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The Trash I’m Not Being Paid To Pick Up

September 1, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, Recreation, sports, travel, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

Department Of What Is It?

 

 

The HTC: The Hood To Coast relay race, that’s what it is.

Hood To Coast is a long-distance relay race that starts at Mount Hood and continues nearly 200 miles to the Oregon Coast. Known as “the mother of all relays”, it is the largest running and walking relay in the world….
The race is held annually in late August, traditionally on the Friday and Saturday before the Labor Day weekend. The course runs approximately 200 miles…from Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mount Hood, the tallest peak in Oregon, through the Portland metropolitan area, and over the Oregon Coast Range to the beach town of Seaside on the Oregon Coast. Teams of 12 runners take turns running legs along the course.
( from “Hood to Coast” Wikipedia entry )

The Hood to Coast Relay is so popular, it sells out every year within minutes on the day when it opens for team registrations.   [1]    HTC begins at Mount Hood, with staggered start times on Friday from 3 am to 2 pm (teams have 36 hours to complete the course).    [2]   This year there were 1,000 teams participating, and 12,000 runners.   Teams come from all US states and 40 other countries, including our neighbors to the north:

 

 

Y’all impressed?  You should be.  For all the years we’ve been coming to the Oregon coast, the last weekend in August is one of the more fun times to be there (almost   [3]  fun enough to make me want to take up running again, just to participate in the HTC).  MH and I hang in Manzanita, 22 miles south of the HTC finish point (Seaside).  During the HTC weekend, almost about anywhere on the north Oregon coast you’ll spot the HTC team vans with their colorful names and mottos painted on the sides and doors, and encounter the enthusiastically exhilarated (and exhausted and sleep-deprived) HTC team members looking for food and drink, massages, blister relief, or just wanting to hang out.

 

 

Moiself  knows many people who’ve participated in the HTC.  This year son K joined a team for the first time, and asked me to be a HTC volunteer.  All local   [4]   HTC teams are required to provide three volunteers or one exchange leader,  [5]   or they’ll be disqualified from the race.  As you might imagine, with so many runners, a 200 mile race stretching from a mountain to an ocean needs a lot of people helping with logistics along the way,   [6]  including at the start and at the exchange points, to keep track of participants and vans (each team must provide two vans to transport members; each race member must run three legs of the race), and particularly at the end of the race, where the teams check in to a large, roped off section of the beach at Seaside, and have ceremonies and parties and eat and take official pictures…and did I mention parties?

I signed up for the 9:45a – 2:45p Saturday volunteer shift at Seaside.  There were many of us volunteers at that shift time, and we were (most unscientifically) chosen for a variety of tasks.  Moiself  ended up in Trash and Recycling.  T/R involved constant movement: for the next five hours (with lunch and hydration breaks at the volunteers’ discretion) we T/R crew walked a snaking/looping pattern throughout the various sections of the finish line area, from the perimeters to the zones within the zone, checking the I-lost-count-of-how-many trash and recycling receptacles.  T/R volunteers duties included “pre-cycling” as much as possible (invariably, people dump the wrong items in the receptacles, despite the bins being clearly marked for trash v. recycling and having picture labels showing what items go where; thus, we had to move items from one bag to another), and changing the bags when they were 75% full.

 

*   *   *

Department Of People Are Fun

It was fun, even while digging through the icky T/R receptacles,  [7]  to see the teams arrive.  There was so much sheer joy to be witnessed, on the part of the runners and the friends and family cheering them on. And the team names – I wish moiself  could remember them all. I had a job to do, but tried to pay attention as the teams’ arrivals were announced over the loudspeaker (which you could hear from any part of the finish zone).  Most teams go for a funny/punny name; e.g., one that satirizes their workplace and/or sponsors, or is a play on words with common situations and ailments faced by distance runners in general or HTC racers in particular (e.g., team “My Third Leg is Harder Than Yours”).

 

 

Most teams had custom shirts for their runners, and sometimes hats and other accessories.  Teams decorate their vans, too.  A popular team name motif is the slightly naughty/double entendre.  Years ago, I saw a van with this motto painted on its rear door:

” Go Nads!
(National Association of Distance Sprinters)”

Atop the van, attached to its luggage rack, was a large set of paper mâché…any guesses?

Another van’s display of their team name made me consider whether or not I would want to park (or walk) behind a van labeled, “Twelve Sticky Buns.”

A few intrepid teams run in full costume – moiself  spotted members of one all male team which seemed to have a Barbie theme going on –  or regalia related to their names.  I never found out the name of the team whose every runner, male and female, was clad in red prom dresses, but they were a jolly group to behold.

 

Some team names I remember from years past:

* Run Like a Mother
*199 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
* Get in the Van!
* Where’s the Beach?
* Hauling Ass-prin
* 12 Drummers Drumming
* Cheap Hills
* Forrest Stump   [8]

* Endorphiends
* Toenails Are For Sissies
* It’s Cute You Run Marathons
* Tektronic Megahurtz
* Hoodwinked
* Van You Catch Us?
* The Team Formerly Known As Class Act    [9]

* Grateful (We’re Not) Dead
* 70 Rocks    [10]

* Chafing the Dream
* Blister Sisters
* PNW, WTF?
* Saturday Night Dead
* Ducks for a Husky-Free Northwest

This year’s team names included:

* Pick it up Princess   [11]

* Back Fat
* The Young and the Breathless
* The Young and The Rest Of Us
* Premature Acceleration
* Monty Crython and the Hilly Trail
* Oreo Speedwagon
* Electrolyte Orchestra
* Turd Herders
* I-Be-Pro-FUN
* Worst. Wine. Tour. Ever.
* Obi-Run Kenobi
* Cirque du Sore Legs
* Last Place Legends
* Team Questionable Life Choices
* The Island of Misfit Toys
* Married Up
* Pace Cadets
* Kids, Get Your Shoes On
* Resisting A Rest
* Seven Deadly Shins
* Tequila Mockingbird
* Another Run Bites the Dust
* We’ve Got the Runs
* The Kind Of Dirty Dozen
* Lactic Acid Trip
* Two Dozen Scrambled Legs   [12]

Now: who’d want to be a member of team Back Fat?  When I saw several BF team runners hanging around by one of the finish area T/R receptacles, moiself  had to ask.   I did my T/R checking job, then prefaced my query by pointing to my shirt (as I did several times afterward, when I realized that people would answer *anything* I asked when they saw my shirt). “So,” I said, “in my ‘Race Official capacity, ‘ I must ask you: Why would anyone want to run under the team name, Back Fat?”

 

 

The BF-ers exchanged knowing glances.  “Well, look at us,” one of them said, and he pivoted to show me his back.  Yep, in their green polyester, clingy running shirts (mostly) covering their squatty, chunky physiques….I’ll concede that their team’s name was a first-rate example of truth in advertising.

“We’re just running for fun…we’re not the elites,” the BFer said, as he hoisted a beer with one hand and with the other hand, pointed behind moiself , to the Nike area (Nike had its own roped off zone within the finish zone, with complimentary food and beverages for Nike-sponsored teams, as well as their own set of gleaming white, porta-pottie trailers.  Bouncers checked IDs at the entrance to the Nike zone, ensuring no plebes – except for those wearing Race Official ® shirts – got inside.)  “We know we’re not the team that’s in the best shape…” BF guy snickered.

“But you’re the team having the best time,” I offered.  He laughed heartily, and he and his fellow BFers toasted me with their beers.

Moiself  moved on to the next set of T/R bins, where another group of racing men stood (hanging around the T/R bins seemed to be a thing). There were six of them, all wearing their race shirts and, from the waist down, colorful batik, sarong-type wraps.  They were quite the contrast to the BFers:  they were all tall, slender, in their 40s – 50s, in great shape, with that lanky, distance runner’s physique.  And the way they were groomed: even after having just finished a two-day race, their hair was neatly styled and none of them looked the least bit sweaty.  Distinguished-looking, you might say.  Something about their aura and the way they carried themselves radiated, “well-kept” (read: money).

I asked about the team’s name on their shirts (a word which sounded Hawaiian to moiself); also, noting their sarongs, I asked if the team had some Polynesian connection (although the men were all haoles).  One of the men began to explain: “A few years ago, a friend of mine bought a small island in Fiji…” To which I interjected, “As one does.”

 

 

Well-Groomed Man didn’t miss a beat; he continued to tell me about how their team name was a word his Fijian-island-owning friend had introduced them to.  The word had a few variants among the Fiji Islands and was similar to the Hawaiian aloha in that it had no one translation, and could be used as word of greeting and departure, or as a way of wishing someone well, etc.

My next T/R stop took me to the Nike area – my Race Official ® shirt was my entry ticket.  It was quite the nice setup.  About twenty minutes later, I encountered a T/R volunteer in a (non-Nike) area by the finish lines, and she told me that although there were not long lines of people waiting to use the porta-potties which lined the perimeter of the finish zone, the facilities always seemed to be occupied.  I told her that if she needed a bathroom break, she should go to the Nike area and use their pristine facilities.  “But, isn’t that for Nike people only?” she asked.  “Who cares?” I snorted.  “I didn’t see anyone checking IDs once they let you in their zone.  Besides, if someone questions you, give them a WTF look, show ’em your shirt and your trash bags, then ask them if they’re saying that you’re good enough to pick up their trash but not good enough to use their porta potties?”

*   *   *

Department Of People Are Pigs

Oh, but it wasn’t all fun and games. As a member of the T/R crew, I had more than enough job security.  As my shift wore on I became lip-curlingly disgusted with my fellow human beings, too many of whom left their discards in the strangest places – as in, obviously and deliberately misplaced, not just dropped in carelessness.

 

Yeah, clever, dude!  Because that’s where recycling goes.

 

Besides the Nike teams’ area there was another restricted/ID required zone: The VIP tent. There was a guy seated at one entrance to the tent, whose job was to check people’s…. status, I guess?…before he let them into the tent.  Moiself  never found out what qualifications were needed to enter the VIP tent (I saw several people – non-VIPs, I assume – turned away).  However, Those Of Us Wearing Race Official® shirts were allowed inside the tent, to do our T/R duties. The first time I approached the VIP tent, I saw Entry Checker Guy eye my volunteer shirt and the extra T/R bags I was carrying. I told him I was there for a VID – a Very Important Duty.  “Ah, yes,” he said.  In a tone both flip and friendly, he added, “But, are you a VIP?”  To which I replied, “I am a Very *Impudent* Person.  Is that VIP enough for you?”  Turns out it was.

