Department Of Laughing Out Loud, So Loud, MH Comes Into My Office To See What’s Going On
Dateline: Monday afternoon. Moiself is in my office, checking on the yogainternational.com site to see what routine I feel like doing. Yogainternational is an online yoga site, where for a membership fee [1] you can access their extensive library of recorded yoga classes, meditation resources, documentaries and films, and wellness articles.
I joined for the yoga classes. At the site you have the option to customize your workout, to a certain degree, by selecting sorting options from five categories.
* Duration ( class lengths ranging from 10 m up to 120 minutes [3] );
* Teacher ( they have over 100 yoga teachers who’ve taped classes for them [4]);
* Level (Beginner, and Levels 1, 2, 3 );
* Focus ( what do you want the class to emphasize or what you’d like to work on – e.g., strength, conditioning, endurance; certain body parts – e.g., arms, hips; low back; physical or emotional concerns – e.g. digestion; emotional awareness; sleep better; time of day – e.g. morning wakeup, evening cool down, afternoon energy boost; using specific exercise equipment or props – e.g., foam roller; chair; blocks; straps)
You may design very specific classes according to how many categories you sort by, although your favorite yoga teacher might not have a tape of, say, a 45-minute Vinyasa style Level 2 class focusing on arm balances.
That last sorting category – focus – was the root of the Monday laughter. I’d had a busy day and wanted to get in a bit of yoga before dinner. A practicing yogi for over almost four decades, moiself is perfectly capable of just doing/designing my own “class” of whatever length, but I wanted to see what the YI site had available for a relaxing quickie. For the first time I chose the shortest class duration, 10 m. I didn’t narrow it down by choosing a teacher or style (I figured there’d be few options at that duration); I went to Focus to see what was available ( ITAL hmm, what do I feel like focusing on for ten minutes – sleep better? Flexibility? Reduce Stress?…) and saw an option I’d never seen before:
Massage Balls
Within seconds of moiself being overcome with esophagus-clogging laughter, I figured out that those two words meant you were looking for a class which incorporated the use of the exercise balls common to Pilate, massage, and other wellness disciplines.. But, too late. I could not stop laughing, and heard the stomping pitter patter of feet as MH came down from his upstairs office. I indicated my computer monitor, and showed MH the Focus choice that had caught my attention. He said he’d give his approval to that class focus.
* * *
Department Of Figuring Things Out…
Which in this case refers to moiself figuring out why I loathe the what-is-becoming-the-standard-opener, almost a disclaimer of sort, of good intentions, which accompanies meetings, events (I’ve even seen it is the literature and/or email signatures) of certain groups, activities, and companies. You know what I mean, even if moiself just did a lousy job of describing it:
“We wish to thank and acknowledge the Chinook, the Coast Salish,
and the Lummi peoples/tribes,
on whose original land this bake sale is being held….”
Why I find that so cringe-inducing is that it’s the secular equivalent of the virtue-signaling, “I’m sending thoughts and prayers.”
Y’all didn’t think there are equivalencies to prayers in the secular universe? Many folks (both religious and religion-free [5] ) tag, share, or “like” political and humanitarian causes on social media innumerable times a day. Such actions carry the same illusion as prayer: the illusion that you’ve actually done something.
Perhaps illusion would be better replaced wit self-delusion: in that when we “like” something it takes a wee bit ‘o of pressure off of us; it makes us feel good about ourselves – we’ve recognized the problem; we’ve “liked” the *correct* [6] comments about it and/or the proposed solutions – without having actually done something other than click.
There is, of course, a neologism for it: slacktivism.
Thanking or acknowledging the previous tenants of the land you currently occupy (we are all, ultimately, occupants, and not owners, of the earth) makes you look good ( “I am aware; I care” ) but it accomplishes little to nothing. There is no hard work of reconciliation or reparation or of even truly learning the history. [7]
You can even order your own fill-in-the-blanks sincere acknowledgement form on Etsy.
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself. Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [8]
May our activism eclipse our slacktivism; May something cause you to laugh so long and so loud that someone else feels obligated to check on you; May you have fun choosing and using your class yoga props; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Monthly or yearly, it comes out to *way* less than taking classes at a yoga studio…but, at a studio you have the camaraderie of other students and teachers.
[2] Whatever that means…most likely incorporation dance or non-yoga…? I should check it out.
[3] Depending on time of day/what else I’ve done during the day, I’ve varied from the 20, 30, 45, 60 or 75 minute classes.
[4] Some of whom I’m familiar due to decades of doing their tapes; some are “famous” (or infamous) within yoga and some are not; some are newer/unknown to moiself…
[6] Right as politically correct, depending on which side of the political zipper y’all hang.
[7] If that is even possible, or desirable, and what such reconciliations and reparations would look like. Difficult; thorny stuff…no wonder the “Yeah, I know this used to be someone else’s neighborhood” seems preferable.
[8] 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.
[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
…and this second season is also riveting. Have you ever been pregnant, known anyone who was pregnant, or are yourself the result of your mother’s pregnancy? Yeah, I’m saying everyone should listen to this.
The Retrievals second season was inspired by the podcast’s first season, [1] which dealt with the broad (sorry) issue of women’s pain being ignored during medical procedures as seen through the lens of a specific scandal: a nurse was stealing painkillers from the Yale Fertility Center, and the saline substitute some patients received instead of a painkillers meant they were in agony during the procedures they were undergoing…and the medical professionals performing the procedures didn’t believe them.
Season 2 is a new story. It’s not about Yale medical clinics or fertility treatments, but it’s definitely a related subject. Susan Burton, the producer of the first season, goes behind the scenes at a Chicago hospital as a group of doctors and nurses struggles to address this issue of women’s pain after one of their own nurses undergoes an excruciating C-section.
After The Retrievals season one, Burton received many, many letters from women sharing their stories of medical nightmares due to anesthesia failure. Burton was compelled to focus season two of The Retrievals on a persistent problem with the most common surgical procedure performed in the US: the inexcusably high rate [2] of inadequate anesthesia and/or anesthesia failure during cesarean sections. As in, the patient can *feel* the operation, and too often (too often means even once – this should NEVER happen) is ignored or pooh-poohed by her doctor and/or anesthesiologist and/or nurse, with no acknowledgement of her suffering or investigation as to what went wrong.
This teaser excerpt, from episode three, is a conversation between podcast host Burton and one of her guests, Susanna Stanford, a British woman who undertook a graduate’s degree study into this issue after she endured agonizing pain during her own C-section. And, yes, that quote from the doctor you will be reading was taken from this century, and not the 1800s.
Susanna Stanford, podcast guest: …Just to give you a sense of how accepted this was, this is an editorial from 2006 in the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia.
Susan Burton, host: The editorial, by a British doctor, was about the necessity of keeping good records in case you ever got sued by a woman who complained of pain during her Cesarean.
Susanna Stanford: “Let me read to you the opening section: ‘It was all so simple in the old days. You simply injected the local anesthetic down the epidural, warned her that she’d feel a bit of pain, and told the obstetrician to get on with it. And then things began to become more complicated. First, women began to complain more, no doubt fueled by general changes in patients’ attitudes as they made the transition from passive recipients of health care to consumers.’ Doesn’t that just tell you so much?”
Susan Burton: “I mean, it’s just like, well, the women started speaking up.”
Susanna Stanford: “Damn it. Those wretched women started complaining about pain.”
Susan Burton: “I cannot believe this. This is 2007, 2006?”
Susanna Stanford: “ ‘06. 2006. It’s not the 1950s.”
The Dowager is shocked.
* * *
* * *
Department Of A Different Kind Of Shock
“Culture shock is the growing pains of a broader perspective.”
Moiself could summarize a recent Rick Steves podcast interview with that quote of his. Travel guru Steves (whose recent book, On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer, I highly enjoyed and recommend,) is known for his enthusiastic advocacy of cross-cultural travel as a political as well as recreational act. And although I’ve been on three RS tours [3] (and, if I’m lucky, will undertake at least three more), one of Steves’ most treasured travel tenets is one moiself disagrees with…slightly.
This precept is that travel changes a person – travel makes you a better person, in that the exposure to different people and cultures helps us celebrate differences and overcome misunderstandings and question prejudices and presumptions, large and small.
I think that *can* happen, but only if you are the type of person prone to introspection and open to change…and if you are, perhaps you wouldn’t have needed, ultimately or eventually, to go to Bosnia or Turkey or Greece to have discovered this (maybe just watching a Rick Steves Europe Travel Videos from the comfort of your den would do).
I think that instead of experiencing eye-opening, mind-altering change when they travel to foreign lands, more often than not, people take who they are and what they think with them – most folks pack their opinions and biases along with their toiletries and passports. For some travelers the opinions/biases can fit into a TSA-approved ziplock sack; while others will need to check at least one full-sized suitcase to accommodate their assumptions and expectations. [4]
Whenever I hear someone repeat any variation of that optimistic cliché platitude – that travel makes you a better person – I immediately, unfortunately, picture (even if only for a moment) several people I’ve met who didn’t get that memo along with their passports, including One Of The More Racist People I’ve Ever Known ® .
