Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.
And everyone feels better after looking at a picture of a baby sloth wearing pjs.
* * *
Department Of The Theory Of Let Them
I’m not sure if this can – or should – apply to politics in the wider sense; e.g., when it comes to the depredations of The Mandarin Turd Führer and company, we don’t just want to let them. But in one’s personal dealings, I have found this to be helpful.
* * *
Department Of Dude Doesn’t Waste Time Getting Down To Brass Tacks [1]
Sub-Department Of Things I Learned From The Older [2] Man Who
Approached Me As I Was Waiting For The Door To Zumba Class To Open
Dateline: Monday; circa 10:55 am. An affable, petite, elderly man, [3] whose appearance and accent indicated he came from a culture different from mine, approached me and wished me a good morning. He looked familiar; I’d seen him in class at least once. Thus, after I returned his greeting, I passed on the information a staff member had given me when I first entered the Rec Center: the Zumba class was going to start a few minutes late, as another group was using the facility.
He nodded, said he’d just come from another Zumba class at Hidden Creek (another Hillsboro Parks & Rec facility), and asked if I was married.
The casual ease with which he spoke his question – which I found to be both a straightforward query and a non-sequitur, given the circumstances – took me by surprise…but not in a threatening way.
“Yes,” I said, “I am married.”
He looked at my left hand, his eyes widening and sparkling with mischievous disbelief when he beheld the modest band on my ring finger (MH and I currently choose to wear plain but colorful silicon bands, which, I have been told, “…don’t look like *real* wedding rings” ).
“You are married?” he asked again. I laughed, repeated my marital status affirmation, and decided to return the straightforward-ness: “I take it you are not married, and are looking to meet someone?”
He seemed pleased by my supposition. Yes, he enthused, he is looking to meet a woman for dating! He reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved a piece of paper that had his name and phone number on it, and asked me if I would be so kind to take down the information and pass it along to any women I know who might also be looking for companionship.
Moiself was feeling generous, and said that I would. As I reached for my phone to take a picture of the paper, I asked if he was using his family for matchmaking ( a common practice in his culture ). He said he’d decided notto go that route. I asked him what he sought in a date, and what should I tell prospective dating partners about him? He told me…
* He is 78 years old, a retired chemical engineer originally from ____ (another country);
* He was married for 43 years, has been widowed several years;
* He frequently visits his daughter, who lives nearby;
* He doesn’t ask his daughter to “fix him up” because she isn’t happy about him wanting to date;
* He has looked at online dating apps but is not impressed by them (and he doesn’t do social media);
* The age of the woman doesn’t matter to him;
* He offers companionship, kindness, and affection, and seeks the same;
* He has found that there are two things which people think are important to control in their life: their diet and their religion. But he wants people to know that he doesn’t care “about any of that;”
* “Everyone” at the Hillsboro Recreation centers knows him (he said that after an employee passed by and greeted him by name), because he is so friendly;
* He is open to meeting a woman from any background, *but* notfrom ____ (his home country). This is for several reasons, including the “fact” (as he put it) that after they (women from his culture) are widowed, they don’t look to date or remarry; rather, they join their children’s families and spend their time looking after their grandchildren.
I guess I won’t be passing his number on to June.
He asked me to stress that he is monogamous (“Not like many other men who,” he said, “flip around” [4] ), and that he goes to exercise classes and takes care of himself, “even though with age…” he glanced down, patted his protruding belly, and chuckled. He then complimented me – “And you obviously take care of yourself” – and touched my upper arm, very lightly and quickly squeezing my bicep. It was a gesture I might have found insulting and/or icky from someone else, but from him, it was almost…sweet? Is that ageist, or patronizing of me?
I found him wistfully charming; not creepy or threatening, and there was an air of both optimism and loneliness about him. As the Zumba classroom door opened I said something positive about networking ( “Well, that’s how you do it – let others know you’re looking” ) and wished him well in his search. We shook hands and he bid me farewell. It turned out he was not going to class. It also turned out (surprise! As in, not) “He does that to every woman,” I heard from another female class member, after she asked about the bemused look on my face and I told her about my gentleman solicitor.
