It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree. [1]
Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?
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Happy Boxing Day, y’all.
Chill, dude. Not that kind of boxing.
Commonly celebrated in England, and countries with substantial ties to/former territories of the Brits (referred to as commonwealth nations[2] ), Boxing Day has many competing attributed origin stories. Some say it is a day set aside for giving alms to the poor…
…but more likely it has to do with the British economic class system – giving the servants one measly day off during the holiday season (they had to work on Christmas Day, preparing their masters’ employers feasts, etc., and could take home the leftovers and receive Christmas Boxes with giftts from their employers on the 26th).
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Department Of Speaking Of The Brits Sub-Department Of Visual Double Takes
Dateline: Saturday; 3 pm-ish, headed home after grocery shopping with MH. We took a scenic detour, and on a street a half mile or so from our ‘hood we passed a blue road sign on the right. In this state, blue street signs typically indicate a business or service or other facility, from a hospital or gas station to a winery or store or church or B & B….
The sign read ARISE CHURCH, with an arrow pointing to the right. But the words were in skinny capital letters, and at the speed we drove by moiself missed the I, and for a brief moment my mind registered the sign as indicating
ARSE CHURCH →
Moiself likes the idea of my city hosting a local chapter of The British Church of the Bum.
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Department Of One More Thing To Be Happy About
That would be, the week between Christmas and New Year’s day.
Happy Twixmas, y’all.
The guidelines for Twixmas sound a lot like recovery from foot surgery.
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Department Of Real Estate Obfuscate-Speak
They’re not calling them trailer parks anymore, or even manufactured home parks. It’s land lease communities.
The reason I have become familiar with this slight-of-tongue terminology is that I’m keeping up with the real estate market in the vicinity of where daughter Belle lives. [3] And while a well-built manufactured home can be attractive in that it’s another option in the overpriced real estate market, it comes with a financial gotchain that, in the vast majority of the situations, you are buying the manufactured home only, yet paying the lease price for the site it sits on – a price that can be as high or even higher than the mortgage itself (double or triple, in many cases I’ve seen). You can be fooled into thinking that you are a solely a homeowner, when you are still, in a crucial way, a renter, accruing no equity in the property upon which your home sits. If the landlord raises that rent, you gotta pay it.
Here is how they try to sell you a scam a pro-land lease community site describes it ( my emphases ):
Land lease communities allow residents to own their homes while leasing the land, offering the best of both worlds: affordability and a community atmosphere. You can find land lease communities across the U.S., and they are especially appealing in areas where high land costs might make property ownership particularly expensive.| By choosing a land lease community, residents can enjoy the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag. ( excerpt, Inspire Community, “What is a Land Lease” )
…the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag. That’s a new way to shovel it. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Lovely view of Brooklyn, for only $1300/month, for just the dirt under your feet.
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Department Of News From The Recovery Front
Moiself’s exercise routine needs (temporary) modifications post-foot surgery. I found a variety of chair exercise videos online: [4] cardio, strength, even yoga. After trying them out I mostly don’t use them, and just modify my regular routines. But I tune into one chair cardio/weights online video to use as a warmup, because I have developed a certain fondness for the Shiny Happy, over enthusiastic exercise leader. It’s been six weeks, and so far, hearing her perky malapropisms never gets old: they include her pronouncing musclesas musk skulls, and enthusing about how chair workouts can still be vigorous, especially for those who have some “fiscal limitations.” [5]
Department Of Working Your Brain During The Holiday Season
One of my favorite podcasts, People I Mostly Admire (aka PIMA) is being retired by its host. PIMA is/was hosted by economist and author [6] Steve Levitt. His PIMA interview with astrophysicist, author and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson was one of my favorites, despite [7] the fact that, to moiself, Levitt seemed somewhat intimidated by interviewing a “real” scientist.
The most intriguing part of the interview for moiself was when Levitt and Tyson discussed hypothesis theory, something that both fascinates and frustrates me. The frustration comes from the fact that, IMO, the ignorance re and/or misinterpretations of the definitions of hypotheses and theories account for a great deal of the misunderstandings laypersons have about science. Non-scientists tend to think of theories and hypotheses in terms of how the words are used socially and culturally – they see those terms as more akin to opinions and hunches. Thus, to Biff The Non-Scientist Who Nevertheless Loves Ranting About Science, the theory of evolution carries about as much weight as does Biff’s Uncle Anus’s pontifications about why his neighbors decorate their lawn with statues of Nordic trolls and Japanese anime characters: “I have a theory about that….”
During the interview Levitt was self-critical re the fact that, as he sees it, his discipline – economics – is not “truly scientific” (despite there being a Nobel prize category for it 😉 ). By that he meant, economists use different data gathering methods than those working in the so-called hard sciences, and that there is a certain “stickiness” about working with/trying to explain that try to explain things that are often unquantifiable, such as human behavior.
Steve Levitt: “…it’s not the scientific method, it’s a sensible method, in a data-driven world, you try to figure out what’s going on. To me what is so disturbing in economics is that everybody knows it’s completely fake, what we do. And no one talks about it, and everybody pretends to follow the scientific method, when in fact we’re doing nothing like it.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson: “I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Let me first tighten up some of your vocabulary. If you have an idea about how something works, it’s not a theory, it’s a hypothesis. [8]
A theory, in science, is an understanding of how things work that not only explains all that it has confronted but that makes *predictions* that have been shown to be accurate going forward. That’s a theory. Until you have experimental verification you have a hypothesis.
So, you put forth a hypothesis, some of the data don’t quite fit it, and you go back and readjust the hypothesis, that’s just fine. You readjust the hypothesis, and now it fits the data. I don’t have a problem with that. But don’t elevate it to a theory of human behavior until *that* hypothesis makes a prediction you then test.
I don’t care what you do with your hypothesis; I don’t care how much stitchery and remending you have to do to it – once you present it, and it accounts for the data you have available, that is the *beginning,* that’s not the end. Now, let’s test it. Can you make a prediction? Now we’re onto something. If, after you’ve retooled it, it makes more predictions than you’‘ve ever imagined, bada-bing, let’s call it a new economic theory.”
May you exercise your brain musk skulls during the holidays; May that same brain entertain you with visual double-takes; |May you be able to form hypotheses about your theories; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago.
[3] She hopes to become a homeowner, within the next couple of years. A pipe dream, is how so many of her peers view the housing market.
[4] As in…wait for it…exercises that can be done while sitting on a chair and thus keeping weight of the affected foot.
[5] Which might impact you even more than your, ahem, physical limitations, as you cold only afford to watch her free tape, rather than join a gym?
[6] Levitt, with his fellow Steve (Steven Dubner) , is the author of the ground breaking ITAL Freakonomics books, and Dubner hosts the Freakonomics podcast.
[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
That’s because this post was written a day ago. When it goes live moiself will be in the hospital, waiting for my foot surgery to begin.
Something along these lines.
The Foot Doctor ®, while performing his presurgical assessment, told me I had a strong heart, and robust foot and leg muscles and joint flexibility ( without using the qualifier, “for someone over fifty,”[1] which I appreciated ). I told him that’s likely because I’ve been active/a regular exerciser all my life; thus, my major concerns about the surgery [2] involve post-operative restriction of activities.
When discussing post operative care, FD confirmed what I’d read: much to people’s surprise, recovery from knee and hip replacement surgeries are, in many ways, easier than recovery from foot surgeries. This is because in the latter case you must keep *all* weight off of the foot for some time post-surgery. In the joint replacement surgeries, within a few days you are up on your feet – which carry the majority of your weight load – working toward assuming unassisted walking. Depending on the type of foot surgery, you cannot put *any* weight on your foot for 6-8 weeks.
Meet Bertha, my BBB (Big Beautiful Boot). She’ll be my constant companion for 6-8 weeks. Yep, I blinged her.
I told FD that what has kept me in good health pre-surgery will be (moiself is guessing) vexing to me post-surgery, in that it will be difficult for me to be only partially ambulatory.
Moiself: “I assume at my first post-op appointment we’ll go over what exercises and activities I can do to prevent muscular atrophy – I can sit in a chair and do upper body weights? Chair yoga, and abdominal workouts? Maybe resistance exercises on the one weight-bearing leg, and…”
FD, giving me a shrewd look: “Now, don’t do anything stupid.”
MH’s reaction, when I told him that story: “You’ve only seen him a few times, and he knows you already.”
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Department Of More Considerations
Recovering from surgery during the holiday season.
Yeah, that sucks. Is there ever a good time for enforced/limited mobility? [3] Only times that are a wee bit less – or more – sucky/inconvenient, right?
So, why not put the surgery off until the new year? Deciding factor: I want to be well over a half year’s recovery from the surgery for our once-in-a-lifetime, family trip to Iceland next summer, to be in the zone of totality for the 2026 solar eclipse. [4]
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Department Of Star Trek Moments When You Least Expect Them
Dateline: last Friday, 11 a.m.-ish, doing a streaming/online yoga class. Midway through the practice the instructor refers to a certain movement she’s adding into the sequence, advising her students to “assimilate that” into their vinyasa flow.
Department Of Passion, Schmassion – Careful What You “Follow”
Moiself is not only irritated by but actually opposed to the concept/advice that when it comes to jobs/career paths, people must follow their passion ( there are many variations, including do what you love and the money will follow ). This is because moiself sees this tripe-passing-as-wisdom as exceptionally first/white world privileged and tone deaf – for many reasons, including that it downplays and/or completely misses the fact that any work can have meaning without being what outsiders (or even you) might call meaningful. [5]
As A Writer ®, along with other folk working in fields considered artistic/passion-following, I’ve often had that tired trope presented as a compliment wrapped up in advice ( “Oh, you’re a writer – you followed your passion! You’ll never retire/a true artist will always keep creating/you’re so lucky to have been able to pursue your passion….” ).
Once I became aware of that scenario I tried to follow a healthier path, and for years [6] have held on to this perspective:
Be a verb; not a noun.
Don’t be defined by what you do, because you can do other things. I write, but I may not always be writing.
I don’t have to be a writer for the rest of my life.
What you are doing – whether for more or less lofty career aspirations, or the just-a-job-to-pay-the-bills – or the recreations and hobbies you pursue ( you may run, but are you “a runner”? ) do not necessarily define you.
HB host Shankar Vedantam: ” ‘Having a job that pays the bills is great, but even better is doing work that builds on your passions, one that challenges you, that drives you to innovate and excel.’
This message, that the ideal career is one where our work and our passions are neatly aligned, is widespread in American culture. For better or for worse, many of us want our work to do more than just keep a roof over our heads. We want it to reflect who we are. Our guest…is Jon Jachimowicz, a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. Jon, a lot of your work seems to be about stepping back from the pursuit of passion to see it more clearly and accurately. You say that one obstacle to doing this lies in the way that we have moralized passion. What do you mean by that?”
Jon Jachimowicz: “I think that we have elevated the pursuit of passion to such a high moral level where we are good people for pursuing our passion and vice versa. We’re seen as morally bad people if we don’t pursue our passion. And I think that that is a wrong expectation to have. At best, I think it’s unhelpful…. Amy Wzefsiewski has this really wonderful distinction between meaning and meaningful. Work can have a meaning without in and of itself being meaningful. I can think of my work as having a really important role in my life. It can empower me to do other things. It might allow me to support my family. But in and of itself, that work might not necessarily be meaningful….the reality is that for many people, pursuing work that is meaningful is a luxury…
I think we as a society need to embrace that that is a perfectly great justification to do what it is that we’re doing. I think we would do better by highlighting that for some people, given their life circumstances at some time points, it might actually be more meaningful if they focused on work that isn’t in and of itself something that they’re passionate about, but that might empower them either to pursue their passion later on in life, or to pursue their passion outside of work – which is an equally noble, or in my mind at least, an equally noble way of doing something that we deeply care about.”
SV: “One other unfortunate consequence of moralizing passion is that passionate people can sometimes be reluctant to give up their passions, even when they should, because they’re afraid that others will think less of them. I want to play you a clip of a man named Simone Stolzow, who left a traditional career in journalism to become a speaker and a consultant.”
Clip of SS: “I felt guilty. I felt that I was sort of abandoning a calling, and democracy dies in darkness, and what am I doing – turning off one more light in the room? And will my colleagues and my coworkers ever forgive me? Will I ever be able to publish ever again?”
And whatever you do, think twice about following a passion that involves clowns.
SV: “Jon, would you say this is another way in which moralizing passions ends up hurting people who decide to take a different route in their lives?”
