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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 )

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*   *   *

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 Genetic Lottery I’m Not Counting On

May 8, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Genetic Lottery I’m Not Counting On

Department Of How To Take Advantage Of The Something Else

So much in life we feel is out of our control, and certainly a lot of it is.  But a recent TED Talk podcast shares the good news that your fate is not sealed by your genetic lottery.

If you’re lucky enough, i.e. if you don’t die before age 65, you will become part of a demographic often referred to as the elderly.  The good news is that you have options and choices when it comes to whether you will be part of the ill-derly or the well-derly.

Doctors and scientists investigating so-called Super Agers   [1]  (those who at age 80 were on no medication, had never had cancer or dementia-related issues) studied genomes of Super agers, and noted that it was lifestyle choices and preventive measures that extended the Super Agers  wellspan (aka healthspan    [2] ). 

 

 

“Eric (Topol, Cardiologist and professor and executive vice president at Scripps Research)  and the Scripps Research team looked for the longevity secrets in the DNA of wellderly Super Agers. And what they found changed everything they thought they knew about how humans age.

Eric Topol:
The stunning result was…there was not much to be able to say, ‘this was a genetic story’. So, this was either due to luck, which seems that’s farfetched to say all these people were so lucky, or something else. And I think that something else is what we’ve learned so much about in the last couple of years…”

( excerpts, my emphases, How to be a “Super Ager” (it’s not your genes);
5-1-26, TED Radio Hour )

Translation: There ain’t no, TPAGTLLAHL ( These People Are Guaranteed To Live Long And Healthy Lives ) genes.

Lifespan refers to the quantity of years a person lives; wellspan refers to the quality of those years; i.e.,  the number of years a person lives in good health, free from chronic disease and cognitive and physical disability.  You want a long wellspan, right (no use in having a lengthy lifespan if you’re sick and miserable)?

Listen to the talk/read the transcript for some good tips.  (Spoiler alert: ignore the Increase your protein!  Inject Peptides!  And Plasma!  …and other snake oil hypes, and get the shingles vaccination.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Good Advice I’m Currently Pondering

*Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.  [3]

* Accepting reality is not the same thing as endorsing reality.

* We are born on one day. We die on one day. We can change on one day.
We can fall in love on one day. Anything can happen in one day. [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of After All These Years, There IS Still
Room For Improvement In My Social Skills

Dateline: several days ago. This (imaginary) exchange takes place on social media:

FB Reminder:
” _____(name of FB friend) has a birthday today.
Let him know you are thinking of him.”

Moiself :
“But, I’m not….”

 

 

*   *   *

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?!?!?!  [5]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [6]   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 May to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, What was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of May 12, 2017 (  The Phone Call I’m Not Returning ).

Department Of Things That Frost My Butt
Installment 621 in a series

(Pre-rant background information: I volunteer for a feline-specific animal adoption organization, at one of their offsite locations. The majority of the cats and kittens are housed at the mother ship, aka the main shelter in south Washington County city. Kittys are also housed at several offsite adoption centers – generally, pet supplies stores which have special cat kennel section which they lease to the shelter.)

To the Guy (and it’s always a guy) who walks his dog (it can be any breed, from the 5 lb yippies to the 80 lb Dobermans) up and down the aisles of the PetOpia store:  Dude, you hold your dog up to the glass wall of an animal’s kennel/habitat and encourage your canine to bark/growl/otherwise harass the animal (usually a cat, but I’ve seen it happen to rabbits, gerbils and other rodents, reptiles, birds, other/smaller dogs) housed on the other side of the glass.  Anyway, you know who you are…

On second thought, you probably don’t. Your actions indicate that there is nary an introspective bone in your body, only a thick mass of bone-like tissue where your brain should be housed.

Every time it happens, a part of me is surprised as well as disgusted. Apparently, because you have an animal with you and you are in a pet supplies store, I hold the (obviously mistaken) assumption that you are fond of animals.  And yet you engage in this behavior as if it were playful, and persist in encouraging your dog to bark at the other animal despite   [9]  seeing obvious signs of distress in that animal.

And I, a volunteer for an organization which depends upon the goodwill of the pet supplies store in order to have that adoption space at the store, have been explicitly instructed that I am forbidden from confronting you. I can only “redirect” your behavior and attempt to educate you; I can’t kick your sorry sadistic ass to the curb.

If only for a taser gun with a heat-seeking, genital-specific probe….

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

” ‘The original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge.’ That line, whether read as theology or metaphor, contains a quiet irony: the foundational story of much of Western religion begins with a punishment for seeking knowledge. Not violence. Not theft. Curiosity.

That narrative sets a tone that echoes through history. When church signs declare that education distances people from God, or that faith thrives where common sense falters, they are not anomalies—they are symptoms. They reflect a long-standing tension between authority and inquiry, between certainty and doubt….

… The pattern is not anti-knowledge per se; it is selective acceptance of knowledge that does not destabilize belief systems.

That selectivity matters.

Modern research consistently shows a measurable—though nuanced—negative correlation between religiosity and scientific literacy…. This does not mean religious individuals are unintelligent….  It means that when beliefs are tied to identity, community, and perceived moral order, contradictory evidence is often filtered or resisted.

So the issue is not stupidity. It is insulation….

…the sharper question is not, “Does religion need people to be stupid?” That framing misses the mark.

A better question is:
Does religion function best when people stop asking certain questions?

Another:
If a belief is true, why should it fear scrutiny?

And another:
What kind of truth requires protection from education?…

Religion does not require stupidity. It often thrives on something more subtle: the prioritization of belief over verification.

That distinction matters, because it shifts responsibility. The problem is not that people are incapable of thinking critically—it is that many are taught, explicitly or implicitly, that certain ideas should not be critically examined….”

