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The IEDs I’m Not Detecting

April 19, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

Department Of That Which Warms The Cockles Of My Heart

The new phonebooks – I mean, cookbooks are here!  The new cookbooks are here!

 

However, years ago moiself  made a pledge about equilibrium (and not acquiring excess stuff); thus, two cookbooks from my library   [1]   will have to be rehomed.

*   *   *

Department Of War Is Hell

Dateline: last week, post dinner, watching a streaming “based-on-a-true-story” movie about a young woman who joins the US Marine Corps in 2003, as they are preparing to go to Iraq post 9-11.  Young Marine Woman gets trained as a bomb-sniffing dog handler.  MH joins the viewing about 35 minutes in; I try to get him up to speed when he expresses confusion about what one marine, recently returned from Iraq, says to the soon-to-be-departing marines.

Moiself:
“He warned the dog handlers that bomb-building materials their dogs have been
trainedto detect are”…different from the IUDs they’ll encounter in Iraq…
Uh… make that, the I  **E**  D s.”

MH:
“The IUDs are probably different as well.”

 

Can you detect the difference?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Two Obscure Words You Will Come To Know
If You Do The New York Times Crossword Puzzle

Uta  and Hagen.

Actually, the two words form a proper name.  Thespian nerds know of Uta Hagen as an influential theater actor and acting teacher.  Non-theater nerds who are budding word puzzle nerds aficionados should know that you will, eventually, encounter either Hagen’s first or last name (and sometimes both) as an answer to a crossword clue,   [2]   whereas previous to your interest in the puzzling life, upon hearing or reading Uta Hagen you may have thought that it was some kind of Teutonic greeting:

“Uta Hagen, Fraulein Schimmel.  Sprechen sie käse?”

 

Many otherwise obscure words – aka, crosswordese – are found frequently in crossword puzzles.  The phenomenon even gets its own Wikipedia entry  [3] :

“Crosswordese is the group of words frequently found in US crossword puzzles but seldom found in everyday conversation. The words are usually short, three to five letters, with letter combinations which crossword constructors find useful in the creation of crossword puzzles, such as words that start and/or end with vowels, abbreviations consisting entirely of consonants, unusual combinations of letters, and words consisting almost entirely of frequently used letters. Such words are needed in almost every puzzle to some extent. Too much crosswordese in a crossword puzzle is frowned upon by crossword-makers and crossword enthusiasts.”

 

Now you know.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Older Age Is Just A Number
(A Larger Number, but….)

The store where I do most of my grocery shopping has two days each week where shoppers in a certain life category get a 10% discount on their purchases: on Tuesdays, the discount is for active or retired military personnel; on Wednesdays, the discount is for those shoppers formerly known as Prince formerly referred to as “seniors.”  I first became aware of the latter discount ~15 years ago, when I happened to shop at that store on a Wednesday (which was not my usual grocery  shopping day).  I entered the store and went straight to the produce section, which the store was in the process of reorganizing.  After picking some lettuce and mushrooms, I paused, looking around to see where they’d moved the lemons and limes.  I got a strange feeling, and looked around some more.  Every person in sight was evidently quite older than moiself.  Every. One. It  seemed like a strange coincidence.  I pushed my cart down the refrigerated items aisle – more oldsters.  I didn’t see another person under age 50 until I’d perused two more aisles.

At the checkout stand I saw two signs by the credit card machine, signs I’d previously and apparently paid no heed to, which announced the store’s two discount days.

 

 

Flash forward:  The first time I received that store’s senior discount was not because I claimed it.  I was at the checkout counter; it was a Wednesday; the Very Young Checker ®  announced my total, then told me what the senior discount was.  “Oh, that’s nice of you,” I said, “but technically, I’m not eligible.”  She blanched, lowered her voice, and apologized so profusely (for guessing that I qualified for the discount) that I felt bad for her.  “My ‘qualifying’ birthday’s in two weeks,” I reassured her. “So, you were close.”

There were no customers in line behind me; thus, I thought it safe to take a minute to ask her about the policy.  Are checkers supposed to ask customers, or look at them and assume/estimate, or wait for the customers to ask for the discount, or….?   The checker said that she wasn’t sure, and that, in her opinion, the policy could be problematic for checkers.  She never quite knew what to do; when she asked people if they wanted to claim the senior discount, some of them got offended that she thought they looked “that old.”  I told her no harm meant/none taken; also, the age ranges I’d seen for “senior” discounts, for places that offered them, varied so much, from beginning at age 55 to beginning at age 67…and why do people get offended by someone trying to save them money?

A mere two weeks later (a day or so after my birthday), moiself  was back at the same store – this time purposefully on a Wednesday, to reap my discount reward.  When I got to the checkout counter I saw that the sign for the senior discount had been replaced:  the new sign proclaimed Wednesdays as, “Wisdom discount” days.

Moiself  (to the checker, as I gesture toward the new sign):
“Wait, ‘wisdom’ discount?  Seriously?  I mean, I qualify for it, but…seriously?”

Checker (eyes rolling in empathy):
“Yeah, I know….*someone* thought it was a more respectful term than ‘senior discount,’ which seemed to offend some…well…some seniors.”

Moiself:
  “If you’re giving a discount for wisdom I should have qualified forty years ago.
If I bring in my old receipts can I get all those missed wisdom credits?”

Checker (laughing):
“I’ll see what I can do.”

Moiself:
“This is great.  Now instead of offending people by trying to judge their age, you can offend them if you don’t think they are…
wise enough?…
to qualify for the discount?”

Checker:
“Well, yeah!  Oh, and you know, I wouldn’t have thought you were old enough — “

Moiself  (cutting her off, gently, as I cringe to think about the ageism implicit in her
intended complement, that I Do*Not* Look Old Enough To Qualify For A Senior Discount® ):
  “Trust me, I am just old enough.  And wise enough.  Or, wise-ass enough.”

 

 

When I and my siblings were younger, for some reason my parents did not want us to know their respective ages.  I knew that Dad’s birthday was August 8 and that Mom’s was June 30, and that Dad was four years older than Mom.  But I didn’t know the years of their birth dates. I asked them once – first Dad, who declined to tell me.  When I approached Mom and got the same evasion, I loudly announced, in the righteous indignation only a fists-on-hips, grade-schooler can muster, that IT’S NOT FAIR.  Grownups know how old kids are – in fact, adults ask kids about their age all the time, as if it is their right to know.  Even strangers who are introduced to you, what’s the first thing they say?   “It’s so nice to meet you, Robyn.  And how old are you?”

Yeah, my parental units agreed, it seems unfair.  But, tough toenails, what’s your point? I kept asking, every month or so. They wouldn’t budge.

One Saturday afternoon, a few months into my parental-age obsession, my father was sitting at the kitchen table, filling out a small, just larger than postcard-sized, dark pink form.  I asked him what it was; he said it was an application for a safety deposit box.  He got up from the table and left the room for some reason; I scurried over to peek at the application, looking for his birthdate.  As I heard his footsteps returning to the kitchen I backed away from the table, trying to hide my GOTCHA exultation.  I didn’t have time to see the line which asked for his birthdate, but I’d had enough time to glean the information I sought.  On the top line of the form, next to his name, was a blank for his age, which he’d filled in as “39.”

I burned that into my memory.  From that day forward, for years before I knew their actual birth years, I always remembered my parents’ ages.  But I waited for what I considered to be a safe amount of time (a few months) before finding a moment to announce one night at the dinner table, “By the way, I figured out that Dad is 39 and Mom is 35.”

 

 

Fast forward ten years.  I was in high school, accompanying my mother on an errand wherein, for some reason I cannot recall, another adult asked my mother her age, and my mother declined to answer.   When we returned home I challenged her on that.   [4]

Moiself:
“Why didn’t you answer the question?
Adults ask children their ages all the time, and…”

My Mother:
“Yes, I remember how much that used to bother you.”

Moiself:
“Still does.  The issue is still the same – what’s the big deal?  And, as I was trying to say, it’s just a fact.  Like your name.  And you told her that.  It – being asked your age – doesn’t bother children, so why should it bother you?”

My Mother:
“It’s different.  Children and teens are young; they don’t mind their age.
They’re even proud of it.”

Moiself:
“So why shouldn’t adults be as well?” 

My Mother
(she shrugged off a non-answer)

Moiself:
” ‘Children don’t mind their age’ implies that adults do.  You’re fitting into that stereotype, of  women not wanting to reveal their age.”

 

 

My Mother:
“Because you are judged by your age, especially for women.
People hear a certain number and they think, that is who you are.  Your age limits what people think you can do, or what they think you are capable of or interested in.  They treat you differently.”

Moiself:
“Well, then that’s a stereotype.”

My Mother:
“Right.”

Moiself:
“One that you apparently think is wrong, at least for you.
So, you’re never going to refute that stereotype unless you break it.”

My Mother:
(Shakes her head and smiles condescendingly)

Moiself:
“OK, so maybe some people by age 40 are more likely to…act or feel or think a certain way, while others do not, or some people act like they’re elderly when they are in their thirties but other people don’t seem like they’re old until they’re 85….
But unless everyone is open about their age, there will only be the stereotypes, and the prejudices.  And why is that the stereotype for women?”

My Mother:
” It just is.”

Moiself:
“Yes, I know there’s more prejudice against women regarding aging.
But don’t you ever think about why there is, and how we can change that?”

My Mother (starting to get cross with me):
“I don’t know.  *I* didn’t start it.”

Moiself:
“But you resent it, yet you’re not going to try to help stop it.  You’re not helping to break the stereotype.  I don’t just mean you, I mean most women.  By wearing makeup or dying their hair or other age disguising attempts alternations – by going along with it, by acting like your age is something to hide instead of just a natural part of life, you’re…aaarrrghhh.
It’s so pointless; such a waste of energy and resources.  Besides, people are not going to think you’re still in your late twenties if just decide not to tell them you’re 45….”

My Mother:
“You don’t understand.  It’s different for women.”

Moiself:
“And that’s unfair, isn’t it?”

 

I am woman; hear me roar….

 

It’s likely that, somewhere during that conversation, I assumed the fist-on-hips posture of ten years previous, my indignation and frustration growing as my feminist sensibilities ran straight into the wall that was my mother’s passivity…or whatever it was, it was the opposite of introspection and activism.  Still, I kept at it, repeating my pitch for total honesty, followed by her repeating her mantra that the standard for women and aging was indeed unfair, but that’s what it was, and that I was still too young to understand.

Looking back: the thing is, we were both right.  I was right about the necessity of challenging stereotypes and living truthfully, and about the ultimate futility of trying to hide or alter a biological reality.  Growing older is a privilege   [5]   as well as an inevitability.  The 57-year-old actor who dies her hair to the shade(s) it was when she was 35 and has the Botox and the fillers and lifts and the stitches will not look like she is forever 32, nor will she be offered the roles going to the 26 year old actors; she will look like a 57-year-old tinted, pulled and stretched, de-animated version of a picture of herself from long ago.  But by her futile and desperate “anti-aging” machinations she contributes to the prejudice against women aging naturally.

But my mother was also right, about the treat-you-differently thing.  I’ve seen it, and am experiencing it moiself.  On the few times when my age has been a relevant question and I’ve stated it, every effin’ time, the reactions have been that of receiving a reassurance I neither need nor seek (“Really?! You don’t look ______  [6]  !”).  On most occasions and encounters there isn’t any reason to state your age, but the obviousness of my presence – I don’t dye my hair, so it is slowly but indisputably going gray, and the family wrinkles which I’d hoped my elderly aunts had taken to their graves seemed to have, overnight, made themselves at home in every inch of my skin north of my shoulders   [7] – gets me the ma’am treatment from restaurant seaters, et al.

With regard to the host of workers in grocery marts, pet supply and hardware stores, cafes and other service industries – who tend to be decades younger than moiself – I, and my age-peer female friends, have reached that point of the invisibility of older women, re how we are noticed and treated (that’s if you are even noticed at all).  And it’s *not* that the Home Depot aisle wandering employee (“customer service specialist”) has an overt, rude, “I’m going to ignore this older person and help the younger one,” attitude.  It’s like they don’t even see this older person until you fling a box of drywall screws at their feet.

Not getting prompt and respectful service from a customer service specialist is one thing, but don’t think for a moment that this phenomenon – women aging into invisibility – is a matter of vanity, or that it is trivial.  This prejudice is across the board, including (and perhaps most dangerously, in terms of women’s economic security) in the workplace.

 

 

Invisible woman syndrome can make aging hard
“A not so funny thing happened to me this summer.  I turned fifty.  And unlike some of those Instagram #fitfab50 women you see, I was not feeling fit or fabulous. In fact, I was feeling pretty crappy about myself and I went into a funk, big time….

how could I be feeling so bad about something so superficial as my aging visage?  Who was this woman and what had she done to the smart, confident daughter my mother raised?  And the fact that I consider myself a feminist just added to the insult of my perceived injury. It felt wrong on so many levels….

