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The Resume I’m Not Updating

January 9, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Isms (religion), politics, school, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Resume I’m Not Updating

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]  One last week for this, and then the holiday is officially over (in our front yard, at least).

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Buh-Bye, Betty

 

Happy BLD (Boot Liberation Day) to moiself!

 

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of No Chairs Were Flung Harmed By The Making Of This Rant

 

 

When moiself  has heard the “But, not all men…” line – spoken when someone attempts to derail the subject when I have been pointing out misogynist behavior and culture – I have somehow managed not give into my gut reaction, which is to fling a chair at the face of the  “But, not all men…” (corollary, “But I’m a good Guy® … )”, spewer.  [2]

Now I have another option.  I can refer the misguided defenders of Good Men® to this explains-it-all essay by the astute Dawn Villines.  Read it all after you enjoy this excerpt.

 

 

“Good men care about oppression. They care about the lived experiences of women. They understand that, without listening to women, they cannot learn what women experience. They believe women. When women share their experiences and your responses is, ‘But not all men!’ you undermine those experiences. You show no concern for oppression. You are not behaving as a good guy.

Imagine a friend was sharing with you that they had cancer. You wouldn’t jump in and proclaim that not all people have cancer, now, would you?

There’s also the now-infamous thought exercise of not all snakes. Imagine being put into a box with snakes. Only a few are venomous. ‘It’s not all snakes! What are you so worried about?!’

This is what life is like as a woman. It is irrelevant that there are some nice guys out there. It’s irrelevant even in a world where most guys are decent, because so many guys are not decent. So we have to act as if all men are a danger, because we know also that when men victimize us, society won’t believe us—and that random people will pop into the discussion to tell us that our suffering doesn’t matter because it’s not all men.”

( excerpt, Hello You’ve Reached Not All Men hotline, by Dawn Villines, )

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of An Appropriate Container

Christian theology in a nutshell:

A Short History of God   [3]

  1. Creates Adam and Eve
  2. Creates Evil
  3. Populates the world through incest
  4. Surprised that the evil exists
  5. Clueless about how to deal with evil
  6. Drowns the entire planet, saving one small family of very skilled ship builders
  7. Populates the world through incest…again
  8. Surprised the evil exists…again
  9. Sends diseases, starvation, plagues, tsunamis, etc.
  10. Still bewildered by the existence of evil
  11. Blames the devil…that he created
  12. Rapes a girl so she’ll give birth to himself as his own son so that we can torture and kill him/his son so that he can forgive us for being so evil
  13. Says “just joking” three days later and brings his son back to life
  14. Claims omniscience and omnipotence
  15. Expects to be worshipped for his wisdom

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January, last year. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  It turned out that moiself  liked this enough that it was a regular blog feature for 2025.  Will it continue throughout 2026?  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?!?!?!  [4]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [5]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  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 January, to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here’s an excerpt from my January 8, 2016 blog (The Dr. Seuss Book I’m Not Reading).  I spun the wheel, picked a January ten years ago…and now I’m reminded of why I write this blog.  I’d forgotten this poignant memory, which wiped me out for the rest of the day, after I reread it:

My Mother’s Resumé

Last week my older sister forwarded a text she’d received from CG, one of our mother’s caregivers. The subject was, “Mom wants to pitch in.”

(It was a ) Good day here. Your mom was making her resumé for a while in her office. She feels that she should be working. I didn’t want to dampen her hopes but we talked about being a volunteer which of course would be too much….

I got a kick out of it…for a moment. The image of my mother making her resumé – is cute, funny, sweet – make that, bittersweet. And now a part of me wants to know: did mom follow through, and what would be on it if she did? What would this 87-year-old woman (who is not always cognizant of her own age   [6]  ) list on her resumé?

 

 

My mother was the youngest of four daughters – her parents’ midlife, “oops” baby.    [7]

Like most women of her generation, my mother had little hope for independence as an adult and was, essentially, sentenced to life with her parents until/unless she married.

She moved with her mother and father to Santa Ana (CA) after her father retired from his job in Cass Lake (MN), an event which coincided with Mom’s high school graduation.

Mom enrolled in the local community college, got an A.A. degree, and managed to land a job with the Post Office.

I gathered from the stories she told me over the years that she loved her job. Although she still lived with her parents,   [8]  she was thrilled by the promise of even a modicum of independence that arose from earning her own money – she was saving up to buy her very own car; she really liked the styling on the Chevy Bel Aire! – even as she was less than thrilled (read: downright resentful) to be privy to the status and higher salaries of her fellow Post Office employees, all older than her and male, whom she described as slack-off, ineffectual, Civil-Service-for-life “geezers” whose jobs she felt she could do so much better (and sometimes did, but without credit) but would never be hired for or promoted to.

And then she got married.

She transferred her savings into the account of he-who-would-be-my-father, and their joint monies went for the deposit for their apartment, and a couple of years later, after my older sister was born, the down payment for their first house.

Oh, and she had to quit her one and only “real” job after she got married.

 

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds…but married women give ’em the willies.

 

What do you mean, you had to quit your job when you got married? Why?

No matter how many times I asked that question   [9]  I never received a satisfactory answer. This was because

(a) there can be no satisfactory answer to a rational question about an absurd situation;
(b) my mother, hardly the bastion of feminist consciousness and one of the least
introspective and politically conscious persons I’ve ever known,
didn’t understand the why herself.

When I’d press her, she’d say that she didn’t know if it was codified Post Office policy, but it was common knowledge that only single women were hired for such clerical work.  Her supervisor informed her, when she told him she was engaged, that she could remain at her position “until that time,” but that she’d have to quit her job when she got married.

 

It’s been 60 –  sixty!? – years since my mother had worked for pay. She worked nonetheless and of course for all those years, in a job of total dependency – a job which wasn’t even called a job, and for which there was little-to-no recognition outside that from the family which “employed” her.  She played by the rules; she heeded the porous platitudes from the male-worshipping culture which spawned, formed, defined and limited her: 

We won’t let you be a scientist   [10]   but you will have
the-most-important-job-in-the-world-as-wife-and-mother!

That same ManSociety neglected to mention that, lofty rhetoric aside, it placed little value in that “most important” of jobs, which by the way and don’t you worry your pretty little head about this  will leave you completely financially dependent upon your husband and without translatable, marketable experience and skills.

 


And now, ’tis 2016.  Seemingly apropos of nothing, a sweet, memory-addled, elderly widow-woman wants to update her resumé.  If she were physically and mentally able to seek employment, what would she be qualified to do?   [11]  

I won’t ask, in my next phone call with her, how her resumé is shaping up.  It would only confuse and upset her; she’ll have no memory that she mentioned her project to CG.  She will have forgotten; I can’t.  It’s gnawing at me, in a wistful way that makes me think about the last book Dr. Seuss never wrote: Oh, the Places You Could Have Gone.

I’d like to think that, if only for a moment, when my mother was thinking about writing her resumé she was reaching for the proverbial stars, and genuinely if only fleetingly thought she had a chance at applying for something important and exciting.  Astronaut camp counselor?  Postmaster general?  Chevrolet design engineer?  Hell’s bells, what good is a stalling memory if you can’t jump start it and take a joy ride every now and then?

 

1954 Chevrolet BelAire

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

*   *   *

May you never need a referral to the  Not All Men hotline;
May you reach for the proverbial stars when updating your life’s resumé;
May we all go bowling instead
( and ride to the bowling alley in 1954 Chevrolet BelAire! );
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] Lest you think me superior in my self-control, fact is there are rarely fling-worthy chairs in my vicinity.

[3] Would love to give attribution…but can’t find it.

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

[5] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[6] My mother suffers from a variety of age-related ailments, including memory impairments.

[7] And the fact that she knows the history of her “embarrassing” birth – that she was told by her parents that her “arrival” was an embarrassment to them – explains a lot, IMHO, about many aspects of her personality.

[8] Apartment complexes/landlords would not rent units to unmarried women.

[9] I stopped asking around the time when I was in high school, when, thanks to the Second Wave of Feminism, I “got it.”

[10] My mother’s high school physics teacher announced on the first day of class that he would not teach science to female students and fhe wanted them to leave the classroom. My mother’s mother intervened with the principal, and the teacher begrudgingly let the girls stay in his classroom but continued to slight them (including my mother, who would go on to be her class valedictorian). He never looked at them during his lectures and ignored their raised hands when he asked for questions…with one exception. He agreed to teach my mother’s best friend, Dorothy, because “It is obvious Dorothy will never marry,” and thus she’d need to be educated to support herself (Dorothy had been facially disfigured at birth by the inept, forceps-wielding doctor who delivered her).  This story was first told to me when I was taking physics in high school. I’d commented on something we’d learned in class, and my mother told me she’d never found physics very interesting. Imagine that.

[11] Please don’t say, Walmart greeter. Gawdammit, I heard ya.

[12] “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 Professional Title I’m Not Respecting

November 28, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Professional Title I’m Not Respecting

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

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Random Realizations That I Can’t Blame On The Post-Foot Surgery
Narcotics Since I’m Not Taking Them Anymore, But I’m Much Housebound,
And These Thoughts…Arise

I know – or, since I’m telling y’all, should that be, You Oughta Know – that, had moiself  been a freshman in college in 1995, my dormmates would have heard a lot of Alanis Morrisette blasting from my room.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Random Thoughts/Observation/Realizations That
I Can’t Blame On….  Chapter Two.

I was reading a newspaper article which contained an interview with a clergyman (who was quoted as some sort of expert on some sort of religious subject).  The clergyman’s title was given as, “The Very Rev. Nutsack.”       [2]

*Very* Reverend?  Since my stitches are in my foot, my ensuing belly laugh didn’t threaten to rip them out.

Excuze-moi; I know that Reverend is a professional title conferred upon someone who has ordered and paid for their degree certificate via the classified ads section of the Billy Graham Association’s  Decision magazine and/or The National Enquirer studied/met the requirements of certain theological institutions.  Still, I’ve little respect for anyone who has obtained the title (and sees fit to use it), Reverend.

What is a degree in theology, other than a degree in mythology and apologetics?  Theology is a field of “study” which, instead of employing the verifiable modalities of the sciences, is based on unproven, unverifiable assumptions (e.g. faith, and the existence of specific deities).

And how does one get the Very prefixed to one’s title?  Is there a contest, like Jeopardy or American Ninja Warriors, to determine the most Very of Reverends?

 

That’s *very* Reverend, to you!

*   *   *

Department Of More Notes From Recovery

Dateline: Monday; 6 am-ish.  After working from home last week, MH is going back to his non-virtual office.  I know he’s a bit concerned re how moiself  will manage on my own ( translation: Will she try to do too much and overdo it/hurt her foot?   [3]   )

Meanwhile, in our small, pocket-doored, downstairs half-bathroom, I’m feeling proud of moiself  as I begin the morning routine I’ve established:

* Step 1: Move from sleeping spot (family room couch) to bathroom. Crutches resting against the wall, kneeling on the padded-with-a-folded-towel  footstool in front of the sink, I remove my nightshirt, hang it on the koi painting, and wash my face and neck.

 

 

* Step 2: Balancing on my right foot, I wet two of the three clean hand towels (which I’d set out the night before, by the sink) with warm water.