 (excerpts;  my emphases; Religion:  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 5-4-26 )

*   *   *

May you never be One Of Those People whose ass other people want to kick to the curb;
May you take advantage of the Something Else;
May you eat from the tree of knowledge at every opportunity;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] A Super Ager is someone age 80 or older who exhibits cognitive function that is comparable to an average person who is middle-aged and/or who has never had cancer nor is on medication for chronic conditions (heart disease, Type 2 diabetes….)

[2] Referring to increasing lifespan, people are trying to add years to life, vs. wellspan or healthspan,where the emphasis is “adding life to your years.”

[3] Attributed to US tennis star Arthur Ashe.

[4] From a Calm daily meditation.

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

[6] Was it really over twelve years ago?

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

[8] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[9] Or because of…bullies apparently do not limit their torments to their own species.

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

The Cocktail I’m Not Drinking

April 24, 2026

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

                                                                                                

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

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

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

This is too special, even for Portland.

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

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

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

[3] Not the company’s real name.

[4] Not her real name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 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 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

The Nails I’m Not Perfecting

March 6, 2026

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, community, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of Can It Already Be Day Six Of AEDD?

AEDD.  No, it’s not some type of learning disability…you could think of it as a culinary learning (or experimentation) opportunity.

It stands for Asparagus Every Damn Day ® .  To honor both the impending arrival of Spring and my love for asparagus, I challenge moiself  to cook and/or eat asparagus, in some form, every damn day of March.  Last year I had some favorites creations; mostly, I defaulted to what’s-easy-but-I-still-love-it (e.g., oven roasted lemon garlic asparagus spears, creamy   [1] asparagus and green pea soup….).

Gird your proverbial loins and let the wild rumpus begin.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of My Favorite Blast From The Past

Were I asked by Someone to come up with an example of carefree bliss, I would show that Someone this picture.

 

Moiself, son K and daughter Belle (and Mt. Neahkahnie in the background), on Manzanita beach, circa…two decades ago. Picture taken by MH, existential protection provided by Mt. Neahkahnie.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Asshat Tag Line Of The Year [2]

Dateline: last Friday; driving to the Oregon coast, listening to one of my science podcasts.  At the end of the podcast there is an advertisement from one of the podcast’s sponsors.  The ad is for…some kind of service having to do with manicures.  Repeated at least three times during the ad is the service’s enticement/slogan, something about how  “…we all deserve to have perfect nails.”

 

 

And I find moiself  thinking, do these people understand the target audience of this podcast?  And how can the proverbial  we all – or just moiself –  deserve anything having to do with our fingernails?  And is it deserve as in, how we all deserve basic human rights and to be treated with dignity (and not harassed about our less-than-perfect nails)?  And what, exactly, constitutes perfect nails?  And is there a committee, a governing board, which establishes and oversees such a standard of perfection?

And the sheer inanity of this ad is provoking way too many, And and and and questions – which made me want to (should moiself  be offered a free sample of the product) take whatever was being advertised and heave it off the rim of the Grand Canyon.    [3]

Important Note To The Advertising Industry, whether large scale Commercial/Industrial And/Or Small Business Owners: Struck as I was by the astounding vacuousness of the ad’s tag line, I can’t tell you what service it was for.  Which is the ultimate failure of an advertisement, the very purpose of which is to get you to want (or at least remember the name of) the product.

 

I’m assuming these were not the top choice of the Fingernail Perfection Police.

*   *   *

Speaking Of Mormons…

…which I was, two weeks back ( 2-20-26, The Documentary I’m Not Inspired By, re the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping documentary)….

Department Of And Now Some Words About Witnessing

 

 

Relax; it’s a story about Porch Proselytizing®.  There will not be pamphlets left on your front doorstep.  [4]

The prompt for this story is…moiself  saw an article online having to do with someone complaining about having to shoo Porch Preachers away from their front door.

 

 

The above is the sign I made and had laminated 10+ years ago, a larger version of which is on our front porch below our doorbell.  The sign, in my estimate, keeps ~98% of solicitors away.  Before I did the rewording I had another sign up, a cartoon illustrating how we do not want solicitors, but – surprise ! –there was always a Someone who thought it didn’t apply to him.  When moiself  answered the doorbell, realized who the stranger was on my porch/what he was up to, and pointed toward our no soliciting sign, that Someone would say, “Oh, I’m not *selling* anything.  I have good news that’s free…”

 

 

Even before the signage, religious solicitors – Mormon “Elders”   [5]  in particular – left skid marks getting away from my porch, after I’d engaged them and they realized What Kind Of Uppity Woman They Were Dealing With ®. 

 

 

What used to surprise moiself, about the solicitors I personally encountered as well as those I’d known over the years who’d engaged in such activities, was their seeming befuddlement re overwhelmingly receiving less-than-hospitable reactions from those whom they sought to evangelize.  I had to wonder:  from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons to Evangelicals, in their witnessing training, was there not even a smidgen of attention paid to the basic human psychology behind someone not in *your* group being presented with *your* group’s message, with no request from them for your thoughts and/or opinions?

Was there no mention of the reality that it is highly likely that what you are indoctrinated trained to think of as informative/friendly/useful information, will be seen by others as presumptuous?  And that’s because it *is* presumptuous.  A friendly demeanor and/or beatific smile on your face does not dilute the ultimate cluelessness and arrogance of your mission:  you are approaching a stranger, unsolicited by her, knowing nothing about her save for the (likely   [6] ) fact that she does not share your spiritual worldview, which therefore in your worldview means her worldview is deficient…and you think you can (and even should) enlighten her!

 

I bet she can’t wait to hear the good news from white boys wearing even whiter shirts!

 

I remember seeing and hearing my mother deal with the Mormon “Elders”  ( nine out of ten of the proselytizers we got were Mormon ) who would, every couple of months or so, ring the doorbell of our Santa Ana home.  First off, no one who knew our family came to our front door (when I was a young child I didn’t even know if our front door “worked,” or if it was just for show).  We all entered and left the house, along with our friends and neighbors, via our side door or backyard door.  Thus, when there was a ring/knock at the front door we knew it was from a stranger; i.e., someone who didn’t know us.  This Someone, experience taught us, most likely wanted to sell us something, and would ask to speak to “the adult of the house,” so I and my siblings would call for our mother to answer the front door.  But I liked to lurk in the background, to…watch.