Then this happened.  A man I had never met told me I was beautiful and congratulated my husband on marrying so well.  And for a moment that compliment made me feel good about myself again, which then made me mad. Then this happened.  I decided to stop coloring my gray hairs and aside from the horror of the women at the hair salon, the response that annoyed me the most was ‘what does your husband think about that?’  Say what?  I assure you no one has ever asked me what I thought about my husband going bald.  And just like that I was out of my funk.

Aging isn’t easy on anyone, but there is a well-known social phenomenon called Invisible Woman Syndrome that can make it particularly hard on women….  At the half century mark, men are typically viewed as being at the zenith of their professional and personal lives, often leading organizations and companies and are viewed as accomplished and experienced.  This is in contrast to women whose main stock in trade is assumed to be their physical appearance, which we’re sold and told should be youthful and appealing to the male gaze….

Be it the maturation of our physical features, an empty nest, or being ignored or overlooked in public and social settings, there is an overwhelming feeling of being invisible and irrelevant for many women over 50.  But here’s the kicker, the invisibility and irrelevance that these women feel, is actually backed up by numbers, actually one number, 49.

It turns out that lots of data, including metrics on health, employment, assets, domestic violence, and sexual abuse stop at age 49.  The explanation for this limited age framework is that it stems from a focus on women of reproductive age.

At this intersection of middle age, sexism and ageism are parallel roads that many suggest disproportionately impact women. Studies reveal that women today strive to achieve aesthetic ideals because they recognize the correlation between beauty and social standing… ‘most women agree [report] that good looks continue to be associated with respect, legitimacy, and power in their relationships.’  In the business world, hiring, evaluations and promotions based on physical appearance push women to place the importance of beauty above that of their work and skills.
In a recent study…researchers from The National Bureau of Economic Research reported that ‘physical appearance matters more for women’ since ‘age detracts more from physical appearance for women than for men.’ ”

(excerpts from “Invisible woman syndrome can make aging hard,”
By Julie Hunter , Pennsylvania coalition to advance respect )

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

Pix: make it stop, no just no, etc. caption: “Women are not forgiven for aging.  Robert Redford’s lines of distinction are my old age wrinkles.”
( Jane Fonda, American actor, author, activist )

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when I get an idea for scoring the loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread I’m going to bake, but as Ithree slices in I realize that I’ve made the leg cuts of the cicada pattern I’m going for too big to add other legs, and, being an homage to a cicada,    [9]  I should add more legs because, a cicada being an insect likely has more than four legs…and then there are those dang antennas…never mind, this loaf has got to get into the oven…and it ends up looking and tasting good anyway.

 

 

But not looking as good as Belle’s cicada tattoo. 

 

*   *   *

May you become acquainted with the crosswordese list;
May our homemade breads be tastier than a cicada;
May you remain visible;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sixty-four, at last count.

[2] This department was in spired by MH doing the Monday NYT crossword.  He was proud of himself for remembering “Uta” as an answer to a clue…but couldn’t quite recall why he should know it

[3] Big whoop, right?  One of these days, everyone and everything, including my late Aunt Erva’s Aunt Jemima toilet paper roll cover, will have its own Wikipedia entry.

[4] Although it is probably unnecessary to do so, I will note that the following conversation is reconstructed, not verbatim.

[5] One that is denied many, who die “too young.”

[6] Insert whatever euphemism for, that old.

[7] Except for my earlobes.  I assume those are next?

[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. 

No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[9] This is a special year for the cicada emergences, as there are cicadas with the 13 year brood cycles and 17 year brood cycles, and or the first time since 2015 a 13-year brood will emerge in the same year as a 17-year brood, and for the first time since 1998 adjacent 13-and 17-year broods will emerge in the same year.

The Life Advice I’m Not Giving

April 12, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , Comments Off on The Life Advice I’m Not Giving

That’s a fib of a title, because I came upon two stellar pieces of advice recently that I’m going to share.  The two bits ‘o wise counsel were not new in an, AHA! Light bulb moment! sense, (I’ve heard them, somewhere…and now can’t recall when and where).   [1]  But they stuck in my mind, like chewing gum to the bottom of my cerebral sneakers, because these two cautions remind me of the troubles of a dear friend, and my late mother, whose respective burdens would have been lightened so much (IMO) if they’d taken the following counsel to heart.

* The past is to be learned from, not lived in.

* When you engage in nostalgia, go for a visit, don’t take up residence.

 

 

Moiself  has several files/lists of sage advice I’ve collected over the years.  Much of it is observations benefiting from the life experiences and wisdom of others; some of it is rather obvious; some of it profound; some of it comical, some a combination of all three and more.  I can’t figure out why I’m feeling…something I (mis?) interpret as magnanimous…I’ll just blame it on the recent eclipse (because, Science).  So, moiself  gonna share a random sampling of my favorites.

I’ve listed attributions when possible (although most of what follows was apparently uttered/written by that artful and wise wonder of the world, Anonymous). 

Does the clown upset/frighten/bore you?
Don’t blame the clown for acting like a clown –
you’re the one who went to the circus.   [2]

You have two lives – the second begins when you realize you only have one.
(Attributed to Confucius)

We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
( Roger Ebert, American film critic and author )

If you think you’re enlightened, go visit your family.
( Ram Dass, American teacher of spirituality ) 

The answer to bad speech is good speech, not censorship.
( ACLU )

To believe you’re justified in feeling “upstaged,”
you also have to believe two things:
that there is such a thing as a stage, and that you are entitled to all of it.
( Carolyn Hax )

 

 

I don’t think I’m old, but I know I’m not young.
( Ray Romano, American comedian and actor )

When people show you who they are, believe them.
( Maya Angelo, American poet, writer, educator, activist ) 

No matter how high sits the throne
What sits on it is like your own.
(Yip Harburg, American atheist activist, songwriter/poet  [3]  ) 

There is a difference between making good choices and *having* good choices.

“Yes” to anything will always mean “no” to something else.

Remember:  it’s better to be alone than to wish you were alone.

 

 

Why is it that when people die, we make such an effort to turn them into saints? Especially when the entire reason we loved them so much in the first place is because they weren’t.
( Alison Arngrim, American actor, from her memoir, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch:
How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated  )

The truth will set you free.  But first, it will piss you off.
( Gloria Steinem   [4]   )

You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

Any product or service with the word “beauty” in its title
has a vested interest in making you feel ugly.

The people who deserve your (personal) time are the ones who, consistently, behave as if they’re grateful to have it.
( Carolyn Hax, American writer and advice columnist )

Just because you can’t always doesn’t mean you won’t ever.
( MH )

 

 

“No doesn’t mean never; it means not now.”
( Dambisa Moyo, Zambian-born economist, marathoner, author )

I don’t want to live this day as if it were my last.
I want to live this life as if it were my last.
(Greta Christina, American writer, atheist and LGBTQ activist,
from her book, The Way of the Heathen )

The four most dangerous words in the world are:  “I will be happy when…”
( moiself )

Grief is the price of love.

You know you’re an adult when you can be right
without proving the other person wrong.

 

 

When hard times come, remember:
 your track record for surviving your bad days is 100%.

The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to help make others so.
( Robert Ingersoll, 19th century American lawyer, writer, orator,
civil and women’s rights and agnostic rights activist )

The thing about advice is knowing when to ignore it. 

 

*   *   *

Department Of About That Living In The Past

Have any other of y’all assigned female at birth womenfolk been minding your own beeswax, avoiding support hose but appreciating comfortable footwear, when out of the proverbial nowhere you turn 50 and certain types of catalogs aimed at certain demographics take up residence in your mailbox?

I remember the first one, due to its obsequious name:   As We Change. ®   [5]   Which, moiself  supposes, is catchier than the As We Want To Barf When We Read Such Ham-Fisted Euphemisms catalog.

 

 

Like many former snail mail catalogs, AWC is now a social media page.  But it was a mailbox infester when I turned 50 –  it found me.  By the third time it found me, instead of immediately tossing it into the recycle bin, I was curious as to its contents, and began thumbing through its pages.  My impression was that the magazine was trying to convince moiself  that I was ready to don cruise wear 24/7, and that I was in the market for shaping swimsuits and supportive undergarments ®, comfy shoes, and “tastefully fashionable jewelry”… (f your idea of tastefully fashionable is necklaces and bracelets which try to combine Gen X insouciance, Lillian Vernon catalog panache, and all-of-these-dangly-things-won’t-get-in-the-way-of-your-nursing-home-tracheotomy practicality, into a unique kind of…accessory).

 

 

At the halfway point of the catalog, without warning the wares for sale changed:   seasonal potpourris and scented candles gave way to several pages of “personal wellness enhancement” devices, if you know what I mean and I think you do.  Most of them battery operated.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Speaking Of Life Advice: When Is The Last Time You Updated
And/Or Rethought Your Medical Directive(s)?

“Many of us believe we know how we’d choose to die. We have a sense of how we’d respond to a diagnosis of an incurable illness. This week, we revisit a 2019 episode featuring one family’s decades-long conversation about dying. What they found is that the people we are when death is far in the distance may not be the people we become when death is near.

In 1950, A 3-year-old girl from Tennessee contracted polio. Within days, Dianne Odell couldn’t walk. Then she couldn’t breathe. Her life was saved by a miraculous, monstrous device – the iron lung.

Over the years, new types of respirators allowed many polio patients to escape the iron lung. Not Dianne – she had a spinal condition that made it her only option. So she stayed flat on her back, encapsulated from the neck down in the long, noisy, cylindrical tube for 58 years.

In an interview shortly before her death, Dianne said people often had the same blunt reaction about what they would want in her situation.

Dianne Odell:
‘Most of them said, “I’d rather be dead. I couldn’t live that way. I’d rather be dead.”
 Nobody would rather be dead.
They think in the spur of the moment, but there’s always tomorrow.’

There is always tomorrow. Dianne saw her choice very differently than the people looking in from the outside. It’s one thing to say you would not want to live for 58 years in an iron lung, but that is not the choice that confronted Diane. The choice was always, do you want to see tomorrow?

(excerpts, my emphases, from intro to the Hidden Brain podcast, The ventilator )

 

 

I’d rather be dead. I’d rather be dead than be a burden on my family/live that way….

Some of us trusincerely hold that opinion.  And moiself  would bet that many of us think we’re *supposed* to think that such a sentiment is the brave/practical, situationally rational way to view our (inevitable) demise, particularly if extending our life – read: prolonging our death – would involve complex and painful medical interventions. Most of us probably hold a combination of both convictions (we either believe we would rather be dead than burdensome, or would like to believe it).  But the choices are never so black and white, especially in the rapidly advancing fields of critical/end-of-life care.

It used to be that if you were incurably ill or severely injured and needed a respirator or feeding tube, then that was it – you’d be tethered to those devices until your death.  Thus, people signed DNR orders and medical directives accordingly (“I don’t want to live that way;” “Pull the plug, don’t plug me in”).  But what if, given the particulars of your illness or injury, the feeding tube and/or respirator or other medical devices are not a life sentence of hospitalization and dependency; rather, they are bridge treatments that allow your body to heal, and can be removed/discontinued after your body has rebuild its own capacity to breath and intake food?

The latter scenario is often he case now, what with the increasingly improved and fine-tuned technologies and medications.  But, what if you signed your DNR, or your no-feeding-tube/respirator medical directive years ago, in light of what you knew about the technologies of that particular time?  And when the time comes to act on the directives you signed or wishes you expressed years ago, what if, as Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedamtan puts it, you discover questions you hadn’t considered?

“What if the seemingly rational choices you prefer when you’re healthy no longer make sense to you when you’re actually confronting death?

Today, we look at how one family grappled with the same question. Over the decades, they talk deeply about the choices they would want to make in the face of an incurable illness or terrible injury.”

Valuable, if perhaps uncomfortable, issues to consider.  Check it out here.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

Just as moiself  is reaching the point of no return as I read about my fellow human beings warring against others, their religious fanaticism and persecution of anyone they deem The Other, their polluting of their own habitats and general disregard for the health of the only planet we call home…I love it when someone poses a question of such existential deepness that it restores my belief in humanity’s ultimate ability to unite and tackle the intellectual lassitude which plagues our species:

 

 

*   *   *

May we discern how to follow good advice and ignore bad;
May we update/reconsider our medical directives;
May we be able to get that picture of mole asses out of our minds;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Knowing moiself, probably a podcast.

[2] Okay, exceptions for this one.  Some children are dragged to the circus – both literally and metaphorically – by their parents.

[3] Harburg wrote the lyrics for Over The Rainbow, and all the songs in The Wizard of Oz.

[4] Not gonna explain who she is.  If you don’t know, WTF are you doing reading this blog?

[5] Yeah, I know, what are they gonna call it:  As We Wake Up One Day And Say, Holy Fuck, I’m Getting’ Up There.