When I came back on my third run-through in the VIP tent, its T/R receptacles, while not yet full, needed changing. I was disgusted by the behavior of the VIP tent occupants, who’d left their trash *everywhere.*  A couple of VIPs were seated less than two feet from the T/R containers, and when they saw me, they nodded in acknowledgement (as if to say, “Ah, here comes the help”) and then just  – I couldn’t believe it – set their plates of partially eaten food and their half-empty beer cans down, on the sand, nudging the items toward the T/R receptacles but not bothering to get off of their Very Imperious Posteriors and properly dispose of said trash.  Something in me snapped, a wee bit. T/R volunteers had been told (at the beginning of our shift, by the volunteer coordinator who did our T/R duty training) not to berate or even correct people who discarded their trash improperly, but to just “fix it.”  So, I did pick up the VIP refuse and sort them into the proper bins, but decided to leave the tent with full T/R bins, and did not return to check on them later.

 

 

My HTC volunteer experience brought to mind the gentle…warning, for lack of a better word, which I received many years ago from someone who was quite the dedicated volunteer.  She had volunteered across a variety of fields and for a variety of events and services, for decades, and she told me that when you volunteer, for anything,

“…be prepared to be disappointed in your species.”

As the hours went by it began to bother me, more and more:  the amazing amount of trash, and waste.  T/R receptacle liners bulged with utensils, non-recyclable cups, and plates loaded with food – plates of food from which someone had taken a couple of bites, from hot dogs to burgers and noodle dishes/stir frys, and then thrown aways the rest.  Why do people even bother?  Did it taste bad?  And the food – apart from that served in the VIP and Nike areas, was not free – it had to be purchased from various booths.  Were the people who bought it even hungry; did they get a burrito, then realize, Oh, I don’t really want/need this?  You don’t have to eat every time there is food around, (perhaps the food wasters fell prey to that American Mindset®: “Look, food! Must be time to eat.”)

I just didn’t get it; I didn’t want to get it…

There were many booths in the finish zone, some with sponsors/vendors giving out free cans and bottles of various beverages (kombucha and flavored/”energy” waters). We T/R crew would find many of those cans and bottles cracked open but half full, buried in the sand, or leaning against the recycling receptacles (which had notices asking people to please empty cans and bottles before recycling them).  What’s the deal, of not taking five seconds to empty it? Were they just waiting for/assuming someone else to do it?

 

 

When checking in volunteers were given a Race Official shirt, which we were told we must wear over whatever other shirts we had on, during our shift. After check-in we were directed to move away from the check-in line and wait for a volunteer coordinator to assign us to task groups.  As I stood in the waiting-group, I looked noted that most of that group, plus those in the volunteer check-in line, were female.  One young man, who looked to be in his late teens-early twenties, was standing at the periphery of my waiting group. I pulled on my RO shirt, sidled over to him and asked if he was or had been a HTC runner.  He shook his volunteer shirt (he was holding a Race Official shirt but had not yet donned it) and mumbled, “No; I’m just doing this for a friend.”  Another volunteer also greeted him, and by the look on the young man’s face I couldn’t tell his reaction:  was he mortified, or disgusted, to be surrounded by middle-aged women, some of whom were actually attempting to talk with him.

Once I was on my T/R shift, I continued to note (anecdotally; this was not a scientific survey, but I saw what I saw) how the volunteers were overwhelmingly skewed, gender-wise.  Particularly, those who were chosen for T/R duty – I saw only one man doing T/R.  And while moiself recalls being thanked by four (yes, I counted) men during the five hours of my shift, I lost track of the number of female race participants who, when they saw my Race Official shirt (and noticed me picking through the trash), thanked me for doing so.

That’s women for you, I groused to moiself.  We are the world’s garbage collectors.  I was reminded of a quote I read, decades ago, from a woman who was part of a lawsuit against a local (So Cal) municipality which refused to even consider hiring women to work on refuse collection crews:  men don’t object to the fact that women pick up/deal with the world’s physical and metaphorical garbage, as long as we aren’t paid to do so. 

Stop getting all existentially bummed, I castigated moiself.   If K runs the HTC again next year and asks me to volunteer, I probably will.  I can select a different shift and locale – maybe somewhere midrace, at an exchange point?  Oh, but there’ll be trash duty there as well.  Will I just be removing moiself  from seeing the majority of the waste produced by this event…. This is way too much ruminating on yet another example of how we continue to literally trash our environment, which is our home, our VIP zone.   So, after my shift  ended I went home and washed out the reusable containers in which I’d brought my lunch – yeah, that’ll save the planet….

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [14]

 

*   *   *

May you respect the person who picks up your trash;
May you be the person who picks up your trash;
May we all have the means to buy a (trash-free) island in Fiji;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] Beginning in the 1990s, Hood to Coast implemented a lottery system to select participating teams.

[2] Some elite teams, often corporate (read: Nike) sponsored, have run the course in half that time.

[3] Ah…but only almost.

[4] As in, from within Oregon, not those flying in from, say, Costa Rica.

[5] Exchange leaders work in the exchange zones, where a race participant passes off to the next participant in rotation to run the next leg.  Each leg of the race varies in distance, from approximately 4 – 7 miles.

[6] …and an estimated 500 port-a-potties are staged along the route.

[7] I insisted on the thickest pair of gloves they had at the volunteer check-in booth.  Some T/R volunteers just wore thin vinyl gloves.

[8] All Forrest Stump team members were adaptive athletes: all team members had some physical challenges, including prosthetic legs and/or use wheelchairs due to spinal cord injuries….

[9] The story behind this name: One year a team called themselves, “Class Act.” The next year they were, “Class Act Is Back.” During that second year one of their vans was pulled over and reprimanded by a Sheriff’s deputy when the riders were shooting Super Soakers out the window on the highway.  Thus, the third year’s Prince-inspired moniker, to allow for how their “classy” reputation had been tarnished.

[10] All team members are age 70 or over.

[11] They were young (I think the minimum age for runners is 13) and female, and they were running fast – picking up the pace! – when I saw them cross the finish line.

[12] Son K’s team’s name.

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

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

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

The Word I’m Not Overusing

June 9, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Word I’m Not Overusing

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

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

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

As posed by the No Stupid Questions podcast:

Do you have a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset?

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Word To Stop Over Using

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of Veggiepalooza

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [10]

 

 

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

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

[6] ( see Merriam Webster online dictionary )

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

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

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

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

The Self I’m Not Controlling

March 24, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, science, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of Listen To This, For Something Insightful To Consider
Chapter 347 In A Never-Ending Series

What could be more appropriate for Spring, the season of growth, renewal and new beginnings, than to consider what we think about, and how we pursue, happiness and contentment?

(intro to) Hidden Brain Podcast:  Happiness 2.0: The Path To Contentment.

“The conventional way most of us go about accomplishing anything, is to work hard at it.  When it comes to happiness, many of us say, ‘If this is something I really want, I need to go out and get it.’

This might be especially true in the United States, where the Declaration of Independence celebrates the ‘pursuit of happiness.’  The problem is, pursuing happiness can have the paradoxical effect of chasing happiness away.  Trying to elude unhappiness can be similarly counterproductive.

(in this episode we) kick off a month-long series we’re calling Happiness 2.0. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more elusive the harder we chase it, and what we can do instead to build a lasting sense of contentment.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Commander In Chief

What would moiself  do without podcasts?   [1]

Can’t remember where I heard this (a podcast, most likely), so moiself  apologizes for the lack of attribution….

Research into human nature  (aka the full employment strategy for psychologiss) has led to the tactic of *reframing* negative or tricky situations, which can be an effective solution to understanding and solving them.  For example, take the words self-control and self-command.

 

 

Talking about “self-control” seems to have fallen out of behavioral science vogue. What is become more popular is attributing bad habits and harmful behavior patterns to a combination of genetics, environment, etc. Certainly, these are all factors for any situation, positive or negative.  But if you have a problem with the concept of self-control (or even with the term itself), try reframing it to this: self-command.

But first, we at self-command central  [2]  need to define a term that is used in subsequent paragraphs:  Dead Food.

 

Oh, do you really?

 

 

“ ‘Dead food’ is the newest title given to food that has had the life packaged, preserved, or cooked out of it, to the point where it has become sadly void of virtually all nutritional value. Dead food refers to processed food or food without nutrients. It is called dead because it has been refined to a point that it is bereft of minerals, vitamins, and fibers.

These types of ‘foods’ are not foods!!!  Rather they are a series of synthetically derived ingredients that are mixed together into something that tastes OK, has a long shelf life and actually does more harm than good to our health. In recent times these health depriving ‘foods’ have become quite popular and often a staple in the Standard Western Diet. As such, we have seen an incredible rise in modern diseases like diabetes, obesity, autoimmune diseases, infertility, cancer and more….

 Live foods are foods that are consumed fresh, raw and/or in a condition as close as possible to their original, vibrant, living state. The basic idea behind all live foods is retaining the very best that natural foods have to offer, including live enzymes, antioxidants and other nutrients.
(dead food v. alive food, deepH.com )

 

Yep, I’m out to ruin Girl Scout cookies for you.

 

“There are numerous ways to classify food—low fat, high sodium, low fiber, high sugar, clean, gluten free, vegetarian, lactose free, to name a few. But what if you were told the path to good health was to eat only ‘alive’ food and avoid ‘dead’ food?

So, what exactly is a ‘dead’ food? If it can sit on your counter for days or weeks and not go bad, then it’s a dead food. These foods are refined, highly processed, often synthetic and have little-to-no nutritional value. Think about foods like cheese-flavored crackers, meal replacement bars, fruit snacks and flavored beverages. Chemicals? Check. Artificial colors and flavors? Check. Ingredients on the label that you can’t pronounce? Check.