 

 

My mother would never confront the Porch Preachers, despite my advice that she should tell them the truth ( that you think they’re whack-doodles ) and not waste anymore of your or their time.  But Mom came of age in the 1950s, meaning she was raised to be a Nice Woman®.  She would listen to their opening spiel, then give her standard, gentle-but-firm, “No thank you; we have our own religion,” response, and wish them a nice day while she gently shut the door.

There was one exception (that I know of) to my mother’s unperturbable niceness with solicitors.  This happened during a weekday, the summer before I entered eighth grade.  A pair of Elders knocked on our front door.  I heard the customary/brief exchange between my mother and the elders, then noticed it was going on longer than usual at the front porch.  I was surprised to hear the rising pitch of a young male voice, followed by my mother sputtering, “Blasphemy!” before slamming the door. 

After commending her display of backbone, I asked what they had said to her.  Instead of simply accepting her brushoff, that pair of snot-nosed albinos   [7]   didn’t do what they should have done at that point – thank her for her time, apologize for disturbing her, and get the fuck off her property.     [8]   Instead, one of them challenged her.   Yes, you may have your own religion, the cadaverously pale, just-past-post-adolescent pompous primnose   [9]   preached to a woman twice his age, but only *our* faith has the “true revealed truth“ (I can’t remember the verbatim exchange, but I remember that phrase, and how I’d guffawed at the redundancy). 

 

“Yes, God is beyond our understanding…but let me tell you about him….”

*   *   *

Department Of And Now For Something (Not So) Completely Different

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week        [10]

( excerpt a scene from the movie  The Big Kahuna.  Three industrial lubricant salesmen, Larry, Phil, and the evangelical Christian Bob, are at a convention in Wichita.  In this incisive scene, Phil is speaking to Bob,  emphases mine.)

“You preaching Jesus is no different than Larry, or anybody else, preaching lubricants.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha, or civil rights, or how to make money in real estate with no money down.  That doesn’t make you a human being.  It makes you a marketing rep.
If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are — just to find out — for no other reason.  Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation, to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore — it’s a pitch — and you’re not a human being.  You’re a marketing rep.”

 

Or perhaps you prefer the wisdom of *this*Big Kahuna (on the far right) from the world of Gidget surfer-movies.

*   *   *

May we all have our own favorite example of bliss;
May you never give a thought to the quality of anyone’s fingernails;
May you enjoy all that damn asparagus;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yet, without cream.  Yep, it’s those dastardly plant-based cooking tricks….

[2] Or more…the century is young.

[3] Please do not take this as any form of encouragement to litter in our beautiful national parks.

[4] At least, not metaphorically, from moiself.  Who knows what happens in *your* neighborhood?

[5] I just love that title, once reserved for revered people of great age and wisdom in the community, now doled out by the LDS to pimply-faced boys who get the respected title simply by being a male age 18 and up, while a kick ass, grown-ass woman like moiself  who is twice their age could never be an Elder in their world.

[6] It’s more than a likely fact, if you are a Mormon missionary.  Mormon missionaries are given a list in the neighborhoods they canvas; they don’t waste time showing up at the houses of other Mormons.  They know whether or you are not Mormon, because they are given that info by the local Mormon church.  Unlike other brands of Christianity, if you are Mormon you do not go to whatever LDS church you like, you go to a certain church – “chapel” –  that has a specific geographical area assigned as “their area.” If you live in that geographical area, you are supposed to go to services at that chapel, and your address is noted.

[7] You’ve never seen how white the white boys can be until Mormon missionaries come to your doorstep.  I used to think they were selectively bred for their lack of melanin.

[8] I probably don’t need to explain that that was *my* 12-year-old-smartass’s interpretation of their responsibilities as uninvited solicitors, and not my mother’s thoughts.   

[9] Yeah, I made that up.  But, you know, right?

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

The Hidden Power I’m Not Doubting

February 6, 2026

Robyn Parnell family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Me so happy, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of First Things First

One of my favorite dates is today.  Happy Birthday, She-Who-Was-Not-Intimidated-By-The-Rope-Swing-On-The-Treehouse-Deck.   [1]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why I Will Be A Couch Potato (Luger?) For The Next Three Weeks

The Winter Olympics begin today.

 

Bring on the Norwegians!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Human Interaction Is Sometimes Disguised As
– or Enhanced By – a Non Sequitur

Dateline:  Tuesday morning; circa 10 am; The Dollar Tree Store‘s Birthday greeting cards section.  [2]   Moiself  is picking out birthday cards, a lot of ’em. To an uninformed observer it might seem that I am choosing them at random, dumping them in my handbasket…but this is not so.  There is method to my madness.  As I grab one card two envelopes come with it, and the extra envelope flutters to the floor.  Only when I reach down to retrieve it do I realize that a woman is standing next to me, in front of the Valentine’s Day card section.

“Excuse me,” I say, as I lean over to pick up the miscreant envelope, which has landed just to the right of her right foot.  “I didn’t mean to fling an empty envelope in your direction.”

She smiles, looks at my handbasket, and I expect her to remark on the number of cards in it (which will eventually total 30).  Instead, she replies, “My daughter was unable to have children, so she adopted four dogs.  I get them all cards for every holiday and special occasion.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Few People Say It Better Than Greta Christina   [3]

“Dear Republicans,

Apparently some of you are having second thoughts. Recent events have led you to question your commitment to Trumpism, and even move away from it. A line has been crossed for you, and you can no longer accept the direction the country is going in.

Am I glad about this? Yes. Do I want you to step away from Trump and the Republican Party, to rethink the path you’ve been on and walk it back? Yes….