* Step 3: I put the toilet seat lid down; place a dry folded towel atop the lid, sit on the lid and use first wet hand towel to sponge bathe my back, torso, arms, right leg and foot, and as much of the left leg as I can reach (the boot goes from toes to just below the knee).  I use the second towel to sponge bathe my groin and towel #3 to dry off, then slather my skin with lotion.

* Step 4: I don my underpants, carefully, over the booted leg first and then the right leg; I follow the same procedure with my flared capri yoga pants (chosen for their relative ease in slipping over my booted foot).  As I pull on my bra and shirt, I’m feeling rather smug about being able to craft and maintain this routine given my temporary limitations and in a usable space of 32 x 36 inches…until I realize that moiself  has put her bra on backwards.  [4]

Okay, back down to earth, Supercrip, Ms. Smartypants/Dumbassbra.  I appreciate my momentary humility before recalling one of my favorite quotes, from former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meyer:

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Latest Publishing Scam Marketing Opportunity

“As creative artists, we not only have to worry about our work being stolen… now we need to anticipate being assaulted with AI-generated scams, marketing pitches, publication offers….  This is an incredibly prolific scam that is aggressively targeting writers… It has spun up extremely fast.”
(author Victoria Strauss, whose Writer Beware website provides information and warnings on writing related scams.  Excerpt From her Wikipedia page  )

Like many writers, marketing publishing strategies (read: scams) have occasionally infested my email inbox.  But there is something more disturbing, even malevolent – yet also dystopian-ly entertaining, IMO – about these new ones.

The emails are similarly formatted.  They open by complementing me on my writing and listing several of my publication titles, indicating at least a cursory knowledge of my work.   [5]   The various setups all employ similar complements in their intro, then give the pitch for hiring them to “maximize your ___(blah blah blah consultant speech ).”

Nowhere is there a mention of their fees – surprise!  But since fewer publishers (even the legit, traditional publishers) are doing the actual work of publishing, this is a con that I can see novice/wannabe authors falling for.  World-weary sigh: one more way to separate authors from increasing dwindling royalties while, of course, proposing to maximize those royalties.  To adapt an infamous, curmudgeonly maxim, it is an unfortunate truism that no one ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of writers.   [6]

The most recent MSE (marketing scam email) I received purported to be from someone with a new (to me) title: a Professional Amazon Marketer Therapist.   

 

Tell me about zis marketing content platform, and about your dreams of trains going through tunnels and how your parents ruined your life….

 

Dear Robyn Parnell,
Congratulations on your outstanding literary career and creative versatility. Your works, from The Mighty Quinn ( Scarletta Press  [7] ) to This Here and Now and My Closet Threw a Party, reflect a rare blend of wit, heart, and depth that connects with both adult and young audiences alike. Your clever humor, inventive storytelling, and wide range of published pieces across anthologies and journals showcase a voice that is both distinctive and resonant.   [8]

As a member of the Authors Guild and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), with a bibliography spanning multiple genres and age groups, your dedication to the craft is unmistakable. However, even the most talented and prolific authors often face challenges in ensuring that their books gain the global reach and visibility they *deserve* on Amazon….

This is where I come in.  My name is (redacted), a Professional Amazon Marketer Therapist with years of ___ (Six bullet points of blah blah sales BS blah blah  ensue ).

Through this structured and proven process, I’ve helped authors regain traction, achieve top-category rankings, and sustain lasting success in competitive markets. Your creative achievements and literary voice *deserve* that same global recognition and reach….
Amazon Professional Marketer Therapist.
( excerpt from email; *emphases* mine )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Marketing Therapy, The Prequel

The first such email moiself  received (several months ago) began thusly:

“Hi Robyn,
First, let me say how much I admire your work. From your short fiction collection This Here and Now to your children’s book My Closet Threw a Party, you display a rare combination of humor, imagination, and literary skill. Your writing captures both the whimsy and the profound, creating stories that resonate with adult and young readers alike. Your playful yet insightful approach to storytelling makes your work memorable, engaging, and timeless….”

It was, almost word for word, a preview of the other emails I would be receiving, from “people” I don’t know/have never met who greet me by my first name and proceed with the kind of flattery a younger and/or less experienced writer might be impressed by ( “Wow, they really know and like my work!” ).

 

 

Swept up in the Sally Field-esque moment, you might neglect to notice that the complementary adjectives and descriptions of your work are either AI-generated and/or taken from reviews about your book ( if you were lucky enough to get any   [9]   ) or your book jacket’s description and promos provided by your book’s publisher.    [10]

Then, there’s one more booster before getting down to business:

“Your versatility as a writer navigating adult fiction, juvenile novels, and children’s literature positions you to connect with multiple audiences. With a targeted marketing strategy, we can expand your readership, amplify your visibility, and drive meaningful engagement across the literary community.
As a book marketing consultant, I specialize in helping authors like you….”

Marketing hype ensues.

There are slight changes in the wording – excuse me, the content   [11]  – but once you’ve read one of them, the template is easily recognizable.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Points Worth Remembering About Charlie Kirk
( excerpts from The Guardian  article:“Charlie Kirk in his own words.” )

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
( The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024 )

“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”
( The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023 )

“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?”
( The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024 )

“Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”
( Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement,
 on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025 )

“America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.”
( The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025 )

“The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.”
( The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024 )

“The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
( The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024 )

“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
( Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025 )

 

 

The following quotes are curated in the 11/25  Freethought Today  (my emphases).

 “Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated. But I am overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff, calling this nation to honor…a man who was an unapologetic racist, and spent all of his life to sew seeds of division and hate into this land…. How you die does not redeem how you lived.”
( Rev. Howard–John Wesley, of Alexandria, Virginia, in a sermon in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, Associated Press 9-24-25 )

“What Cardinal Dolan may not have known is that many of Mr. Kirk’s words were marked by racist, homophobic, trans, phobic, and anti-immigration rhetoric, by violent, pro-gun advocacy, and by the promotion of Christian nationalism. These prejudicial words do not reflect the qualities of a saint. It is giving undo sanction to words and actions that hurt the very people Jesus calls us to love.”
( The Sisters of Charity of New York, rebuffing comments made about Charlie Kirk by Cardinal Dolan, who said, “this guy is a modern day Saint Paul” and a “hero.”
Religion News Service, 9–28–25 )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Publishing Scams Ain’t Got Nothing On
The Oldest Scam In The World…Which Brings Us To

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

It’s an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now
in exchange for life after death. Even corporations
with all their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous.
( Gloria Steinem )

 

 

*   *   *

May you know how special you are without
scammers telling you how special you are;
May you fall for neither the newest nor oldest scam;
May you live in a way so that no one tries to redeem your
legacy via the manner of your death;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] Not the Reverend’s real surname.

[3] Turns out I did, overdo it that is, and hurt something else, BUT  NOT  MY  FOOT.

[4] Note for men and or non-brassiere wearers, who might wonder how this can be possible: The bra in question is a pullover style, not one with the hook and eye backstrap thingamajiggy.  And now you know.

[5] that any 10-year-old with the knowledge of search engines could do.

[6] “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” – variants attributed to showman PT Barnum and Baltimore journalist H.L. Mencken.

[7] Well, they got that only partly right – Scarletta Press changed its name to Mighty Media Press.

[8] Another such email used its AI thesaurus to describe my work as both unique and vibrant….

[9] The majority of published books never receive even one professional review.  These stats have only worsened since the Authors Guild Bulletin noted in 2008: “from Publisher’s Weekly: ‘Three thousand books are published daily (1,095,000 per year) in the U.S.  Six thousand were reviewed in 2007,  less than one percent of the total published. ‘ “

[10] or your parents and friends, if your book was self-published ( rim shot! )

[11] as I have learned, all writers now are “content providers“ who should be concerned with, as much or not more than the quality of their work, establishing and maintaining their “platform.“

[12] “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 Friday Letter Limerick I’m Not Sending

November 21, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, Oregon, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Friday Letter Limerick I’m Not Sending

…that’s because I sent it last week.

Background: every Friday moiself  sends a letters to each of my two offspring.  [1]  I begin their letters with either a haiku or a limerick, the subject matter having (loosely) to do with the past week’s news, personal or otherwise.  One week ago today, their respective letters began thusly:

A Limerick For Finally Fixing This Fucking Foot
If under oath, I’d commit perjury
If I said that I don’t dread foot surgery.
Except for childbirth
I’ve a hospital dearth…
Just a wee medical dramaturgery.    [2]

As far as I can tell,   [3]  the surgery went well.  I’ll know more after the first post-op appointment, which will have been yesterday.  This post is being written earlier in the week; I’m using my recovery time to somewhat crib the blog  – as in using the words of other and moiself  so as not to tax my painkiller-addled brain with too much new material.

Crib #1: Here is a version of what my gradually-becoming-less-addled brain reported on Tuesday to a California buddy:

I am now on my fourth day post bunion surgery, which was Friday afternoon. Unlike me, Betty (my post-surgery boot) is photogenic and not at all camera-shy. Here she is taking a respite from our morning project: helping me hobble (crutches) to the kitchen where I do five minutes of prep work, then return to the couch and watch an episode of “New Scandinavian Cooking.”  It’s good rehab viewing.  I figure if those Norwegians can make wild berry pancakes on a snow-covered mountain promontory, then I can take six hours to make a 30-minute casserole in my indoor kitchen.

 

 

I’m off the narcotics today…. Extra strength Tylenol (no autism symptoms to report, yee haw!)  and constant foot elevation are my friends. I’ve discovered that even the non-narcotic pain relievers make me quite tired, or perhaps that’s an effect of the surgery as well, and so I spent a lot of the day looping in and out, mentally.

I’m looking forward to the first postop exam on Thursday: the great unveiling. The doctor is going to unwrap the dressing, inspect his handiwork, then change the dressing… hopefully without passing out from the smell (I must keep the dressing dry and thus am unable to wash the lower leg and foot, although I’m going to have a sponge bath this afternoon – which I’m sure you’ll read about on your favorite social media outlet).  At least I’ll get a glimpse of my toes, which I haven’t seen since before the surgery.

The main issue for me, besides boredom, is the enforced lack of daily exercise until I get the all clear from my surgeon, who has already warned me,  “Now don’t do anything stupid.”  I am trying to be all chill and mindful, just enjoying what comes up on the screen. MH and I are already almost done with, The Good Wife,   [4]   yet another critically acclaimed series that we never watched. I can see why it was acclaimed; also, I like shows that reinforce my decision to *not* go to law school.

I hope things are well and dry in your part of California, which, if I believe the headlines, is washing into the ocean due to heavy rainfall.  We in the Portland metro area remain steadfast in our determination not to let anything rain on our parade, which nowadays includes dressing up in various unicorn, frog, and dinosaur outfits and parading around the Portland ICE center. Life is good.

 

 

*   *   *

Crib #2: Department Of Filling Space With A Right-On Article
About Getting Rid Of Your Crap Precious Stuff

This writer of this article – book summary, really, about Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die – was spot on…I found moiself  wanting to underline everything, and I haven’t even read the book.  But this summary nails the experience my siblings and I had, nine years ago, when our mother died and we returned to So Cal to go through the lifetime of STUFF she (and our father) had accumulated…it now gives me PTSD symptoms when I am around clutter and hoarding.

