [1]  this is a blog segment I ran across while looking for something else.  Specifically, one from ten years ago last month, found while I was lamenting this year’s lack of April Fool’s Day pranks: 

Department Of Fun With Student Drivers

Dateline: Tuesday, early a.m., out for my morning walk, waiting to cross a street. As I watched the cross traffic’s stoplight and saw the green-changing-to-yellow light – the pedestrian’s rewarding indicator that it will soon be your turn to cross the street – I noticed a white sedan slowing down much more deliberately than is usual yet still not managing to come to a complete stop until the car’s front bumper was just a tad into the crosswalk.

My light changed to green, I began to cross the street, and saw the telltale red and yellow logo for a local driving academy on the car’s driver’s door.  A student driver?

 Excellent.

I looked inside the car: the student in the driver’s seat sat ramrod straight, an expression of nervous anticipation drenching her face. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the steering wheel and her gaze was fixed ahead. Her instructor was looking down at a clipboard he held; neither of them seemed aware of my approaching presence.

My instinctive reaction was to throw myself onto the hood of the car and scare the living pee-pee out of both of them.

How I managed to restrain myself, I’ll never know.

But, I did. Okay? 

 Had I gone through with my whimsical notion, ‘twould have made a good – dare I say, even legendary? – April Fool’s Day prank.

You gotta love a day that is devoted to honoring and encouraging practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks both well- and feebly-played. 

The origins of April Fools Day’s are not completely agreed upon by historians, and have been variously attributed. What is agreed upon is that many cultures, going back to the ancient Romans and Egyptians, have set aside days for celebrating jokes and pranksters. Perhaps, as some people have speculated, there’s just something about the day’s timing – the fading of winter and the blooming of spring, which lends itself to the observance of light-hearted frivolity.

 

 

I can recall only a few of the pranks I’ve played on friends, family and co-workers over the years. The memories are silly but fond, and include:

* Sneaking a package of Hydrox cookies   [2]  from the family snack drawer and replacing all the cream fillings in the second row of cookies with toothpaste.

* Showing two positive pregnancy test dipsticks to a newbie Planned Parenthood co-worker and telling her I was pregnant with twins.

* Adding just a couple of drops of blue food coloring to the carton of nonfat milk in my parent’s refrigerator.

* Calling my father at his office and convincing him (if only temporarily) that someone had bought a raffle ticket in his name for the local animal shelter’s fundraising event, he’d won the raffle, and could he please let the shelter know when he was coming to claim his prize: an English Mastiff and a week’s supply – a 100 lb. bag of kibble – of the dog’s food.  [3]

“I don’t get it.  Why would that be funny?”

 

* Swapping my and my siblings’ framed high school graduation pictures, which hung in my parent’s hallway, with pictures of the members of Led Zeppelin.

* Replacing the hard-boiled egg in my sister’s school lunch bag with a raw egg.

* Cutting my finger, smearing my blood on the scissors in co-worker Roger’s cubicle, leaving a note on my computer saying I had been threatened by Roger and feared for my life, then faking my own death and leaving town.

Oops, that’s right – I never got around to implementing the last one.  

As pleasurable as it is to pull off an epic prank, it can be equally fun, IMHO, to have a great prank played on your own self. I hope y’all have a Happy April Fools’ Day…and I hope that I do not regret having made that previous declaration.
( excerpts; 4-1-2016;  The Instinct I’m Not Obeying )

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Seeing Yourself Through Other Eyes…Or, Not?

Dateline:  Monday morning; scrolling through the previous night’s Nehalem BBQ posts.  The BBQ is an online bulletin board of sorts.  As per its mission statement:

 The BBQ is a free public service provided to the citizens of the Oregon North Coast. It is dedicated to the promotion of community building by establishing a website forum whereon citizens may announce important matters and events, offer goods and services, express needs and provide information of general interest.    [4]

 

 

Moiself  clicks on the post that catches my eye – the one titled,  North Coast Pinball Updates May 2026.  North Coast Pinball is arguably my favorite beach business.  I always spend a couple of hours there at least once a week.  [5]  I adore the owner’s community spirit, his generous, welcoming personality, his freethinking/humanist, feminist politics…and has NCP really been open for five years?  Here is how the post begins:

“Fun fact: we’ve been doing this thing for five years now. Sold 562 used pinballs and 1272 stickers. Rebuilt more flippers than I quite know how to count. Gave away *so* many mystery tokens. Maybe you’ve seen our chess set in the corner; guess how many pieces have gone missing in five years?

