Department Of Why You Don’t Want Me To Fill Out Your Survey
Dear, ____ (name of artistic group whose events I patronize),
I know that you-who-sent-moiself-this-survey – or the consultants which convinced you to do so, to justify their services – hope that having me fill out your survey will help you to “gain insights into the kind of audience” you are attracting, or wish to attract. [1]
However, I am slightly annoyed/somewhat mystified by the myriad of (what I consider to be) none-of-your-business/how-does-this-matter? questions. Checking “prefer not to disclose” was not satisfying, to moiself…then, my annoyance morphed into delight, when I came upon this question in your survey:
Please select any of the following sexual identities/orientations that describe you.
Aromantic
Asexual
Bisexual
Fluid
Gay
Heterosexual or straight
Lesbian
Pansexual
Queer
Questioning or unsure
Prefer not to disclose
Other:
At first glance I thought the first option was “Aromatic.” Which I decided to disclose to you, under “other.” I also thought about checking “pansexual” (I have this thing for cast iron skillets)…but…nah.
Anyway, thanks for the entertainment.
Are those your grill ridges, or are you just happy to see me?
* * *
Department Of These Labels Violate My Boundaries
Sometimes moiself wonders if social media has amplified the tendency we all have toward practicing amateur psychiatry. We scoff at our social media friend who barks, “Don’t poison your body – do your own research!” and sends us a link to a 15 minute video hosted by a dubiously-credentialed Guy In A Lab Coat® who spouts conspiracy theories contradicting 15 years of medical research on RNA vaccines. Then we turn around and employ (and misuse) psychological concepts and diagnoses, such as boundaries and narcissist.
In psychology jargon, boundaries are rules and guidelines we set for *ourselves,* to help us set realistic limits on activities and relationships. We choose and set these boundaries; thus, it is we who are in charge of enforcing them. Yet, those [2] I hear (or read about) who use the term boundaries emphasize the actions of *other* people – extended family; coworkers; friends and neighbors – whom they accused of ignoring or violating their boundaries. They forget the crucial point of boundaries (or perhaps never understood it in the first place): boundaries are rules that *they* set for *themselves,* not for others.
” Yet even as ‘boundaries‘ have taken off, the concept has become misunderstood, joining gaslit and narcissist in the pantheon of misused psychology jargon. When you want someone to do something, throwing in the word boundary can lend the request a patina of therapeutic legitimacy.
When imposed on us, boundaries can feel upsetting. Because many people view happy relationships as problem-free, a request to behave differently can feel like a rejection. Some people—out of trauma or other wounds—interpret a ‘no’ from a loved one as the end of a relationship. But boundaries are supposed to help preserve relationships, not destroy them. ‘People typically believe that boundaries are to control people, and in actuality, they are safeguards for yourself and for peace and comfort in your relationships,’ says the therapist and Drama Free author Nedra Glover Tawwab.”
( “The Most Misunderstood Concept in Psychology: What are boundaries?” By Olga Khazan” The Atlantic 8/23 , my emphases )
That article got me to thinking about more misuse/misunderstandings of the other two psychology terms the article mentions – terms that but get diluted with mis- and over-use.
Narcissist. How many times have y’all heard that term, used as a pejorative and also as an analysis of a difficult spouse/coworker/person/family member, despite the fact that the person being labeled a narcissisthas not received a Narcissistic Personality Disorder diagnosis from a mental health professional, nor has ever even visited a counselor? [3]
” ‘One of the internet’s favorite diagnoses is that someone is a narcissist—which has become shorthand for anyone who appears self-centered or entitled. The term is ‘thrown around so carelessly,’ says Jacquelyn Tenaglia, a licensed mental health counselor based in Boston. ‘I see narcissism being especially misapplied when it’s used to label someone who exhibits qualities that someone might not like.’
While it might feel good to call your frenemy who only talks about herself a narcissist, mental-health experts suggest refraining. Narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis….”
And gaslit – I’m hearing that term more and more, to describe the allegedly nefarious actions and/or motivations of someone we don’t trust and/or just don’t like…but, are we really using it correctly?
The term is derived from the 1944 movie, [4]Gaslight. Gaslight tells the story of a late 19th century woman who is whirlwind-romanced into marriage, by a man who wants to gain access to her wealthy aunt’s estate, in which, he’s discovered, many valuable jewels are hidden. The husband tries to convince his wife that their house’s gas lights, which flicker and fade (but only when she is in a room, alone) are not in fact actually dimming, and that she is imagining the sounds she hears coming from the attic. The husband himself is the one behind both the noises and the dimming lights, in a strategy to drive his wife mad and have her institutionalized.
Someone can treat you poorly, even lie to you, without “gaslighting” you.
“Although in most cases the word serves to expose implicit power dynamics and level the playing field, it can also be used to do the exact opposite. That’s thanks to a process called ‘semantic bleaching,’ where a word’s true meaning gets diluted through imprecise and bad-faith usage…. woke—a word that originally meant ‘socially and politically aware,’ but now can be used to mean ‘sensitive’ and ‘irrational about social and political issues’ because of semantic bleaching by right-leaning media.”
Moiself highly recommends these articles I’ve cited (and hope I’m not violating any of your boundaries with this suggestion).
* * *
Department Of And One More Thing We’re Overusing/Doing Wrong:
Can we please stop referring to people as toxic?
“One of my most important rules as a therapist: Ignore all adjectives. When one of my clients says someone in their life is selfish, or cold, or hot-tempered, it doesn’t tell me much about the problem. Adjectives aren’t facts.
That’s especially true of ‘toxic,’ an adjective that’s become increasingly popular in and outside of my office (it was even the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2018). It’s also easily overused — a way of reframing a difficult relationship as one not worth having.
So, when I have a therapy client who uses ‘toxic’ to describe someone, I don’t ask them to clarify, or to reconsider the word. Instead, I focus on the facts of the challenging situation they’re telling me about….
When you feel anxious around another person, your brain will begin to take emotional shortcuts that usually involve fighting, fleeing, or complaining to others. You quickly label the person as ‘toxic,’ declare their toxicity as the cause of your anxiety, and assume that escaping them will fix your distress…
When one of my clients starts getting into adjective-heavy territory, I redirect them with questions like, ‘What did they do?’…and ‘Where and when did this happen?’ and ‘How did you respond?’ Notice that none of these questions have the word ‘why.’ This is because ‘why’ usually requires you to guess a person’s motivation, or label them as a certain kind of person….”
(“Why Therapists Avoid Using the Word ‘Toxic’ – Labeling others can stunt your own growth,” Forge.medium.com ; my emphases )
Hey, I enjoy petty name calling as much as the next guy. But do I really think the person who annoys me – or even the who has treated me poorly [5] for years – has venom running through his veins, and that touching him would set off an anaphylactic or neurological reaction? Or is it that he does ____, and ____, and ____, and thus I believe it is ultimately unhealthy for me to be around him?
Delineate, please. Be specific; calling someone toxic tells me nothing, except that you don’t like them.
“Toxins are poisonous substances produced within living cells or organisms and can include various classes of small molecules or proteins that cause disease on contact. The severity and type of diseases caused by toxins can range from minor effects to deadly effects. The organisms which are capable of producing toxins include bacteria, fungi, algae, and plants. Some of the major types of toxins include, but are not limited to, environmental, marine, and microbial toxins. Microbial toxins may include those produced by the microorganisms bacteria (i.e. bacterial toxins) and fungi (i.e. mycotoxins).” ( 14.4A; Toxins, Biology Libre Texts )
Is your boss doing any of this? He may be a brazenly manipulative asshat, but he’s probably not toxic.
* * *
* * *
Department Of Affirmations Gone Astray
Moiself received yet another solicitation to purchase “anti-aging” products. The misogyny and (ultimate) futility of the concept behind the term “anti-aging” I have railed articulately commented about, many times, in this space.
“Viral on TikTok” and “proven by science” – such a deal!
This time I had a minor epiphany as to the appropriateness of the term. Anti-aging: it is, indeed, anti– aging…which therefore makes it anti-life. Because if you’re not aging, you’re not alive. The only people who do not (who cannot) age are dead.
Feeling rather smug, I briefly meditated upon another embrace-the reality-maxim:
Today I am as old as I have ever been, and, as young as I will ever be.
“I realized early on that it is detailed scientific knowledge which makes certain religious beliefs untenable. A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically? . . . What could be more foolish than to base one’s entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at the time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?”
May you always identify as the Best-Smelling Orientation; May you remove unfortunate vestiges of earlier erroneous beliefs; May you enforce boundaries with the narcissistic gaslighters, real or imagined, in your life; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] I know this because it says so on the survey’s intro.
[2] These folks are not mental-health care professionals.
[3] Oh, but that would be typical of a narcissist, right?
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[7] British physicist and biologist Crick, along with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, helped decipher the structure and replication scheme of DNA, for which he (and others) won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.
Department Of This Is Beyond Depressing Sub-Department Of Are We Abetting A Nation Of Crybaby Snitches?
“As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items….
Everything was ready, but Wood didn’t leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.
Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me,’ a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.
The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students ‘feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress’ on account of their race.”
( excerpted from, “Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?: Mary Wood’s school reprimanded her for teaching a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now she hopes her bond with students can survive South Carolina’s new laws.” By Hannah Natanson, The Washington Post, 9-18-23 )
I read Between the World and Me. I think every American should read Between the World and Me. I wish that a book like Between the World and Me had been published when I was in my American History and social studies classes in high school, and if it had been, I know we would have been able to read and discuss it.
Gaaaawwwwd, it makes me feel old, to read about this shameful South Carolina policy. Old in a different way than the usual, “In my day…” story, which is often the tag line for a Good Old Days ® conservative cultural sentiment.
Why does it seem as if we are going backwards? [1]Moiself was able to benefit from so many high school classroom topics and discussions that some people, apparently, would find “controversial” (read: threatening) today, but that which we students managed to deal with. Isn’t that the point of education?
I remember when a couple of friends of mine, who were taking the Logic class given by one of our high school’s most respected teachers, told me about how they were frustrated after a classroom discussion wherein a student brought up the topic of religion: this student thought that some idea(s) presented in the class threatened his religion in particular and/or dismissed the idea of taking something “on faith” in general, and wanted the class to discuss it. Being a class on logic, i.e., a class on learning to employ and evaluate different kinds of arguments [2] and learning how to recognize good or bad arguments, students who made illogical and or unsubstantiated claims re their religion were challenged, and the mistakes in their arguments and claims were pointed out to them, by both the teacher *and* by fellow students.
I listened to my friends’ recounting of the class’s discussion; I pointed out where I thought the other students and teachers had made excellent points, and gave my friends the, “Hey, chin up – this is good for you!” support. My friends accepted my feedback – one of them had to pout for a minute, as she was initially put out by the fact that I didn’t just jump to her defense, no matter what, but she was thoughtful and gracious about it.
And that was that.
It never occurred them to run whining to their parents like a tantruming toddler:
“Mommy, Daddy, that mean Mr. Guggenheim made me feel uncomfortable!
My teacher corrected me when I made false assertions
and used faulty reasoning!
My teacher introduced me to new ideas!
My teacher attempted to teach!
WAAAAAAHHHHHH! “
What’s with students – in an *Advanced Placement* class – turning into narcs? WTF ?!?!?! Coate’s book is just the kind of thought-provoking material “advanced” students should be reading and discussing.
This is yet another sad example of the wimping out by and dumbing down of the American student, and it is happening on all sides of the cultural and political spectrum. Those college students who essentially put their hands over their ears and assume the nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah I can’t hear you posture, as they bleat, “We feel threatened! We need safe spaces in order to learn!” while they shout down and/or attempt to censor professors and guest speakers with whom they disagree? Same coin; opposite side.
And what kind of parents would report a teacher for…..arrrrghhh. My own parents were conservative, both with regards to politics and religion, but it never would have occurred to them [4] to presume to tell my teachers what and how to teach.
* * *
Department Of I Don’t Give A Rat’s Ass About What Percentage Of Tag Fees Go Toward So-Called “Conservation Efforts,”
I Wish All Hunters Would Hunt Each Other And Leave Other Creatures Alone
Yet another misguided attempt at forging common ground. Because, yeah, what can unite us human beings – despite our differences in skin color, origin, religion, ethnicity, etc. – is the All-American ® desire to kill other living beings for the sheer, bloodthirsty fun of it sport.
“Hunters of Color, founded in Corvallis in 2020…is a nonprofit intent on diversifying the outdoors, specifically hunting. The organization has flourished since its inception, with ambassadors in Texas, Washington, New Mexico and many more states. It offers a mentorship program, hands-on restoration opportunities and anti-racist education services. The organization aims to confront and remove barriers for people of color interested in hunting.” ( excerpt from “The outdoors are for everyone: Oregon nonprofit aims to diversify hunting,” Oregonlive.com )
* * *
The Podcast I’m Looking Forward To (Sub-Department Of Note To Moiself:
Time To Stop Complaining And Appreciate Something)
Moiself has a long line of podcast episodes in my listening queue, but the one going to the top of the list will be the one that was previewed on the last Clear + Vivid podcast I listened to, which was C+V host Alan Alda’s interview with Maya Shankar. Shankar, a gifted violinist, had her hard work and dreams smashed by an injury which ended her dream of a musical career. Yet it was the end of that dream, and that career, which led Shankar down another path: to a PhD in neuroscience…which led her to being appointed to science advisory posts with both the Obama administration and the United Nations.
As if that episode wasn’t interesting enough (and it was), here was the teaser for the next C+V episode, featuring Matt Walker, the “…go-to expert on everything to do with sleep, from how it keeps both mind and body healthy to why we dream.
(Walker speaking; my emphases): “I often think of dream sleep as a Google search gone wrong. Let’s say that I type into Google, ‘Alan Alda,’ and the first page is all of your…accomplishments, but then I go to page twenty, it’s about a field hockey game in Utah, and I think, ‘Hang on a second, that’s not…’ but if I read it and I look, there’s a very distant, very non-obvious association. When you start to collide things together that shouldn’t normally go together, it sounds like the biological basis of creativity. And no wonder, as a consequence, no one has ever told you, ‘Alan, you should really stay awake on a problem.’
How can I not resist a preview like that?
Sometimes I feel as if Alda and his C+V staff write their podcast episode previews for an audience of one: moiself. The podcast’s focus is on communication; host Alda has a passion for the subject, both as an actor and as a lifelong science devotee (Alda hosted Scientific American Frontiers, and founded Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.)
Here is the mission statement for C+V:
“Learn to connect better with others in every area of your life. Immerse yourself in spirited conversations with people who know how hard it is, and yet how good it feels, to really connect with other people – whether it’s one person, an audience or a whole country.
You’ll know many of the people in these conversations – they are luminaries in our culture. Some you may not know. But what links them all is their powerful ability to relate and communicate. It’s something we need now more than ever.”
Alda’s guests include many scientists, but not exclusively. He interviews people from across the spectrum of professions, including music and art. One of his most memorable guests (IMO) was Paul McCartney. Alda spoke with McCartney about communicating through music and the process of composing a song. Some of Paul’s songs he crafted deliberatly: When Paul was struggling with his grief over John Lennon’s death, Paul’s late wife Linda, knowing music was the vehicle through which her husband dealt with emotional issues, suggested he write about his feelings for his childhood friend and former Beatles bandmate…and that prompt resulted in McCartney’s heartfelt song, Here Today.[5] Other times, McCartney noted, although he would still apply his musical skill and experience in fine-tuning a song, the original idea for a song appeared organically, or out-of-the blue, as when he awoke one morning with the complete melody for Yesterdayin his head, after having “composed” it in a dream. [6]
Here are just a few of the guests and subject titles of recent C+V podcasts.