[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

The Existential Crisis I’m Not Blaming On The Parking Lot

April 5, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, category-free rants, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Existential Crisis I’m Not Blaming On The Parking Lot

Department Of Backfiring Techniques

Text message on moiself’s  cellphone, from an unidentified number:

“To all ______(political candidate) supporters,
please do not click away from this important message….”

Congratulations, sender. You have just guaranteed that moiself  will “click away.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Disturbing Consideration (About AI)
In An Otherwise Enjoyable Exchange Between Two Interesting People

“Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio, has long been fascinated by the physicist Richard Feynman. As has Alan. Stephen has devoted a year to making a remarkable podcast series on Feynman, and Alan has played Feynman on the stage for a year. They compare notes on what they’ve come to learn about him.”

This is the intro to Freakonomics podcast host Stephen Dubner’s guest appearance on Clear + Vivid most recent episode, Feynman On Our Mind.  In their wide-ranging conversation about any and all things Feynman, Dubner and C+V host Alda talked about AI and our relationships, and Dubner posed a question about how, if AI obtains sentience, might we, in some ways, regress to the time humans did not understand their universe and left it to religion and religious authorities to explain the world to them?   [1]  

 

 

Alda and Dubner miss  the late great Feynman’s curiosity about *everything,* and his ability to identify and weigh complex problems – on all subjects, not just physics. They wished they could have his commentary on how the advances in technology affect humankind, as it seemd to lead to fewer people understanding how our physical world works, and thus we defer understanding to…well, to whom?  It used to be to the religious authorities, then to “the experts,” and now it’s to machines; i.e., computers.

Dubner:
“…I think one of the most interesting arguments about AI and what’s going to happen – how we will integrate with AI…is that if AI really becomes sentient and omnipresent in a way that it’s just beginning to gain a foothold, might we humans revert to something like the pre-Enlightenment, where religious thinking dominated, where when rather than thinking for yourself about natural processes and decision making and so on, you kind of defer.

In the old days, many many many people deferred to some kind of deity; is it possible that in the near term, people will defer to a different kind of supernatural intelligence in the form of AI, and therefore, stop thinking so much for ourselves?

And if that’s the case, what are we humans going to do?  Are we going to take what we do well and do that even better, or are we gonna kinda give up and let ourselves turn into…  We can be – the way we treat our dogs, now in wealthy societies, we often care about them more than we care about  our fellow humans.  It wasn’t like that a couple of hundred years ago – dogs were work animals.  So, are we bound to become the pets of the AI, or do we have something to contribute?

I think these are the big fundamental questions that we’re all wrestling with…. Feynman would have been a phenomenal person to think about that…to sort the wheat from the chaff, the BS from the reality, and sort the pompous, self-aggrandizing behavior from the intelligent behavior….  So yeah, even though I never knew him, I miss him.”

 

Why does it seem like the people working on AI have never watched any science fiction?

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Fun With The Same Podcast Episode

As moiself  has mentioned previously/just recently in this blog ( “The Pranks I’m Not Playing” 3-15-24 ), at the end of each episode of the Clear + Vivid blog, host Alan Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all of which have some relation to the idea of communication. Here is how C+V guest Dubner answered the seventh question.

Alda:
“Suppose you’re sitting at a dinner table next to someone you’ve never met before.  How do you begin a genuine conversation?”

Dubner:
“I once made a podcast with a friend of mine…..and I asked him some version of that question, and he gave me an answer that I thought was not very good, and now I realize it was very very very good.  It’s a very simple question: ‘Where are you from?’ and that question is not just one little piece of factual, geographic location, it is an invitation to that person so say, tell me who you are.  Tell me the version of who you are that you want to tell me, and then we’ll take it from there. It’s just also as non-invasive as it gets…unless they were born in a Gulag in Siberia or whatnot….”

As I reflect on it, I think that question might be “better” than my strategies  [2]   (depending on the circumstances and the person with whom you are trying to converse). “Where Are You From?” can be deceptively reassuring/non-threatening, and thus draw out a reticent person.  That question leaves you free to interpret how far back you want to go: where (physical/geographic) you were born, or perhaps the locale you’ve chosen as an adult, or “from” in a metaphorical/intellectual sense, or some combination of whatever criteria fits your definition of your roots.

If I moiself  was asked, “So, where are you from?….

 

 

Dateline: decades ago, one weekend when I and my college boyfriend were visiting my parents in their new (to them) Santa Ana home.  I wanted to show BF where I was “from,” and we drove a mile or so from my parents’ new home to 1509 Martha Lane, the address which had been home for most of my childhood.   [3]  Except that there was (and is) no more 1509 Martha Lane.   The reason my parents were in a new home is because during my freshman year at UCD, Santa Ana college (SAC), the junior college that had been my family home’s expanded “back yard” playground, did what they had been threatening to do for years:  SAC enacted Eminent Domain.  [4]   They annexed our cul-de-sac street, and a few other nearby streets.  The homeowners were compensated and their houses auctioned off.   [5]   Martha Lane became a college parking lot.

The thing is, on the lot where our house once stood, SAC left standing two of our trees.  The towering pine in our backyard – from whose top branches my siblings and friends and I used to watch the Angel’s stadium halo light up – along with our apricot, lemon, plum, peach, and banana trees and pomegranate bushes were all gone, but still standing, surrounded by concrete, were our two Japanese elms – the one in the backyard and the one in the front yard.  Using those trees as a guideline, I traced out for my BF where my house had been.  “Look!” I said, estimating paces from the front elm to a spot between painted lines delineating several parking spaces, “this was my bedroom!”

As we got into BF’s car to head back to my parent’s house, I started to wax philosophical, about how *this* – I indicated the parking lot – might explain a lot of my mindset, or my outlook on life.  Understand my roots and the impact of my So Cal heritage:  “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”   Yep, they did, but I can still look at a parking lot and see an outline of my childhood….

BF didn’t find my waxings as profound as moiself  did.  His loss.  Take it away, Joni.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Moderation In All Things

Just in case ya’ll may have been even momentarily concerned for my emotional stability when I relived the afore-mentioned existential crisis, two hours after reliving that  my-childhood-home-is-a-parking-lot incident, moiself  got tickets to a local movie theater and saw Godzilla x Kong.   

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Unanticipated Joys

As per both my personal experiences and observations of fellow homo sapiens: perhaps the most surprising thing about parenthood,  which moiself  did not anticipate, is the sheer/utter/simple delight of having an adult relationship with your children (that is, a relationship with them, as adults, when they are adults).

You will never have (nor want, I hope) a peer-like relationship with your offspring; regardless of their age, there will always be the parent-child dynamic.  But the privilege of seeing them grow into the kind of people you would choose to spend time with, even if you weren’t related?  Words like incomparable spring to mind.

Just sayin.’

 

Son K, still adorable, still adores cats.

 

Daughter Belle, still as cute, with slightly better table manners.

*   *   *

Department Of Sheer Unadulterated Joy

Another surprising source of bliss is watching that phenomenon which is Savannah Bananas Baseball.  Not that I’ve been able to do so in person – their home stadium is in Georgia, and their tickets are sold out even before their seasons begin.

If anything is stressing me out, I search the ‘net for some Bananas clips. Seriously, this is how baseball should be played and enjoyed.

 

No rule *against* having a pitcher on stilts, is there?

 

Not that they don’t have rules:

RULE 1: WIN THE INNING, GET THE POINT
Every inning is worth one point. The team that gets the most runs in an inning, gets a point for that inning, except for the last inning, where every run counts.

RULE 2: TWO HOUR TIME LIMIT
You get the idea. No new inning can be started after 2 hours. In the last inning of the game, every run counts.

RULE 3: NO STEPPING OUT
If the hitter steps out of the box, it’s a strike.

RULE 4: NO BUNTING.
Bunting sucks. If a hitter bunts, they are ejected from the game.

RULE 5: BATTERS CAN STEAL FIRST
On any pitch of an at-bat, the hitter can try to steal first base. This can happen on a pass ball, wild pitch, or any time the hitter chooses.

RULE 6: NO WALKS ALLOWED
If a pitcher throws ball four, it becomes a sprint. The hitter will take off running while every defensive player on the field must touch the ball before it becomes live. The hitter can advance to as many bases as they want.

RULE 7: NO MOUND VISITS ALLOWED
Let’s keep the game moving. No mound visits from the coach, catcher, or any other player at any time. Hype your pitcher up from afar if needed.

RULE 8: IF A FAN CATCHES A FOUL BALL, IT’S AN OUT

( …and so on…  From Banana Ball Rules, bananaball.com )

For those of you unfortunates who’ve never heard of the Bananas, nor their unique, alternative “Banana Ball” format for baseball, some brief descriptions excerpted (my emphases) from their Wikipedia entry:

The Savannah Bananas are an exhibition barnstorming baseball team based in Savannah, Georgia…until  2022, the Bananas competed as a collegiate summer baseball team ….  However, after the growth of their alternate “Banana Ball” format, the team transitioned entirely to exhibition games against their partner touring teams… the team has been featured by ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, CNN 10, and Sports Illustrated because of its on-field hijinks and viral videos.

Yeah, they had me at hijinks.

On-field hijinks include dancing.  At the drop of a hat (or mitt…or bat….).

 

The Bananas’ rendition of Dirty Dancing’s “I Had The Time Of My Life” finale.

 

Some of the Bananas fans’ fave team dances from last year can be found here.

And as for team selection, not only do the players have to have genuine and even extraordinary talent (check out this footage of a “360 tornado catch” by a Banana outfielder),  but moiself  swears there must be a face and body…uh…selection during team tryouts process.  Because dem boys be hot.   [6]

The most exuberant dancer is one you’d guess – it’s the home plate umpire.  Dude doesn’t make it in the hot bod department, but he knows how to shake his baseball booty.

 

 

*   *   *

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] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when you find the perfect spot for the duck feet.

 

 

*   *   *

May you always feel free to click away from annoying texts;
May you enjoy present-day relationships with (yours or other people’s) now-adult kids;
May you have the time of your life at a Savannah Bananas game;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Of course, the religious authorities’ “God did it” is a non-explanation, but their “God did it,” followed by, “so stop questioning things or else this all-knowing all-loving god will put you on the fast track to hell” was sufficient inspiration for keeping mouths – and minds – shut.

[2] Asking a question like,  What are you thinking about lately/ What occupies your thoughts these days?  What are you surprised by?  Tell me about the last time you were surprised/scared/overjoyed/disgusted?    Or, simply start out by finding a commonality, as with the dinner table scenario (“So, what’s your connection to [the host] – how did you meet?” )

[3] Save for two years in San Diego, where I started school (K and grade 1), when my father was temporarily transferred for his work.  We rented out the Santa Ana house and returned to it the summer before I entered grade 2.

[4] the right and power of a government or to annex private property for public use, with payment of compensation.

[5] To people who bought them at a greatly discounted price, and then paid to have them shipped to empty lots, etc.

[6] Hellyeah, I look.   I am decades happily married, but I’m not dead.

[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

The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

March 29, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

Department Of My Phone Dictation Transcriber Knows Me Too Well

Dateline: Sunday, circa 3:30p; out for a walk.  Moiself  discovers this delightful agricultural (in my mind) scene, takes a picture, and sends it to friend CC, with a caption.  In the caption I mean to say “crop;” only when CC reacts do I see what my phone decides the translation should read.

 

my caption “Looks like a good crap this year.  They are usually ready for picking by June, but with global warming, we may be harvesting in May.”

 

I explain the mix-up to CC.  Her response: “I guessed that could have gone either way.”

*   *   *

Department Of I Wish It Were Just A Coincidence…

…but, unfortunately, it’s a timely issue.  Again.  *Still.*

That coincidence would be my friend Suzanne Mathis McQueen’s sharing of an article on Tuesday, which she wrote in 2019 It’s our fertilized eggs they want, and which today she says might be retitled, Fair Warning; thus, she added a 2024-worthy addendum.  Check out the article, and while you’re at it, you might want to check out SMM’s other writings and ventures.  An “author ~ publisher ~ nature nerd ~ dragon tamer ~ womb wisdom educator ~ reproductive rights protector,” she is a person of many hats and talents.

Oh yeah, the coincidence:  on Monday, apropos of too many news nudges, moiself  had been thinking…*once again*  [1] …about how attempting to control/legislate the ways a woman uses her reproductive parts is the most fundamental violation of human rights.

I was thinking about how this right for human beings to be in charge of their own bodies is of paramount importance, and that for all of humanity, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy should take precedence – even over a man’s right to do the same.   [2]   Why, you may ask rhetorically?  Because yon uteri is where we all come from.