None! Well, there was that knight who wandered off one day but it came back before I noticed it was gone.   [6]   Y’all are the best. Thanks for making NCP NCP.

Oh! Also in those five years I wrote a book about the place, which should be out later this month. You can learn more about that at www.mysterytoken.pub.”

 

 

I assume the post was written by NCP’s owner, with whom I am on a friendly/first name basis (moiself  also assumes (1) he is writing the book; (2) trhe book will be self-published).

Wondering how/if he will write about those of us who might be considered regulars of NCP, I follow that link, which leads to this teaser/excerpt:  (my emphases):

Can You Feel It?
stories from North Coast Pinball

“…another day, you may write in your journal that three people, who did not know each other a month ago, who live in three different towns, and who met each other playing pinball in your place, are now out on a hike together. Your journal will reflect a feeling that the purpose of your life has been fulfilled.”

“…five years later you’ll write a weird little book. A book that’s not so much about pinball as it is about how it feels at North Coast Pinball in Nehalem, Oregon….

“A book about what it’s like for the five-year-old peering through the window as you prepare to open. What it’s like for your ten-year-old regular, back once again to improve on his high score. What it’s like for the sullen teenager, dragged against their will on an obligatory family trip….

What it’s like for the sixty-something beach bum who comes in weekly for $20 in tokens, plays each game exactly once, and leaves her leftovers in the community donation jar….

“Holy crap, that’s me,” I blurt out, first to moiself, then to MH.  I read the underlined section of the post to him, then wonder how the book’s author can accurately write a *nonfiction* book about  “what it’s like” for the five-year-old, or the sullen teenager, or the beach bum, without interviewing said characters.  [7]

My reaction surprises moiself.   That (underlined) pretty much describes what I do when I’m there.    I am sixty-something; I do frequent NCP weekly (when in town); I do get $20 in tokens; I do play the games once…but sometimes twice (and not all of them – I avoid the easy ones/the one-token-per-game ones…and when I win a free game I don’t play it again – I like to leave the free game available for a kid to discover); I do make sure to not use up all my tokens so that I may leave the leftovers in the community donation jar.

“But,” I confess to MH, “I don’t know how I feel about being described as a ‘beach bum.’ ”  ( Although I realize that my ubiquitous attire – yoga pants and t- shirts and OR rain/sun hat – are casual to the max and could tilt perceptions of moiself  toward the latter category.)

MH points out to me that the description could fit many people at the coast.   [8]  Nice try, honey.  I’m not a vain person (what would be the point?).   [9]  Still….  Beach bum is one of those phrases that could mean colorful character to some people, or one-step-above-a-grungy/homeless person-and/or-those-men-in-their-eighties-with-their-pants-hiked-up-to-their-nipples-who-patrol-the-beach-with-metal-detectors  to other folks.    [10]

 

Beach bum.  Okay; it’s two words. Until I have evidence otherwise I’ll take the description to be one that is meant with fondness.  And although I’ll maintain my smugness re self-published books, I will buy a copy when it comes out.

 

My high score in one of my fave pinball machines, which I rented from NCP and got to have in our home (terrorizing/entertaining the neighbors) for three months a couple of years ago.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

 

So, what have atheists got against casseroles?

 

*   *   *

May you have unending patience with apprentice drivers;
May you be entertained by how you might be described by others;
May your you enjoy religion-free casseroles;
and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Wherein yours truly posts a segment from a blog of the second Friday of years ago….which I just did last week.  Lazy ass writer that I am.

[2] Anyone else remember the precursor (and competitor) to Oreos?

[3] My sisters making muffled barking sounds to approximate background animal shelter noise was a great help in pulling off this prank.

[4] To post on this BBQ you must be a subscriber or non-subscriber who operates a business on, lives on or has a second home on the Oregon North Coast.