* Adam Mastroianni: Why You So Often Get It Wrong * Nancy Kanwisher: Your Brain is a Swiss Army Knife * Dan Levitt: You Are Stardust. Really. * Adam Gopnik: The Joy of Getting Good at Something Hard * Brenna Hassett: Why We Are Weird
So, if you haven’t already…check it out!
* * *
Department Of Reasons To Read Your Junk Mail
Because you may just stumble upon gems like this:
Robyn, you’re invited to a FREE Seminar and Meal! Presented by SMART CREMATION – your local pre-planning experts.
*Smart* cremation. As opposed to, uh, foolish or stupid cremation, where you, like, stumble into the crematorium chamber when you’re not really dead yet?
Also head-scratch worthy: the invitation’s envelope was addressed to, “The Robyn Parnell Family.” Hmm. Does my family have plans for me, to which I am not privy?
May you not “stay awake on it” when contemplating your next challenge; May you occasionally, actually, read your junk mail; May you creatively “collide things which shouldn’t go together”; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] Such as categorical syllogistic logic, propositional logic, predicate logic….
[3] But, alas, I was never able to fit it into my schedule, which was weighed down with everything else I either wanted to or had to take, and the class was offered only once a semester, at one time of the day.
[4] And I did ask them about it – about what they would do in similar circumstances – years ago. This was when I’d read an article about students complaining to parents about a teacher teaching something that the student didn’t like – something which was not factually incorrect, or presented in a rude or condescending or nasty way, but a mere fact, which made the student (translate: a fact which their parents had told them was not a fact, as in something about religion and/or the civil War) uncomfortable.
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Can anything match the parental pride such as that experienced by moiself, when son K’s first reaction upon reading the name of the offender in the news article, Serial flasher gets long sentence for exposing himself… was, “It’s the role he was born to play.”
“Washington County Circuit Judge…handed down a sentence…to Michael G. Dick, who pleaded guilty to two counts of felony public indecency…”
* * *
Department Of Spending Too Much Time Thinking About An Existentially Inconsequential Concept.
.”…these dogs beds are not your typical slabs of foam covered in polyester. They are true inner spring mattresses that provide unparalleled back support and proper spine alignment for dogs of all sizes….”
I can’t remember if it was on an earlier HB episode or a different podcast where I also heard an ad for Saatva dog beds, in which it was claimed that a Saatva dog bed is the mattress “your dog deserves.”
This sterling example of the sentimentally manipulative capacity of marketing got me to wondering: How can a dog *deserve* a certain kind of dog bed?
deserve transitive verb: to be worthy of : MERIT
(“deserves another chance”) intransitive verb: to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital ( from Merriam-webster online dictionary )
I can understand a dog wanting something (a tummy rub) or needing something (a drink of water); I can understand a person wanting or needing something for their dog (a trip to the dog park; a leash). I can understand a person rewarding their dog for a specific act – with the reward directly connected to the act so that the dog understands that it did what was asked of it (e.g., giving the dog a treat for obeying a command to sit or heel…), and thus you can say the dog “earned” or merited the treat.
But how does a dog merit a piece of furniture that will be given to it – *must* be given to it (it’s not like the dog can take its Mastercard and go to Petsmart) – by its human?
I don’t know about that superlative. A dog meriting a bed is perhaps not the greatestmystery. But it does get me to wondering, about other mysteries of life and human behavior (this dog bed thing has everything to do with human motivations and almost nothing to do with dogs), including….
* * *
Department Of Existentially Consequential Concepts Which Deserve All The Time In The World To Contemplate…
Despite My Doing So Not Making A Damn Bit Of Difference
Sub-Department Of I Blame Vladimir Putin, For Everything…
…including the fact that beloved friends are going through a grueling Something which has afflicted them, for reasons unrelated to them personally and/or anything they may have done. Like Putin vis-à-vis the Ukrainians, there is this Something out there which is trying to torment and kill them, for no rational reason.
The cosmos is full of beauty and wonder and misfortune and pain, all of it unevenly and randomly distributed. Understanding this phenomenon is the key to equanimity…along with being able to tell the truth in all circumstances. Say, this is dreadful, when it is dreadful; cry when you have to and laugh when you can.
Moiself knows that disease organisms, like all primitive of life forms, just do what they do: try to survive and replicate. Got it. But, dammit it, you flaming asshole tumors, pretend for one nanosecond that you have sentience. Get some self-awareness here: if you kill the host, you die, too, HELLO !?!?!?.
We humanist/religion-free folk know that such afflictions are not personal: we know we’re not being punished when illness and injury occur, nor are we being rewarded when we somehow avoid or recover from the same calamities which afflict others. Still, as human beings; we suffer when hurt. At least we are spared the suffering from cognitive dissonance and the mental gymnastics that come with trying to live with and justify concepts such as karma and fate and believing the existence of deities which are supposedly all-powerful and thus *could* choose to alter the Something…but simply *don’t.*
So, we can admit upfront that contending with lethal illnesses et al sucks, as in, “This is massively, putridly, ginormously, donkey-dong sucking….”
“Hey! I thought you weren’t going to get personal?”
….even as we live in a world where, come yet another day, there will also be the mixture of the profound and the mundane to be appreciated, in, say, the sight of the morning dew sparkling on the araneusdiadematus’s web, which she’s anchored between the raspberry bushes and the recycling bin. And neither phenomenon – the simple but stunning example of the splendor of the natural world, and the specific ordeal of the illness we battle in that same world – is one we either caused or merited.
The late great Roger Ebert, noted film critic and freethinker, [1] shared his thoughts about his then-imminent death in his blog post, Go Gentle Into That Good Night. This was during a time when Ebert’s mental faculties were as sharp as ever despite his body having been ravaged by both his disease and the treatments for that disease. His perspective is one that is shared by many humanist/religion-free thinkers. It is a lovely meditation (excerpted here), the entirety of which is worth reading and rereading, no matter what your worldview is regarding your own mortality or that of a loved one.
“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear… I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris…
I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
* * *
Department Of Because I Was Trying To Avoid Something I Need To Work On, And For Some Reason Had A Flash Back To This Topic
That topic, broadly speaking, would be co-worker relationships. Most of us have had a combination of ups and downs in that category, but have you ever had a coworker for whom your mere presence was apparently so annoying that it motivated them to play a petty (but delightfully so) prank on you?
Last week my remembrance of one such “relationship” resulted in a FB post from moiself. And now, my social media secret is revealed: the main reason for almost any story I post (or tell at the dinner table) is related to what inspires 5-year-olds to play doctor: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. I love to hear and read the stories of others, so I share one of mine, as a prompt.
My post:
“Okay, it’s another thinly disguised story prompt (I’ll show you mine if you show me yours): please share any similar stories you may have re a really poor relationship you had with a petty, nasty, bigoted, misogynist, and/or just plain stupid coworker, which led to an amusing incident. Here’s mine: On my first day back on at second season of a summer job (Disneyland; The Hungry Bear Restaurant), one of the kitchen crew clicked the play button on a mini-cassette recorder he had in his pocket, and serenaded me with Elton John’s, ‘The Bitch is Back.’ “
And dammit, although I got comments, for the first time no one shared a similar story. [2]
As you can imagine, this workplace incident didn’t happen out of nowhere. A friend requested the backstory; and so: [3]
At the end of my senior year in high school, anticipating the need to earn college tuition money, I began working weekends at Disneyland. I obtained “seasonal” worker status, which was the status of the majority of my male and female coworkers with whom I shared summer shifts at Disneyland’s Hungry Bear Restaurant (HBR). [4] Once we were hired by The Happiest Place on Earth®, if we seasonals worked the entire summer season and at least one other holiday season (winter or spring breaks; Thanksgiving…) we were guaranteed a job for the following summer.
The serenader in question – moiself will refer to him as Kid Rock [5] ( who wasn’t a thing then, but if he had been, I think my serenader would have been a *big* fan ).
Kid was a boor from the moment I met him. His square-jawed face’s limited repertoire of expressions were all variations of a smirk, and he oozed dumb jock attitudes and mannerisms. Moiself initially experienced a wee bit o’ guilt for judging him at first glance, until my second, and third, and one hundred seventeenth glances and encounters (as well as my observations of his interactions with others) confirmed my stereotyping assessment astute perception of who and what he was.
With his male coworkers, Kid was constantly jockeying for position, ingratiating himself with his kitchen shift managers, and attempting metaphorical pissing matches with the other kitchen guys. [6] He considered himself to be above his peers (although they were all doing the same job, at the same pay scale), even as he courted their respect (or fear) for being a “player,” with an edgy (read: mean and stupid) sense of humor. The nice guys in the kitchen crew (and there were several) earned Kid’s contempt, because being a nice guy meant being well thought of by the HBR females (we were “the girls,” of course).
“I can smell that creep from here.”
No surprise, Kid also had a binary way of relating to the HBR females: they were either objects of his sexual desire or not worthy of it. His preferred mode of communication with female co-workers was a combination of peacock preening, barely-masked sexual come-ons, and furtive insults (aka, “jokes”). He got giggles from some of the girls, but, as I observed, those girls seemed to be giggling to mask their unease, and trying to prove that they could “take a joke” and weren’t prudes. If Kid’s thinly disguised sexual banter was rejected by a girl, he’d let it be known that he hadn’t really wanted her at all – he’d just been trying to make her feel better, because she was unattractive. I saw him behave this way with *every* female at HBR, with the exception of one of the counter area managers, whose slight but noticeable physical disability effectively neutered her in his eyes.
And, as was typical of many guys of the time (even the not-so-loathsome ones), when Kid complained about his male coworkers he was able to do so using specific language re what bothered him about their actions: they’d been slow on the grill, had been late to their shift, had burned a batch of onion rings, had neglected key steps in their closing shift, had acted too passively, or aggressively….. Any complaints he had about a female coworker came under the cover-all of critiquing her very essence, with no particulars as to behavior: “She’s just a bitch.”
Kid’s attempts at titillating braggadocio didn’t impress moiself (SURPRISE !), and I limited our interactions as much as possible. Whenever possible, I ignored him. Therefore, of course (and, yay!), he had to announce to one and all that he didn’t find me appealing. But that wasn’t the end of it. It took me awhile to figure out the source of his irritation with moiself because I didn’t spend much time considering it – which was, for him, the issue. He seemed continually annoyed by my lack of interest in what he had to say, about anything.
In Kid’s eyes, I had committed the worst sin possible for a female: I’d indicated, not by saying so but by merely not engaging with him, that I had no interest in his opinion of me. I did not wear his taunts and insults as a badge of honor (as did a couple of my bad ass, feminist HBR colleagues), I simply stopped hearing them. I realized for the first time what it meant to hold someone beneath contempt. Strong emotions, including contempt, require effort and time to maintain. To moiself, Kid was just…macho flotsam.
I did not engage Kid in the repartee – playful, and with occasional double-entendre overtones – that I did with the “nice guys” and my female colleagues. We were all mostly within three years of one another, age-wise; naturally, there was workplace banter and casual flirtation and good-natured kidding bordering on insults. With regard to the latter I punched up, never down, with both male and female colleagues. The few guys who harbored a nasty streak stayed clear of me, after one of them, the Assistant Shift “Chef,” [7] tested my limits on my first week on the job. He did this with (what I later found out was) his standard routine with which he teased the new counter girls:
Assistant Shift Chef summoned me to the kitchen area, informing me that it was SOP to give counter girls a tour of the kitchen facility, even though they’d be working out front (later I was told that he always did this “tour” with others present, as having an audience was a key component of his routine.) Under the pretense of wanting my opinion about a possible flaw in Disneyland’s chef’s apron design, which seemed to have pockets and a seam or something no one could quite figure out, he reached down, fingered the outline of his crotch, and ask Newby Counter Girl ® moiself, “Do you know what this is?”
I’d been informed re the HBR hierarchy on my first day at work. Despite his title, Assistant Shift Chef had no authority over me (or any female HBR female), so I decided to go for it.
“Hmmm.”I assumed a wide stance, one hand on my hip and the other slowly stroking my chin in a gesture of solemn deliberation. “Wait; don’t tell me, this is familiar…Oh! I know! It looks like it a penis, only smaller.”[8]
Assistant Shift Chef guffawed heartily, as if he had collaborated with me on the joke. Still, I noticed (and savored) the nanosecond of terror and humiliation which flashed across his eyes, just after my line sunk in and before his crew began to whoop it up.
Once again, I digress.
The first day I returned to HBG for my second summer season (after my freshman year of college), I was delighted to see that several of my favorite seasonal employees had also returned…oh yeah, and there was also the Kid. Although, maybe he’d been there all year? I can’t remember if Kid had been a year-round employee or was another seasonal worker (all of whom were college students – the idea of Kid in any institution of higher learning never occurred to moiself).
Anyway, Kid had obviously been alerted to my return. He waited at the rear of the pack welcoming me back, and after the rest of us had exchanged greetings, he removed the mini cassette player from his pocket and pressed play. This time, I was the one with the genuine smirk on my face.
* * *
Department Of Entertaining The Donations Dude
Dateline: Monday; 1:30 pm-ish; Goodwill donations center. The guy helping me unload the donations from my car engages me in small talk about the current mugginess and upcoming weather forecast. I hand him a bag full of books; he points to a book at the top of the bag, whose title is something like, Staying Sane In An Irrational World.
“Well now, what’s that about?” he asks.
“Who knows,” moiself shrugs. “It’s a book of empty pages.”
May your pets somehow obtain the furniture (you think) they deserve; May the book of your life not be filled with empty pages; May you live long enough to find out that which makes you happy; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Ebert, who grew up Catholic, chose not to define his religious beliefs, saying he is not an atheist and not a believer. He clarified his religious views in a blog post called “How I believe in God.” He said, “I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist — which I am. If I were to say I don’t believe God exists, that wouldn’t mean I believe God doesn’t exist. Nor does it mean I don’t know, which implies that I could know.” (from Roger Ebert entry, ffrf.org )
[2] Perhaps there were none to share; perhaps all of my FB friends have been beloved (or at least tolerated) by even the most neanderthal of their colleagues.
[3] Thanks, RU, although I’d already considered sharing more of the details.
[4] Which, as more than one dissatisfied patron told me (as if I were responsible for the name or had any influence in *any* Disneyland policy) : “Shee-it, girl, this ain’t no restaurant, this is a burger and fries joint.” Or a glorified fast food place, with no table service…aka, in Disney-speak, a “quick service eatery.”
[5] I am happy to report that although I’ll never forget his face I cannot recall that co-worker’s name (nor would I used it in this space, even if I did remember it).
[6] At that time, D-Land’s various food attractions staff were sex-segregated with respect to responsibilities: males in the kitchen, running the fryers and grills and stocking the food wells, and females upfront – the “counter girls”, taking the guest’s orders, receiving payment, and “boxing” and giving to guests the food and drinks.
[7] I can’t believe that title (chef?) was given to the dude who was in charge of the run-the burgers-through-the-grill machine line.
[8] A thousand thanks to seventh grade PE teacher Mrs. Ewing, who suggested a version of that response to flashers and other harassers.
[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of If You Can Answer These Questions With Utter Certainty, You’re Smarter Than Moiself (Or, You Are Self-Deluded And/Or A Good Liar)
* Are social media posts by students, outside of school, protected speech?
* Is a school’s attempts to censure student’s personal social media posts
a violation of the First Amendment?
