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The Parade I’m Not Saving From Inanity

July 5, 2024

Robyn Parnell community, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, YEE HAW! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Parade I’m Not Saving From Inanity

Department Of Belated Holiday Greetings

 Moiself  be typing this on July 4.  [1]   And I am typiing this at a time when most if not all of my fellow villagers are heading to procure their seats for Manzanita’s annual 4th of July parade.  As close friends and family know, I am a notorious Parade Loather. ®   Even as a child, I found parades boring, not to mention downright confusing.  Why are a bunch of people sitting on either side of a street, watching other people walk down the middle of the street?  But the small-town-ness of Manzanita’s parade has a certain charm, I was told.  Still, after watching it once to confirm that bit o’charm, I found that once was enough.

In 2018 I devised a way to tolerate the parade, and that was by walking in it.   [2]   Since I find parades to be nonsensical, a non sequitur outfit and ITAL raison d’etre seemed appropriate, and the legend of Orange Hat Woman With Spatulas ® was born.

 

 

For the years after that, when the pandemic forced the cancellation of the parade, on the 4th of July 4 I donned my OHWWS outfit and accoutrements, and marched in a circle in the street outside our house while MH played Stars and Stripes Forever     [3]   from our house’s stereo speakers and neighbors tossed paper airplanes across the street.   [4]

Someone who knows I was in the 2018 parade asked if I was going to this year’s parade. I told them the unvarnished truth:  “(IMO), parades are still inane; they’re only not inane when I’m marching in them; thus, this year’s parade will, once again, be inane.”

 

 

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Department Of Quote Of The Week

“When people are in a mindless state, they’re typically in error but rarely in doubt.”

That quote comes from a recent People I Mostly Admire podcast, wherein host Steve Levitt says about his guest, “I cannot think of an academic whose research findings have more consistently surprised me than my guest today.”

That guest (from PIMA’s episode, Pay Attention! (your body will thank you)  was Ellen Langer, the psychologist and researcher who studies the mind-body connection.  As per the Harvard Department of Psychology’s website, Langer “…is considered the mother of mindfulness…

 

Listen to your mother.

 

…and has written five books on the topic…. The Langer Lab conducts research on health, happiness, decision- making, education, business and culture all through the lens of mindfulness.”

Langer told the following story while talking with Levitt about the studies involving the alignment of Western scientific perspective with the eastern Buddhist perspective

Langer:
“Someone once called me, someone doing her PhD, and wanted to know, was mindfulness a fad?… I said, ‘OK, let’s say you burn your toast every morning. And then somebody comes along and shows you that all you need to do is turn the dial down a slight bit and then the toast is no longer going to burn. Is it a fad?’ I mean you’re not going to go back to burning your toast unless you prefer it that way.

It (mindfulness) is not just paying attention.  Because although attention is necessary, it’s not sufficient. There has to be the activity of coming to understand something that is novel, something that is new.

When I started to paint, prior to that, if someone had asked me what color are leaves, I would have said – mindlessly forgetting about the fall when leaves change colors – that leaves are green. Then I start painting, and I start seeing more. You look at trees, and there are hundreds of different color greens that change as the sun changes in the sky, changes in the seasons and so on. Once you wake up, there’s just so much more. Everything feels new and potentially exciting.”

Moiself  loves that sentiment.  A long-time Oregonian, I thought I knew green colors.  Then I traveled to Ireland, and saw in the land and flora a panoply of greens I didn’t know existed.

 

No picture can do it justice.

 

Even more thought-provoking was Langer’s response to Levitt’s question about the process of opening people up to the state of taking a mindfulness approach to life.  She listed three key steps:

(1) The respect for uncertainty ( as in, nobody knows everything for certain
 thus, everything is there to be found out);
(2) Noticing new things, particularly regarding surroundings and people you think
you are familiar with (e.g., notice three new things about the person you live with;
three different ways of doing whatever you’re doing. Look for multiple answers
to any question that you’re asked….)

Langer’s third suggestion is the most intriguing, and most problematic for all of us, I’d guess. It has to do with trying to learn conditionally and to *not* learn how we have been taught to learn – with absolutes, and with memorizing what we are told are unalterable facts.  The “fact” is that even facts are context dependent.  Any first grader will tell you that one plus one equals two.  Langer points out (my emphases) that one and one may be two, but if you’re using a base-two number system one plus one is written as 10. And if you have one pile of sand and add all of that pile of sand to another pile of sand, you don’t have two piles of sand, you have one.