(these are excerpts from the article I refer to,  Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die,  which I saw on a FB link 11-12-25 ).

The author’s premise is simple and devastating: you think your collections – whether they are perfectly organized and carefully curated or just jammed into rooms and boxes – will matter to someone after you’re gone. They won’t.

This isn’t another gentle guide to organizing your home or finding joy in your possessions. This is a wake-up call about what happens to all your stuff after you die, narrated by someone who clearly has zero patience for sentimental attachment to junk.

 

 

(the book’s author) isn’t being cruel. She’s being honest about what she’s watched happen countless times—families forced to deal with a lifetime of accumulated possessions, feeling guilty with every item they throw away or donate, wishing their loved one had handled this themselves.

1. Your Treasures Are Someone Else’s Burden
(the author) gets brutally specific about this: those family heirlooms you’ve been preserving?  The collections you’ve spent decades building? The perfectly good stuff you’re saving “in case someone needs it”? Nobody wants it badly enough to come get it. What feels like leaving an inheritance is actually leaving a massive chore for people who are already grieving.

2. “Someday” Is Code for Never
All those items you’re keeping for  someday—when you lose weight, when you have time for that hobby, when you get around to fixing it—that someday isn’t coming…. Keeping things for someday is just refusing to admit that this day, right now, is the only one you actually have.

3. Downsizing Now Is a Gift to Everyone, Including You
Getting rid of excess isn’t losing something. It’s gaining space, time, and clarity.

4. Sentimental Value Doesn’t Transfer
This might be the hardest truth: just because something means everything to you doesn’t mean it will mean *anything* to anyone else….
Do not expect others to preserve your memories for you.

5. Decluttering Before You Die Is Your Last Act of Consideration
The book’s ultimate message: dealing with your stuff while you’re alive is one of the most loving things you can do for the people you’ll leave behind. They’ll be grieving. The last thing they need is weeks of sorting through your garage, your attic, your closets….
Leave them with memories, not mountains of stuff.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Having Empathetic Support At Home Is The Key To
Successful Post-Surgical Recovery

MH pimped enhanced my temporary accommodations.

 

How long have I been stuck on this couch/behind this TV tray?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

People of all faiths need to remember these Four Great Religious Truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God’s chosen people.
2. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian world.
4. Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters or the liquor store.

( attributed to WHOA   [6] )

 

*   *   *

May you declutter now, and regularly;
May you never burden others with the expectation that they will
preserve your memories for you;
May someone pimp your surgical recovery space;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The snail mail/in an envelope kind of correspondence.

[2] Yeah, poetic license, re me being a writer who used to work in the medical field.  I’m not sure that dramaturgery is a word, but if I were to advise a playwright on my experiences in either writing or, say, working at Planned Parenthood, I’d be practicing being a dramaturge…so, there.

[3] Translation: from what the doctor told me.

[4] “network television’s last great drama.”

[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.

[6] We Happy Observant Atheists

The Sandwich I’m Not Eating

November 7, 2025

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, radio & podcasts, school , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Sandwich I’m Not Eating

Department Of Sober Memories

Dateline:  Monday, November 3; 5 a.m.-ish; playing my morning wakeup/online games, one of which informs me    [1] that it is National Sandwich Day.

Which assumes the question, What’s your favorite sandwich?

Sandwiches formed the bulk of my daily lunch items during my (pre-college) school years; however, moiself  isn’t much of a sandwich eater these days.  Thus, no name of a favorite sandwich pops into my mind.  But I do have a favorite sandwich story.

 

 

Dateline:  High school; my senior year, if memory serves.   [2]   Moiself  is driving my friend MB and I back from the Long Beach Arena, where we ‘ve seen Led Zeppelin in concert.  We arrive at her house, realize that we are both famished, and head for her kitchen.  MB rustles up a loaf of bread, two plates, and various utensils while I empty the contents of her refrigerator onto her kitchen table.  We proceed to construct sandwiches of…yeah…of things I would never consume in combination today. I cannot recall every ingredient we used, but the point was that we used almost every available ingredient.  What sticks in my mind is three kinds of mustard, mayo, pickle relish, cottage cheese, raisins, peanut butter, olives, marmalade, some kind of roasted or peppers…..  We called our creations – which we consumed with I-can’t-believe-we’re-eating-this?!?!?  gusto – Led Zeppelin sandwiches.

 

And if any of these items had been available that evening
we would have put them between two slices of bread.

 

Moiself  has never been a toker, not even in my younger days (nor, to my knowledge, was MB).  So, although I was not a conscious (as in intentional) imbiber, unlike Bill Clinton I  did  inhale.  It was either that or suffocate at most of the rock concerts of that era.  And the “air” at Zeppelin concerts set the EPA record    [3]  for particulate matter (read: wafting weed fumes).

I can’t believe   [4]  that it took moiself  *years* [5]  to realize that the only logical explanation for post-Zeppelin concert sandwiches MB and I made and scarfed down with the last-meal desperation of death row prisoners was that we must have gotten a contact case of the munchies.

 

This was pretty much the scene at the Long beach Arena balcony seats.  [6]

 

I can’t remember having been that hungry since the time I gave our cat Nova an enthusiastic, several minutes long head rub, forgetting that MH had previously applied a transdermal appetite stimulant gel to her ear.   [7]   Apparently, the medication works on all mammals – or at least cats *and* humans – as I discovered during the ensuing 24 hours when I emptied our kitchen cupboards and tried to eat everything in the house.

 

Yeah, blame the old sick kitty.

*   *   *

Department Of Name Your 15 Minutes – Shame, Or Fame?

Last week, due to several current events prompts, moiself  relistened to Monica Lewinski’s TED talk.     The Price of Shame  is one of the best TED talks, or public service presentations of any kind, I’ve ever heard.  If you haven’t listened to it and/or you think you know what you think about Lewinsky, listen to her recount her unique situation (read: ordeal) of being one of the first cases of the internet being used as a forum for public shaming and cyber-bullying.

 

 

I relistened to her talk after reading about a recent public incident which brought to mind Andy Warhol’s   [8]   famous proclamation, that in the future “…everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

Moiself  thinks that not only are we’re heading for (if not already occupying) Warhol’s prediction, our present is morphing into a future where “…everyone will be shamed for 15 minutes.”  The particular example I’m thinking of is the already infamous Milwaukee Brewers Karen  incident at a baseball playoff game last month:

“A Milwaukee Brewers ‘Karen’ who went viral after threatening to call ICE on a rival Los Angeles Dodgers fan has reportedly been fired from her job.

The spectator, named online as Shannon Kobylarczyk, was seen in a racist rant towards Ricardo Fosado – a US citizen and war veteran – in footage that has been viewed more than a million times on X.

During Dodgers’ 5-1 win in the MLB playoffs…Fosado can initially be heard saying to the home fans around him in the stands: ‘Why’s everybody so quiet? What is this?’

His remark appeared to clearly irk the ‘Brewers Karen’, who fired back with a jibe about Donald Trump‘s immigration agents, saying: ‘Let’s call ICE.’

Fosado replied: ‘Call ICE! Call ICE! I’m a US citizen, war veteran baby girl. Two wars. ICE cannot do anything to me.’ At one stage of the video she seemingly tried to slap Fosado’s phone out of his hand while also calling him a ‘p***y’….

it took less than 24 hours for the woman in question to be fired by her employers….”

 ( excerpt, “Milwaukee Brewers ‘Karen’ fired from job after disgraceful racist rant towards war veteran at Dodgers game,”  Daily Mail, 10-16-25 )

 

 

As repulsed as I was when I read about MB Karen’s  bigoted bluster, I didn’t think she should necessarily lose her job due to her public display of drunken    [9]  asshattery.  And apparently, neither did the target of her racist rave.

“An American citizen of Mexican descent who was on a business trip to Chicago when he decided to attend the game, Fosado said he thinks Kobylarczyk ‘made a mistake….
I feel bad for her…..We cannot be judged on one mistake and a lot of emotions were involved. It was just hurt feelings, nobody physically hurt anybody.’ ”
( excerpt, “MLB Fan Reportedly Loses Job For Terrible Remark During Playoff Game,”
 yahoo sports, 10-16-25 )

Certainly, MB Karen  earned her moment in the Shame Spotlight®.  And she’s going to live with the consequences of her revelatory rant for at least the internet equivalent of 15 minutes (and it will be Google-able for much longer), until the internet shame/lynch mob moves the spotlight to yet another guano-for-brains  loudmouth.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Giving The Annoying Thing Another Chance…

That annoying thing would be a certain part of the podcast Ologies, 95% of which I genuinely enjoy and find informative…but it’s that 5% that frosts my butt.   I’ve whined written about this before: the 5% annoyance involves one of The Reasons The Good Guys Lost The Election ®  issues ( namely,  the Left’s obsession with pronouns and labels, and with critiquing how someone says or asks something vs. focusing on the content of what someone is actually trying to say or ask).

Ologies podcast host Alie Ward, in her intro to each episode, talks about her guest using they/them pronouns.  Okay; fine; whatever floats her (their?) boat…except that she records this intro *after* she’s already done the interview.  And she begins each interview with the annoying-to-moiself  part, where she asks her guests to introduce themselves by stating their names and pronouns.  The majority of the time, when Ward’s guest is female, that guest says she uses she/her pronouns, and if the guest is male, he says he uses he/him pronouns.  Thus, Ward already knows what pronouns her guest prefers.  Yet, when Ward is in post-production for the episode, doing the intro, she refers to her guest using  they/them  pronouns.

 

 

Yep.  She asks her guests to state their preferences, then later ignores their stated preferences, which I find incredibly patronizing and  WTF-ing-point-is-there-in-asking?,  face-palm-worthy.

A recent example of that was in the episode Critical Ponerology (WHAT IS “EVIL”?) with Dr. Kenneth MacKendrick. 

Once I got over the irritation (Ward referred to the he/him -self-identified  Dr. Ken as they), I was intrigued by the episode’s subject.  What a topic for study – what is ‘evil’!?  It is a word – a concept – that is exceedingly difficult to define, and perhapss even trickier to understand the history of the word, and who has been allowed to define it.  And that sent me on a flashback…

 

 

…this once-upon-a-time  was some 30 years ago.  Pre-social media; pre-Twitter, X, Reddit, et al, for a period of about four or five weeks I used to check a certain message board.   [10]   Moiself  had found this message board via a reference from MH about a colleague of his who’d made commentson the board, on a subject MH thought I might find interesting.  After several weeks of checking the board twice a week (I suppose that qualified me as a lurker?), I was moved to make my first (which turned out to be my last) comments on it.

I posted said comments one day when the message board topic focused on what one of the posters termed the “evil” of natural disasters.  This One Particular Poster®  was getting all hot under his metaphorical collar, referring to a recent hurricane which had brought extensive wind and flooding damage to the southeastern seaboard of the USA.  He did this – called the storm, *evil,* – several times, which brought out the Let’s all be clear about our terminology cop in moiself.  I felt moved to offer that I found the use of the word evil, when applied to an explainable phenomenon of the natural world (e.g.,  earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes), problematic, as in, factually incorrect.