But as you walk back this path, you need to realize that it’s not going to be covered with rose petals. A lot of people are extremely angry with you, and we have every right to be. You have done a great deal of harm. The Republican Party has done a great deal of harm — not just in the last month, it’s been doing great harm for a long time — and you’ve been part of that. When you’ve hurt people badly, you need to do more than just say “Oops” and expect to be forgiven. You need to work to fix the harm you’ve done. And the greater the harm, the more work you have to do….

 

 

We warned you this was coming. Even the Republican Party warned you this was coming: the Project 2025 document spelled out their plans in detail. You chose not to listen. Moving forward, you need to be willing to listen. You need to do the kind of listening that involves not talking. You need to not get defensive, not try to justify your actions. You need to stop saying, ‘I didn’t vote for this!’  You absolutely voted for this.”

( excerpts from author, activist, blogger Greta Christina’s
Dear Republicans 1-28-26, my emphases )

*   *   *

Department Of The Hidden Power Of Doubt

“What do you do when you’re not sure?”
( from opening monologue, Doubt:  A Parable, a play by John Patrick Shanley )

 

Last week the podcast Hidden Brain concluded their You 2.0 series   [4]  with, as per the podcast website’s intro,  “…a look at the hidden power of doubt — not as weakness or indecision, but as a tool that helps us make better choices and navigate an uncertain world.”

The episode opens with the story of the little known letter General Eisenhower wrote on the eve of the allied invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, aka, D-Day. There were so many factors at play – including the weather – and an allied victory was far from certain.  Eisenhower drafted what he dreaded, should he have to announce that the mission had failed.  When it became apparent that Operation Overlord was succeeding, Eisenhower crumpled the letter and tossed it in his office trash can.  His military secretary retrieved the letter and kept it, allowing history to see what (IMO) was the true leadership of the man.

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”   [5]

 

 

Time machine to the present:  can you imagine the so-called leader we have today ( The Tantrum-Throwing-Toddler-in-Chief ) writing something like that – taking responsibility so succinctly and directly?  #47 will go to his corpulent casket carping and whining and kicking, blaming others for the political, moral, financial and cultural devastation he leaves in his wake.

Yet again, I digress.

HB podcast host Shankar Vedantam and his guest go on to talk about the power of doubt, which is something we tend not to associate with the stereotype of leadership (confident; decisive; never wavering; unwilling to back down).

“We don’t think of strong leaders as hesitant, doubtful, or unsure of the right answers.   Confidence and determination are admirable traits.  But they also have drawbacks.  Confidence can lead to overconfidence; decisiveness can make leaders less likely to be tolerant of dissent; determination can blind us to risks.
At the University of Virginia’s Darden College of Business, [Bobby] Parmar studies the value of doubt.  He says that by avoiding uncertainty, we miss out on opportunities for growth.”
(excerpts, You 2.0: Trusting Your Doubt,  Hidden Brain Staff / January 26, 2026  )

It’s a thought-provoking presentation of a compelling subject.  Two thumbs up for podcast listeners.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Learning To Lie In Another Language

 Ég  skil  íslensku.

Funny how one of the first phrases I learned in my Plimsleur language app, which I’ve been struggling through like a stuttering pig using daily since last Wednesday, is a total lie:   I understand Icelandic.

 

Yeah, fluency is just around the corner.

 

Adding to the hoax is that five minutes after learning how to say,  I do not understand Icelandic, I have forgotten how to say, I do not understand Icelandic.

Just about every Icelander speaks English ( Ninety-eight plus %! English is a compulsory subject in Icelandic schools ), but still, I want to be a gracious visitor when we go there this summer.  I think this trying-to-learn-some-conversational-Icelandic is going to be one of those things where I have to repeat lesson one seven times before moving on. 

About speaking Icelandic. Knowing that fact (that Icelanders speak English), then bothering to learn to say in Icelandic, Excuse me, do you speak English?  while perhaps respectful in intent, could easily come off as, to an Icelander, Why is this doofus butchering my language when it is totally unnessary to do so?  Obviously, if I’ve bothered to learn anything about the country (including from when MH and I were there three summers ago), I should know that any Icelander whom I address will speak far better English than I speak Icelandic. 

I wish the language course would start off by teaching Icelandic cusswords.  That would be more inspiring.  Of course, there is the internet, where I discovered, farðu í rassgat, which you would hurl as an insult when you are in the kind of situation where you want to advise someone to crawl up your own asshole.  Perhaps I’ll save that one for the United States customs agents.

 

“May your urine burn, you cowardly goat,” will be my backup curse.

*   *   *

Department Of Cool Story, Bro…    [6]

When I recently saw this spot-on summation of Christian theology I was reminded of an acquaintance who, when I came out decades ago as religion-free, resorted to the believers’ last tactic:  when you can’t counter facts and logic and rationality, use fear ( of something only the religious believe in – hellfire/damnation  [7]  ).  He was not amused when moiself, using the following synopsis to do so, laughingly confirmed that I was indeed rejecting his god’s plan for “salvation.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?   [9]
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad
has made the world ugly and bad.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.”

(  Friedrich Nietzsche , as quoted in  The Very Best of Friedrich Nietzsche: Quotes from a Great Thinker, by David Graham,)

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember to fix the harm you’ve done when you realize you’ve done harm;
May you, as much as possible, not find yourself in farðu í rassgat situations;
May you resolve not to find the world ugly and bad;
…and may the hijinks ensue.    [10]

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Belle can still give you the badass, stinkeye look, should the occasion call for it.

[2] Two for $1!

[3] GC is an author, blogger, speaker, LGBTQ and atheist activist.

[4] The podcast does an annual series, at the end of the old/beginning of the new year, exploring the latest in evidence-based understandings offered by behavioral scientists – understandings which may help people improve their lives via establishing good habits/getting rid of bad habits, overcoming emotional, romantic, career-related, and cognitive challenges, etc.