OOTMRPIEK, the father of a junior high friend of mine, was the first person I heard use the slur jigabooto refer to a Black person. He did this openly, in front of me, when I was at my friend’s home and peeked into their TV room to say hi to her dad. OOTMRPIEK was watching an LA Lakers game, and after some spectacular play which brought the crowd to a roar he giggled and said to me, “Those jigaboos sure can jump!” I had no idea what he meant; I’d never heard the word. [5] But since that tittering comment of his was soon followed by another in which he (still giggling) used the N-word,[6] I knew it was not a complimentary term, no matter how happy he looked when he said it.
OOTMRPIEK was always nice to me and (as far as I know) to his daughter’s other (white) friends. And OOTMRPIEK was a world vagabond – the most well-traveled person I’ve ever met, then or now. Travel was his hobby, his passion. His daughter and I used to speculate about how her dad must be a CIA operative, and his cover was that of a mild-mannered suburbanite – how else to explain why an otherwise meek-seeming husband and father and insurance agent was always heading off for exotic locations?
“I’m here to check if you have adequate coverage via your homeowner’s policy.”
Over the years when I asked OOTMRPIEK to tell me stories about his travels, it became evident to moiself that he traveled for his interest in the history, the geography, the scenery of places “exotic” to him. I tried to elicit stories about the people he encountered and noticed the commonality among the nations about whose inhabitants he spoke disparagingly (African; Middle Eastern; Asian). Even for the countries about which he spoke positively (European), he honestly seemed, to me, to have had no great (nor even small) concern for the *people* living in the countries he traveled to. Therefore, he could enjoy a trip to the exotic Egypt and the intriguing Middle East and witness a spectacular Sub-Saharan sunset, and return home to joke about niggers and jigaboos.
Sub-Department Of Speaking Of Perspectives…
Y’all may have noticed that with my first usage of that YOU SHALL NEVER USE THIS WORD word [7], I used the culturally-sensitive currently acceptable stunt double (“the N-word”). Now, by not doing so with the second usage, moiself is wondering if this post will somehow get flagged. When on the rare occasion I’ve had cause to use that word – which is always quoting someone else who said it – I usually (when in the presence of those with delicate sensibilities) employ the euphemistic contraction. But it seems rather juvenile to do so when quoting what another person actually said (and there is, to my knowledge, no J-wordsubstitute for jigaboo). So maybe I’ll throw in some other words and see which one gets the most censorious reaction.
How’s about cocksucker?
“It is remarkable to me that people can travel
and not be impacted by what they see.”
That statement came from the person who interviewed [8] Rick Steves, when he mentioned to Steves about how he was once sitting at the foot of a melting glacier, next to a fellow traveler who announced that he doesn’t believe in climate change.
OK, so that was remarkable to Mr. Interviewer, but guess what? For a significant amount of people, no amount of foreign travel –
– which BTW increases the amount of carbon into the air, which even We-Who-Are-Open-To-Change-And-Concerned-About-Working-For-Solutions-To-Global-Warming® nevertheless contribute to the problem by taking jet planes to Europe or wherever –
– will likely change their perspective. It’s not that simple. People often come to such opinions via a complicated jumble of religious and cultural and political influences. I think by the time Mr. Interviewer met the What Melting Glacier? Guy, WMGGhad already, consciously or otherwise, decided not to see what he didn’t want to see.
May you listen to The Retrievals; May you carefully employ your euphemistic contractions; May your travels be respectful and bring perspective; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] The series, reported and hosted by Susan Burton, won a buttload of “best podcast” awards and a Peabody Award.
[8] Damned if I can’t remember which interview – I’ve head so many with RS, especially since his new book’s release.
[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department of Nine Out of Ten Psychologists Agree…
…that turning to familiar (“comfort”) activities in stressful times is an adaptive behavior. Which partially explains why moiself recently rewatched one of my favorite movies, Tootsie. But really – who needs an excuse to watch that classic – which is perennially near the top of the American Film Institute’s list of best comedies – about a neurotic, out-of-work actor who becomes a better man after putting himself, figuratively and literally, in a woman’s shoes?
For y’all who haven’t seen the movie WTF is wrong with you ?!?!?!. , here’s a brief recap of what has led up to the movie’s final scene, which has one of the best ever, IMO, dialog endings of a movie.
(Jessi Lange as Julie, with Dustin Hoffman as Dorothy Michaels/Michael Dorsey )
Michael Dorsey is speaking with Julie Nichols, his fellow actor on a popular TV soap opera, where he pretended to be a female actor (“Dorothy Michaels”) playing a female character on the show. Michael left the show after his dramatic, on-air revelation that he, a man, was in fact playing Dorothy Michaels. Several weeks later, Michael has caught up with Julie outside the TV studio and tries to make small talk with her. She blows him off until he drops his guard about why he did what he did. Michael has fallen in love with Julie, while Julie, believing Dorothy was a woman, befriended Dorothy and came to deeply care for her as a friend and mentor, confidant, and even a mother figure.
Michael: I just did it for the work; I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Especially you.
Julie (after a long pause, whispers): I miss Dorothy.
Michael: You don’t have to. She’s right here, and she misses you.
Look, you don’t know me from Adam, but…I was a better man with you, as a woman… than I ever was with a woman, as a man. You know what I mean? I just gotta learn to do it without the dress.”
* * *
Department Of Questions With No Simple Answers
A little while back, moiself read a post on a community social media bulletin board (the post in its entirety can be read in my longest blog footnote ever [1]). The poster wrote about her child’s school district’s proposal to bus children from one grade school to another one, to create a Life Skills classroom for special needs children. The poster adamantly insisted that all students be mainstreamed and was strongly against the proposal (as in, if you hold a different opinion, to quote her directly, you are wrong!).
After reading the post my first thought was rapidly followed by a bajillion others, all of which kept coming back to this: I have a feeling that this issue is more complicated than the poster made it out to be. [2] Will the well-meaning people on all sides of this issue be able to listen to one another with open hearts and minds?
Moiself is no longer a parent with children in primary schools; thus, I’m not familiar with the current educational strategies for students with special needs/cognitive and emotional disabilities. I *am* familiar with human nature, and so I’m crossing my fingers (but not holding my breath) that reason and compassion and open minds will prevail over Possibly Misguided-But-Good-Hearted-Intentions ®.
This issue is often referred to as mainstreaming vs. special or adaptive education. Probably not a good idea to phrase it adversarial terms; it’s a not one size fits all subject, and each Special Needs Child ( acronym-ed here as SNC – I will be using the vocabulary used by others, although I’m not fond of that term ) is an individual, not part of some apocryphal, Special Needs Child Community® . But, society being what it is, students can seemingly be pitted against one another when it comes to funding educational programs.
Both MH and I volunteered in our offsprings’ classrooms in their K-8 years (and MH in high school). [3] I’ve some opinions on this issue based on (1) what I saw/dealt with in the classrooms, (2) what my offspring shared with me, and (3) what some concerned (and sometimes frustrated) teachers confided to me.
First of all, there’s the poster’s lofty proclamation that “…your children learn compassion, kindness, and acceptance” by being in a class with SNC (“who struggle to fit into the educational environment due to their unique and personal disability needs”) kids. Yeah…maybe…sometimes. But why do some adults seem to forget or discount how downright nasty children can be to other children?
In Belle’s kindergarten class there were two SNCchildren who were mainstreamed at their respective parents’ insistence. My heart broke for one in particular, when, after repeatedly seeing his inappropriate behavior during recess, [4] I (privately and discretely) asked The Teacher® about him. TT® had tried to get him help, but was dealing with the fact that he, along with another SNCchild, was taking up so much of her class time…she knew it was unfair to the other kids, but even though it was “just” kindergarten, he was behind in so many areas….
I saw a similar dynamic in Belle’s first grade classroom. Again, as a classroom volunteer, I discretely asked The Teacher® for tips as to how to deal with a certain student during the reading groups I was leading. [5] He was disruptiveto say the least, and the other students’ frustration with him was growing – it was *their* time he was disrupting, as well as his own. And TT®, sadly and discretely, told me that she had at least five students who needed their own (as in, one-on-one monitoring) classroom aide, but only one of those students had an aide. She then surprised me by apologizing to me for what, given the realities of the classroom, my daughter Belle was missing out on. She explained it to me thusly: by being one of the “smart” students (as in, hardworking, able to stay on task, eager to learn), Belle didn’t get the attention *she* deserved – and still needed no matter how smart she was, by virtue of being a first grader – because of all the time that the teacher had to spend trying to keep the SNCstudents on track (or at least to try and quell the disruptions).
The teacher shared this privately, but it was no secret. Even at age six the students had more social awareness than many adults gave them credit for – and their resentment (of their share of their teacher’s time and attention being spent on SNCs) was palpable.
You know the thing that adults do with (so many issues, but in particular) regard to SNC– the trying-not-to-say-what-they-are-saying? The euphemisms change every five years or so, but I saw that what was true when I was in second grade was still the case when my kids were:
You can call the reading Groups A, B or C,
or The Red Group and The Green Group and The Blue Group,
or The Eagles and The Hawks and The Ospreys, or whatever….