* Is someone who follows a hate-mongering social media account (SMA) or “likes” an offensive or racist post, as culpable as those who write the posts?
* Are high schoolers who post progressively insulting and disturbing text and images on their SMAs doing so because they are shallow, ignorant, immature youths trying to impress one another with their generation’s edgier-than-thou credentials?
Or are they racists/Proud Boys in training?
* And what if the posters of “racist” materials are themselves bi-and multiracial? [1]
These questions and more were raised by a 2017 case of social media bullying, which led to multiple students being expelled from Albany High School (California; east Bay Area) for racist and threatening posts made to a private Instagram page. The students and their families sued Albany United School District over the expulsions, and while the case wrangled its way through the appeals courts, students, faculty, family and community wrangled over the implications.
“A private Instagram account with just over a dozen followers might not seem like something that could cause much trouble. But the discovery in 2017 of such an account, run by students, with racist posts, shattered a Bay Area high school and its town. Friendships were destroyed, lawsuits were filed and the trajectories of lives were changed forever.” ( “The Instagram Account That Shattered a California High School: It had barely a dozen followers, but the discovery of its racist posts turned a Bay Area community against itself — and changed students’ lives forever. “ NY Times, 8-28-23 )
Moiself recommends y’all read the entire article. [2] Warning: I had a headache after I did so – I’d been (unintentionally) clenching my jaw, the more I got into the gripping, nuanced reporting of the incident, its aftermath, and the mind-boggling issues it raised.
Bullying disguised as humor; racism; misogyny; students testing boundaries – nothing new under the sun. But the ways these issues are handled and transmitted is monumentally more complicated than when I was in school. How many of my peers (and moiself ) would have/could have been caught up in similar scandals, had our clever and ironic (read: often tactless and tasteless) jokes, remarks, observations and random blatherings been posted (and thus documented) on social media, instead of just shared between certain friends and classmates and forgotten the next day?
One personal account in the article, from a boy who was one of the “likers” (but not posters) of the Instagram group, was particularly poignant. He radiated regret, confusion, shame, and self-doubt, wondering how he got caught up in such a stupid, sleazy, and hurtful thing, which in his mind started as an edgy joke. He *knew* in his heart that the posts, and thus him liking them, was wrong…. But, in that way which is common to so many insecure adolescents, he wanted to seem tougher than he was and impress the older boys who were the original posters.
One perceptive Albany High student noted, in an op-ed article in the school’s student newspaper, a disturbing tendency in her generation with regard to social media – a tendency which, she felt, was played out in the Instagram posts:
“The constant exchange of offensive memes breeds a vicious competition,
where the jokes get increasingly more shocking
until the initial jokes are no longer very outrageous.”
Another student’s account was equally if not more touching, in that she was a subject of at least one of the posts. Imagine having a friend warn you about (read: direct you to check out) a social media account, where you discover that people you thought were your friends had made snide and/or disparaging personal comments about you, and posted graphic, offensive, sexist, and racist (think: KKK images) pictures linked with pictures of you and other bi-and multi-ethnic students.
The following excerpts, from the end of the article, encapsulated for me the complexities of the incident, the reverberations of which continue to this day, for both the community of Albany and the students and their families (my emphases).
Darren McNally, current principal of Albany High (he was a newbie administrator in 2017, when the Instagram account was discovered), reflected on the students involved:
“…When he thinks about them, which is often, [McNally] thinks about the importance of teaching empathy and interpersonal connection, of helping students connect the dots between the more abstract lessons about injustice they receive in the classroom and the immediate impacts of their own actions on the human beings sitting in the desks next to them. ‘These kids had been instructed that these things are bad on an intellectual level,’ he said, referring to the racism and sexism of the (Instagram account), ‘but not on a deeper interpersonal and emotional level. And so they knew it would be transgressive, it would be edgy to do this, but didn’t understand the harm that could come from it.’
Schools can bridge that gap, McNally suggests, by building a capacity for reflection among young people who may not be in the habit of thinking deeply about their own or other people’s emotions. But doing so requires moving beyond the conventional calculations of school discipline, in which the menu of responses to bullying or hate speech is limited to three choices: ignore, suspend or expel. When the Albany community demanded the harshest possible retribution, it was in part because few people could imagine an alternative that didn’t amount to shrugging it off or sweeping it under the rug. ‘We live in a society that is so punishment-focused, that is so focused on turning people into right and wrong and then punishing wrongness, that it’s incredibly difficult to get people out of that mind-set,’ he says. ‘It makes me think about how we as a society have actually trained everybody that exclusion is what you do to people that are not right.’
Like McNally, (then) assistant principal Melisa Pfohl has found herself in a contemplative frame of mind since the resolution of the lawsuits. Back in 2017, she interviewed every student she knew who was involved on both sides of the account. Each of their stories was different; many were heartbreaking. It is those overlooked particularities that she mourns now, the complexities that were lost in the rush to respond to the community’s desire for immediate action and stern retribution.
Back then, it felt as if she were in the middle of a conflagration. ‘It was a fire line…and so everybody was passing the buckets.’ Her eyes fill with tears at the recollection. ‘Some of us, me included, accidentally picked up some gas. We didn’t know it, right? We were just passing the bucket. And I’m sorry that it was gasoline. I didn’t mean to do any harm. I tried to pick up plenty of buckets of water. But when it’s all moving so quickly like that, it all looks the same.’ “
What’s in your bucket?
* * *
Department Of I Don’t Know About Y’all, But After That Topic I’m In Need Of A Visit From My Emotional Support Peek-A-Boo Sloth [3]
(From salon.com, [5] a letter to the editor. The letter writer was addressing a gay pastor (the subject of the article) who’d expressed being surprised by the homophobia of a South Carolina congregation ):
“Read your bible. The people that hate you are the ones who are acting biblically. Sorry if you didn’t realize that your job teaching fairy tales to adults
wouldn’t have some down sides. You can’t keep people ignorant and expect them to be intelligent when it suits your personal needs.”
* * *
May we realize the down sides of teaching fairy tales as facts; May the boys who started that Instagram post grow up and grow a pair –
a pair of kindness antennae,
to alert them to when they’re being hurtful jackasses; May we be careful which bucket we pass when we’re trying to douse a fire; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Six of the followers were white; the rest were Asian, Latino or Middle Eastern.
[3] A sloth is deserving of a footnote. Here it is.
[4] “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
[5] I don’t have the link to the article, which was posted years ago. I was so taken with the response that i wrote it down but forgot to note the reference. Bad journalist – oh; wait, I’m not a journalist.
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]
* 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 alohain 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]
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.
[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.
[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.
[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
(Which makes MH, Mr. Abner Kravitz. Yep, I’ve been having fun with that all week).
Left: Gladys Kravitz; Right: Samantha Stevens
For those readers younger than 50, Gladys Kravitz was the nosy neighbor of the TV series Bewitched‘s protagonist, Samantha Stevens. Gladys was convinced that there were extraordinary goings on in Stevens’ household, and was exasperated to the nth because she couldn’t prove her suspicions to her husband ( “Abbbnnneeeerrr!” ) [2]
Background to this startling revelation about my heretofore secret identity: Dateline, Tuesday morning, circa 7:30 am. I was at the coast, out for a morning walk…
But first, a relevant digression. A long time ago…oh, no – here it comes again…
From my late high school years until my late twenties, I ran [3] between two to five miles, every day. As recreational runners know, unleashed dogs and runners are not a good combination. [4] Every runner I’ve met has stories of being confronted, harassed and/or attacked by an unleashed/unaccompanied-by-its-human, aggressive dog. The stories, and the avoiding-being-a-dog-bite-victimadvice runners receive and pass on to other runners, are mostly similar, but sometimes divergent.
A person running triggers the prey instinct in many dogs; thus, the common wisdom shared amongst runners: when approached by a dog whose posture and behavior…
* stiffening or freezing of the body; * forward-leaning, hunched down, hunting/stalking posture; * “whale eyes” (wide, with a lot of white showing); * teeth baring; tense mouth/curled lips; wrinkled nose; * ears laid flat against the skull or stiffly held straight up (not relaxed); * barking, growling; “air-snapping”….
…indicates aggression, and there is no dog owner in sight, you should:
* stop running * stay as calm as you can * avoid eye contact (which can be seen as aggressive); * speak to the dog in a calm, firm, but non-threatening voice; [5]
* remain upright; * don’t scream (or flail your limbs or panic or jump up and down); * back into a corner or against a wall so the dog can’t get behind you; * look for a tree or car to climb [6] and hope to f***’s sake the owner appears…
I faced the aggressive dog situation many times when I was running for exercise. Those strategies worked for me, as they did for other runners…except when they didn’t. I heard too many stories of someone who did everything right and got bitten anyway.
Fellow runners also shared the WTF?!?!?confusion of hearing sure-fire advice from so-called experts which contradicted advice shared by other experts. As in: ignore the dog; *don’t * stop running. Continue what you’re doing, because some dogs will pay you no mind when you walk or run past them but if you stop, they “think” (okay, no human really knows what a dog thinks, we are trying to guess/interpret) you are a threat to them.
In other words, encountering an aggressive dog is situational and dog-specific: sorry, but there is no sure-fire, works-every-time, strategy. But, human nature being what it is, there is this sure-fire reality: there will always be some person who will tell you that, whatever you did, you should have done something else.
Back to the future background to the Mrs. Kravitz revelation: Dateline: the Oregon coast (Manzanita); Tuesday morning, circa 7:30 am; out for my morning constitutional. On that day I decided to walk north along the imaginatively named Ocean Road, which parallels the beach, then splits into two roads, one of which (Beulah Reed Road) continues along the coast and up into the streets winding around the base of Mt. Neahkahnie.
I walked along the road, noting the increasing number of vans and other vehicles I’d been seeing in my early morning walks – vans and campers parked alongside Ocean Road which look as if they’ve been there all night (as opposed to the vehicles whose drivers pull over, watch the waves and savor their morning coffee [7] before driving on to their jobs, or what/where ever). Those been-there-overnight vehicles are situated in such a way to indicate that the occupants are camping there, despite the fact that it is illegal to do so, and despite the “No Parking between 11pm – 5am” signs posted along the road.
As I turned up Beulah Reed Road I saw two more looks-like-illegal-campingvehicles parked on the west side of the road. Safety-conscious pedestrian that I am, when I am walking along a sidewalk-less road, I always walk facing traffic; thus, I passed close by both of the vans, whose occupants were presumably still inside/asleep (the vehicle’s windows had shades and other objects blocking the windows and windshields). One of the vans stood out due to its color and décor: a green van festooned with white and yellow flowers, sporting a Nebraska license plate and a message – “love mother nature and she will love you back” – painted on the van’s rear window.
The Green Van was in the same spot on the west side of Beulah Reed Road where, in the past few months, I’d walked past other camping vehicles one of which provided moiself with a memorable visual a couple months ago. The naked man who’d emerged from that vehicle and began urinating by the side of the road just as I was passing by was an unpleasant sight, but a minor startle compared to what happened Tuesday am.
I continued walking up Beulah Reed Road for a few more minutes, then headed back to Ocean Road. As I neared the Green Van(this time, walking on the far side of the road) I saw a husky/malemute dog lying in the sand by the right rear of the GV. The dog had not been there five minutes ago, when I’d first walked past the GV, and there was no sign of any humans (other than moiself) about. When I was about thirty feet away from the GV the dog’s eyes fixed on me; it got up and slowly began to cross the road toward me.
Oh, shit. It takes minutes to type what flashed through my mind in nanoseconds Some of the nicest dogs I’ve met, and some of the meanest, have been husky/malemutes – and those two breeds consistently rank high on the Biting Dogs lists….[8]
The dog was obviously not going to be one of the nice ones. It slunk toward me, in a crouched position (the classic hunting posture – have you ever seen footage of wolves or other carnivores stalking their prey?). Its approach was menacing, but silent…which I found more disturbing than barking. [9] If it had been barking, that would have (hopefully) alerted its owner.
“How’d ya like to see these teeth up close?”
I stop walking and spoke softly but firmly, remembering not to make eye contact. I did all the “right things,” which had no effect on the dog’s aggressive body language and approach, so I slowly began to continue my walk. The dog circled in front of me, blocking my path. It growled, bared its teeth and walked stiff-legged toward me, then began to snarl and bark. I put my walking poles between me and the dog and called out loudly: WHOSE DOG IS THIS – COME GET YOUR DOG. I did this several times; finally, a woman appeared from the west-facing side of the van. She had long, reddish hair and looked to be in her late 20s – early 30s. She made no apologies for her menacing dog, but unenthusiastically attempted to
(1) assure me that her dog was not aggressive (“He just has a lot to say” she said,
as her dog began barking even louder, flattened his ears, and raised his hackles) (2) get her dog under voice control.
She failed at both (1) and (2).
She held no leash (and with the dog’s thick fur I couldn’t tell if it even had a collar to which a leash could be attached). She kept calling to the dog, which would turn to look at her, take two steps toward the GV, then turn around and bark and take three steps toward moiself. As the dog continued to ignore the anemic “suggestions” of his owner to return to her, I swung one of my walking sticks at him, which temporarily stopped his advance (at that point he was less than two feet from me).
Oh, for some pepper spray, I thought – not for the dog, but to use on that pathetic excuse for a human being. GV lady may make van-decoration-declarations on loving Mother Nature but she obviously doesn’t give an oyster’s ass about walking responsibly through Mother Nature’s land while respecting and protecting *all* of Ma Nature’s creatures, including bipedal ones.
This brand only works on German-speaking dogs.
I made firm, aggressive eye contact with the woman when she repeated her, “He’s not mean/he has a lot to say”bullshit excuse. I replied, “Yeah, he’s saying a lot and none of it is nice – I’ve been bitten by a dog; I know when I’m being threatened. You need to get your dog under control, RIGHT NOW.” The insolent look on her face reminded me of a pouty adolescent whose parents had threatened to ground her until she cleared the dinner table. “I am going this way,” I pointed toward Ocean Road, “and your dog needs to gothat way.“ I pointed toward her van.
Which eventually happened. After the woman and her dog disappeared behind the other side of the van, I took a picture of the back of the GV.
I was seething when I got home (and really hungry). I posted the GV picture on my FB page, along with a very brief description of the incident. As I was doing so I remembered that on my way back I’d passed an elderly couple walking on Ocean Road, headed in the direction I’d come from. Damn, I chastised moiself– should I have warned them about staying away from that van? With that thought in mind I posted the same photo and incident description, with an “FYI” warning/introduction, on a FB page where locals post pictures and info about items of North Oregon coast interest.
I knew I should report what had happened to “the authorities.” As I fixed my breakfast and mulled over whom to call (The town? The county? ) I was contacted by my Friend and Neighbor ®. F&N had seen my post, and urged me to report the incident. I called the police non-emergency number; the dispatcher who finally answered said that Beulah Road was under Tillamook County jurisdiction, and that she’d have a TC deputy contact me.
The TC deputy took down the details of my report, and then…oh my my (“Officer Chatty Cathy,” my mind soon nicknamed him). He had a lot to say about what had happened to me, and about related incidents he had been/was currently dealing with. I was apparently a sympathetic ear into which he unloaded his and his law enforcement colleagues’ frustrations with similar incidents and with “what’s going on in the county,” including:
* increased illegal camping * increased reports of aggression between illegal campers and county residents * illegal campers’ aggressive/unleashed dogs (who go after both people and other dogs) * the overload of reports the county has to investigate without the staff to do so….