Langer:
“How much is one plus one?… If you add one wad of chewing gum plus one wad of chewing gum, one plus one equals one. So now you have one plus one can be one, can be two, can be 10. ….
Imagine a teacher asks young students, ‘How much is one plus one?’ And little Stevie says, ‘One.’ What’s going to happen? In most classrooms, a teacher is going to try not to look at you like you’re stupid.  You’re going to feel uncomfortable, and possibly set the stage for a lifetime of feeling stupid. Where if the teacher were mindful, the teacher would say, ‘Little Stevie, how did you come to that?’ And then you’d say, ‘If you add one pile of sand to one pile of sand, one plus one is one.’ And now everybody would have learned something.
So everything we’re learning as absolutes makes us think we know, and we don’t know. And when you think you know, you no longer pay any attention. It makes us evaluative of other people who may see a different world.

 

Wait; if I combine these two bowls of guacamole I end up with only one bowl of guacamole?

 

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Department Of More Podcast Jewels
Sub-Department Of You’re Not The Only One This Happens To

In the most recent Hidden Brain podcast, Befriending Your Inner Voice, host Shankar Vedantam discusses with his guest, Psychologist Ethan Kross, that most human of conditions:  the annoying, negative voice that goes round and round in your head.  That voice, which Kross calls chatter, is the one that keeps you up and night and makes it difficult to think of anything else once it gets switched on

Vedantam:
“…the phenomenon of self-doubt (which) in some ways that is also connected to chatter, the ways in which people who are actually very good at doing some things can start to  second guess themselves.  You tell the story of Mr. Rogers, on TV  he came across as serenely self-confident, but behind the scenes it was another picture altogether?”

Kross:
“Yeah, there’s this wonderful chatter artifact of sorts that the New York times published several years ago.  Fred Rogers had gone on a sabbatical a while from his show, and when he came back, he was filled with self-doubt, about whether he’d be able to perform at the same level that he did prior to taking this break.  And in this letter he writes to himself, he very, very candidly expresses that vulnerability.  He writes, ‘Am I kidding myself that I am able to write a script again?  I wonder.  Why don’t I trust myself?  After all these years, it is just as bad as ever.  I wonder if every creative artist goes through the torture of the damned trying to create?  Oh well; the hour cometh, and now *is* when I’ve got to do it.  Get to it, Fred; get to it.’

So, this is really remarkable to me…we’re talking about Mr. Rogers.  Mr. Rogers helped teach *me,* and countless other kids and adults too, how to manage my emotions growing up…and yet here we see him admitting to struggling with his own self-doubt at times…. This is such an important message to convey…it really says, ‘Hey, if you’ve ever experienced chatter; if you’ve ever experienced self-doubt, welcome to the human condition.’ “

 

“Please won’t you be my human condition neighbors, boys and girls?”

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [5] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

*   *   *

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

I hate it when those whose rhetoric and actions indicate that they know almost nothing   [7]   convince their followers that they know everything.

 

*   *   *

May we recognize when one plus one equals something other than two;
May you pay attention to that which you think you know all about;
May you appreciate the piccolos’ part in arguably the best march ever written;   [8]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] y’all be reading this on the 5th or later. Thus, belated.

[2] Manzanita allows basically anyone to walk in the parade, by showing up at an assembly point for walkers (as opposed to those riding in vehicles or performing with groups)

[3] I hate parades, but I LOVE Stars and Stripes Forever.

[4] the latter in place of the Oregon Air National Guard, which, on that day, does a flyby over as many of Oregon’s July 4 parade towns as they can.

[5] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg.  Until I did.

One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens.  No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.

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

[7] Or that if they don’t know something, that something must not be worth knowing.

[8] All together now:  in Stars and Stripes Forever!

The Dream I’m Not Interpreting

June 28, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Me so happy, movies, Oregon, politics, science, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Dream I’m Not Interpreting

*   *   *

Department Of Referencing Moiself

The post is a part two, meant to be read as companion piece to part one, my post of 4-7-23 ( The Upbringing I’m Not Regretting ).  Cliff notes preview:  the subject for part two is my leaving “the church” – specifically, how I told my pastor (but first told moiself ) that I was doing so, via a dream that I’d had.

My dreams range from pastiches of images/seemingly random blurbs from the previous day’s events, to straightforward narratives of events or scenarios realized, to Cecil B. DeMille    [1] style, cast-of-thousands epics, with the occasional/random celebrity cameo.  I think that the scenarios and images contained in my dreams can be

*  both profound and significant, with my unconscious mind using my dreams to work on puzzles, or try to message my conscious mind;

*  due to the random firing of neurons stimulating the brain’s centers of memory and creativity;

* everything above and beyond and in between.

 

 

I had a class in college wherein dream interpretation was mentioned and briefly discussed, [2]   and for a couple of months after that, I kept a dream journal. Upon waking in the morning – or sometimes in the middle of the night, when one of my dreams was either so intense or ludicrous that my brain decided to rouse me from sleep with a what the hell was that? –  I wrote down whatever dreams I could remember. I wrote what I wrote and put that journal away until the next dream; I purposefully did not read the journal entries until several months had passed.  My idea was to try to view what I’d dreamed with new (or newer) eyes and perspective.