 

 

I gave my brief definition of evil as that which involves the motivations and intents of sentient beings.  As devastating as the effects of, say, a tornado can be for humans, tornadoes have neither the agency nor the intent to deliberately and maliciously cause harm.  The hurricane has no ill will toward the coastline residents who live in its path; it simply forms due to the particular physics of wind, ocean temperatures, currents, et al.

Before making the above fairly innocuous (IMO) comments, I had looked up records of other recent storms.  I found several other major hurricanes and typhoons which had formed and then dissipated in open waters, either never making landfall or doing so on the shorelines of deserted islands, thus causing no damage to humans or human structures.  I referenced those storms in my comments, and wondered if OPP would consider those storms *not* evil?

OPP’s response was a hurricane of vitriol, as he blew his hot air into me: “LADY, you don’t think that the hurricane was evil?!?!?!?  Just ask the people whose homes got smashed, whose lives have been destroyed – LADY, *you* think the storm was not evil?  Just ask the people who experienced….”

Yada yada yada.  OPP  kept on with his emphasis of how wrong LADY was.  He had clearly misread or did not understand my point… Which other message board commentators quickly noted on my behalf.

Those others also noted  OPP’s repeated use of the term LADY to address me, as if he were flinging a pejorative.  And BTW, there was nothing my comments nor in my online posting name which would indicate my gender identification…which caused the other message board commentors to speculate if there was more than a wee bit o’ misogyny in OPP’s LADY assumption?

 

 

PP’s switched his LADY  tempest tantrum to my defenders.  Meanwhile, moiself  lost interest in the silliness of it all.  So much for my one foray into the online chatroom world.

One more thing, re the podcast’s subject matter of what is evil.  Whatever you might hold the definition of evil to be, moiself  thinks there are plenty of sufficient synonyms for that which is intentionally malicious and/or harmful.  Evil is a word I’ll use hyperbolically or sarcastically but never seriously, as, IMO, evil, like sin, is one of the conceptual stones around humanities’ neck with which religious thought has burdened us.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“Faith is the process of granting assent without proof, especially to supernatural claims.   Faith is what you use to oppress, to justify, to judge in the name of (your) god – faith is the means to rationalize more evil in this world than anything in history.  If there were a devil, faith would be his greatest invention.”
( attribution…unsure? )

 

*   *   *

May you remember that nothing in the natural world is inherently evil
May you have a favorite sandwich (or sandwich story);
May you never cross paths with anyone (including Jerry Lewis)
who would call you LADY;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I don’t know why…but, why not?

[2] And it does, although sometimes the serve is an ace, and other times it’s a foot fault.

[3] In moiself’s  not-so-scientific estimation.

[4] But I have to, since it’s true.

[5] Really.  Like, two decades.

[6] Actually, it’s a still from the 1938 movie, Reefer Madness.

[7] Nova was experiencing loss of appetite and weight due to kidney disease, and was prescribed an appetite stimulant by her vet. 

[8] Warhol, according to his Wikipedia bio, is “generally considered among the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century.”  Well, certainly he was one of the most self-important, self-proclaimed artists, surpassed by none when it came to promoting himself. 

[9] I’m assuming.

[10] Message board?  Chat room?  I can’t remember what it was called…I think MH alerted me to it, thinking I might find the discussions therein “interesting.”

[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 Contraption I’m Not Underestimating

October 31, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, music, radio & podcasts , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Contraption I’m Not Underestimating

It’s time for The Dropkick Murphys to usher in the holidays.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Can’t Believe I Just Figured This Out

This would be the appeal of the actor Jennifer Coolidge, who sashayed ( Tottered? Shuffled?  Stumbled?   [1]  ) to stardom, or at least notoriety, in supporting roles such as the awkward manicurist Paulette in Legally Blonde.

Watch the Netflix movie Single All The Way ,    [2]   and you’ll get it the attraction.   Coolidge, although female, is the quintessential Drag Queen With A Heart Of Gold ®.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Good Fortune

Last Friday daughter Belle and her coworkers took a company “field trip” to another Washington state cidery.  [3]   Belle wanted to make some treats for the bus ride    [4]   up the Olympic Peninsula and made fortune cookies for the occasion.  She sent me a picture of the fortunes she inserted into the cookies. With her permission, I’ve listed some of my favorites below.

Belle:
“These are the fortunes I’m using; ___ (friend from work) and I brainstormed them together.  We wanted most of them to be vague/ominous, with a few nice ones, too.  And some straight up silly.  Like the winning Powerball numbers from a month ago.”

* You will be evidence in the trial

* Remember the importance of load bearing walls

* You will face a life-or-death decision in February

* You would look great with bangs…if you dare

* You have forgotten something important – tomorrow you must remember

* In three days’ time, you will experience a fish

* You are being deceived

* Profit = revenue – costs

* Sat. Sept 6 Powerball:  11, 23, 44, 61, 62, 17

* Your anxiety is the gift of precognition, trust it

* You will encounter your next cat in a Fred Meyer parking lot

* Luck is coming your way! Remember to share it with rats

* Follow the next crab you see to receive a rare blessing

* Never underestimate contraptions

* Do: experiment with new fonts; Don’t: eye contact with mannequins

* You must atone in a bog for the offenses committed in a fen

* Your fears are well-founded

* The naked man fears no pickpocket

* Amphibians have no scruples, proceed with caution

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Finalist For Best Euphemism Ever

Dateline: October 21; 5:30 am; reading the Carolyn Hax advice column.  The woman writing to CH has a husband, who was raised by a “deeply spiritual” mother who forbade his childhood participation in Halloween activities.  Not only has her husband left those childhood superstitions and beliefs behind, as an adult he *loves* Halloween.  However, as a new parent, and he has had a sudden, panicked change of heart:  he is asking his wife to hide from his mother pictures of their 11-month-old old son dressed up in a lion outfit for Halloween.  This is because he fears it will distress his deeply spiritual mother:  “He says he thinks it will so profoundly upset his mom that she seriously could have a heart attack because she is very afraid of the devil.”   

 

 

Yep, really.  That’s what the LW wrote.

The source for Best Euphemism Ever came from one astute CH commentator, who noted:

“…’deeply spiritual’ is a euphemism for bat guano crazy. “

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Whatever Happened To….?

“…a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations, and the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an ‘anarchic‘, digitized ‘global brain‘ or ‘hivemind‘. Anonymous members (known as anons) can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta….
( excerpts, Wikipedia entry for Anonymous [hacker group] )

 

 

Starting in 2003, The Anonymous collective became known for DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites.  A few of their more (in)famous attacks were on the Syrian Ministry of Defense,  Scientology, the Westboro Baptist Church,  the KKK, and Operation Avenge Assange.  According to a timeline of events attributed to Anonymous, it looks as if they’ve been “silent” since 2024.

Are Anonymous freedom fighters or cyber mob terrorists?  Hmmm, that might depend on your POV.   A loose collective with no top-down organization (or organization of any kind, some say), Anonymous hasn’t been heard from since…well, since the world has *really* needed them, IMO.  There are so many causes to which I wish they would apply their skills – could it be that our democracy will be “saved” by an anarchist collective? – as long as they agree with moiself  re what those causes are.  [5]

 

 

Translation:  I realize that if the genie granted me such a wish, it should come with the caveat that Anonymous might apply their skills to causes I’d disapprove of.

Perhaps a general rise in their areas of expertise (hacking) means Anonymous are now more likely to be caught (and indeed, dozens people around the world have been arrested, prosecuted, and even jailed for their supposed participation in Anonymous activities) than when they first became active on the world stage, and thus…my pipe dream…they are still around but are temporarily keeping a low profile while calculating how to best save the world from the Frito-Faced Fascist.

*   *   *

Department Of Just Wondering
Chapter 103 In A Never-Ending Series

Can I be just…whelmed?  I think it’s an actual word – one with archaic origins, and nobody uses it anymore, although we do employ the modified versions.  As in, I know that at times I have felt overwhelmed or underwhelmed.  But moiself  cannot recall the state of being or experiencing an average amount of whelm.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Ghost Of Halloween Memories Past

The entrance to the now-defunct bar was in an alley between Bryant and Ramona in downtown Palo Alto.  42nd Street was a popular hangout in the 1980s.  It attracted a mostly young, college age/new worker bee crowd, although patrons ranged from big-haired, spandex-clad new wave/metal fans to pretentious grad students from nearby Stanford University to businessmen and tech entrepreneurs and soon-to-be/self-described “creatives,” the latter group fond of snarkily commenting on how the bar was *nothing* like the New York saloons it so earnestly wanted to imitate.

42nd Street did have its distinctive ambience, with an abundance of standing and hanging plants and ferns, dark wood paneling, an overhanging second floor and a system of ceiling fans propelled by pulleys, a small dance floor – at that time it was one of the more unique bars in Palo Alto.   [6]

 

 

Dateline:  Palo Alto CA; October 31, 6 pm-ish; 42nd Street.  Moiself, in full Halloween regalia – dark dress and tights, black clod-hopping boots, green face makeup, bridal veil, hair with a white streak running from forehead to the back of teased hair – is seated in a booth with a colleague who had not worn a costume to work.  We are engaged in an earnest discussion about the virtues of the so-called classic works of American literature,   [7]  including whether or not The Great American Novel®   [8]  was a thing, or just a promotional scam.

I notice that every now and then my work friend taps his pipe against the table’s ashtray  [9]  (that was back when you could still smoke in bars) and stifles a smirk.  The fourth time he performs his pipe-tapping ritual I catch the bemused look in his eyes.

“What?” I ask him.

“It’s just…” he shakes his head, “I’m having a serious discussion about the merits of The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick with The Bride of Frankenstein.”

 

“And your point would be?!?!?!”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

Hannibal Buress is an American comic, writer, producer, actor, musician and businessman.

*   *   *

May you never be the evidence in anyone’s trial;
May you remember the euphemism if anyone calls you, “deeply spiritual;”
May you make someone a sandwich when they’re struggling;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] It wasn’t leapt; she’s been a working actor for years. 

[2] It’s like a (Canadian) Hallmark Christmas movie.  Don’t ask how/why I know this.

[3] Belle is QA manager for Schilling Cider.

[4] Every field trip should have a bus ride, no matter how old you are.

[5] And, most importantly, what the solutions should – and shouldn’t – include.

[6] “Michael Patrick Partners, a nationally recognized design studio, announced today that its two founding partners…are retiring before year’s end…Communication Arts published a story that featured the creative chops of the local advertising, design, illustration and photography tribes of Palo Alto, California, being fueled by the early high-technology startups of Silicon Valley.  Within the story was a photograph of the 40 or so independent creatives at their favorite watering hole, a bar called 42nd Street. ”  (excerpt and picture from “Michael Patrick Partners: Last Men Standing, 43 Years and 500 Awards Later, San Francisco design studio looks back on surviving earthquakes, financial meltdowns, global pandemics and recessions.”   EIN Presswire, Feb 27, 2023 )

[7] We were both fiction writers, both working in “civilian” publishing jobs, both a few years shy of having our respective first books published.

[8] “In 1868, a little-known writer by the name of John William DeForest proposed a new type of literature, a collective artistic project for a nation just emerging from an existential conflict: a work of fiction that accomplished “the task of painting the American soul.” It would be called the Great American Novel, and no one had written it yet, DeForest admitted. Maybe soon.”  (excerpt, “The Great American Novel,” The Atlantic, March 14, 2024 )

[9] Yes, he smoked a pipe – fully admitting that he took it up because (1) it was different, and (2) he thought that it made him somehow seem more “literary.”