He said that TC had a backlog of *hundreds* of calls about illegal camping and other violations, but that because what happened to me involved menacing, he could prioritize my report, and would head for Beulah Road. I thanked him, and noted that the van had probably moved on. Actually…probably not, he said. And, in his experience, if it did move it would likely move to somewhere nearby, and a green van with Nebraska plates would be easy to spot. Should he find the van, he said he’d have an in-depth conversation with the van/dog owner. How he handles these cases, he explained, is based on the dogs’ and or vehicles’ owners’ demeanor and response. If they listen respectfully and are forthright and apologetic, he tries to educate them and lets them off with a warning. If they are unapologetic and insolent, and even (as some people have done) go so far as to assert that they have no intention of abiding by the _____ (leash, parking/camping/trash disposal, etc.) laws, he’ll give them “as many citations as possible.”
He asked me to spread the word: please tell people to report these encounters, even as he acknowledged the perception that “They (law enforcement) will do nothing,” and so most incidents go unreported. It’s true, we (local police/sheriff departments) are understaffed, he said, but people need to know that the reports, even if they cannot be immediately investigated, help them gather statistics in general, and make records in particular for individual menacing dogs and their owners, so that if (or as he put it, “unfortunately, when“) the dog harasses/attacks another person or pet, the dog owner can’t get away with, “Oh, he’s harmless/he’s never done that before….”
At one point in our conversation, I told him how I’d began my walk thinking about the increase in illegal parking/camping, and asked if he knew if that is indeed the case, or just my anecdotal impression? And is this uptick (in illegal beach camping) related to homelessness? He told me the increase in numbers wasn’t my imagination, but that my assumption about the cause was incorrect. He then asked me something which led to an “aha” turn to the conversation: “Have you heard of the website, ‘vanlife’?”
“You’ve seen the hype around #vanlife. You’ve seen the stunning photos on social media. Now you want to throw everything to the wind, quit your job, build out a camper van, and live a carefree life of adventure…. This page is designed as a jumping-off point for your personal vanlife journey. We go over the pros and cons of this lifestyle, the reasons why full time van life is awesome… We answer the most frequently asked questions about living in a van – everything from bathrooms and showering…to finding sweet camping spots.”
“After we’ve posted this cool picture of ourselves can we go back to our penthouse and order takeout sushi?”
I said I knew of the site, but had never visited it. I thought it was similar to other sites I’d heard about, where people share information about RVing and/or traveling and living in trailers and vans. It is that, Officer CC said, but has become so much more: it has become a source of the increased “incident” calls faced by local law enforcement. He proceeded to express his frustration re the influence of the van-lifestyle sites, where people post info for others who’ve chosen to live in vans, sharing tips about where to travel and camp “for free” (but not necessarily legally).
More and more, Officer CC said, the people he speaks to and then warns and/or cites for illegal camping are mentioning (in some cases, boasting) that they were “referred” to the Oregon coast by vanlife and similar websites and online bulletin boards. And, he stressed, these people are *not* homeless– they seem well-funded (trust fund babies?) and/or are working remotely. For whatever reasons, they have romanticized the idea of public urination and defecation[10] life on the road. They…
* find it glamorous to be house-less by choice;
* take pride in ridding themselves of the bourgeois trappings of consumerism:
* receive positive feedback from like-minded folk when they post cool pictures on Instagram of their adventures in livin’ on the road;
* believe that dogs also “need freedom” and so they ignore local leash laws;
* tell him that they love livin’ “for free”…
which – surprise! – turns out to be anything but free for the people in the communities who pay the taxes that fund the services to clean up after those freedom lovin’ van lifers, who leave their trash and toxic waste behind as they move on – and the damage these love-nature-and-she’ll-love-you hypocrites do to natural habitat areas frustrates him to no end…
As he described his dealings with these voluntary nomads, more than once he referred to van-life enthusiasts as, “hippies.” I could tell from Officer CC’s voice that he was much younger than moiself; it took all of my maturity (ahem) to refrain from correcting him:
“Actually, they aren’t hippies – that was an older generation. Any surviving hippies are at home rubbing patchouli and/or CBD oil on their aching joints…I think y’all need to come up with a more contemporary epithet for the younguns whose lives and values you find disrespectful, or just fruity.”
I’m not criticizing or mocking the deputy. He was amiable, empathetic, and eager to articulate the frustrations of law enforcement officers who cannot adequately fulfill their oath to serve and protect when they are overwhelmed by calls they cannot address.
Our talk turned to what people can do to protect themselves against aggressive dogs (Officer CC said his wife is a runner, and that she and her running buddies frequently deal with unleashed and aggressive dogs). I said that, due to my afore-mentioned, bitten-by-a-dog incident, I’d done my research, and ordered a cannister of citronella spray [11] and an air horn, for self-defense. Before I could tell him I’d ruled out bear sprays/pepper sprays, he strongly advised that I tell my friends *not* to carry pepper sprays, because
* Unless you’re an expert who practices with pepper spray on a regular basis you can end up inadvertently spraying yourself, particularly when you’re under duress; * At the beach, where gusts of wind can arise seemingly out of nowhere, pepper spray can backfire, as in, get blown back on *you.*
He said that while he hated having to recommend it (“Nobody wants to hurt an animal,”) carrying a club might be called for (I said thanks/no thanks, and mentioned my walking poles). He expressed admiration for the air horn strategy: “What a great idea!” he enthused, noting that the loud noise would both startle the dog and alert nearby humans.
Yeah; okay, are we ever gonna get to the Gladys Kravitz connection?
After my conversation with the deputy I drove to Hillsboro, where I had business to attend to. While driving I received a voice mail from my Friend & Neighbor, and pulled over to return her call. F&N said that my local/beach group FB posting had spawned a comment firestorm: most were from people relating their own/similar incidents, and/or expressing sadness re what happened to me in particular and what they saw happening to their community. Other posters engaged in unfounded and unsolicited second-guessing, reframing the incident, and even claiming to know the dog’s intentions, despite having not been there. [12] Several of those I-wasn’t-there-but-I-know-what-really-happened posters also opined on what I *should* have done to avoid being menaced by the dog.
( Ladies, does this sound familiar?
“If you’d only done this/said that/worn that/walked this way,
you wouldn’t have been assaulted.” )
I’d read a few of the early comments, including two which asserted that “people should mind their own business” and “stop caring about who parks where or does what.” [13] The MYOB theme was picked up by a few other unbalanced strident posters. How that became a thing, considering the context, was a mystery to moiself. Translation: I found it bewilderingly irrational. The afore-mentioned Gladys Kravitz remark came from one such poster, who addressed her remarks to moiselfand fumed about why I was being Gladys Kravitz, and that I should have minded my own business….
Say what? Minding my own business – exactly what I was doing. I did not approach the dog and try to determine whether he was neutered. My business, which I was minding, thanks for your concern, was walking. I was out for a walk on a public road, enjoying the scent of the briny coastal air and minding my own beeswax, when an aggressive, unleashed canine decided to make his threats my business.
F&N and I had a giggle about how comments on my post had spiraled into many tangents. I said that, after violating the never-feed-the-trolls rule (I corrected one unhinged commenter, who seemed to be reading comprehension-challenged and tried to rewrite my story to fit her outrage at…whatever), I’m not going to read any more comments on that group. F&N said she’d keep me apprised of the more entertaining (read: whackadoodle) posts…although, I told her, the Gladys Kravitz epithet would be hard to top.
The next morning my phone rang: it was F&N’s update call. Apparently, by the end of the previous day, “things got nasty,” as she put it. She’d checked the FB local/beach site before bedtime: there were “248 or 258” comments, including a thread where people posted pictures of when they’d been bitten by an unleashed dog, and others posted either support or criticism for the bite victim. Then a man mentioned that he might carry a gun when he goes to the beach, and lawdy mama, it took off from there, with about 40 more posts related to carring concealed weapons on the beach. In the morning when F&N rechecked the site, about 40 of those packing-heat-on-the-beach posts had disappeared, taken down by the group moderator (or perhaps, I posited, by the posters who’d developed cooler heads overnight?). F&N said the nastiness also included some posts which made blatant or tacit references to class warfare, claiming that heartless “rich people” at the beach hate “the rest of us” and harass people who have no choice but to live in their cars…in sharp contrast with the deputy’s testimony that the majority of the people he and his fellow deputies encounter and warn about/cite for illegal camping are neither destitute nor homeless, but self-obsessed, “van life” adventure seekers, whose idea of freedom is mooching off of public services they can well afford to pay for….
And moiself? Oy vey. I’d not even considered filing a report about illegal camping.
I just want to go for a walk, anywhere it’s safe and legal to do so, and not get bitten.
May you enjoy any/all outdoor activities free from dog (or human) harassment; May you delight in observing online trolls but not in feeding them; May you enrich the public discourse by coining a better word than “hippies” to describe Gen Z…hippies; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] And of course, Gladys Kravitz turned out to be spot on: Samantha Stevens *was* a witch. Despite promising her mortal husband Darrin that she would *not* use her powers, just about every episode of Bewitched involved Samantha using witchcraft to create unusual happenings, or to try to undo the wacky situations created by her witch and warlock relatives, who would make mysterious arrivals and departures and mess with the mortals. Mrs. Kravitz witnessed just enough to have her suspicions, which would always be explained away by Samantha or others. Yep, Mrs. Kravitz was a nosy neighbor, but her suspicious were correct, and she was gaslighted.
[3] Or I could say, “I was a runner,” but I never took my identity from that; I ran for enjoyment and exercise, as opposed to training for the Olympics or whatever.
[4] Unless the dog belongs to the runner and is also running because…well, it usually isn’t the dog’s idea.
[5] This is not to make yourself the alpha or assert dominance, but to get as much control of yourself and the situation as possible, and to make any cues you give the dog – “sit; down; stay; go home” as understandable as possible.
[6] The strategy used by one elderly gentleman, in a neighborhood I used to live in, when he was attacked by two free-roaming dogs when he was doing his early morning neighborhood rounds, delivering advertising flyers. The man and I had greeted each other when I went out for my morning run, and I was able to rescue him when I returned and saw that the dogs had treed – carred? – him.
[7] Or sometimes, doobies…as I notice when I pass the vehicles and they have the windows down.
[8] Which I learned in my training for the animal rescue organizations for which I volunteered, and I confirmed this when I returned home, by searching for dog bite statistics.
[9] Many a person who has survived a dog attack says that the silent ones, who approach you steadily, are more dangerous than the barkers.
[11] The smell of citronella is irritating/offensive to dogs, but not harmful.
[12] Perhaps there is a Canine Psychic Intentions website I am unaware of.
[13] Those comments seemed to be related to other posters who focused on the illegal parking and camping situation, not the aggressive dog.
[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
Dateline: Tuesday morning 6:59 AM listening to the Fresh Airinterview with Christopher Nolan, director of Oppenheimer.FA host Terry Gross began her interview with a “getting something out of the way” question ( [my notes] ):
TG: “Before we talk about the film, let’s talk about the writers’ and actors’ strikes, which have shut down TV and film production….”
CN: “……it’s an important moment in our business [Nolan is both a director and a writer and a member of the Writer’s Guild] ….
The ways in which we’re compensated have to be updated
to reflect the current world….”
Moiself’s reaction: what took them (the writers and actors) so long?
The issues involved ( including AI and streaming ) can seem complicated, at first. They’re not. Consider what’s at stake; it’s fairly basic. There is a central issue:
The ways in which writers and actors are compensated have to be updated to reflect the current world.
I’ve been on strike for years – as in, not writing for publication – for (many of) the same reasons. [1] Only in my case, no one powerful cares enough to rectify the situation.
The ways in which ______ (writers and actors…or insert waitstaff, teachers…almost any profession) are compensated have to be updated to reflect reality.
That’s it.
* * *
Department Of And Now, On A Totally Unrelated Note…
…except, maybe not. This anecdote moiself is about to share *is* related, in that it also was prompted by listening to the afore-mentioned Fresh Air interview.
Later in the interview, Terry Gross and Christopher Nolan were talking about dreams, as in, the dream-like narrative and/or pictorial quality of many films (including Nolan’s), and one of them (TG?) brought up the age-old question of whether or not people dream in color or in black-and-white.
One night when I was in high school I had a dream which started out to follow the usual pattern for my dreams: it was a colorful (I always dreamed in color), intricate, adventure saga, with a cast worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille film. [2] What made that particular dream noteworthy was that it used a chronological narrative (the plotlines in my dream world tended to vault around in time) until the middle of the dream, which suddenly switched to…something else (“We now pause our regular programming for this important digression”). This center piece was an approximately three-minute segment wherein Godzillamade a cameo appearance. When Godzilla was terrorizing people on a raft in the ocean, my dream switched from color to black and white; after the Godzilla short feature, my dream resumed its original setting and story, in color.
The next day I told a couple of school friends about my dream. Their reaction was almost identical to mine: they were fascinated by my subconscious mind’s ability to construct some sort of cinematographic cohesion within the total fantasy that is a dream: up to that point, Godzilla movies were filmed in black and white. I’d never seen a “color” Godzilla.
However, I’d also never seen a full-grown man, dressed in a vaudevillian striped shirt and straw boater hat and carrying a cane, jump out of a jar of peanut butter and start doing a song and dance routine – yet my mind inserted that scenario in one of my dreams.
It was my dream to be in one of her dreams.
* * *
Department Of Enough About How Moiself Dreams; Let’s Carp About How Some Other People Want To Change How Everyone Talks [3]
Have y’all heard about “equity language” (aka what moiself thinks of as “compulsory euphemisms”)? You probably have, even if you haven’t thought of it in those terms. Either way, I highly recommend George Packer’s recent article in The Atlantic:The Moral Case Against Equity Language. Here are excerpts from the article ( my emphases ), which makes this case: although the point of language is to clarify, well-meaning attempts to cleanse language “of any trace of privilege, hierarchy, bias, or exclusion” tends to obfuscate, and can also have the unintended consequence of dulling rather than sharpening awareness and empathy.
“The Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide discourages using the words stand, Americans, blind, and crazy. The first two fail at inclusion, because not everyone can stand and not everyone living in this country is a citizen. The third…even as a figure of speech (‘Legislators are blind to climate change‘), is insulting to the disabled….
In its zeal, the Sierra Club has clear-cut a whole national park of words. Urban, vibrant, hardworking, and brown bag all crash to earth for subtle racism. Y’all supplants the patriarchal you guys, and elevate voices replaces empower, which used to be uplifting but is now condescending. The poor is classist; battle and minefield disrespect veterans; depressing appropriates a disability; migrant—no explanation, it just has to go.
Equity-language guides are proliferating among some of the country’s leading institutions, particularly nonprofits…. The guides also cite one another. The total number of people behind this project of linguistic purification is relatively small, but their power is potentially immense….
Which is more euphemistic, mentally ill or person living with a mental-health condition? Which is more vague, ballsy or risk-taker? What are diversity, equity, and inclusion but abstractions with uncertain meanings whose repetition creates an artificial consensus and muddies clear thought? When a university administrator refers to an individual student as “diverse,” the word has lost contact with anything tangible—which is the point.
The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually easier to say people with limited financial resources than the poor. The first rolls off your tongue without interruption, leaves no aftertaste, arouses no emotion. The second is rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad. Imprecise language is less likely to offend. Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.
The liturgy changes without public discussion…. A ban which seemed ludicrous yesterday will be unquestionable by tomorrow…. in the National Recreation and Park Association’s guide, marginalized now acquires ‘negative connotations when used in a broad way. However, it may be necessary and appropriate in context. If you do use it, avoid ‘the marginalized,’ and don’t use marginalized as an adjective.’ Historically marginalized is sometimes okay; marginalized people is not. The most devoted student of the National Recreation and Park Association guide can’t possibly know when and when not to say marginalized….