When I did go back and read them, I was astonished.  Employing images and scenarios that were in turns realistic, fanciful, or outrageous, my brain apparently was using my dreams to work out/try to identify ongoing dilemmas relating to my school studies, my job, my boyfriend(s), my relationships with my apartment mates, my past, present, and future…  Yeah, like, that would be, My Life ® .

My subconscious mind – likely the hippocampus, an area in the temporal lobe which is believed to be key in dreaming and imagination, and not to be confused with the part of a college where large semiaquatic mammals native to sub-Saharan Africa hang out….

 

“Are you sure this is the way to the dining commons?”

 

I’ll try that again.

My subconscious mind – likely the hippocampus, an area in the temporal lobe which is believed to be key in dreaming and imagination – knew things that my conscious mind was apparently unable or unwilling to deal with.  And in that sense, my dreams were my attempt to send a message to moiself.

Although I was fascinated (and at times embarrassed)  to read my dreams, I was busy with work and classes, and fell out of the habit of writing them down.  Then,

 

 

As in, Hillsboro, OR, one winter weekend morning almost twenty years ago.

Moiself  awoke in a state of some agitation.  As MH and I packed up the car and kids for our day trip to Mt. Hood, I asked if he would mind driving  as I needed to “…write something down.”  Once we were on the road I opened the blank spiral notebook I’d grabbed at the last minute and wrote down the source of my agitation: the early morning dream I’d had.

I hadn’t consistently written down my dreams since college. This time after writing down my dream I did not set the notebook aside, but read through it again…and again…and again.  Later that day, after we’d returned to Hillsboro, I told MH about my dream.  I told MH that my brain was sending me a gigantamous, face-palm of a message:

You.  Have.  To.  Leave.

You have to leave “the church;” as in, religious attendance and affiliation.

Your involvement has served its purposes (see 4-7-23 post for what that was).

Continued involvement, even in the liberal/progressive UCC, will not only give you
an increasingly severe case of cognitive and ethical dissonance but will
actually be harmful to the children you are trying to educate and raise with integrity.

I stopped going to church.

The pastor of the church (“Pastor D____”) our family attended was a person I liked and admired, as well as being one of the most well-read people I have ever met.  A month or so after I’d had the dream she called to ask me if she could take me to lunch to discuss why I had left the church.  Sure, I said, then asked if I could email her the narrative of my dream, so that she could read it before we met up.   [3]    Pastor D____ agreed, which probably accounted for the pleasant lunch that we had.

D____ in no way tried to refute or chastise me, or convince me that my decision was wrong.  In fact, she told me that after reading my account of my dream she’d realized that, “Yes, it’s true, you don’t belong in the church.”

 

 

Yup; really.

And we enjoyed our chai teas and the Indian restaurant’s ample lunch buffet, and talked about…other stuff.

Over the years I’d shared my perspectives on Christian theology with D____, and through my participation in the weekly nonfiction book   [4]  group that she led, she was aware that I was not a “true believer,” even when it came into the UCC’s liberal theological/social gospel interpretations.  What she was not aware of was that when it became my turn to serve as a deacon   [5]   and I was setting up for a church service, I would perform my own little acts of dissension, such as (but not limited to) the following.

In our church there was an enormous King James Bible kept on a platform behind the altar (the hefty tome had been donated by two church member in honor of their late son; the UCC is not a King James-ish denomination when it comes to bible translations ).   It was customary to have that bible open to the pages of whatever Old Testament reading had been chosen for that particular Sunday’s service (even though, with extremely rare exceptions, the laypersons doing the scripture readings did not read from that KJ bible).  When doing my Deacon set-up tasks, instead of opening that bible to the page(s) featuring the morning reading I would find a nearby page which contained a particularly odious passage, such as the Psalm which lauds dashing the infants of one’s enemies upon rocks ( Psalm 137) , or the Hebrew god’s directions of how and when to kidnap and rape women (Judges 21:10-24; Numbers 31:7-18, ad nauseum….) or the story of Yaweh sending bears to maul boys who had teased a prophet about his baldness (2 Kings 2:23)….

 


I hadn’t told Pastor D____ about that little petty prank of mine.   I had told her other things, and she’s always assured me that those beliefs/disbeliefs of mine, those “arguments” I had with the tents of religion, were exactly why my presence and perspective was needed in church.  Thus, during our lunch, after having read my dream, D____ apparently felt no need to discuss my reasons with me. She did say at one point that while it came as a disappointment to her that I was leaving (the church), it did *not* come as a surprise, considering how I’d “…made many close friendships with __________”  (she named several people who had attended the church at one point, and then left).