Pick your code of choice, it doesn’t matter. You and other adults may never use the words (“the smart/advanced/gifted” groups and the “slower/special/challenged” groups); you may even banish such terms and labels from your classroom, but guess what? The kids still figure it out. And they don’t necessarily apply the terms in a negative way, but simply as another way of noticing who does and who is what. Kids will do the seemingly instinctive, self-descriptive, sorting that kids do:
* I have blue eyes like my mom; I’m allergic to nuts;
I suck at jump rope; I’m in the advanced math group;
* I like kittens and puppies; I don’t like spelling tests;
I’m good at kickball; I’m a middle reader;
* I’m tallest in my class, I like reptiles and parrots;
I’m a fast runner; I’m in the slow math group…
There is an unintentionally cruel side to mainstreaming, that Belle’s kindergarten teacher described in a way that almost broke my heart, when she talked to me about the disruptive child I previously mentioned. The child was frustrated; he was soooomuch slower (in every way – speech; vocabulary, physical coordination; emotional self-regulation…) than the other kids. And his developmental delays were obvious to him, as well as to his classmates.
If the boy could have been in a class with other students at the same skills and maturity level he could, on some days and in some situations, excel, and maybe even have a turn at being on top. He might learn to enjoy school and learning. But by mainstreaming him, at least at his particular age, he was always going to be at the bottom of the heap, and school (and by extension, academics and learning) was going to be a painful reminder of that, for him.
Oy vey…I don’t know. What a dilemma.
I have been fortunate. Through an inscrutable combination of luck…
* The genetic lottery?
Our kids’ respective, “natural” or inborn temperaments and interests?
…and intention
* Mindful parenting? The history, on both sides of MH’s and moiself’s’ families,
of education being cherished, valued, and enjoyed?
…navigating the world of SNC has not been my parental row to hoe.
And I have felt the shame of resenting the SNCwhose overwhelming needs/deficits took time away from other students; I have justified my resentment about the time and resources taken away from the others– aren’t all kids supposed to be *special* ?!?! – when I saw how my own and other supposedly “gifted” kids didn’t have enough to challenge them, when they were given busy-work that bored them…or were given the label “gifted” with no accompanying programs or opportunities because, as one teacher told me, they didn’t have the resources ( several other parents of a child who’d tested gifted told me that they’d been told by their child’s teachers that getting SNC students up to grade level was prioritized over keeping the “higher level” students engaged)…. [6]
I have seen and felt the teachers’ genuine devotion to and concern for their SNCstudents, when it seemed obvious to me that the kids were not only falling behind the rest of the class, but, worst of all, seemed genuinely *miserable.* How could that kind of mainstreaming be in those children’s best interest? [7]
My favorite part of the bible is when, after the flood, the ark landed, and all the carnivores waited until their prey reproduced before eating them.
* * *
May you menfolk “learn to do it without the dress”
(or hey, with the dress, if that floats your boat); May we mindfully navigate the pitfalls of educational good intentions; May we rejoice in knowing there’s less than 17 weeks until Exploding Whale Day ; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] “Local Friends and neighbors…. Please read and share my thoughts on this important change coming to our grade school! I am so mad, so sad and so very disappointed in this proposed change….
Our grade school is planning some really big changes that you may think does not impact you or your children, but you are wrong! The benefits that your children gain by having their friends and neighbors who struggle to fit into the educational environment due to their unique and personal disability needs are enormous. Your children learn compassion, kindness, and acceptance by just including those who do not learn as they do. We all have differences, and we need to learn to live together and accept one another. Not to exclude those who are different but to include them. Our society pushes those who do not fit into the traditional learning model out of society because they have been taught to do so by school programs such as these. This is not necessary! Please come to the meeting and say “NO!” Not at our school.
They are proposing bussing children in from ______(location redacted) grade school to _____(location redacted) to create a “Life Skills” classroom. I can tell you from experience that no life skills will be taught here, this is a place to put our children who are different so that they do not impact the learning of those around them. This is happening because our district has hired a Special Education Director who has absolutely zero experience with anyone who has special needs. This Director was head of a high school TAG program with no experience on how to support someone with high sensory needs so that they can learn alongside their peers and not be segregated and separate. I have heard rumors that they have allowed the placement of a 4th grade student to the preschool classroom to “hang out” for the day because they do not know how to support this individual. We need to hire someone who can support our children so that they can be accepted and included into society, not shoved into a separate room and forgotten about by their friends and neighbors.
Please come with me and help me tell the school district that we do not want this change! Keep our children at their local community schools. All children deserve an education alongside their peers regardless of their disability. Ask them instead to please hire experts who can teach from experience how best to support our children where they are because their lives are valuable too. Children with disabilities deserve an education alongside their peers at their local community schools and the other children deserve to know them, to be friends with them. This is a disservice to our entire community, not just the few children that are bussed in and forgotten about. This impacts all of us.”
[2] and I confess that I have not seen any follow-up reporting (nor read the comments) on the issue.
[3] With the exception of K’s first grade teacher, who made it clear that she did *not* want parent volunteers in her classroom. She told me that, in her experience, she ended up spending too much time tutoring certain parents – and she couldn’t tell who were the quick learners and self-starters among them and it was difficult, once you had a parent volunteer and realized, “I’m going to have to hold this one’s hand,” to find a genteel way to “fire” them…so she found it easier not to have any at all and thus not have to make those distinctions and be accused of favoritism, etc.
[4] Read: out of the blue/apropos-of -nothing, * violence* toward a classmate.
[5] Reading select books to students, five students per group.
[6] Some administrators in our local school district apparently thought that parents would be placated by the Gifted label, even though there was no corresponding change in instruction or programs or opportunities offered for the gifted. When I discovered that reality, I told son K’s teacher I didn’t want him tested for the program if there was no point to it – they weren’t going to pacify us with a feel-good label (and she told me, in confidence, that she fully agreed…then went ahead and had him tested anyway.)
[7] One of those kids was a girl in my son’s 3rd grade class. I knew some particulars of her family life, and saw how lost and spacy she seemed (her bio dad, along with a series of “mommy’s boyfriends,” passed through a revolving door between jail and her mother’s house, and her mother had been doing drugs while pregnant with her). I was a math aide in that class; after noting the girl’s consistently abysmal worksheets and test results on the most basic of arithmetic skills, I asked the teacher if I might offer to tutor the girl after class. I think the girl trusted me; after noticing how her classmates scorned and/or ignored her, I’d made it a point to always greet her during my volunteer shifts and find something nice to say to her. The only time I saw a light in her eyes, which were consistently dull and glazed, was when I complimented her (ratty, faced) red high-top sneakers. The teacher had tears in her eyes when she told me that she so appreciated my volunteering to tutor the girl, but that the suggestion had already been offered, *several times* by both the teacher herself and other teachers and classroom volunteers. The girl’s mother had vehemently refused (and seemed to resent) all offers: Her daughter was going to be in the age-appropriate grade, and that was that.
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of Why Didn’t I Think Of That Comeback?
“When a man says to you, ‘You’re prettier when you smile,’ tell him, ‘I’m prettiest when I’m dismantling the patriarchy which made you think hat my face owes you anything.’ ”
Department Of An Extraordinary Quote From An Extraordinary Interview
That interview can be found on the recent Hidden Brain podcast, wherein host Shankar Vedantam speaks with U of Michigan School of Public Health researcher Victor Stretcher. Stretcher explains how he strives to understand the connections between the changes he made in his own life after his daughter’s death, and the things he is studying as a scientist, including looking into the science of purpose, transcending values, [1] and emotional regulation strategies.
( Daniel Goleman is American psychologist and science journalist [2])
“…At every age and every stage, many of us are intimidated by the question of what we should do with the remaining days we have left….A lifespan of a few decades is but a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the planet to say nothing of the universe. How can we spend this time meaningfully? This week on Hidden Brain…we explore the science of finding a life that is meaningful. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for everyone. But there are scientifically tested ideas about how we can feel more in harmony with ourselves and the world….”
Excerpts from the podcast:
Victor Strecher: “People with transcending values have less activation in a part of the brain that relates to fear and aggression called the amygdala. They have more activation in a part of the brain that relates to long-term orientation, a future orientation, and that’s called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex….”
Shankar Vedantam: “…Your research has found that people with a greater sense of purpose employ different emotion regulation strategies than people who have a weaker sense of purpose….why are they [emotion regulation strategies] important?
Strecher: “…we all have stressors in our lives, right? All of us.
And the question really is, how do you cope with those stressors? Turns out that of 16 coping strategies that we looked at, strategies like drinking alcohol or eating too much or venting, were negatively associated with sense of purpose. Whereas seeing a big picture, knowing this won’t last forever, taking walks in nature…were strongly associated with a sense of purpose. And along with that, emotional self-regulation….”
Stretcher illustrates emotional self-regulation by sharing a story told to him by a colleague, whose son has a five-year old child who attends a Montessori school. [3] One day the child comes home from school, and for whatever reasons, he and his father start getting in a big argument…
Stretcher: “…and they’re almost yelling at each other…finally, the five-year-old child says, ‘You know what? I’m gonna change my own weather.’ And suddenly they have an adult conversation. And I was thinking, I wish a lot of senior leaders had that ability to change their own weather, going from cloudy to sunny….what that requires…is a sense of understanding what your emotion is, and also having the agency to be able to change it.”
Yeah, all of the above, to get to that (quote from a child). But, what a that is that.
“I’m gonna change my own weather.”
What a remarkable metaphor, image, strategy – for anyone, let alone a five-year old child.
( Pema Chodron is American Buddhist teacher and author. )
* * *
Department Of A Blast From The Past
Dateline: January. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month). Perhaps moiself will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature for 2025. So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.
This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?! [4] friend gave me, all those years ago, [5] as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life. Journal/diary-resistant moiself would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.
Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago July to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )
The blast is going to the way back – to when the blog was but ten months old. Here is an excerpt from my blog of 7-12-13 ( The Phrase I’m Not Saving ).
RESCUE 911 “We’re lost in the woods, and need an extra large with mushrooms and double cheese…and a helicopter, please.”
Join our thrilling, reality-based series, during which MH and I discover our son’s true concerns should we ever end up lost or injured in the wilderness.
Dateline: Sunday, July 7. MH and I planned on driving up to Vancouver, WA to go hiking on a new (to us) trail. We invited son K, who declined. [6]
As I was lacing up my boots I informed K of our destination, and told him I was leaving a map of the trail on my computer. I decided to test his hiking/outdoor recreation, Buddy system safety awareness [7] by asking him,
“So, what would you do if we did not return by a certain time?”
“What time?” K asked.
“Absolutely, by dinner time,” I clarified. “But we should be back waybefore that.”
“Well…” K steepled his fingers in front of his face in a Mr. Spock-like pose of thoughtfulness. “I haven’t been to Pizza Schmizza in a while….
“ ‘Life doesn’t need purpose, purpose needs life.’ A religious believer acting as a slave to her deity isn’t actually purpose-driven in any sense we should admire, because the purpose is someone else’s and is often taken up under threat or by bribery. A mind free of superstition and servility is necessary for a fulfilling life…. as a non-believer, your purpose resides in yourself; it is yours alone to discover and develop. It’s about choosing to live your own life for your own reasons. No one can dictate your purpose. You decide. Freely choosing to help and cooperate with others is the true path to finding purpose. Life does not need purpose: Purpose needs life.”
May you have the self-awareness to change your own weather; May your purpose be your life; May you look absolutely fabulous while dismantling the patriarchy; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Transcending values are core principles which move beyond self-interest and personal desires and needs, and are typified by a concern for the welfare of people other than our selves or our inner circle (family/neighbors/friends/co-workers). Transcending values focus on broader ideals, such as seeking the well-being of all people (and non-human species, for ethical vegans, for example) contributing to the betterment of the human condition, casting aside tribal beliefs and concerns to focus on the larger ideals of truth, justice, (and the American way calm down, Superman ), compassion and altruism.
[6] There were, as always, aliens to be battled in cyberspace. (at the time of the post K was age 20, home from college for the summer).
[7] Always inform friends and family about your trip itinerary, ideally include a map and tell someone where you are going and when you expect to return….
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
‘Twould be the under-est of understatements to say that, this year, moiself doesn’t really feel much like hailing Independence Day. The holiday, which commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, rings hollow this year, what with His Royal Orangeness – He Who Puts The Dick In Dictator (along with the vile Vance, traitorous Dick #2 ) – determined to send this nation tumbling ass-over-tit down the slope of authoritarianism. Meanwhile, #47’s butt-snogging, morally-deluded followers seek to replace the independence celebrated on July 4 for the slavish insurrection he instigated on January 6.
Thus, moiself be looking to the past for some wisdom…or just a moment’s diversion. I think the last time July 4 fell on a Friday was in 2014; searching through my blog post of that day for a #47-free excerpt, I see that I had other things on my mind:
I can think of few better ways to celebrate our nation’s independence from hierarchical hegemony than to kick a hallowed institution. But, first….
* * *
White People Problems – #568 In An Unending Series The Warning That Ruins Lives
Don’t you, kinda yeah maybe well sure, want to know things? As in, when a certain variation of A Good Thing to Do has a deleterious or dangerous side effect, and there is a better version of or way to do The Good Thing ®, wouldn’t you want to know about it?
Another helpful hint – it’s too much to handle! Let the little #$&!s get melanoma!
(a) spray-on sunscreens are not effective as the rub-in lotions, and (b) children can inhale the sunscreen mist, which is harmful to their lungs.
“And I thought, really?” PW rolls her eyes and snorts with disgust as she snaps the cap back on the spray bottle and tosses it in the stroller bag. “I mean, really – it’s just so frustrating! So now what else can’t I give my kids?!”
What else can’t you give your kids?
How about lead paint?
Or an overdose of Tylenol, or….?
* * *
And now, let the kicking begin.
The Honeymoon Is Over
Although the relationship was doomed from the start, I’m surprised more friends didn’t intervene and say, “He’s just not that into you.”
I refer to the liberal religiositati’s [1]high hopes for the latest head of the Catholic church, Pope Francis. He threw them a few bones about caring more about the poor than about divisive social issues and they were practically tripping all over themselves, using their ACLU membership cards to mop up their deferential drool.
It may be true that, as one friend put it, P. Francis is “better than the Nazi,” [2] but talk about damning with faint praise.
Francis replied: “The fact is that woman was taken from a rib.”
PF then laughed “heartily” before saying: “I’m joking. That was a joke.”
That’s one wacky dude! Hard to believe he traded in a promising stand-up comedy career for vows of celibacy and poverty.
Living the vow of poverty, Vatican-style.
Not only is the latest high priestess of Isis/RC witch doctor/holy chicken bone mumbler pope maintaining his church’s separate and unequal gender wall, he seems prone to reinforcing it, as when he spoke a few weeks back about, the need for “… fertility in maintaining a Christian marriage.”
Pay attention to whatever the man in the dunce cap pointy hat – surely a signifier of supreme intellectual aptitude if there ever was one – tells y’all.
Yo, Catholic married couples: Your Jesus (according to RC doctrine) never married and was childless; therefore; it logically follows that to be faithful to this Jesus and his church you should marry and must have children. If it breeds, it leads! Or…something. [3]
Why anyone heeds the admonitions of a childless celibate who presumes to lecture other people on the supposed virtues – and strictures – of a breeding marriage…. RCs, get your heads out of those orifices.
Or perhaps Francis the talking mule O’Pope was trying to divert attention from the latest Catholic business as usual scandal. “Our own little Holocaust,” is what an Irish Mirror writer called the discovery of the bodies of ~ 800 toddlers and babies who died of disease and malnutrition in the Irish institutions that housed their unmarried mothers, who were shamed and damned by the cultural stigma against sexually active females and “bastard” babies – a stigma invented, promoted, and implemented by the church.
On the really, really dim bright side, will yet another set of these latest revelations finally help to break the RC stranglehold on Irish culture, law and politics?
“After the revelations that Irish priests raped countless little boys and Irish nuns beat and starved countless little girls forced to work in the Magdalene laundries, we can’t take any more. The children in the homes were even used as guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies to test vaccines… Never again should the Catholic Church dare to point the finger at any young woman contemplating abortion, or lecture on the sanctity of human life.” The Week (6-20-2014)
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That was fun, wasn’t it?
* * *
* * *
Department Of They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To
Television show theme songs, that is.
They still make TV shows; however, it seems to have become more common in the “contemporary classic” era to repurpose existing songs – e.g., The Rembrandts’ I’ll Be There For You, which was used as the theme song for Friends.
But according to a study I just made up, you couldn’t do better than those Golden Years Of TV Theme Songs, ® when composers were paid to come up with original instrumentals – such as the thundering, surf’s-up vibe of film composer Morton Stevens theme to Hawaii Five-0, (later a hit for The Ventures[4]), and Jerry Goldsmith’s eerie psych-out theme for The Twilight Zone; Alexander Courage’s theme to the original Star Trek series.
But that melodious passage which awakened moiself at 2:05 AM Tuesday morning – I figure if you’re going to have a bout of classic TV show theme song induced insomnia, you can’t do better than having arguably the best television main theme ever, with its urgent, hypnotic syncopation (notable for being in 5/4 time), Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin’s Grammy-winning Theme to Mission: Impossible.
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Department Of Pondering Life Choices
Dateline: Thursday, circa 1 pm. Enjoying my sushi lunch at Happy Elephant restaurant [6] in Manzanita, which now serves sushi as well as Thai food.
Sometimes, when I’m having a good meal in a restaurant, moiself wishes I’d followed up on going to medical school, so when the server stops by after I’ve had a chance to sample my food and asked me how everything is, I can honestly say, “It’s just what the doctor ordered!”
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Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself. Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [7]
May you have the odd (and hopefully, rare) pleasure of classic TV theme song insomnia; May you never take family planning advice from celibate men wearing pointy hats; May you find reasons to be hopeful on July 4; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Yeah, not an OED-recognized word. But it should be.
[2] The always observant SCM was referring to Joseph Ratzinger, better known by his slave name, Pope Benedict.
[3] No footnote here. Move along folks; there’s nothing to see.
[7] 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.
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
As in, this is not the post that was intended for today. [1] But first, this breaking news:
Dateline: Monday eve, 6-23-25. Scott Harris joined us for dinner.
Several years back, when people were starting to post pictures of meals they’d eaten and/or dishes they’d prepared on social media, moiself decided to do so, as a kind of joke. The first time that I posted a picture [2] of a meal MH and I were enjoying, my friend Scott Harris [3] commented on the post with something like, “Oh, not, you’re not going to turn into one of those people who posts pictures of food, are you?”
Moiself picked up that gauntlet he’d thrown down, and ran with it.
Here’s the gauntlet I picked up. I’d assumed it was thrown by Scott.