[5] Note that the draft was dated July 5th. In 1966, when the question about this date was put to him, Einsenhower indicated that it was a minor mistake on his part and that he had actually written it on June 5, 1944.  (from D-Day Overlord, Encyclopaedia of the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy )

[6] Not.

[7] It’s a knee slapper, when you think about it:  they try to make *you* afraid of something  that is in fact *their* greatest fear, something which you don’t thing about at all, like pissing off Santa claus.

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

[9] This is serious stuff; no need for a footnote.

[10] See previous footnote.

The Fifth Wheeler I’m Not Inheriting

January 30, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Recreation, travel, Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Fifth Wheeler I’m Not Inheriting

Department Of This Is How Life Works, I Guess

Dateline: Monday, late morning.  I received a text from MH, in forming me that his Uncle JW had died “peacefully, I’m told” this morning, and that that was the only information he had so far.  I didn’t know his uncle well; I received the news with no emotion, save for the flat affect of Another piece of family history to log….  And as I was doing so, I remembered my first encounter with JW.

Background:  JW was the youngest of my FIL’s five siblings.  [1]   I met JW a couple of months after MH and I married.  [2]   This was at a time (late 1988) when gay rights issues were predominant in the national news – particularly in California – and fear of AIDS sparked a backlash against anti-discrimination legislation.  JW, who knew that I was a native Californian and that MH and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, steered any conversation he had with me toward “the gay thing.”   He did this during every one of the (few) times he and I were in the same room, which were always at my FIL’s family get-togethers.   [3]

 

 

That first encounter took place when MH and I flew out to Florida to join his parents, who hosted a mini-family reunion/ congrats to MH and Robyn!  gathering at a condo complex in New Smyrna Beach.  One afternoon, as one of MH’s cousins and I were out on the condo’s lanai chatting about our respective favorite beaches, JW, who’d apparently overheard us from inside, joined us on the porch.  He asked me if I’d ever been at a beach and seen two men strolling by the seashore, holding hands.  I said that I had.  JW shook his head and made clucking noises, then said that he didn’t think he could “handle it.”  “Handle what?”  I asked him.  “Oh, you know,” he said, shuddering with…ick discomfort.  “I just couldn’t handle it.”

 

 

I knew what he was getting at, but feigned befuddlement.  What was there to handle, I asked him, other than the sight of two people walking on a beach?  JW said he realized that the theoretical, hand-holding gay couple technically weren’t harming “anyone else,” but that it would make him feel very uncomfortable to see that.

I reminded JW (perhaps, informed would be the more correct way to state it, if moiself  was enlightening JW as to something he hadn’t previously been aware of ) that in many countries around the world, especially those with conservative/religious/strict/oppressive cultural mandates, it is perfectly fine – and is in fact, the norm – for non-romantic, same-gendered friends to show physical affection in public, such as two men walking arm-in-arm or holding hands.  However, in those same countries, a male-female romantic couple (even a couple engaged to be married) would not hold hands or be “physical” in public, lest a sexual liaison be implied.

Knowing this, I asked JW, why would you assume that any two same-gender people you see holding hands are gay?  Perhaps they are expressing affection, as I had done fairly recently, with a female friend whom I hadn’t seen in years – and, yep, wouldn’t you know it, we were at the beach.  As we strolled along the seashore, walking arm in arm, delighted to be in each other’s company, one of us joked about how someone’s bigoted uncle from the Midwest might be  harumpfing to himself about ….those lesbos flaunting it in public.

 

 

My FIL later told me that his lil’ brother’s way of communicating was via teasing – that JW teased people he liked.  I can’t remember my reaction; I probably responded with something mildly snarky.  My lifetime of living in California had made me familiar with that form of teasing, in which someone, for some reason, can’t hold in their prejudice – they just gotta share it with you – but wants to be able to backtrack ( “What are you getting so excited about/can’t you take a joke? I was just teasing.” )

Moiself  finds this next fact neither good nor bad – merely noteworthy:  this story I’ve shared is the strongest memory I have of JW.  Evidently it is also the most lasting impression, as it’s the first that came to mind when MH told me that JW had died.

 

At least we aren’t West Coast lesbians.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Memory File Search:
What Was In That Letter Which Prompted My Response?

Last week while searching for my letter to my MIL, written in response to her critique of me keeping my surname after marriage ( the subject of my blog post two weeks ago The Name I’m Not Hyphenating, 1-16-26 ), I came upon a letter from moiself  to my own mother (shared below).  The letter from my mother which prompted my reply is somewhere up in my attic, but I decided it was more fun to suss out, from what I had written, what was the subject of her letter.  Sure enough, it all came back to moiself – little-to-no sussing needed.

It was a kick to read something I’d forgotten about:  my parents’ fond hope – obsession, almost – that one of their four children would want their truck-and-trailer rig after they could no longer use it.

I remember comparing notes with my siblings when our parents purchased what was to be their last RV-setup – a fifth wheeler towed by a pickup truck.

 

Ala this.

 

My comparing-notes suspicions were correct:  all of us were, individually, being consulted by our parental units.  Mom and Dad said they couldn’t decide which they preferred, a self-contained RV or a truck-trailer set up, and “for the future,” wanted to know what *we* preferred, so that it could be handed down to us.  Poor, dear folks – they were surprised ( and definitely hurt ) that none of their offspring wanted…whatever setup they chose.  We all respectively advised some version of, Thanks for thinking of us, but please pick whatever is best for *you,* as we don’t want any kind of RV.

I can read between the lines of the letter to my mother, and recall how bemusing and face-palming I found it when, in her letter to me, she’d tried to appeal to some stereotype of Men-Like-To-Drive-Trucks®, as perhaps a last ditch effort to get at least one of her daughters to consider taking the rig (our brother, my parents’ only son, was a strong no way from the get-go), if only to please her husband by offering him the ultimate manly symbol of manliness:  the opportunity to drive a pickup truck.