[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 Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

October 24, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, politics, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

Department Of Here They Come

Halloween (aka All Hallow’s Eve); Samhain; All Saint’s Day; El Dia de los Muertos; Mischief Night, Diwali…

In the USA and in northern hemisphere countries around the world, there are multiple holidays with a relationship to “our” Halloween.  The relationship is as per the time of year and/or the theme, underlying beliefs, customs or origins of the various celebrations.

Many of these holidays originated as dual celebrations – acknowledgments of times of both death and rebirth – as celebrants marked the end of the harvest season and acknowledged the cold, dark winter to come.

And after Halloween, the holiday season really gets going.

 

 

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Department Of Life Is Tough But It’s Even Tougher If You’re Stupid
Chapter 22467 in a (never-ending) series

“The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity….
Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from?
The most organized attack on Christmas came from the Puritans, who banned celebrations of the holiday in the 17th century because it did not accord with their interpretation of the Bible….”
(“How the ‘War on Christmas’ Controversy Was Created,” NY Times, 12-19-16)

 

 

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Department Of If Something Seems Familiar, That’s Because It’s Time For
My Annual Holiday Traditions Explained ® Post

 What do we vegetarians, vegans, non-meat and/or plant-based eaters
do on Thanksgiving?
( Other than, according to your Aunt Erva, RUIN  IT  FOR  EVERYONE  ELSE.   [1]  )

The above question is an existential dilemma worthy of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, who wrote eloquent discourses on the subjective and objective truths one must juggle when choosing between a cinnamon roll and a chocolate swirl.   [2]

 

 

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Department Of I’ll Take Those Segues Where I Can Find Them

Four weeks from today will be the day-after feasting, for many of us. Then, just when you’re recovering from the last leftover turkey sandwich/quiche/casserole/enchilada-induced salmonella crisis and really, really, need to get outside for some fresh air, here comes the Yule season. You dare not even venture to the mall, lest your eardrums be assaulted from all sides by Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, Feliz Navidad, ad nauseum.

This observation provides a convenient segue to my annual, sincere, family-friendly,  [3]

Heathens Declare War On Christmas © post.

 

 

As to those Henny Penny/Chicken Little hysterics proclaiming a so-called “war” on Christmas, a rational person can only assume that they are not LGBTQ, or Jewish or a member of another minority religion, or an ethnic minority – in other words, they’ve never experienced actual bigotry (or actual combat).  If they had, it’s likely they would not have trivialized discrimination (or war) with their whining.

The usage of   “Happy Holidays” as an “attack on Christianity” is an invention of right-wing radio talk show hosts.   Happy Holidays  is nothing more nor less than an encompassing shorthand greeting – an acknowledgement of the incredible number of celebratory days, religious and otherwise (aka “the holiday season”), which in the U.S. is considered to start in October with Halloween, moving on to November with Thanksgiving (although our Canadian neighbors and friends celebrate their Thanksgiving in October) and extending into and through January, with the various New Year celebrations.

It is worthwhile to note that while many if not most Americans, Christian or not, celebrate Christmas, there are also some Christians who, on their own or as part of their denomination’s practice or decree (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses; The Worldwide Church of God), do *not* celebrate Christmas  [4]   (nor did our much-ballyhooed forebears, the Pilgrims).  Also, the various Orthodox Christian denominations use calendars which differ from most Protestant and Catholic calendars (a biggie for them at this time of the year is the Nativity of Christ, which occurs on or around January 7).

Happy Holidays — it’s plural, and for good reason.  It denotes the many celebrations that happen during these months.  People in the northern hemisphere countries, from North, Central and South Americans and Egyptians to the Celts and Norskis, have marked the Winter Solstice for thousands of years, and many still do.  And some Americans, including our friends, neighbors and co-workers, celebrate holidays that although unconnected with the winter solstice occur near it, such as Ramadan, Diwali, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

 

In 2025 the Chinese (lunar) New Year began on January 29; in 2026 it will begin on February 17 )

 

Most folks are familiar with the “biggies”- Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. But don’t forget the following holidays, many of which my family has learned about (or celebrated with) via our children’s teachers and fellow students, and our neighbors and co-workers.

* The Birth of the Prophet (Nov. 12) and Day of the Covenant (Nov. 26) are both Baha’i holy days  (our family has had Baha’i teachers, childcare providers, and neighbors).

* St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6).

* Bodhi Day.  Our Buddhist friends and neighbors celebrate Bodhi Day on December 8 (or on the Sunday immediately preceding).

* Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12).

* St. Lucia Day (Dec. 13) Our Swedish neighbors and friends celebrate St. Lucia Day, as did one of our daughter Belle’s and son K’s schools, when they were in grade school (Belle, as the oldest 3rd grade girl, got to play St. Lucia).

* Bill of Rights Day (Dec 15).

* Pancha Ganapati Festival (one of the most important Hindu festivals, Dec. 21st through the 25th,  celebrated by many of MH’s coworkers).

* The Winter Solstice (varies, Dec.  21 or 22, this year on the 21st ).

* Little Christmas Eve (Dec.  23) Celebrated by my family, LCE was a custom of the small Norwegian village of my paternal grandfather’s ancestors.

* Boxing Day (Dec. 26), celebrated by our Canadian-American and British-American neighbors and friends.

*Ramadan and/or Eid, the Islamic New Year (as Islam uses a lunar calendar, the dates of their holidays varies, but these holidays sometimes occur during November-December)

* The Chinese New Year.  I always look forward to wishing my sister-in-law, a naturalized American citizen who is Cantonese by birth, a Gung Hay Fat Choy.  (The Chinese Lunar calendar is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BCE.  The New Year is celebrated on second new moon after the winter solstice, and so can occur in January or February).

This is not a complete list. See why it’s easier to say,  “Happy Holidays?”

The USA is one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world.  To insist on using the term “Merry Christmas” as the all-encompassing seasonal greeting could easily be seen as an attack on the religious beliefs of all of the Americans who celebrate the *other* holidays and festivals.  At the least, it denotes the users’ ignorance of their fellow citizens’ beliefs and practices.

 

 

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Department Of Did You Know…

…that the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that, “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”   [5]

…that because of its known pagan origins, Christmas was banned by the Puritans, and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts until 1681.   [6]

 

 

 “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

We Heretics/apostates non-Christians Happy Heathens ®  often hear this question at this time of year.  The inquiry is sometimes presented in ways that imply our celebration (or even acknowledgement) of Christmas is hypocritical.  This implication is the epitome of cheek, when you consider the fact that it is the early Christians who stole a festival from our humanist (pagan) forebears, and not the other way around.

Who doesn’t like a party, for any reason? And we who are religion-free don’t mind sharing seasonal celebrations with religious folk – sans the superstition and government/church mumbo-jumbo –  as long as they accept the fact that the ways we all celebrate this “festive season” predate Christianity by hundreds of years.

 

 

Early Roman Catholic missionaries tried to convert northern Europeans to the RC brand of Christianity, and part of the conversion process was to alter the pagan’s existing religious festivals. The indigenous folk, whom the RC church labeled “barbarians,” quickly discovered that when it came to dealing with missionaries, resistance is futile. The pagans intuitively grasped the concept of natural selection and converted to Christianity to avoid the price (persecution, torture, execution) of staying true to their original beliefs.  But they refused to totally relinquish their traditional celebrations, and so the church, eventually and effectively, simply renamed most of them.    [7]

Pagan practices were given a Christian meaning to wipe out “heathen” revelry.  This was made official church policy in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory the First issued the now infamous edict to his missionaries regarding the traditions of the peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than try to banish native customs and beliefs, missionaries were directed to assimilate them. You find a group of people decorating and/or worshiping a tree? Don’t chop it down or burn it; rather, bless it in the name of the Church.  Allow its continued worship, only tell the people that, instead of celebrating the return of the sun-god in the spring, they are now worshiping the rising from the dead of the Son of God.

 

 

( Easter is the one/odd exception, where a pagan celebration was adapted by Christians without a name change. Easter is a word found nowhere in the Bible. It comes from the many variants (Eostra, Ester, Eastra, Eastur….) of a Roman deity, goddess of the dawn “Eos” or “Easter,” whose festival was in the Spring.)

The fir boughs and wreaths; the Yule log; plum pudding; gift exchanges; feasting; the holly and the ivy and the evergreen tree….It is hard to think of a “Christmas” tradition that does not originate from Teutonic (German), Viking, Celtic, and Druid paganism.   [8]   A celebration in the depths of winter – at the time when, to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears to stop its southerly descent before gradually ascending north – is a natural instinct. For thousands of years our Northern Hemisphere ancestors greeted the “reason for the season” – the winter solstice – with festivals of light and gift exchanges and parties.  The Winter Solstice was noted and celebrated long before the Roman Jesus groupies pinched the party.

 But, isn’t “Jesus is the reason for the season”?

The reason for the season?  Cool story, bro.  Since you asked; actually, axial tilt is the reason for the season.  For *all* seasons.

 

 

And Woden is the reason the middle of the week is named Wednesday.   [9]   My calling Wednesday “Wednesday“ doesn’t mean I celebrate, worship, or “believe in” Woden.  I don’t insist on renaming either Christmas, or Wednesday.

 

“Now, go fetch me the brazen little sheisskopfs who took the Woden out of Woden’s Day!”

 

The Winter Solstice is the day with the shortest amount of sunlight, and the longest night. In the northern hemisphere it falls on what we now mark as December 21 or 22.  However, it took place on December 25th at the time when the Julian calendar was used.  [10]   The early Romans celebrated the Saturnalia on the Solstice, holding days of feasting and gift exchanges in honor of their god Saturn ( Other major deities whose birthdays were celebrated on or about the week of December 25   [11]   included Horis, Huitzilopochtli, Isis, Mithras, Marduk, Osiris, Serapis and Sol ).  The Celebration of the Saturnalia was too popular with the Roman pagans for the new Christian church to outlaw it, so the new church renamed the day and reassigned meanings to the traditions.    [12]

In other words, why are some folk concerned with “keeping the Christ in Christmas”  [13]  when we should be keeping the Saturn in Saturnalia?

 

 

*   *   *

Whatever your favorite seasonal celebrations may be, moiself wishes you all the best.

May you have the occasion to (with good humor) ruin it for everyone else;
May you find it within yourself to ignore the Black Friday mindset;
May you remember to keep the Saturn in Saturnalia;
…and may the fruitcake-free hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] You have an Aunt Erva, somewhere.  We all do.

[2] Damn right I’m proud of that one.

[3] Well, yeah, as compared to the usual shit I write.

[4] And a grade school friend of mine, whose family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, considered being told, “Merry Christmas” to be an attack on *her* beliefs.

[5] “Increase Mather, A Testimony against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New England” (London, 1687).  See also Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday,” New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

[6] Stephen Nissenbaum, “The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday.”

[7] “Paganism in Christianity.”

[8]  “Learn not the way of the heathen…their customs are vain, for one cuts a tree out of the forest…they deck it with silver and gold…” Jeremiah 10:2-5

[9] Wednesday comes from the Old English Wōdnesdæg, the day of the Germanic god Wodan (aka Odin, highest god in Norse mythology and a big cheese god of the Anglo-Saxons until the seventh century.)