From that time onward, every week or so I post a picture of a dinner I’ve prepared, along with a caption containing variants of, “MH and I would be delighted to share our stir fry with Indonesian peanut sauce with Scott Harris, were he in town;”“If only Scott Harris could be here to help us finish off this grilled steelhead with lemony garlic greens, spice-roasted butternut squash, and MH’s homemade sourdough…”
It became a long-running joke, with several of my FB friends wondering/asking moiself if there actually is such a person as Scott Harris? Indeed there is, I assured them, but Harris and his family have lived abroad for many years (first Hanoi, currently Hong Kong). He occasionally gets stateside to visit family in So Cal; we’ve tried to arrange get-togethers but nothing has worked out…until three weeks ago Scott messaged me with the news that, due to his youngest son’s participation in a touring baseball team tournament comprised of expat kids, he and his son would be in the Portland area, and:
“…if you are around, I demand to be fed.”
We were, and he was. Photographic evidence (yeah, I know, it could be AI-faked) is available, privately, for doubters.
* * *
Department Of If You See One Movie This Summer… ( You Need To Get Out More Often )
Dateline: Tuesday. Coincidently, the day after a long-time friend [4] visits – the kind of friend where you can both catch up on each other’s respective lives and discuss the state of/meaning to the universe in the same paragraph – I met my dear buddy and fellow Movie Buff® CC at a theater to see The Life of Chuck. This is the incident which made the title of this week’s blog appropriate. Translation: I’m not writing the blog installment I’d intended, because moiself can’t get the movie’s themes from careening through my frontal lobe and my amygdala like a drunken sailor.
I felt odd, driving home from the movie theater, and actually wondered at one point if I should pull the car over and strip off my clothing and run into traffic whooping and yelping in both despair and delight catch my breath, because my mind, and possibly body, felt… elsewhere. After the movie was over I told CC, when we were both stumbling for words outside the theatre, that “…when I get home tonight MH will ask me how the movie was, and I’ll have no good answer, and then he’ll ask what was the movie about, and I’ll say something like ‘it was about living life with the knowledge of the inevitable obliteration of the cosmos, whether physically or philosophically/personally…and I can’t explain it any more than that.’ ”
And then I’ll have to sit in one of our Comfy Chairs ® and stream a movie about dinosaurs or King Kong or something.
* * *
Department Of…Or Something
The next day I saw one version of Or Something: The Phoenician Scheme, [5] which, for moiself, is the existential opposite of The Life of Chuck.
I won’t bother to give even a rudimentary summary of The Phoenician Scheme’s plot line, because it doesn’t matter. It was a Wes Anderson movie, in all its Wes Anderson-osity, with its plethora of *name* actors eager to play a part in his highly stylized eccentricity: Look at us – as actors we’re all individually and collectively capable of emoting our spleens off, but here we are in Wes Anderson ® mode, so enjoy us being deadpan and quirky amidst the symmetrical, bright-vintage and hyperrealistic, Andersonesque set design! [6]
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Department Of In Three Days My Mother Would Have Had Her Ninety-Seventh Birthday
To honor that, moiself will be excerpting a blog from three years ago ( The Holiday I’m Not Renaming ), in which I shared one of my favorite memories of my mother:
Dateline: earlier this week. A FB friend posts pictures of his grandchild‘s visit to what looks to be an amusement park, and a picture shows the child playing that classic arcade game, Whac-a-mole. Seeing this picture prompts a lovely flashback for moiself– a memory I’ve not thought of in decades.
Dateline of memory: A long time in a galaxy far far away (Southern California). I am visiting my parents at their home in Santa Ana. It’s summertime, and the County Fair is on. My parents tell me they haven’t been to a state or county fair in ages, and suggest we go. And so we do. As we walk past the various cheesy games and merchandise and food booths, nothing catches our interest, until we come to an arcade. I espy a Whac-A-Molegame, and instantly am obsessed with getting my mother to play it.
My mother is hesitant, despite my enthusiastic recommendation. She knows nothing about it, she says ( Even better!!!, moiself thinks to moiself ). I assure her that it’s a straightforward game, no complicated strategy or levels or scenarios: she simply must hold the mallet and whack the heads of the moles as they pop up from the console.
“Why?” she asks me.
“There’s no time to get existential right now,” I reply. I put my two quarters in the slot, press the game’s start button and put the mallet in my mother’s hand. “You don’t want me to waste fifty cents, right, Mom? Look – there’s one! Pretend it’s digging up your rosebushes!”
…my mother is exquisitely awful at Whac-A-Mole. Her timing is atrocious; even so, she soon gets into it in her own way, emitting a high-pitched, “Oh!” whenever a mole head appears, followed by her delayed whack at its head. My father and I, standing to the side of the game console, are doubled over with laughter as we watch my mild-mannered mother, with an increasing maniacal look in her eyes, pursue those pesky moles:
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
( Carl Sagan, the late, great, American astronomer, planetary scientist, teacher, author, science communicator…. )
* * *
May you realize that we’re all living The Life of Chuck May you have a favorite memory of your mother; May your life never resemble a Wes Anderson movie; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[3] I’m making an exception here (in my blog) to identify a real person with his real name (and not an acronym or initials). He deserves it, and also, being a journalist for years, he kind of qualifies as a person in “the public eye.”
[4] We’ve known each other since junior high ( I was in the 7th grade, and Scott the 8th). Can you imagine the hideous (as in, embarrassingly adolescent) stories we could tell?
[5] Yep, I returned to the movie theater. I’m trying to get back into watching a movie a week in the theater…which shouldn’t be so difficult given the plethora of summer releases but which in fact is difficult for moiself when the majority of the releases are the seventeenth in a series of I Know What You Did/How You Screamed Fast and Furioiusly Last Summer – Marvel Super Hero, Inside Out of Training Your Despicable Me’s Dragon, Mission Impossible: The Final Squeezing Of Blood From A Movie Ticket Turnip…
[6] At least I didn’t pay for it…directly. I have a movie club membership, and have amassed many free tickets.
[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
Department Of Thoughts While Walking Around A Farmers’ Market
Dateline: Last Sunday, with MH, Orenco Farmers’ Market; ~ 11:45a. Moiself is noticing a long line for one of the market’s food carts. We approach the cart to see what it is selling, then exchange knowing snickers. As MH puts it,
“… it is so strange to see a long line for a place serving food you’d have to pay me to eat.”
That particular cart specialized in biscuits and gravy/biscuits and sausage and gravy. Even way back when moiself was the occasional meat eater, I disdained the dish – confession: I find its appearance so repulsive I’ve never even tried it.
To the minority (I’m being optimistic) of y’all who claim to actually like biscuits and gravy: [1] that homey dish, which may remind you of family comfort food, has always looked to me to be the result of feeding sausage to Grandma’s dog which then vomits all over a plate of Grandma‘s biscuits.
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Department Of More Thoughts, These Which Occurred To Moiself@ 5:57a On A Father’s Day Sunday Morning
Who “invented” shaving?
Shaving was, for centuries, an already well-established torture grooming option for men before the Roaring 20s and flapper fashions revealed that adult female humans also grow hair on their legs and armpits. Seeing as how there are few things more frightening to patriarchy – and the “feminine” ideal it created – than recognizing the natural, biological commonalities of male and female bodies, razors and depilatories became marketed to (read: mandated for) women.
But Whowas the ambitious Phoenician dignitary (or other post-caveman ancestor) to figure out that you could take a blade or hone a stone or another sharp surface and scrape it along certain parts of a man’s skin, to remove the hair growing on the skin [2] without removing the skin itself? And why did that Whothink that that – selective body hair removal – would be a worthwhile activity for human men to pursue?
And why were Certain Parts ® chosen for hair removal, while others were left alone? Shaving targets a man’s face – chin, cheeks, upper lip…not his eyebrows for some reason, [3] – but not the hair atop his head. Why, in most cultures, do men shave their facial hair, but not their forearm or leg hair?
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Department Of You Had Me At “We Don’t Understand Yogurt”
Moiself has no idea what this “We Don’t Understand Yogurt” quote is supposed to reference. But I had it set for today’s blog, and so it shall stand. Let your imagination run wild.
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Department Of Big Swinging Dicks
Not my terminology, but that used by the OceanGate[4] CEO and founder Stockton Rush ( I don’t know about big or swinging, but that’s a dick name if I ever heard one). Rush used the BSD term to describe the cadre of egotistical entrepreneurs ( alaJeff Bezos and Elon Musk) which, he told several of his employees, he aspired to join. No doubt Rush imagined that he would one day be the exemplar of the ITAL Big Swinging Dicks he admired. And now he is….although not exactly in the way he’d hoped.
In June 2023 Rush, and four passengers who’d paid OceanGate $250,000 each to ride in an OceanGate submersible to see the wreck of the Titanic died when OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded about 90 minutes into its descent, instantly goo-ifying/squashing killing all five people on board. [5] Investigations into the disaster [6] revealed that warnings had been raised by experts inside and outside of the company, from deep sea explorers to engineers and former OceanGate employees, about Titan’s unique carbon fiber design not being suitable for Titanic-style depths [7] – a design which ignored over 60 years of submersible design research and which was described by one former OceanGate employee as an “abomination” and an “inevitable disaster.”
Titan submersible, before….
Dateline: last Wednesday, 7:30 am. Moiself is watching the Netflix documentary Titan: The Ocean Gates Submersible Disaster. I’m not sure why I chose it; its near the top of my you-may-find-this-interesting list, and was something to watch while on my morning elliptical workout. As it began with the recap of the disaster, I wondered to moiself , Other than being appalled by the public resources used (read: money and equipment and manpower wasted) trying to rescue a bunch of privileged multimillionaires from their ill-advised, thrill-seeking adventure, am I really interested in this story?