Much like writing down a dream, setting it aside and thinking about it later, that remark of Pastor D___’s came back to me.  When I shared it with MH, he reached the same conclusion about/interpretation of it, as moiself:

“In a way it’s like she *wants* you to go,
before you stay longer and influence others to leave as well.”

And now, the dream (followed by my thoughts about it, written later that same day, after I’d reread what I’d written):

*   *   *

The Dream ® :  early Wednesday morning, April 20, 2005

I am looking at an old house that is for sale.  Design or style-wise, it is a combination Victorian and what I call “Grandma house,” with many classic features, from the glass & brass doorknobs to hardwood floors, moldings, built-ins, and exceptional woodwork.

Pastor D___ is showing me the house.  I’m unclear as to whether she is selling it; i.e., whether it is her house that is for sale, or whether she is acting as an agent for another party.  The house has been newly remodeled and upgraded; I glance out a window and see workmen, their trucks parked in front of the house, packing up ladders and painting supplies.  D___ tells me about the new plumbing and points out the fresh paint in many of the rooms and talks about the upgrades, which are very eye-catching.

Then I see the basement/first floor (I’m not sure which it was; we seemed to start touring the house in the middle floor, and the house had at least three floors), and I am astonished.  The basement/ground floor is an absolute disaster.  Its wooden flooring is old and rotting; paint has been randomly flung on the walls; floorboards and moldings are missing or pulled out and splintered, light fixtures are missing or damaged, woodchips and sawdust litter the floors….  I ask D____ if the remodeling will be finished soon, possibly by the workmen I’d seen outside?  No, she tells me, they are packing up and not returning – they’re finished with this particular house.

D____ senses my disappointment, and points out that I can finish the job myself or hire another remodeling crew…and then she offers to lower the price to $305,000. (I can’t remember the asking price, but it was a good deal higher).  I know that 305k would be a good price – a great deal, really – for that kind of house, if the house was in top condition, but its ground floor needs BIU extensive work, and I have neither the time, the skills, nor the desire to do it myself.  I add up the time, materials and labor costs, estimating what it would take to get the floor in shape (I’ve been looking at similar style houses for some time and have comparison prices in my head) and am quite discouraged, as it would be less costly to just tear the place down and start over.

I tell D____ that I appreciate her showing me the house, and while it may be a good price for what it is, I just can’t buy it.

*    *    *   

I just can’t buy it.

How obvious can my subconscious get?!?!  The last line of my dream, not-so-subtly screaming out what’s been eating at me.

(And it is about what’s eating me.  Despite K’s and Belle’s discussing their objections to bible-religion/”church stuff” with me over the years, they were not in the dream, nor was MH.)

I like many things about the UCC Hillsboro congregation in particular and the UCC denomination in general.  But, for all our/their remodeling, they are still a Christian church in a Christian denomination, and the ground floor — Christian theology in particular, religion in general — is, to me, a mess:  archaic, in shambles, needing to be replaced or simply razed.  I also love, respect and admire Pastor D____ for what she is, and for what she does and tries to do.  I appreciate the “deal” she has made for (people like) me, but I can’t buy it.  I can’t buy Christianity – even the laissez-faire, UCC brand – for what it is.

I’m certain that there have been several recent triggers for this dream, including the Sunday when a family from our kids’ school attended our church.  There was a baptism, and I remembered experiencing discomfort and even embarrassment on their behalf (or mine?)  when I listened to – actually paid attention to –  the baptism liturgy and thought, yet again, I don’t believe this stuff.   That the “waters of baptism” confer any special blessing or standing – that’s voodoo/chicken bones talk.  Much if not all of it is symbolic and/or metaphorical, I realize, but that’s not what was said (and then, what’s the point for using the symbols and metaphors?).  The new member class I attended (as a longtime member who was there to meet potential new members) also brought uncomfortable issues to mind, as does almost any meeting where church policy related to theology is discussed.  The new member attendees were all pleasant people, but listening to their experiences and ideas of what a church is or should be was awkward for me.  When ZM mentioned how she was unfamiliar with the Bible, having grown up in a Hindu household, and was learning about it through the children’s sermon and her daughter’s children’s Bible, I found myself wanting to blurt out, RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!, or at least, “Don’t go any further than the kiddie version, or you might not like what you find.”

These feelings are nothing new to me.  Participating in a “worship” service of any kind has always been a matter of toleration, as I find the whole concept itself to be silly at best.  I don’t know what this means in terms of practical application; it’s not like I feel I must Leave The Church ®  this very moment.***  I think they/we are mostly trying to do good in the world, and I enjoy the community.  But the intensity of my concerns has increased…and it’s not just a social club, it’s a church.  The community, as nice as I may find the members, is based on and organized around the false premises of religion, and I’m not good at pretending to not know what I know.