JJ: “Absolutely. I think part of the challenge is that when we moralize passion in that way, we also worry about how other people might think of us if we were to quit or give up on one passion pursuit. The implication being, ‘If I am a good person for pursuing a passion, then what must be wrong with me that I’m now giving up on that thing? There must be something inherently morally wrong with me. I must be a bad person for choosing to give up on what it is that I’m passionate about.’
Or at least that’s the belief that people themselves have. What we actually find in the research…is that other people understand that sometimes you need to give up on one passion in order to pursue another, that that’s just what life is like, that you don’t give up on passion pursuit altogether. But from that person’s perspective who’s pursuing a passion, they might really worry, ‘Are other people going to think of me as a lesser person because I’ve given up on that passion?’
And we find that that worry can keep people in jobs that they perhaps initially were really passionate about or where the working conditions perhaps initially were a really good fit, but where for whatever reason, it’s no longer a fit where they’re now having troubles and challenges maintaining that passion or they’re incurring negative outcomes that can harm them in the long run. But they keep on persevering because they worry so much about what other people will say if they were to give up.”
[1] Which, for some reason, I’ve been reading a lot, lately. Seems medical & exercise gurus have enshrined age 50 as some kind of natural divider. As in, life before and after.
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[8] From “apología” a Greek word that means “defense.” Christian apologetics means giving a defense of the Christian faith and theologies. The problem with Christian apologists is that instead of looking at the available evidence and then drawing conclusions from the evidence, they start out with the conclusion, then look for whatever supports their position while ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
Department Of This Advice Is Worth What She Paid For It
Dateline: September 4; early morning walk; listening to a recent Fresh Air podcast with guest host Tonya Mosley interviewing Jane Fonda.
At age 87 Fonda is perhaps even more interesting than she’s ever been. I’ve long admired Fonda for her acting and her activism, even during the times when I was shaking my metaphorical fist and saying to her, Stop working out your daddy issues by marrying controlling men![1] I’ve admired her quest for knowledge in general as well as self-knowledge, and her willingness to fight for important causes. Even when I felt she was naive/mistaken in her methods and/or style (as in her trip to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War), she was correct about the substance of those causes.
And it’s about the latter issue that, were moiself ever to have a privilege to meet her, I might spoil that privilege (read: send her running from the room) with my statement, May I give you some unsolicited advice? And the advice would be:
Please don’t ever apologize again for what you did and said during your anti-Vietnam war activism.
Notice the key word in the phrase: apologizeagain. That’s because Fonda has apologized, many times during the past decades, with sincerity and in great length and specificity.
The cause for anti-Vietnam-war activism was just and right. And as the years passed, with the help of the Freedom Of Information Act, as well people higher up in the decision-making – and as it turns out, deception-making – echelons of government being willing to confess and confront the “sins” of our nation’s foreign policy, we found out just how right the anti-war activists were. They were right to oppose a war we never should’ve been in the first place; they were right about how our government was lying to us ( anyone remember The Pentagon Papers? ); they were right to criticize a government which dug in its heels and kept sending our soldiers to kill and be killed by Vietnamese people both north and south, for *years* after their own research and analysis brought them to the conclusion that the war was unwinnable.
But, back to my advice. I would say:
“Ms. Fonda, please never apologize again when someone asks you about the mistakes both you and they think you made. Acknowledge their concerns if you must, with that prickly attorney’s rejoinder:Ask and answered.Then drop it.”
Because, this: at this point, anyone who is still holding a grudge re your anti-war activism (on behalf of himself personally or by taking it upon himself – mistakenly, I believe – to defend his country or the honor of US soldiers ) is either completely oblivious to and/or refuses to acknowledge the fact that you have, indeed, apologized. It’s a fact that he won’t accept. And he’s never going to…because he doesn’t *want* to. [2]
There are people who do not want to give up their anger against Fonda re her anti-Vietnam war activism. It’s part of their identity. There’s this guy in his 70s, and an important part of his self-perception is
* he wears his Ohio State University football shirt every Thanksgiving; * his favorite music, which he listens to almost exclusively, is his collection of
Otis Redding and Glen Campbell albums; * he’s an avid duck hunter, likes to ski and play backgammon with his wife and take his grandkids bowling
(even though the kids would rather play computer games with him); * he describes his politics as middle of the road; * he hates/will never forgive Jane Fonda …..
For all of the complicated reasons which only the-therapist-he-will-never-see could unravel, the grudge he is holding against Fonda is part of his identity. To give that up, to accept the fact that Fonda *has* apologized, would oblige a rational person to let go of that grudge – to let go of a piece of himself that, after all these years, he would feel incomplete without.
I admire Fonda’s never-say-never spirit, but the people who matter [3] are people who will listen to opinions other than their own and try to understand and their fellow human beings, whether or not they agree with them.
You can’t change the others. The precious time Fonda (and all of us) have remaining will be lost and can never be regained by repeating sincere apologies to insincere ears.
Thank you for listening, Ms. Fonda. And thank you for…
Cat Ballou; They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Klute; Coming Home; Julia;
The China Syndrome; Nine to Five; On Golden Pond; Agnes of God;
The Morning After; all those workout tapes [4]; Grace and Frankie;
Book Club; This is Where I Leave You; Our Souls At Night….
One of my faves: Two old pros reunited: Fonda and Redford in Our Souls at Night.
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Department Of A Blast From The Past
Dateline: January. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month). Perhaps moiselfwill like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature for 2025. So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.
This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?![5] friend gave me, all those years ago, [6] as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life. Journal/diary-resistant moiself would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.
Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago September to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )
Here is an excerpt from my blog of 9-13-13, The Keys I’m Not Losing. (Twelve years ago, ay y iyi. The segment I’m excerpting begins with a reflection on writing the next book I was thinking of writing, at the time….):
…And I have to choose the characters’ names as soon as I think of the character. I use baby naming books and other resources, to identify characters with names that hold special meaning, even if only to myself. Hmmm, how can I denote this character’s total prick-osity without actually calling him a dick?
* * * Speaking of dicks (and thanking moiselffor that segue)….
Dateline: last Sunday am (9-8-13); MH and I in bed; [7] listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition. My attention was caught and hackles were raised during Rachael Martin’s interview with author Norman Rush re his new novel:
“On the surface, Norman Rush’s new novel is about a middle-aged man, Ned, who reunites with a group of college friends after one member of the group dies unexpectedly. But what transpires over the next few days ahead of the memorial service is less about Ned’s relationship with these men and the heady, self-absorbed days of yore, and more about how Ned sees himself.
In his third, much anticipated novel, Rush takes the reader inside the most intimate parts of relationships — between Ned and his wife, between Ned and his deceased friend, and between Ned and his own expectations.”
Imagine that!, the cynical author part of moiself snickered to moiself while MH breathed deeply [8] beside me. A novel written by a middle-aged author that purports to take a reader “…inside the most intimate parts of relationships;” a novel that is, the author says (further into the interview), “about friendship.” Ah, that relationship-y thing again. And the novel is “much anticipated” and taken seriously, and is also described merely as what it is: a novel. There is no limiting modifier.
Now, change the gender (for both author and characters) in Martin’s commentary:
On the surface, Nora Rush’s new novel is about a middle-aged woman, Nell, who reunites with a group of college friends after one member of the group dies unexpectedly. But what transpires over the next few days ahead of the memorial service is less about Nell’s relationship with these women and the heady, self-absorbed days of yore, and more about how Nell sees herself. In her third, much anticipated novel, Rush takes the reader inside the most intimate parts of relationships — between Nell and her husband, between Nell and her deceased friend, and between Nell and her own expectations.
It’s strange, having a flashback on a Sunday morning in bed, when I’ve never taken an acid trip (in or out of bed). But that’s what happened as I listened to the interview – I was back to a conversation with friend and fellow fiction author SCM about an unfortunate, ongoing, literary dirty laundry issue which, thanks to uppity female authors with more clout than moiself, has received some airing in the past few years:
* Novels dealing with (what literary critics perceive to be) ” relationships” are often
critically acclaimed when the author is male, and when the author is female, such books are dismissed as “domestic/family dramas”…if they are reviewed at all.
Not germane to the rant, but a cute picture
Warning: domestic drama ranting [9] ensues (via excerpts from an email, sent approx. two years ago re this topic, to SCM):
“I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book – in short, it’s something unworthy of serious critic’s attention. [10]
On my way back from an errand this afternoon I caught the tail end of a rerun of NPR’s Fresh Air 2010 interview with author Jonathan Franzen, recorded not long after the release of his latest novel, Freedom. I felt an almost overwhelming urge to pull the car over to the side of the road, get out and find somebody’s yippie dog and give it a good kick.
The ways Franzen’s novels have been presented and marketed by publishers, and reviewed by the critics, have had me (and many other writers, almost all – surprise! – women) reflecting on the sexism and even misogyny that still pervades the wacky world o’ contemporary literature (well, the world in general). What sent me into Pomeranian-punting mode were several of Franzen’s ruminations, including [11] :
“I wanted in this book to write about my parents’ marriage and their parental experiences as I observed them … but I…wanted to set it in times contemporaneous with my own. So in that way, too, I turned my parents into people my age; into people I might be or I might know. And that was the real engine. It was something that came from inside. “…much of the work on a novel for me consists in the kind of work you might do in a paid professional’s office of trying to walk back from your stuck, conflicted, miserable place to a point of a little bit more distance, from which you can begin to fashion some meaningful narrative of how you got to the stuck place.”
What frosted my butt was not Franzen himself – don’t know him, personally – but the fact that when he, a male author, chooses to fictionalize the subject matter of family, feelings and relationships, the resulting work is touted as a “masterpiece of American fiction” (Time Magazine) and “an indelible portrait of our times” (The New York Times).
The Fresh Air site acknowledged the controversy:
“So many terrific contemporary female novelists cover the same terrain, yet their work receives a fraction of the highbrow fanfare that greets Franzen. It’s like how men still get praised for doing housework and taking care of their own kids: Any male involvement in the domestic realm still merits applause.”
In the interview Franzen spoke extensively about how his own feelings, experiences, family relationships and background influenced his writing. I was reminded of an excerpt I read many months ago, from article in New York magazine, in which a novelist noted that if a woman writes about herself or acknowledges using material from her own life in her writing, she’s a narcissist, and has no wider interest in or focus outside of [12] the domestic sphere. If a male novelist does the same, he’s describing universal truths or chronicling the human condition.
Of course, such inequities almost always sound better when put into the mouths of fictional characters. I love this observation, from the novel, Commencement:
“When a woman writes a book that has anything to do with feelings or relationships, it’s either called chick lit or women’s fiction, right?” one of the characters asks. “But look at Updike or Irving. Imagine if they’d been women. Just imagine. Someone would have slapped a pink cover onto ‘Rabbit at Rest,’ and poof, there goes the Pulitzer.”
Here is something the non-fictional character moiself wrote over a year ago, right around the time of the release of Freedom (it’s from one of the documents in my Things I Hate About The Publishing World file. Oy vey, it’s less expensive than therapy):
Freedom is being hailed as “a domestic drama about marriage and family.” Effusive, serious praise…for a domestic drama. Since it is a Jonathan and not a Joanna Franzen who wrote it, the book isn’t being consigned to the “women’s fiction” bin of commentary. When a female novelist writes about herself, or her protagonists’ ethnicity, age, social and economic circumstances are thinly disguised versions of herself or her peers, she’s a neurotic narcissist. When a female novelist tackles subjects related to family, feelings or relationships, her work risks being labeled “Chick Lit” (or the faintly more reputable, “women’s fiction”).
A (usually white) male author (e.g. Franzen, Updike, Irving, Cheever, Roth….) does the same thing, writes about the same “territory.” Do the literary critics – whose ranks are still overwhelmingly white and male – review his book in the category of…what? ITAL “Dick lit?” Noooooooo. He’s illustrating and critiquing the human condition! He’s doing some serious ITAL Li’t-ra-chure!
* * *
By the way, if you want to borrow the Dick Lit descriptor, feel free to do so.
Attribution would be nice (or, failing that, cash).”
A simple question, which is never satisfactorily answered:
* * *
May you stop holding decades-old grudges against…anyone; May you never feel guilty for enjoying a book about relationship-y subjects; May you check out some of Fonda’s recent work ( Our Souls at Night is quite touching) ; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Fonda has talked and written about her strained relationship with her cold, distant, hair-trigger-tempered father, actor Henry Fonda. And her husbands were French film director Roger Vadim, American activist and California senator Tom Hayden, and multimillionaire business entrepreneur Ted Turner.
[2] I’m using “he” because although I’m sure there’s some nasty grudge-loving old ladies out there, the fanatical Fonda-haters I’ve met have all been male.
[3] Yep, I’m treading into dangerous/judgmental, territory here, and that’s fine ’cause I got my combat boots on.