Unfortunately, these processed, chemical-rich foods are pervasive in the American diet. We want fast, convenient and tasty food and there’s plenty on the supermarket shelves that fit the bill.”
( Alive food v. Dead food, ACE certification )

*Most of us know about (or are at least familiar with the concept of ) the nutritional ideal of the “perfect plate,” which consists of 50 % veggies and fruit, 25 % whole grains, and 25 % a lean/high fiber protein source.  [3]

* Most of us know, or at least have heard, that we should not drink our calories, and that sugar-laden soft drinks, milk shakes and sports drinks – even allegedly healthy smoothies – are awash in calories but don’t make you feel full, and that diet sodas and artificially sweetened beverages are no better than their full sugar counterparts and in fact are also linked to increased food cravings for high calorie foods and Type II diabetes    [4]….

* Most of us know, or at least have heard, that (as per the AARP’s phrasing) “ Your sainted mother  [5]  was wrong — it’s bad to clean your plate. The iron rule: Exercise more; eat less….”

 

Damn right I’m gonna eat more than one slice at the office potluck because I * deserve* it, and besides, my co-workers are all jerks….

 

*   *   *

 

We don’t necessarily let our meals be dominated by simple carbs (bread, white rice, white pasta, sugar, chips) and soft drinks, and all the synthetic snack foods, cereals, and other dead foods, because we’re lazy or incompetent or greedy.    [6]

But it’s likely we’ve  stopped commanding you own lives. Who is in charge?

Advertisers for the industrial/fast/dead food industries are trying to get us to eat when we’re not hungry, and to think that we’re hungry 24/7.  The entertainment industry wants us to park your badonkadonks on the sofa from dinner time to bedtime, stream our brains out and then brag about it later.  Remember when the word “binge” did not have positive connotations (“We ordered in and binged all episodes of ‘Housewives of Chernobyl’ last night…”)?

Self-command.  Who is calling the shots in your life, and what are the areas in your life  where the commander is anyone, anything, but yourself?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Back to Happiness and Contentment:
In Praise Of Simple Pleasures

There is simple yet insightful essay (recently referred to by  The Washington Post Columnist Carolyn Hax) that, although written some 18 years ago, addresses some of what we now might call gratitude awareness and mindfulness before those concepts got into the mainstream.

When I read the essay I was reminded of a phone call in January with daughter Belle.  After catching up with her goings-on, Belle asked MH and I about what we were doing, and I couldn’t really think of much to say, other than something like it was just another “uneventful normal day.”

Many “normal days” in a row, are, as the essay’s author points out, the bulk of days for most people.  Thus, since “most of life *is* normal days, to be in love with them is to be in love with life.”

To be in love with normal days is to be in love with life.

 

 

However much we await the arrival of fantastic things, or dread the tragedies and anticipate their passing…it all does pass, or at least change.  Meanwhile…

“How many of us pass our lives in anticipation? Of the larger homes, smaller bodies and fattened bank accounts of our dreams; of the losses and disasters of our nightmares? We’re so focused on what we pray will happen or on what we hope never will happen that we’re blind to what is.

What is, for most people, is normal days.

Days when you’re aware of being neither particularly sick nor well. When your relatives, friends and partners waver between buoying you up and sitting on your nerves; when you’re too busy to notice much of anything — except that you’re too busy. Days when people ask, “So what happened today?” and you pause, think and come up with squat.

Those are days worth loving.”
(excerpt from “The Dog’s Wet And Life Is Wonderful,”
Donna Britt, The Washington Post, June 16, 1995)

I found the essay both sweet and profound, and hope y’all check it out.

And in praise and recognition of simple pleasures, moiself  will confess to the first one that sprang to my normal (well, for me) mind:

I love it that my family knows I will appreciate (and use) a jar of “farty putty.”    [7]

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Secret To Eternal Youth

Dateline: Monday, North Coast Pinball.  I am playing one of the arcade’s newest – as in, most recently acquired – games.    [8]   A ~12 year old boy, whom I’d seen earlier playing some of the games, was playing chess with his sister (? they look like fraternal twins),  at the arcade’s games table, which is a few feet from the pinball machine I’m playing. He and his sister get up to leave, and he approaches me.  He looks at me shyly, glances down at his shoes, then looks up and smiles the sweetest bright-eyed smile I’ve seen in years.  He holds out two tokens in his right hand, and nods at me.

“For me?” I ask.  He nods again, and blushes.  I take the tokens and thank him.  The two kids leave the arcade, and I inform WI, the arcade owner, of this encounter.

“Awww,” WI says, raising his voice two octaves.  “ ‘Will you be my valentine?’ “

“It was so sweet,” moiself  gushes.  “Like being asked to go steady.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week 

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
 (Author E.B. White )

 

 

*   *   *

May you expeience the emotional equivalent of being asked to go steady;
May you strive to be in love with the life of normal days;
May you find a way to work the word  badonkadonks  into your next conversation;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Plenty, actually.  Just like I did, and continue to do, before this genre of news and entertainment existed.

[2] Okay; there’s no such thing, but I’m working on it.

[3] Plant-based, ideally!

[4] Artificial sweeteners lead to a reduction in the hormone that inhibits appetite, increase the risk of Type II diabetes and obesity (Multiple sources, including NPR 10-7-21

[5] Or grandparents, who lived through The Great Depression and had it hammered into them that you never know when (or if) your next meal is coming so you must eat all of whatever is offered to you.

[6] Or, perhaps a brutally frank self-assessment and/or some sessions with a trained counselor might indicate that, maybe, we *are* and now that we have identified these tendencies we can work on overcoming and/or managing them.

[7] Which is why I found one in last year’s Christmas stocking.

[8] Bally’s World Cup Soccer.  I love it when the machine’s voice yells, “GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAL!”

The Sign I’m Not Following

January 20, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, radio & podcasts, science, sports, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of What A Difference A Letter Makes

Dateline: Saturday; mid-afternoon; on my way to drop off donations to Goodwill.  Driving south on a throughway street which bisects residential areas to its east and west, I pass a blue sign on the left side of the road  [1] . This sign directs you to find:

ARISE
CHURCH →

The sign is bent in the middle, which causes moiself, at first glance, to miss the I  in the top word.

All those headed to the church of the Holy ARSE, turn right.

 

I like big butts and I cannot lie….

 

*   *   *

Department Of, Oh, Ya Think?

Dateline: 6:45am last Saturday.  A dear friend is in the hospital, recovering from life-altering  [2]  surgery.  I found a respected medical clinic’s website and looked up information on radical cystectomy, the surgery he has undergone. From the site:

“The procedure to remove the entire bladder is called a radical cystectomy. In men, this typically includes removal of the prostate and seminal vesicles….
“After removing your bladder, your surgeon also needs to create a new way to store urine and have it leave your body. This is called urinary diversion.”

Under risks associated with urinary diversion  there is the following bullet point. Which I had to read several times to assure  moiself,  yep, that’s what it says.  Apparently, one of the risks following removal of your bladder is:

* Loss of bladder control (urinary incontinence)

 

 

Really. 

Yeah; kinda difficult to control an organ you no longer have in your body.

 

 

*   *   *

Dateline: last week, Valley Art Gallery

Department Of Gawddammit It’s Like They Know I’m Coming In…

And so they put this right where I’ll see it.  Because a sculpture like this, displaying both the talent and whimsy which moiself  so admires in art…and which the artist oh-so-appropriately-not-to-mention-appealingly named, “Speckled Twerp”…they know who’s going to take it home.

 

 

 

At first I tried to divert moiself  by falling for this charming piece, called…wait for it…Yellow Chicken.

 

 

 

 

But the twerp in me would not be denied.

 

 

“Are we all clear on the new installation?  Have the twerp piece where she’ll see it, and maybe distract her first with the chicken….”

*   *   *

Department Of Things You Talk About With Good Friends After A Good Lunch

Cattywampus
Hornswoggled
Bumfuzzle
Taradiddle
Withershins
Collywobbles
Gardyloo
Flummadiddle

The Miriam Webster online dictionary has a special link for those and other “funny-sounding words,” but that’s not enough, sez moiself  (and friends agree).  There needs to be a special day set aside, or declared, to encourage the usage of these words.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why Has It Taken Me So Long To Realize This?

I don’t use marjoram.  As of last Wednesday, there is no longer a jar of marjoram in my Wall O’ Spices ®.  You know how it is, when you redo your kitchen’s spice holding system and buy those pre-printed spice jar labels which of course include one for marjoram and you think, “Ah yes, a classic spice,” and so you give it jar space but then forget that you never use it because…you never use it.

 

 

Nor is there a marjoram jar or tin on the cabinet shelves filled with refills for spices I commonly use, and less-commonly-but-still-occasionally-used ones, from amchur and  asafetida to celery powder to gochugaru.

 

 

When I last encountered a recipe calling for marjoram  [3]  I used up the pitiful amount I had left.  And when looking for more, I found none in the bulk sections of several markets, and I wasn’t about to pay $8.99 for a small jar which would go stale before I would use even 10% of it.

Thus, for perhaps the first time in my adult life, I am marjoram-free.

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Getting To Play The Game

Check this out, for an interesting listen: the recent Clear + Vivid podcast Alison Gopnik: Making AI more childlike.

Gopnik is a professor of psychology and researcher into cognitive and language development. She spoke with C+V podcast host Alan Alda about her (and other people’s) research which shows how children are generally curious about their world; thus, children are interested in science and have innate abilities for experimentation and theory formation…then tend to lose interest in the subject itself as they age.  Gopnik, along with many other scientists, argue that this is, in great part, because of the way science is taught:

“Suppose we taught baseball the way we teach science.  So for the first five years you’d be reading about baseball games, and maybe you’d be reading about some of the rules. And then in high school you’d get to reproduce famous baseball plays…and you would never get to play the game until you were in graduate school….
That’s kind of the way we teach science – you don’t really play the game, you don’t really *do* science, until you’re in graduate school.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Here We Go Again
Sub-Department OF Preview Of Coming Grievances Attractions

( Sub- Department explanation: my next three blogs will deal with various aspects of The Writing Life As Moiself  Sees It ®  ).

 

 

Dateline: Earlier this month, researching and updating guidelines for literary journals and publishers.    [4]  What I find in my research confirms one of many reasons moiself  rarely submits my work anymore. For example, I come across this, from the guidelines of a self-proclaimed “international” journal:

“Submissions are open to all, but we particularly welcome work from….
First Nations and POC writers, the LGBTQI+ community, and writers with a disability.”