* * *
Department Of Sometimes I Feel Like Moiself Should Wear A Black Arm Band For My Country
Context: recently messaging a friend from high school, who has lived now for decades overseas, about The State Of Things In My (and formerly, his) Country ® . My friend’s past experiences include being in the US military and working in health care with mentally ill – life experiences which, along with being bicultural and multilingual and an expat ( a stranger in a strange land which he has now made his own) – give him a keen and unique perspective on what he sees going on in his native land. His pithy articulation shredded my heart.
“Do I miss my homeland? No, not really, but I do mourn for it.”
* * *
Department Of What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received
While listening to the rebroadcast of the No Stupid Questions podcast, What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received[5]moiself didn’t immediately come up with my alternative (as in, Ah, yes, and the best advice I ever received was….” Instead, I was intrigued by how many possible answers there might be to that question, perhaps as many different pieces of advice as there are advice givers, and seekers.
Podcast host Angela Duckworth: “The first thing that leaps to mind is I was about 19 or 20 years old. There was a professor named Kay Merseth, who I’m still in touch with. And I remember being unhappy and going to Kay for advice. I can’t exactly remember whether it was another romantic breakup…or more that I was struggling with a career decision. Like: should I go into education, which I really wanted to do, but my dad wouldn’t speak to me after that, or should I become a doctor like he does want me to.
And I remember she said this: ‘Angela, it sounds to me like you really want to make the right decision, the best decision.’ And I nodded. And she said, ‘But life’s not like that. Life is a story. And your job is not to tell the ‘right’ story or even the best story. It’s just to tell a story that you can be proud of.’ And I went away from that day thinking, ‘What the hell did Kay mean? This is too deep for me.’
But I have actually used that advice when I talk to undergraduates in my own course. Now they’re the 19 or 20-year-old, and I’m the professor. And I do think the reason why Kay gave that advice to me — and why I pass it along — is that I think I was a little bit paralyzed by, like, ‘What’s the absolutely correct or best decision?’ And we can’t know. I mean, life is just mostly uncertainty. All we can do is act in a way where we can use the intuition we have. There are many, many paths in life, and who knows how this is going to turn out? But am I doing something that — at the end of the story, will I look back and say, ‘I’m proud of that?’
“No myths need to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No person god needs to be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need to be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.”
May you discern when or when not to just Let Them; May we do more than wear a black armband for our country; May your life be the best advice someone else has ever received; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Whence that phrase, which means getting down to the basics or serious business? And can the tacks-one-is-getting-down-to be of an alloy other than brass? Getting down to pewter? Bronze? Sterling silver?
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
AEDD. No, it’s not some type of learning disability…you could think of it as a culinary learning (or experimentation) opportunity.
It stands for Asparagus Every Damn Day ® . To honor both the impending arrival of Spring and my love for asparagus, I challenge moiself to cook and/or eat asparagus, in some form, every damn day of March. Last year I had some favorites creations; mostly, I defaulted to what’s-easy-but-I-still-love-it (e.g., oven roasted lemon garlic asparagus spears, creamy [1] asparagus and green pea soup….).
Gird your proverbial loins and let the wild rumpus begin.
* * *
Department Of My Favorite Blast From The Past
Were I asked by Someone to come up with an example of carefree bliss, I would show that Someone this picture.
Moiself, son K and daughter Belle (and Mt. Neahkahnie in the background), on Manzanita beach, circa…two decades ago. Picture taken by MH, existential protection provided by Mt. Neahkahnie.
Dateline: last Friday; driving to the Oregon coast, listening to one of my science podcasts. At the end of the podcast there is an advertisement from one of the podcast’s sponsors. The ad is for…some kind of service having to do with manicures. Repeated at least three times during the ad is the service’s enticement/slogan, something about how “…we all deserve to have perfect nails.”
And I find moiself thinking, do these people understand the target audience of this podcast? And how can the proverbial we all – or just moiself– deserveanything having to do with our fingernails? And is it deserveas in, how we all deserve basic human rights and to be treated with dignity (and not harassed about our less-than-perfect nails)? And what, exactly, constitutes perfect nails? And is there a committee, a governing board, which establishes and oversees such a standard of perfection?