[11] I checked the program’s website transcript to make sure I was recalling them correctly.
[12] No, there is no footnote in the middle of my email. How silly would that be?
[13] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Dateline: yesterday; circa 7:45 a.m.; on morning walk; heading back toward my neighborhood. Context: previous evening MH mentioned reading on a Hillsboro community news FB group where someone was wondering about a “raid” (the someone speculated) that was going on near 28th street.
As part of my walk, I turned off the afore-mentioned street, walking on the north side of the block. Less than halfway down the block my attention was drawn to a house on the south side of the street, with its front window busted in and the window blinds broken and hanging akimbo from the window frame. About a dozen people, a mixture of young men and women, were milling about on the house’s front lawn, porch, and sidewalk. All were wearing the distinctive, dark blue, FBI field agent jackets.
One of the female agents even had her hair in a pony tail, like…this
Standing by an Official-looking Vehicle® parked on the street in front of the next door neighbor’s house was another agent…doing neighborhood point duty? He was the only agent with a visible firearm – a rifle of some sort. I crossed the street and asked if I could talk with him. He said yes, and I waved toward his comrades and asked if a training exercise was going on, because, well, maybe the older I get, the younger the agents look? He gave me a smile which would have qualified him for the Officer Friendly calendar…
…and said, nope, these are actual agents, who had been executing a search warrant. To which I replied, “Through the front room window, apparently.”
I began to wonder aloud to him why this would be a federal thing…hmm, drugs? But the local (city and state police) can handle your garden variety drug case – why the Feds involved? Officer Friendly laughed and told me what I already knew that – that he couldn’t give specifics. “Oh, of course, But then you know that’s why we,” I pointed around the ‘hood, “have to start rumors, and it’s fun to speculate.” I told him I lived a few blocks away and walked on this street on a regular basis. He assured me that, other than the broken window, there was “no violent crime involved,” and that the neighborhood was safe. I remarked that it was nice to see that the officers included both men and women (and not all white); he seemed happy that I noticed, and said that the FBI is quite “inclusive” and that “we need everybody” to “…help keep us safe.”
It was my turn to laugh. “I agree. You and I may know that, but if a certain president has his way, that’s gonna end…oh, let me guess – you can’t comment on that either.” He laughed again, stuck out his hand and introduced himself. I shook his hand, introduced moiself, and thanked him and his comrades for (“hopefully”) keeping us safe. With that, he beamed his 1000 watt smile at me, wished me a great day, and I went on my way, thinking to moiself,
I don’t exactly know why, but this *was* a great way to start the day.
* * *
Department Of Science Needs You To Manage Your Shit
Dateline: Last Sunday (March 2); reading an article about the uninhabited Icelandic island of Surtsey. [1] Surtsey, created by an undersea eruption off the southern coast of Iceland (in 1963 – 1967), has been declared a nature reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site for its scientific value. No humans, except for a limited number scientists studying the process of biocolonisation, are allowed on the island.
The only significant human impact is a small, prefabricated hut which is used by researchers while staying on the island….All visitors check themselves and belongings to ensure no seeds are accidentally introduced by humans to the island’s developing ecosystem. It is believed that some boys who sneaked over from Heimaey [2] by rowboat planted potatoes, which were promptly dug up once discovered. An improperly managed human defecation resulted in a tomato plant taking root, which was also destroyed….
* * *
Department Of Rational Articles On An Irrationally Contentious Subject
As readers of this blog may have surmised, moiself has been in a mood since the election. This mood often vacillates between white hot anger and cold blue despair, due in great part to the certain left-leaning, political zeitgeist moiselfobserved both before the election, which, IMO, portended the abyssal election results.
Poor baby.
I’m written about this several times, most howlingly right after the election:
I loathe the use of wedge issues and exploitation of those on the lower end of the power totem to provoke the fear response. I despise the fact that such tactics are often effective, which is why the ethically-deficient Right uses them. And as I watched that ad, [3] thinking of the wide audience it was playing to, I thought to moiself, re the election: if Harris (and therefore the USA) loses, it will be because of things like this.
Things as in, not necessarily that particular issue, but because too many of my well-meaning liberal brethren and sisterthren have shot themselves in the foot with their psychological tone-deafness…and Those People ® who feel lectured to and put upon are exacting some kind of social revenge….
How many times have people (usually but not always from the lower economic and education strata) felt silenced or intimidated because they didn’t toe the “progressive” political and cultural lines? Maybe they have questions about certain social issues; maybe there are things they just don’t understand and therefore, instinctively, tend to fear.
Maybe they don’t actually *hate* people of different genders and sexual orientations and ethnicities and religions and social classes and political opinions. But that’s what they get labeled as ( haters; ___ -phobics ), and then they don’t feel as if they can even voice their questions and concerns in certain situations and when speaking with certain people, because if they don’t use the *correct* terminology of the moment, the focus will be on *how* they asked their questions/offered their opinions, rather than on the content of those questions and opinions. They will be shamed and lectured to if they “misgender” or “dead-name” or “mis-pronoun;” they will be condescended to and corrected when they reference a person’s “race” or ethnicity and use the terms black and white instead of Black and White, or Latino/Latina instead of Latinx….
And if the actions and attitudes of aggressive Lefties pushes some centrists or moderates more to the Right, then those Lefties dismiss the migration with their purity-testing mantra: “Well, it’s no loss, they weren’t really allies in the first place.”
“In this issue, we have a section presenting some contrasting views on transgender-related issues. Consistent with our respect for personal autonomy, I don’t see how a humanist could oppose an adult transitioning; it’s that person’s life. Similarly, we should support laws prohibiting employment or housing discrimination against transgender individuals. But that respect for personal autonomy does not resolve whether, in biological terms, sex is binary or whether or under what conditions puberty blockers and hormone treatment should be made available to children. Reasonable people, reasonable humanists, can differ on these and other matters, and this journal will present these differences of opinion, leaving it to you, the reader, to evaluate the competing arguments.” (Excerpts, my emphases, Humanism Is Not a Creed, editorial, by Ronald A. Lindsay )
This Free Inquiry special feature consists of an introduction, followed by four articles:
*Transgender Rights: A Framework for Resolving the Controversy, by Gary L. Francione
* In the Toilet with J. K. Rowling: Reason vs. Emotion in the Transgender Bathroom Debate, by Tilda Storey-Law
* Parental Rights: A Casualty of Anti-Transgender Legislation, by Robert Pokorski
*Get Gender Ideology out of Biology! by Nathan H. Lents
Trust us, after reading these articles you may have a better understanding of the issues…our just feel as fabulous as we look.
“There are several biological differences between men and women, which, of course, become most obvious following puberty and its cascade of hormones. Men, on average, develop broader shoulders and larger hands and feet, more upper body muscles, more fast twitch muscles, lower body fat, greater height, and so on. The key hormone is testosterone. Men have more testosterone, on average, than women. Testosterone provides a very significant advantage in many athletic competitions, as indicated by, among other things, the fact that doping with testosterone and its synthetic analogs is banned by almost all athletic associations. Given these biological differences, there is, understandably, a performance gap between men and women in many sports.
The relevance of these biological facts was accepted by nearly everyone until the advent of transgender athletes, in particular transgender women. Then for some, ideology took precedence over facts.
‘Trans women are women. Period.’ This is the battle cry of the transgender ideologues. And the message is clear: no debate allowed. If one questions the right of transgender women to compete in women’s sport, one is transphobic. Can’t be any other explanation. And the distinct biological development of men and women? Not relevant. Greatly exaggerated.
One of the bizarre aspects of the ideologues’ position is that the very same people who deny that testosterone has any meaningful effect on one’s competitive ability are also the ones who argue that hormone therapy is essential for those with gender dysphoria. For one issue, hormones might as well be water, but for the other issue, hormones are a critical component of transitioning. Only dogma can magically transform a substance from inert to potent.
So, should transgender women be banned from women’s sports? Not necessarily. Reality is messier than the extreme positions staked out by partisans on both sides of this issue. How much of an advantage a formerly male individual may have over biologically female competitors depends on when and how the person’s transition took place and the skills involved in the sport. There may not be one right answer to this problem; weightlifting may require different guidelines than gymnastics.”
Although moiself cares not for the seeming obsession with sports vis-à-vis the Transgender Controversies ®, I’m including Lindsay’s intro comments on one aspect of the controversies – transgender women’s participation in women’s sports – because of two comments he makes which, IMO, get glossed over in all the hoopla…probably because they are so calmly rational. One statement is a general guide, the other applies specifics:
* Reality is messier than the extreme positions staked out by partisans on both sides of this issue;
* (as an example of specifics) weightlifting may require different guidelines
than gymnastics.
That last one holds a host of implications in seven simple words. The idea/fact that one context may have different requirements than another – that’s almost anathema, in this world of hyperbole. That approach seems to be asking too much from our lazy ideologies. We want blanket statements; we want one-size-fits-all, when comes to both questions and solutions. The idea of coolly and logically looking at/analyzing each situation separately – where’s the nasty soundbite opportunity in that?!
“I want an avowed atheist in the White House. When time comes to push that button, I want whoever’s making the decision to understand that once it’s pushed, it’s over. Finito. They’re not gonna have lunch with Jesus.” ( Quentin Bufogle )
* * *
May you grapple with the messiness of reality; May you have a cheerful chat with a friendly Fed; May your defecations be properly managed so as not to disturb scientific studies of an uninhabited island’s developing ecosystem…or anything else; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[3] The tR___ campaign’s anti-Harris ad, which ran several times during the World Series, which took issue with Harris’ past support for taxpayer funds being spent on providing gender-affirming surgeries for prisoners. The ad ended with the tag line: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Happy Summer Solstice to all! And to my fellow yogis, if this tradition is in your practice, I hope you had a memorable 108 Sun Salutations.
* * *
Department Of Get Thee Behind Me, Satan Sub-Department Of Stop Tempting My Husband, Bitch
Dateline: Saturday morning, circa 8 am, sitting at the breakfast table with MH. MH picks up his copy of yesterday’s (Saturday) NYT crossword puzzle, which he hasn’t yet finished; he works on it a bit, then tells me he’s stuck with the 49 across clue and the down clues which cross the answer are not helping him.
Moiself did the puzzle yesterday but can’t remember the clue. MH reads it to me:
” ‘Noted tempter’ …I can’t figure out the missing vowel;
I have “S _ _ AN. Susan? Susan is a noted tempter?”
He’s serious, and I can’t stop laughing.
* * *
Department Of Another Family Contemplation Of The Theory Of Relativity Sub-Department Of My Daughter, The Content Creator
Dateline: Tuesday am. We’ve had some home maintenance projects – new gutters and downspouts installed/exterior house painting – that are 99% completed. MH shared pictures of the house exterior on our family’s message board, so that our offspring could see the progress. The following hijinks exchange ensued.
MH: All done. Except for a gutter adjustment tomorrow.
Moiself: Actually/unfortunately, the gutter adjustment isn’t until Thursday.
MH: I’m living in an alternate timeline.
(daughter) Belle: If you don’t actually go to sleep tonight, then maybe Thursday is tomorrow?
Moiself: Don’t go getting all quantum time bending on us.
Belle: Is time a fixed variable that we have no influence over? Or is it a mutable part of the universe that we simply haven’t figured out how to manipulate yet? Is our perception of time the definition of it? So many things to consider. But yeah, for now we’ll just say Thursday.
Moiself: This conversation is so going in my blog.
That would be Sfoglini’s reginetti. Soon I will be ordering another case of it (the whole grain, which is my fave) because I’m down to three boxes, and moiself cannot be reginetti-less.
What is not to love about this shape – it’s like a teensy-weensy lasagna noodle. Makes me happy just to look at it.
* * *
Department Of I Respectfully But Vehemently Disagree
Moiself recently heard a Tony-nominated playwright interviewed on an NPR show , [2] during which he talked about his years of struggle to write his play, and how he scraped by due to the kindness of friends. He used his experience as an example of why “we need government funding” of the arts. I guess he meant we need more funding than we already have ? For as I heard him whine speak about the subject, I wondered if he was somehow not aware of the NEA and other state and local government grants and funds, as well as the hundreds of private individuals and organizations offering artistic grants and funding?
Dateline: Sunday evening watching the latter half of the 77th annual Toni awards. There is that same playwright – David Adjmi, accepting a Tony award his award for Best Play for Stereophonic. In his acceptance speech, Adjmi gushed about how “this was a very hard journey, to get this play up here….” and named the friends who let him sleep on their couch for seven years so that he could write the play, and then, again:
“It’s really hard to make a career in the arts; we need to fund the arts in America – it is the hallmark of a civilized society….”