[5] …when I’m at the coast.  That time has been rare since my November foot surgery and now since MH and I cannot easily get to Manzanita unless we can arrange the complicated care for our elderly, kidney-disease stricken cat…

[6] Okay…there is some missing info here.  How did you know it was gone, if you didn’t notice it was gone, and then it was back and so it wasn’t gone? 

[7] Ahn yes:  poetic license.

[8] Perhaps…but how many of them play pinball at the NCP place and in the manner described?

[9] (that would be an exercise in futility – in vain?)

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

The Healthy Skepticism I’m Not Having Trouble Applying

April 10, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marion: “That’s right.”

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

Chet: “And so his name was…?”

Marion (deep breath): “Harry Hole.”

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

*   *   *

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Post Easter Reflections

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

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

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

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

 

 

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

Department of Seasonal Poor Taste

Content warning:  Well, duh.

My (belated) Easter sex joke:

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

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

[5] Or fittingly, according to your POV.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

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

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

The Streets I’m Not Renaming

March 27, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, travel , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Streets I’m Not Renaming

Department Of Yet Another Reason Why I Love Norway

I have immensely enjoyed the times moiself  has had the opportunity to travel to/around several European countries.  Each of those times involved at least one  embarrassment-by-association experience, wherein Some Otherwise Enlightened World Citizens ® that one finds in, say, a Rick Steves travel group feel compelled to bray about the high taxes of, for example, the Scandinavian social democracies.   [1]  This typically happens after visiting a country’s house of parliament or other such facilities:  we visitors are chatting amongst ourselves, comparing and contrasting, say, Norway’s standard of living with that of the USA, and SOEWC will feel compelled to remind everyone how the people who live in those countries must pay “far too much taxes to  *the government.*“

 

 

This triggers moiself  and others to remind the braying ignoramous Ugly Americans SOEWC that, it’s the people of those countries, not some random/arbitrary “government,”  who understand that the government is not some far away entity.  It is them; it is *their* government.  This is how they vote to collect and spend *their* money, on a system which runs on the premise (read: reality) that a higher standard of living for everyone benefits everyone.  [2]

Why is it that so many folks in the USA seem to forget what they pay for later ( is it simply that, the timing? ) rather than up front?  By not having a portion of their taxes fund a system of national health care they think they get to keep more money in their pockets; they have financial amnesia when it comes to what later flies out of those same pockets, sometimes seemingly at light speed, for medical insurance premiums and copays and care and medications and visits and “conditions not covered” and…and…and….

Fortunately, we have level-headed (if bemused by USA obliviousness on the subject) Norwegians to explain it to us.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of History To Keep In Mind

Several years ago I found this old employee status board in an antique shop.  It’s currently in my office, keeping track of the comings and goings of my imaginary coworkers.  These coworkers are people, real or fictional, whom I admire in some way.  When the Cesar Chavez sexual abuse scandal broke, I reminded Mark about that board – I asked him to go into my office and take a look at it, and notice whose name was #7 from the top.  [3]

 

 

I always thought Dolores Huerta was the un- (as in, lesser) sung hero of the farmworker’s movement.  Little did I suspect what Huerta endured – what she felt she had to endure and keep silent about – for a cause she put above her own mental and physical health.

Amid the rush to cancel the memorials to Chavez’s name (and in some cases, rename them for Huerta), moiself  offers this suggestion:  how’s about we stop naming public facilities – from roads to recreation centers to parks and preserves – after people?  Our idols *always* turn out to have feet of clay (or in Chavez’s case, feet of…festering ICK).

As for the legion of progressives who feel let down/betrayed by and disgusted with Chavez, I am almost one of them.  But, not really, as in, not fully.  And if you are, I ask you to consider…why?

 

 

Progressive male leaders were/are still…male leaders.  Male leaders’ sexism in the 1960s-70s anti-war and civil rights movements helped motivate what has become known as Second Wave feminism, and was an open secret among activists of the times.

When Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee activist Ruby Doris Smith presented a paper on at a SNCC staff meeting on “The Position of Women in SNCC,” SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael infamously declared,

“The only position for women in the movement is prone.”