And the sheer inanity of this ad is provoking way too many, And and and andquestions – which made me want to (should moiself be offered a free sample of the product) take whatever was being advertised and heave it off the rim of the Grand Canyon. [3]
Important Note To The Advertising Industry, whether large scale Commercial/Industrial And/Or Small Business Owners: Struck as I was by the astounding vacuousness of the ad’s tag line, I can’t tell you what service it was for. Which is the ultimate failure of an advertisement, the very purpose of which is to get you to want (or at least remember the name of) the product.
I’m assuming these were not the top choice of the Fingernail Perfection Police.
Relax; it’s a story about Porch Proselytizing®. There will not be pamphlets left on your front doorstep. [4]
The prompt for this story is…moiself saw an article online having to do with someone complaining about having to shoo Porch Preachers away from their front door.
The above is the sign I made and had laminated 10+ years ago, a larger version of which is on our front porch below our doorbell. The sign, in my estimate, keeps ~98% of solicitors away. Before I did the rewording I had another sign up, a cartoon illustrating how we do not want solicitors, but – surprise ! –there was always a Someone who thought it didn’t apply to him. When moiself answered the doorbell, realized who the stranger was on my porch/what he was up to, and pointed toward our no soliciting sign, that Someone would say, “Oh, I’m not *selling* anything. I have good news that’s free…”
Even before the signage, religious solicitors – Mormon “Elders” [5] in particular – left skid marks getting away from my porch, after I’d engaged them and they realized What Kind Of Uppity Woman They Were Dealing With ®.
What used to surprise moiself, about the solicitors I personally encountered as well as those I’d known over the years who’d engaged in such activities, was their seeming befuddlement re overwhelmingly receiving less-than-hospitable reactions from those whom they sought to evangelize. I had to wonder: from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons to Evangelicals, in their witnessing training, was there not even a smidgen of attention paid to the basic human psychology behind someone not in *your* group being presented with *your* group’s message, with no request from themfor yourthoughts and/or opinions?
Was there no mention of the reality that it is highly likely that what you are indoctrinated trained to think of as informative/friendly/useful information, will be seen by others as presumptuous? And that’s because it *is* presumptuous. A friendly demeanor and/or beatific smile on your face does not dilute the ultimate cluelessness and arrogance of your mission: you are approaching a stranger, unsolicited by her, knowing nothing about her save for the (likely [6] ) fact that she does not share your spiritual worldview, which therefore in your worldview means her worldview is deficient…and you think you can (and even should) enlighten her!
I bet she can’t wait to hear the good news from white boys wearing even whiter shirts!
I remember seeing and hearing my mother deal with the Mormon “Elders” ( nine out of ten of the proselytizers we got were Mormon ) who would, every couple of months or so, ring the doorbell of our Santa Ana home. First off, no one who knew our family came to our front door (when I was a young child I didn’t even know if our front door “worked,” or if it was just for show). We all entered and left the house, along with our friends and neighbors, via our side door or backyard door. Thus, when there was a ring/knock at the front door we knew it was from a stranger; i.e., someone who didn’t know us. This Someone, experience taught us, most likely wanted to sell us something, and would ask to speak to “the adult of the house,” so I and my siblings would call for our mother to answer the front door. But I liked to lurk in the background, to…watch.
My mother would never confront the Porch Preachers, despite my advice that she should tell them the truth ( that you think they’re whack-doodles ) and not waste anymore of your or their time. But Mom came of age in the 1950s, meaning she was raised to be a Nice Woman®. She would listen to their opening spiel, then give her standard, gentle-but-firm, “No thank you; we have our own religion,” response, and wish them a nice day while she gently shut the door.
There was one exception (that I know of) to my mother’s unperturbable niceness with solicitors. This happened during a weekday, the summer before I entered eighth grade. A pair of Elders knocked on our front door. I heard the customary/brief exchange between my mother and the elders, then noticed it was going on longer than usual at the front porch. I was surprised to hear the rising pitch of a young male voice, followed by my mother sputtering, “Blasphemy!” before slamming the door.