Admi brought himself to tears as he recalled his struggle. Of course when he made the plea for funding there was the obligatory applause from Supporters Of The Arts ®, who must whoop it up reverently with their version of, say amen. Preach, brother!
As I do with most preaching, be it religious or artistic, I’m listening, then thinking…
Adjmi decries how hard it is to earn a living in the arts. This is nothing new; it always has been hard to earn a living in the arts. It always should be hard to earn a living in the arts.
I’m not denying his or any composer, singer, actor, writer, painter, potter or other artist’s struggle. I *am* calling for all who have chosen to pursue their art to check their privilege – their sense of exceptionalism – if they think, for whatever reason, that their particular job should not be a struggle, and/or is deserving of endowment.
Struggle is the common lot of most people in the working world, who do not receive any kind of artistic accolades nor have opportunites, e.g., award shows, for public forums in which they may complain about their struggles. They plow the fields, fix the cars bag the groceries manufacture the semi-conductors, empty the bedpans, collect the lab results, interpret the data, bake the bread, comfort the bereaved, put out the fires, clean the kettles, sweep the movie theaters, mend the crab pots, patrol the demilitarized zones…
Adjmi didn’t mentioned receiving financial aid or grants for Stereophonic, and his play’s success belies his plea for funding. Somehow, he managed to produce this work of art without the government’s help – and let us always remember that the translation of “the government,” means the tax dollars of moiselfand y’all.
Save for those rare artists born to wealth (or the nepotistic receivers of artistic funding and opportunities), life in any artistic field has always been that of financial struggle before commercial success (and often afterward), usually involving multiple side jobs and other means of support. How would the playwright who thinks there should be more public funding of the arts, and others who hold similar sentiments, define what would constitute more support of “the arts,” and who will get to define what is an art worthy of support, and which artists will get support, and for what length of time such support is given….?
There are museums and art galleries wherein I’ve lingered for hours, and others I’ve fled after15 minutes because, content, meh. I’m a fan of performing arts and patronize live music, theater and other events. There’ve been plays and concerts I’ve attended/movies I’ve seen where I left feeling entertained and even aesthetically transformed, and others – even a few ones which won prestigious awards and were recommended by “everyone” [3] – where I left during intermission, or if I forced myself to stay to the bitter end, I left the venue thinking, Holy imaginative waste of time, how did this piece of embarrassingly trivial, reductionist, hackneyed crapola ever get produced? It’s a bad enough that I spent money on a ticket, but to subsidize this playwright’s/director’s/performer’s delusion that they are “artists” worthy of third party “support”….?
Sorry, starving artists. Eat less, get a second job, a third job, a patron, a couch to surf on. Struggle, like the rest of us. Government support for the arts? You take their money, you play by their rules. In Russia during the USSR era there was little art seen by the public apart from that which was funded – or allowed – by the government. Remember any great works of socialist realism that came out of the Soviet-sponsored art?
Socialist Realism
A form of modern realism imposed in Russia by Stalin following his rise to power after the death of Lenin in 1924, characterized in painting by rigorously optimistic pictures of Soviet life painted in a realist style
The doctrine was formally proclaimed by Maxim Gorky at the Soviet Writers Congress of 1934, although not precisely defined. In practice, in painting it meant using realist styles to create highly optimistic depictions of Soviet life. Any pessimistic or critical element was banned…. It was quite simply propaganda art, and has an ironic resemblance to the Fascist realism imposed by Hitler in Germany (see ITAL Entartete Kunst – degenerate art[4] ).
I love it when I come across a new (to me) George Carlin witticism; I hate it when I remember that Carlin died years ago and isn’t here to reflect on today’s wackadoodle.
* * *
May you have strength when tempted by Susan; May your art remain free of government supports and constraints; May you decide to have a favorite pasta shape; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] As decreed by the Most Omnipotent Italian Saucy Epicurean Loving Foodie, as in, moiself.
[2] Can’t remember which program…a Fresh Air interview, most likely?
[3] for example, not to deny the creativity and hard work of Lin Manuel Miranda, but I couldn’t abide Hamilton (or In the Heights) – both of which I sowanted and expected to like (or maybe, thought I *should* like). With the rapid-fire, rap-ish dialog, I felt like the cast was shouting at me the whole time.
[4] Degenerate art ( Entartete Kunst) is the label the Nazis applied to art they didn’t approve of – any art which did not extol or depict “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” ( family, home and church), which was the Nazi party’s and Hitler’s view of the virtues of German life.
[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
“Four current and former L.A. Sheriff’s Department employees
died by suicide in a 24-hour span.
warning: This story includes discussion of suicide.”
* * *
Department Of An Odd Thing That Makes Me Feel Lonely
That would be the show Escape To The Country, a BBC daytime TV show (recommended to moiself by a friend), wherein current city dwellers search for their dream homes in rural UK areas. [1] The ETTC would-be buyers give their budget, desired rural locale, and other what-we-want parameters to a real estate agent, who then shows them three properties for sale.
My afternoon exercise sessions often include working out to a DVD, and a few weeks ago I began watching ETTC during my cooldown/stretching sessions. Although I found ETTC quite interesting at first (it was fun to imagine traveling to those areas), watching those potential home-in-the-country buyers gradually made me feel…lonely, in a way that was initially hard for me to recognize, much less describe.
Methinks I have identified the sources of what my mind interpreted as loneliness:
(1) The ETTC buyers are mostly older, often retirees, and are living in a city. They’re moving to “the country,” where they don’t know anyone and will have few nearby neighbors. [2] Aren’t they going to be friendless, at least for a while?
(2) What an adventure that would be, moving to the English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Ireland countryside (even for those people who are already in Great Britain)! But the show makes me wonder…has my and MH’s time for such adventures passed?
(3) Even if for some reason MH and I wanted/found a way to relocate to another country (whether permanently or temporarily), we’d be leaving behind family and friends. Given our life circumstances (read: “at our age”), would we make new friends, or would we be the proverbial fish [3] out of water? What makes a friend is the willingness and availability to *be* one. After a certain time, most people already have their friends, and do not have a surplus of time and energy to devote to making new ones. [4]
Well, not quite so long. This story is from sixteen years ago, when I was at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s annual conference, in Madison, WI. On the day the conference ended, while riding the hotel shuttle to the airport moiself struck up a conversation with an elderly couple who sat across from me on the shuttle’s bench seats. We chatted about the convention highlights, what a great city Madison was, etc. Noticing their British accents, I offered that I lived in Oregon, and asked where they were from. They said they’d lived in Connecticut for 15 years but, “as you might guess,” were from England. When I said, Do you mind if I ask why you moved? they exchanged knowing glances, and the wife said, “This conversation.”
They chuckled at my bemusement, and the husband went on to clarify: Both of them were native Brits who’d lived in England all their lives, [5] and they’d never had a conversation like this – a warm exchange with a stranger – in their home country. It simply didn’t happen. While they considered themselves to be kind and friendly folk, they found Brits in general (“Yes, we realize *we* are also British”) to be rather…cold; distant; hard to get to know. Traveling outside of England confirmed their opinions, and they decided to retire elsewhere. Within six months of moving to Connecticut they felt they had more close friends and neighbors than they did in 60 years of living in England.
* * *
Department Of The Problems With Identity Politics
Beware the harmful consequences of good intentions.
Yeah; beware that ides-thing, as well.
But my beware is related to a series of decades-old, poignant conversations with a family member about good intentions gone wild, conversations which sprang to mind when I came across an article by academic and writer Freddie deBoer. I will address those conversations in a future post; on to the article, which is thought-provoking enough for moiself to devote way too much a modicum of blog bandwidth to the article’s observations and assertions (and I hope my excerpts prompt you to peruse it in its entirety). [6]
deBoer, a self-described “Marxist of an old school variety,” writes on politics and culture. His specific interests include media commentary and “critiques of progressive pathologies from the left”: in the case of this article, identity politics activists who advocate for a “community” which in fact does not exist, and who might presume include him in their community, whether or not he wanted to be. [7]
In deBoer’s intro to his article (excerpted below; my emphases), he notes that although he’s written about certain elements of the disability rights and the disability studies movements (the former a “catchall term frequently used by activists,” the latter an academic field), these complicated subjects are worthy of book-length analysis. deBoer intends his article to be a “primer,” and warns that ...the people who are responsible for this stuff have good intentions; indeed, that’s part of what makes it all so frustrating and at times tragic.
” ‘Disability rights’ rhetoric implies a community of the disabled that does not exist.
A common problem with identity politics is that those who practice it often imply unanimity within broad groups that doesn’t exist (…I refer to the common implication that all Black Americans supported defunding the police in 2020 [despite] polling demonstrating that no such thing was true.)
There are sometimes commonalities that are shared by a large percentage of a given group, but ‘people with disabilities’ is an unusually broad and varied group even compared to others. This is true because all kinds of people can be afflicted with all kinds of disorders, making it unthinkable that we’d ever see (for example) rigid attachment to a given political party among the disabled. More, the experience of disability is dramatically different depending on a given ailment – you can refer to people with psoriasis and with anxiety and with ALS all as ‘people with disabilities,’ but that’s a meaningless exercise…
…(also) many people with disabilities reject being defined that way, which has inherent political and social consequences. All of this diversity undermines any faith we might have in seeing those with disabilities as a coherent political group. Disability activists are forever purporting to speak for all people with disabilities even as many such people completely reject the activist agenda. There is no organizing committee for people who are sick. This has particular consequences given the next point.
Normalizing disability inevitably centers the most normal and sidelines the most severely afflicted.When you insist that there’s nothing wrong with people with disabilities, you are inherently (if usually unwittingly) pushing people who obviously have something wrong with them out of the conversation.…
… autism self-advocacy partisans are so insistent that having autism is not in any sense negative that they have to sideline those whose autism is clearly negative, as it is with profoundly autistic people who are nonverbal or self-harming or unable to control their bathroom function or similar. Such people are an uncomfortable reminder of what autism specifically and disability generally can do, so they are marginalized by those who prefer to maintain a false positivity. …. Anyone who can’t express themselves in a conventional way, whether thanks to cerebral palsy or autism or schizophrenia or any other condition, finds themselves written out of the debate….”
deBoer notes a disturbing trend of disability/identity rights activists: proclaiming that there is nothing wrong with having a disability and therefore nothing needs to be fixed – that what the disabled suffer most from is a stigma placed upon them by society.
“Once disability becomes identity, treating disability as something bad becomes forbidden. Contemporary disability mores are deeply influenced by the social model of disability, which holds that disabilities themselves are not inherently or intrinsically bad but rather that society has not set itself up in such a way as to accommodate those with disabilities.
It’s certainly true that we should do far more to make the world more accessible, but I don’t think that attitude is productive. I’m perfectly happy to say that being sighted is better than being blind regardless of how society sets itself up, and for the record there are many people with disabilities who find it insulting and callous to be told that there’s nothing wrong with them. Either way, insisting that you simply are your disability sacrifices your autonomy and right to self-define on the altar of an identity that you didn’t choose….
Stigma is nobody’s biggest problem….
A deeply mentally ill person who lives under a bridge has a lot of very real problems, and stigma is not one of them.
… Almost no one who suffers from a serious disability is going to name stigma as the highest hurdle they face. Access to healthcare, housing, and food, achieving basic financial stability, grappling with hopelessness and depression, finding community and love…. All of these things come first. But because of the incentives of identity politics, stigma reigns as the object of fixation…..
( excerpts from “What’s the Problem with Disability Studies and the ‘Disability Rights’ Movement? Self-appointed spokespeople don’t own disability issues.” Freddie Deboer, Nov 6, 2023; my emphases )
“If only there was no stigma attached to my disability, I could get into this building, no problem.”
* * *
Department Of I Hate To Even Type “Literally,” But Literally, Chills Ran Up My Spine When I Read This WaPo article
Because in the article was the essence of a recurring dream I had in childhood – a dream that could become reality, according to the article? Moiself wrote about this dream in my post of 12-13-2019:
“A major unpleasant memory from my childhood (early 1970’s So Cal) was dealing with smog alerts. Activities were curtailed; recess and PE classes cancelled…. Flash forward to the present, and whenever we have had ‘low quality’ air alerts – as when the smoke from recent year’s wildfires drifted south or north to the Portland metro area – my watery eyes and that distinctive ‘catch’ I feel in my chest/bronchial tubes takes me back to those wretched smog alert days.
And the yoga teacher says, “Remember to breathe deeply…oh, never mind.”