Should I decide to send my work to this journal I, like any writer submitting work to any journal, would not be doing so in person.  I’d submit material as per their guidelines: either online via their submissions portal (the default nowadays) or via mail (much less common, but still used). Either way, the journal’s editors can neither see nor hear nor speak with me.

 

 

My first name may or may not indicate my gender; my surname might convey an impression (which could be a false impression either way) as to whether I am or am not a First Nations and POC writer.  How will the editors know if I am a LGBTQI+ community, or a  writer with a disability, unless I declare this in my cover letter?  And if I do so, will the journal’s editors then “particularly welcome” my story due to my personal particulars that they have particularly decided to find particularly welcoming?

 

 

Moiself  can’t help but suspect that the content of my work will be read and judged differently under such circumstances.  Which moiself  finds both ethically odious and disturbing.  Speaking  [5]   both as a writer and *especially* as a reader, I don’t give a flying buttress’s butthole…

 

“Excusez-moi?!?!!”

 

 …about writers’ “identities” or “qualities.”  I’m interested in the quality of the *stories* they write, not in who or what they *are.*

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [6]

 

*   *   *

May you remember to make someone a sandwich;
May you support the reform of how we teach science in schools;
May you not be hornswaggled into giving a tarradiddle’s colleywobbles
about doing things widdershins;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] You’ve seen those signs, with names of churches or other businesses located in an otherwise residential area.

[2] And ultimatly, lifesaving, fingers crossed!

[3] In itself a rare thing, and I have found that the recipe either won’t miss it or that oregano will do just fine – or even better – instead.

[4] (I’ve addressed complained about this issue previously, in this space.

[5] There should be at least five footnotes in this post.

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

The Rings I’m Not Wearing

December 9, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Rings I’m Not Wearing

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

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.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If You’re Already Sick Of The Holiday Cheer…

Then this might be for you:  The entire L.A. City Council racist audio leak, transcribed and annotated by The Los Angeles Times.

 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-21/la-city-council-racist-audio-leak-transcription-annotation

 

 

Well, *listen* and weep….

 

Y’all may remember the scandal, which broke in October and which moiself  wrote about in my November 4 post.  Bare bones summary of a very complicated story:  someone(s)   [2] secretly recorded a behind-closed doors meeting of three Los Angeles City Council members and a local labor leader, wherein Council President Nury Martinez and other attendees slammed some of her fellow council members, gleefully made racist remarks, and spoke openly about how the city’s political districts should be carved up to advantage certain constituencies.

The council was thrown into turmoil, Martinez resigned, and some long-overdue rumination re revising and reckoning our “tribalism” in politics has been aired, including in a thoughtful op-ed by  LAT columnist Sandy Banks.

Banks opens her essay with the story of a hurtful incident which happened to her many years ago.  Riding a crowded bus and exhausted from a long day at a new job, Banks was  touched when a young Latina woman gesture to Banks to take the seat next to her.  The Latina woman had just herself been beckoned by an elderly Asian woman to take the seat beside her, but that same elderly woman reacted with visible disgust when the Latina in turn invited the Black woman to join them…and the Asian woman stood up and moved to another part of the bus.

…It has been several years since that episode, but the hurt, anger and shame it roused in me resurfaced last month when I listened to three of our city’s elected Latino leaders gleefully mocking and insulting Black people.
Their tirade made international news, because of the crude and racist language they used to describe Black, gay, Armenian, Jewish and Oaxacan people in a private meeting, secretly recorded, about increasing the political power of Latinos at the expense of other struggling groups.
Then, adding insult to injury in the days that followed, the politicians larded their pseudo apologies with references to serving “communities of color” — when the only color they really seem to care about is light brown. Their own.
And that got me thinking about whether the label has outlived its utility….
Maybe now is the time to scrap the “people of color” label and its “communities of color” twin — along with the pretense that all nonwhite groups can be seamlessly yoked together in the fight for equality by the color of our skin.

 

 

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the bonds between racial and ethnic groups in multicultural Los Angeles are weak. We may share economic stressors and even neighborhoods, but we have different priorities, challenges and needs — and apparently little regard for solidarity, given that the leaders of our city’s largest ethnic group were trying to hoard power by chopping other groups off at the knees.
The “people of color” frame began to take shape decades ago…. But research by UCLA political science professor Efrén Pérez has found that “the unity behind ‘people of color’ crumbles” when individual racial groups feel their unique challenges are being ignored.
“There is nothing natural about camaraderie among people of color,” Pérez wrote in a 2020 opinion piece for the Washington Post. “For every commonality, a point of difference intrudes on unity.”
Dropping the label wouldn’t mean giving up on the idea that there’s power in our collective energy. But it would allow us to scrap the fantasy that Black, Latino, Asian American and Indigenous people are the sum of our similarities, and should be willing to sublimate our own priorities to advance others’ needs.
And while “people of color” is part of the zeitgeist today, debate over the concept has long been robust in academic and political arenas….
“We have talked about this a lot over the years,” said USC law professor Jody Armour, who specializes in the intersection of race and justice. “I’ve always been skeptical of the ‘people of color’ category.’…. The POC category has replicated this country’s reductive colorism, which strands dark-skinned people at the bottom of its ‘people of color’ hierarchy. It’s become a way ‘of camouflaging anti-Blackness,” Armour says.
( excerpts from “Lessons of the audio leak: Solidarity is dead.
Let’s ditch the label ‘people of color,’ “
By Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times, 11-21-22 )

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Bored Of The Rings

Moiself  recently read an advice column wherein a man sought counsel on what, to him, seemed a vexing dilemma, and what to me was a “problem” worthy of wanting to give him and like-minded others face-palming so cosmic as to launch them into orbit.

 

“Incoming!”

 

The man wanted to propose marriage to his sweetie.  His dilemma, as he saw it, was that his partner makes so much more money than he does that any ring he would buy or pick out would not be as fancy or somehow as “deserving” as that which she could get for herself.  He did acknowledge in his letter that “she’s just not a fancy jewelry type person,”  and that they had already been discussing marriage, and she’d indicated she wouldn’t necessarily want an engagement ring at all.

 

 

Oh my… That took me back. But first, this public service announcement.

Men, women – we’ve all have been lied to. Diamonds are not a rare treasure, despite the fact that the jewelry industry in general and diamond pushers in specific want you to think so, and have worked damn hard to equate the color, carat, cut, clarity the of rock to the quality of your loooooooooove.  And no one works that scam angle quite like the Debeers company.

 

 

“The perfect diamond is a promise of the perfect relationship, because love is supposedly rare and so is this stone. We want the story that tells us our relationship is special. And we don’t want to accept that rarity isn’t all that meaningful.”
(“Diamonds Aren’t Special and Neither is Your Love,”
The Atlantic, 1-29-21)

Ahhh, the rings.  Wedding rings; sure, whatever.  But the whole engagement ring thing, where one person in the couple wears one but the other does not, reeks of sexism and the history of marriage as property transfer of a woman, from her birth family (read: father) to her husband. I suppose a ring is a more genteel way than pissing a circle around the woman to declare territorial rights, but it is still a pronouncement of ownership, and not any less creepy to me just because our culture has been injured to it.

Answer me this, moiself  asks rhetorically (because no one has been able to give a cogent reason when I’ve asked seriously):  Why is it the woman who wears an outward signal of “I’m ‘taken’ ”  [3]  and the man does not, when the couple are both engaged to be married?

Why are engagement rings still even a thing? It’s just…stupid.

Menfolk, the marketing that is aimed toward you with regard to this “tradition” is truly mind-numbing.  It is meant to get men to internalize the idea that the engagement rings they pick out are signifiers of their commitment and worth.  Also, let’s face it, the not-so-subliminal attachment message is that the bigger/more expensive the ring he can afford, the bigger the man’s…uh, manliness.

 

Are you man enough to give her this?

 

Interesting anecdote:  despite the stereotype of women being interested in such things, my “congratulations” to couples who announce their engagement is never followed with “Ooooh, lemme see the ring.”  Because I don’t give a flying fuck about such foolishness and wish we’d all move beyond that.  I do give a flying fuck about this very-interesting-fact-of-my-experience:  the only time an engagement ring has been proudly and insistently displayed to me in those announcement circumstances has been via the engaged dudes.  For example: on at least three different occasions – a work or holiday party, or other social gathering – when a couple’s engagement was announced, as I started to say something congratulatory to the couple, the man grabbed his fiancé’s left hand, shoved it in front of my face, and all but demanded that I praise the ring he’d given her.

I suppose that’s a more socially acceptable way to brag than for him to drop trou at the party and display his 14 karat manliness, but….

 

 

MH and I have been married for 30 something years now.   [4]    It should come as no surprise that I did not wear an engagement ring, nor was I given one by MH, because he knew my opinions on the matter.  When we were Getting Serious ® and discussing our future together, MH said, just to check, that he assumed I would not want an engagement ring?  I told him that I’d never worn rings of any kind, with the exception of my The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ® spy ring and my high school class ring, only one of which I treasured and both of which I lost after just a few weeks of wearing.  [5]

 

 

Also, I’d never worn much jewelry of any kind– rings, bracelets, necklaces – except for earrings.  I had my ears pierced when I was a junior in college, at the behest of one of my roommates who declared one holiday season that I was a difficult person to shop for and “Could you just please get your gawddamn ears pierced so I can always know what to get you for Christmas?”    [6]

MH and I laughed when I told him this story, and I joked, “Yeah, so, engagement earrings….”

Not long after that (what I assumed was a) throwaway remark, MH presented me with a pair of diamond “engagement earrings.”  [7]    I almost convinced him to get one of his ears pierced so we both could each wear one.  But he was still young enough and concerned enough with what his parents would think,   [8]   and respectfully declined my request.  Somehow, we both managed to survive our engagement without me wearing the traditional visible marker of such.  We chose matching wedding rings: simple gold bands engraved with a weave pattern.

Fast forward thirty years.  One evening at dinner MH said something along the lines of, “BTW, in case you’re wondering why I’m not wearing my wedding ring….” which caused me to look at his left hand and see that yep, his fourth finger was ringless. No, I hadn’t noticed.  He told me that in the past few weeks at work his fingers had started to ache and swell.  He’d visited his workplace’s occupational nurse, who couldn’t tell if the puffiness was the beginnings of arthritis or simply the results of too much clickety-clack time on keyboard, but advised that MH remove the ring now in case the swelling got so bad he had to have it cut off.    [9]

 

Yeah, don’t let it get to this point.