Moiself’s  unsolicited, non-RV advice to y’all:  pick a time to go through some of your old family letters, whether in the attic or on your computer files.  You’ll likely be surprised/touched/amused/confused by what you find.

 

 

April 13, 2009

Hi, Mom

Thanks for your letter and sharing your ideas about the truck and RV.  You certainly put some thought into various options, which I appreciate.  I got a chuckle out of the fact that, despite your claim that most men love driving and having a truck, we have  [4]   MH, R____, E___ and R__    – manly men, each in their own way – and not one truck drivin’ dude (as my daughter would say) among the four of them.  It must be something in the water.

A few years back Dad brought up the subject with me.  He said he’d made the offer of the truck & RV to all the Parnell kids (if anyone took him up on it the offer would include compensating the remaining three accordingly – he always strove to be fair, to, as he put it, “even things out,” which was so sweet of him).  He told me everyone had said, “Thank you, but no,” and so he thought he’d eventually sell the setup and put whatever he could get out of it “into the estate.”

Anyway, you’re right about MH and I not wanting the rig.  Although we enjoy kayaking and hiking, etc., we’re not interested in any kind of RV set up.  We do have RVC hookup and parking space, but that is for temporary use only.  Our CC & Rs prohibit us from storing any such vehicles on site.   Even if we took you up on your generous offer to pay for off-site storage, the additional upkeep and insurance wouldn’t be worth it for something we’d use at most once a year (if that often).  RVs can be great for retired folks, who have the flexibility to take longer trips or even just longer weekends, and who have time before the trip itself to do the necessary preparations and also time after the trip for the fix-up, put-back-in-storage chores (and such tasks take longer when the RV is stored off-site).

I’ve fond memories of our family trailer trips, and included in the memories are the fact that those trips were long.  Our family enjoyed the benefits of Dad’s government job – he had something like 25 days of vacation (plus holidays) and often took them all at once in the summer, when we (I mean of course you and Dad) would prep the rig and then take off for weeks.  MH and I simply don’t have that kind of vacation time.   But we do appreciate the offer!

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

 


*   *   *

May you have fun reading between the lines of letters sent and received;
May you remember to keep copies of letters sent and received;
May you agree to disagree with – and challenge – your teasing uncle;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Only one of whom – the second youngest –  survives now.

[2] Although they were invited, I don’t remember JW and his wife attending our wedding, which was across the country from where they lived.

[3] and which were mercifully [from moiself’s  perspective] rare, as MH’s father’s extended family lived 2k+ miles away, in the Midwest and/or South and/or east coast.

[4] My husband, two BILs and brother’s names redacted.  Not quite Epstein-file-redaction worthy, but still….

[5] “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 Name I’m Not Hyphenating

January 16, 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), politics, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Name I’m Not Hyphenating

Department Of The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name…
If It’s Hyphenated

Dateline: Monday morning.  Starting my morning reading the she’s-brilliant-because-moiself-almost-always-approves-of-her-advice  Carolyn Hax’s WAPO column.  The first advice seeker of the morning, “Expecting,” wrote about an issue near and dear to the cockles of my heart: deciding the surname of one’s children when both married partners have “kept” their names:

 My husband and I are expecting our first baby. I didn’t change my name when we got married, so we need to decide what last name to give our child. I’m pretty adamant that we hyphenate, though I don’t really care about order. I’m also open to giving the child some new last name that combines both our names….It’s important to me that we both be identified as equal parents to our child and that there’s no subtle preference given to one parent/family or the other.

My husband thinks we’d be setting our kid up for a lifetime of confusion and challenges by hyphenating. He says when our child gets married, having a hyphen name will cause all kinds of problems. My perspective is that we don’t know that our child will get married at all, and if they do, they can figure it out then! Husband wants to give the kid his last name and have my last name as a middle name, which from my perspective perpetuates sexist ideas about male ownership and lineage…

Is there some other option we’re not thinking of? Are there really problems with hyphenating that I’m not taking seriously?

Hax, as is her wont, has some fun with her opening remarks, while laying the groundwork for addressing the issue-behind-the-issue:

 Expecting:

Hyphens do add some challenges, but it’s not exactly Everest without mittens.

I’ve known dozens of hyphenated people personally, professionally and by association, and none of them were, to my knowledge, wandering around lost in corridors due to failures of identification.

Non-facetiously, none of them to my knowledge have chosen to streamline to one name out of bureaucratic frustration. Hyphenating has been yawned at as within the range of normal naming conventions for decades. Some people and forms will get it wrong, yes. People also get my name wrong every. day. and it’s not hyphenated.   [1]    Or even long. So if your husband hits upon the Great Unscrewuppable Name, then please share. I might switch….

( excerpts, my emphases, Carolyn Hax 1-12-26,
“Husband sees hyphenating name for fairness as too much of a hassle” )

 

 

One of moiself’s many mottos is,  Who knows (or cares) what people say behind your back.   Behind-my-back- criticism of moiself  and/or my life decisions is fine.  If it’s behind my back, well then, I’m not meant to hear it, am I?  Not my chickens, not my circus.  

 

You can have monkeys in *your* circus, if you like.  Thanks to friend CC, my circus has chickens.

 

To my knowledge/memory I didn’t get any blowback from my side of the family when I kept my surname after marrying MH.  [2]   As to what was said in-front-of-my-back, it came from MH’s family.  After we married there were a couple from testy remarks from MH’s mother and maternal grandmother regarding me keeping my surname.  And both women, when they sent written correspondence to us, addressed the envelope to “Mr. and Mrs. MH” and/or “Robyn and MH.”  They used some version of what I came to think of as my  manhandle; they did this despite us telling them that my name was my name, and despite our having arranged for the officiant of our wedding to end the ceremony by introducing us, “…as wife and husband, Robyn Parnell and MH.”  There was also MH’s uncle, who introduced me to one of his children using  not-my-last-name, despite my having seem him the previous year at a family holiday gathering, where he, and my future MIL and G-MIL, introduced me to their friends and family as, “Robyn Parnell, MH’s friend….”