In the late 1960s through the early 1980s California’s enactment of innovative, first-in-the-nation, vehicle emission control strategies and standards actually worked, and although the state’s population continued to rise its air quality improved…for a few decades, at least. [8] But while politicians and scientists joined forces to cobble together stop-gap measures, a schoolgirl dreamed of a fantastical invention which would solve the problem forever.
During an interval of several months when I was 11 or 12 years old, I had dreams wherein I invented colossal fan/vacuum type devices which, when placed in strategic locations across the state, sucked in air and ran the air through a series of filters, which strained out the polluting particulate matter and compacted the pollutants into bricks, particle boards, and other (non-toxic) building materials. Not only would our air be clean, this invention also protected trees and forests, as the need for lumber was greatly curtailed.
Yep, it seemed realistic to me at the time. The decades passed, and the Scientist/Engineer Who Saved The World…well, it very obviously didn’t turn out to be moiself….”
Yeah, okay…but smoky bands of filthy air encircle the globe, and my imagination in all its glory isn’t fixing that….
Here is a teaser for the WaPo article which prompted my digression:
“For decades, scientists have tried to figure out ways to reverse climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere…. Companies, researchers and the U.S. government have spent billions of dollars on the research and development of these approaches and yet they remain too expensive to make a substantial dent in carbon emissions.
Now, a start-up says it has discovered a deceptively simple way to take CO2 from the atmosphere and store it for thousands of years. It involves making bricks out of smushed pieces of plants. And it could be a game changer for the growing industry working to pull carbon from the air.”
( excerpts from “The Lego-like way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere,” The Washington Post, 11-13-23 )
May you carefully consider your participation in identity politics; May you risk engaging amiable strangers in conversation; May you eschew [10] using redundant content warnings;
[6] Which is a writerly way of saying, “read the whole damn thing.”
[7] According to some disability rights activists, DeBoer is part of the disability rights community due to his bipolar disorder.
[8] So Cal air pollution is rising again. Rising numbers of people and vehicles outnumber good intentions and inventions. Waaaah.
[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
[10] I once tried to come up with a joke about a Spaniard describing how he eats a French delicacy: ” I eschew the escargot.” Yup; still working on it.
The HTC: The Hood To Coast relay race, that’s what it is.
Hood To Coast is a long-distance relay race that starts at Mount Hood and continues nearly 200 miles to the Oregon Coast. Known as “the mother of all relays”, it is the largest running and walking relay in the world…. The race is held annually in late August, traditionally on the Friday and Saturday before the Labor Day weekend. The course runs approximately 200 miles…from Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mount Hood, the tallest peak in Oregon, through the Portland metropolitan area, and over the Oregon Coast Range to the beach town of Seaside on the Oregon Coast. Teams of 12 runners take turns running legs along the course. ( from “Hood to Coast” Wikipedia entry )
The Hood to Coast Relay is so popular, it sells out every year within minutes on the day when it opens for team registrations. [1] HTC begins at Mount Hood, with staggered start times on Friday from 3 am to 2 pm (teams have 36 hours to complete the course). [2] This year there were 1,000 teams participating, and 12,000 runners. Teams come from all US states and 40 other countries, including our neighbors to the north:
Y’all impressed? You should be. For all the years we’ve been coming to the Oregon coast, the last weekend in August is one of the more fun times to be there (almost [3] fun enough to make me want to take up running again, just to participate in the HTC). MH and I hang in Manzanita, 22 miles south of the HTC finish point (Seaside). During the HTC weekend, almost about anywhere on the north Oregon coast you’ll spot the HTC team vans with their colorful names and mottos painted on the sides and doors, and encounter the enthusiastically exhilarated (and exhausted and sleep-deprived) HTC team members looking for food and drink, massages, blister relief, or just wanting to hang out.
Moiself knows many people who’ve participated in the HTC. This year son K joined a team for the first time, and asked me to be a HTC volunteer. All local [4] HTC teams are required to provide three volunteers or one exchange leader, [5] or they’ll be disqualified from the race. As you might imagine, with so many runners, a 200 mile race stretching from a mountain to an ocean needs a lot of people helping with logistics along the way, [6] including at the start and at the exchange points, to keep track of participants and vans (each team must provide two vans to transport members; each race member must run three legs of the race), and particularly at the end of the race, where the teams check in to a large, roped off section of the beach at Seaside, and have ceremonies and parties and eat and take official pictures…and did I mention parties?
I signed up for the 9:45a – 2:45p Saturday volunteer shift at Seaside. There were many of us volunteers at that shift time, and we were (most unscientifically) chosen for a variety of tasks. Moiself ended up in Trash and Recycling. T/R involved constant movement: for the next five hours (with lunch and hydration breaks at the volunteers’ discretion) we T/R crew walked a snaking/looping pattern throughout the various sections of the finish line area, from the perimeters to the zones within the zone, checking the I-lost-count-of-how-many trash and recycling receptacles. T/R volunteers duties included “pre-cycling” as much as possible (invariably, people dump the wrong items in the receptacles, despite the bins being clearly marked for trash v. recycling and having picture labels showing what items go where; thus, we had to move items from one bag to another), and changing the bags when they were 75% full.
* * *
Department Of People Are Fun
It was fun, even while digging through the icky T/R receptacles, [7] to see the teams arrive. There was so much sheer joy to be witnessed, on the part of the runners and the friends and family cheering them on. And the team names – I wish moiself could remember them all. I had a job to do, but tried to pay attention as the teams’ arrivals were announced over the loudspeaker (which you could hear from any part of the finish zone). Most teams go for a funny/punny name; e.g., one that satirizes their workplace and/or sponsors, or is a play on words with common situations and ailments faced by distance runners in general or HTC racers in particular (e.g., team “My Third Leg is Harder Than Yours”).
Most teams had custom shirts for their runners, and sometimes hats and other accessories. Teams decorate their vans, too. A popular team name motif is the slightly naughty/double entendre. Years ago, I saw a van with this motto painted on its rear door:
” Go Nads! (National Association of Distance Sprinters)”
Atop the van, attached to its luggage rack, was a large set of paper mâché…any guesses?
Another van’s display of their team name made me consider whether or not I would want to park (or walk) behind a van labeled, “Twelve Sticky Buns.”
A few intrepid teams run in full costume – moiself spotted members of one all male team which seemed to have a Barbie theme going on – or regalia related to their names. I never found out the name of the team whose every runner, male and female, was clad in red prom dresses, but they were a jolly group to behold.
Some team names I remember from years past:
* Run Like a Mother *199 Bottles of Beer on the Wall * Get in the Van! * Where’s the Beach? * Hauling Ass-prin * 12 Drummers Drumming * Cheap Hills * Forrest Stump [8]
* Endorphiends * Toenails Are For Sissies * It’s Cute You Run Marathons * Tektronic Megahurtz * Hoodwinked * Van You Catch Us? * The Team Formerly Known As Class Act [9]
* Back Fat * The Young and the Breathless * The Young and The Rest Of Us * Premature Acceleration * Monty Crython and the Hilly Trail * Oreo Speedwagon * Electrolyte Orchestra * Turd Herders * I-Be-Pro-FUN * Worst. Wine. Tour. Ever. * Obi-Run Kenobi * Cirque du Sore Legs * Last Place Legends * Team Questionable Life Choices * The Island of Misfit Toys * Married Up * Pace Cadets * Kids, Get Your Shoes On * Resisting A Rest * Seven Deadly Shins * Tequila Mockingbird * Another Run Bites the Dust * We’ve Got the Runs * The Kind Of Dirty Dozen * Lactic Acid Trip
* Two Dozen Scrambled Legs [12]
Now: who’d want to be a member of team Back Fat? When I saw several BF team runners hanging around by one of the finish area T/R receptacles, moiself had to ask. I did my T/R checking job, then prefaced my query by pointing to my shirt (as I did several times afterward, when I realized that people would answer *anything* I asked when they saw my shirt). “So,” I said, “in my ‘Race Official capacity, ‘ I must ask you: Why would anyone want to run under the team name, Back Fat?”
The BF-ers exchanged knowing glances. “Well, look at us,” one of them said, and he pivoted to show me his back. Yep, in their green polyester, clingy running shirts (mostly) covering their squatty, chunky physiques….I’ll concede that their team’s name was a first-rate example of truth in advertising.
“We’re just running for fun…we’re not the elites,” the BFer said, as he hoisted a beer with one hand and with the other hand, pointed behind moiself, to the Nike area (Nike had its own roped off zone within the finish zone, with complimentary food and beverages for Nike-sponsored teams, as well as their own set of gleaming white, porta-pottie trailers. Bouncers checked IDs at the entrance to the Nike zone, ensuring no plebes – except for those wearing Race Official ® shirts – got inside.) “We know we’re not the team that’s in the best shape…” BF guy snickered.
“But you’re the team having the best time,” I offered. He laughed heartily, and he and his fellow BFers toasted me with their beers.
Moiself moved on to the next set of T/R bins, where another group of racing men stood (hanging around the T/R bins seemed to be a thing). There were six of them, all wearing their race shirts and, from the waist down, colorful batik, sarong-type wraps. They were quite the contrast to the BFers: they were all tall, slender, in their 40s – 50s, in great shape, with that lanky, distance runner’s physique. And the way they were groomed: even after having just finished a two-day race, their hair was neatly styled and none of them looked the least bit sweaty. Distinguished-looking, you might say. Something about their aura and the way they carried themselves radiated, “well-kept” (read: money).
I asked about the team’s name on their shirts (a word which sounded Hawaiian to moiself); also, noting their sarongs, I asked if the team had some Polynesian connection (although the men were all haoles). One of the men began to explain: “A few years ago, a friend of mine bought a small island in Fiji…” To which I interjected, “As one does.”
Well-Groomed Man didn’t miss a beat; he continued to tell me about how their team name was a word his Fijian-island-owning friend had introduced them to. The word had a few variants among the Fiji Islands and was similar to the Hawaiian alohain that it had no one translation, and could be used as word of greeting and departure, or as a way of wishing someone well, etc.
My next T/R stop took me to the Nike area – my Race Official ® shirt was my entry ticket. It was quite the nice setup. About twenty minutes later, I encountered a T/R volunteer in a (non-Nike) area by the finish lines, and she told me that although there were not long lines of people waiting to use the porta-potties which lined the perimeter of the finish zone, the facilities always seemed to be occupied. I told her that if she needed a bathroom break, she should go to the Nike area and use their pristine facilities. “But, isn’t that for Nike people only?” she asked. “Who cares?” I snorted. “I didn’t see anyone checking IDs once they let you in their zone. Besides, if someone questions you, give them a WTF look, show ’em your shirt and your trash bags, then ask them if they’re saying that you’re good enough to pick up their trash but not good enough to use their porta potties?”
* * *
Department Of People Are Pigs
Oh, but it wasn’t all fun and games. As a member of the T/R crew, I had more than enough job security. As my shift wore on I became lip-curlingly disgusted with my fellow human beings, too many of whom left their discards in the strangest places – as in, obviously and deliberately misplaced, not just dropped in carelessness.
Yeah, clever, dude! Because that’s where recycling goes.
Besides the Nike teams’ area there was another restricted/ID required zone: The VIP tent. There was a guy seated at one entrance to the tent, whose job was to check people’s…. status, I guess?…before he let them into the tent. Moiself never found out what qualifications were needed to enter the VIP tent (I saw several people – non-VIPs, I assume – turned away). However, Those Of Us Wearing Race Official® shirts were allowed inside the tent, to do our T/R duties. The first time I approached the VIP tent, I saw Entry Checker Guy eye my volunteer shirt and the extra T/R bags I was carrying. I told him I was there for a VID – a Very Important Duty. “Ah, yes,” he said. In a tone both flip and friendly, he added, “But, are you a VIP?” To which I replied, “I am a Very *Impudent* Person. Is that VIP enough for you?” Turns out it was.
When I came back on my third run-through in the VIP tent, its T/R receptacles, while not yet full, needed changing. I was disgusted by the behavior of the VIP tent occupants, who’d left their trash *everywhere.* A couple of VIPs were seated less than two feet from the T/R containers, and when they saw me, they nodded in acknowledgement (as if to say, “Ah, here comes the help”) and then just – I couldn’t believe it – set their plates of partially eaten food and their half-empty beer cans down, on the sand, nudging the items toward the T/R receptacles but not bothering to get off of their Very Imperious Posteriors and properly dispose of said trash. Something in me snapped, a wee bit. T/R volunteers had been told (at the beginning of our shift, by the volunteer coordinator who did our T/R duty training) not to berate or even correct people who discarded their trash improperly, but to just “fix it.” So, I did pick up the VIP refuse and sort them into the proper bins, but decided to leave the tent with full T/R bins, and did not return to check on them later.