Decades later    [4]  a few SNCC members pointed out that Carmichael was known to be supportive of women activists; thus, perhaps what he said was a “bad joke” taken “out of context.”  No matter what Carmichael’s intentions might have been,   [5]  that statement is merely one example of  “the entrenched misogyny of 1960s activist movements, which prompted the feminist critiques of the New Left that would later develop into the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s.”   [6]

 

 

This embedded misogyny was arguably/most blatantly on view during the Counter-Inaugural Protest,  [7]    a series of speeches and marches organized by the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam.  When antiwar activists and feminists Marilyn Webb and Shulamith Firestone tried to address the crowd about the realities of sexism outside of and within the anti-war movement, they were booed and sexually harassed by men in the crowd (including fellow/male activist leaders), some of whom hurled a memorable taunt revealing the true feelings of many male leaders re what place women activists should occupy in the movement:

“Take her off the stage and fuck her.”

How’s that for progressive leadership?

 

 

In the late 1970s I read an article   [8]  about (or by?) the feminist, “Lavendar Menace” and LGBTQ rights activist and author Rita Mae Brown, in which Brown discussed her involvement in the (then) nascent Gay Rights movement.  When Brown spoke/wrote  [9]   about the threats and hassles she and other lesbian activists received from men, and what it was like was working alongside men in civil rights organizations, she used a phrase that has haunted me ever since.  Moiself  cannot now recall verbatim the first part of the phrase, but I’ll never forget the second.  When asked to describe men’s reaction to lesbians’ participation in human rights activism, she said something about how the strait men tried to break our spirits (which was not unexpected), but that

“…the gay men broke our hearts.”

 

 

Gay women made the heartbreaking discovery that although gay men were their supposed allies in the struggle for civil rights, gay men were still, first and foremost, men.  As in, they interrupted, talked down to, belittled or just plain ignored the women in the movement, took credit for their female peer’s ideas and activism, and expected the women to get their coffee, answer the organizations’ phones, and type the groups’ memos.  One lesbian activist wrote that, when it came to dealing with men, women in the gay rights movement had even less power than women in the civil rights/anti-war movements, because in the former, “…since they (gay men) don’t have to pretend to be nice to us and respect us in order to fuck us, they don’t even pretend to.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Among The Many Things I Don’t Know…

This department title might scare readers into thinking,  Holy crap – this is gonna be the longest blog post ever.  Not to worry.   [10]

Dateline: Two Tuesdays ago; 8 a.m.-ish; morning walk.  As I pass by one of the two banks in Manzanita I look through the bank building’s side wall of windows.  Moiself  sees two people, sitting at what I presume are their desks.  One has her arms wrapped around a coffee mug; the other is slowly flipping through the pages of…a report or manual of some sort?  I find moiself  thinking thoughts I do not typically entertain; that is, thoughts about banks, and the people who work in them.

 

 

* Are they called bankers, or bank employees?

*And what exactly  is a banker versus a bank employee?

* Is a bank teller a banker – what constitutes being a banker?

* What is there even for bankers to do, now that people can do so much of what they used to do in their bank at the ATM, and/or online?

*Are those two bank worker/people I saw sitting there, looking forward to a great day of Exciting Bank Work® …or are they just sitting there, resigned with casual dread to their lot: “Great, another eight hours where I have to justify my existence, look busy look busy look busy…”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“[On religious dogma] …It’s funny, I’ve always been told that peace comes through Christ. That leaving or letting go of my faith would lead only to guilt and sadness. But here I am, finding the truest joy I’ve ever known in all the places I was told not to look.”
( Author and audio book narrator Natalie Naudus,
quoting her own experience, in “Gay the Pray Away” )

*   *   *

May you never idolize leaders of any social movement;
May you never have to look busy to justify your existence;
May you find joy in all the places you were told not to look;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland.  Ireland and Great Britain also came under fire for their respective nationalized health care.

[2] I appreciated, during MH’s and my RS tour of Ireland, the Canadian nurse who was able to enlighten the Some Otherwise Enlightened World Citizen who started dissing the Canadian system of (gasp)  socialized medicine ( despite SOEWC never having any experiences with that system).  Canadian nurse graciously but firmly corrected the blatant falsehoods and distortions SOEWC attempted to attribute to Canadian health care.