After a couple of months of this, MH wrote to his mother and grandmother, requesting that they grant me (and him) – the simple courtesy of referring to me by my actual name.

At the beginning of this surname silliness I told a friend how odd it was, to find out that certain people…

“…had no problem remembering my name – two words, four syllables total – when I was single. Then, I get married, and boom – their brain’s long-term memory storage capacity immediately decreased by a couple thousand neurons.  Apparently, it’s my heretofore unrealized superpower.”

My lasso of forgetfulness commands your obedience.

After MH’s request for some R-E-S-P-E-C-T for his wife, I received a three-page letter, from his mother, addressed solely to moiself.  The letter began as such letters begin, with compliments paving the way for the critique.  MIL praised my many fine and unique qualities!!!…and assured me that none of those qualities would be diminished by me showing my love for my husband by assuming a common surname.    [3]

While MH was mortified by the letter ( hellyeah, I showed it to him ), I was…thrilled …is the proper word.  His mother was bothered by this issue – so, don’t let it fester, let’s address it and be done with it.  I like This Kinda Stuff® to be out in the open and on paper.  Unlike phone or even one-on-one conversations, where one party can later deny (or honestly forget) what they said, or accuse you of putting words in their mouth, if it’s in print, there it is.   [4]  My MIL’s letter gave me the opportunity to articulately eviscerate her archaic, patriarchal, women-marginalizing judgements lovingly and firmly refute her “reasoning,” and educate her as to current and historical practices and cultural and personal assumptions behind the giving and taking of surnames.   [5]  Sure, a simple, This is so none of your beeswax  might have sufficed, but the former was so much more fun.

 

(one of the thirty-plus bumper stickers on our old Honda Odyssey)

 

I cannot find that letter to my MIL in my computer files (I save all such correspondence; however, it seems it didn’t survive a systems update from many years ago).  But the sentiments I expressed to her were similarly (if less personally) addressed in a letter I sent, many years later, to one of my favorite magazines, Brain,Child: the magazine for thinking mothers.  This was in regards to an article that appeared in Brain,Child‘s   Debate feature.  My letter    [6]   was published in their Letters to the Editor section.

Liz Breslin (Debate, Does a Family Need to Share a Surname? Winter 2009) claims she is a feminist, but that her intention to take her future husband’s surname “…is not a feminist issue for me.  It’s a family one.”

Say what?  Since when are feminism and family issues separate?

Breslin feels that a family should share a surname.  As for those who feel the same and do so by blending names she declares, “Think of the strife involved in that…it sounds fine, but it causes issues in school…at the doctor’s office…whether it’s right or not, our wider administrative world operates largely on an assumption that a family shares the same name.”

Ms. Breslin ( Mrs. Soon-to-be-His-Last-Name? ) needs to get out more.  The “administrative world” deals quite effectively, every day, with blended, step- and foster families, whose inhabitants often have three or more differing surnames.

My husband made the bold step of keeping his name when we married (Oh yeah, so did I).  Our children share a blended name, and we refer to ourselves collectively using that name, as the ___ family.  Who knows (or cares) what people say behind our backs, but we’ve had nothing but positive comments to our fronts:

“Oh, I get it!”

“How clever!”

“We’ll remember your family!”
(And guess what?  They do.).

It has caused us no trouble, nor even inconvenience.   Even if it did, how long does it take to say, “I’m Robyn Parnell, Belle _____’s mother”   [7]  when you call the doctor or meet your kid’s teacher?

Any cultural anthropologist (or weekend genealogist) can tell you that naming customs have varied, all over the world for all of recorded history, and somehow, people have always been able to keep track of who belongs with whom.

Like Breslin, I am also a writer of short stories.  I would point out to her that, more important than any alleged administrative inconvenience is the story that your choice of a surname tells, regarding to what or whom your family is and belongs.  Few things are more personal than your name; it is part of your life story.   Sure, your surname is (most likely) your father’s.  But it’s your father’s, not someone else’s father’s name.

If you take your husband’s name, some people will judge you…just as they should, because you call yourself a feminist but cling to the most personal aspect of traditionalism.   Feminism has always involved thinking outside the box re the ways people structure relationships.  “Giving away” your name makes a statement, whether you intend that or not, which is why women in many cultures and countries are not allowed to keep their surnames.

Don’t take your rights for granted; don’t say you’re a feminist when you go for the traditional, patriarchal choice.  Proclaiming feminism only to “give away” your name tells your children and the world something very basic, even Orwellian:  all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

If you really want to share the same name with your husband, both of you can change your names.  After all, it is a new family unit you’re creating, isn’t it?  You can look into your joint family histories, or favorite books or mythologies, until you find a name you both like and both change your surname (we have several friends who’ve done this; again, the “wider administrative world” has not imploded).  Many options are consistent with a feminist world view. Taking his name isn’t one of them.    [8]

BTW and FYI, re that pesky administrative world:   do you realize that if you take hubby’s name you’ll have to change or append your driver’s license, passport, bank account information, medical records, credit cards, your country’s version of a social security card, and…?

Robyn Parnell, Hillsboro, OR
( excerpt, 12-19-08 Letter to the Editor, Brain,Child magazine )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Observation

Re the letter to Carolyn Hax: the person who objects to a hyphenated or “kept” surname usually wraps their disapproval and/or digging-in-for-the-sake-of-digging-in with the excuse of concern for the future confusion of all of those anonymous, administrative hasslin’, judgmental, *other* people.  Cue the pearl-clutching, “But, what about the children??!?!?!?” …

 

 

…which thinly masquerades as a criticism of your choice to keep…your own fucking name.

If you are married or single, no matter what you did or did not or will or will not choose if you marry, let us all take a meditative millisecond to consider the breathtaking absurdity of why this should even be an issue: keeping Your. Own. Name.