My HTC volunteer experience brought to mind the gentle…warning, for lack of a better word, which I received many years ago from someone who was quite the dedicated volunteer. She had volunteered across a variety of fields and for a variety of events and services, for decades, and she told me that when you volunteer, for anything,
“…be prepared to be disappointed in your species.”
As the hours went by it began to bother me, more and more: the amazing amount of trash, and waste. T/R receptacle liners bulged with utensils, non-recyclable cups, and plates loaded with food – plates of food from which someone had taken a couple of bites, from hot dogs to burgers and noodle dishes/stir frys, and then thrown aways the rest. Why do people even bother? Did it taste bad? And the food – apart from that served in the VIP and Nike areas, was not free – it had to be purchased from various booths. Were the people who bought it even hungry; did they get a burrito, then realize, Oh, I don’t really want/need this? You don’t have to eat every time there is food around, (perhaps the food wasters fell prey to that American Mindset®: “Look, food! Must be time to eat.”)
I just didn’t get it; I didn’t want to get it…
There were many booths in the finish zone, some with sponsors/vendors giving out free cans and bottles of various beverages (kombucha and flavored/”energy” waters). We T/R crew would find many of those cans and bottles cracked open but half full, buried in the sand, or leaning against the recycling receptacles (which had notices asking people to please empty cans and bottles before recycling them). What’s the deal, of not taking five seconds to empty it? Were they just waiting for/assuming someone else to do it?
When checking in volunteers were given a Race Official shirt, which we were told we must wear over whatever other shirts we had on, during our shift. After check-in we were directed to move away from the check-in line and wait for a volunteer coordinator to assign us to task groups. As I stood in the waiting-group, I looked noted that most of that group, plus those in the volunteer check-in line, were female. One young man, who looked to be in his late teens-early twenties, was standing at the periphery of my waiting group. I pulled on my RO shirt, sidled over to him and asked if he was or had been a HTC runner. He shook his volunteer shirt (he was holding a Race Official shirt but had not yet donned it) and mumbled, “No; I’m just doing this for a friend.” Another volunteer also greeted him, and by the look on the young man’s face I couldn’t tell his reaction: was he mortified, or disgusted, to be surrounded by middle-aged women, some of whom were actually attempting to talk with him.
Once I was on my T/R shift, I continued to note (anecdotally; this was not a scientific survey, but I saw what I saw) how the volunteers were overwhelmingly skewed, gender-wise. Particularly, those who were chosen for T/R duty – I saw only one man doing T/R. And while moiself recalls being thanked by four (yes, I counted) men during the five hours of my shift, I lost track of the number of female race participants who, when they saw my Race Official shirt (and noticed me picking through the trash), thanked me for doing so.
That’s women for you, I groused to moiself. We are the world’s garbage collectors. I was reminded of a quote I read, decades ago, from a woman who was part of a lawsuit against a local (So Cal) municipality which refused to even consider hiring women to work on refuse collection crews: men don’t object to the fact that women pick up/deal with the world’s physical and metaphorical garbage, as long as we aren’t paid to do so.
Stop getting all existentially bummed, I castigated moiself. If K runs the HTC again next year and asks me to volunteer, I probably will. I can select a different shift and locale – maybe somewhere midrace, at an exchange point? Oh, but there’ll be trash duty there as well. Will I just be removing moiself from seeing the majority of the waste produced by this event…. This is way too much ruminating on yet another example of how we continue to literally trash our environment, which is our home, our VIP zone. So, after my shift ended I went home and washed out the reusable containers in which I’d brought my lunch – yeah, that’ll save the planet….
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself . Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [13]
May you respect the person who picks up your trash; May you be the person who picks up your trash; May we all have the means to buy a (trash-free) island in Fiji; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Beginning in the 1990s, Hood to Coast implemented a lottery system to select participating teams.
[2] Some elite teams, often corporate (read: Nike) sponsored, have run the course in half that time.
[4] As in, from within Oregon, not those flying in from, say, Costa Rica.
[5] Exchange leaders work in the exchange zones, where a race participant passes off to the next participant in rotation to run the next leg. Each leg of the race varies in distance, from approximately 4 – 7 miles.
[6] …and an estimated 500 port-a-potties are staged along the route.
[7] I insisted on the thickest pair of gloves they had at the volunteer check-in booth. Some T/R volunteers just wore thin vinyl gloves.
[8] All Forrest Stump team members were adaptive athletes: all team members had some physical challenges, including prosthetic legs and/or use wheelchairs due to spinal cord injuries….
[9] The story behind this name: One year a team called themselves, “Class Act.” The next year they were, “Class Act Is Back.” During that second year one of their vans was pulled over and reprimanded by a Sheriff’s deputy when the riders were shooting Super Soakers out the window on the highway. Thus, the third year’s Prince-inspired moniker, to allow for how their “classy” reputation had been tarnished.
[11] They were young (I think the minimum age for runners is 13) and female, and they were running fast – picking up the pace! – when I saw them cross the finish line.
[13] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg. Until I did.
One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens. No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.
[14] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Dateline: Monday ~ 7:45 am. I am on my elliptical exercise machine, which is in our family room, across from the kitchen. I hear MH walking downstairs. As he approaches the kitchen he pauses, gives moiself a long look, and says…nothing.
“I know, I know,” I say. His expression tells me he is wondering about my shirt-pants combo. “My other (yoga/workout) pants are in the laundry,” I explain.
“That looks like something a kid would wear.” MH laughs.
“A kid like *me,* you mean,” I say. “Remember that picture?”
He says he does.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, MH and moiself were visiting The Folks® in Santa Ana, looking through an old photo album with my mother. When I came across that picture, moiself burst out laughing. My mother reminded me that that combination of clothing items – corduroy leopard print cutoffs and a blue/green Hawaiian midriff shirt – comprised my favorite “outfit” that spring and summer. Not that I dressed in outfits (I knew the difference, as I had friends whose parents bought their children – read: their daughters – outfits.). It was just that those two items of clothing – both hand-me-downs from older neighborhood children – were my favorite shorts and top, respectively. Therefore, in my 10-year-old mind, they were a perfect match.
“You wore them constantly,” my mother told me. She said she’d sneak into my room at night while I was sleeping, get the shorts and top from the end of my bed and put them in the laundry basket, only to discover the next morning that I’d gone through the basket and was wearing them again. I told her how much I admired her for letting me go outside like that, knowing what the neighbors must think (“She lets her kid dress like that? Every day?!?!”).
The black and white photo doesn’t do it justice; use your colorful imagination.
* * *
Department Of Generalizations
Sitting across from me at the breakfast table, MH asked if I’d read about “the soccer game.”
“The one in Indonesia? Where people, uh, died?” Moiself was unsure re the details.
MH scrolled to a news site on his phone and read a summary aloud:
“A stampede at a soccer stadium in Indonesia has killed 125 people and injured more than 320 after police used tear gas to quell a pitch invasion….
Officers fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse agitated supporters of the losing home side who had invaded the pitch after the final whistle in Malang…
‘…They started attacking officers, they damaged cars,’ (the police chief) said, adding that the crush occurred when fans fled for an exit gate.” (“Indonesia soccer stampede kills 125 after police use tear gas in stadium.” reuters.com 10-2-22 )
Although generally disdainful of gender stereotypes, I felt compelled to comment on the baffling-to-moiself phenomenon of crazed sports dudes rushing the pitch, or rushing anything, for any reason.
“Women don’t do that,” I grumbled.
“If they had testosterone shots, they might,” MH noted.
Won’t vote for female politicians because he says women get too emotional.
* * *
* * *
Department Of Apropos Of…Something
I was listening to a blog, the name of which escapes me now, where in one of the subjects being discussed was apologies and holding grudges. It got me to thinking about the conventional teaching re that particular, delicate, interpersonal relations territory.
We have all heard of, or have been on the receiving (or giving) end of what has been termed the insincere or “false” apology, which is some variant of:
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
I’ve little quarrel with the conventional apology-psychology which has decided thatI’m sorry you feel that way is not a sincere apology, but instead is a way of *not* expressing contrition, of *not* taking responsibility.
Notice I didn’t say, *no* quarrel, but littlequarrel. The little is this: I think there may be more to it than that.
In some cases, sincere-apology territory is clear cut: let’s say I step on your foot, either intentionally or as a (poor) joke or because I’m a klutz. You yell, “YEOUGH, you stepped on my foot! That hurt!” My saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way” would indeed be an inappropriate, callous (and clueless) non-apology.
In defense of the other cases of the “non”- apology [1] : Sometimes, under some circumstances, I’m sorry you feel that way is the only sincere and/or accurate expression Person1 can offer to Person2 if Person2 feels injured or slighted or by Person1.
As in: If Person2 feels poorly (sad, angry, resentful, and/or slighted) because of something they think Person1 said or did, Person1 may indeed be sorry to learn that Person2 is feeling poorly. But, if Person1 disagrees with Person2’s interpretation of whatever happened (or even in some cases if the incident even happened in the first place), what can Person1 say that would be sincere, and which would truly satisfy Person2?
One of the most memorable times I have been in the position of having to deliver what might be interpreted as a non- or insincere apology was during a phone call I received from (someone I considered to be) a friend, who was also a fellow member of the church MH and I attended. This was over 16 years ago; moiself (and soon after, MH and our offspring [2] ) had recently “come out” as religion-free and had stopped attending the church. This person, whom I’ll call “FJ,” called to tell me how hurt he was by my decision to leave the church.
Three sentences into the conversation, it became obvious that FJ felt *he* had been wronged by me. I disagreed, even as I felt sincerely sad for FJ. I was sad that he took my decision/action so personally (in his words, it was a “personal affront” to him); I felt sorry for him, even as I felt in no way responsible for his feelings, which, IMO, were his alone to hopefully/eventually experience and analyze.
FJ was hurting; it seemed to moiself, from what he was saying to me, he was determined to take it personally – to take *what* personally? It’s not like I went to church during a worship service, stood up after the opening hymn and declared that I was leaving the church because of FJ. Nothing about FJ, either personally or representationally, had led to my decision. So, what was he taking personally – that I’d decided to live the truth about my life and beliefs?
It was one of the oddest phone calls I’ve ever received. I kept rephrasing/repeating to FJ what he was telling me, to make sure I was hearing him correctly (I was). As bizarre as it seemed to me, he made it plain: If I left the church, he was going to take it as a personal affront. When it became obvious that FJ expected me to apologize to him, all I could honestly say was, “FJ, I’m sorry you feel that way.”.
I could not say what he wanted (or thought he needed) me to say – “I’m sorry for leaving the church [3]/rejecting religion” – because I wasn’t. [4]
“I’m sorry that you feel that way; however, you do not have my ‘permission’ to feel that way. If you decide to take my feelings, *my* beliefs, as a personal affront to your feelings and beliefs, then that is on you – that is your decision. I did not make my decision based on what I thought would “hurt” (or please) *you*, or any other member of the congregation, but rather on what was the right thing to do, for me.”
Another observation re the so-called non-apology: our contemporary counseling culture advises us that when we are having an argument or expressing our feelings to another person, we shouldn’t say, “You make me angry/sad when you ____ (do or say this anger/sadness-causing thing).” Rather, we are supposed to say, “I feel angry/sad when you _____.” In other words, by reframing, rephrasing what we say, we express our anger/sadness while also taking responsibility for our reactions and feelings, and not blame the other person for them. Now, isn’t that, in some, way, interwoven with the non-apology?
Interpersonal relationships; apologies, sincere and otherwise…. Complex territories, fraught with emotional landmines. I need to think about this for a while.
And if you disagree with my ruminations, well, I’m sorry you feel that way.
Sub-Department Of, Who Says I Don’t Have A Filter?
Dateline Saturday night/early Sunday morning: MH has been battling a rhinovirus for the past few days (surprise! COVID is not the only player left in the world of virology [7] ).
So, monkeys get credit for the pox: I get the common cold virus…not that anyone asked.
He’s been sleeping with his head elevated, but that night the congestion got to him…and to me, even through my earplugs (translation: loud snoring). Moiself tries the usual tricks of loudly adjusting my pillows and rearranging/tugging the sheets, which sometimes get him to change position without fully waking him up. [8]
Finally, I jostle his shoulder and speak to him, gently but firmly.
“Roll over.”
What he says: (in very clear voice, as if he’s just sprung into full-awakeness, even though one second before he sounded as if he were clearcutting an endangered forest):
“Why – was I making noise?”
What I think (and want to say): “WTF? Seriously – ‘Am I making noise?’