The answer proved to be yes, yes, and yes. The film’s documenting of the rise and fall of OceanGate and its CEO is Shakespearean in its themes of ego and hubris, power and ambition, inevitable fate and coveted glory.
The submersible Titan was made of a material (carbon fiber) that no other submersible – either in Rush’s own company or other companies that produce submersibles – had used, a fact which, to moiself, screams the question, IF NO ONE ELSE IS USING THIS MATERIAL TO GO THAT DEEP IN THE OCEAN, MAYBE THERE’S A REALLY GOOD REASON WHY ?!?!? When Rush was interviewed by a newscaster who raised this fact, Rush actually said, on camera, that once they got through testing the Titan the submersible would be “ invulnerable.” The newscaster quickly reminded Rush, “Isn’t that what they said about the Titanic?”
“Come home to mama, little Titan.”
If you were fictionalizing this story you couldn’t concoct a more classic, almost stereotypical, self-aggrandizing, bullying, grandiose, and ultimately ignorant elitist lead character, whose background of privilege and wealth and money and connections got him a Princeton University degree [8] and seed money for his projects. During the US Coast Guard’s investigation of the disaster, one former OceanGate engineer testified under oath that he quit the company after he asked Rush what would happen if the Titan failed a neutral/third party inspection, and Rush replied that he would “buy myself a congressman.”
Moiself found the documentary both fascinating and unnerving. It reminded me of Werner Herzog’s acclaimed 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man. [9] In both films you see a narcissistic megalomaniac unraveling on screen – making rash choices and brazenly overconfident assumptions which lead to their (and other people’s) deaths. In Stockton Rush’s case, in the end he would literally rather get in a sub that’s going to implode than admit failure (or do what he really needed to do – get some therapy).
Rush’s conceit and aspirational insecurities are vividly on display. He’d sunk his company’s money and his ego and reputation on this new design that would show all the naysayers what a BSDhe was. He ignored everyone and everything he’d used to help him on the project – his engineers, the test results, even his own monitoring system. The filmmakers obtained footage of one of Rush’s solo test dives on Titan, which Rush filmed. When the hull began cracking you could see, you could *feel,* his anxiety. It was all over his face, and he didn’t do another dive for four months after that, until he…until he what? Just said, WTF?!?!? He ignored the evidence that the hull would break. He couldn’t deal with the failure; he pushed his luck…and when that luck ultimately and inevitably ran out, he took other human beings with him.
BSD. Big Swinging Dick, indeed, that’s what Rush finally was. But not in the way he’d envisioned.
Titan submersible…after.
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* * *
Department Of A Recent Bingo! Moment
Dateline: last Tuesday, 8:02 am, walking on the beach at Manzanita, listening to a Fresh Air podcast about stand-up comic and American immigrant, [10]Atsuko Okatsuka. Don’t you love it when someone else, at least for a moment, has thought your same thoughts and/or has experienced your same experiences, and comes up with a pithy way to describe it – a phrase or explanation that you can use, then blame it on/attribute it to someone else, if anyone finds the description unpleasant or insulting?
As a standup comic Okatsuka puts herself at the center of attention when she is working, and thus by definition, is “on stage.” Still, in the interview she showed a unique understanding in answering certain questions or prescriptions often posed to writers, artists and other “creatives” by folks not in those fields, folks and who conflate an artist’s wanting to do the creative work with wanting fame and acclaim for that work:
“Why do you do *___*” or, Why don’t you do *____*?
My response (often unuttered) has always been on the tip of my snarky little tongue when, over the years, people who’ve judged me amusing and/or clever felt the need to give me unsolicited career advice. This advice, always phrased in ways to seem complimentary, comes out as some version of
* You should be (should’ve been) a stand-up comic! * You should be (should’ve been) an actor, or someone on stage!
Fact is, if or when y’all would truly pay attention and/or look beneath the surface (as did some editors and publishers, who were less than pleased with the results), you would surmise that although I’m one of the more genial people you will meet and am generally fine in one-on-one and very small group situations, being “on stage“ (or even the idea of it) is something I truly abhor.
Yeah, kinda like this.
Translation: book fairs, book signings, author readings and appearances – while highly (and often desperately) sought by aspiring/newbie writers, and (usually) highly appreciated or desired by other, established authors – were anathema to me. And I’m fine with that.
Thus, my answer to the Why did you never pursue being a stand-up comic/more public speaking/presentation opportunities to sign books and bask in attention and acclaim…?” [11] question:
“Because I don’t have this hole in my heart that I have to fill with the validation of strangers.”
(Reason # 68). I’m angry that when people run for political office in the Unites States, it’s considered legitimate to grill them about their employment background, their positions on legislation, their positions on social issues, the taxes they’ve paid, even their sexual history… but, it’s considered invasive and intolerant to ask if they believe in talking snakes, demonic possession, magic underwear, magic crackers that turn into the flesh of their god, an earth that was created 6,000 years ago, or a god who put himself on Earth in human form and then sacrificed himself to himself to atone for sins that other people committed and to save humanity from the punishment he himself was planning to dole out.
If someone is going to make decisions about science funding, emerging medical technology, our educational system, and so on… I think it matters if they believe any of that shit, and I bloody well want to know.
May your life be free from BSD’s; May your comfort food never look as though it’s been regurgitated; May you, for whatever reasons, understand yogurt; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[4] OceanGate Inc. was a privately-owned company, co-founded by Stockton Rush, based in Washington state’s Puget Sound. OceanGate manufactured and provided crewed submersibles for tourism, research, and exploration. It ceased operations after the Titan disaster.
[5] The five were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush (who piloted the submersible), British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
[6] From the US Coast Guard, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, even the US Department of Justice (which was concerned about the company’s financial practices).
[7] The wreck of the Titanic lies some 12,500 feet below the ocean’s surface.
[8] Even though his grades – the documentary shows his Princeton report cards – were hardly Ivy League bragging material (they ranged from B – to D’s and even Fs).
[9] Focuses on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, a self-proclaimed grizzley bear “expert,” who descends into grandiosity and manic delusion in his quest to “save the bear” and also get himself attention and jump-start his aspiring actor career. Among Treadwell’s many peculiarities included him faking an Australian accent (he told some people he was from Australia; he was from New York state) or telling people that he was a British orphan (both of his parents survived him). Moiself highly recommends you watch this movie…but only once.
[10] technically an “illegal alien” – as a child she was brought to the US from Japan, without proper papers, by her grandmother.
[11] Translation: I was the worst self-promoter, ever.
[12] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The escalation – federal forces and incendiary rhetoric – to produce the violence #47 so desperately seeks. Instigation, followed by justification.
Dictators; authoritarians…this is their playbook. And one of the most essential – and the most heart-wrenching – chapter of the playbook is that their followers don’t, won’t, can’t, or refuse to see it. They vehemently and obstinately don their moral and historical blinders and bray, “That was then; this is different,” as they slide into the putrid pit of “then.”
* * *
Department Of Win-Win
Dateline: Monday eve, watching the Becoming Led Zeppelin documentary. Moiself can’t remember exactly where I was or even how old I was when I heard Led Zeppelin’s first album, but the thing was that I heard it as an album. Among the many insights presented in the documentary is the group’s strategy to *not* be a singles band – their albums were meant to be played and listened to us as just that: albums. [1] That differentiated them at the time (although, arguably, they were preceded by The Beatles’Seargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band in terms of a band producing an album that was meant to be listened to as an album, and not just filler songs surrounding one or two singles).
I (eventually) bought all of the LZ albums and attended several of their concerts. I also understood, intuitively if not consciously at the time, how LZ, and the heavy metal and “stadium rock” bands which followed, became partly responsible for the emergence of punk rock. Several of the members of The Ramones, as well as members of other punk bands, have spoken about how their approach to music (jackhammer, two-minutes songs; minimalist instrumentation and no solos by any member of the band) was a reaction to and rebellion against what they saw as the self-indulgent excesses of mainstream rock, which had abandoned or twisted the original energy of rock ‘n roll into, as an example, Jimmy Page’s and John Bonham’s respective, lengthy, guitar and drum solos. [2]
Moiself was a fan of Led Zeppelin’s music, then *really* loved The Ramones and punk rock as well, so it all worked out for me.
* * *
Department Of A Blast From The Past
Dateline: January. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month). Perhaps moiself will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature for 2025. So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.
This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?![3] friend gave me, all those years ago, [4] as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life. Journal/diary-resistant moiself would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.
Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago June to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )
As a kid, I didn’t understand thelight a matchreference, nor the presence of a pack of matches in the bathrooms of most people of my parents’ generation. Even after it was explained to me by an adult, [5] it still seemed rather silly. Was it a last resort, an act of religious penance ( Forgive me, Father, for I have blown Satan’s bugle [6]), or some kind of ritual atonement (setting oneself on fire rather than face the shame of emerging from the host’s bathroom after you’ve stunk it up)?
Matches eventually gave way to the Bathroom Air Fresheners industry – including the aptly if not discretely namedPoo-pouri[7]. This was a great loss to the budding pyromaniac that lurks in most six-year-olds, and also provided yet another variation on things that don’t make much sense.