After commending her display of backbone, I asked what they had said to her. Instead of simply accepting her brushoff, that pair of snot-nosed albinos [7] didn’t do what they should have done at that point – thank her for her time, apologize for disturbing her, and get the fuck off her property. [8] Instead, one of them challenged her. Yes, you may have your own religion, the cadaverously pale, just-past-post-adolescent pompous primnose [9] preached to a woman twice his age, but only *our* faith has the “true revealed truth“ (I can’t remember the verbatim exchange, but I remember that phrase, and how I’d guffawed at the redundancy).
“Yes, God is beyond our understanding…but let me tell you about him….”
* * *
Department Of And Now For Something (Not So) Completely Different
( excerpt a scene from the movie The Big Kahuna. Three industrial lubricant salesmen, Larry, Phil, and the evangelical Christian Bob, are at a convention in Wichita. In this incisive scene, Phil is speaking to Bob, emphases mine.)
“You preaching Jesus is no different than Larry, or anybody else, preaching lubricants. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha, or civil rights, or how to make money in real estate with no money down. That doesn’t make you a human being. It makes you a marketing rep.
If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are — just to find out — for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation, to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore — it’s a pitch — and you’re not a human being. You’re a marketing rep.”
Or perhaps you prefer the wisdom of *this*Big Kahuna (on the far right) from the world of Gidget surfer-movies.
* * *
May we all have our own favorite example of bliss; May you never give a thought to the quality of anyone’s fingernails; May you enjoy all that damn asparagus; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Yet, without cream. Yep, it’s those dastardly plant-based cooking tricks….
[3] Please do not take this as any form of encouragement to litter in our beautiful national parks.
[4] At least, not metaphorically, from moiself. Who knows what happens in *your* neighborhood?
[5] I just love that title, once reserved for revered people of great age and wisdom in the community, now doled out by the LDS to pimply-faced boys who get the respected title simply by being a male age 18 and up, while a kick ass, grown-ass woman like moiself who is twice their age could never be an Elder in their world.
[6] It’s more than a likely fact, if you are a Mormon missionary. Mormon missionaries are given a list in the neighborhoods they canvas; they don’t waste time showing up at the houses of other Mormons. They know whether or you are not Mormon, because they are given that info by the local Mormon church. Unlike other brands of Christianity, if you are Mormon you do not go to whatever LDS church you like, you go to a certain church – “chapel” – that has a specific geographical area assigned as “their area.” If you live in that geographical area, you are supposed to go to services at that chapel, and your address is noted.
[7] You’ve never seen how white the white boys can be until Mormon missionaries come to your doorstep. I used to think they were selectively bred for their lack of melanin.
[8] I probably don’t need to explain that that was *my* 12-year-old-smartass’s interpretation of their responsibilities as uninvited solicitors, and not my mother’s thoughts.
[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of Now That The Winter Olympics Are Over I Can Get Back To
Considering Issues Of Profound Ethical And Existential Importance®
Host David Marchese: “What do you think we should *do* with the increasing awareness that more animals might be conscious than we previously thought? ….we *know* human beings are conscious and we exploit the hell out of other humans all the time.”
Guest Michael Pollan: “…there’s this whole conversation…that if A.I. is conscious, then we’re going to have to give it moral consideration. Well, really: have we given moral consideration to one another? Have we given moral consideration to the chickens and the cattle that we eat? The answer is no. It doesn’t automatically follow. So, we’re going to have to sort out the ethics.”
Michael Pollan: “Maybe it’s around the ability to suffer. Maybe that’s where you draw the line…but it’s not as easy as: Ital you’re conscious, therefore you have all these rights…. Who we grant personhood to is a very subjective human decision. We give it to corporations, oddly enough, which are not conscious, but there are all sorts of creatures we don’t give it to. I don’t think we’re entirely rational or consistent in our granting of moral consideration.” ( excerpt from journalist and professor Michael Pollan’s interview with David Marchese,
“Michael Pollan says humanity is about to undergo a revolutionary change,” 2-7-26, NY Times podcast The Interview )
So yeah, there’s that. Or….
I could search the incredible volume of available videos online and perhaps find an entire channel devoted to showing a continuous loop of All Races Won By Norwegian XC Skiing Æsir-god Johannes Høsflot Klæbo® .