 

“Oh, that makes sense,” I replied. Then I immediately took off my wedding band and put it in a safe place. I assured MH that I did not do so out of spite or anything negative; rather, for parallel conformity. We are either both wearing wedding rings, or we aren’t.

 

 

In the weeks to come MH investigated ring alternatives, while I actually/kinda/sorta felt like I didn’t need it.  Sure, I’d worn one for almost 30 years at that point, but a part of me had never gotten used to wearing a ring, and I was always twisting it and found it cumbersome for handwashing.  I recalled to him, from my previous life of working in the medical profession, how over the years I’d met and talked with several patients and couples who did not wear wedding rings, typically for one of two reasons:

(1) occupational hazards; i.e. one or both of them had jobs in metalworking or sports or manufacturing jobs where avulsion (eeeewwww….ick)  was a risk, or

(2) a dermatologic allergy to the metals used in the ring bands.

Some of the couples fashioned their own bands out of various other materials; one couple chose not to wear rings; at least two couples I met had their wedding rings tattooed around their ring fingers.    [10]

MH did some online searching and found silicone bands he liked.  They are flexible, come in a variety of sizes, widths, colors and patterns– even camo, for the romantic military fanatic outdoorsman.  Bonus: they usually cost less than $30, so you don’t feel bad (and by you of course I mean moiself ) if you lose them.  It’s fun, to occasionally change the color and pattern.  After all, the only thing that separates us from our fellow primates is our ability to accessorize.  Anyway, that is what we have both worn ever since.

 

My current one is a dark purple.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“Instead of wondering why I don’t need god to be good, ask yourself why others do. Consider that true morality lies in doing what’s right without expectation of divine retribution or recompense for our actions.”
 ( Freethought Today, 11-22 excerpt from “Letter to a Mormon mother,” by Oliver Brown,
5th place winner of FFRF’s 2022 high school essay contest,    [12] )

*   *   *

May you reconsider your usage of POC and other group-signifying terms;
May you discover the cheap thrills of wearing colorful silicon rings;
May you get your gawddamm ears pierced as an easy gift receiving solution;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] who, as of this writing, have not been identified.

[3] Which is how one man mansplained engagements rings to me, when I wondered aloud about their meaning.

[4] Don’t ask me to do the math, which I have to do in order to remember.  Okay; it’s 34.

[5] My parents insisted I get my high school class ring, because I might regret *not* having one later…why they thought I would regret such a thing, I have no idea.  I lost the ring in a bodysurfing wipeout at Newport Beach.

[6] Yes, Sandra Banana, that was you.

[7] When the horrible news about diamond mining and the “blood” diamonds began emerging years later, I stopped wearing them, first “warning” MH of my intent.  I did not fault him, and neither did he:  he’d bought them in good faith and had no idea about how dirty the diamond industry was.

[8] After all, he was already dating and now engaged to this crazy older woman….

[9] The ring, not the finger.

[10] In discussing the various ring alternatives with our offspring, our generously tattooed daughter was – surprise! – highly in favor of the ink option.

[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

[12] The William Schulx High School Essay Contest for college-bound seniors had this prompt for 2022 contest entrants:  “Please write a letter to a religious friend, relative, classmate, teacher, etc., who buys the myth that one can’t be moral without believing in a god.”

The Planet I’m Not Worshipping

November 25, 2022

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Planet I’m Not Worshipping

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

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

Can you guess this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Blast From The Past

Seeing as how MH and I are hosting Thanksgiving/harvest day festivities at our Humble Abode ®, moiself  will not be sober enough able to do my usual Thursday night blog editing. 

 

 

Thus, a rerun.

Apropos of…something I’ve already forgotten, I was recently given cause to look up what I had, previously in this space, written about ancestor worship (from 2-17-17):

 

 

As regular readers of this blog know (and new or sporadic readers will likely surmise), I am not a religious person. I was raised by church-going, Christian parents;  [2]   flirted with/researched a variety of denominations during/post college; was a member (even served as a deacon, holy shit!) of a UCC church  [3]  for many years; happily (read: finally) came out over 15 years ago as a lifelong skeptic-atheist-Freethinker-Bright.

While I hold a modicum of respect for some of the ideals and practices of, say, contemporary non-theistic Buddhism and Unitarianism and Jainism, I find all religions to be more-or less silly/offensive/just plain fallacious. There is one “spiritual” practice, however, which I can somewhat understand, if only in that it makes a teesny-tiny, infinitesimally wee bit o’ sense:

Ancestor worship.

 

 

Yes, really.

Make that, ancestor *veneration,* not worship. For the love of the FSM,   [4]   get off your knees, open your eyes, and stop bowing your head – nobody should “worship” anything.

Worship: VERB
[with object] Show reverence and adoration for (a deity)
1.1  [no object] Take part in a religious ceremony.
(English Oxford Living Dictionary)

Unlike the claims of religions which have one or more deities, you don’t have to take your ancestors’ existence on “faith”  [5]  – you know they have lived (you yourself are evidence of that); you’ve likely met them one, or two or sometimes even three, generations back. From the photo albums and other heirlooms to the birth certificates, school and county records, family businesses, homes, farmsteads, and kinfolk near and far, you’ve an idea of what they have “given” you, materially, intellectually and emotionally – you’ve some idea what you might be grateful for.

Best of all, you’ve little incentive to argue or go to war with other people over whose interpretation of what their Imaginary Friend wants is correct. Your neighbor’s ancestors are their business, and yours are yours.

Of course, the option of ancestor veneration leaves out a small subset of people: those who have little or no knowledge of their forebears, such as certain kinds of adoptees,   [6]  as well as those who have just enough information (e.g., children in the foster care system) to…well, I’ll put it this way: if you come from two generations of meth addicts, ancestor veneration might not be the spiritual practice to float your boat.

Now then.  By ancestor veneration I’m not talking any kind of belief system wherein the dead are beseeched to intercede on behalf of the living – that’s just as silly as all the others. I do not believe that my deceased grandparents and parents have a continued existence in a spirit world, or that their spirits look after moiself  and my family in particular or the world in general, or that they somehow can influence the fate of the living. I’m talking about a practice of honor and appreciation, in which a person might use the roads paved and trails blazed by previous generations as a focal point for remembrance and gratitude.

 

Thanks for the dimples, Dad.

 

I’m not sure what brought the previous topic to mind.  A likely suspect is the recent death of my mother. Anyway, y’all have my permission to honor your ancestors…as well as my fervent wish that that is as far as your theology goes. However, as I look at the state of the world, it appears that the old superstitions have some staying power. As long as people will continue to proclaim and dispute over whose invisible leader is the best-est, I’d like someone to come up with another dog in the fight.

As the Bay Area’s own Huey Lewis, the Bard Of The Bammies, once sang, I Want A New Drug.

Putting it yet another way, y’all have my encouragement (if you are religiously inclined) to come up with a new religion, within the following parameters: in this belief system, it is the men who are required, in one form or another, to cover themselves.

That’s it. Yep. That’s the entire theology in a nutshell.   [7]

From a light veil or hijab – make, that, he-jab –  to a full-body, Bro-burqa, your theology must include all the usual nonsense reasons (modesty; an easily offended deity; protection from your fellow believers who will beat the holy crap out of you if you show any evidence of human form) as to why certain people –  in this case, those with boy parts – must be covered in public.

Duuuuude – put a scarf on it.

 

We swear on Her Holy name, it doesn’t make your butt look big, no, not at all.

 

*   *   *

That was then; this is now.  Last week, reveling in an awesome autumn day, I found moiself  thinking about Wicca and/or the contemporary pagan/nature spiritualities – those which mark the passing of the seasons – as another category of spiritual practices which make more sense to me.  This doesn’t mean I am or would consider being a sun or “goddess” worshiper; it’s just that, unlike the tenants of the so-called “revealed” religions,   [8]   with those nature-centered ideologies we can see and directly experience what is being venerated.

Humans living in extreme regions –  i.e., at the poles or the equator (or Southern California) –  [9]   don’t have the dramatic difference of the four season changes that we who inhabit the middle latitudes experience.  Still, the earth has seasons and cycles; we live here; they affect us.   But again, this form of spirituality gets my Nod Of Approval® for *acknowledgement,* not worship.  As in, after a period of torrential downpour I appreciate the sun; after an unremittingly unrelenting bout of summer heat moiself  appreciates the rain.

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Planet Earth Edition

How can you tell the ocean is friendly?
It waves.

I love the way the Earth rotates – it makes my day.

How can you tell Mother Nature watches a lot of Oprah from June – November?
Because it looks like everybody gets a hurricane.

 

*   *   *

May you take care of your Mother;
May you appreciate the seasons;
May you enjoy those leftovers;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] Lutheran, specifically: what was once called the ALC and now ELCA, for those obsessives interested in denominational nitpicking. It wasn’t one of the “synod” denominations (Missouri & Wisconsin), which are closer to Catholicism in their conservative doctrines (e.g. women cannot be ordained as ministers; liking to snipe about other denominations as being the “not true” faiths) .

[3] Which I have, since leaving, recommended to people who, for whatever reasons, are looking for a liberal Christian church experience and/or community.

[4] The Flying Spaghetti Monster.   “All praise to his noodly appendage.”

[5] Although, especially at Thanksgiving when someone brings up politics, you may have to take them with a helluva big grain of salt.

[6] If you’re counting “blood” kin as the only kind of ancestors which matter. Which I hope you are not.

[7] Which is the proper receptacle for all theologies.

[8] Revealed religions are religions based on the supposed revelations of god(s) to humans, particularly as described in the scriptures of those religions. Thus, the existence of these gods depends on revelation by said gods, to humans, of ideas that would not have been arrived at by natural reason alone. Examples of revealed religions are the primary monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’ism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Sikhism.

[9] Growing up in So Cal we used to joke we had two seasons:  brown and tan.