Yeah, I get the point of, or rather I understand the supposed need for, commercial bathroom air fresheners. But other than serving as an effective irritant to asthmatics and people with fragrance allergies I think it is arguable that they “work.” In my experience in other people’s houses and in restaurants, businesses and other “out” venues, it’s a tossup as to whether air fresheners eliminate [8] or enhance the odors they are designed to combat.
And the varieties of masking perfumes, ay yi yi. Here are just some of the olfactory auras available to you, Discerning Consumer, thanks to the scentmeisters of Glade, Renuzit, et al:
Frosted Pine Clean Linen Creamy Custard® & Apple Cinnamon Angel Whispers [9]
But really, who’s kidding whom? Here are your choices:
*Bathroom usage sans air freshener: it smells like someone took a dump in here. * Bathroom usage with air freshener: it smells like whispering angels stood by as someone took a dump on a pine tree,
in your clean linen, on your apple custard dessert.
Not to get all Bathroom Buddhist ® , but it is what it is. Embrace the stone age, y’all: light a match.
* * *
* * *
Department Of Born Too Soon To Achieve My Ultimate Sports Destiny Sub-Department Of I Realize The Pressure To Fill Space With Content 24/7,
But, A Classic Sibling Bedroom Brawl Is Now A Professional Sport?
Dateline: Sunday night, at Manzanita’s San Dune Pub, [10] realizing that one of the pub’s five televisions which show a variety of sports was set to an ESPN channel which was broadcasting the PFC, as in…I can’t believe moiself is typing this….Pillow Fighting Championship.
“PFC: Pillow Fight Championship is the world’s first professional pillow fighting league featuring professional fighters engaging in intense, fast-paced and all ages-friendly combat unrivaled by any other professional sports entertainment or fighting organization.
However, PFC isn’t just for professional fighters. We have developed a unique set of rules and regulations to complement our patent-pending and safe combat pillows that allow anyone to participate.
Pillow Fight Championship has been credited for being a safe alternative to traditional, violent combat sports and for it’s ITAL (sic) cardiovascular and benefits.” ( from PFC: About )
Zora Neale Hurston. Brilliant Harlem Renaissance writer. Anthropologist, ethnographer, folklorist. Best known and beloved for her 1937 masterpiece nove,l Their Eyes Were Watching God. Enormously influential in the worlds of literature, anthropology, oral tradition, African American folklore, and just about every other damn thing except maybe particle physics. She was a non-believer, and even as a child, she was beginning to question the unquestioning faith and dogma of her congregation. She wrote of those years she could not “understand the passionate declarations of love for a being that nobody could see…. When I was asked if I loved God, I always said yes because I knew that was the thing I was supposed to say. It was a guilty secret with me for a long time.” She eventually concluded, “Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.” [12]
May you no longer engage in pillow fights for free if others are paid to do so; May you not say yes because you know it is the thing you are supposed to say; May you find a way to torch the authoritarian’s playbook; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] And LZ founder/guitarist Jimmy Page was fortunate to get the contractual stipulations to be able to do that.
[2] Johnny Ramone’s one note guitar riff in I Wanna Be Sedated was his satirical nod to rock guitarists’ lengthy solos.
[3] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.
[5] By my uncle Joe, accomplished match lighter, may he rest in peace.
[6] a high-pitched, keening wail of a fart, as if summoning Satan’s minions from one’s nether regions.
[7] I am not making this up, and you have to read the product reviews.
[8] Sorry. Potty-pun unintentional. No shit really.
[9] Because we all know what angel whispers smell like.
[10] Interested in a business opportunity? The beloved Pub is for sale. We want someone good to keep it going!
[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[13] Who herself is not an old white guy; rather, Greta Christina is a not-infrequently-quoted-in-this-blog author, atheist ad LGBTQ activist, and speaker.
It’s been almost six months since the death of Jimmy Carter, the #39 US President. Carter served in the tumultuous, smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-1979 Energy Crisis, [1] post-Watergate years of 1977 – 1981
Yeah, Watergate. Not even gonna attempt a summary, except to say to those readers too young to remember it, that I never thought I’d miss having a president who goes on national television to defend himself thusly: “…people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.” Contrast that with the Current Occupant who has raised crookery to an art form, and who doesn’t give an orange-toupeed rat’s ass if anyone or everyone knows about it.
After Carter’s death in December (2024), the usual pros and cons of Carter’s public life were listed and discussed by pundits and historians. Pros including Carter
*brokering the 1978 The Camp David Accords (signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin);
* championing diversity in the justice system by pointing out judicial inequities in representation and appointing more minority judges to the federal judiciary than all previous presidents combined;
* working with human rights organizations and engaging with foreign governments to free political prisoners in countries around the world [2]
* shifting US foreign policy to build diplomatic relationships with African nations (his 1978 visit to Liberia and Nigeria were the ITAL first ever state visits of a US president to sub-Saharan Africa.
But during Carter’s term the country struggled with a new-to-most-folks-in-the-Western-world neologism: stagflation[3] – which was aggravated by the afore-mentioned oil crisis – then the Iran hostage crisis.
Carter was an ethical breath of fresh air after the dishonesty and criminality of Nixon and his henchmen. Still, critics noted that his much acclaimed “outsider’ status made him ineffective when it came to working with the politics-as-usual members of Congress, many of whom resented what they saw as his “above-it-all” (read: holier than thou) presentation of his political self.
“… James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter came out of nowhere to capture the Democratic nomination for president, eventually winning the presidential election…. Carter’s ‘I’ll never lie to you’ pledge resonated with voters disgusted with the corruption of the Nixon administration….
Jimmy Carter…was an unlikely president who served in difficult times….Being an ‘outsider,’ not part of the Washington D.C. political establishment, was a great asset in the everything-inside-the-beltway-is-corrupt estimation of the public. But what helped him get elected came back to haunt Carter as his inexperience with beltway politics was, in part, his undoing….
As president, Carter attempted to de-pomp the imperial presidency that had blossomed under Nixon. Downsizing the presidency seemed a good idea at the time, but world events conspired to demand a stronger, more in-charge president. Post-Watergate, the public was in a president-bashing mood, and Congress began to flex its muscles, leaving the presidency weaker and more vulnerable than at any time in the previous two generations. Governing in the best of times is difficult enough, but governing in an ‘Age of Cynicism’ and declining trust was all but impossible.”
Carter is often referred to as “the most successful ex-president,” if by successful you mean someone who tries to do good in the word. Many of Carter’s predecessors (also and especially his successor, Reagan) leveraged the ex-president card as a way to make millions in post-presidential speaking gigs. But Carter used whatever cache he had to establish, fund, and promote NGOs that worked on a variety of national and international human rights causes, from affordable housing (Habitat for Humanity) to nonpartisan and collaborative conflict resolution, monitoring of elections, and parasitic and infectious disease ratification (The Carter Center).
Waging peace.Moiself loves it, and admires the work Carter [4] engaged in post-presidency. And what a legacy! here’s just one example: thanks to Carter’s decades-long advocacy, Dracunculiasis, the crippling parasitic affliction aka Guinea-worm disease, is on the brink of being eradicated.[5]
As much as I admire Carter’s humanitarian work, when I heard all the rush-to-praise that accompanied his death – which accompanies the death of any former leader – I found moiself biting my tongue about a few of my less-than-charitable-so-close-to-his-demise critiques of some of his methods.
I admired Carter, but do not idolize him (or anyone); thus, it’s not a feet of clay thing.
Nope, not like this at all.
’Tis uncomfortable to pick nits about someone who did a crap-ton of good work (and who had cancer). But equal opportunity picker, that’s moiself. And when I ran across this several months back – it was not new, but new to me – those nits just begged to be picked, or at least nudged.
“Former U.S. President Carter said on Sunday he believes ‘Jesus would approve of gay marriage.’
“I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,’ Carter, who describes himself as a born-again Christian, told HuffPost Live…..
(Carter) spoke at length in the HuffPost Live video about how his faith has informed his politics. He is promoting his new book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. ”
To repeat: I greatly admire the humanitarian work of former President Jimmy Carter. More ex-presidents would do well to follow his example of using his influence and connections to advance human rights and eschew temptation to pursue lucrative speaking opportunities (yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, George W. Bush). Just as I would pooh-poo a wingnut claiming to speak for what their god would or would not do, sorry, Jimmy, if you use the same tactics you get the same reaction. Doesn’t matter if I approve the message – the idea that anyone thinks that what their deity would or would not approve of should influence civil rights is antithetical to a rational, secular government.
Carter used the same methods – the appeal to what their deity *really* wants or intends; [1] the selecting citing of scriptures to support their position – that his opponents used to refute his claims. I recall him doing that several times, regarding several human rights issues, over the course of his post-presidency public life. For example, while I’m glad he supported women’s rights I cringed when he cited his faith for justification. [2]
Now, y’all keep in mind that moiself, as a Freethinker-atheist-Bright-Secular humanist, don’t believe in any of these deities I’m about to use in a For The Sake Of Argument® example:
Moiself has to insist that, in fairness, regarding your support for or claims about the political/human issues I might happen to agree with (as in, your positions on social or other issues): you must appeal to evidence and reason, and not your opinion of some silent deities’ likely take on the issue. I insist on the same standards from those whose positions you oppose.
An actual comment moiself read on FB, regarding a human rights issue ( think LGBTQ rights, immigration reform, women’s bodily autonomy….):
“Any true Christian who understands the life of Jesus would believe this as well.”