 

 

When this pearl-clutching comes from the wimmenfolk in the family, it is often, IMO, because they take your decision to keep your birth name as an implied criticism of *their* decision to take their husband’s family name…as if they even had a true/no pressure option to choose, back in my MIL’s day.  Or even today, when the patriarchal norms of ownership and possession, of who “counts” in a relationship and whose relationship/family this really is, still linger like the festering odor from that July 4 BBQ when your Uncle Anuss used rancid bacon grease to fry the catfish.

 

 

One of Carolyn Hax’s readers pointed out

Re: Hyphen: I am feeling like this is just a matter of U.S. society getting used to the idea. The Brits have had names like Harumpher Stinkly-Blowhardington for centuries, and they seem to have it figured out.

I read that comment and thought, DANG, I missed the boat!  After all these years….I could’ve told MH’s family I was British and intended to honor my roots by reverting to my original family surname, Petardhoister-Snotsbury-Flapjackington. 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Welcome Mindfulness, Lovingkindness, And Compassion,
But Leave Them At The Door, Along With Your Shoes

At my recent  post-op appointment   [9]   I obtained my doctor’ ok to do some gentle yoga.  But, until my next appointment/assessment of my foot’s healing, any exercise I do – including just walking around in my own home – cannot be barefooted.

Barefoot is the norm for most yoga studios, although I’ve seen yogis wearing socks (and even what looked like ballet slippers) in the classroom during class.  Last week moiself  emailed the owner of the yoga studio where I (up until eight weeks ago) attended classes, re my intent to return to class.  I explained my limitation and asked whether my wearing light-but-supportive shoes (not street shoes) in the classroom was kosher.

I didn’t hear back from him for several days.  I’ve been a studio member since 2017; his replies to emails have always been prompt; thus, I assumed things were copacetic and signed up for the Wednesday evening class.  He got back to me Monday.  His response, after congratulating me on my healing:

“This question has come up before and we have to be consistent. There aren’t any types of shoes allowed in the classroom. Shoes and cell phones in the classroom is what we hear the most about. One time a student didn’t take their shoes off to put their mat down in the classroom. It bothered someone so much, the student followed the other student down the hallway after class to express their feelings.”

 

 

I replied that I understand, and hope to be back in class after my next month’s post-op appointment.  But… Holy Obsessively Mindful Stalker.

What I understand is that the studio has a no-shoes-in-class policy.  What I do not understand is a no-exceptions policy which cannot be modified when a student has exceptional circumstances.  What I cannot understand – what I cannot wrap my blissful brain around – is that a yoga student followed another student down the hallway after class to “express their feelings” about such a trivial matter…a matter which, if it truly was a problem (to anyone other than that one anal-retentive complaining student), should have been handled by the class’s teacher.  [10]

 


There are several reasons why yoga is traditionally practiced in bare feet, including

* to help yogis feel stability, develop balance, and feel connection with the ground/the mat under your feet;

* to keep the practice room clean (shoes track in dirt/although you can change from your street shoes to indoor only/studio shoes, like what dancers do)

* historical and cultural considerations:  in some cultures and traitions it’s considered disrespectful to walk indoors with your shoes on.  Leaving one’s street shoes at the door is a sign of respect, and in yoga it also becomes part of a pre-class ritual, as you step onto your mat and prepare for a shift in attitude and perspective.

 

But I’ve seen/heard of other accommodations for yogis with permanent or temporary physical limitations and disabilities.  [11]   Also, yoga teachers and studios and magazines have been fighting an uphill battle to counter the idea that yoga is for young, super-fit and flexible people who wear size 2 leotards and look like Yoga Journal®  cover models.  The yoga world emphasizes that “Yoga is for Every Body“ (space intentional, get it?), but apparently,  everybody does not include a body requiring a physical support that, the mere sight of it makes a busybody yogi lose her mindful shit and stalk you down a hallway….  [12]

 

Guess it’s back to Irish Yoga for me.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [13]

“We don’t want a piece of the pie – it’s still a patriarchal pie.
We want to change the recipe.”
( bell hooks 1952 – 2021, American author, educator, feminist, activist )

 

 

*   *   *

May you hyphenate as many names as possible;
May you reap the benefits of yoga without acquiring a stalker;
May you find a clever (and tasty) way to change the pie’s recipe;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Ditto to the nth for my name.

[2] Knowing moiself, they expected no less. The only feedback I got was positive, specifically from my father, who confessed to me that he wished my younger sister had also kept her surname (my older sister…there was no question she’d take her husband’s name..to do otherswise would not have been an option in that relationship).

[3] Hey, I would have been happy for MH to take my surname (how’s that for commonality?), but I never asked and he never offered.  We both liked our respective names. 

[4] You can always weasel out with, “that’s not what I meant,” but it’s evident, that’s what you wrote.

[5] Yep, she had no idea what she was getting into.

[6] Which, as per the magazine’s circulation, probably got more readership than any of my published stories.

[7] As is my custom in this blog, my offspring’s first and last names are redacted, as I cling to the outdated notion that there can still be a modicum of privacy remaining in this world.

[8] Now, those last two statements…I’m not the Feminist Police (there was an election, and I lost the position by five votes). Some of my favorite, righteous right-on feminist friends have taken their husbands’ surnames.  The reasons and reasonings can be complicated, and not everyone is attached to their name of birth.

[9] I had foot surgery eight weeks ago, addressed here.

[10] Whatever happened to the yoga mantra of keeping your eyes on your own mat?

[11] Including chairs in class for elderly yogis who have balance and stamina issues.  Also, I have a couple of friends who could not do yoga, or any exercise, barefooted, due to neuropathy and other painful foot conditions.  They bring their own supportive/orthopedic house shoes when they go to other people’s homes where removing shoes is the custom and expectation.

[12]  Following someone down the hallway after a YOGA class to “express their feelings.” It both cracks me up and frosts my butt.  Once again, I may be a fiction writer, but I can’t make up this shit.

[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

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