The Holiday I’m Not Renaming

November 18, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, 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, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, sports, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday I’m Not Renaming

Department Of It’s The Little Things Which Make Life Worth Living
In These Trying Political Times

Dateline: Tuesday afternoon. Apropos of…whatever, my offspring, son K and daughter Belle, have this exchange on our family messenger group, Yep!!!! Cats!!!!     [1]     (sans pix; these are my illustrations):

K:
I did not realize how truly gigantic Fetterman is.
He’s like 6’9.”
Since words and reason don’t work we now have Fetterman
to give the insane senators a swirly.

Belle:
(thumbs up)
First on the list: Mitch McConnell.

 

 

Belle:
Although I think just turning him upside-down would kill him,
probably couldn’t even get to the swirly part.

 

 

 

Moiself  walked around the rest of the afternoon with a big smile on my face, thanks to the imagery provided by my offspring. 

 

Relax, Mitchie-boy. Just think of it as your well-deserved spa treatment.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Another Good Thing ® About Social Media

There’s no shortage of criticisms of the various social media outlets, and most critiques are legit, I’d wager.   [2]   Even as I am encouraging those who complain about supporting a certain megalomaniac to drop their Twitter accounts and stop buying Teslas, moiself  remains on one social media site: Facebook. Here’s one of the reasons why.

Dateline: earlier this week.   A FB friend posts pictures of his grandchild‘s visit to what looks to be an amusement park, and picture shows the child playing that classic arcade game, Whac-a-mole. Seeing this picture prompts a lovely flashback for moiself – a memory I’ve not thought of in decades.

Dateline of memory: A long time in a galaxy far far away (Southern California). I am visiting my parents at their home in Santa Ana.  It’s summertime, and the County Fair is on.  My parents tell me they haven’t been to a state or county fair in ages, and suggest we go. And so we do. As we walk past the various cheesy games and merchandise and food booths, nothing catches our interest, until we come to an arcade. I espy a Whac-A-Mole game, and instantly am obsessed with getting my mother to play it.

 

 

My mother is hesitant, despite my enthusiastic recommendation. She knows nothing about it, she says (Even better!!!, moiself  thinks to  moiself ) I assure her that it’s a straightforward game, no complicated strategy or levels or scenarios: she simply must hold the mallet and whack the heads of the moles as they pop up from the console.

“Why?” she asks me.

“There’s no time to get existential right now,” I reply.  I put my two quarters in the slot, press the game’s start button and put the mallet in my mother’s hand.  “You don’t want me to waste fifty cents, right, Mom? Look – there’s one!  Pretend it’s digging up your rosebushes!”

Unlike the champ in the above video, my mother is exquisitely awful at Whac-A-Mole. Her timing is atrocious; even so, she soon gets into it in her own way, emitting a high-pitched, “Oh!” whenever a mole head appears, followed by her delayed whack at its head. My father and I, standing to the side of the game console, are doubled over with laughter as we watch my mild-mannered mother, with an increasing maniacal look in her eyes, pursues those pesky moles:

“Oh!”
(whack)

“Oh!”
(whack)

“Oh!” (whack) “Oh!” (whack)

“Oh oh oh oh oh oh!”
(whack whack whack whack whack whack)

It is one of my favorite memories of her.

 

This is another one.

 

I haven’t gone to a county fairs in years and it’s been even longer since I’ve even seen a Whac-a-mole game.  So, then:  would that memory have been prompted by anything else, save for a post on social media? It’s not like I would have seen a picture of my friend’s grandchild playing this game – like most of my FB friends, we don’t have a letter-writing kind of relationship.  

*   *   *

Department Of Well That’s Not Up To Their Usual Standards

Moiself  is referring to the recent rerun of an interview with (the late) Loretta Lynn on Fresh Air .

It was a tad interesting, due to the skills of FA host, Terry Gross, arguably   [3]  the best interviewer out there.  But IMO it was not up to the usual FA standards.  This was because Lynn was (again, IMO)….  There’s no easy way to say it.  The guest can make or break the interview.  And it wasn’t that Lynn was a “bad” guest, or an audaciously humorless and insufferably boorish one like a notable few TG has dealt with.  [4]   On the contrary.  Lynn was pleasant enough, but it seemed to me that she was also…well… rather…simple, or basic. Not plucking every string on her guitar, so to speak.

 

In the history of country music, LL’s talent was even bigger than her hair.

 

LL seemed not at all interested in self-reflection and/or discussing or exploring how she writes her songs.  Okay; fine; her prerogative.  But then, why agree to be come on a show where the whole point is to talk about your work as a female singer who broke ground in her genre for writing her own songs?

The point of a FA interview with a musician/singer/songwriter is to reflect upon one’s work, technique, inspiration, and so on.  Which Lynn summed up in sentences like, “Oh, I don’t really know,” or “I don’t like to talk about that.” Lynn’s songs are personal – she’s said in previous interviews that her husband was, in one way or another, “in every song” she wrote, yet she wouldn’t go further when FA  host TG would ask her about *how* or why her husband is in a particular song.

And TG let her get away with it.

LL’s song Fist City is borderline hilarious in some ways and disturbing in others.  And TG did not probe into that, as I have heard her done, through the years – the decades now –  that I’ve been listening to FA interviews.  Gross is insightful and persistent as an interviewer, and respectfully so.  She typically does not give up after one attempted conversational diversion by a guest.  And her guest was country music legend Loretta Lynn, who has written all these classic country songs about women trying to take her man (including, wait for it: “You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man”), and… hello? What are those lyrics about?

 

 

If it had been any other songwriter, I think TG would have asked more persistently about the song’s implications.  She did try, but Lynn wasn’t having any of it.  “Oh I don’t want to talk about that,” LL would purr, in her soft Kentucky lilt.

I wanted TG to get LL to at least to consider why people might want LL to talk about that problem – about how she was really singing about, writing about, the wrong problem.  When LL sang about how some women were ‘after,’ (her words) her man, the underlying problem wasn’t those women.

Loretta Lynn, the woman who wrote so empathetically about birth control liberating women from the life of a brood mare (“The Pill”), and the trials of a divorced woman having people think that just because she’s divorced she’s loose/available (“Rated X”) didn’t seem capable of, or willing to, consider the fact that it was her husband who was the problem. He married her, but chased after other women.  But Lynn…wouldn’t go there.
And TG, in deference to Lynn’s age, status and/or “sweetness,” didn’t seem willing to push it the way I think she would have with another musician…or politician, or writer or artist or sports figure or…..  Is that ultimately respectful, or patronizing?

 

 

   *    *   *

Department Of The Big Day Next Week

The more I know about the origins and mythologies (read: lies) about Thanksgiving, the less I want to call it that.

I’ve always had a certain ambivalence regarding Tday.  Even as a child, I suspected we weren’t being told the truth about that much vaunted Happy Time Between Indians and Pilgrims ®.  Historians are starting to speak up, and…how can I put this?  Folks, if the Readers Digest, hardly The Socialist Review, is willing to address this issue, that means it’s way past time the rest of us did.

 

 

“Thanksgiving is both uniquely American and full of treasured traditions. But this rosy picture of modern celebrations leaves out most of the real history of Thanksgiving….
Yes, you can still settle down with family to give thanks. But it’s important to know what you’re celebrating and unlearn some long-held myths.”
…. What’s the harm in believing the happy version so many of us grew up with? It’s just a story, right? This whitewashing downplays the long and bloody series of conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans that would occur over the next two centuries…..
‘Narratives of a harmonious Thanksgiving celebration were created to justify westward expansion and Manifest Destiny,’…. The term Manifest Destiny, coined more than two centuries after the first Thanksgiving, was the belief that settlers were destined by God to expand across America and prosper….
Myth: The “first Thanksgiving” started the tradition that founded the holiday.
Truth: The harvest celebration of 1621 was not called Thanksgiving and was not repeated every year. The next official ‘day of thanksgiving’ was after settlers massacred more than 400 Pequot men, women and children. Governor Bradford’s journal decreed, ‘For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a governor is in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.’
We should add that to our list of favorite Thanksgiving quotes as a stark reminder of the real history of Thanksgiving.”
(“The Real History of Thanksgiving,” Readers Digest, 11-15-22)

 

 

I like the idea of a holiday involving gratitude, and one in which friends and family get together for a celebratory meal.  As for what is in the meal, as the years have gone by, my own dietary preferences have changed – although even as a child I never was all that fond of the big bland boring turkey and wondered what all the fuss was about.    [5]  Moiself  likes the idea of variety feast, rather than a fixed menu.  [6] 

Moiself  also likes that which is practiced by our neighbors to the north.  Canadian Thanksgiving, which I and my family have experienced thanks to the generosity of a dear Canadian friend and (former) neighbor, is more of a general harvest celebration, without a traditional fixed menu.

Hmmm, so, how’s about Harvest Fest?  Gratitude Day?  Grativest Day? Harvitude Day?

 

Yeah, like that’s gonna fly.

 

Perhaps I’m being persnickety here.  After all, I’m the one who points out the secular origins of Christmas, which I don’t insist on renaming it, for the same reasons that, for example, I call the middle day of the week Wednesday even though I do not worship the Germanic god for whom the day is named.  Still, knowing the origins of Thanksgiving and the subsequent mythologies which promoted it, I can’t help but wish for a name change.

But that’s about as likely to happen as Elon Musk is likely to gift the running of Twitter to the Southern Poverty Law Center, sell his holdings in Tesla and donate the profits to Greenpeace, then take a vow of abstemious living and join a Buddhist monastery.

Ah, but it’s good to dream.

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Tday Edition

How did Ziggy Stardust express his gratitude to the Thanksgiving host for serving her tasty sweet potato casserole?
“Wham, yam, thank you ma’am.”

My family advised me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes,
but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.

How does rapper Sir Mixalot, who loathes pumpkin pie,
express his Thanksgiving dessert preference?
“I like big bundts and I cannot lie.”

 

I’ll give her points for not eating us, but really, these jokes are fowl.

 

*   *   *

 

May you have a good feast with friends and family, whatever you call it;
May visions of Mitch-getting-a-swirley warm the cockles of your heart;
May you find a whac-a-mole game and go to town;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] So named, by MH…I can’t remember the specifics, but it had to do with one of us commenting about all of us posting cat pictures yet again.  It has evolved into a family message board…with – yep! – lots of cat-sighting pictures.

[2] Wager, rather than aver, because I’m not on most social media and thus can’t speak from direct experience.