But this confused guidance is inevitable, because with repeated use, the taint of negative meaning rubs off on even the most anodyne language, until it has to be scrubbed clean. The erasures will continue indefinitely, because the thing itself—injustice—will always exist. “
I encountered a pertinent example of the smokescreen effects of using equity language in a recent episode of Serial’s The Retrievals podcast (summarized below [4]. ) Episode four deals with the aftermath of patients’ lawsuits against the Yale hospital fertility clinic, where a clinic nurse had stolen drugs meant for fertility procedures. The hospital, in its papers addressing the issue, used the term drug “diversion” instead of theft. Oh gee, that doesn’t sound so bad – a diversion. Like, the drug was merely diverted – relocated – from this clinic to another one, or one patient to another?
What a cheap and insulting diversion in and of itself: to rebrand the theft of a vital medicine; to divert attention away from the horrific pain patients experienced during a procedure involving having a long needle inserted into their most private body cavities and through their abdominal walls. [5]
Diversion; schmersion – patient’s pain medication was *stolen.*
These and other examples of equity language raise my hackles, both personally and professionally via my “AS A” credentials. As a writer (and a reader), I esteem communication which uses words and phrases that illustrate, elucidate, and clarify, rather than those which attempt to soften or divert or confuse or disguise.
(Confession: moiself also likes words and phrases that provide a visually evocative substitute for the normative term – such as
* for vomiting: calling the dinosaurs; de-fooding; feeding the fish; whistling carrots; driving the porcelain bus; inspecting the chowder; barking at the ants….
* for fart and/or the act of emitting flatulence: cheek sneak; breaking dawn; carpet creeper; deviled egg; duck stepping….
All of these are, of course, euphemistic…and are also just plain fun.)
As Packer notes, the term the poor is “rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad,” while people with limited financial resources…leaves no aftertaste, arouses no emotion.” I think the provocation of emotion is good, particularly when it spurs action to address what caused the provocation. Y’all ever been poor? “Poor” should provoke emotion, because Being. Poor. Sucks.
Certainly (read: IMO), all linguistic rebranding needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis. There are words and phrases which could use a good makeover if they originated from and reflect times of ignorance and prejudice. Here’s one of the best examples (again, IMO) of a renaming which could (and I think, does) help reframe the way we view a fellow human being: “She is confined to a wheelchair,” vs. “She uses (or rides) a wheelchair.” The first is a rather patronizing description, painting a picture of dependency and pathos…but most of all, it is simply inaccurate. For someone whose physical condition requires it, a wheelchair is *liberating* – it provides the ability to move about when one’s legs, whether on a temporary or permanent basis, cannot.
Then, there are the others: the dreadful, weasel-word-filled, furtively-trying-to-slip-one-past-us euphemisms. Trying to rebrand “He served a prison sentence” into “He had an encounter with the criminal justice system” makes me think you’re trying to hide something. A person using such a circumlocution may intend to be helpful, but that kind of window re-dressing does nothing to reform, acknowledge, or even address the reality of the brutality of the American penal system and the obstacles faced by parolees.
Some of the most well-meaning folk never seem to get it. Calling bullshit “bovine ejecta” does not make it smell like morning at the bakery.
Preach it, sister!
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Department Of Stuff That Is Out Of My Control, And Keeps Me From Having A Good Night’s Sleep
It was almost two decades ago, I think, [6] that the actor Susan Sarandon expressed what turned out to be some rather prescient concerns re what was to come in her field. Although she didn’t use the term AI, her a particular concern is at the heart of the current writers/actors strike. Sarandon gave this example: Let’s say a producer likes her face, her voice, her overall presence, whatever they find distinctive and/or appealing about her as an actor, and wants to hire her to act in their movie…but she doesn’t want to do that role. Perhaps she doesn’t like the script or the politics conveyed via the plot; maybe she doesn’t trust the director’s experience or intent, or she just thinks it’s a stupid storyline. And, Sarandon noted, she had turned down acting jobs for all of those reasons – she just said, “No thank you” to the offers. However, she knew that there were people working on technologies which would allow them to essentially replicate her and use whichever of her qualities they wanted – they could make “her” do things that she didn’t want to or never would choose to do.
No doubt some folk dismissed or pooh-poohed her concerns. Yeah, what does a mere actor know – she probably one of those anti-tech, Luddite types, right?
More and more, I come across warnings, from People Who Know What They’re Talking About ®, re what is to come with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and its many applications. One of these PWKWTTA has articulated his warnings in a way that made me think he’d been inside my head, when he used the exact term that keeps coming to my mind:
This person is American cognitive scientist, writer, and philosopher Daniel Dennett, whose recent guest turn on Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid podcast is as fascinating as the topic they discussed is foreboding. As per the podcast’s summary:
“Counterfeit people, the seductively appealing Deep Fakes made possible by AI, are just the beginning of what the distinguished philosopher Dan Dennett says is a threat to humanity. This spring, he joined hundreds of other thought leaders in signing a starkly scary statement: AI threatens to make us extinct.” ( excerpt from “Dan Dennett: Fake People Aren’t Funny” Clear + Vivid, July 24, 2023 )
Dennett was so concisely articulate that I had to stop listening for a while – it was too much to take in. In particular, his comments about the people who are involved in AI development and research made me squirm. I know such people. And I know that they are (or seem to be) good people. And I know how seductive it can be, to think of yourself as working on the cutting edge while also thinking of yourself as a good person with good intentions…which leads to rationalizing away any critique of your work:
* Well, if I don’t/we don’t do it, someone else will….
* At least this way I know that *I* am involved, and I am a good person with good intentions…”
These are the go-to justifications of people involved in, for example, designing and building assault weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear bombs…. And the agencies and businesses making such products rely on their employee’s instinctive, defensive, self-justification. Or, both the businesses and their employees may dismiss any criticism with, “This is just what people have always said with every new idea;” or, “People who say that are anti-technology,” and other deflections.
We all tend to rationalize away such threats. *I* know I’m not a lil old lady who’s gonna be conned into sending her savings to Nigerian prince to save her kidnapped grandson – they tried it with email and it didn’t work on me![7]
But that’s the point Daniel Dennett makes: we *know* AI *is* going to be used for nasty purposes, because of what already happens *without* AI. Counterfeiters and scammers have always used the latest technologies; now, here comes AI, something that is so far above, so much more sophisticated than the usual techniques, that soon nothing will be able to be trusted except for face-to-face interactions [8]…which are simply not possible for many of us in this world of globalization and mobility. A phone call or Zoom message from my child, who is in obvious distress – how will I know that it isn’t a fake?
I’m not saying y’all working on developing anything AI-related should exit the business. I’m saying, with all the conviction my non-AI heart and mind can portray, that:
* You should summon the guts and hearts to realize that what you are doing, no matter your original intent,
is enabling the counterfeiting of human beings; thus…
* You should be advocating for the strongest possible watermarks (to continue the counterfeiting analogy Dennett used). The least you can do is to also develop legitimate technologies and strategies which will allow us humans to recognize the counterfeit.
This is yet another thing over which moiself feels like I have so little personal control (thus, the “department” title of this segment). And how do I know it’s even me who is writing this – that is indeed moiself who is thinking these thoughts? Maybe I am an AI human prototype which was released years ago…
May our work and compensation reflect the current world; May we weight the pitfalls and benefits of equity language; May we consistently be able to recognize the counterfeit; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Non-Hollywood writers – members of the Authors Guild (movies and TV writers are Writers Guild members) have a few similar and many different concerns with their contracts, including publishers eschewing the traditional/basic functions of a publisher (editing, design, distribution, marketing [e.g., publishers are increasingly demanding authors do the bulk of publicity] ) and not modifying royalty percentages and otherwise updating contracts to reflect the realities of the internet and e-books.
[2] The term used to describe DeMilles’ epics was “A cast of thousands.”
[3] But am I somehow dissing those oily freshwater fish by using carp as a verb?
[4]“ The Retrievals is a is a five-part series about the patients who say their pain was dismissed, a nurse who was hiding something, and the institution that failed to protect its patients. It tells the story of a dozen women who underwent egg retrieval procedures at the Yale Fertility Center. For months they complained of severe pain. But nobody caught on to exactly what was wrong, until one day…the truth was revealed: A nurse at the clinic had been stealing the pain medication and replacing it with saline. Eventually the nurse has her own story, about her own pain, that she tells to the court. And then there is the story of how this all could have happened at the Yale clinic in the first place.” (excerpts from “Introducing ‘The Retrievals,’ a New Podcast From Serial Productions.” NY Times, )
[5] I try not to pass out and/or vomit (or, bark at the ants) just thinking about it.
[6] This interview I read (heard?) was not with a large organization or prominent reporter, and was pre-internet; thus, I didn’t bother searching for a link.
[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of Before I Get To The Complaining Thoughtful Expositions On Topics Of Importance To All Humankind…
First, this observation of appreciation:
I’m not a coffee drinker, [1] but I would like to thank the person who, somewhere on Necarney Boulevard (Manzanita, OR) at approximately 7:30 am Tuesday morning, was either out on their porch or deck with their morning cuppa Joe, or brewing it in a nearby kitchen with the windows open. Whatever grind or blend they were using, its enticing aroma wafted onto the bicycle/pedestrian path as I walked by. In combination with the morning mist, which carried the scent of the salty ocean…Aaaahhh. What a delightful sensory experience.
* * *
Department Of A Gut-Wrenchingly Devastating, Throwing-Heavy-Objects-Against-The-Wall-Anger-Inducing Thing To Hear… And Yet Also, Ultimately, Am I Surprised?
Unfortunately, the answer is, fuck no.
This Gut-Wrenchingly-Devastating-Throwing-Heavy-Objects-Against-The-Wall-Anger-Inducing-Thing-To-Hear can be heard in the latest Serial podcast, the capper to their five-part narrative series, The Retrievals. Moiself has written in this space about this podcast, which I can’t recommend strongly enough. In Episode 5: The Outcomes, former patients talk about the lasting effects of their experiences at Yale’s fertility clinic, wherein an IVF procedure caused them excruciating pain, both during the procedure and for hours and even days afterword (…and for “good reason” – it turns out a narcotics-addicted clinic nurse had been stealing the analgesic used for the procedure and replacing it with saline). But the patients’ reports of pain, even to the doctors and clinic staff who heard the patients screaming during the procedure, were discounted and/or minimized.
The following podcast excerpts (Episode 5: The Outcomes, transcript) are from conversations between Serial producer/investigator Susan Barton, and Kelly Fitzpatrick, one of the attorneys representing the patients in their malpractice lawsuits against the Yale clinic, [2] and Barton and Cecelia Plaza, an attorney who wrote a paper cited in the conversation (my emphases):
Fitzpatrick: “These women were repeatedly ignored….that sets it apart from a regular medical malpractice case. These women were gaslighted. They weren’t believed. …And that makes it different.”
Burton: “…So how do you do that? How do you sue for ignoring pain?… It’s not like that, another one of the (patients’ lawsuit) attorneys told me. You can sue because they should have investigated reports of pain…
And then I came across the perfect paper. It was called, ‘Miss Diagnosis – gendered injustice and medical malpractice law.’ ….
The paper…(didn’t say) ‘Here’s how you sue for ignoring pain.’ What it did do is explore how this issue of women not being believed in medical settings plays out in court….
The (paper’s) author was a young attorney named Cecilia Plaza… She set out to answer a specific question about the gender gap in medical malpractice outcomes, which essentially is a question about whether women can be fairly compensated in the medical malpractice system. And what she found is that women likely cannot.
Because the foundation of this system is, did what happened to you meet the standard of care? If it did, you’re out of luck. Like, you’re a woman, you think you’re having a heart attack. You go to the ER. The doctor says, ‘it’s just your anxiety,’ and sends you home. Then it turns out that you really were having a heart attack. Can you successfully win a case against this doctor in court?
Maybe not. Because doctors misdiagnose so many women’s heart attacks as anxiety that sending a woman home could actually be interpreted as a reasonable choice that an ordinary doctor would make.
Just to be clear, Cecilia’s paper is not a work of opinion. It is an empirical analysis based on a ton of data. And what Cecilia found is that women cannot expect to get as much money as men in this system. Because dismissing women doesn’t necessarily fall below the standard of care.”
Plaza: “You would have to basically make the argument that not believing your patient’s report of symptoms or of pain is de facto below the standard of care. That’s not currently the case, which is a little bit mind boggling. But you would have to make that argument, and the court would have to agree with you.”
Got that, amid the legalese?
* Because so many doctors misdiagnose women and have done for so long and for so often, it is considered to be routine.
* Because discounting, minimizing, ignoring women’s pain, and *not believing them when they report severe pain,* is so common in the medical field, it is considered to be the standard of care.
Recently, while re-reading Roxane Gay‘s collection of essays, Bad Feminist, moiselfwas reminded of my conflicted feelings on whether or not people ultimately care about, or learn from, the lives and stories of others.
RG’s essays – specifically, Blurred Lines, Indeed – took me back to last summer, when moi-blog-self mulled over issues of freedom/personal liberty after the SCOTUS Roe V. Wade ruling. We religion-free folk have taken a page from the LGBTQ playbook; thus, many of us so-called atheists, Freethinkers, Skeptics, Brights, et al, encourage “outing” ourselves as such, and not only for reasons of truth-telling (religion-free folk tend to be fans of reality), but also with the thought/hope that that increased visibility helps to break down barriers, open minds, increase participation in the civic arena, and counter stereotypes. Thus I outed moiself, in one sense, [3] by briefly mentioning my reproductive history:
(excerpt from The Liberty Loss I’m Not Accepting, 7-29-22): So. A dimwitted busybody curious person may wonder, If it’s personal/no one else’s business, why am I making it yours by writing about it here? Moiselfdoes this for reasons that are not so original and yet are nonetheless pertinent.
“In 1972—when abortion was illegal throughout most of the country—53 well-known U.S. women courageously declared ‘We Have Had Abortions’ in the pages of the preview issue of Ms. magazine. ‘To many American women and men it seems absurd, that in this allegedly enlightened age, that we should still be arguing for a simple principle: that a woman has the right to sovereignty over her own body,’ they declared. Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, Susan Sontag, Nora Ephron, Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Judy Collins were among the signers. The women spoke out ‘to save lives and to spare other women the pain of socially imposed guilt’ and ‘to repeal archaic and inhuman laws.’ They invited all women to sign in order to ‘help eliminate the stigma’ of abortion.” ( ” ‘We Have Had Abortions’ Petition Relaunches 50 Years Later—With Support From Original Signatories.” Msmagazine.com 1-20-22 )
It can be easy to ignore or discount issues that are critical for other people, if you think the issue doesn’t affect you or anyone you know. If you (mistakenly) think that you don’t know anyone who’s gay/atheist/has had an abortion, then LGBTQ rights/religious discrimination/reproductive freedom may be an abstraction to you. You can allow yourself to be on the fence about the issue – or even on the compassionate side of the fence but not really involved – if you think it doesn’t affect you or anyone that you know.
I’m not sure about my mother’s stance on abortion, but I know she went to her grave not knowing about her older sister‘s harrowing experience. [4] My parents were as loving and considerate as could be to all of my different friends, and they knew of (and even occasionally discussed with me) my political opinions. However and sadly, judging from the publications and mailers I espied on their coffee table during my infrequent visits to their house, it is likely that they could have fallen prey to fear-mongering politics of The Billy Graham Association and other conservative religious organizations.