The intellectual dishonesty of the rationale for continuing to participate in church stuff – to support a more liberal group to help counter the Right/conservative religious voice (aka the  “voting for moderates” justification, as per MH’s reason for why he remains registered as a Republican) –  is no longer enough, for me.  By being part of a religion, even a relatively progressive one, I lend credence to ideas that, in their application, are dangerous and just plain wrong, including

(1)  the standards of reason, judgment and evidence I apply to every other facet of life may be set aside for matters of “faith;”

(2)  extraordinary propositions can be believed without evidence;

(3)  that, by applying interpretation and razor’s edge scholarship (read: by rationalizing myth, fallacy, ignorance and atrocity) the Christian bible – or anyone’s bible –  is an appropriate and even a good lens through which humanity may view present day circumstances.

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

When I became convinced that the Universe is natural – that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world – not even in infinite space.
I was free – free to think, to express my thoughts – free to live to my own ideal – free to live for myself and those I loved — free to use all my faculties, all my senses – free to spread imagination’s wings – free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope – free to judge and determine for myself –  free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the “inspired” books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past – free from popes and priests – free from all the “called” and “set apart” – free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies – free from the fear of eternal pain – free from the winged monsters of the night – free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the first time I was free.

(as quoted, in Leaving Christianity, from Why I Am Agnostic, by Robert Green Ingersoll.  Ingersoll [1833-1899], nicknamed “the great agnostic,” was American politician and orator, humanistic and scientific rationalism philosopher during the Golden Age of Freethought    [7]  )

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when my dreams are stylishly consistent.

Example: Godzilla once had a cameo in a dream of mine.  The dream had started in color, switched to black and white during Godzilla’s scene, then went back to color when Godzilla left.  Up until then, the only Godzilla movies I’d seen were filmed in B & W.

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember the dreams that are worth remembering;
May you remember that any dream you remember is worth remembering;
May you pay attention to what your subconscious is telling you;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

*** Even though I did.

[1] Am I dating moiself  with that reference? Should I use Spielberg, or Nolan, or Cameron, or the casts-of-thousands directors of today?  But then, today’s cast of thousands are maybe a cast of 6 actual actors with 1,974 CGIs….

[2] The jist of the discussion being that no dream can “mean” anything out of context for the one doing the dreaming – no object in th dream “represents” any thing or idea for all people.  Or as that influential but misogynistic man of his times/founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud once admitted, Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[3] I made no formal proclamation of dissociation or anything like that; I didn’t even really tell anyone. I just stopped going.  MH was not ready to do the same, so he continued for a few weeks, taking the kids at first.  When our offspring realized they had a choice, they elected to stay home with me.  We were all still in the habit of having a certain amount of hours set aside on Sunday, and used that time to go to nearby city park, taking our trigger-handled trash grabbers and large trash bags.  We’d roam the grounds of the park,  picking up the plethora of garbage (fast food wrappers, beer bottle caps, etc.) which the park users somehow neglected to escort to the park’s many and ample trash bins. 

[4] Subjects ranging from science and theology, comparative religion, religious history, critiques of religion….

[5] Duties vary widely between denominations and congregations, but generally a deacon is a church member who helps out the pastor and/or church members with, for example, setting up the sanctuary for the church service and then cleaning up afterward.

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

[7]  “The Golden Age of Freethought is the mid-19th-century period in United States history which saw the development of the socio-political movement promoting freethought. Anti-authoritarian and intellectually liberating historical eras had existed many times in history, notably in eighteenth century France. But the period roughly from 1875 to 1914 is referred to by at least one contemporary writer as “the high-water mark of freethought as an influential movement in American society”….   Freethought is a philosophical position that holds that ideas and opinions should be based on science and reason, and not restricted by authority, tradition, or religion. It is characteristic of the 18th century Enlightenment but hardly confined to any one epoch or place. The late nineteenth century American Golden Age was encouraged by the lectures of the extremely popular agnostic orator Robert Green Ingersoll, the popularization of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the push for women’s suffrage, and other political, scientific, and social trends that clashed with religious orthodoxy and caused people to question the traditional ideas about the world that they encountered in received opinion.”  (excerpts, Wikipedia, The Golden Age of Freethought )

The Supernatural Bread Explanation I’m Not Appreciating

June 14, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, community, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, nature, politics, Recreation, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Supernatural Bread Explanation I’m Not Appreciating

Department Of How Am I Just Now Seeing This Movie?

That would be A Million Ways To Die In The West. 

AMWTDITW is a takeoff of a specific genre, ala the Airplane/Police Squad/Naked Gun lampoons of, respectively, disaster/detective/mystery movies.  AMWTDITW’s writer/director/producer/lead Actor Seth MacFarlane pays respects, in a way, to that most American of movie genres, the western, and his AMWTDITW is the even more profane and scatological, red-headed stepchild of Blazing Saddles (and thus might not be everyone’s cup of whiskey). 