[3] As in, you could argue with me about this, but you’d lose.

[4] As in her FA interviews with Bill O’Reilly and Gene Simmons.

[5] My most memorable Tday was when the friend of a host brought a huge chinook salmon he’d caught the previous day in Alaska, and the hosts, my aunt and uncle, roasted it simply, with herbs and lemon juice.  I WAS AMAZED.

[6] Also, I haven’t eaten meat for years, so there goes that feast centerpiece.

The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

October 28, 2022

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Grab your sleigh bells and gird your garland-wrapped loins: you can practically smell the mistletoe in my annual, here-comes-the-holiday-season blog post:

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.

 

 

*   *   *

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)

 

 

*   *   *

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]

 

 

*   *   *

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, 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 extends into and through January, with the various New Year’s 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 and The Worldwide Church of God), do not celebrate Christmas     [4]   (nor did our much-ballyhooed forebears, the Pilgrims).  Also, the various Orthodox Christians 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 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, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

 

In 2023 the Chinese (lunar) New Year begins on Jan 22.

 

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 we’ve 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 Belle’s and 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 are usually 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 be seen as an attack on the religious beliefs of all of the Americans who celebrate the other holiday and festivals.  At the least, it denotes the users’ ignorance of their fellow citizens’ beliefs and practices.

 

 

*   *   *

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 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, the 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?

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
The Approaching Holiday Season Edition

What is a jack-o’-lantern’s favorite literature genre?
Pulp fiction.

My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes right now,
but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.

My cousin is terrified by all of the St. Nicholas displays at the shopping mall.
You might say she’s Claustrophobic

I told you not to encourage her.

*   *   *

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 was 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 Weird Carpet Walking Man I’m Not Following

October 21, 2022

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, reproductive rights, sports, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Weird Carpet Walking Man I’m Not Following

Much to my surprise, moiself  received a text from the campaign of Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate for Oregon governor.   [1]  The message said that Drazan “has a plan” (no details of course) for Oregon’s homeless situation, and asked for a donation.

My cell phone has been inundated by texts from political candidates, mostly from the Left side of the spectrum.  I block the caller# and delete them all, even when they are from candidates I support  (I do *not* give candidates my cell # and resent them finding and using it).  And what in the name of a purple Planned Parenthood placard…

 

Like this one.

 

…would make anyone on the Drazan campaign think that *I* would forget Drazan’s anti-abortion politics because of some mysterious “plan” she has?

Moiself  just had to respond to this text, before blocking/deleting:

If you are not pro-choice then you are no choice.
Shame on you.
Do not text this number again.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Thanks For Sharing

The streets of Manzanita are a crap minefield. 

 

Like this, only with crap.

 

Welcome Fall; welcome to the roaming elk and deer, pooping while they’re roaming, pooping while they’re standing still…stepping on their own poop; stepping on the poop that their herd comrade just dropped in front of them; stepping in the dried poop from three days ago…

A small price to pay for living in and/or visiting a bit o’ paradise on earth – the Oregon coast – in autumn.

And yet another reason to take your shoes off when you enter a home.  If you’re walking around here, whether on the streets, sidewalks, trails, or beach, you’re stepping on poop, in some form or another.

Although it doesn’t show up well in this picture, this poop pattern continues up the street, on both sides.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Playoff Game That Wasn’t

Early last week daughter Belle messaged me, wondering if she should get a ticket to Game 4 of the Seattle Mariners-Houston Astros American League Division series playoff game.  The division playoffs are a best-of-five series; Belle’s company, Schilling Cider, is a Mariners sponsor, and was guaranteed a certain number of tickets to purchase for playoff game 4.  Belle checked to see how many tickets her company would be allotted, and found out there would be enough so that she could get one for moiself  as well…and would I be interested?

It warmed the cockles of my heart, to hear that Belle was interested in going. How Belle’s grandparents would have liked that, I told her.

Chet and Marion Parnell were longtime baseball fans.  They once told me they’d always wanted to go to a playoff game but never had the opportunity. I grew up going to LA Dodgers and Anaheim Angels games, then in the 80s I lost – or rather deliberately misplaced – my interest in the sport.  I don’t remember the exact year; it was when there was yet another player/management strike.  Free agents had become the thing; it seems like you didn’t know the players anymore (“Wait…he was a Dodger and now he’s a Yankee?”), there was no team loyalty or team identity on either side of the management/players…it used to be you could follow the career of a player, having come up through the farm system….

 

LA Dodgers: The 1970s Cey to Russell to Lopes to Garvey era.

 

Then came the latest the player/manager/owner strike.

I remember thinking,

“Hmmm, which group of multi-millionaires do I feel sorry for?”

And that was that.

I became a fair weather fan – one who would watch The Big Games ®,  particularly if there’s a team I had an interest in (rooting for California or West Coast teams, and against CHEATERS like the Houston Astros…or just arrogant assholes like the Yankees).

BTW: Why do we sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” when we are already out at the ballgame?

 

 

Yet again, I digress.

When Belle asked if I were interested, moiself  realized that *I* had never been to a MLB playoff game. And when your 26-year-old daughter solicits a visit from her (much older, ahem) mother…

I started gettin’ spontaneous.  I booked train passage to and from Tacoma, found a (very expensive, yikes   [2]) hotel room, and crossed fingers for our odds in getting the tickets, which would be for sale depending on what happened in the first three games.

Game 4 would be on Sunday (10/16). My train reservations were for Saturday afternoon. MH advised me to get to the Portland train station early, as President Biden was in town that weekend. I took his advice to heart; I’d not been paying attention and had no idea Portland was in for a presidential visit, but I remembered a story I’d read about our most recent decent President:   An Average Person ® had traveled many miles to attend a political rally, where she got to speak with Obama.  She invited him to visit her state, because “…it would be such an honor to have a presidential visit.” Obama thanked her for the invitation, then warned her in good humor that, in reality, a presidential visit is a massive inconvenience to the area of the visit.  Presidential visits cause backups and delays for motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, even public transportation users, and are difficult to plan for, as, for security reasons, the presidential limo motorcade (and the decoy limo) and entourage routes can’t be announced in advance.  So, maybe the people who are invited to the speech or meet-n-greet or whatever consider it an honor, but for almost everyone else, it’s an irritation.  I like the fact that Obama was aware of/acknowledged that.

 

“Okay, remember, the decoy limo stops at Starbucks.”

 

As it turned out, Biden’s visit impacted a train’s departure four hours earlier in the day, but as I checked in I was told that my train (departing at 3:38p) was on time.  Then, for the next two and a half hours, Amtrak moved our departure time ahead, first in 5 minute increments, then ten, then….. Train station personnel on their intercoms and passengers googling on their cellphones were trying to find out what was going on.  The delay wasn’t due to the presidential visit (Biden’s entourage was already out of the area)…something about how due to a “police action” our train was stopped across the river.  Turns out there was a person “laying on the tracks.”   [3]

Our train finally arrived and we boarded, coming on three hours after our scheduled departure time.  Then, the train just sat at the station.  And sat.  Sat sat sat sat.  What now? Eventually, the conductor announced that “someone up ahead had set a fire next to the train tracks.”

Fucking Portland, I texted to Belle, who had already moved back and then cancelled the dinner reservations we’d had.  She passed the time on her end by giving me updates on the game. It was do or die for the Mariners: they’d lost the first two games; thus, if they lost game 3 (which I – mistakenly, as it turns out – assured Belle ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS    [4]   )  there would be no game four.

The hours went by; the game went into overtime.  Belle messaged at one point,

“Heading into the 15th inning now still 0-0.
Maybe we’ll just end up going to game 3 tomorrow.”

After 18 innings the Mariners lost “the longest 1-0 playoff game in MLB history.”     [5]

There would be no ballgame on Sunday.  Still, I had a very lovely day with my daughter, which included taking the ferry to Vashon Island. Belle, who works at Schilling Cider, wanted to show me another cidery she and her fellow Schilling-ers had visited.  We got to-go sandwiches and enjoyed a picnic on the orchard grounds of Dragon Head’s Cider. We sampled their amazing Columbia Crabapple blend, chatted with the affable DH employees, and just chilled out on an unseasonably   [6]    warm October afternoon.

 

 

After our island visit Belle wanted to go to her apartment to see her cat and rest up for the evening.  When she dropped me at my hotel moiself  noticed that the area  –The Point Ruston development in Tacoma’s  Ruston Way Waterfront – was hoppin.’  I got in the hotel elevator along with four other people – two couples, both of whom asked me, “Are you going to the concert tonight?”

Now, you could hear music coming from outside the hotel, and I said something about how I’d just told my daughter that it was such a nice night, you’d think someone would have scheduled a band to play outside in the amphitheater (where they have a summer concert series)…but then this weather is unexpected so it would be hard to book a group at the last minute…

My elevator buddies all looked momentarily confused, and one of them said, “No, not that – Elton John.”  I thought she meant an Elton John cover band was playing outside.  I laughed, and said, “Yeah, right, I don’t think so,” and another one of them chimed in and told me that Elton John was playing at the Tacoma Dome. 

Later that afternoon I went out to a nearby market, and returned to the hotel for another Elevator Encounter ®.  A couple who’d just checked in got in the elevator and didn’t know how to operate it.  I showed them how; they punched the button for floor 5.  Another man who got in the elevator at the lobby floor didn’t say anything, and didn’t make a floor selection.  When I got off at my floor (3) the couple wished me an enjoyable evening.  I turned around and asked, “Are you going to the concert?” they enthusiastically replied, “Yes!” and asked if I was also going.  I laughed and said that no, “…and I had no idea it was even taking place until people in elevators started talking about it.”    [7]

 

The Amphitheater Where Elton John Is Not Playing.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Weird Carpet Walking Man

That evening over dinner I told Belle the story of my elevator encounters, and also about what happened after the second encounter. The previously-mentioned man in the elevator, whom I thought gave off “didn’t belong” vibes (and wore a big scraggy beard, torn jeans and dirty shoes) exited the elevator when I did. I lagged behind; I let him go first, to keep an eye on him, lest he turn out to be the El Creepo Guy® who follows lone females off of hotel elevators to see what rooms they go to.