[10] The Julian calendar, adopted by Julius Caesar ~ 46 B.C.E., was off by 11 min/year, and when the Gregorian calendar was established by Pope – wait for it – Gregory,  the solstice was established on 12/22.

[11] The Winter Solstice and the Origins of Christmas, Lee Carter.

[12] In 601 A.D., Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his missionaries regarding wooing potential converts: don’t banish peoples’ customs, incorporate them. If the locals venerate a tree, don’t cut it down; rather, consecrate the tree to JC and allow its continued worship.

[13] And nothing in the various conflicting biblical references to the birth of JC has the nativity occurring in wintertime.

The Intentions I’m Not Setting

September 26, 2025

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

Moiself  was merely one of the thousands of people who informed certain media and entertainment outlets that their kowtowing to a DICKtatorship cowardice in the face of First Amendment threats has consequences.  This is the email I sent last week to ABC national and local affiliates:

We are saddened to have to cancel our ABC-related accounts (Hulu, Disney) – I am a fan of Grey’s Anatomy and had eagerly awaited the new season – but we feel we have no ethical choice.  We are appalled by the cowardice and submissiveness ABC is broadcasting by its decision to suspend the Jimmy Kimmel Live show.

ABC did this after the Trump administration – which complains about every news and media outlet which does not kiss their a**es bend the knee to their ideological whims – complained about the contents of Kimmel’s comments re Charlie Kirk’s killing.  Yet Kimmel said nothing to disrespect the death of Kirk; rather – and we cannot emphasize this enough – Kimmel did his job.  What Kimmel disrespected was the Trump administration’s frenzied usage of this tragedy for their political gains and aims.  Kimmel did what comics and truth-tellers are *supposed* to do: tell the truth to power.  The purpose of the court jester is to use humor to criticize the (in Trump’s case, would-be) king, something the commoners have neither the power nor the platform to do.

We are cancelling our household Hulu subscription.  Our family will no longer purchase Disney products or services or visit its parks ( We don’t do this lightly; I am a former Disneyland Employee – Hungry Bear Restaurant), and will no longer watch our local ABC affiliate (Portland’s KATU) or any other ABC station.
As is the case with all authoritarian regimes, Trump’s attempts to silence his critics will eventually fail.  But ABC will be left with the legacy of its capitulation to – and thus collaboration with – the censorious would-be dictator and his corrupt courtiers.  ABC has betrayed its trust as a public media outlet; unless ABC reverses (and publicly repudiates) its capitulation, it is no longer trustworthy as either a source of news *or* entertainment.

Regretfully but firmly yours,

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Just Wondering:
Question 497 In The Unending Series

Soon I’ll be traveling to Southern California to attend moiself’s  high school reunion.   [1]   In preparation for the trip, I checked my ride service apps to make sure they still remember me (I don’t use them often; I will not be renting a car).  I’ve discovered I’ve apparently either chosen    [2]  ( or been assigned? ) Lyft’s WOMEN+ CONNECT service:

“WOMEN+ CONNECT
Rides for women, by women
We’re driving change one ride at a time. Now, women and nonbinary drivers can turn on Women+ Connect to increase their chances of matching with more women and nonbinary riders.”

Oh; okay; sure.

When using the Lyft and  Uber services I’ve had both women and men drivers (where they registered on any binary scale, I have no idea).  I’ve yet to notice a difference in service that I’d attribute to gender.   [3]

And then I got to thinking…

…yeah, always a dangerous endeavor.

Ahem.

I never got the memo re what makes a person want to identify as binary or non-binary, nor have I felt any pressure/had even a dash of desire to claim either…uh…( one of the two..therefore, a binary choice? ) label.

One of the cool (or frustrating, depending on where you are on the linguistic stick-in-the-mud  scale ) things about language is that it expands and evolves:   words take on new and additional – and sometimes *really* entertaining  [4]  – meanings.  Still, moiself  must confess that when I hear the word  binary my default thinking steers me toward the word’s original definition, as an adjective typically applied to mathematical systems and computer programming     [5]  consisting of or identified by two things or parts, as in a system of numbers ( the binary digits 0 and 1) or a formula incorporating a choice of two alternatives (e.g., on-off or  yes-no ).

 And then I got to thinking: if you identify as non-binary (however you define the criteria), does that mean that you in turn identify everyone who does *not* identify as non-binary as binary?

 

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Department Of Empirical Question Of The Year

Are yellowjackets helpful pollinators/vital members of the pollinator ecosystem,  [6] or just the bellicose bullies of the wasp world – heartless bastards who swarm and sting for no apparent reason?

Moiself  knows what ecologists and entomologists want me to think.  But really, yellowjackets are *so* obnoxious.  And the fact that they can sting multiple times without paying the ultimate price, as honeybees must do, only adds to their predilection for arrogance, IMO.

 

 

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Department Of The Remedy I Hope To Never Use

Dateline:  9-19-25, 3pm-ish; at a local pharmacy checking in to receive my COVID vaccine.  Moiself  sees a sign at the pharmacy check-in window informing clients that Naloxone may be obtained there.  MH shows up for his vaccines ( COVID and influenza   [7] )  not long after I check in, and in addition to our vaccines we end up getting two packages of Naloxone, one to for my car and one for his.

I thought of the practicality having a dose of Naloxone – which rapidly reverses an opioid overdose – several years ago, after I first read of its availability to the general public.  But my second thought at the time was one informed by…to put it delicately, compassion fatigue.  As in, after reading/hearing paramedics’ and police officers’ and hospital emergency room staff’s stories of doing multiple, serial revivals on the same person, (sometimes more than once a day), only to have that same person they’d revived three times come in the next day or week dead from an opioid overdose, moiself  thought,  If someone is stupid enough to use that shit I’m not going to waste time and resources “saving” them today so that they can kill themselves tomorrow.

 

 

Well, maybe not, Martha.  After encountering more/recent stories of how many people have OD’d on fentanyl (and other opioids) completely unintentionally…

– they intentionally ingested something, from an illicit drug to a totally benign medication or substance that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with, say fentanyl, or
– they unintentionally were dosed with fentanyl or another opioid ( read; they were, essentially, poisoned ) by having, e.g., a beverage that was spiked, by someone they knew (who thought it would be a funny joke to play on them,  har de har har! ) or a total stranger  

 

 

…I thought it prudent to be prepared to help out, no matter the circumstances.  I think of it (having Naloxone in my car) as another insurance policy:  it’s good to have, and I hope to never have cause to use it.

 

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Department Of Another Small Step Toward Understanding

Y’all have that friend, family member, coworker, who seems (mostly) otherwise rational but who can drive you face-palm-slapping batty with their persistent denial of evolution or other processes and principles of science?  Here is some understanding – not for them to understand science, but for you to understand them.

This opinion piece recently appeared in the Washington Post.  Moiself  is a WaPo  subscriber; if you hit a paywall for this article, it’s worth it, to gain a modicum of consideration from the experiences and perspectives of someone who once fit into that (science-denier) category.

 

 

I highly, highly recommend this read.  The author is a former religious missionary  [8]  turned scientist, with a valuable, first-hand view of how just “following the facts” of science is a difficult thing to do for so many people, in part because of another fact of science: how we evolved, as humans, to view the world and the places we and other people fit into it.

“The moment I finally admitted that evolution was real didn’t feel liberating. It felt like grief. I had spent years running up against hard evidence that, despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t refute. I was in the shower, and I cried inconsolably. Accepting evolution meant more than just accepting a scientific theory. It meant leaving my community and almost every friend I had ever known, and it was the final nail in the coffin of my arranged marriage.
Those tears were a response forged in the Paleolithic era. We are not meant to find it easy to leave our tribe because, back when caves were prime real estate, leaving your tribe was a death sentence. My anguish was biologically ingrained over hundreds of thousands of years. That ancient biology explains why so many people still reject ‘the science.’ ””

( excerpt, “I’m a former creationist.  Here’s why ‘Follow the science’ failed.”
  by Ella Al-Shamahi )

 

 

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Department Of Setting Your Intentions

It is a common practice at the beginning of a yoga class – whether the class is live (in a yoga studio), or streaming, or in a yoga workout tape or DVD – for the teacher to suggest that you  “set your intention” for the class.

Intention as in, asking yourself a question, from the purely logistical to the profound ( e.g., Why did I come to this class today?  Why do I do yoga in the first place? ) or consciously choosing a purpose or affirmation to focus on during your practice, as a way to stay present ( aka mindful ) beyond just performing another set of physical exercises.  

Sometimes I do this — set an intention.  Sometimes I don’t.   And one time recently at the beginning of a yoga class, when the teacher mentioned (amid a soundtrack of soothing background music) that yogis might want to take a brief moment to set an intention, moiself  had a most un-yoga thought:

My intention is to kick some Yoga ass.

Which, once again, reminded me of how my thoughts and attitudes often affirm another yoga truism:

“It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect.”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

*   *   *

May you avoid being bullied by yellowjackets;
May you never have a reason to use administer opioid overdose reversal medicine;
May you enjoy reading the blog posts you read (mine, or someone else’s),
whether or not you set an intention to do so;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yikes.

[2] I don’t remember doing so.

[3] Anyone of any gender can overdo the personal scents, as did one driver whose cologne was so overwhelming I rolled down both backseat windows and stifled the urge to tell him, “Whatever you’re trying to cover up, I’m sure your natural body odor is far better than this perfumed stink bomb.”

[4] I refer, of course, to all the euphemisms for farting.

[5] You can get an idea of my age from my using that term, instead of “coding.”

[6] I recently posed the question to two certified Master Gardeners ® at a farmer’s market, and their answer was no, not really.  Yellowjackets are primarily predators and scavengers…which does help to clean up their surrounding by consuming dead and decaying animals (think of them as tiny vultures).  Yellowjackets are neither efficient nor intentional pollinators, but do transfer some pollen as they fly about, bumping into plants while looking for other insects and animals to harass and torture….  These were not the Master Gardeners’ exact words.

[7] I had had the influenzas vaccine three days earlier; at the time, due to the dickheads “in charge” of health misinformation, I could not yet get this year’s COVID vaccine.

[8] “I’ll show ’em – I’ll study their evidence and find all the flaws and refute their theories!”

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

The Thoughts And Prayers I’m Not Sending

September 5, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Thoughts And Prayers I’m Not Sending

Department Of Just Another Day In The US of A:
( Translation: Another Church/School Shooting )

 

 

“…yet again the same stale ritual has unfolded: politicians sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ instead of offering solutions.

But this time, some prominent figures are refusing to let that go unchallenged.

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki cut through the platitudes, posting on X: ‘Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayer does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.’

She’s right. Prayer doesn’t stop bullets. It doesn’t heal wounds. It doesn’t change laws. It doesn’t keep parents from burying their children.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made the point even more starkly: ‘Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.’

The victims of this atrocity were in church, being led in prayer, when the shooter opened fire. If ever there were a test of the supposed ‘power of prayer,’ this was it. And it failed in the most heartbreaking way imaginable.