What are the circumstances where in the past, in the middle of the night, I have asked [9] you to roll over? Why would there be any other reason to ask you to roll over? Because I heard the cat barf and it’s your turn to clean it up? How would you rolling over clean up the cat barf? Because I heard someone trying to break in the house, or I heard the toilet running, or the sounds of the TV left on downstairs, or family photos falling from the fireplace mantle and hitting the floor? My getting you to roll over would accomplish nothing in those situations. ‘Am I making noise?’ Oh, no, of course not – I just woke myself up out of a sound sleep and decided that, for aesthetic purposes and/or achieving universal peace and harmony, I wanted you to roll over.”
What I actually say: “Yes.”
* * *
Punz For The Day Losing My Religion Edition
Q: How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two. One to actually change the bulb, and the other to videotape the job so fundamentalists won’t claim that their god did it.
What do you call a ruling on Islamic law made by an overweight imam? A fatwa.
What is the Dalai Lama’s favorite margarine advertising slogan? “I can’t believe it’s not Buddha.”
Why don’t churches have free wifi? They don’t want to compete with an invisible power that actually works.
* * *
May you give yourself permission to dress like a kid; May you never, under any circumstances, rush onto the pitch; May you roll over when so requested; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Which I have been on the receiving end of, when a blatantly sincere apology was called for, so I’m not taking this lightly.
[2] Who were quite delighted that they didn’t “have” to go to church anymore. Even though they had friends there whom they liked, they didn’t accept Christian theology or any religion’s theology) and wondered, in their words, “Why do we (our family) go to church when it’s obvious you don’t believe in any of that?”
[3] Or “rejecting the church/religion/god”…and all the many other ways my decision has been categorized by religious family and friends – ways which are, of course, their terms, and not mine.
Department Of It’s Not Working #397 In A Never-Ending Series
Dateline: Monday morning, 9 am, at the beginning of my streaming Vinyasa yoga class. The teacher announces that, in case we weren’t aware, September is National Yoga Awareness Month. She says that before the pandemic a group of yoga teachers in the area used to gather on the first Sunday after the Equinox to do 108 Sun Salutations in an open space, such as a public park. They would begin the practice by “setting an intention” for world peace. For this morning’s practice she was going to lead us in a series of Sun Salutations – but don’t worry, she assured us, *not* 108 of them. [1]
Moiself is aware of the practice of yogis doing 108 Sun Salutations to mark the changes of the seasons, and I’ve done them for the past few years, by moiself, [2] on the day of the solstices and equinoxes. I hadn’t heard of the first-Sunday-after/intention-for-peace ® thing. And, after Monday morning’s class, when the teacher again mentioned the intention-for-peace, I couldn’t help but siggle(a combo sigh and giggle).
For thousands of years, thousands of monks and nuns – whether in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries or Roman Catholic abbeys, have devoted their lives to the practice of praying for world peace.
Yo, all you well-intentioned monastics (and any like-minded yogis): it isn’t working.
One true thing: while occupied with doing yoga poses my fellow yogis and I were not outside the studio and/or our homes, fomenting armed conflicts. And all those folks praying for/meditating on world peace, while they are so engaged, they also are not participating in any wars. [3] But prayer and good intentions…dudes, really? These and other elements of “spiritual warfare” may give you a temporary dose of the warm fuzzies, but they didn’t stop the Romans or the Huns or the Nazis then, and they don’t stop Putin’s army now.
Nevertheless…. Yeah, it is a nice “intention.” Namaste, y’all.
I’d prefer one yoga pose which does not effectively put all of my weight on my boobs…but hey, whatever works for you.
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Department Of International Celebrations Of Yoga
Meanwhile, Irish yogis marked the Equinox with their traditional celebrations. [4]
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Department Of Particularizing
“The best argument in the world won’t change a single person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” (novelist Richard Powers)
Recently I was listening to an interview with Ken Burns, who was promoting his latest documentary series, The US and the Holocaust. When discussing with the interviewer how to get past the numbness of such atrocities, Burns said something at once common-sensical and dazzlingly insightful: [5]
“If you don’t particularize, you anesthetize.”
Burns was referencing how one can try to illustrate or explain seemingly unimaginable numbers, such as this disorienting fact:
There were nine million Jews living in Europe before World War II; afterword,
there were only three million left alive.
Six million Jews died.
How many of us can imagine six million, of anything? But, as Burns explained, you can tell the story of a family of three; you can show the pictures of a mama and a papa and their child, and tell how only one of the three will be alive at the end of the war. *That* can touch people; that is something people can relate to.
I immediately thought of the movie The Martian, one of my favorite films of the past…well, ever. Many is the discussion I’ve had with MH about that movie; more specifically, about the idea of sending people on manned missions to our moon or other planets. Moiself is in favor of that; I am keen on extra-Terran investigation of our cosmos and don’t see it happening otherwise. I see the need for humans in space exploration as an inversion of the old astronaut’s axiom. “No Buck Rogers, no bucks.”[6]
MH’s position, held by some scientists and laypeople alike, is that it makes no sense to undertake the higher costs and logistics of sending astronauts to (for example) Mars when robots and probes, etc. can do similar jobs of exploration more efficiently and less dangerously. [7] But I say it depends on what kind of “sense” you are talking about.
If a probe crash lands or simply runs out of juice, the scientists who have worked for years (in some cases, decades) on the mission will be distressed, of course. But no one will be scrambling to mount a rescue mission.
Exactly.
Without human involvement – not just in the design, but in having human/astronaut “boots on the ground” – you will not capture the wider human attention for the mission. In the real-life case of Apollo 13, millions of people around the world were watching. Even if only temporarily, people set aside personal concerns and were united in their hopes that the three imperiled astronauts would make it back to earth alive. Three men in a space can. Meanwhile, 100,000 times as many people were dying across the globe every day, some from (arguably) treatable causes such as famine, war, and poverty. But we don’t relate to those numbers; it is the particular stories which can capture our hearts and minds.
Figures like 100,000 deaths anesthetize. But a particular story can, I firmly believe, unite people across seemingly intractable political barriers, as when, in the fictional case of The Martian, an international crew of astronauts faced tragedy, and Chinese scientists persuaded their government to essentially give up their secrets in order to help a stranded fellow scientist.
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Department Of The Podcast I Couldn’t Listen To All The Way Through
But first, a flashback.
Dateline: a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, during one of those late-night, discussing-Deep-Topics®-while-sitting-in-someone’s-dorm-room conversations. One of the Deep Topics® participants, in whose room the conversation was taking place (there were a total of five of us), was considering majoring in psychology. While we bantered about various subjects, “Tim,” a dorm friend of ours, appeared in the open doorway of the room. Reeking of dead skunk and beaming a beatific smile, Tim looked down at us five, spouted some stoner nonsense, and continued staggering down the hallway, loudly humming a Grateful Dead song.
Deep Topics® host chuckled, then offered a provocative discussion topic. With the caveat that psychological survey claims cannot ultimately be tested, they said they’d read a survey wherein religious believers generally claimed to be happier than religious skeptics.
“And your point would be?” moiself snarked. I pointed out that, right now, Tim would no doubt “survey” as being happier than all five of us combined. Little did I know that Someone Smarter Than Moiself ® had already nailed that one.
Back to the podcast I couldn’t finish. It was a recent episode from one of my favorites: Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid podcast. In that particular episode, Alda was up to his usual high standards of affable yet probing interviewer, and his guest was equally amiable and engaging. But the episode, Bridging Science and Faith, was about a subject at which guest Francis Collins tanked, IMO.
There was no bridge constructed. Not even an inflatable pontoon.
Collins is a noted a physician and researcher, former director of the NIH, and one of the Human Genome Project leaders. The episode had this teaser:
Head of the National Institutes of Health for 13 years and now interim science advisor to President Biden, Francis Collins is that rarity in the scientific community – an outspoken evangelical Christian.
For him, science is “getting a glimpse of God’s mind.”
In the interview Collins ultimately (even cheerfully) did not offer any “evidence” for his belief in a (Christian) god, except for the fact that he did believe. He openly admitted that he could make no argument for the evidence affirming the particulars of Christian theology over those of other religions. It quite surprised me, coming from a scientist – his offering of the shopworn, “oh gosh all these things I am studying it must have come from something, and it looks like there is some kind of order to it, yet we don’t know what it is…” reason.
You don’t know something, and so you conclude that the somethingmust be a supernatural deity, aka, a god? That’s quite a leap, for which there is no evidence. And science is all about the evidence. Thus the fact that scientists consistently survey as the least religious professionals.
Then, when Collins decides to embrace the concept of a deity, he happens to choose a religion which would be the most comfortable and familiar and acceptable in his culture and country: Christianity. It was a giddy, circular concept, as dizzying as a child’s playground roundabout. Collins said that by studying what he studied (biology/the human genome), by examining the “evidence,” he became convinced of the existence of a creator, which led to his religious faith – however, this same evidence does not convince other scientists who have studied the same things (the vast majority of scientists) that there is anything supernatural guiding the cosmos…. So, Collins talks about the evidence leading him to faith even as he admits that he takes his faith on faith, because there *isn’t* objective evidence to prove his faith.
Scientists, of course, are human beings, raised by and living among other human beings. Whether or not they actually believe in their particular culture’s religions, many scientists do not object to being identified with the religion of their family or “tribe,” or they continue to hold on to some kind of religious identity for cultural and social reasons (and for professional and personal safety reasons, as in some societies you do not have the freedom to be open about religious disbelief, no matter what your profession is).
“I have no problem going to church services because quite often, again that’s a cultural thing,” said a physics reader in the U.K. who said he sometimes attended services because his daughter sang in the church choir. “It’s like looking at another part of your culture, but I have no faith religiously.” ( “First worldwide survey of religion and science: No, not all scientists are atheists.” Rice University news and media relations 12-3-15 )
Even as I kept those contingencies in mind, moiself started doing that thing – have you ever done it? – feeling embarrassment for or on behalf of a person I have never met, a person who is not even in the same room but whom I think is speaking…well…foolishly.
I wish Collins would have just said, “I have chosen to believe this,” instead of claiming that some kind of evidence – which, unlike the evidence used to map the genome, is not evident to his fellow scientists – is what led him to faith. Like the vast majority of religious folk, no matter their profession or education, Collins’ decision to embrace the supernatural is not (IMO) the result of response to objective evidence; [8] rather, it is due to that most human of traits: credulity. For whatever reasons, he *wanted* to believe. And so he did.
Don’t get me wrong – I think Collins is a great guy. And I love the fact that he had a friendship with the late great British journalist and author, Christopher Hitchens. “Hitch” trashed Collins in public debates (re the existence of a supernatural deity) but got to know Collins personally. [9]
We now pause for a break in our regularly scheduled program to take advantage of this opportunity for segue.
Many is the person, however witty and wise they had previously seemed to be, who regretted debating Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens was acknowledged by admirers and detractors alike as being one of the best debaters to ever take the stage. In 2007 at an FFRF convention I had the pleasure of hearing Hitchens speak, then answer questions from the audience. One of the audience questioners…oh, dear. I felt so sorry for the man, but he phrased his disagreements with several of Hitchens’ opinions – disagreements I moiself actually held – somewhat inanely and very clumsily. And Hitch pounced. I witnessed a phenomena that (at the time) I didn’t know had already been given a name: the man had been Hitch-slapped.
Hitchens response to the biblical story of Abraham obeying god’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac.
Definition: when a person overwhelmingly lost a debate with Christopher Hitchens or was the subject of a devastating Hitch putdown, s/he was said to have been “Hitch-slapped.”
Most of the people Hitchens debated with wound up Hitch-Slapped within a few minutes of making their first remarks. You can check out one of my favorite H-Smoments here.
Christopher Hitchens was an annihilative debater, seizing on logical weaknesses and often dominating the discourse with his vast vocabulary and Oxford-honed debating skills. No matter the subject, Hitch would have all the facts at his disposal and an overwhelmingly witty way of presenting them, in his unpretentious British accent. Some of his finest moments were when he had the audience on his side and he turned his powerful forensic skills on them, if he felt they’d mistreated his opponent:
“The liberal…audience members were on Hitchens’ side, of course…. They cheered him on and loudly booed (his opponent) …. Instead of basking in the adulation, he stopped the debate to scold the audience for treating (his opponent) so shabbily.
As a leftist way outside of the mainstream, he knew what it was like to have his opinions shouted down, and he objected to his own partisans engaging in such behavior.” ( “Christopher Hitchens…outrageously fierce, outrageously classy…” Isthmus12-16-11 )
Hitch called his and Collins’ friendship despite having differing opinions on religion “The greatest armed truce of modern times,” and he praised Collins’ devotion to the Human Genome and other scientific projects. I do appreciate how over the years Collins has been the point man in getting other evangelical Christians to consider the facts of science. But I don’t think “the facts,” other than the those of Collins’ own humanity and credulity, are what caused Collins to undertake the most human of endeavors: religion.