So, he’s walking ahead of me, verrrrrry strangely, weaving from side to side, sometimes taking large steps and sometimes tiny steps. As I observed him I realized he was walking so as to avoid stepping on the dark(er) blue spots on the hotel’s carpeted hallway – like a kid does when playing the “Don’t touch the lava!” game or “step-on-a-crack-break-your-back.”  I got out my phone to film him, stopped moiself, then relaxed when he removed a key from his picket and let himself into a room.

After dinner Belle came up to my room to get something I had for her. On her way out of the hotel I got this series of texts from her:

Belle:
I JUST SAW THE GUY WALKING WEIRD ON THE CARPET.
It had to be the same guy. He was avoiding the dark spots.

Moiself:
YES!

Belle:
Large beard.

Moiself:

YES!

Belle:
Wow amazing.
He’s like a natural phenomenon.

 

The carpet.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Carolyn Hax    [8]    Gem Of The Week

Context: re advice to a letter writer who is being told by her husband’s family that if she objects to his extravagant spending habits she will be “emasculating” him.

“Is there a worse word (or concept) than ‘emasculating’?
It’s basically a verbal encapsulation of the concept that the genders must
work in concert toward preserving the standing of men.”

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Baseball Edition

What’s the difference between a pickpocket and a second base umpire?
One steals watches and one watches steals.

Did I tell you the joke about the pop fly?
Never mind; it’s way over your head.

Why was Cinderella kicked off the baseball team?
She ran away from the ball.

Did you hear about the baseball player who can spot a fast-food restaurant a mile away?
He leads the league in Arby eyes.

 

“What did I say about encouraging her?”

 

*   *   *

 

May you remember that those who are not pro-choice are no choice;
May you read Carolyn Hax’s column – what are you waiting for?;
May you one day be enchanted by a Weird Carpet Walking Man;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Don’t make me use the term gubernatorial, which is a word that ought to be banned in public, IMO.

[2] For reasons revealed later in this post.

[3] A protestor? A drunk or loony?  We never found out. Just pick ‘em up and toss ‘em aside, disgruntled passengers helpfully suggested, to anyone who would listen.

[4] A sweep in a MLB series playoff.

[5] 18 innings, 1-0.  Sounds to me like a soccer score.

[6] As in record-setting for the Seattle area.

[7] And that’s why I had to spring for the pricy hotel rooms, as so many places were completely booked up, with the Elton fans, I assumed.

[8] What do you mean, who is Carolyn Hax?  Just about the best advice columnist ever.

The Summer I’m Not Yet Enjoying

July 8, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, nature, Oregon, politics, reproductive rights, school, science, sports, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Summer I’m Not Yet Enjoying

Yeah, so.

MH and I return from six weeks overseas, to find our country in the toilet – make that the outhouse, as toilets weren’t introduced until the late 1800s and six members of SCOTUS seem determined to flush us back to the Middle Ages.  And now we’ve a diabetic cat on death row….never mind that depressing development.

First, reflections on July 4.

Department Of Generosity Of Spirit…Yeah.  Right. Get Back To Me On That.

Here is my social media post on July 3.

“So, what are your plans for the 4th?” 

That’s the usual question around this time of the year, and while MH and I may do some grilling and gather (read: commiserate) with friends, I am boycotting the Fourth of July as a celebratory holiday this year, and asking y’all to consider doing the same.

Our constitution is, unfortunately, elevated to the status of a sacred document by some folk.  While many of its precepts were progressive for its day, it was flawed from the beginning and is showing its age. The fact that business as usual under its governance has allowed the cabal of cheats and liars and loons to institute their medieval theocracy ideals….  I just don’t think the USA deserves a birthday celebration this year.

Please join me in taking a knee on July 4, and wherever and whenever you are presented with flags and anthems and other bitter reminders of our false claims to liberty and justice for all.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Further Reflections From Little Miss Sunshine

As for the day itself?  Meh.

“For some strange reason, people around the world have decided that the best way to mark important holidays and events is…by blowing things up.

Most of us are aware that fireworks are dangerous: we either know someone, or know of someone, who ended up in the hospital emergency room due to fireworks, but most people are completely unaware of the more insidious environmental damages and health impacts caused by fireworks…..

Fireworks create… a toxic fog of fine particulates, poisonous aerosols and heavy metals…that poison the air, the water and the soil, making them toxic to birds, wildlife, pets, livestock — and people….”
( excerpts from “Festive Fireworks Create Harmful Pall Of Pollution,”
Forbes, science section, 12-31-19 )

The neighborhood’s pyrotechnics started sporadically in the late afternoon, gradually increasing in uniformity and intensity around 10 PM, and were finally, mostly, done by midnight. As our cat Nova cowered under our bed, moiself  reflected, not kindly, upon my fellow humans’ obsession with that most wasteful and destructive means of “celebration.”

The world is on fire,    [1]   so yeah, let’s celebrate with incendiary devices spewing even more pollutants into our air, and as a bonus, we can terrify all the dogs and cats and nesting wildlife….

Why they were celebrating at all, I kept thinking?  Don’t they realize what is happening in in their country? Or maybe they do, and just don’t care, or think it’s too late: We keep destroying our liberty and our planet, so what the hell, eat drink and be merry (and start another wildfire, what the hell), for tomorrow we may die.

The next morning I encountered this scenario during my walk.  Over the years I recall seeing people cleaning up their post fireworks debris by hosing down their sidewalks and streets, sending the contaminated mess into the sewer system (and eventually into our streams and wetlands).

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Last Week’s Distractions

Last Friday, the first new blog post after returning from 6+ weeks of travels, moiself had intended to post some travel reflections, only to become distraught distracted by…shall we say…current events.  Such as these headlines

“SCOTUS Justices ‘Prayed With’ Her —
Then Cited Her Bosses to End Roe.
“A right-wing evangelical activist was caught on tape bragging that she prayed with Supreme Court justices. The court’s majority cited a legal brief that her group filed while overturning Roe v. Wade”
( Kara Voght & Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, )”

 

 

I shall attempt to return to reflective mode, by allowing moiself  to share some impressions gathered during MH’s and my overseas travels.

First of all, why is everyone sarcastic when they find out you’re going on a trip?  And by that I mean the comment moiself  kept hearing, as our departure date neared, that I should “have fun packing!“ Is packing, for anything, ever *fun*?

Once again, I digress.

The trip’s timeline – both the original plans and the changed itinerary after we got COVID – is in the previous post.  What I didn’t mention was the bag of 100, 1 ½ inch rubber chickens which accompanied moiself  on my journey. 

 

Down to twenty.

 

Each day I hid/placed a chicken in a “public” spot.    [2]

from a hotel or Airbnb dresser drawer,

 

 

to a crack in the leg of a theater seat in Stockholm’s Drottingholm Palace grounds,

 

 

to a potted plant in an Oslo tapas restaurant,

 

 

to a crack in a rock wall on on a rock wall on Strangehagen Street in Bergen…

 

 

in the hopes that someone, some day, will find it and think to themselves,

“Uh…what is this, and why is it here?”

*   *   *

Travel Reflections

Things Scandinavians do better than Americans:

 * toilets  (both in businesses/private residences/public WCs)

* Public transportation systems

* Hospitality & service industry   [3]

* Public art  (both the amount of and access to)

* Cod   [4]

Things Americans do better than Scandinavians:

* ADA access  (from businesses to museums and public buildings)

* Pizza

* Vegetarian/vegan burgers

* Extra pillows in hotels and/or Airbnb rentals

* Decaf   [5]

 

From Vigelandsparken, Oslo. Sculptor Gustav Vigeland

*   *   *

Department Of Missed Opportunities

Certainly one of the cultural highlights of the trip was our visit to the Iceland Phallological museum in Reykjavik.  Iceland was the last country we visited before returning home, and so as not to be schlepping gifts all over Scandinavia I informed certain folks that I would return with souvenirs for them from Iceland – read: most likely from the Phallological museum’s giftshop (“You’re all getting dicks!”).

But while the museum itself was interesting and informative, the vast majority of the items the gift shop carried were…regrettably, not.  More along the line of tacky joke shop items designed to make 11-year old boys snicker.  But I did manage to purchase and then fit several bags of penis-shaped pasta into our luggage.

Then, much to my disappointment, upon our return to the USA we sailed right through Customs at PDX.  One customs officer asked us if we had any apples or oranges in our bags (from Iceland?), but that was it.   I was so hoping for the classic question, “Do you have anything to declare?”   [6]   which I had planned on enthusiastically answering,

“A bags of dicks!
Officer, I declare I have bags of the cutest dick pasta you’ve ever seen!”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Even Plant-Based Eating Moiself   Still Doesn’t Get This

Artichokes.

What’s the point?

Just lick the mayo/aioli/butter off the spoon and get it over with.

 

Also, I try to avoid eating veggies which have hair and/or a heart.

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Penis Pasta Edition

What do you get when you mix a penis, a potato, and a boat?
A dictatorship.

Why is it so easy to distinguish a penis apart from a testicle?
There’s vas deferens between them.

On average, how much does a circumcisionist earn for his services?
Sixty dollars an hour, plus tips.

A husband says to his wife, “I bet you can’t tell me something that will make me both happy and sad at the same time.”
The wife thinks about it for a few moments and replies, “Your dick is bigger than your brother’s.”

 

 

*   *   *

May you think about how (and why) you celebrate a National Holiday;
May you enjoy Icelandic cod and American veggie burgers;
May you have the opportunity to declare to a customs agent, “Dicks!”;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] “The past seven years have been the hottest in recorded history, new data shows Global temperatures in 2021 were among the highest ever observed, with 25 countries setting new annual records, according to scientists from NASA, NOAA and Berkeley Earth.” Washington Post, 1-13-22 )

[2] The rules I set for moiself:  it had to be hidden in a place where someone could theoretically/eventually find it without trespassing on private property, it could not do damage to its hiding place or surroundings (e.g., jammed in between and thus widening the cracks in a museum artifact).

[3] Better pay for workers; little to no tipping expected (or sometimes even allowed).

[4] Iceland excelled here.  Norway, surprisingly, dropped the ball when it came to cod.  Notice I didn’t say, “dropped the cod ball,” because that would be…ick.

[5] Decaffeinated beverages do not seem to be a thing, and woe unto you who asks for decaf coffee.

[6] I’m not even sure they ask that question anymore, if you are part of the Global Entry Program.

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