[3] They are listed alphabetically by their first names.

[4] This happened in 1964.

[5] He died in 1998 and so can’t defend (or admit) anything now.

[6] Excerpt, Bryn Mawr College Flexner Book Club Blog, “The only position for women in the movement is ‘prone’”, 10-27-11

[7] Washington, D.C., January 1969 

[8] In Rolling Stone magazine?

[9] Again, I can’t recall if she wrote the article or was the subject of the article.

[10] Yet.

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

The Drug I’m Not Ready For

March 20, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, TV, Wow, Zoo , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Drug I’m Not Ready For

Department Of Consider Yourself Warned

Moiself  has been in a reflective mood; which should not be surprising.  According to a study I just made up, everybody knows that within three days of a holiday referencing the Irish, a writer’s brain is capable of little output which does not involve humorous anecdotes of family and friends and kneecapping British soldiers and scatological puns and Chuck Norris “facts”  (psst – this is what is known as foreshadowing ).

*   *   *

Happy Belated St. Patrick’s Day

This – a belated SPD-related memory – is from 3-18-16, when daughter Belle was in college  ( The Common Ground I’m Not Seeking ):

Department Of Parents Are Never Too Old To Go Apeshit
Over Reminders of Childhood Cuteness

It has been a week of many celebrations, both national and personal. Belle is home for Spring Break. Pi day. The Ides of March. That Irish-American Thing.     [1]  Many if not all of these festive days call for special feasts.  I asked Belle if there was any special dinner she’d like, in honor of…whatever.  While she was pondering her options, MH showed me a list Belle had made, quite a long time ago. He found it written on a (unfortunately, undated) notepad he discovered as he was going through old papers in the attic:

 

 

I told Belle all she had to do was say the word and we would endeavor to come up with a  speshl desert and froot salid…and lots of Yum.

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of No, Wait – That’s A Lie.
Regular Programming Continues To Be Disrupted.

Department Of Even-Ing It Up   [2]

After sharing a blog-posted memory involving my daughter, it’s time for one involving my son.  During one glorious phase in his life   [3]  son K was notorious (within our family) for getting moiself  helpless with laughter by telling me Chuck Norris puns and memes.  Moiself  shared this memory on 1-14-22 ( The S-Words I’m Not Mispronouncing ):

Punz For The Day: Scat Edition

Did you hear about the monkey who was arrested for throwing its feces at zoo patrons?
The monkey was charged with turd debris assault.

Why did Packy the elephant    [4]   bring toilet paper to the zebra’s birthday bash?
Because Packy was a party pooper.

Remember, dog owners, when you walk the dog you have to pick up its poop.
It’s your doo diligence.

Why is Chuck Norris’s dog trained to pick up its own poop?
Because Chuck Norris doesn’t take shit from anyone.
Chuck Norris doesn’t flush the toilet.
He scares the shit out of it.

Yeah, I know, scat is typically used to denote animal feces.  But I’ve heard that making at least one Chuck Norris Joke ®  – aka, reciting a Chuck Norris “fact” – at the beginning of the year is a guarantee of good fortune in the weeks to come.  [5]

 

 

Department Of The Bonus Round Of You-Know-Who Jokes

(Happy New Year to son K, who once brought me to helpless tears of stomach-cramping, snotty-nosed laughter when he loaned me his Chuck Norris Factbook to read while we were seated in a booth in a restaurant, waiting for our lunch to arrive).

* Chuck Norris doesn’t read books.
He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

* The flu gets a Chuck Norris shot every year.

* When Chuck Norris plays dodgeball, the balls dodge him.

* Chuck Norris doesn’t worry about high gas prices. His vehicles run on fear.

* The Dead Sea was alive before Chuck Norris swam there.

* When Chuck Norris was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.

* There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.

 

* Death once had a near-Chuck-Norris experience.

* There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

* MC Hammer learned the hard way that Chuck Norris can touch this.

* Chuck Norris has been to Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life there.

* Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless phone.

* If Chuck Norris traveled to an alternate dimension in which there was another
Chuck Norris and they both fought, they would both win.