AI  hasn’t completely taken over everything;   [3]   a pregnancy is still launched and nurtured inside a woman’s body.  But, according to the forces of evil,    [4]   although a woman is somehow capable enough to conceive in the first place, how she handles that bundle o’ DNA…well, she’s just not competent or principled enough to do it without governmental guidance interference.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Timely Reminder For A Timeless Admonition

Timely as in what SCOTUS is considering this week (a case related to contraception), timeless in that the wisdom of Christopher Hitchens warns us even today, from his way-too-early grave, about the dangers of fanaticism encapsulated in one very misunderstood foe of a woman’s – of any person’s – physical (or spiritual) autonomy.

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty.   [5]  She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
(Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice )

If you have ever uttered a kind word/held a generous thought for MT – and why wouldn’t you, based on the Catholic Church’s very successful propaganda about her ? – you owe it to your intellect to read The Missionary Position…or just read the Cliff Note’s version in my post from three years ago ( The Lot I’m Not Accepting; Department Of Name Dropping And Saint Shaming ).  Or watch this documentary:  Hell’s Angel.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Seriously, What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Here is the earwig which awakened moiself  early last Saturday am: Cher’s number one hit from *fifty* years ago, the now cringe-worthy, non-PC song, Half-Breed. 

Of all the things to reflect on at 3 am….

 

 

I remember assuming at the time the song was popular (~ 1973) that the song must have been written by a White man.   [6]   Even as the child I was, I didn’t think then, and don’t think today, that the song was “racist” and/or “bigoted ” –  kneejerk epithets that would certainly be flung at it now.  It wasn’t racist; it was just stupid.  Like most “Indian” stories told from a White perspective, the song’s lyrics (and music) used clichés for how cliché’s typically are used for: to present a viewpoint that is simply and profoundly wrong.

The lyrics portray the lament of a young woman, the daughter of a White father and a Cherokee mother, who is rejected by both sides of her lineage.  But the opening verse about that rejection is inaccurate.

“My father married a pure Cherokee/
My mother’s people were ashamed of me/
The Indians said that I was white by law/
The White Man always called me ‘Indian Squaw’….”

Many North American native peoples, particularly those of the Southeast and Southwest tribal nations, were/are matrilineal – that is, tracing their lineage on the mother’s side – as are the Cherokee.  Thus, the tragic mulatto of the song, while she may have been subjected to White Man pejoratives, would have been accepted as a Cherokee, by the Cherokee.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Calling Out People Who Are On Your Side

Comedian Patton Oswalt so profanely described, in one of his comedy specials (“Talking for Clapping”), getting in trouble for using “the wrong words.”  Even way back X# of years ago (six, to be precise), he appears to be a kindred spirit with moiself  in terms of being frustrated with progressives who not only kick themselves in the foot but also kick other so-called progressive’s feet, by focusing on the wrong things.  Translation: Calling out people who are on your side – are you nuts?  

“…And it’s really hard now because, look: I could not be a more committed, progressive, feminist, pro-gay, pro-transgender person, but I cannot keep up with the fucking glossary of correct terms, goddammit.  I’m trying…I want to help but holy fuck, it’s like the secret club password, they change it every week, and then you’re in trouble:   ‘That’s not that’s the word we use.’  ‘Fuck you – it was last week!’

Ru Paul – RU PAUL, got into shit for saying tranny. Ru fucking Paul!!!  Ru Paul, she laid down on the barbed wire of discrimination throughout the seventies and eighties so this new generation could run across her back and yell at her for saying tranny?  WTF?!?!”

 

“Don’t even think about siccing your word cops on Saint Ru.”

 

A bit later in his routine, Patton expands on a central point of his, which is that you should try to discern a person’s heart and intentions when they mess up on the vocabulary, because the thing is….

“…BTW, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, if you get hung up on words, then you’re going to let a lot of evil MFers slip through.
Because evil people learn the correct terms very quickly.  They’re the first ones to learn it so they can smuggle their evil shit through, by saying everything correctly even though they’re hiding really bad shit in it.

And a lot of times, the good guys, eh, they fuck up a couple of words, but listen to their hearts.

All right: I’m gonna give you two guys right now. One of em’s is a good guy and one of em’s is a bad guy – I’m not gonna tell you which one….

Here’s guy #1: ‘While I happen to be heteronormative and certainly respect people who have alternative lifestyles including gay, bi, lesbian, omni or transsexual, I still think that heteronormative behavior is a biological imperative for propagating the species and I believe that does deserve the highest priority….’

Here’s guy #2: ”Well a couple of fags wanna get married or some dykes they wanna be men, how the fuck does that affect you, asshole?

Hey, if there’s some tranny out there it’s like, ‘Hey I don’t want a dick no more, I want a vagina,’ then boom, guess what – it’s a she now, or whatever the fuck, she, it – I don’t know, whatever they wanna call themselves, that’s it, it don’t affect you.

If you see some guy, I don’t care if he’s got a chooch that looks like a Boris Karloff horror movie, I don’t care, you gotta share the planet with that guy, or that girl, I don’t fucking know – they’ll tell me, right?’

The second guy was the good guy….who probably looks like an asshole, probably is wearing kinda rednecky shit.  The first guy is probably at a nice coffee bar….”

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when something reminds me of a really bad/good pun sequence moiself  hasn’t thought of in ages.

 

 

*   *   *

May you try not to confuse crop with crap;
May you differentiate discernment and distraction; specifically: try to discern what someone says rather than be distracted by how they’re saying it;
May your early mornings not be haunted by Cher songs from the 70s;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I hate hate, hate, hate, hate the fact that these thoughts can and will occurs to me at all, but given the political climate….

[2] Despite the fact that these rights are not in competition, no matter what the withered, Pope-sucking, Holy Joe windbags on SCOTUS may want you to think.

[3] Yeah, I know, the century is young….

[4] Read: The religious right, and extreme social and political conservatives of any religion or worldview.

[5] There is a BIG, big difference, and if y’all don’t already know about it, you should learn.

[6] Actually, a White songwriting couple, Mary Dean and Al Capps.

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

The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

March 22, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

Department Of Read This Book If You’ve Ever Watched TV/Seen A Movie  [1]

Ed Zwick, he of the multi-slash identities, who as a creator/producer/writer/director  brought us iconic/groundbreaking, continuing storyline TV series (thirtysomething; My So-Called Life) and epic movies (including Glory; Legends of the Fall; Courage Under Fire; Courage Under Fire ),  has written an perceptive and entertaining memoir about his years in “the business.”

In Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:  My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, Zwick presents a behind the scenes peek into how the Hollywood sausage is made.   [2]   ‘Tis a world far removed from my own…or so I thought.  Then I read Zwick’s book, and found moiself  identifying with many of his observations and insights.  His articulations of the hazards of filmmaking echoed much of what I found loathsome about the business end of writing fiction.  I’ll share just two of those, and leave the rest for y’all to discover

“Praise makes you its prisoner.  It’s the spike in your arm where the first taste is free.  And when it comes from the critics, it’s the hangman saying you have a pretty neck.  If I choose to read the good reviews, I’d better read the bad ones, too.”

In this second excerpt, replace “executives” with “publishers” and/or “editors,” and include in his crop of new phrases “content provider” and “author’s platform,” and “cultural appropriation,” and you’ve got my take of the current culture of book publishing.

“After fifty years of getting their notes, the sum creative contribution from all but a few truly gifted executives might be reduced to four words:  ‘Faster. Dumber. More likable.’  Every script ‘needs work,’ every first cut is ‘eighty percent there.’  In the new millennial Hollywood, the legacy of Silicon Valley start-up culture is felt everywhere.  Everything is decided by ‘the group.’  An idea needs to be ‘socialized.’  But since when is consensus the best way to judge art?  Is homogeneity really the goal?  Each year they introduce a crop of new phrases:  ‘edge it up,’ ‘backload it,’ ‘unpack it,’ ‘lean into it’…”

( excerpts from Ed Zwick’s,
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:  My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood )

 

*   *   *

Department Of Questions That Can No Longer Be Answered

A recent No Stupid Questions podcast has an interesting (and perhaps ultimately unanswerable) question for a title: Is It Good Or Bad To Keep Secrets?

That’s a fascinating topic for discussion, moiself  thought.  As I began to listen to the episode it was clear that the focus was on keeping secrets that you were holding about yourself.  Nevertheless, from the first moments of the podcast, when I heard the episode’s title, my hippocampus and other temporal lobe structures   [3]  fixated on the idea of keeping “secrets” (or information) that, as the saying goes, aren’t yours to tell.  As in, Other People’s Secrets ®.

Dateline :

… which would be my junior year in college, at UC Davis.  Late one weekday evening my friend Logan   [4]   called to ask if I wanted to go “Jazzcuzziing.®”  Backstory:  Jazzcuzziing ®  was a verb amongst a certain group of my friends.  Founding members of this friend group had scoped out apartment complexes in Davis which had swimming pools and hot tubs (Jacuzzis) and sometimes even saunas   [5]   that anyone could use (translation: those facilities were intended for the renters, but the apartment complex grounds were inadequately fenced, and it was easy for non-renters who knew the layout of the complex to gain entry).

A group of us would do this about once a week, later in the evening before the facilities’ official closing times (midnight on Mondays-Fridays).  Experienced Jazzcuzziers knew to only accept a Jazzcuzziing ®  invitation when you were done with your homework/paper writing/exam prep, or had decided you were done with such academics for the night…because after the watery relaxation session your mind wasn’t good for anything related to scholarly assignments.

When Logan picked me up, something felt…different. I’d assumed there would be at least three others in Logan’s car, but me getting into the passenger’s seat made only two of us. I asked where brothers Nick and Mick were, and JJ, etc. – were they meeting us there? As Logan drove away from my apartment complex and headed toward our Jazzcuzzi destination he said,

 I wanted to tell you…something.  Privately.

He spoke in a subdued, I’m serious manner that I hadn’t known he’d possessed.  I turned in the passenger seat to look directly at him; when he made eye contact with me I saw no trace of the amiable, waggish, even flirtatious look that seemed to be his default mode.

Logan began telling his something by asking me what I knew about (his former girlfriend), Kathleen.

I put his former girlfriend parenthetically because I’d never been sure what Logan’s and Kathleen’s relationship was.  I was vaguely aware that, months earlier, Kathleen had seemingly disappeared from UCD; the story was that she’d transferred to another college to change her major?  Yes, Logan confirmed, Kathleen had left school.  But not because of her major.  She’d gone up north, to Montana.  A week ago Friday Logan had received a phone call from her, after which he drove all night to where Kathleen was staying.  He arrived “just in time,” which was shortly before Kathleen gave birth to a child – their child – which she was going to put up for adoption.

 

 

“I have a daughter,” Logan said, almost inaudibly.  He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

When he spoke about how he and Kathleen had found out she was pregnant and how they’d deliberated their options I asked if they had considered keeping and raising the child, or having an abortion, or…. “Oh, no.” Logan adamantly cut me off when I mentioned the A-word. “I wouldn’t allow that.”

I remember thinking, Oh, so *you* wouldn’t allow it?  But you will “allow” yourself to stay here, continuing with your life as if nothing has changed, while you “allow” Kathleen to put her life on hold, leave the state and her friends and her studies….  But I kept such thoughts to moiself.  Logan was agitated and distraught, and on the verge of tears at several points.  For reasons he never revealed to me he’d chosen to share his pain with me.  It was no time for me to lecture him on society’s (and his) sexist expectations for what Kathleen should be “allowed” to do with her life.

 

 

One Saturday night, a few weeks after Logan’s revelation, I was with a group of friends, including Logan and the usual Jazzcuzziers, at JJ’s apartment, playing backgammon and other board games and shooting the shit.  Someone said something about how they hadn’t seen Kathleen around, and Logan mentioned the college transfer cover story.  Logan was sitting directly across from me; I was beyond careful *not* to make eye contact with him.  I felt a tightness in my throat and gut as I thought, not for the last time, “I wish he hadn’t told me.” I wished he hadn’t momentarily relieved part of his burden by placing it on me….  And I immediately regretted having such harsh thoughts.

A few months later Nick told me that Kathleen had returned to UCD, and he repeated the story he’d heard from Logan: Kathleen had transferred to another university, thinking it would be better for her major, but after a couple of quarters she realized that Davis was the place to be. As far as I know, Logan and Kathleen did not resume their relationship.

Nick and I kept in touch after college, with phone calls and letters and occasional in-person visits.  Fast-forward 20+ years, to one of the rare but wonderful times when I was reunited with Nick in person.  I was visiting Nick and his family at their San Francisco home; his delightful   [6]    wife gave us her blessing (read: shooed us out of their house so as not to bore her and their kids) to go out and have dinner at an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks away and yak about our college days.  As we were sharing antipasti and chianti and what each of us knew about what mutual friends were doing, Nick announced that he had some juicy news to tell me.  He’d seen Logan recently, for the first time in years, and he’d learned something about Logan and Kathleen.

Nick:
“They had a kid, junior year – Kathleen left school, and had a baby!
And they kept that from everyone!”