During one of my visits, California had an “anti-homosexual” proposition on the ballot (I can’t remember which proposition, nor exactly when– there’ve been several, over the years), and I saw a GAY TEACHERS ARE AFTER YOUR KIDS -type flyer on their kitchen table.
I asked them if they took such hyperbole seriously. One of them (can’t remember if it was Mom or Dad) said they realized it was over-the-top, then said, “Actually, we don’t know anyone who is gay.”
“No,” I said, “Actually, you *do* know gay people. You just don’t know that they are gay because you don’t know them well enough to be privy to their personal lives, or they have chosen not to reveal this to you…” – I indicated the flyer atop the mail pile – “…because of crap like that.” (My mother later assured me that that the flyer had just come in the mail, and that they hadn’t “requested it”).
I proceeded to give them the names of friends and teachers of mine, whom they’d met and liked, who were gay. They seemed genuinely surprised. “Mr. Haffner is gay? He was one of your and your sister’s favorite teachers….” (Still is, Dad.)“That nice friend of yours from college – he’s so sweet and smart and funny, he was a premed student, I think – he’s gay?” (Yes, Mom. He’s still the nice young man – nice doctor, now – who impressed you. You simply know something about him that you didn’t know before).
Did it make a difference in how they thought, or voted? No idea.
* * *
I’m still wondering: when it comes to knowing the personal stories of others, what does and doesn’t make a difference? Still wondering after reading these excerpts from RG’s essay, Blurred Lines, Indeed (my emphases):
“On June 30 2013 in the Room for Debate section, the NYT asked, ‘Would support for abortion rights grow if more women discussed their abortions?’ When I first saw the question, I bristled. Women shouldn’t have to sacrifice their personal histories to enlighten those who are probably uninterested in enlightenment.
…what if she doesn’t want to tell her story? What if it’s too personal, too painful? What do these confessions really do? Some people will be moved, but those are rarely the same people who support legislation to erode reproductive freedom. Immovable people will not be moved by testimony.”
* * *
* * *
Department Of Different As In, And now For Something More Light Hearted: We’ll Always Have Paris…
A classic line from a classic movie. [5] There are lists of such – “best” or “most memorable” movie lines – compiled by the American Film Institute, et al. Last week moiself overheard two people discussing classic movie lines. [6] I got to thinking about those lists, which, if Iremembers correctly, tend to be skewed toward films released before the mid-1970s. So, off the top of moiself’s pointy little head…
Not *this* pointy.
…I started my own list of memorable lines or dialogue from films released since 1975. I’m not claiming these are the “best” lines; they’re just, IMO, marvelous.
In no particular order, I present you with the lines, in this format:
“Line/dialogue “ characters/actors who speak the lines ( movie in which the lines appear )
“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.” Matty/Kathleen Turner ( Body Heat )
“I have been and always shall be your friend.” Spock/Leonard Nimoy ( Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan )
“KKKKHHHHAAAANNNN !!!!” James T. Kirk/William Shatner ( Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan )
“Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?” Soldier #1/Michael Palin ( Monty Python & the Holy Grail )
“You sit on a throne of lies!” Buddy/Will Ferrell ( Elf )
“Louise, I don’t know how to fish.” “Neither do I, Thelma, but Daryl does it – how hard can it be?” Thelma & Louise /Geena Davis & Susan Sarandon ( Thelma and Louise )
“That is one big pile of shit.” Ian Malcolm/Jeff Goldblum ( Jurassic Park )
Look, I have ONE job on this lousy ship. It’s STUPID, but I’m gonna do it, OKAY?” Gwen DeMarco/Sigourney Weaver ( Galaxy Quest )
“Fuck you Mars.” Mark Watney/Matt Damon ( The Martian )
“Into the garbage chute, flyboy!” Leia Organa/Carrie Fisher ( Star Wars: A New Hope )
“Better get a bucket.” Mr. Creosote/Terry Jones ( Monty Python: The Meaning of Life )
“How do you like your eggs?” Emma/Sally Field ( Murphy’s Romance )
“It’s comin’ outta me like lava!” Megan/Melissa McCarthy ( Bridesmaids )
Before 1975; still one of my favorites of the classic movie lines:
Actually, there are hundred of reasons…
but all you need is one, and this is a good one.
* * *
May you not be an immovable person/uninterested in enlightenment; May you find a way to incorporate a classic movie line into at least one comment of yours during the upcoming week; May you be pleasantly surprised by enticing aromas;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1]Moiself will occasionally treat myself to a latte-dah type drink, but tea is my hot beverage of choice.
[2] Fitzpatrick herself has been through an IVF procedure.
[3] The other sense – my religion-free status – has been out for some time.
[4] A few years before her death, at the request of one of her nieces (who suspected, correctly, that there were family stories to be told), my mother’s eldest sister revealed that the reason she and her husband never had children was that she was unable to, after having undergone an illegal abortion (that almost killed her) .
[5]Casablanca. Please don’t tell me if you didn’t know that.
[6] As in debating which were the best, or most-overrated or under-rated lines or dialog couplets….
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
But if moiself did publish such a book, it would have a chapter titled, “The Girls of Summer.” Said chapter would be devoted to describing the elaborate role-playing [1] games my grade school friends and moiself played, in my backyard and/or garage, during summers, on the three-point-five days a week when we were *not* at the beach.
The games we played on a regular basis included
* Dracula (we were – surprise! – vampires, although no one ever played the titular Count. [2] );
* Haunted House (we transformed my family’s garage – in which my parents did not park their cars because doing so would have taken away a vital part of our play space – into a haunted castle, wherein we would haunt [read: terrorize] our younger siblings, aka “The Little Kids ®,” who were so desperate to play with us Big Kids ® that they’d do anything we’d say);
* Leopards (we were a family of leopards, living harsh lives on the African plains and forests)
* Amazonian Women ( explanation forthcoming)
.
* * *
Department Of The Hitherto Unexplained Connection Between Barbies And Nuns
First, the Amazonian Women game explained, or at least outlined.
My childhood home’s backyard was a vegetation paradise, particularly during summer. Our fruit-producing trees and shrubs included a lemon tree, a peach tree, a plum tree, a pomegranate bush, several banana trees, [3]and five apricot trees. A huge, great-for-climbing pine tree of some sort (the sort that produced so much sap my mother kept a jar of Crisco, soley dedicated to sap removel, by the kitchen sink) was behind the garage. The pine tree provided a good access point to the garage roof, which we kids were technically forbidden to climb onto, due to our (read: *my* ) tendency to play WWII paratrooper and jump off of the roof holding an umbrella. [4] Summer night bonus: If you climbed far enough up in the pine tree you could see the halo at Anaheim’s Angel Stadium light up when an Anaheim Angel hit a home run. The view was definitely worth the sappy hands, arms, elbows, knees….
The perimeter of our yard’s back and side fences was lined with a variety of shrubbery. Cascades of bougainvillea flowed up and down and around the backyard fence, and the vines’ vibrant magenta-colored flowers provided the perfect tropical aura for our Amazonian game: we would drape a garden hose at the top of one of the vines and adjust the hose’s sprayer to the finest mist setting, which provided the proper, lounging-by-the-waterfall atmosphere, and also kept us cool. You could work up quite a sweat in the summer as an Amazonian warrior, canoeing from island to island, hunting and fishing and gathering tropical fruits, fighting off dangerous wild animals, and planning excursions to either visit or plunder neighboring islands.
Our brothers and other neighborhood boys were welcomed for the tag games [5] my girl friends and siblings and I played on balmy summer evenings, but with the exception of having one boy join the Dracula or Haunted house game on a few occasions, the other games were all-female. There were no literal male occupants of our Amazonian island; there were a never-specified number of men that we’d taken from neighboring islands and whom we kept in captivity. My friends and I knew enough about mammalian reproduction to know that our species could survive as a single gender, so we kept these imaginary male captives for “breeding purposes” – the ultimate meaning of which was lost on us, but somehow, we knew we had to acknowledge that aspect of our culture.
My notes for my SoCal girlhood memoir have gathered dust; moiself hadn’t thought of the Amazonian game in ages, until Monday, when friend CC and I saw the Barbie movie. During our après-cinema lunch when we were discussing the movie, [6] I told CC about the Amazonian game, and how it fit into my theory of why so many girls (especially those whose girlhoods were 40+ years ago) – girls who would either then or later identify as feminists – liked playing with Barbies, and also sometimes pretended to be nuns.
Hold on to y’alls wimples: it’s the long-awaited for, Barbies-Nuns Connection. ®
Like all the girls I knew when I was in grade school, my sisters and I were given, and played with, Barbie dolls. I never received, nor wanted, a Ken doll. [7] I did have a few male dolls: I asked for, and received for Christmas one year, a G.I. Joe doll and a Johnny West cowboy doll (which came with a palomino steed, and a plastic vest and chaps and spurs wardrobe for Johnny!). But as I discovered, a boy’s G.I. Joe was not to be called a doll, but an “action figure.” You’d best not refer to any of a boy’s male play figurines as what they were – dolls – lest the boy’s little dingus shrivel up and snap off at the mere suggestion that he played with a kind of toy commonly associated with girls.
Like many most of same girls with whom I played let’s-pretend we’re_____ games, we also played the We Are Nuns games. This was not a The Sound of Music fantasy thing, [8] and with one exception these friends were *not* from Catholic families. But there was a similar appeal to the world of Barbies, Amazonian island women, and nuns.
It’s not a complicated connection, not in the least. The appeal was that those worlds (Barbies; Amazons; nuns) were composed solely of females. Thus, girls got to do *everything.* This was not the case when we played games with the neighborhood boys.
One of a bajillion examples: One summer day I agreed to play “The Smith’s Home” (or some other family name) with my younger sister and our next-door neighbor boy. Next Door Neighbor Boy and I were The Smith Family. We were a recently married couple, with a dog and a cat and two hamsters and no children. After we’d discussed the game parameters, NDNB announced that he was leaving our house (a fort we’d built in my backyard) to “go to work.” I wanted to head out as well, but NDNB boy-splained to me that things didn’t work that way: as the wife, I had to stay home. When he insisted on taking the family pet, a German Shepard (played by my sister), to work with him, I in turn explained to him that things didn’t work that way. Husbands do not take the family pets with them to work – name one husband in the neighborhood who does that?! And that was the end of The Smith Family game.
Now then: NDNB was a nice boy, of whom I was genuinely fond re his gentle disposition and kind heart. But he, like the other neighborhood boys and the brothers (whether older or younger) of my friends, always tried to take over during the few times we let them join our games. If the girls were starting a game of Blackbeard’s Buccaneers you didn’t want the boys to join in because they’d insist on being all of the pirates and you had to be…something else.
Who you callin’ a scullery maid?
As young females, we grew up seeing a world where males were in charge, of just about everything. In television and movies men were the primary (if not the only) protagonists, with the women there as domestic/romantic supporting players. I was no fan of Catholicism and steadily (if secretly) came to despise almost everything about any religious doctrine (including my own family’s moderate Lutheranism); still, nuns held a peculiar attraction for many girls such as moiself . [9]
Sure, nuns were “cloistered,” but at least a nunnery was a cloister of choice. Girls grew up seeing few-or-no female counterparts to the much-envied, free-livin’, swingin’ bachelor: whether by choice or circumstance, females who remained single were portrayed as objects of pity. “Spinsters” and “old maids” were the only terms for women who remained single and childfree.
Similarly, when you played with Barbie dolls, you could be the good egg, the louse, the protagonist and the hero and the side player and everything in between. Our Barbies ran the house, earned the paychecks, planted and harvested the crops, designed fantastical machines, drove the stagecoaches between the OK Corall and Santa Fe, flew to the moon in shoebox rocket ships – whatever you wanted them to do, with no Ken to tell you that you couldn’t, or yeah, maybe just this once but you gotta ride…
“Sidesaddle my PVC ass, Ken.”
* * *
Department Of Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait A Minute…
“The battle over legacy and donor admissions to college — the practice of giving special treatment to family of alumni and contributors — is about to heat up in California as critics take aim at what they see as a long-standing barrier for less privileged students to access elite institutions.
State Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) plans to renew efforts to deny state financial aid to any college or university that gives an admissions advantage to such applicants, who research has shown are overwhelmingly white and affluent.” ( “Battle over legacy and donor admissions preferences to heat up; USC, Stanford could take hit.” LA Times 7-31 )
What the….
Moiself is, of course, *highly* in favor of such a bill, even as I’m stunned (naive? ) by California’s need for it. Since when did state financial aid go to private universities?
* * *
Department Of And In A Related Story…
A long time in a galaxy far far away: In the summer after son K’s junior year of high school, he began the first of several rounds of visiting colleges he was interested in applying to. Moiself accompanied him on the first three campus visits, which were in California. [11] It was late June when K and I flew down to Sacramento, rented a car, then in the next three days toured UC Davis, Stanford, and UC Santa Cruz.
My Oregonian born and bred son, who was known to complain when the temperature rose above 72°, seemed to have had an weather-influenced relationship with the colleges we visited on that trip: the closer we got to the coast, the more he liked the school, inversely conflating the temperature of the area with what his academic experience would be.
When we deplaned in Sacramento the heat blast hit K in the face, and I remember thinking, “Yep, this is familiar…” I am a UCD alum. A couple of summers I stayed in Davis to work expanded hours at the student job I had during the school year. I assured K that if he went to UCD he would probably not be staying during the summer, and that Davis had winters an Oregonian would appreciate. Nevertheless, looking back, I think all he “saw” of UCD was the heat.
Neither MH nor I were the kind of parents who lobbied (nor even encouraged) our offspring to consider attending our respective alma maters. But in the fall of K’s junior year, one winter weekend afternoon when he and I were hiking in a local nature preserve, K mentioned his interest in studying entomology. I told him there were not many colleges which offered an entomology major, and of those that did…things may have changed, but when I was at UC Davis it had the top-rated entomology program in the nation (when we returned home I did an internet search and confirmed that that was still the case).
I forget the reasons K had an interest in Stanford (his aunt, my younger sister, was a Stanford alum, but I don’t know if that was the influence); he was curious about UC Santa Cruz for its connection to the Human Genome Project. So: we planned our trip, signed up for the campus tours of and presentations by the respective colleges, and moved from east to west, starting with UC Davis, then Stanford, then UC Santa Cruz.
As moiself mentioned, I don’t think K saw much of Davis but the heat. UC Santa Cruz – he liked many things about it, although he agreed with my observation, as we did a bus tour around UCSC’s verdant campus, which is situated in the forested hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay, that it might be like going to college in summer camp.
As for Stanford, our visit there provided the most indelible, visiting-a-campus story.
We both enjoyed the Stanford campus tour, which was led by an enthusiastic student who was personable and articulate and knowledgeable and proud of his campus. K was quite keen about Stanford after that tour. Next on the agenda was a sit-down presentation for prospective students and their parents, given by Stanford’s Director of Admissions. In 20 minutes K went from, “Wow, I really like this place; it’s definitely going to be on my application list,” to, “I wouldn’t go to this snobby, elitist, self-aggrandizing institution if *they* paid *me* to do it.”
One of many statements the Dude of Admissions made which K found off-putting was a dyad of contradictory statements, which he kept repeating:
” *Any* person can get into Stanford! “ (After saying this, he would give examples of students from lower income, and/or nonwhite and/or non-big city backgrounds who were Stanford alums)
” Stanford, as one of the top rate universities in the United States,
is very selective, and has one of the, if not THE, lowest acceptance rates
of any college in the world! “
Several times during his presentation Admissions Dude said that he wanted parents or students to ask questions at any time, about any Stanford-related subject. After AD’s third repeating of his anyone-can-be-here/almost-no-one-gets-in couplet, a student raised his hand and asked how he might increase his odds of getting accepted to Stanford. AD answered with what he obviously meant to be a humorous story: “First of all, don’t do this….” He proceeded to tell how a high school senior had marched into AD‘s office, unannounced, hours before the admissions deadline. The student dismissively flung an admissions packet onto AD‘s desk and said, “Take care of it.”