You know what you need to do.
* * *
Department Of Five Words You Don’t Hear Me (Or Anyone) Saying Very Often…Or At All
“This Norwegian salad dressing rocks!”
Holy Hel [2] and Herring Heritage – it seems moiself is producing a (unintended) Norski theme blog. [3]
Dateline: last week. I finally got around to making this salad dressing, from the innovative mind of Norwegian chef Andreas Viestad. I’d been intending to do so for some time; now, I want this dressing on every lettuce-based salad I eat, for the rest of my life.
Viestad, who also hosts the PBS show New Scandinavian Cooking, pissed off impressed the European gastronomic world by when his cookbook on Norwegian food was selected the “Best Foreign Cookbook in the World” and also was awarded Special Prize Of The Jury at the 2008-2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
Norwegian Salad Dressing (moiself’s adaptation of Andreas Viestad’s recipe; serves 2-3)
Viestad’s recipe uses juice from the lettuce offcuts to make a dressing with an intense lettuce flavor. Use your best lettuce for the salad, and the dressing (which will be an intriguing dark green color).
2 to 3 small heads of your favorite/most flavorful lettuce – one small head of radicchio or other bitter salad green [4] – 1 t Dijon mustard – neutral oil (I use avocado) – splash of lemon juice or any vinegar (optional) – ground black pepper; and a pinch of fresh or dried dill – sea salt to serve
(1) Rinse and tear the greens into bite-sized pieces; dry them in a salad spinner. Set aside the “cutoffs” (inner stems, core, and outer leaves) of the greens. (2) Juice cutoffs in a juicer; strain juice ( you want ~ ¼ c ). [5] (3) Add juice to a jar along an equal amount of oil as juice (or less, as moiselfprefers) the Dijon, the spices, and lemon juice/vinegar; shake well to combine. Mix dressing into the salad leaves, serve w/sea salt sprinkled atop greens.
Many people who eat salad don’t tend to care about (or even notice) the flavor of the lettuce – it’s all about the dressing. [6] Viestad came up with a dressing that uses the bits and pieces of the lettuce that we tend to throw away but where the lettuce flavor is concentrated – almost more lettuce-flavored than the lettuce itself – which is why the greens you use should be your favorites. Y’all foodies may be thinking, Why would you *trust* any salad recipe from a Norwegian? Growing lettuce in the high north might sound like a bad idea, but as one Norski “salad farmer” explained to Andreas, [7] the far northern farms of Norway have good soil, good water, good light, and the cold night temperatures help the salad greens to grow “strong, crispy, and tasty.”
The only reason our household now has a juicer is because moiself wanted to properly make this dressing [1] . I *love love love* this dressing; please try it out, and I must emphasize again that you should do so using the best, flavorful lettuce you can find. On that subject, I hope I don’t have to remind anyone that storebought [8] iceberg “lettuce” is anything other than nasty and flavorless. My favorite description of iceberg lettuce came from an anonymous post on a food-related bulletin board, from a former restaurant worker: “…with the experience I got being an employee I can tell you that iceberg lettuce tastes as poor as my life’s decisions….at the end of the day it’s just water with a cell structure.”
In moiself’s opinion, it was the preponderance of iceberg lettuce in the Titanic’s food storage holds that actually sank the ship (there was a miscommunication when the first mate radioed for help…and the rest is history).
* * *
Department Of Every Senior Person Should Be Taking This Class- Dang, That Means Me As Well…
Moiself is having a hard time identifying with that label, as, according to the various demographics (depending on which ones you consult), you enter senior territory at age 55, or not until 60, or 65, or 70, or 75…. I recently took a Zumba class labeled for that (“senior”) demographic. And now I’m thinking that every person, regardless of age, should also be doing so, if only to provide reason/excuse to get up and shake it instead of sitting on your ass all day commune with your fellow human beings.
I was trying to think of some activity something to stretch or even test my foot recovery. [9] At my most recent postop check (two weeks ago) I asked my doctor if a Zumba class might be good; I’d been searching for something other than what I do at home (neighborhood walking; elliptical and treadmill workouts; yoga; weights and core routines) to give my foot some new challenges. He asked if I’ve done any Zumba before my surgery. No; but I used to do a lot of Jane Fonda workout tapes back in 1990s.