Moiself  (nodding my head as I reached for a kalamata olive and took another sip of the wine which impeded my intention to don my Oh-Wow-Really?!?!?! face):
“Yeah.”

Nick (looking across the restaurant table at me, surprised by my lack of surprise at what he’d just told me):
“Yeah.’?  Did you hear what I said?”

Moiself:
“Yes, I know.  I knew.”

Nick (incredulously):
“How did you know?”

Moiself:
“Because Logan told me.  The weekend after Kathleen gave birth.”

I’m not sure which emotion was strongest on Nick’s face: shock, disbelief, pain, or disappointment.

Nick:
“He told *you*????!?!?”

Moiself:
“Yep.  I was as surprised as…”

Nick:
“Why didn’t he tell *me*?!  Or ….”
( He named his brother, Mick, and two more of their Close Guy Friends.® )
“We were so close – he didn’t tell his best friends?”

Moiself:
“Maybe that’s why he told me – because I wasn’t his closest friend.
I figured he just needed to tell someone, and he pegged me as empathetic, or…
I don’t know.  I don’t know his reasons for confiding in me.  He never told me why, and I never asked.”

Nick:
“You kept this secret, all these years?  Why didn’t *you* tell me?”

Moiself:
“Because Logan asked me not to tell anyone.”

It was as simple as that. I could tell Nick wanted to press it further, but didn’t know how do so without…well, without looking like a jerk who was disappointed in one friend for not betraying another friend’s confidence.

I don’t know if Nick ever asked Logan about the part of the secret that seemed most important to Nick – why Logan had confided in me, and not his “closest” guy friends.  A year or so after Nick’s and my conversation, it was too late to find out.  Logan died, far too young,   [7]   and took whatever remaining secrets he had with him.

 

Well, okay.  How’s about poetry?

*   *   *

Department Of The Poetic Form I’m Not Appreciating

 

 

I’ve read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.
( John Barrymore )

 I have no desire
to fit in. 

No plans to walk with the crowd.

I have my own mind,
heart and soul.

I am me

 And it 

has taken me years
to realize

how important that is

  

  

Moiself  saw the above poem recently (posted on FB).  I’m not the first nor the last writer or non-writer who scorns   [8]   free verse as anything other than what it seems to me to be: an attempt to be poetic (for whatever reasons, perhaps to obtain what the writer feels is the artistic cred/prestige of the title, “poet,”) without being willing to put in the work of crafting poetry.

That’s not to say that I do not appreciate or understand the sentiments expressed in the above poem, or ones like it.

I just ask myself,

why is that labeled as a poem?

Why is it not,
simply and straightforwardly,
evocative
and beautiful
prose?

Is
it the

arranging?

if so, you can take any opinion,

sentiment,
or statement, and make it poetic
due to spacing
and punctuation

and
general
formatting.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

“Christianity is the religion of love and forgiveness. And if you don’t believe that
you’ll burn in a pit of hell for all eternity.”

( Moiself, x years ago, when asked to give a summary
of Christian witnessing in 25 words or less )

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when the rhodies (by the pear tree that daughter Belle planted) decide to burst forth on the first day of spring.

 

 

*   *   *

May you choose well those in whom you confide your secrets;
May you keep
Your free verse
To
yourself;
May you appreciate the behind-the-scenes tales of art;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] A little more subtle entreaty than “Everyone Should Read This Book.”

[2]  Vegans beware; it’s a backstabbing meat market in many aspects…and now I’ll stop with the butchered (oops!) food metaphors.  You’re welcome.

[3] The parts of the brain currently thought to control long term memory.

[4] All names in this story are not the characters’ real names.  They are, of course, some people’s real names…just not the people mentioned in this story.

[5] Or sometimes, all three!  I wonder how many capillaries I burst, going from swimming pool, to jacuzzi, to sauna, to pool, and back again.

[6] Don’t you love it when your friends marry someone that you think is simply mahvelous?

[7] Cancer; lymphoma, I think.

[8] Or as a fan of the genre might say, just doesn’t “understand.”

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

The Pranks I’m Not Playing

March 15, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Pranks I’m Not Playing

Content Warning: Contentious World Affairs

“…if Israel is going to be accused of genocide
(which is a misuse/misunderstanding of the term, as the writer explains in the article)
regardless of its actions, it has that much less incentive to show restraint in its effort to defeat an enemy that is *avowedly* genocidal.   [1]
Indeed, it’s worth noting that those loudly calling for a cease-fire to stop Israel’s genocide typically fail to call for Hamas to surrender.
That would stop the bloodshed, by any name, immediately.

( excerpts (*my comment);*  my emphases, from:
“This is what’s wrong with the rush to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza”
The LA Times 3-5-24 )

 

 

Department Of Why I Am Not Hopeful For Peace In The Mideast,
Even If Hamas Surrenders And Israel Stops Being A Butthead About The West Bank And Pursues A Palestinian Homeland/Two State Solution

Because: religion and regional history (which are one and the same).  Remove both sides’  adherence to their primitive scriptures which enshrine their “you are special/I gave this land to you” xenophobic deities’ proclamations, and there might be a chance….  As the late great Christopher Hitchens put it, “people will kill each other’s children for ancient caves and relics.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of “It’s Mine!  No, it’s Mine!”
Oh Crap, Do Y’all Have To So Brazenly Prove My Point?

“Carrying planks of plywood, a group of Israeli settlers pushed past soldiers guarding the barrier surrounding the Gaza strip and quickly got to work.  Within minutes, the young men had erected two small buildings – outposts, they said, of a future Jewish settlement in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Their movement had hungered for this moment for years, but now, after Oct. 7, they felt is was just a matter of time before Jews would be living in Gaza again.  ‘It is ours,’ said David Remer, 18.  ‘[God] said it is ours.’  “

(from “Israel’s religious right has a clear plan for Gaza:
‘We are occupying, deporting and settling.’ ”
Los Angeles Times, 3-13-24 )

“…This manifestly shows that the true heirs [of Palestine] will always be Muslims, and if it goes into the hands of some else at some point, such a possession would be similar to a scenario in which the mortgagor gives temporary control of their property to the mortgagee. This is the glory of Divine revelation, [and it shall surely come to pass]….”

(“What does the Quaran say about Israel and Palestine?”
 The Weekly Al Hakam )

 

 

*   *   *

Dateline Tuesday morning 7:50 AM, morning walk, listening to a No Stupid Questions podcast. At the end of each NSQ episode, the hosts play two to four comments that listeners have recorded and sent in regarding previous NSQ episodes, then give the names of those who sent in their comments. That episode had two comments, from (1) “a person who prefers to remain anonymous,” and (2) “Julia Roberts.”

My first thought upon hearing the commentor’s last name was, no – that’s incomplete.  That was her full name at some point in her life, perhaps when she was a wee lass.  But now, when answering the what is your name question, her full answer is likely, “Julia Roberts, yeah/no.”    [2]

 

“What do you mean, ‘Am I *that* Julia Roberts?’  I thought the name of the podcast was no stupid questions….”

 

*   *   *

Department Of…You Know….

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Fun With Podcasts: The Question I’m Not Asking

At the end of each episode of Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid blog, Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all of which have some relation to the idea of communication.  The questions have varied slightly over the years; the current crop:

* What do you wish you really understood?

* How do you tell someone that they have their facts wrong?

* What’s the strangest question anyone has ever asked you?

* How do you stop a compulsive talker?    [3]

* What gives you confidence?

* What book changed your life?

* How do you strike up a real, genuine conversation?

My favorite is the last question, which Alda often prefaces with a scenario: “Let’s say you’re seated at a dinner party next to someone you don’t know.  How do you strike up a real, genuine conversation?”

 

 

Moiself  was pleased to recall that, in my years of listening to the C+V podcast, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they ask the other person, “What do you do?”  That is a question I propose we eliminate from our introductory conversations.

I’ve had a lifelong distaste for that question, but first gave serious thought as to why over two decades ago, when a friend told me about his recent business trip to Europe, during which he had some interesting conversations with “the natives.” He shared the story of how, when he’d gotten to know a few of his foreign colleagues well enough, they felt comfortable enough (over a meal, comfort abetted by multiple glasses of the local red wine) to ask him some version of two “Why do Americans do this?”  questions.  The first, which I heard later on during several of my own European adventures, was,

“Why do Americans use the question, ‘How are you?,’ as a greeting. Why don’t they just say, Hello; Good morning; Good afternoon; Nice to meet you; etc.?  Because when I answer their question, it turns out they don’t really want to know how I am….”

 

 

That cracked me up – it’s something I’ve noticed for years (and I strongly agree with the Why Do Americans… questioners’ befuddlement on this issue).

The other question was why do Americans, within seconds of being introduced to or meeting you, ask what most Europeans considered to be a personal, even rude question:

“What do you do?”

My friend’s European colleagues said that the answer to the what-do-you-do query  – “do” meaning, your career/occupation – is seen as intrusive, and as a way of determining status.  And if you are temporarily/currently unemployed – as was the case for many at that time (when my friend was there, most countries in Europe were going through an economic downturn) then you are ranked lower on the totem pole.  Or, if their job is one they think Americans won’t respect or understand, they don’t know what to say to you.

I agree with those observations, have experienced them moiself…but mostly I think that what do you do is just not an interesting question, conversation-enhancing-wise.

 

 

Since the pandemic times I have mostly, but not exclusively, been around people I’ve known for years; thus, moiself  can’t remember the last time someone asked me what I do.  I do know that if asked What do you do?  I probably probably responded with one of my two stock answers:

(1)  When?

(2)  I call 911, then put out the fire as best I can.

Depending on how well I know the person asking the question, I usually hedge about revealing that moiself  is a writer.  This is due to years of experience; read: because of the responses that the I-am-a-writer answer usually produces – responses I’ve seen my artist friends endure receive as well. 

That is so wonderful – you’re a creative!?!

Uh…yeah?  The first time my writer-admission was met with that response,   [4]   moiself  kept waiting for the subject which usually follows the adjective.  Nope; it seems that creative has been noun-i-fied.  And yeah, I realize that that response is (usually) meant to be a compliment.  The thing is, I loathe that word being applied only to the artistic fields, and it usually is.  Some of the most creative people I’ve met/known/read about have been scientists, engineers, teachers, health care providers….

 

 

Then there is the ick/uncomfortable factor: many if not most people, immediately after finding out you are a writer/artist, heap praise upon you and ask you questions whose answers you have no way of knowing:

That is so great – I wish I could be that talented!
Have I read anything you’ve written/seen any of your paintings?

Without seeing or reading any of your work, the non-writers/non-artists make false assumptions, including that you must be some kind of celebrity and that you and your work are worthy of adoration and somehow “above” what they do…which indicates how very little they know about your profession.  This might seem petty, to complain about how revealing what you do gives many people an immediate positive, “You are so special/what you do is more interesting than what I do,” assessment of you, but it has always made me feel uncomfortable.

If your work/career is a passion and you chose it for interesting reasons, that will come out eventually.  The more interesting conversations are, IMO, initiated by something that gets you to know a person on a more personal level without being too personal.  Does that make sense? 

Finding out what people think is usually more interesting than finding out what they do for a living (unless the “do” answer is something really esoteric, like, “I repair the no-gravity toilets on the International Space Station.”).  Try variations on these questions:

* What are you thinking about lately/ What occupies your thoughts these days?

* What are you surprised by?

* Tell me about the last time you were surprised/scared/overjoyed/disgusted?  [5]

Or, simply start out by finding a commonality, as with the dinner table scenario (“So, what’s your connection to _____ [the host] – how did you meet?” )

Moiself  delights in hearing peoples’ stories, and over the years I’ve found the most efficient way to do that – to elicit stories from people, especially those who, by their temperaments might not initiate telling them – is to tell a story of your own.

 

 

In particular, try either sharing a story that doesn’t exactly put you in the best light or sharing a vulnerable moment – both kinds of stories preferably bracketed with self-effacing humor.  So, moiself’s  secret is out: my ulterior motive for posting family stories and personal experiences on Facebook (the only social media I am involved with), or relating them at dinner, parties, or other social engagements, is to be able to hear the stories I inevitably get in return. 

*   *   *

Department Of Technology Is Groovy, But There Are Things It Stifles…
And Some Of Those Things I Miss

Dateline:  last week, returning from morning walk, noticing a new (to moiself)  security camera affixed to a neighbor’s garage door.  For some reason my first thought was,

Dang!  Nnow their kids’ friends can’t toilet paper the house
without everyone knowing who did it.

I think of the (harmless, I swear) pranks of old (e.g., TP-ing a friend’s house; playing ding-dong ditch), as well as acts of intrigue and kindness (leaving May flowers and notes on the doorstep), that depended on anonymity.  I still think of/get inspired to pull such fun pranks, but am deterred by the fact that everyone has a camera everywhere (whether on their doorsteps or in their ever-present cellphones), and I don’t want to end up on someone’s youtube video.