I looked around the room, noting that both parents and students were snickering with “Oh, can you believe that arrogant wiseass?!” amusement. Moiself raised my hand, and when AD called upon me I asked him, “Was that student a legacy?”
Admissions Dude turned an impressive shade of white. [12] In a Very Serious Voice he stammered, “I can’t give any names; I can’t – uh, we can’t reveal any personal information about an applicant…”
To which I perkily replied, “I didn’t ask for his name; I asked if he was a legacy.”
Admissions Dude was quite flustered that I’d brought up an apparently taboo subject – as if no one present in the room had ever heard of legacy admission preferences before the big-mouth Oregon lady brought it up. He squirmed with discernable discomfort – I thought he was in danger of pissing his Trussardi trousers. The more the AD tried to act “plussed” the more nonplussed he became. As he strove to change the subject, several parents seated in front of K and I turned around and flashed me knowing, sympathetic, and/or incredulous looks.
K ended up applying to six of the seven schools he visited that summer. He was accepted at all six, and chose to attend the University of Puget Sound. He did not apply to Stanford.
Stanford LegacyGuide (The Koppleman Group)
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself . Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [13]
“If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” ( Anatole France 1844 – 1924, Parisian poet, journalist, writer )
* * *
May you have fond memories of your own childhood summer games; May you be mindful of what popular foolish thing you believe; May you enjoy your own reign as Employee of the Month; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] No, not today’s RPG. It meant something different back then.
[9] One that was romanticized, of course, but what other options did we see?
[11] MH did the next three visits with K, to colleges in Washington, British Columbia, and Minnesota. And K and I later made an overnight trip up to Tacoma to visit the University of Puget Sound, which is where he decided to go (as did his sister, Belle, three years later, and for similar reasons: they both had the experience, upon touring the campus, of “Oh, this is my place.”)
[12] Made even more impressive by the fact that he was not white.
[13] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg. Until I did.
One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens. No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.
[14] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Paging longtime friend EK, to whom I owe an apology. EK, whose family members hail from the Virginia/West Virginia area, was the first person who sought to change my mind regarding my dismissal of the legitimacy of the term.
Moiself grew up thinking that the usage of y’all was indicative of…well…an ignorant southerner.
Yeah, I know. Then I had a face-palming moment about the need for a distinguishing term to indicate when I’m speaking to yousingular or you plural. Thus and now, [1] it’s a term I use all the time, in place of *you-all.*
The summer after third grade I spent three weeks in Tennessee with my parents and sisters, [2] visiting my father’s family for the first time in my life. Moiself recalls being teased by my SoCal neighbors and friends upon my return, about the southern accent I had acquired during my Tennessee time. They actually howled with laughter when I let a y’all slip out (and after that taunting I made a conscious effort to “speak normally”).
My childhood (and young adult) impressions of the South and southern culture [3] came from the television shows my parents watched in the mid 60s-early 1971, [4] in particular the CBS lineup of The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and Hee Haw. Those hick-o-rama shows were inexplicably (to anyone with an IQ exceeding their inseam size) popular at the time, with adults of a certain age. *I* wanted to watch cooler shows – more intellectual fare, like The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Laugh-In, and My Favorite Martian.
My father was also (inadvertently) partly responsible for giving me a negative impression of southern culture. Several times during my childhood, after that first visit to Tennessee and later on when his family members came out to visit us in SoCal, I asked my father why he spoke so differently from his siblings. He had almost no trace of an accent betraying his southern roots (but I noticed he’d “slip up” – i.e., his accent would slightly but noticeably resurface, when he was around his relatives). He told me that when he’d joined the army he worked on losing his “family way” of speaking, as he’d noticed that “you were labeled a dump country boy hick,” if you spoke “that way.”
Thus, in the same way that I could never picture a nuclear physicist with a southern accent (“Y’all wanna split some atoms, or what?”), I grew up thinking that I couldn’t take someone seriously who used the term, y’all. So, a well-deserved slap upside the head with the bigotry stick, for moiself.
* * *
Department Don’t Make Me Call Child Protective Services On Y’all
“_____ and ____ are letting their hair down for a good cause. Each hopes to win a national mullet championship while raising money for wounded service veterans.
___ and ___ are competing in the 2023 USA Mullet Championships. ___ recently finished in the top third of the 1-4 year age group while ___ advanced among 9- to 12-year-olds. These age groups are guided by the old mullet saying, ‘Home room in the front, recess in the back.’ “
( excerpts from “2 Oregon boys vie for title of ‘best mullet in America’” Oregonlive.com
Names redacted by moiself to protect those underage victims of abuse. )
Fer Chrissake (Chris as in Chris Waddle, the English footballer whose haircut was as famous as his soccer skills) – I thought it was the parent’s job to guide their youngsters *away* from disaster, and not have them compete for ignominy.
And don’t y’all love it when a sketchy event is (supposedly) justified by a noble cause? Somewhere, there is a wounded service veteran thinking, “Wait a minute – I thought I fought for truth, justice, and the American Way, ® but no one told me I’d have my leg blown off in Afghanistan so that a young boy could have the right to commit fashion suicide….”
There are some tragedies in life – like gambling addiction, heart disease, and hemorrhoids – which should be adult-only.
* * *
Department Of They Even Have A Special Sticker For “Bullshit”
*They* would be the US Postal Service, who sent me returned mail – my nephew’s birthday card – with this sticker.
“Attempted – Not Known.”
That’s attempted crap, if not a known lie. Putting it on a “professional” yellow sticker doesn’t make the crap any more professional.
The address is correct (moiself triple checked); it’s the same address my nephew has had for several years; the same address to which I’ve send other cards, and packages, and this is the first time ever I’ve received return mail for that same address.
My nephew’s address has three residents on the property; he and his wife are the owners, the primary residents, in unit #1. “Attempted – Not Known” translation: the postal carrier, whether s/he was a newby or veteran incompetent, glanced at the address or house, and for whatever reason my nephew’s name wasn’t the first name the carrier noticed, and the carrier was too slothful or stupid to take the FIVE SECONDS it would have taken to actually make an *attempt* to figure out which slot to place the card in.
This is not the first time I’ve ranted made a rational case about the USPS decline in customer service standards. Moiself understands that the paramilitary nature of the postal service is partially responsible for…for what? For people no longer taking pride in their work (I’m stretching, here, trying to come up with excuses for such shoddy service). But the USPS structure has been in place for decades, and the service complaints of moiself and my family and friends and neighbors have arisen, gradually but steadily, in the last 10 – 15 years.
Herbie Hancock and Van Morrison. This was moiself’s response to friend’s posting of one of those FB memes I think of as “culture shock” questions. The question: What was the first concert you attended?
Herbie Hancock was the opening act, and Van Morrison was the headliner. Quite the doubleheader, although I didn’t realize it at the time.
It was my first rock concert, [6] and I didn’t know the protocol. When I informed my parents that friends and I were going to a music concert my parents asked me about the dress code…and for the first time it occurred to me, having never been to a concert before, that I might need to wear something other than my standard blue jeans.
Since the word concertwas used, I thought the event might be a tad more formal than I was used to. Thus I donned what, for me, were my dress-up duds: pants that were not jeans and had no mustard stains (some kind of plaid bell bottoms, I bet)…
…and a white blouse I borrowed from my older sister. The friend and friend-of-a-friend I went to the concert with dressed along the same lines; the F-O-A-F’s older brother, who had procured the tickets and who was a veteran rock concert attendee, wore jeans and a t-shirt. After my friends and I arrived at the concert venue and were seated, we glanced around the venue, and I said to the friend seated next to me, “We look like narcs.”
At one point early on in Hancock’s opening set someone passed a joint down the row where my friends and I were seated. I slipped into cultural anthropologist mode, observing the ritual. When it was passed to moiself I did not partake, but felt like I should somehow participate. Holding the lit joint in my left hand, I dug in my purse [7] with my right hand and retrieved the emergency snack I’d brought along. I peeled back the wrapper of the Tootsie Roll® and passed it down the row of seats, along with the doobie I had declined to smoke. The subsequent partakees seemed to be…a bit confused.
About the music: I recall almost nothing of what Herbie Hancock and his band played except for one song: a highly syncopated jazz number with staccato vocalizations (I remember thinking of it as, “the hiccup song”). As for the headliner….
Although I liked much of Van Morrison’s music before that show (and after), I was not impressed with his performance. Halfway through his opening number it became obvious that he was off his-northern-Irish-ass drunk, which IMO was incredibly disrespectful of his audience. His band got even less respect from him: our seats were good ones, close enough to the stage that I could lip read the insults and obscenities Morrison traded with his band, as well as detect the musicians’ expressions of disgust and impatience when Morrison would start a song, forget the lyrics, then start a different song and snap at them if they delayed in following along. When a few audience members called out for songs they wanted to hear, Morrison flashed them sneers of utter contempt – at one point he even spat on the stage when someone called out the lyrics to a song he’d stumbled over.
Van Morrison was being marketed then (and still, even now) as some kind of Celtic soul mystic. Mystic soul, my arse. Self-important, Paddy-whacking, [8] twerp-troll was the impression I came away with.
May you seek psychiatric help should your hairstyle guidelines ever be something along the lines of, ‘Home room in the front, recess in the back;’ May you have memorable stories of attending *your* first concert; May y’all come back now, here? …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1]Thus and now – sounds like a good title for a book. Except that I’ve already done something like that (my collection of short fiction, This Here and Now published a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, by Scrivenery Press).
[2] My younger brother would not be born until the following summer.
[3] Of which my father himself was not fond of, to tell the truth, and he “got out of there” as he put it, as soon as he could (by enlisting in the army in WWII).
[4] All of those shows seemed get cancelled around 1971.
[5] Which, although I’m using the term metaphorically here, was/is the actual name of a street in Santa Ana, whence moiselforiginated.
[7] Yeah, I took a purse to a rock concert. I didn’t even take a purse to school….
[8] My ethnic heritage is 50% Irish; this, in our culture’s bizarre calculus of who can say what to whom, I’m entitled to diss my own.
[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Active, reliable, sarcastic, affectionate, bipedal, cynical optimist, writer, freethinker, parent, spouse and friend, I am generous with my handy supply of ADA-approved spearmint gum and sometimes refrain from humming in public.
The Classic TV Sitcom Identity I’m Not Hiding
August 25, 2023
Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, Recreation, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! aggressive dogs, batshit loony commenters, Bewitched, bogus class warfare, dogs and runners, Gladys Kravitz, hippies, illegal camping, nature loving hypocrisy, The Classic TV Sitcom Identity I'm No Longer Hiding, van life 1 Comment
Department Of, Curses – My Cover Has been Blown!
According to a rather irrelevant and batshit crazy deranged, ad hominem attack/comment someone made about moiself on a Facebook group…
Can you believe it – someone said something nasty on social media?!
…I am…(gulp)…Gladys Kravitz. [1]
(Which makes MH, Mr. Abner Kravitz. Yep, I’ve been having fun with that all week).
Left: Gladys Kravitz; Right: Samantha Stevens
For those readers younger than 50, Gladys Kravitz was the nosy neighbor of the TV series Bewitched‘s protagonist, Samantha Stevens. Gladys was convinced that there were extraordinary goings on in Stevens’ household, and was exasperated to the nth because she couldn’t prove her suspicions to her husband ( “Abbbnnneeeerrr!” ) [2]
Background to this startling revelation about my heretofore secret identity: Dateline, Tuesday morning, circa 7:30 am. I was at the coast, out for a morning walk…
But first, a relevant digression. A long time ago…oh, no – here it comes again…
From my late high school years until my late twenties, I ran [3] between two to five miles, every day. As recreational runners know, unleashed dogs and runners are not a good combination. [4] Every runner I’ve met has stories of being confronted, harassed and/or attacked by an unleashed/unaccompanied-by-its-human, aggressive dog. The stories, and the avoiding-being-a-dog-bite-victim advice runners receive and pass on to other runners, are mostly similar, but sometimes divergent.
A person running triggers the prey instinct in many dogs; thus, the common wisdom shared amongst runners: when approached by a dog whose posture and behavior…
* stiffening or freezing of the body;
* forward-leaning, hunched down, hunting/stalking posture;
* “whale eyes” (wide, with a lot of white showing);
* teeth baring; tense mouth/curled lips; wrinkled nose;
* ears laid flat against the skull or stiffly held straight up (not relaxed);
* barking, growling; “air-snapping”….
…indicates aggression, and there is no dog owner in sight, you should:
* stop running
* stay as calm as you can
* avoid eye contact (which can be seen as aggressive);
* speak to the dog in a calm, firm, but non-threatening voice; [5]
* remain upright;
* don’t scream (or flail your limbs or panic or jump up and down);
* back into a corner or against a wall so the dog can’t get behind you;
* look for a tree or car to climb [6] and hope to f***’s sake the owner appears…
I faced the aggressive dog situation many times when I was running for exercise. Those strategies worked for me, as they did for other runners…except when they didn’t. I heard too many stories of someone who did everything right and got bitten anyway.
Fellow runners also shared the WTF?!?!? confusion of hearing sure-fire advice from so-called experts which contradicted advice shared by other experts. As in: ignore the dog; *don’t * stop running. Continue what you’re doing, because some dogs will pay you no mind when you walk or run past them but if you stop, they “think” (okay, no human really knows what a dog thinks, we are trying to guess/interpret) you are a threat to them.
In other words, encountering an aggressive dog is situational and dog-specific: sorry, but there is no sure-fire, works-every-time, strategy. But, human nature being what it is, there is this sure-fire reality: there will always be some person who will tell you that, whatever you did, you should have done something else.
Back to the future background to the Mrs. Kravitz revelation: Dateline: the Oregon coast (Manzanita); Tuesday morning, circa 7:30 am; out for my morning constitutional. On that day I decided to walk north along the imaginatively named Ocean Road, which parallels the beach, then splits into two roads, one of which (Beulah Reed Road) continues along the coast and up into the streets winding around the base of Mt. Neahkahnie.
I walked along the road, noting the increasing number of vans and other vehicles I’d been seeing in my early morning walks – vans and campers parked alongside Ocean Road which look as if they’ve been there all night (as opposed to the vehicles whose drivers pull over, watch the waves and savor their morning coffee [7] before driving on to their jobs, or what/where ever). Those been-there-overnight vehicles are situated in such a way to indicate that the occupants are camping there, despite the fact that it is illegal to do so, and despite the “No Parking between 11pm – 5am” signs posted along the road.
As I turned up Beulah Reed Road I saw two more looks-like-illegal-camping vehicles parked on the west side of the road. Safety-conscious pedestrian that I am, when I am walking along a sidewalk-less road, I always walk facing traffic; thus, I passed close by both of the vans, whose occupants were presumably still inside/asleep (the vehicle’s windows had shades and other objects blocking the windows and windshields). One of the vans stood out due to its color and décor: a green van festooned with white and yellow flowers, sporting a Nebraska license plate and a message – “love mother nature and she will love you back” – painted on the van’s rear window.
The Green Van was in the same spot on the west side of Beulah Reed Road where, in the past few months, I’d walked past other camping vehicles one of which provided moiself with a memorable visual a couple months ago. The naked man who’d emerged from that vehicle and began urinating by the side of the road just as I was passing by was an unpleasant sight, but a minor startle compared to what happened Tuesday am.