Just about every western cliché gets its moment, with a few contemporary updates (e.g. MacFarlane’s mild-mannered sheep farmer protagonist debates self-esteem issues and gently chastises his fellow Old West townsfolk when they use ethnic slurs).  I started watching AMWTDITW on Monday, during my morning pre-breakfast/pre-yoga, ~ 35 m elliptical warmup, and finished two days later.  Other movies and series I have watched or am watching during elliptical time include Tacoma FD and Fisk, both of which my spirit animal recommends.

 

 

Hats off to the composer of the AMWTDITW score; the opening theme in particular is a mahhhhvelous homage to the classic western movie soundtracks.  And I’ll put more hats on, just to be able to take them off to Netflix, for adding this to their streaming recommendations for moiself.

And the last hat goes off to one of the best movie sight gags I’ve seen, involving a sheep.    [1]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Wildlife Identification

What is this?

 

Did you guess that it’s an antiskid pad that is glued to the foot of the legs of one of our kitchen table chairs – a pad   [2]   which detaches itself, and then is patiently reglued by MH, at least 10x per year for the past twenty-seven years?  You are correct.

I’ve seen it on the floor a million times….okay; more like 270 times, according to the above estimate.  So why then, last Friday afternoon, did moiself  see the pad on the floor and for the first time realize that it reminded me of the door to a trapdoor spider’s burrow?

 

 

That long time ago would be in the galaxy which contains the city of San Diego, where my family lived for two years, during what was moiself ‘s  kindergarten and first grade years.   [3]  The house we rented was on the rim of one of the many canyons winding through the city – a canyon my sisters and I and our neighbor friends considered to be an extension of our backyards.  We spent many glorious afternoons – and almost all of the summer days that we weren’t at the beach – exploring and playing down in the canyon, experiencing what now might be referred to as a “free roaming”  or “free range” childhood.  (Sadly, I have little doubt that when MH and I took the parenthood plunge in the mid-90s, were we to have let our own children have such freedoms   [4]   someone would have sicced Child Protective Services on us.)

There were all kinds of critters and trees and bushes and cacti and dirt paths in the canyon, and a small creek that somehow managed to survive even in the summer heat. My friends and my “canyon games” included Desert Scientist, Runaways In the Forest; Tracking the Wayward Outlaw, Pioneers Exploring the Prairie, and so on.  As for the latter game, I had to temper my fascination with the local flora after getting chewed out by my mother one afternoon. “How can a straight-A student be so stupid?!?!” she muttered, while she used a pair of pliers to tediously yank, one by one, the spines out of my jeans pocket – spines from the “baby cactus” knob that I thought was so cute I had to take it home to show my folks.   [5]

The canyon’s many snake holes and trapdoor spider dens were among my favorite canyon features to explore.   [6]  My friends and I sometimes played a version of Ding Dong ditch with the latter.  A trapdoor spider constructs the door to its burrow using dirt and plant material that the spider hinges on one side with its silk.  The TD spider then places twigs round the door, and weaves some of its silk as “triplines” around the twigs and down into its burrow.  When we found the telltale door to a TD spider’s burrow, we’d tap the ground around the twigs and the trapdoor (or sometimes tug on the twigs), mimicking the vibrations of passing prey, then raise our fingers as the trapdoor flew open and the spider quickly lunged out of its burrow.  The TD spider, realizing that instead of a juicy grasshopper within its reach there were just a bunch of giggling juvenile hominids, would flash its eight eyes in an expression that seven-year-old moiself  interpreted as the arachnid equivalent of, “You gawddamn kids get off my lawn!,” and just as quickly back down into its burrow and pull the door shut.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The God That Is Not In The Gluten

Dateline:  last Saturday; 12-1:30pm; the classroom of a local gourmet grocery store/café which offers culinary classes; attending a sourdough baking class with 12 other civilians.

While chatting with the students standing on either side of me and overhearing the comments of others, moiself  surmises that the class is roughly 50% newbie sourdough bakers, and 50% experienced sourdough bakers who are interested in expanding tips and techniques.   [7]  The class teacher (whom I had met a few months ago, while buying one of the sourdough boules he makes on the weekend and sells in that store), is a fulltime middle school teacher.  He introduces himself and says a little about what got him into baking sourdough bread, which he took up as a hobby during his spare time when he was in the Middle East “…on a Christian mission.”

 

 

Yeah, I know.  Moiself  be thinking, why is this detail necessary? Is he one of *those* (Gotta take gotta make, every opportunity to witness!)?  Well, he’s a genial guy, so, let’s hope he got that out of his system and now it’s on to the bread.