You could put this on any side, of any argument, citing any religion, in the form of a Mad Libs® Doctrine of applying faith to politics:
* any true ___ (Christian; Muslim: Jew; Hindu; Prosperity Gospel believer) who reads and understands the ___ _______ ( life of Jesus, words of Mohammed, Torah, Bhagavat Gita; Wall Street Journal ) would ______ (believe this as well; believe as I do; feel the same way )
about _____
( insert whatever cause).
While I’m usually glad when liberal religious believers support causes of social justice, I cringe to see them use same tactics/justifications as their conservative counterparts; that is, extrapolating what a “just god” thinks about Issue X.
Support your causes – fight the good fights based on reason, justice, human rights and realities, utility of existence – not by citing the unprovable notions of an illusory, or fickle at best (given the causes attributed to said deity for a millennium) deity:
* god made separate “races” and segregation – just look at these verses….;
* our god made us equal and supports civil rights – just look at these verses….;
Your arguments and advocacies should stand on their own evidence, and on their own intellectual, physical, and scientific merits, and not on the fluctuating, consistently-behind-the-times, illusory precepts of theology.
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself. Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [8]
May you not need justifications for treating people kindly; May you never support your opinions with Mad Libs theology; May we all be wagers of peace; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Aka (in the USA) as The Oil Crisis, a drop in oil production after the 1978 Iranian revolution, which led to speculation and hoarding and not nearly enough self-examination re our dependency on non-renewable energy sources.
[2] After he left office, Carter continued to work on freeing political prisoners through The Carter Center.
[3] rising inflation paired with a high unemployment rate and sluggish economic growth.
[4] and his fellow activist and humanitarian and the love of his life, his wife, the late Rosalyn Carter.
[6] Only in this case he didn’t, because there aren’t any Christian scriptures which support – or oppose – gay marriage. Not matter the translation, the words gay and homosexual do not appear in those ancient texts. In those times what later folks termed “homosexual acts” were considered to be just that – acts – and not an outward expression of a sexual orientation, the concept of which didn’t even exist until the late 1800s.
[7] Just as his opponents cited theirfaith as to, for example, why women shouldn’t be ordained in their churches.
[8] 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.
[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
Does anyone remember Boobquake? Reading the current news headlines (moiself handles it by glancing at them and shrieking), I feel like the world could use many more rounds of guerilla activism and mocking-the-mock-worthy.
Boobquake, a rally to protest (read: mock) an Islamic cleric’s proclamation attributing earthquakes to women’s immodest attire, took place on April 26, 2010. It was inspired and co-organized by (then) grad student and blogger, Jen McCreight. [1]
“In early 2010, there came news reports that an IranianIslamic cleric, Kazem Seddiqi, had blamed earthquakes on God‘s wrath because of women who dressed immodestly and advised ‘Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.’ and Iranians should ‘adapt their lives to Islam’s moral codes’ to avoid being ‘buried under the rubble.’ The day that this was reported, (genetics grad student and activist/blogger ) Jen McCreight [2] comically encouraged her readers (via Facebook) to dress ‘in your immodest clothing to represent Boobquake,’ which they referred to as a scientific experiment. The actual event took place on April 26, with McCreight carefully avoiding hateful, anti-Islamic, or anti-Iranian messages.
The center of the event (the ‘epicenter’) was at Purdue University, with participants dressed in appropriate attire and carrying signs saying things like Cleavage for Science, andGod hates boobs….
An estimated 200,000 people participated in Boobquake…..true to the, um, scientific nature of the event, McCreight ran a rigorous statistical analysis of seismic activity during Boobquake and figured out that world-wide incidence of earthquakes on April 26 was actually below average. Conclusion: boobs stop earthquakes!” ( excerpts, rationalwiki, McCreight )
* * *
Department Of Why Do We Forget This?
We hear so much about PTSD – so much that some people are under the mistaken impression that every traumatic event will bring PTSD to those who experience trauma – and we hear relatively little about the other effects of living through or with trauma. One of the most important effects is a positive: PTG, as in, Post Traumatic Growth. PTGis not about denying or repressing one’s suffering, but about recognizing that living through trauma can also lead to developing resiliency and insightfulness, to having changes in perspective and increasing compassion for one’s self as well as for others. But PTGrarely seems to be addressed or even acknowledged, along with the fact that it’s possible to experience both PTSDand PTGfrom the same traumatic circumstances.
“There is research showing that, in the aftermath of a traumatic stress, some people – probably not immediately – actually end up better off. They develop resources, friendships, social networks, insights into themselves, a sense of purpose….so many people, for example, who receive a terminal diagnosis of cancer at least will *say* that it *really* put things in perspective, and they valued their last days much more than they probably would have in any other scenario. So, it’s possible, for example, that there is some benefit for having been through something terrible.”
Well someone knows enough about it to turn it into a list.
* * *
Department Of A Name I Can Live With
As regular/longtime readers may know, moiself cannot even bear to type the name of that international sign of shame that is our current occupant of the White House; thus, I must resort to aliases (e.g., the Mandarin Mussolini) when mentioning him. But, leave it to science – specifically, taxonomic classification – to provide an alternative.
This nomenclature suggestion comes from (I assume) an ornithologist, or someone in the birding community:
The Common North American Trump( anus tangerinus ).
* * *
Department Of Finding An Unexpected Use For A Often Troubling Technology
As much as I have grave doubts about AI usage (except for certain applications, e.g., to medical and scientific research), there is one thing which recently gave me a favorable feeling toward these technologies: their mere existence has given me the almost perfect framework with which to understand, or at least classify, a phenomenon which has both bemused and saddened moiself for decades.
I have Religious Friends And Family Members ® whose correspondence and interpersonal interactions [3] have long struck moiself as…pamphlet-like, ya know? I’ve struggled with ways to describe it; after last weekend, I shall struggle no more.
Dateline: Saturday; 7:45 AM; morning walk. Apropos of almost nothing ( but perhaps a recent article I’d read about professors despairing of reading the all-sound-alike, AI-assisted essays from their students? ) I had a clickmoment which provided me with a more contemporary description for my impressions:
It’s like these RFAFM’s lives are guided by Christian AI.
There are many, many Christian denominations – over 200 in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity – a head-scratching number for a religion that, according to most of its adherents, is just so obviously the only true faith/pathway to salvation/god. [4]
Ah, yet again, I digress.
These RFAFMs of whom I write are typically aligned with the conservative/evangelical brands of the religion. Over the years, when I listen to the things they say/read the things they write/watch the things they do, I’ve often found moiself wondering, Is there an individual in there? It all sounds so…scripted. I can’t distinguish what she said or wrote from what her sister or that cousin/friend/coworker said or wrote. In conversations with RFAFM’s that might actually (and would likely, with other people) steer toward the substantive, there is little of anything uniquely personal – little of *them* present – other than their discernable desire to fulfill an obligation to be looking for any moment, in every situation (particularly when they are in the company of us happy heathens), to say or show how their lives are a “witness” to their religion.
It’s as if they are reading from a Christian AI script. [5]
* * *
Department Of Sound Advice For The… Day… Week… Month…Your Entire Life.
This is advice (usually but not always solicited) which moiself has given – and heeded – many, many times:
Write it down. Then put it away. Come back to it in a few days ( or better yet, weeks), and read it with the mindset, Is this still what I want to say? Edit, then send…
or not (maybe it’s no longer necessary?)
Context: moiself’s favorite advice columnist, The WaPo’s Carolyn Hax, writing to an advice seeker who’d been zinged at her mother’s funeral, by her mother’s sister. The advice seeker was wondering how to respond to her aunt, as the zing – and the feelings it brought – still linger. Hax listed several possible options, including
* write off your aunt’s words as the rantings of a grieving mess; * two variations on the do-nothing/let it go response; * handwrite a note to your aunt.
Moiself strongly favors that last option. I have seen too many friends and family estrangements come from slights and resentments left unspoken. Brushing things under the rug gets you nothing but a houseful of lumpy rugs. Don’t leave it to others to assume how/why you are feeling what you are feeling…
BUT, and this is a big but…
almost as big as this one?
BUT:
* choose your battles, and
* use the perspective which can only come from deliberation,
as opposed to the instantaneous reactivity of texting, or emailing,
or (gasp) using social media IN ANY WAY.
Write it down; then, sit on it, so to speak.
“The purpose of paper is to encourage slow reactions. You write it and set it aside, in case just writing it is enough; if you want to send it, then you rewrite it as needed until all venom is out; then you snail-mail it so she can’t hit “reply” and react. Etc. Cooler heads.”
( excerpt, “Aunt’s vicious jab at funeral tarnishes a late mother’s gift,” Carolyn Hax, The Washington Post, 5-6-25 )
May you never attribute temblors to tatas; May your birding binoculars never be soiled by the image of an anus tangerinus; May your interactions never sound as if they are AI-scripted ; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Jen McCreight goes by the name Jey McCreight now and uses different pronouns, but at the time of Boobquake and her other feminist activisms other she identified as Jen/female; thus I am using the names/pronouns which she used at that time and was identified as in news reports, etc.
[2] who described herself on her blog (at the time) as “a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist trapped in Indiana.”
[3] both of which are becoming increasingly infrequent, given the years and physical and emotional distance between us.
[4] So “obvious” in its theologies and tenets that there is a need for all those denominations, as these followers of the One True God ® can’t agree on how that god wants them to eat, live, sing, worship, dress, pray, love, play music….
[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
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.