I continued walking up Beulah Reed Road for a few more minutes, then headed back to Ocean Road. As I neared the Green Van (this time, walking on the far side of the road) I saw a husky/malemute dog lying in the sand by the right rear of the GV. The dog had not been there five minutes ago, when I’d first walked past the GV, and there was no sign of any humans (other than moiself ) about. When I was about thirty feet away from the GV the dog’s eyes fixed on me; it got up and slowly began to cross the road toward me.
Oh, shit. It takes minutes to type what flashed through my mind in nanoseconds Some of the nicest dogs I’ve met, and some of the meanest, have been husky/malemutes – and those two breeds consistently rank high on the Biting Dogs lists…. [8]
The dog was obviously not going to be one of the nice ones. It slunk toward me, in a crouched position (the classic hunting posture – have you ever seen footage of wolves or other carnivores stalking their prey?). Its approach was menacing, but silent…which I found more disturbing than barking. [9] If it had been barking, that would have (hopefully) alerted its owner.
“How’d ya like to see these teeth up close?”
I stop walking and spoke softly but firmly, remembering not to make eye contact. I did all the “right things,” which had no effect on the dog’s aggressive body language and approach, so I slowly began to continue my walk. The dog circled in front of me, blocking my path. It growled, bared its teeth and walked stiff-legged toward me, then began to snarl and bark. I put my walking poles between me and the dog and called out loudly: WHOSE DOG IS THIS – COME GET YOUR DOG. I did this several times; finally, a woman appeared from the west-facing side of the van. She had long, reddish hair and looked to be in her late 20s – early 30s. She made no apologies for her menacing dog, but unenthusiastically attempted to
(1) assure me that her dog was not aggressive (“He just has a lot to say” she said,
as her dog began barking even louder, flattened his ears, and raised his hackles)
(2) get her dog under voice control.
She failed at both (1) and (2).
She held no leash (and with the dog’s thick fur I couldn’t tell if it even had a collar to which a leash could be attached). She kept calling to the dog, which would turn to look at her, take two steps toward the GV, then turn around and bark and take three steps toward moiself. As the dog continued to ignore the anemic “suggestions” of his owner to return to her, I swung one of my walking sticks at him, which temporarily stopped his advance (at that point he was less than two feet from me).
Oh, for some pepper spray, I thought – not for the dog, but to use on that pathetic excuse for a human being. GV lady may make van-decoration-declarations on loving Mother Nature but she obviously doesn’t give an oyster’s ass about walking responsibly through Mother Nature’s land while respecting and protecting *all* of Ma Nature’s creatures, including bipedal ones.
This brand only works on German-speaking dogs.
I made firm, aggressive eye contact with the woman when she repeated her, “He’s not mean/he has a lot to say” bullshit excuse. I replied, “Yeah, he’s saying a lot and none of it is nice – I’ve been bitten by a dog; I know when I’m being threatened. You need to get your dog under control, RIGHT NOW.” The insolent look on her face reminded me of a pouty adolescent whose parents had threatened to ground her until she cleared the dinner table. “I am going this way,” I pointed toward Ocean Road, “and your dog needs to go that way.“ I pointed toward her van.
Which eventually happened. After the woman and her dog disappeared behind the other side of the van, I took a picture of the back of the GV.
I was seething when I got home (and really hungry). I posted the GV picture on my FB page, along with a very brief description of the incident. As I was doing so I remembered that on my way back I’d passed an elderly couple walking on Ocean Road, headed in the direction I’d come from. Damn, I chastised moiself – should I have warned them about staying away from that van? With that thought in mind I posted the same photo and incident description, with an “FYI” warning/introduction, on a FB page where locals post pictures and info about items of North Oregon coast interest.
I knew I should report what had happened to “the authorities.” As I fixed my breakfast and mulled over whom to call (The town? The county? ) I was contacted by my Friend and Neighbor ®. F&N had seen my post, and urged me to report the incident. I called the police non-emergency number; the dispatcher who finally answered said that Beulah Road was under Tillamook County jurisdiction, and that she’d have a TC deputy contact me.
The TC deputy took down the details of my report, and then…oh my my (“Officer Chatty Cathy,” my mind soon nicknamed him). He had a lot to say about what had happened to me, and about related incidents he had been/was currently dealing with. I was apparently a sympathetic ear into which he unloaded his and his law enforcement colleagues’ frustrations with similar incidents and with “what’s going on in the county,” including:
* increased illegal camping
* increased reports of aggression between illegal campers and county residents
* illegal campers’ aggressive/unleashed dogs (who go after both people and other dogs)
* the overload of reports the county has to investigate without the staff to do so….
He said that TC had a backlog of *hundreds* of calls about illegal camping and other violations, but that because what happened to me involved menacing, he could prioritize my report, and would head for Beulah Road. I thanked him, and noted that the van had probably moved on. Actually…probably not, he said. And, in his experience, if it did move it would likely move to somewhere nearby, and a green van with Nebraska plates would be easy to spot. Should he find the van, he said he’d have an in-depth conversation with the van/dog owner. How he handles these cases, he explained, is based on the dogs’ and or vehicles’ owners’ demeanor and response. If they listen respectfully and are forthright and apologetic, he tries to educate them and lets them off with a warning. If they are unapologetic and insolent, and even (as some people have done) go so far as to assert that they have no intention of abiding by the _____ (leash, parking/camping/trash disposal, etc.) laws, he’ll give them “as many citations as possible.”
He asked me to spread the word: please tell people to report these encounters, even as he acknowledged the perception that “They (law enforcement) will do nothing,” and so most incidents go unreported. It’s true, we (local police/sheriff departments) are understaffed, he said, but people need to know that the reports, even if they cannot be immediately investigated, help them gather statistics in general, and make records in particular for individual menacing dogs and their owners, so that if (or as he put it, “unfortunately, when“) the dog harasses/attacks another person or pet, the dog owner can’t get away with, “Oh, he’s harmless/he’s never done that before….”
At one point in our conversation, I told him how I’d began my walk thinking about the increase in illegal parking/camping, and asked if he knew if that is indeed the case, or just my anecdotal impression? And is this uptick (in illegal beach camping) related to homelessness? He told me the increase in numbers wasn’t my imagination, but that my assumption about the cause was incorrect. He then asked me something which led to an “aha” turn to the conversation: “Have you heard of the website, ‘vanlife’?”
“You’ve seen the hype around #vanlife. You’ve seen the stunning photos on social media. Now you want to throw everything to the wind, quit your job, build out a camper van, and live a carefree life of adventure….
This page is designed as a jumping-off point for your personal vanlife journey. We go over the pros and cons of this lifestyle, the reasons why full time van life is awesome… We answer the most frequently asked questions about living in a van – everything from bathrooms and showering…to finding sweet camping spots.”
(excerpts from the intro to Van Life How To: Complete Guide to Living in a Van Full Time,
my emphases )
“After we’ve posted this cool picture of ourselves can we go back to our penthouse and order takeout sushi?”
I said I knew of the site, but had never visited it. I thought it was similar to other sites I’d heard about, where people share information about RVing and/or traveling and living in trailers and vans. It is that, Officer CC said, but has become so much more: it has become a source of the increased “incident” calls faced by local law enforcement. He proceeded to express his frustration re the influence of the van-lifestyle sites, where people post info for others who’ve chosen to live in vans, sharing tips about where to travel and camp “for free” (but not necessarily legally).
More and more, Officer CC said, the people he speaks to and then warns and/or cites for illegal camping are mentioning (in some cases, boasting) that they were “referred” to the Oregon coast by vanlife and similar websites and online bulletin boards. And, he stressed, these people are *not* homeless– they seem well-funded (trust fund babies?) and/or are working remotely. For whatever reasons, they have romanticized the idea of public urination and defecation [10] life on the road. They…
* find it glamorous to be house-less by choice;
* take pride in ridding themselves of the bourgeois trappings of consumerism:
* receive positive feedback from like-minded folk when they post
cool pictures on Instagram of their adventures in livin’ on the road;
* believe that dogs also “need freedom” and so they ignore local leash laws;
* tell him that they love livin’ “for free”…
which – surprise! – turns out to be anything but free for the people in the communities who pay the taxes that fund the services to clean up after those freedom lovin’ van lifers, who leave their trash and toxic waste behind as they move on – and the damage these love-nature-and-she’ll-love-you hypocrites do to natural habitat areas frustrates him to no end…
As he described his dealings with these voluntary nomads, more than once he referred to van-life enthusiasts as, “hippies.” I could tell from Officer CC’s voice that he was much younger than moiself; it took all of my maturity (ahem) to refrain from correcting him:
“Actually, they aren’t hippies – that was an older generation. Any surviving hippies are at home rubbing patchouli and/or CBD oil on their aching joints…I think y’all need to come up with a more contemporary epithet for the younguns whose lives and values you find disrespectful, or just fruity.”
I’m not criticizing or mocking the deputy. He was amiable, empathetic, and eager to articulate the frustrations of law enforcement officers who cannot adequately fulfill their oath to serve and protect when they are overwhelmed by calls they cannot address.
Our talk turned to what people can do to protect themselves against aggressive dogs (Officer CC said his wife is a runner, and that she and her running buddies frequently deal with unleashed and aggressive dogs). I said that, due to my afore-mentioned, bitten-by-a-dog incident, I’d done my research, and ordered a cannister of citronella spray [11] and an air horn, for self-defense. Before I could tell him I’d ruled out bear sprays/pepper sprays, he strongly advised that I tell my friends *not* to carry pepper sprays, because
* Unless you’re an expert who practices with pepper spray on a regular basis you can end up inadvertently spraying yourself, particularly when you’re under duress;
* At the beach, where gusts of wind can arise seemingly out of nowhere, pepper spray can backfire, as in, get blown back on *you.*
He said that while he hated having to recommend it (“Nobody wants to hurt an animal,”) carrying a club might be called for (I said thanks/no thanks, and mentioned my walking poles). He expressed admiration for the air horn strategy: “What a great idea!” he enthused, noting that the loud noise would both startle the dog and alert nearby humans.
Yeah; okay, are we ever gonna get to the Gladys Kravitz connection?
After my conversation with the deputy I drove to Hillsboro, where I had business to attend to. While driving I received a voice mail from my Friend & Neighbor, and pulled over to return her call. F&N said that my local/beach group FB posting had spawned a comment firestorm: most were from people relating their own/similar incidents, and/or expressing sadness re what happened to me in particular and what they saw happening to their community. Other posters engaged in unfounded and unsolicited second-guessing, reframing the incident, and even claiming to know the dog’s intentions, despite having not been there. [12] Several of those I-wasn’t-there-but-I-know-what-really-happened posters also opined on what I *should* have done to avoid being menaced by the dog.
( Ladies, does this sound familiar?
“If you’d only done this/said that/worn that/walked this way,
you wouldn’t have been assaulted.” )
I’d read a few of the early comments, including two which asserted that “people should mind their own business” and “stop caring about who parks where or does what.” [13] The MYOB theme was picked up by a few other unbalanced strident posters. How that became a thing, considering the context, was a mystery to moiself. Translation: I found it bewilderingly irrational. The afore-mentioned Gladys Kravitz remark came from one such poster, who addressed her remarks to moiself and fumed about why I was being Gladys Kravitz, and that I should have minded my own business….
Say what? Minding my own business – exactly what I was doing. I did not approach the dog and try to determine whether he was neutered. My business, which I was minding, thanks for your concern, was walking. I was out for a walk on a public road, enjoying the scent of the briny coastal air and minding my own beeswax, when an aggressive, unleashed canine decided to make his threats my business.
F&N and I had a giggle about how comments on my post had spiraled into many tangents. I said that, after violating the never-feed-the-trolls rule (I corrected one unhinged commenter, who seemed to be reading comprehension-challenged and tried to rewrite my story to fit her outrage at…whatever), I’m not going to read any more comments on that group. F&N said she’d keep me apprised of the more entertaining (read: whackadoodle) posts…although, I told her, the Gladys Kravitz epithet would be hard to top.
The next morning my phone rang: it was F&N’s update call. Apparently, by the end of the previous day, “things got nasty,” as she put it. She’d checked the FB local/beach site before bedtime: there were “248 or 258” comments, including a thread where people posted pictures of when they’d been bitten by an unleashed dog, and others posted either support or criticism for the bite victim. Then a man mentioned that he might carry a gun when he goes to the beach, and lawdy mama, it took off from there, with about 40 more posts related to carring concealed weapons on the beach. In the morning when F&N rechecked the site, about 40 of those packing-heat-on-the-beach posts had disappeared, taken down by the group moderator (or perhaps, I posited, by the posters who’d developed cooler heads overnight?). F&N said the nastiness also included some posts which made blatant or tacit references to class warfare, claiming that heartless “rich people” at the beach hate “the rest of us” and harass people who have no choice but to live in their cars…in sharp contrast with the deputy’s testimony that the majority of the people he and his fellow deputies encounter and warn about/cite for illegal camping are neither destitute nor homeless, but self-obsessed, “van life” adventure seekers, whose idea of freedom is mooching off of public services they can well afford to pay for….
And moiself? Oy vey. I’d not even considered filing a report about illegal camping.
I just want to go for a walk, anywhere it’s safe and legal to do so, and not get bitten.
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [14]
* * *
May you enjoy any/all outdoor activities free from dog (or human) harassment;
May you delight in observing online trolls but not in feeding them;
May you enrich the public discourse by coining a better word than “hippies”
to describe Gen Z…hippies;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Or at least, channeling her spirit.
[2] And of course, Gladys Kravitz turned out to be spot on: Samantha Stevens *was* a witch. Despite promising her mortal husband Darrin that she would *not* use her powers, just about every episode of Bewitched involved Samantha using witchcraft to create unusual happenings, or to try to undo the wacky situations created by her witch and warlock relatives, who would make mysterious arrivals and departures and mess with the mortals. Mrs. Kravitz witnessed just enough to have her suspicions, which would always be explained away by Samantha or others. Yep, Mrs. Kravitz was a nosy neighbor, but her suspicious were correct, and she was gaslighted.
[3] Or I could say, “I was a runner,” but I never took my identity from that; I ran for enjoyment and exercise, as opposed to training for the Olympics or whatever.
[4] Unless the dog belongs to the runner and is also running because…well, it usually isn’t the dog’s idea.
[5] This is not to make yourself the alpha or assert dominance, but to get as much control of yourself and the situation as possible, and to make any cues you give the dog – “sit; down; stay; go home” as understandable as possible.
[6] The strategy used by one elderly gentleman, in a neighborhood I used to live in, when he was attacked by two free-roaming dogs when he was doing his early morning neighborhood rounds, delivering advertising flyers. The man and I had greeted each other when I went out for my morning run, and I was able to rescue him when I returned and saw that the dogs had treed – carred? – him.
[7] Or sometimes, doobies…as I notice when I pass the vehicles and they have the windows down.
[8] Which I learned in my training for the animal rescue organizations for which I volunteered, and I confirmed this when I returned home, by searching for dog bite statistics.
[9] Many a person who has survived a dog attack says that the silent ones, who approach you steadily, are more dangerous than the barkers.
[10] That was my snarky thought, not his.
[11] The smell of citronella is irritating/offensive to dogs, but not harmful.
[12] Perhaps there is a Canine Psychic Intentions website I am unaware of.
[13] Those comments seemed to be related to other posters who focused on the illegal parking and camping situation, not the aggressive dog.
[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