* Chuck Norris’ farts smell like freshly baked cinnamon rolls.

Okay; I gotta get control here.  Seriously; somebody stop me; this could go on forever.

* Chuck Norris counted to infinity — twice.

*   *   *

Department Of This Time It’s True

*   *   *

Department Of Don’t Ask Questions
(But Do Ask Your Doctor For Drugs…Just, Any Drugs)

Dateline: last Tuesday; 9:25 pm-ish; sitting in The TV Chair®…although not watching whatever show was on TV that MH had left on while he went to load the dishwasher. I was about to check something on my phone….

 

 

…when moiself  heard a TV advertisement.  The ad caught my attention with its opening question, which I found rivetingly nonsensical:

Are you ready for Vivaldi?    [6]

Uh…golly gee…I…don’t know.  How *would* I know?  What the heck is Vivaldi?

The advertisement continued with what’s become the standard prescription meds come-on, encouraging viewers to ask their doctors about whether or not they could benefit from using this prescription medication…. But, for what?  Why would you take this medication?  There’s gotta be a reason, right?  For no other reason than you fall into the category of,  Hmmm, I’m currently not taking any prescription medications and all my friends and family are and I feel kinda left out….?   I kept waiting, but:

 There. Was. No. Mention. Of. What. That. Drug. Would. Be. Used. For.

 

Really. 

Nevertheless, you’ve been advised.  Call your primary care provider, now.

Patient:
“Doctor, am I ready for  Vivaldi?”
Doctor:
“What makes you ask? What are your symptoms, or health concerns?”
Patient:
“None at the moment; I’m fit as a fiddle.  Still, could I benefit from taking  Vivaldi?
Maybe, like, if I bought stock in the company?”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

If life has no meaning for someone unless they pretend to know something they don’t know, then I would strongly and sincerely urge extensive therapy and counseling.  This is particularly true if feelings of meaninglessness and lack of purpose lead to depression, which is a serious illness.  Absent a mental disorder, or head trauma, there is no reason an adult should feel life is meaningless without maintaining some sort of delusion.
( Dr. Peter Boghossian, American writer, philosopher, professor )

Or, maybe that Someone should ask their doctor about Vivaldi.

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember to even it up;
May your loved ones serve you speshl desert and froot salid and yum;
May you not ask your doctor, any doctor, about TV advertised drugs;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] On March 17 real Irish people in Ireland apparently do not affix paper shamrocks on their foreheads, don Kiss Me I’m Irish underpants and drink until they vomit green beer on their faux Leprechaun shoes and call it a celebration of their heritage.

[2] A phrase of my father’s, used for when he had done something for one of his four children who had a particular need, and then found a way to “even it up” by doing something for the other three.

[3] Which is presently dormant but which I’m certain could be resurrected at a moment’s notice….

[4] Explanation for non-Oregonians:  Packy the elephant (1962-2017) was an Asian elephant born who was and lived his life at the Portland’s Oregon Zoo. Famous for, among other attributes, being the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere for five decades , growing to be among the tallest of Asian elephants in the world, siring seven calves, and being beloved by zoo staff and visitors, having a quirk about hats…. ( I wrote about that here, in The Elephant I’m Not Freeing ).

[5] That is something I just made up.  But it makes as much sense as any of the “Doing _____ will guarantee good luck in the new year!” prescriptions I’ve ever heard.

[6] Not the product’s real name.

[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 Best Picture Award I’m Not Voting For

March 13, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Best Picture Award I’m Not Voting For

The only reason I’m not casting my vote for the 2026 Best Picture Oscar is because moiself  is not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences…either that, or the Academy misplaced my ballot.  Not that it would matter, because I’d do a write-in; that is, I’d vote for a movie that didn’t win last year, because it was egregiously mistakenly not on the ballot: 2024’s The Life of Chuck.

If you hold as truth, as I do, the idea that  we all contain multitudes,   [1]   then all of the movies which existentially and ultimately mean more than diddly-squat   [2]   can be contained in The Life of Chuck.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Helpful Reminders

Tomorrow is Pi Day.  Do you have your recipes ready?  Seeing as how it’s AEDD   [3]   month, y’all can guess what my entrée will feature.