I did the tapes, but not the spandex.
I told the doc that the classes were held at the local community/senior center, so it’s unlikely they’d include ski jump landing preps or ice-skating quadruple jumps or extreme…whatever. Thus, I told him, unless he said no, I was planning on checking out the Zumba class. After briefly examining my foot he gave me his thumbs up– “Feel free to resume normal activities but don’t push till it hurts/do anything stupid.”
So: moiself had my first class on Monday. [10] What can I say? I found it to be so delightful and stimulating that it’s probably banned in countries that frown on people of any age (read: females) moving in ways that distinguish them from infrastructure.
“Now, move to the music…can you even hear the music?”
And by moiself thinking that everyone should take the classes, I don’t mean only the specific brand of class called, Zumba – I’m referring to any exercise class incorporating movement/choreography/what might be called dancing.
Most of us have heard and/or read about how dancing is “good for us;” and most of us don’t have the time or inclination to take formal dance classes, often because we think that you must have a dance partner to do so. And the latter is not the case in a dance fitness class.
Research on multiple levels of study (involving brain health, psychological and social well-being ) suggests that dance-based workouts help protect against the cognitive decline that can happen as people age. From what I’ve read, learning dance/choreography workouts (I’m going to invent the acronym DCW [11] ) reduces stress by boosting your mood through the release of endorphins, providing an outlet for emotional expression, and, when it’s done in a class with other participants, [12] creates and strengthens social connections and a sense of belonging. DCW require focus as you listen to the beat, follow steps, and feel the rhythm – DCW require you to be mindful, as in, putting your mind in the present moment, or more colloquially, paying attention to what you are doing.
So, DCW aren’t just good for your mood – they’re also also great for your brain and your physical coordination. DW enhance cognitive functions, such as memory and spatial awareness and concentration…and yeah, all that’s fantastic, but it’s also just plain fun.
This move is not done in Zumba; still, I challenge you to be in a bad mood when you’re imitating a dog about to pee on a fire hydrant.
Oh yes, the class itself: the instructor (who was a sub for the usual class teacher) was excellent – both chill and enthusiastic. Also, it turns out she has a really great name (even though she spells it wrong [13] ). After the first two dance sections, in the five or so seconds of pause before the instructor queued up the next music, moiself inadvertently blurted out, “Oh, this isfun!” Apparently, in-class out-bursts are not the norm, as the teacher immediately assured the rest of the class, “She’s new.”[14]
( Emma Goldman was Russian-born, radical anarchist activist and lecturer who opposed capitalism and fascism and promoted equality for women, workers’ rights, and free education during the Progressive Era. )
* * *
May your lettuce (or your life) be more than just water with a cell structure; May you find make room for both Issues Of Profound Ethical And Existential Importance® *and* Norwegian sports videos; May your revolution (and exercise) always encourage dancing; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] In the Norse pantheon, Hel is the god (female – let’s do away with this “ess” notation, as if the male gender is the default and the female is the decorative afterthought) of death and the netherworld. Just in case you’re thinking of getting on her good side, Hel’s favorite offerings are tea, chocolate, dried meats, preserved flowers, mead, and raw honey.
[4] Soak radicchio or other bitter greens in ice water (helps tame the bitterness) for at least 15m while you prepare the rest of the recipe, or scroll online for cat videos .
[5] You could also use a heavy duty/high speed blender, like I did the first few times, but this takes some time and it doesn’t work as well, IMO.
[6] Except for MH, who, much to many people’s bewilderment, has always preferred his green salads sans dressing ( he thinks that dressings are or can be a cover for less-than-tasty-greens/other salad ingredients.
[14] Her explanation was probably not necessary, as, from what I could see, all I got was enthusiastic smiles, and no Debbie-Downer Stop Having Fun looks from the other participants.
[15] “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
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?
* * *
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).
* * *
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.
* * *
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.
* * *
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.
* * *
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!
* * *
[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.”
* * *
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]
* * *
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.
* * *
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
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.