 

But creating such a masterpiece might be worth the risk.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cogent Warnings…

…found in my offspring’s alumni magazine.  As far as I know, my kids don’t read their college’s alumni publication, but I do.  Moiself  found a profound statement in the Ask the Expert feature in the latest issue of Arches, the quarterly magazine of  UPS.  The expert being asked was Ariela Tubert, a philosophy professor studying the ethics of AI.   In the interview Tubert was asked to explain the pros and cons, or the promise and pitfalls, of artificial intelligence and machine learning.  Her comment and cautions were sorted into five categories:

  1. Bots are not people;
  2. Separate the serious stuff;
  3. A force for good;
  4. Tools to try;

And the one which contained, IMO, the most crucial warning/reminder,

  1. Beware of biases:  “A system created and trained on human data can amplify biases…Historical data is not ethically perfect.”

 

( graphic from These robots were trained on AI. They became racist and sexist.
The Washington Post, 7-16-22 )

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“I never believed in God. No, I didn’t even as a little kid. I used to think even if he exists, he’s done such a terrible job.
It’s a wonder people don’t get together and file a class action suit against him.”
( Bob Dandridge, played by Alan Alda, in the movie Everyone Says I love You. )

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I hate it when people think I’m Julia Roberts, even when they hear my correct name.  Happens all the time.

 

 

*   *   *

May you not have to explain, when stating your name, that you are not a famous person;
May you strive to ask what someone thinks rather than what they do;
May you dare to, just once more, TP a friend’s house;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The introduction to Hamas founding covenant:  “This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious … It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.”  After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. “The Day of Judgement will not come about,” it proclaims, “until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” (from “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology: A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions,” The Atlantic, 10-10-23, by Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University professor, Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations and Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.

[2] As in, “Julia Roberts; yeah, like the actor; no, I’m not her.”

[3] One of the best answers to this question – and probably one of the most effective strategies – came from writer/actor/comedian Sarah Silverman, who said she excuses herself, explaining that she has diarrhea. 

[4] It’s happened more than once.

[5] Yes, moiself  has posed these questions, to “total” strangers.

[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

The Patient I’m Not Taking

March 1, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Patient I’m Not Taking

Department Of Another Great Moment In Inclusion/Diversity

The story behind the story:  The Inclusion/Diversity story moiself  is about to share came to my mind when MH and I were recently talking about the respective rhinoviruses…

 

“Yeah baby!”

 

…sorry, dude, I refer to the virus most responsible for what we call the “common cold.”

I’ll begin again.

A week or so ago MH and I were talking about the colds we’d each had at the end of last year.  When we were comparing how long each of us had had symptoms, I snickered (to moiself , or so I thought) to recall The Great Cold Debate®  which I inadvertently became a part of, during my time working at a Planned Parenthood clinic.  MH asked what I was snickering about, and thus I shared this memory, which was entagled with another….

 

 

As mentioned previously in this space (e.g., here, and more specifically, here) I worked as a Family Planning Specialist for Planned Parenthood, including several shifts per week in their Bay Area clinics which offered abortion services.  Dateline: one morning in one such clinic, when I was doing intake procedures with a patient, who was accompanied by her husband.  [1]    I’d reached the point during the intake where I would ask them about the contraceptive method(s) the patient had been using and bring up birth control options with them, if they were open to discussing the issue.

Important Background Detail ®, for both this story (and the one which follows): the patient and her husband were from India.  They had come to the USA a year earlier, for the husband to pursue his graduate studies at Stanford University.  

After we’d discussed what had worked, or not (ahem…   [2] )  for them re contraception, and the different options available, I asked if either of them had any questions.  The wife said no; her husband looked at me and asked:

“What is it about American colds?”

 

 

He phrased his non sequitur of a query in tones which seemed more accusatory than questioning.  “Excuse me; *American* colds?” was all I could muster for a response.

His wife glanced at me, rolled her eyes without really doing so, and excused herself to use the restroom.

So: the husband began to whine tell me that he’d had several colds since coming to the USA, and in fact he had a cold right now, at the present time, a cold which was going on two weeks now, and this had never happened in India.

Ummm,  ooookkkkaaaayyyy….

Now, this was a (supposedly) educated person; I can’t remember the exact name of his graduate program, but it was in the biological sciences.  As briefly as possible I mentioned that the viruses which cause what we call “a cold” can typically last from 7 to 14 days…

“No; not in India.”

…and that being ill in a new/different country can seem like a different experience, and when you travel you will be exposed to different cold viruses….  I tried to steer the conversation to the subject at hand, but he would not be deterred.  I realized he really didn’t want an answer.  He just wanted to complain, and found it necessary to repeat himself several times:

“There’s something wrong with American viruses!
Colds in India *never* last this long.”

 

 

It was bizarre; I got the feeling he wanted me to apologize, to him, on behalf of those disrespectful, persistent, American microbes.

The patient returned from her pee break and the three of us settled the contraception issue.  I asked, again, if either of them had any questions about the procedure.  The wife said no; the husband said, “Can you tell if it…

During his micro-pause I could feel moiself’s  arteries icing over — he’s not going to ask me that, is he?  Yep.  

“Can you tell if it is a boy fetus or a girl fetus?”

“No,” I replied, gritting my teeth.  I managed to restrain moiself  from adding,

…but I can tell if its father is an asshole.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of And Now For The Story In Front Of The Story
Behind The Story….  Or Something.

The Planned Parenthood clinics where I worked had many student-couple patients from other countries, who were in the Bay Area for either their and/or their husbands’ college and graduate educations.  Several of my fellow PP clinicians who’d been working for PP much longer than moiself  had noticed certain patterns with – and thus had developed certain opinions about –  patients from certain countries and cultures.   [3] 

Dateline:  Another morning (circa 1989); another clinic.  After finishing my first intake of the day, I escorted the patient to the waiting room, then headed for the lab to chart her hematocrit results.  Hanging on a wall outside the entrance to the lab was the file holder which held the charts of patients who had checked in to the clinic and who were in the reception area, awaiting intake.  When a Family Planning Specialist had finished with her intake she began the next intake, taking whichever chart was on top in the file holder.  Which is what I was going to do, after charting the lab results for my previous patient.

CR, DD, and ML, the other Family Planning Specialists who were working at that morning’s clinic, were gathered around the file holder, quietly but passionately discussing a chart DD was holding in her hands. 

 

 

More IBD ® (just to be clear, that’s Important Background Details, not…er…the other acronym) for this story:

 (1) my fellow FPS’s respective ethnic backgrounds:  CR (the lead for the morning’s clinic) was White; DD was Black; ML was Latina;

(2) Our clinic personnel had recently undergone our first of what would be several days of (not well-planned or executed, IMO    [4]  )  Diversity Awareness training seminars;

(3) There is no background detail #3.

 

 

CR, DD, and ML were gathered around the file holder, quietly but passionately discussing a chart DD was holding in her hands.  So intent were the three of them that they did not notice my approach.  They seemed oblivious to my presence, even when I was standing three feet behind them, listening to their discussion (recalled here to the best of my ability, but not verbatim…duh).

CR:
“Nope, it’s yours.”
(CR shook her head and put her hands out, as if to push away the chart DD had thrust in her direction)
“I know what you mean, I’ve had the same experiences,
but that’s the chart on top, DD, and you’re up.”

DD:
“Please, I  can’t.  I had the last one – I’m serious.  ML, would you take this?”

ML:
“No, oh no, I just don’t – I know this sounds bad, it’s nothing personal, but that culture is so – well you know how the women can’t say anything direct, so they whimper and cry to punish their husbands and make them feel bad….”

DD:
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I get woozy with the odor – I’m not prejudiced, I’m serious.  It’s from their diet, the curry or whatever, and it comes out of the skin and the breath and the last Indian patient I had, it was so strong, I thought I was gonna pass out in the procedure room….”

ML (changing her tone from pleading to teasing):
“CR, you’re the lead, you should set a good example, and help out DD….”

CR:
“No way.”

My snort-laughter caused them to turn around, and their collective expressions changed in a flash, from obstinacy to hope (“Maybe Robyn will take this patient?!?!)…a hope which crashed and burned as I declared,

“Oh, how I wish I had a recording of this moment!
My faith in the equality of humanity is restored, with this prime example of diversity before me:  a White woman, a Black woman, a Latina woman, all arguing about not wanting to help an Indian woman.”

 

 

*   *   *

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.   [5] 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“Religion is man-made.
Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.”

(  Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything )

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when men mansplain teach about sexism and misogyny to captive audiences.

 

 

*   *   *

May your colds (caused by proud, American viruses) last less than two weeks;
May you never have to explain sexism and misogyny to captive audiences;
May you never have cause to wish, maybe someone else will help this patient;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] At some point during the intake, if a client seeking an abortion was accompanied by another person – whether their partner, or friend, or parent or family member –  we made sure to speak to the patient *alone,* to make sure she wasn’t being pressured into any decision.

[2] Considering where they were (a Family Planning clinic, for an abortion), the husband’s idea of birth control – “I’ll wear a condom when I feel like it” was infuriating…but, unfortunately, not uncommon, as I learned.  I was to witness, during my time at PP, the disturbing phenomenon wherein couples from countries/cultures where The Husband Is In Charge Of Such Things ® often had a dynamic where the wife was subject to her husband’s whims of whether or not he wanted to wear a condom every time they had sexual intercourse (even if he was adamant about *not* wanting his wife to get pregnant, he would not consistently use protection!).  But, he didn’t want her to use oral contraceptives (“The Pill”), or an IUD, or a diaphragm. To have her be the one using and choosing birth control would take her out from under *his* control.  And her option of saying no to sex if he refused (“no glove; no love”) – ha!  Not an option, for her, or for far too many women (and any woman who does not have that option is far too many).

[3] I never, never, ever, saw any instance of them allowing their opinions to affect their care of their patients.  That said, working in such a stressful environment, yep, they would discretely blow off steam by commiserating with their fellow clinicians.

[4] That kind of employee education/seminar was in its developmental stages, and not A Thing®  like it is now, and it seemed obvious to moiself  that those leading the training were well-intentioned but didn’t exactly know what they were doing.

[5] 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.

[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

The Truth I’m Not Not Handling

February 9, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Isms (religion), Me so happy, movies, music, nature, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Truth I’m Not Not Handling

Department Of First Things First, As In:
This Date Should Be A National Holiday

♫   It was twenty years ago today,
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play…♫

And it was sixty years ago today – February 9, 1964, that, all over the world but especially in America, aspiring musicians who didn’t even know they were that, or that they wanted to be in a rock n’ roll band, watched the Ed Sullivan Show…and the rest is history.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cheese Is Supposed To Be
Whatever You Want It To Be

Dateline; Sunday 12:45 PM-ish; MH and I are waiting to order lunch at Schmizza Public House in Orenco.  The couple seated at the table next to moiself  (a father and his non-custodial daughter, which I gathered from their ensuing conversation, which I overheard due to the volume with which they spoke   [1]   ) is giving their order to the server.  The man is asking to have the blue cheese crumbles excluded from a dish which includes them; he also wants a different dressing.  He says this three times; each time the server repeats it back to him, to confirm she’s getting it right:  “You want ___ instead of ___, and no blue cheese?”  At the final confirmation, she says “Got it,” and as she leaves to put in their order I hear No Blue Cheese man mumble under his breath, “Cheese is not supposed to be blue.”

 

I wonder how he feels about other Cheeses of Color?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Stealth Bombs

Dateline: Monday morning, circa 10 am.  MH comes into my office to tell me something, and quickly gets sidetracked.  “Hey, he says, pointing to the carpet behind where I am sitting in my chair, “cat barf!”

Earlier in the morning moiself  had already cleaned up a hairball-involved spew from our cat, Nova, near her food bowls upstairs.  Had she also, unbeknownst to moiself,  done the deed downstairs at the same time, or was this a new deposit – series of deposits as it turns out (there were three small spots; two on the carpet and one on the carpet protector underneath my desk and chair    [2]  )?  Either way, I’d been in and out of my office several times and hadn’t noticed.

“Don’t roll back!” MH warns, as one of the barf blobs is right behind my office chair – “Oh, I think you already rolled into it.”  He goes and gets some paper towels; I follow him to the laundry room and get a wet rag, muttering, “She makes no noise, all of a sudden, it’s just there.”   In exasperation I blurt out to MH, “How can she do that, without me noticing?!?!?!  She barfs like some people fart: silent, but….”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cool Scientists We Should Remember

Last week moiself  listened to the first of what will be a series of Freakonomics podcasts about the late great renowned physicist, Nobel Prize winner, Caltech professor and member of The Manhattan Project, author and bongo drum enthusiast, Richard Feynman.  That episode, The Curious Mr. Feynman, featured memories of Feynman shareby by family, friends and colleagues, and most specifically focused on the venture for which most non-scientist Americans know Feynman: for serving on the commission ordered by President Reagan to investigate the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

What most Americans don’t know is that Feynman did *not* want to serve on the commission.  The majority of its members were political and/or military appointments, and after working on the Manhattan project, Feynman was convinced that the military and scientists were not a good mix.  Suffering from cancer (which he kept private), Feynman’s strong impulse was to decline the invitation, especially when he found out that President Reagan had instructed former secretary of state William Rogers, whom Reagan had appointed to chair the commission, “Whatever you do, don’t embarrass NASA.”