Obviously, in a 1½ hour sourdough baking class there will be no start-to-finish product; rather, each student is presented with premeasured ingredients, and goes through the processes of feeding the starter and mixing the dough, gets tips on shaping and rising and scoring the loaf and baking, and gets to take home the dough they’ll mix, with instructions to bake it the next day.

 

 

Near the end of the class the teacher brings out an enormous bin of dough that he’d mixed five hours earlier, to show the class what the sourdough will look and feel like after the  recommended five-hour rest.  He will divide the dough into 12 equal portions, and each member of the class will get to practice different techniques in folding and pre-shaping the dough, reshaping the dough, transferring the dough to a rising bowl…  This ready-for final-rise dough we will also be able to take home, to bake at a later time.

As he stands at the head of class he taps his fingers against the dough peeking out around the edges of the bin, and gives a brief explanation of how flour and water combine to make bread.  Many people mistakenly think wheat flour contains gluten.  The two main components of wheat flour are starch and two proteins, glutenin and gliadin.    [8]   When wheat flour is mixed with water , this action helps combine the two proteins, which form gluten.

Correct.  But then he has to add, “And this is where, as a Christian, I see the hand of god…” and he hovers his hands over the dough.

 

 

And this is where, as a religion-free, reality-loving person, I somehow manage to prevent moiself  from doing a face palm (if only to keep my forehead flour-free).

What I want to say, but don’t:

“And this is where, as an Atheist, I see chemistry….”

…and physics, if you wanted to go even further into the explanation of the chemical bonds and structures of the proteins involved.
The point: there is nothing supernatural about how you go from flour + water + salt + leavening agent + time + heat = bread.

Again: this is where *I* see chemistry.  You know, the chemistry you just mentioned to the class.  You gave a brief, fact-based, natural world explanation of what happens when you make bread, then you introduce the supernatural?  Why?
Perhaps the bakers of ancient times raised their hands in prayer to Vesta when they put their loaves in the communal ovens, but most of us we now know that there is nothing magical/supernatural about baking….”

 

Does he also sees “the hand of god” in other natural processes?

 

Sometimes, classes for which you registered online send you a questionnaire or survey link after the class is over, so that you may offer feedback to the class’s organizers and/or teachers.  I keep checking my email, hoping to have the opportunity to offer a more abbreviated version of, “Hey, the class was mostly fun and useful, but I did not appreciate the teacher referencing his    [9]  religion in a baking class.  I found it odd that he credited an imaginary deity the supernatural within seconds of having mentioned the scientific explanation of how gluten is formed.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

Hubert Reeves, Canadian astrophysicist

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when a religious believer who makes supernatural attributions to culinary results and a baker who is religion-free can use the same recipe and ingredients, follow the same instructions, and produce equally yummy-looking and tasting bread loaves.   [11]

*   *   *

May you raise your hands in praise of the person who gives you homemade bread;
May you be inspired to re-watch your favorite spoof movie;
May you never feel too old to play ding-dong ditch;    [12]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] No no no – and shame of you for even thinking that.

[2] Not to pick on that particular chair pad; none of them stay on for long.

[3] Due to my father’s temporary work transfer.  He was being groomed to be the chief of the audit division of one of the IRS’s 33 districts, a position he later turned down, as the promotion would have required permanent relocation, and his devoted wife and snippy little ungrateful bastards loving children told him they would refuse to leave So Cal!  (He was promoted to Assistant Chief of the audit division of the Los Angeles district, a title he retained until he retired).  My parents, knowing the transfer was temporary/for training purposes, rented out our Santa Ana house and in turn found a house to rent in San Diego for two years.

[4] We’ve never lived by a canyon or any large open area, but if we’d just allowed our kids to roam the neighborhood for hours, arranging play on their own with the neighbor kids without parentally supervised and/or arranged play  dates (which is how I was raised), I know someone would have called the cops on us.

[5] How I managed to get it in my pocket without sticking my fingers, I’ll never know.  Yet, that’s what I did.

[6] I discovered that western diamondbacks will give you a percussion performance with their rattles if you jab a stick down the gopher holes they are occupying.

[7] Rice flour is great for getting sticky dough off of your hands!

[8] Actually, he only mentioned the gliadin.

[9] Besides Friendly Neighborhood Atheist® moiself (and at least one other, if I gauge the eye-rolling reaction of another class participant correctly), I’m fairly certain (judging from conversations overheard/jewelry worn) there was at least one Muslim and one Jew among the other students.

[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

[11] Which proves the religion-free person’s point. 

[12] Except that, dammit!, everyone’s porch has cameras these days, so the anonymity is gone.

The Situations I’m Not Dismissing

June 7, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Situations I’m Not Dismissing

Department Of Props For Keeping The Mystery A Mystery

I am writing this portion of the blog on June 3 – the day, according to singer/songwriter Bobbie Gentry, that Billie Joey McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge.