 

“I think she means us!”

*   *   *

Department Of Tomorrow Is Pi Day And Today…

…is a significant day for my circle of loved ones.  Moiself  wasn’t going to mention the significance until I made a…perceptive  typo, if there is such a thing.   [4]

Background info:  every Friday I write and send two letters ( yep, “snail,” in the mail), one to each of my offspring.  I begin each letter with either a haiku or limerick, rotating every week.  This week is a haiku week. The two letters I sent today began by noting the birthday of someone dear to us, who was taken from us way, way, way too soon.  [5]

A Haiku For SEH
A wise life guide is
to “Love ’em while you got ’em.”
And she was so loved….

I can’t write about anything else today, which is SEH’s birthday.  She would have turned 35 today.  She’d have had finished her residency; I like to imagine her working…in one of her several specialties: family medicine; wilderness medicine; reproductive medicine?  She loved the outdoors so much, and was concerned about this country’s eroding reproductive rights and access to medical care in underserved communities….  I like to think she might have stayed in Utah to provide women’s health care there, or in other more restrictive states.  She shone bright in her brief but significant life, and her fabsence is keenly felt.

Yikes, did you see what I just did typed? I decided to let the typo stand; certainly her absence is keenly felt, but IMO she also had a keen  fab sense.

 

“Sarah Elizabeth” English tea rose

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Guess I’ll Never Know The Answer
If I Never Ask The Question

Dateline:  Sunday, ~1p.m., returning from lunch with MH.  As MH steers our car into our driveway an oldie begins playing on the car radio.  I recognize Jimmy Soul’s bouncy 1962 hit,  If You Want To Be Happy.  The song begins with its chorus:

“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/
Never make a pretty woman your wife/
So for my personal point of view:
Get an ugly girl to marry you…“

The song goes on to extol the virtues of marrying an unattractive woman.  The singer proclaims that, among other plusses, an ugly woman won’t ever leave you ( as per the stereotype, she’ll be grateful for any attention she receives, ’cause no one else would want her ).  Oh, and she’ll be a great cook.

 Har de har har!

The first time I heard that song ( Junior high?  It was already an oldie) moiself  was appalled.  When I expressed my distaste for the lyrics, a guy friend accused me of being a Women’s Libber With No Sense Of Humor® ( “Oh c’mon, it’s an old song; a light-hearted joke of the times… “ ).

Skip to decades later, to the day when daughter Belle came home from high school in a grumpy mood.  She told me about a boy who’d been sent home to get a change of clothing because he’d shown up to school wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it that another boy objected to as being racist.  What gave Belle the grumpies was that the previous week, when she and another girl had gone to the administration to complain about a couple of troglodytes male students who harassed female students and wore t-shirts with misogynistic slogans (e.g., with a drawing of a boy ordering a girl to “Shut up and make me a sandwich”   [6]  ), they were told by said administrative spineless lackies personnel that what those boys were doing wasn’t “illegal” and that there was nothing the school could ( read: would ) do about that.

 

 

I sadly confirmed to my daughter what experience was already teaching her.  Yep, you are not imagining things: there’s a hierarchy of political and cultural concern with discriminatory  isms and ists.  Something deemed as racist is seen as worse than something deemed as sexist.  It’s not (or shouldn’t be) a contest; still, isms/ists are often pitted against one another, as many a Black feminist has attested.

“As a black woman I’ve been told that…I’m supposed to be black first and stand in solidarity with black men. Focus on the impact of racism, specifically on racism that negatively impacts black men. Stop bringing up sexism so much.”   [7]

If the student at Belle’s school had worn a short with a drawing of a white boy ordering a black boy to Shut Up And Go Pick Me Some Cotton, he’d be sent home/ordered to change his shirt and possibly even suspended.  But wearing a shirt with a slogan meant to put a female in/remind her of “her place” – somehow, that was acceptable, or at least tolerable.