 

 

I know; really.  How alarming is that?  But Feynman ‘s wife kept reminding him that if he were not to serve on the commission it would just be “the rest of them” (i.e., politicians and the military), and so he finally agreed.

Looking back, especially after hearing some of the  notes Feynman kept as he served on the commission, I find it highly creepy to think of what might’ve happened had Feynman (or another scientist like him    [3]  )  not been on the commission. 

Once he agreed and got on the commission, he was again reluctant to serve with the others, so Feynman did what he did best.  He went on his own, finding out from the ground up, just how is the space shuttle constructed? And he was aided by this in being able to consistently and meticulously question the scientists and engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory who’d designed and built the shuttle, many of whom were willing to talk with him rather than someone else, because he had been their professor at Caltech!

My takeaway from the episode:  as much as Feynman loathed politics, he evidently understood the political mind and the value of PR, for had Feynman not pulled that “stunt” with the O-ring, it is highly possible that his findings would have been ignored or buried by the others on the committee.

 

 

 

Which brings up the major area of creepiness: Reagan’s instructions to the commission that they were not to embarrass NASA.  That stayed with moiself  for hours after having heard about it (via the podcast).  Consider the times:  when the Challenger exploded our country was still in the midst of the Cold War, and the USA’s space program was lauded by many as a prime example of our “victory” in that conflict.  Reagan in particular championed how our successes in space exploration were just one example of the proof of how the innovation and openness of American democracy triumphed not just politically, but scientifically, over the closed and stagnating system of the Soviets.  I get that that was a factor.

What blows moiself’s  mind is how Reagan could then turn around and use the very tactics of the regime he famously touted as the “evil empire” and the “focus of evil in the modern world.”   Reagan’s commission was, supposedly, appointed to find out the facts  of the Challenger tragedy – why did the shuttle explode? – and yet in doing so they were not to “embarrass NASA.”  If the commission discovered that the shuttle had a design flaw which was not detected and/or minimized, that would embarrass NASA.  However, given their Prime Directive from the president himself, re any such discoveries the commission would be under pressure to act as if:

* this fact is not a fact

* we are not seeing what we are seeing

* we cannot discover what we are discovering, because even if we discover it, we were instructed, “whatever else” we do, *not* to embarrass NASA.
And the facts show that NASA fucked up…so we cannot discover the facts.

 

 

Wasn’t that attitude – ideology trumps reality – a hallmark of closed, repressive, totalitarian systems?   By giving the commission chair that instruction, Reagan was borrowing a move from the playbook of the “evil empire.”  By giving the commission chair those no-embarrasing-NASA  instructions, Reagan showed that in his zeal to maintain the impression of (what be believed to be) the USA’s scientific and moral superiority to the Soviets, he was willing to employ the *exact* strategy of the Soviets, and later the one employed by the Russians , most egregiously in their sham investigation a major tragedy of their own – the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Y’all should really check out the episode.  Fascination, and a bit frightening.

Feynman grew concerned that this “investigation” would be more of a show trial — political propaganda meant to save face….

Most of the 12 members of the Commission were political or military appointees; Feynman worried that Chairman Rogers would try to sideline him, maybe even withhold information….

In Washington, the Commission began to interview witnesses. Feynman didn’t think Chairman Rogers was trying very hard to get to the true cause of the explosion. So Feynman began asking questions — sharp, unrelenting questions. Questions about the science. During a break, Chairman Rogers was overheard, in the men’s room, complaining to the astronaut Neil Armstrong, who also sat on the Commission. He said: “Feynman is becoming a real pain in the ass.” Feynman…felt the investigation was becoming a whitewash.

Serving on the commission had been as dreadful an experience as Feynman had feared. But he kept digging. By now he had come to believe that the Challenger exploded because of the failure of what are called O-rings — small, circular seals designed to prevent fluid or air from leaking during a mechanical process….

Richard Feynman was a patriot; he loved NASA, he loved adventure and exploration; he even loved risk-taking — as long as the risk had been properly calculated. What he hated was any attempt to paper over the truth; as a scientist, all he wanted was to find out true things. Here are some other things he hated: hypocrisy, B.S., and the use of unscientific thinking to make important decisions….

So, he now decided to pull a stunt.  This stunt, on a Presidential commission investigating a national tragedy, would be in public, on television….

It would later be revealed that NASA had known about the O-ring problem, but had downplayed the risks. The Rogers Commission, in its published report, went easy on NASA, as President Reagan had asked. But the report did include an appendix written by Richard Feynman. He didn’t go easy on NASA. Here is his final sentence: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

( excerpts from The Curious Mr. Feynman, Freakonomics  )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Interesting, And Revealing, Choice Of Words

On the subject of PR trumping reality….  I recently came across this scary article:

At Hopdoddy Burger Bar near the University of Florida campus in Gainesville recently…  he menu advertised the usual gluten-free and vegan options, as well as something more unusual: beef purporting to “save the planet, one bite at a time.”

The Austin-based chain buys the meat from ranchers who use eco-friendly agricultural techniques. The burgers — about $4 more expensive than the traditional ones — are designed to appeal to a fast-growing, desirable demographic of climate-conscious omnivores. But the extent to which such premium-priced beef patties are helping cool the earth is hotly disputed.

“We want to change the narrative that eating meat is bad for the planet, or that eating plant-based is better,” said Chad Edwards, the on-duty manager, explaining the company’s “just eat a Hopdoddy burger” solution to climate change…. The stakes, or perhaps steaks, of this effort to rewrite the science-backed narrative that cows are a climate menace are bigger than this 46-restaurant chain. The company is at the vanguard of a contentious push by meat and dairy industries trying to rebrand as climate solutions.

( excerpt from “How meat and milk companies are racing to ease your climate guilt
A climate-friendly hamburger? A carbon-neutral glass of milk? As companies make bold claims, a heated debate erupts.”
By Evan Halper and Laura Reiley, The Washington Post  ; emphases mine  )

 

 

Interesting, and revealing, choice of words.  Can’t change the facts? Change the narrative.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Parting shot: I love it when/I hate it when…

I hate it when word games apparently have a Word Cop curating them. I’ll explain.

Letter Boxed is one of the series of New York Times puzzles  [5]   I do each morning. The objective of Letter Boxed is to use all of the 12 letters around the box in 5 words or less, sequencing the letters to spell words that are at least 3 letters long (no proper nouns or hyphenates or contractions).  Letters can be reused, but consecutive letters cannot be from the same side (for example, in today’s puzzle, pictured below, the letter W in your word cannot be preceded or followed by an E), and the last letter of a word becomes the first letter of the next word.

 

 

Dateline: Thursday, 5:30 am, playing Letter Boxed. I have two of the three words necessary to win by *my* standard, which is to solve the puzzle in three words at most.  My remaining, #3 word, must start with the letter S and use up the letters L and U, which have not been used in my first two words.  I attempt to enter the word slut, and get the curt rejection, “not a word.”

 

 

*   *   *

May we all live by the maxim that reality must take precedence over PR;
May we smugly know when a word is a word,
no matter what the NYTimes games curator apps decree;
May we change the narrative to fit the facts, and not the other way around;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] They were speaking loud enough for me to overhear them, whether I wanted to or not (it’s kind of a sports bar atmosphere), and the details he asked about and the routine things she had to explain to him – he’s obviously her father, but was playing catch-up in her life – made me think she does not live with him.

[2] I hope you’re enjoying all the details.

[3] Although, has there ever been another scientist like Richard Feynman?

[4] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. 

No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[5] The NY Times games I play are (in this order):  Connections; The Mini; Letter Boxed; Wordle.

The Affirmations I’m Not Reciting

January 26, 2024

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

I’ve been doing yoga for almost forty years,  [1]  but it wasn’t until 2016 that moiself  actually went to a yoga studio and took a yoga class.

 

 

Moiself  has had a home yoga practice, which relied first on books and then on video tapes.  [2]   When I had the time (and $) to consider taking a class, I did some research before choosing a studio.  I came to love the studio, the teachers and classes, and the vibes from being around other yogis.  When the pandemic hit and the studio had to suspend classes, some of the studio’s teachers provided links of themselves leading a class (recorded at their home studios, and by studios I mean, their basements and rec rooms).  Not long after, the studio began offering the option of live-streaming classes, with teachers in the studio classroom (sans students) being filmed leading their various Vinyasa Level 1.5, Hatha, Hot Power, Gentle Restorative, etc. classes, at the same pre-pandemic days and times as the in-person classes had been held.

 

 

When the pandemic’s public gathering restrictions were lifted and a limited number of students were allowed back in class, the studio continued filming the classes for the live-streaming option for the next three years.  I took full advantage of the live-stream option, as did many students (including two I knew of who had moved out of town and would be unable to attend physically but who were delighted to still be able to practice “with” their favorite teachers).  I returned to the studio only once after that (as in, during the past three years); my schedule was such that I was out of town for at least one and often two of the three weekly classes I took, and it was more convenient to do the streaming: I wasn’t rushing last minute to do the drive – I felt more “responsible” in that I wasn’t driving (a help to The Environment, ® etc). 

Perhaps one day I’ll return to take some classes at that studio, or attend one of their workshops or special events.  I’d intended to renew my yearly membership this month, but was saddened and surprised when the studio owner informed me in late December that they were going to stop offering the streaming option  [3]   for classes.  [4]    After a few minutes of mourning, I figured there must be other options which don’t involve returning to a studio – I already knew there were, as I’ve copied links to a couple of really good one-hour classes that yoga teachers have posted online.  I do those classes whenever my studio’s streaming class is cancelled due to teacher illness or technical difficulties (their Zoom feed reliability has been…less than consistent), or whatever.

My searching led me to Yoga International. The site offers a variety of yoga classes on tape,  [5]  which you can filter according to class length, yoga style, level of experience and/or difficulty, teacher, etc.  I’ve been doing three of their classes per week since late December, trying a different class/teacher each time.   I’m sampling the wares, so to type, learning how what-I-like that jives with what they offer.  I’ve a couple of favorites already, and also several, “Hmmm, not for moiself.”

 

 

Here’s a prime takeaway, for moiself:  some of the classes are too slow (even though they are categorized as Vinyasa Level 2, which should, IMO, have a quicker pace). Also, some of YI’s teachers are way too chatty.  Of course, other yogis may like and even benefit from that, but for me, a *certain* kind of chattiness is…too much.

The certain too much comes in the form of the affirmation/motivation moments that some yoga teachers offer at the beginning of a class.  Many of the affirmations and phrases presented are – I’m not sure exactly how to say this, so I’ll name it what it feels like to moiself:  First-World cringeworthy-congratulatory.   [6]   

Teacher, I’m sure your intentions are genuine, but I am not going to praise moiself   for showing up on the mat today  and/or for taking the time to do something for myself, and thus claiming my power and reinforcing how I matter to the world and realizing that I have the right to take up space in this world.   My years studying and embracing the theorems of feminism supplied me with all of that and more, thanks.  I know that I would matter equally if, say, instead of being the fortunate American that I am, I was a poverty-stricken, indigenous Q’eqchi’ woman living in Guatemala.

This I-matter realization also carries with it a parallel insight: if I were that Q’eqchi’ woman, I’d be far less likely to have the time and money to allow me to take an hour out of my day for self-improvement, instead of having to toil in the coffee and/or banana and/or sugarcane fields, because as a Q’eqchi’ woman I am, like other indigenous Guatamalan females, “…marginalized from the economy, excluded from educational opportunities, and underrepresented in all spheres of political power.”

Ya get what I’m sayin’?  I neither need nor deserve props for showing up on the mat, when I have the *privilege* of being able to do so.

So, namaste, y’all, and on with the show.

 

Perhaps a show with a bit more structure than Irish yoga.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Useless But Fun Statistics

Late in 2017 I began keeping track of the movies I’d seen in an actual movie theater, as part of my quest to do that (go to theaters, not keep track of things) more often.  Last Sunday, as I made reservations online to see American Fiction on Monday, I saw that moiself  needed to start a new year in my computer’s Movies document, and also to note the count of previous years.  There is a definite pandemic influence.

Year / movies seen in a movie theater

* 2017 / 15 plus   [7]

* 2018 / 52

* 2019 / 54

* 2020 / 12

* 2021 / 29

* 2022 / 19

* 2023 / 16

There are fewer things I’d enjoy more than upping my total to 2081/2019 standards, but the studios need to release movies in the theaters which make me want to go to the theatres.  I’m not a fan of the horror or superhero or action-sequel-after-sequel genres…

 

With a notable exception for most all things Godzilla

 

…and my interest in and tolerance for animated films is very narrow.  So, can you guess which type of movies are the majority of offerings in the theaters?