Instead of reckoning with that reality, White House officials have attacked Psaki and Frey for being ‘disrespectful.’  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance both accused ‘the left’ of mocking faith. But nobody is mocking grieving families. What’s being called out is the political cowardice that hides behind prayer as a substitute for policy.

During a press briefing, Leavitt said: ‘I saw the comments of Ms. Psaki and frankly I think they’re incredibly insensitive and disrespectful to the tens of millions of Americans of faith across this country who believe in the power of prayer, who believe that prayer works.’

Even more outrageously, Leavitt shared a post blaming ‘demonic forces’ for the Minneapolis shooting.

It doesn’t matter how many people ‘believe’ in the power of prayer (or demons) — belief doesn’t make it real….    [1]

…Politicians pray publicly (or at least tell us they’re praying ad nauseam), then do nothing. The cycle repeats, and children keep dying.

It’s not ‘disrespectful’ to point out the obvious — it’s disrespectful to the victims to pretend prayer is the answer.”

( Excerpts, my emphases, “If prayer worked,
the Minneapolis children would still be alive,” Chris Line, FFRF blog, 8-29-25 )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Parrot Sums Up The Only Rational Reaction
To The Latest White House Blatherings Statements

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Interesting People   [2]

Herman Pontzer, researcher and professor of evolutionary anthropology and Global Health at Duke University, studies the interesting (IMO) traits and behaviors of his (and our    [3] ) species.  He shares many of those observations in the latest Clear + Vivid podcast

“Unlike most other land animals, we can live almost anywhere: from deserts, to mountains, rain forests, even the arctic. We are supremely adaptable, and that adaptability has led to our diversity – not only in our biology, but also in our cultures.”
( Episode description, Clear + Vivid podcast,
Herman Pontzer: Diversity: Humanity’s Superpower )

That seems like a simple enough observation.  But that fact – that human beings, like news about the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce engagement, can be found all over the planet – is something moiself  hasn’t often considered.

And speaking of planet-wide infestation, don’t the two lovebirds deserve the obligatory, celebrity name mash up?  Traylor?  Swiftce?

 

 

Once again, I digress.

Other than insects, homo sapiens is arguably the most adaptable life form on the planet.   [4]  .  Check out Pontzer’s interview, for human being trait tidbits such as….

  (  C + V podcast host) Alan Alda:
“What about the notion of race?  Does race exist,
or is a phrase that’s used when it’s convenient?”

Herman Ponzer:
“The answer is it’s a socially constructed grouping…we like to put people in groups, and use them as a sort of in-group out-group way of dividing up our world.

  So, race means different things around the globe. And people divide up their world into different races or categories using different criteria. That just goes to show you how flexible and cultural it is.  There’s no real hard edges around human groups at all.  In fact, we’re such a recent species that all humans around the globe are 99.99% similar genetically.  There aren’t any kind of genetic boxes you can put people in easily.  In the U.S., we use skin color historically, as a sort of racial categorization.  And it’s true that skin color is a biological trait, right?

I mean, it has to do with how much melanin your skin makes.  So, in that sense, skin color is a biological trait.

But even there, as I like to tell my students, until the late 1800s – early 1900s, having white skin wasn’t enough to make you white.

If you were Irish or Italian, an immigrant in the States,
you were still considered black.”

Alda:
” I remember almost dropping your book out of my hand when I read that.
You can hardly get whiter than Irish people.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of  “No Shit?!” Titles

From  Fresh Air interview, 8-21-25, Robert Reich: The Baby Boomers Fell Short

“Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich…opens his new memoir, Coming Up Short,
with an apology on behalf of the Baby Boom generation
for failing to build a more just society.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Nothing Like A Walk In The Fresh Air To Begin Your Day

Dateline: Thursday; 7:41 AM; morning walk. My nose detects it before I see it, and I look around for the carcass of a dead Mephitis mephitis, which moiself  has on at least three occasions spotted while walking past the fields near the Fairgrounds light rail station.  Instead, as I turn the bend in the pathway parallelling the fields I see a man and a dog walking toward me.  The man puffs on a spliff and his dog huffs and strains against its leash.  As the man nears me the stench increases.

I feel my shoulders slump, as I consider the fetid fact that there are people in this world who like to – or feel like they have to    [5] – begin their day polluting their pulmonary packets with the aroma of skunk roadkill.

 

 

*    *   *

Department Of Right Now It’s Like This

“Early one morning an intrepid traveler started down a long and dusty road.  Before long, he came upon a shepherd tending to his flock.  The traveler asked, ‘What kind of weather are we going to have today?’ The shepherd answered, “The kind of weather I like.’  The traveler asked, ‘But how do you know it will be the kind of weather you like?’  The shepherd answered, ‘Having found out, sir, that I cannot always get what I like, I have learned to always like what I get.  So, I am quite sure we will have the kind of weather I like.’

The shepherd chose to be open and flexible to what life gave him. By accepting what he could not change, the shepherd practiced non-resistance. It was as though his personal mantra was, ‘Right now, it’s like this.’  So the next time life throws you a curveball…try recalling on that phrase:

 ‘Right now, it’s like this.”

Do your best to bring a spirit of non-resistance to the situations you can’t change, and challenge yourself to accept what is.  In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘The best thing one can do when it’s raining is let it rain.’ “

( excerpt, Daily Calm meditation app, 8-26-25, It’s Like This )

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

( Doug Stanhope is an American comedian, author, and activist  [8]   )

*   *   *

May you not categorize people because it is convenient for you to do so;
May you understand that believing in something doesn’t make it real;
May you let it rain when it’s raining;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Amen, sez the atheist.

[2] Why would interesting people need a footnoate?

[3] Okay; moiself  is assuming a commonality of species among readers of this blog.

[4] Much to the detriment of other species whom we’ve wiped out due to hunting and habitat destruction….

[5] Oh, yeah dude, weed is so *not* not addictive. 

[6] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg.  Until I did.

One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens.  No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.

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

[8] And there is no footnote for him here.

The Haiku I’m No Longer Sending

August 8, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, Oregon, politics, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , Comments Off on The Haiku I’m No Longer Sending

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature for 2025.  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?!?!?!  [1]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [2]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  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 August to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Since I’ve been writing my blog there has been only one other August 8 which fell on a Friday. Reading through it, I can see the presumptive value of my blog (serving as “a journal of sorts”) that I was optimistic about when I started, even though I had no idea moiself  would look back 11 years later, read an entry, and marvel about how I’d forgotten about (most of) those daily correspondences I sent to my mother…and also how my concerns for my offspring’s generation – regarding the world we are making for and leaving to them – have only increased…which is something I wish I could forget.

So.  Here is an excerpt from my blog of 8-8-14 (  The Generation I’m Not talkin’ ’bout ).  Wait a minute – here’s the whole damn blog.  Moiself  be entitled to take a vacation on my father’s birthday.

 

 

 *   *   *

The PG (Parental Guidance) Post 

 

 

Dateline: Monday evening, doing my own sous chef preparation before sautéing shallots and Swiss chard.  As I strip the ruby red chard leaves from their stalks, I remember how much my father loved Swiss chard.

*   *   *

 Band of Memories

 

Chet cira 1953, on his beloved palomino stallion, Stardust.  “These are the good times”

 

I think of my father every day, and mention him often (an easy thing to do, as he was a special character), in part to keep his memory alive for K and Belle.  But when my family sees that I’ve brought out the Band of Brothers DVD box set, they know something extra is in the air.

Today would have been Chester “Chet-the-Jet” Parnell’s 90th birthday.  It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around that number.  I’ll let my heart do the binding.

 

 

When Chet wanted to relax he would haul out his old Martin guitar. He loved to serenade his kids.  Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes, a traditional country tune covered by singers from Roy Acuff to Rosemary Clooney, was one of the songs Chet used to sing to me at night.

 

 

 *   *   *

 My mother is frail;
“I am winding down,” she says.
She is eighty-six.

Widowed five years now;
Her eldest child lives nearby.
I am second-born.

My two other sibs
Live in the Bay Area;
Mom is in So Cal.

 

 

Mom loathed to travel,
even when she was healthy.
And, now she cannot.

Twenty-three years plus
I’ve lived one thousand miles north,
with my family.

Mom doesn’t do much;
there’s little to talk about.
Calls can be awkward

She always refused
to learn to use computers.
Her children conspired…

We got a gadget:
“technically un-inclined”
is its user base.

 

 

A “one-way device,”
it receives and prints email
from select sources.

Pro: she gets no spam;
Con: she gets but can’t send mail
(which is fine by her).

I send her brief notes –
a small something for the day,
in her morning mail

Mondays are for jokes.
Who wouldn’t like a giggle
To begin the week?

 

 

Tuesdays I phone her.
Her moods and health are falling.
Tuesdays make me sad.

Each Wednesday I send
a Word of the Day feature.
(I choose cheerful words).

Thoughts For the Day
from minds famous and obscure,
are Thursday’s items.

Fridays are for Quotes:
adages and citations
to spark mind and heart.

Saturday, poems:
I send different verse styles,
From Browning to Lear.

Every Sunday
I send my mother haiku,
Two verses, or more.

I write them moiself;
thus, they are not quote-worthy.
Silly, but heartfelt.

 

*   *   *

 A Brief Meditation On Ways To Fail Your Children

Is that a buzz kill subject heading, or what?  If you’re looking for the feel-good post of the week, I suggest returning to the picture of the Swiss chard and using it for a gratitude meditation focal point.

I’m thinking about the many ways my father and mother succeeded, as parents…also, about those ways in which they, and parents in general, failed.

This digression is courtesy of one of my recent morning walk podcast sessions.  [3]   I was listening to the Freethought Radio interview with the president of a N.O.W. chapter, re activism resulting from the SCOTUS  [4]   Hobby Lobby decision. This topic was antithetical to the purpose of my morning walks, which are supposed to be somewhat meditative as well as invigorating.  The former purpose took a back seat to ruminative rage as I considered the seemingly unending, fact-free, conservative political and social balloon juice about a woman’s right to right to personal jurisdiction, and other issues that should have been settled so, so, long ago….

And I find myself thinking,

We failed.

We, as in, talkin’ ’bout my generation.

 

 

We have failed in so many ways, including imagination.

Thirty years ago, I couldn’t imagine we’d be fighting the same fights.   [5]   Sure, a few dinosaur fossils would remain, but I’d hoped that the battle for equality and against sexism and misogyny (at least, in this country) would be history, as in, my son and daughter would learn about it the same way they learned about women’s suffrage ( There was a time when women couldn’t vote?!  And it was less than one hundred years ago?! )

I realize that historical milestones are almost never confined to a single day or week…or even era. The campaign for women’s suffrage was not waged and won on August 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.  Nor was the amendment a one-time antidote to the festering, cyclic, boil-on-the-ass-of-human rights that is the tendency for groups of people to oppress those they view as The Other.

 

 

*   *   *

 Power shared = power diminished.

According to one Wise Old White Guy © I had the pleasure of knowing,   [6]   there is a widely held but false axiom behind bigotry and discrimination. That was the gist of what he tried to explain, one day in our Tuesday morning book group of yore. The group stumbled onto the continuing struggle for civil and women’s rights vis-à-vis religious institutions – a provocative topic for anyone who hasn’t downed their first cup of coffee by 7 am.