On the rare occasions when I hear that Jimmy Soul song – which still receives airplay on Oldies stations – I think of what moiself  has long wanted to ask someone who whistles along to the up-tempo ditty:  What if, instead of referencing a sexist stereotype of the early 60s, the If You Want To Be Happy song contained a 1962-ish, “light-hearted” reference to racism?  Would the song have even gotten airplay, then or now?  If it got airplay today, would its dodgy lyrics be excused as a relic of the times? Ala….

“If you want to be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a light-skinned woman your wife,
So for my personal point of view,
Get a colored girl to marry you…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

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

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

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

 


Here is an excerpt from my blog of 3-14-14 (  The Book I’m Not Stealing ) – two excerpts, actually, both of them book-related:

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away….

Okay, it was 1971.  American anti-war activist Abbie Hoffman wrote and published Steal This Book.  As intrigued as I was at the time – by the “counter culture” and social activism of the late 60-s–mid 70’s in general and by Hoffman’s cheeky chutzpah in particular – I declined to pilfer Hoffman’s prose.  Stealing anything was not something I was inclined to do.  I also did not buy his book because how in good conscience could I lawfully purchase a book that was, essentially if puckishly, advising me not to do so?

Thirty-three years later I find myself wondering: who, if anyone, bought that book?

 

*   *   *
(  second excerpt   [10]  )

Belle leaned against the doorway to my office, respectfully but insistently reminding me that I’d agreed to donate copies of two of my books (my short fiction collection This Here and Now and my juvenile novel, The Mighty Quinn) to her friend A’s senior project…and…uh… A needs those books, now.  Up in the attic, searching for a box to put the books in, I remembered I had copies of another book of mine – “mine” in the sense that my writing was in it, even if my name wasn’t on the cover – to donate.

 

 

Feminist Parenting: Struggles, Triumphs and Comic Interludes (The Crossing Press, 1994) – has it really been twenty years since its publication?  My contribution to the anthology was an essay  [11]  wherein I juxtaposed the naming of my soon-to-be firstborn, K, with how I chose names for my fictional characters.  I was honored to have my contribution included along with a variety of essays, stories, and poems – selections from literary luminaries like Robin Morgan and Anna Quindlen, [12] and literary ordinaries like…well, like me.

The publisher-arranged publicity for the book consisted of readings by the anthology’s contributing writers, held at select locations throughout the country.  There were enough contributors from the Pacific Northwest to do a reading in Oregon, which took place one stormy January evening in Eugene, at the erstwhile vanguard of independent feminist bookstores, Mother Kali’s.  [13]

 

May Mother Kali recommend some light reading-perhaps a political satire or a wacky historical romance?

 

MH, sitting in the in audience with our son K on his lap, later noted that I was the only one of the speakers F-parenting in what (used to be) the normative child producing/rearing relationship:  I was a woman married to a man with whom I was raising our child.  There were four of the anthology’s contributors present: One lesbian mom, two divorced/single moms, and moiself -mom.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

*   *   *



 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [14]

 

 

*   *   *

May you find a way to use diddly-squat in conversation today;
May you know what it feels like to be the least normative in a crowd;
May you remember to love ’em while you got ’em;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As per the movie’s “I contain multitudes” reference, from the Walt Whitman poem, “Song of Myself“.

[2] Sorry to get with all the graduate-level philosophy concepts.

[3] Asparagus Every Damn Day, as noted in the previous week’s blog.

[4] And now, I think there is.

[5] She was murdered, seven years ago.  I wrote about it here: “The Life I’m Not Mourning”  and here: The Speculation I’m Not Endorsing; and here: The Reality I’m Not Denying.

[6] The phrase has various attributed origins ( including a 1995 SNL skit ); whether it is aimed at feminists in particular or women in general, it plays off the sexist idea that it’s a woman’s place to be in the kitchen serving her husband or boyfriend.

[7] ( [Why] Do you think Black Men aren’t trusting of Feminists or on-board with Feminism as a movement?  Reddit.com/r/AskFeminists )

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

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[10] I wasn’t (consistently) using the Department Of format then)

[11] “What’s in a Name?  Ask My Pal, Barry.”

[12]  I particularly enjoyed Quindlen’s essay, “What About the Boys?”

[13] I know, I know.  The bookstore was named in the 70’s, okay?

[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

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