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Punz For The Day Autumn Edition
What’s the best vehicle to drive in the fall? An autumnmobile.
A pumpkin got a job at a public pool, watching children swim. I guess you could say it was a life-gourd.
My husband lets people blame him for anything bad that happens in Autumn. What can I say; he’s a Fall guy.
How do you fix a broken pumpkin computer program? With a pumpkin patch.
* * *
May we do more than visualize what we want for the world; May we be aware of our own credulility and never deserve to be Hitch-slapped; May we remember that all great truths began as blasphemies; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] And once in the studio, in a pre-pandemic group.
[3] Except of course for the war on rational thinking.
[4] I’m half Irish, and thus claim the right to make fun of my peeps.
[5] Hardly surprising, from the person who has had a (if not the) most profound influence on how Americans see and understand their own history.
[6] That phrase, from The Right Stuff (movie and book) refers to the reality understood by the USA’s early space program participants, from NASA scientists to astronauts: No money, no space travel. Thus, the space program courted the press (well, the “right kind” of press) and public interest, without which they knew the funding for their program would not likely be approved.
[7] As in, your average homo sapiens does not (yet) equate losing a robot with having an astronaut die.
[8] As contrasted with people who are religious and admit not to have examined their religions’ theology and/or tenets – they are religious because they were raised to be and have accepted it.
[9] Collins played the piano at Hitchens’ memorial service.
I’m going through my every-two years (pandemic-influenced schedule changes notwithstanding), post-Olympic blues, where after dinner I sit down in one of our way-too-comfy chairs and expect instant access to televised, Holy ACL tear, how do they *do* that? feats of athleticism. Despite my enjoyment of the spectacle, my attention feels somewhat squirm-worthy…. Moiself doesn’t even try to justify my interest in The Games ® with my abhorrence of the host country’s abysmal human rights record.
The USA engaged in a “diplomatic boycott” of these Beijing-hosted games. Remember the lackluster response to that announcement?
Few if any sports fans tune in to watch the participating countries’ political envoys compete in the Ambassadorial Mixed Team Relay Luge, what’s the point? When it comes to action strategies, a diplomatic boycott reminds me of prayer – it’s a way of trying to provide the illusion that you’re doing something when in fact you’ve done nothing of consequence.
“We’re doing a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics.”
“We’re praying for the victims of human rights violations.”
Can or should sports (or any human endeavor) be politics-free? And if the answer is yes, what kind of human rights violations and atrocities are allowed to eclipse those leave-politics-out-of-these-games declarations?
Other minds far keener than moiself’s frequently debate this issue, and come to contradictory conclusions (“The Olympics *are* political and the IOC is delusional” ; “Olympics ‘Are Not About Politics,’ Athletes Should Be Politically Neutral At Games”) and everything in between. I do remember reading a couple of op-ed pieces about the importance of viewers – and journalists – at the Olympics, as in, acting as witnesses to hold the China government accountable for the image they intended to portray vs. the reality of what they do. If no one’s watching, Chinese officials can say whatever they like about…anything.
When the USA boycotted the Russian-hosted 1980 Summer Olympic to protest Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, 64 other countries joined the boycott. Sound like a lot? Think again – 80 countries did not, and sent representative athletes to the games. What was accomplished? Oh, that’s right; how quickly I forget. Shamed as bullies before the free world, Russia renounced its oppressive ways and turned into a beacon of liberty and civil rights for the downtrodden masses across the globe.
Back to the actual games. The big-liest story involved the 15-year-old Russian figure skater, Kamila Valieva. Valieva tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance but was still was allowed to compete (and then fell apart during a key performance).[1]
Moiself would wager that many teenaged Olympic athletes are “older” than their non-athletic team member peers in many ways, after years of single-minded devotion and adherence to a grueling practice schedule that would break most adults. There is a second part to my wager: at the same time, these teen athletes’ pursuit to excel at their sport makes them more naïve than other teens. Young Olympics-bound athletes often little experience of the maturation that comes from encountering “real life,” having been shielded from the day-by-day mundane decisions and activities – by both their coaches and parents – so that they can concentrate on mastering the backside quad cork 180˚ or whatever.
So, who’s responsible for Valieva’s doping? Was it the athlete, or her coach(es)? Given how coaches control influence their athlete’s lives, and the age of the skater in question, it’s not that difficult for me to imagine Valieva’s unquestioning compliance to a command recommendation.
“Here comrade, take pill/shot, and don’t worry, it’s …uh… vitamin B-12! Da, that is what it is.”
Still, there is the argument that if she’s old enough to be on the Olympics team she’s old enough to take responsibility for following the Olympics’ rules. If a substance is banned, you don’t take it, and you don’t let anyone give it to you.
No matter who’s at fault, I hated to see/think of a 15 year old getting ripped a new one by her coaches…which is what happened. Whosever decision it was to dope – hers, or her “support” team’s – maybe it doesn’t matter in long run. And maybe someone should check on Valieva, after she’s returned to Russia and the hoopla dies down, to make sure she hasn’t been carted off to the All-Gulag Tour of Ice Dancing With The Russian Stars.
My interest in watching any of the figure skating dropped after the Valieva doping-but-excused revelation. It left a bad taste in my mouth, particularly when I compared the skater’s outcome with what happened to a Summer Olympics track star. Why wasn’t there a huge outcry about the difference in treatment – USA sprinter Sha’ Carri Richardson was kicked off the Summer Olympics team for failing *her* drug test. A few people commented, including, succinctly, Richardson herself:
“The only difference I see is I’m a black young lady.” ( “Double Standard, Racism? Sha’Carri Richardson Booted From Olympics For Cannabis, Russian Skater No Problem For Doping.” Benzinga 2-14-22)
Moiself does recall that someone else commented about the brouhaha, at the time when Richardson got the boot….
As the Tokyo (Summer) Olympics Games enter the final week, I’m realizing I will soon be going through the withdrawal I experience every two years, after watching two-plus weeks of (summer or winter) Olympics events. I’m not normally a frequent televised-sporting-events fan, but moiself does enjoy The Games ®….
In the second week, with track and field events predominating, moiself is thinking about a conversation I had with daughter Belle, several weeks back, about how the USA’s track star Sha’ Carri Richardson received a suspension for testing positive for marijuana, and thus would not be participating in the Olympics.
Belle was peeved that Richardson would not be able to compete, due to what Belle sees as an unfair and archaic drug testing system. I mentioned that Richardson’s competitors might also be disappointed in Richardson’s absence from the games. As I understand it, when you’re at the top level of your sport, you want to compete against the best. Also, whatever your accomplishments, you don’t want an asterisk next to them (as in, “* ___ won the gold medal, after the favorite ____ was disqualified for….”).
We agreed that athletes should be tested for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs; definitely-absolutely-go-for-it. But Belle and I had fun wondering back and forth about why athletes are tested for alcohol and marijuana…. it seems to moiself that weed and booze, with their relaxant and depressive properties, would diminish, not enhance, athletic performance. And really now: in what sports could marijuana be considered a performance *enhancing* drug? Competitive eating? Belle suggested.
You’d think athletes would *want* their rivals to get the munchies before competition: “Here comes Richardson, strolling across the finish line in last place, giving the other racers a, ‘What’s up with all the hurry?’ look as she heads for the pizza roll vendor….”
“I’d like to thank my coach, and my training partner, Maui Wowie.”
So, lobby to change the Olympics’ drug testing rules, if you think it would be worthwhile to do so. Until then, it would be unfair to other athletes to make exceptions for some and not others, in terms of how existing drug rules are applied. [2]
Also, the athletes know full well what they will be tested for. My advice [3] to them is, don’t act surprised and/or disappointed if you used a banned substance and then get caught. Take responsibility. Don’t play dumb when you’re not. (Excerpts from 8-6-21 blog post, The Drug Test I’m Not Failing, full text here)
Once again, I digress. Time to finish with the Winter Olympics.
As always, moiself thrilled to watch the ariel snowboarding and skiing and ski jumping events, marveled at the WTF?!? stamina and skill required by the XC skiers and Biathlon-ers, [4] and yawned through (read: ignored) the curling/bobsled/luge/skeleton events. [5] Although it was great to see pioneering USA snowboarding champ Shaun White in Olympic action again/for the last time, it was also awe-inspiring to see the younger snowboarders – many if not most of whom were inspired by White – perform their gravity-defying new stunts…and then it was poignant to realize, as White seemed to do so graciously, that his time at that level of competition had passed. Most of all, it was great fun, for moiself at least, to see a smaller country, Norway (population 5 million, led the medal count with thirty-seven. Yes; 37), dominate the competition. [6]
But, my enjoyment was dampened by the skating scandal. And also, the host. Fucking People’s Republic of Human Rights Bullies China.
My gradually-souring mood was saved by son K, who steered me toward an old video clip of Shaun White as a bright-eyed 19 year old, being interviewed by CNN after his first Olympics. Refreshingly unjaded and enthusiastic, gushing as if amazed by his own success, White described how, during his plane flight back to the USA, the flight attendants [7] fawned over his Olympic medal. White’s charmingly disarming, duuuuude, totally rad persona, seemingly endemic to surfers and snowboarders, surfaced when the CNN interviewer interrupted White with an attempted “gotcha” moment. It reminded me why I’m gonna miss the red-haired dude and his ‘tude:
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* * *
Department Of Things I Sometimes Forget
Such as, sometimes I forget how much I like a simple veggie chili, which can be made rather quickly with Staples I Almost Always Have Handy ® . As for the simple part, you can complexify [8] it up, as much as you want, with different beans and pepper combos, and get jiggy with the toppings.
– 2 cans no salt added chopped tomatoes -1 can each (~15 oz) of the following (no salt added) cooked beans, rinsed & drained: Black, kidney, garbanzo, lima – 1 c white frozen corn, thawed – 3 T chili powder – 1 T ground cumin seed (toasted first – optional, but delish) – ½ t each kosher salt & freshly ground black peppercorns; cayenne pepper to taste
– 1 t (or more) red wine vinegar – 3T rinsed pickled jalapeno slices (more or less to taste) [10]
– lime slices
Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 1m. Add beans through cumin seeds, mix well, and bring to simmer over med-high heat. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer until flavors are blended, ~ 30m.
Season w/salt, pepper and cayenne, and jalapenos. Add vinegar to taste. Serve with lime slices to squeeze over.
Additional toppings: Avocado chunks or slices or guacamole; chopped fresh cilantro; chopped scallions; plant-based or regular sour cream or plain yogurt; shredded veg or other cheeses; crushed tortilla chips; red or green chili salsa; a mother’s bitter tears….
Your final product should look nothing like this.
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Punz For The Day Chili Edition
I got a miniature fresh habañero pepper at the farmer’s market. When I returned home I put a tiny blanket on it, because it was a little chili.
We are thinking about making Five Alarm Bean and Cabbage Chili for Christmas Eve. We’re starting a new tradition called, ‘Silent But Deadly Night.’
How do you make a good vegan chili? Stick her in the freezer.
What do dead Norseman like in their chili? Vallhallapeños.
You can see yourself out.
* * *
May you never be subjected to an Olympic-sized double standard; May you never engage in a diplomatic boycott (of anything); May you join your loved ones in a rousing chorus of, “I’m talkin’ ’bout Mountain Dews, baby!” [11]
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] As in, she fell, several times, during her last performance, where, favored to take first place in the Women’s Singles competition, she did not medal.
[2] Richardson claimed she used weed to cope with receiving the news of the unexpected death of her biological mother. If that’s the case, I’m wondering why she didn’t alert officials before she was tested, along the lines of, “BTW, I used this substance for this reason,” to try to explain or at least warn them that she wasn’t trying to sneak anything past them.
[3] Which they clamor for, night and day…it gets soooooo annoying.
[4] Only Norwegians could come up with such a body-punishing, seemingly disparate skills-requiring event as biathlon.
[5] The nuances of the sledding events evades me (“He tilted his body one degree to the right to steer the sled higher on the turn”…uh huh). No doubt fun to do yourself, but a snoozefest to watch someone else do it.
[6] Second place Germany, population 83 million , 27 medals…summer Olympics powerhouse USA (population 330 million) got 25 winter Olympic medals.
[7] Although he refers to them using the antediluvian term, “stewardesses.” DUDE ?!?!?
Active, reliable, sarcastic, affectionate, bipedal, cynical optimist, writer, freethinker, parent, spouse and friend, I am generous with my handy supply of ADA-approved spearmint gum and sometimes refrain from humming in public.