I brought up what I saw as the ultimate butt-frosting, teeth-grinding, bloomer-bunching irony: in order to acquire the rights and opportunities that you, say, a woman or African-American, are denied, you have to convince a majority of those in power – the very people who have been denying you those rights – to grant them.   [7]

This prompted WOWG to share his “unfortunate observation” regarding human nature:

Few people anywhere have ever easily agreed to share power.

I knew what WOWG meant, but asked him to elaborate.  What follows is my (paraphrased) recollection of his simple but profound Walter Cronkite-ism:   [8]

 Power shared = power diminished – this is what people in power believe. But power does not diminish when shared, it multiplies.  Small, stingy, fearful minds don’t understand that – they think power is finite, or is in limited supply, and therefore sharing power with you means there is less of it for them.  This is especially true for those who are (or who see themselves as being) on the lower rungs of the power and status ladders; e.g., some of the fiercest, most vicious criticism of the civil rights movement came from poor white southern men.

He ended with:

We failed. Our generation didn’t fix that.
Maybe it can’t be fixed; but now, it’s your turn.

 *   *   *

And now, a segue to make us all feel better.    [9]

I Am A Bad Person
#359 in a never-ending series

Making travel arrangements for an upcoming family wedding, my brain did that thing it does, and conjured up a memory from a friend’s wedding, several years ago.  I was talking to a teenager at the wedding reception. When I asked her about the rather sour look on her face, she complained to me about how  “Old people at weddings always poke me in the ribs and say, ‘You’re next!’ ”

I told her she could get revenge by saying the same to them at funerals.

 

I’m sure she means next as in next in line at the buffet.

 

*   *   *

Spam Subject Line Of The Week:

IF  YOU  DON’T  READ  THIS  NOW  YOU’LL  HATE  YOURSELF  LATER !!!

I didn’t read it “now” (or at all).

It is later.

I don’t hate moiself.

Ergo, it must be my turn for an all-caps-three-exclam-attack:

VICTORY IS MINE !!!

 

Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahaha

 

*   *   *

May you always be next in line for life’s buffet, and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[3] During my morning walks I listen to podcasts of some of my favorite radio shows, including Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Freakonomics, RadioLab, This American Life, TED Talks, Fresh Air, and Freethought Radio.

[4] Which, yes, oft times seems as if it should be the acronym for Sexist Codgers (and not Supreme Court) of the United States.

[5] Only with different, and often troll-enabling – technologies.

[6] WOWG lost a brief but fierce battle with leukemia ~ 10 years ago.

[7] I remember, a long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, trying to explain to my kids, who were dealing with fledgling democracy concepts in school, how women couldn’t vote to give themselves the vote.

[8] “And that’s the way it is.”

[9] Wait a minute…there is no ninth footnote.

 

The Better Person Travel Is Not Making Me

July 25, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

Department of The Retrievals is Back…

…and this second season is also riveting.  Have you ever been pregnant, known anyone who was pregnant, or are yourself the result of your mother’s pregnancy?  Yeah, I’m saying everyone should listen to this.

The Retrievals second season was inspired by the podcast’s first season,    [1]   which dealt with the broad (sorry) issue of women’s pain being ignored during medical procedures as seen through the lens of a specific scandal: a nurse was stealing painkillers from the Yale Fertility Center, and the saline substitute some patients received instead of a painkillers meant they were in agony during the procedures they were undergoing…and the medical professionals performing the procedures didn’t believe them.

Season 2 is a new story. It’s not about Yale medical clinics or fertility treatments, but it’s definitely a related subject. Susan Burton, the producer of the first season, goes behind the scenes at a Chicago hospital as a group of doctors and nurses struggles to address this issue of women’s pain after one of their own nurses undergoes an excruciating C-section.

 

 

After The Retrievals season one, Burton received many, many letters from women sharing their stories of medical nightmares due to anesthesia failure.  Burton was compelled to focus season two of The Retrievals on a persistent problem with the most common surgical procedure performed in the US:  the inexcusably high rate   [2]  of inadequate anesthesia and/or anesthesia failure during cesarean sections.  As in, the patient can *feel* the operation, and too often (too often means even once – this should NEVER happen) is ignored or pooh-poohed by her doctor and/or anesthesiologist and/or nurse, with no acknowledgement of her suffering or investigation as to what went wrong.

This teaser excerpt, from episode three, is a conversation between podcast host Burton and one of her guests, Susanna Stanford, a British woman who undertook a graduate’s degree study into this issue after she endured agonizing pain during her own C-section.  And, yes, that quote from the doctor you will be reading was taken from this century, and not the 1800s.

 

 

Susanna Stanford, podcast guest:
…Just to give you a sense of how accepted this was, this is an editorial from 2006 in the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia.

Susan Burton, host:
The editorial, by a British doctor, was about the necessity of keeping good records in case you ever got sued by a woman who complained of pain during her Cesarean.

Susanna Stanford:
“Let me read to you the opening section:
‘It was all so simple in the old days. You simply injected the local anesthetic down the epidural, warned her that she’d feel a bit of pain, and told the obstetrician to get on with it. And then things began to become more complicated.
First, women began to complain more, no doubt fueled by general changes in patients’ attitudes as they made the transition from passive recipients of health care to consumers.’
Doesn’t that just tell you so much?”

Susan Burton:
“I mean, it’s just like, well, the women started speaking up.”

Susanna Stanford:
“Damn it. Those wretched women started complaining about pain.”

Susan Burton:
“I cannot believe this. This is 2007, 2006?”

Susanna Stanford:
“ ‘06. 2006. It’s not the 1950s.”

 

 

The Dowager is shocked.

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of A Different Kind Of Shock

“Culture shock is the growing pains of a broader perspective.”

Moiself  could summarize a recent Rick Steves podcast interview with that quote of his.  Travel guru Steves (whose recent book, On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer,  I highly enjoyed and recommend,) is known for his enthusiastic advocacy of cross-cultural travel as a political as well as recreational act.  And although I’ve been on three RS tours    [3]   (and, if I’m lucky, will undertake at least three more), one of Steves’  most treasured travel tenets is one moiself  disagrees with…slightly.

This precept is that travel changes a person – travel makes you a better person, in that the exposure to different people and cultures helps us celebrate differences and overcome misunderstandings and question prejudices and presumptions, large and small.

 

 

I think that *can* happen, but only if you are the type of person prone to introspection and open to change…and if you are, perhaps you wouldn’t have needed, ultimately or eventually, to go to Bosnia or Turkey or Greece to have discovered this (maybe just watching a Rick Steves Europe Travel Videos from the comfort of your den would do).

I think that instead of experiencing eye-opening, mind-altering change when they travel to foreign lands, more often than not, people take who they are and what they think with them – most folks pack their opinions and biases along with their toiletries and passports. For some travelers the opinions/biases can fit into a TSA-approved ziplock sack; while others will need to check at least one full-sized suitcase to accommodate their assumptions and expectations.  [4]

 

 

Whenever I hear someone repeat any variation of that optimistic cliché platitude – that travel makes you a better person – I immediately, unfortunately, picture (even if only for a moment) several people I’ve met who didn’t get that memo along with their passports, including  One Of The More Racist People I’ve Ever Known ® .

OOTMRPIEK, the father of a junior high friend of mine, was the first person I heard use the slur  jigaboo to refer to a Black person.  He did this openly, in front of me, when I was at my friend’s home and peeked into their TV room to say hi to her dad. OOTMRPIEK was watching an LA Lakers game, and after some spectacular play which brought the crowd to a roar he giggled and said to me,  “Those jigaboos sure can jump!”  I had no idea what he meant; I’d never heard the word.   [5]   But since that tittering comment of his was soon followed by another in which he (still giggling) used the N-word,  [6]  I knew it was not a complimentary term, no matter how happy he looked when he said it.

OOTMRPIEK was always nice to me and (as far as I know) to his daughter’s other (white) friends.  And OOTMRPIEK  was a world vagabond – the most well-traveled person I’ve ever met, then or now. Travel was his hobby, his passion.  His daughter and I used to speculate about how her dad must be a CIA operative, and his cover was that of a mild-mannered suburbanite – how else to explain why an otherwise meek-seeming husband and father and insurance agent was always heading off for exotic locations?

 

“I’m here to check if you have adequate coverage via your homeowner’s policy.”

 

Over the years when I asked OOTMRPIEK  to tell me stories about his travels, it became evident to moiself  that he traveled for his interest in the history, the geography, the scenery of places “exotic” to him.  I tried to elicit stories about the people he encountered and noticed the commonality among the nations about whose inhabitants he spoke disparagingly (African; Middle Eastern; Asian).  Even for the countries about which he spoke positively  (European), he honestly seemed, to me, to have had no great (nor even small) concern for the *people* living in the countries he traveled to. Therefore, he could enjoy a trip to the exotic Egypt and the intriguing Middle East and witness a spectacular Sub-Saharan sunset, and return home to joke about niggers and  jigaboos.

 

 

Sub-Department Of Speaking Of Perspectives…

Y’all may have noticed that with my first usage of that YOU  SHALL  NEVER  USE  THIS  WORD  word   [7],  I used the culturally-sensitive currently acceptable stunt double (“the N-word”).    Now, by not doing so with the second usage, moiself  is wondering if this post will somehow get flagged.  When on the rare occasion I’ve had cause to use that word – which is always quoting someone else who said it – I usually (when in the presence of those with delicate sensibilities) employ the euphemistic contraction.  But it seems rather juvenile to do so when quoting what another person actually said (and there is, to my knowledge, no  J-word substitute for jigaboo).  So maybe I’ll throw in some other words and see which one gets the most censorious reaction.

How’s about cocksucker?

 

 

“It is remarkable to me that people can travel
and not be impacted by what they see.”

That statement came from the person who interviewed     [8]   Rick Steves, when he mentioned to Steves about how he was once sitting at the foot of a melting glacier, next to a fellow traveler who announced that he doesn’t believe in climate change.

OK, so that was remarkable to Mr. Interviewer, but guess what?  For a significant amount of people, no amount of foreign travel –

– which BTW increases the amount of carbon into the air, which even We-Who-Are-Open-To-Change-And-Concerned-About-Working-For-Solutions-To-Global-Warming®  nevertheless contribute to the problem by taking jet planes to Europe or wherever –

– will likely change their perspective.  It’s not that simple.  People often come to such opinions via a complicated jumble of religious and cultural and political influences.  I think by the time Mr. Interviewer met the What Melting Glacier? Guy, WMGG had already, consciously or otherwise, decided not to see what he didn’t want to see.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

*   *   *

May you listen to The Retrievals;
May you carefully employ your euphemistic contractions;
May your travels be respectful and bring perspective;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The series, reported and hosted by Susan Burton, won a buttload of “best podcast” awards and a Peabody Award.

[2] Also inexcusably high is the USA’s rate of C-sections – one in three births.

[3] Three two weeks+  trips to the Adriatic (Slovenia; Bosnia; Croatia), Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark; Norway) and Ireland.

[4] So much for the suitcase metaphors.

[5] Really – later after I’d gone home, I asked my parents what it meant. Their first response: “Where did you hear that?!?!?”

[6] And that would not be the first time I head that word from my friend’s father.

[7] Unless you’re a Black rap star.

[8] Damned if I can’t remember which interview – I’ve head so many with RS, especially since his new book’s release.

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

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