And then there are the this-story-is-sooooo-important-we-can’t-tell-it-in-under-180-minutes  films.  I *do* want to see movies in a theater, but *I don’t* want to devote half a day to getting to and from there and then being there, which (counting the previews) is what you get if you see a 3 ½+ hour movie.  Thus, moiself  and MH waited to see Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon until we could stream them at home, with comfy chairs *and* convenient bathroom access.

 

 

BTW, my American Fiction review:

It’s really, really, really, really – and did I mention, really? – good.

 

 

Brief description/no spoilers:  T.M. Ellison is an academic and frustrated novelist who is fed up when his latest novel is rejected for not being “black enough.”   When he uses a pen name to write and submit a satirical novel filled with gangs/deadbeat dads drugs/violence ghetto/rap tropes, the fact that his tale is a very thinly-disguised *parody* seems to sail past publishers, readers and book reviewers alike, as his book becomes both a best seller and a darling of the (predominantly white) critics who praise its “authenticity.”

 

Ellison, astonished and disgusted by the turn of events in his life:  “The dumber I behave the richer I get.”

 

Much of that movie hit (a little too) close to home.  I am not the female version of Ellison – I’m not a well-educated black female professor and author whose editors eschew my literary fiction and ask for more “authentic” stories of my non-existent life as a poverty-stricken, drug-addicted, single teenaged mother.  Still, I’ve both seen and experienced the pigeonholing common to all authors – as well as the recent obsessions with authenticity vs. imagination and who has the right to tell stories of any kind.  I know how the publishing world all too often wants to define (read: confine) and stereotype authors, and I’ve experienced the fawning preciousness of literary events.  And even as I appreciated the wit, wisdom and winsomeness of American Fiction’s screenplay and dialog, the ache in my head by the end of the movie made me realize I’d been clenching my jaw while laughing at the all-too-real absurdities experienced by AF‘s protagonist.

A parallel plot line has Ellison dealing with family issues along with his sudden, batshit crazy literary fortune.  There are fractious, humorous, sweet, and everything-in-between family dynamics at play, as he is confronted by one family member’s unexpected death, another’s seeming abandonment of family responsibilities, another’s descent into dementia, and another’s unexpected joy at finding late-in-life love.  This is not just a one note movie, and I highly recommend it.

If American Fiction isn’t nominated for Best Screenplay, Best Movie and other Academy awards (including at least two acting nods), I’m going to fling…something.  At someone.  Large bones, perhaps.

 

 

Update:  No bone flinging necessary – the nominations have been released!

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“When you’re black there’s like no religion to turn to. It’s like, Christianity? I don’t think so. White people justified slavery and segregation through Christianity so a black Christian is like a black person with no f***king memory.”

( Chris Rock, outtake from the 1989 documentary short,  “Who Is Chris Rock?” )

 

 

*   *   *

May you see American Fiction  (and other movies) in a movie theater;
May you be mindful of the affirmations you are privileged to recite;
May you be making a list (and checking it twice) of fun things that you do;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Not all sequential – I took a ~4 year break when I had some elbow-soft tissue strains, which were aggravated by all those upward and downward dogs and certain other asanas.

[2] For anyone interested, I’ve kept a list of the over 100 yoga workout DVDs I’ve tried over the years, the ones that made it into my regular rotation and the “nope/are you kidding?/what qualifies you to teach yoga much less put out a DVD-you could kill yourself going into full bridge and wheel pose with no warmup”  ones that made it into my reject pile.

[3] You paid the same prices for in-class or streaming, whether you paid for individual classes or had monthly or yearly memberships.

[4] I can’t remember the reasons – wasn’t making economic sense or whatever, although they were still getting the same money per student per class – I think having someone in charge of the recording equipment and the Zoom feed was also an issue. 

[5] as well as courses in meditation, mindful living, and other similar disciplines

[6] Not very yoga of me, I suppose, to carp about this?  Guess there are still some things to learn after 35+ years.

[7] I began keeping tally midyear.

[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

The Surname I’m Not Forsaking

January 19, 2024

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

Department Of Yeah What He Said

MH forwarded a link this article, to moiself  and our offspring, with the comment,  “Why weren’t *we* interviewed for this article?”

Why Parents Give Their Children a Last Name Other Than the Father’s:
Some American parents have been breaking the patrilineal tradition for generations, but the number who do so remains small.
(Upshot, The NY Times 12-27-23)

Seems like everything lately is sending moiself  into a memory spiral.  Exhibit A B C D E F G: one of the first things I thought of, after reading the above article, was my Letter to the Editor which was published in, the (now defunct)  Brain, Child magazine.  I wrote the letter in response to an article in  Brain, Child’s “debate” section.  I remember joking to another editor that, given BC’s circulation, the letter probably garnered me more readership than most of my published stories.

 

 

Behold my missive, in its entirety:  [1]

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I get it!”
“How clever!”
“We’ll remember your family!”  (And guess what?  They do.).

It has caused us no trouble, or even inconvenience.   Even if it did, how long does it take to say, “I’m Robyn Parnell, Belle Wagnell’s mother” when you call the doctor or meet your kid’s teacher?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robyn Parnell
Hillsboro, OR

 

 

It’s been years since I’ve read that.  Looking back, perhaps I was a bit hard on LB, but, ahem:  she’d written the article for the BC section titled, *debate.*   So, I did.

In real life/practice, separate from our wider administrative world (that phrase still cracks me up), given moiself’s  passion re this issue one might wonder, what does moiself  think about the decisions my friends and family have made re this matter?

With a few exceptions, I am in the minority (re my female friends and family who’ve maintained their given surnames    [2] ).  Now, do I think my friends who took their husbands’ surnames are cowards, or anti-feminist, or under the thumb of The Man ®, or whatever?  No; of course not.

When it comes to personal life logistics, most of us wind up going for the easiest, everyone-does-it options.  Translation: we follow tradition/the past of least resistance, even as we may (at least theoretically) understand how problematic and stifling these paths and traditions have been.  When ideals meet up with technicalities and emotional issues in a dark alley, guess what side typically wins that mugging?

 

 

Also, there are *so* many variables.  I’ve met some righteous feminist warriors who have been happy to take on a new last name, due to their less-than-pleasant attachment (e.g., cultural or familial or parental estrangement and/or abuse) to their birth surname.  Some women recognize the limits of their energy and chose to battle on different/bigger fronts, and don’t t want to waste time and emotional wattage braving the criticism that comes from doing something different….and other women just never liked their original surname – perhaps it was awkward to pronounce or spell, or strange/embarrassing in some way   [3] – but they feared that changing it “on their own” would be insulting to their parents, while changing to their husband’s name was the easy out.

My own stance was both idealistic and personal.  My parents were pleased that my name remained my name –

 

Excuse the digression, but right here we have a prime example of male privilege:
99% of guys never even have to *think* of changing this basic part of their identity.

 

 

 

My parents were pleased that my name remained my name.  [4]   There was a wee bit o’ blowback from MH’s side of the family – two incidents – early on in our marriage.  The first was a letter from his maternal grandmother to the two of us, which she addressed to Mr. and Mrs. MH….

Come to think of it, we had a bit of that –  the misnaming of moiself  in post-marital correspondence from MH’s side of friends/family (from people with whom I had previously corresponded and/or met, people to whom I had been introduced by my first and last names, and then these same people introduced me to their friends and family using both of my names, so it’s not like they didn’t know my last name).  Moiself  and MH didn’t belabor the point but we’d made it clear, both in the wedding invitations and in the wedding itself, what our names would be.

Y’all are familiar with how at the end of a wedding ceremony, the officiant introduces the couple with something like, “It is my pleasure to introduce to you, for the first time as husband and wife….”?  Our wedding officiant, as per our instructions, expressed his pleasure at introducing us “…as husband and wife, MH and Robyn Parnell.”  An hour or so later, during our wedding reception, a friend-of-MH’s family good-naturedly ribbed moiself  about it – about how MH and I having two different surnames would be soooo hard for him to remember.  I got no small amount of WTF?  mileage from that comment:

This is amazing – What powers I possess!
By merely changing my marital status, I have somehow
reduced the memory capacity of the brains of grown-ass adults,
who are no longer able to recall the TWO syllables
of the last name which has always accompanied my first name.

 

How can she expect us to remember!  The horror!

 

Once again, I digress.

To continue with Incident 1:  MH’s grandmother never had any kind of problem with my name before I was married (and had written me thank you and other notes addressed to moiself’s  first and name).  Thus, when she pulled the Mr. and Mrs. thing, MH took point, seeing as how she was *his* relative.  He gently reminded her that my name was still my name; there was no harm and no foul, and she got it right from then on.

Incident 2 came in the form of a letter, to moiself , from one of MH’s parents.  While MH was mortified by the letter   [5]   I actually welcomed it, as it allowed what was obviously a concern (for that person) to get out into the open, and also provided moiself  with the opportunity to share my opinions and reasoning.   [6]

 

 

I do not think any less of my friends or family re their surname choices; with the exception of this particular blog post, I do not think of it at all  in our interactions.

I do, however, occasionally think of the reaction of a long-time male friend re this matter.  This friend is a smart, kind, empathetic, funny, creative, across-the-board-feminist-and-human-rights-advocate and one of the Best Men I Know ® (and moiself  knows a lot of great men).  When he heard about a mutual acquaintance who was getting married and had announced that she’d be taking her husband’s last name,  [7]  the very first thing he blurted out was,

“How will women ever be taken seriously
if they don’t even keep their own names!?”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Lightbulb Moments

Dateline: several weeks ago, out for a walk, listening to a rebroadcast of an older Freakonomics podcast, subjec: religion and tithing and does it – (tithing; i.e., giving away money to religious organizations)  make you happy. Don’t ask moiself  if the podcast reached any conclusions on the matter, as my mind wandered away from the podcast and began to jostle around an aha! epiphany:

Churches are habituaries.

 

 

Churches are habituaries. Yes, I’m making up that word, because it needs to exist.

As in, churches (chapels, cathedrals, mosques, temples, gurdwaras, tabernacles, any houses of religious worship) are habituaries– places where one becomes habituated to churchy ideas.  A habituary is where one becomes habituated to intellectual and cultural fallacies; that is, to theologies and beliefs which you’d consider absurd at face value if they were coming from a *different* habituary.  [8]  But, in your habituary, your church, you get used to them – so used to them that you forget they are even there, and also what they look like to outsiders.  You sing the songs, repeat the liturgies, without thinking about what you are saying, without considering, Is this plausible?  Is this true?  Without applying the kind of reasoning you would to any other statements purporting to explain reality.

I think this is also true for many liberal and/or nominally religious believers.  [9]   Examples include the family who lives in a neighborhood with not-so-great public schools, and joins a Catholic church so that their children may attend the church sponsored school, despite the fact that they do not support the church’s stands on political and/or social issues…    [10]  or people who attend and even join a church because they enjoy the social club aspect (churchy term: “fellowship”), of having yet another venue for meeting people, outside of work/school/neighborhood connections.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider the absurdities of any habituaries you might frequent;
May you have fun responding to invitations to debate;
May you enjoy (or at least tolerate) the names you have kept or chosen;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] The letter was marginally edited for publication.

[2] “Maiden name” is a term that belongs in the Middle Ages.  Don’t use it around me; respect yourself and don’t use it around anyone.

[3] My mother’s birth surname was Hole.  While her Norwegian father was proud of his heritage and claimed that, back in The Old Country, Hole was a surname of respected landowners, his four daughters lived in Minnesota, not Norway, and were saddled with “Ha, ha, hole in the ground; fell in a hole… [or worse] “  jibes until they married and took on their respective husbands’ surnames.

[4] Thinking (correctly, in one part) that I was honoring them.  My father went so far as to tell me, privately, how he’d wished (at least one of) my sisters had done the same.

[5] You bet I showed it to him.

[6] After I responded, kindly and firmly and “educationally” to the family member who had expressed their concerns to me, that person never brought it up again. 

[7] His surname name was rather…odd,  and her own was so great , as in, memorable – and it alliterated with her first name!

[8] Christians are very good at turning the critical eye of rationalism to the tenets of Islam (the absurdities of which include the micromanaging of all of life, such as – if you awake at night, wash your nose with water and blow it out three times because Satan stays in the upper part of everyone’s nose at night [Sahi Al-Bukhari Vol. 4, Bk. 54, No. 516] or those of, Hinduism with its karma and reincarnation and other irrationalities), but fail to recognize the absurdities within their own religion (e.g., to many outside the Christian faith the rite of communion = symbolic cannibalism), because they are *used to* them. 

[10] And so they hold their noses/try not to think about such things until their kids graduate or they move to a better public school district.

[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

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