 

 

 

Gentry’s Ode To Billie Joe  is arguably the greatest song mystery never revealed.   [1]    Class act that Gentry is, I hope she takes that lyrical secret – what Billie Joe and the song’s narrator threw off the Tallahassee bridge –  to her grave.

*   *   *

Department Of Conditional Considerations

“Ideal for pre-existing foot conditions.”

The above teaser, for an ad promoting some orthopedic-looking sandals, caught my attention as moiself  scrolled online, looking for a friend’s social media post.  Distraction ensued, in the form of a wee bit o’ existential crisis.  Translation:  I spent way too much time trying to figure out the ad’s wording.

Pre-existing foot conditions.  Pre-existing; well, yes, I have a foot – two, lucky moiself! – and they existed prior to seeing or thinking about sandals or any other footwear…. So, ’tis likely not the foot which is preexisting, but the *conditions*.  Specifically, foot conditions; as in, conditions of the foot?  And conditions, as in the classic definition….

 

 

Here’s what Webster’s online offers, for condition:

1a: a premise upon which the fulfillment of an agreement depends; a stipulation
b: obsolete : covenant
c: a provision making the effect of a legal instrument contingent upon an uncertain event
must meet the terms and conditions of the contract
2 : something essential to the appearance or occurrence of something else: PREREQUISITE: such as
a: an environmental requirement (Available oxygen is an essential condition for animal life).
b: the clause of a conditional sentence
3 a: a restricting or modifying factor : QUALIFICATION
b: an unsatisfactory academic grade that may be raised by doing additional work
4a: a state of being  (ITALthe human condition)
b: social status : RANK
c: a usually defective state of health  a serious heart condition)
d: a state of physical fitness or readiness for use (The car was in good condition).

We have to go all the way to 4c to get into the definition which mosty likely applies to the sandals ad:  foot “conditions,” I suspect, is meant to reference or imply conditions as in foot problems (no arches; high arches; fallen arches; bunions; hammer toes; mallet toes; claw toes; twinkle toes; 18 toes….)

It’s possible moiself  is overanalyzing this.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Moiself’s  Many Mottoes
Episode 363, Regarding Ethics

Context.  Is.  Everything.

Without the test of context, your ethics – your sense of or proclamations about morality – are theoretical, at best.  I was reminded of that while listening to a recent Hidden Brain podcast, Innovation 2.0: the influence you have.  HB host Shankar Vedantam was talking about the work of Stanley Milgram, the Yale social psychologist known for his controversial research on human obedience to authority.   [2]

Vedantam:
Stanley Milgram grew up in a world that seemed bent on destroying itself. World War II was raging in Europe and Asia, and by the time he was 8, the U.S. was swept up in the conflict….
The fields of battle were far from Stanley’s home. But as he grew older, he couldn’t stop thinking about the war and its implications. Stanley was consumed by some big questions. Why did so many people willingly kill Jews in the Holocaust? Was everyone who followed Nazi orders inherently evil?

Stanley Milgram (video soundbite):
How is it possible, I ask myself, that ordinary people, who are courteous and decent in everyday life, can act callously, inhumanely, without any limitations of conscience?….

Vedantam:
As a high school student, (Milgram) was worried that the Holocaust could happen again in America. And everybody said, Stanley, that was Nazi Germany. That was then. We’re not that kind of people. And he would say,
I’ll bet they thought the same thing. And the bottom line, he says, is how do you know how you would act unless you’re in the situation?

How do you know how you would act unless you’re in the situation? Stanley’s theory was that the context that people found themselves in shaped their behavior. This went for Nazis, but it went for ordinary people, too.
Most of us never get to find out if we will behave like Nazis because most of us never find ourselves in situations where we’re asked to behave like Nazis.( excerpts from Hidden Brain podcast, Innovation 2.0: the influence you have,  my emphases )

 

 

Most of us never get to find out if we will behave like Nazis because
most of us never find ourselves in situations
where we’re asked to behave like Nazis.

Remember the debates about Situational Ethics    [3]  ( SE, which I’ve heard referred to as ethical contextualism)?  I don’t hear much about it now.  However, I have memories from my high school and college years, when it seemed to be quite fashionable – a “requirement” of sorts – in Christian circles to dismiss the legitimacy of SE.

Dateline: A late afternoon, when moiself  was in college, at a bible study/social group which I occasionally attended.  One group member brought up situational ethics, and a lively debate ensued.  But it was a debate only because moiself  was involved; the others in the group were all in agreement that SE was a bad thing (even though – surprise! – a couple of the most vociferous anti-SE -ers couldn’t even define it when asked them to do so).

How could anyone justify SE? I was told.  Viewing ethics through the lens of situation is “subjective” and “individualistic,” and contradicts our god’s will as revealed in scripture.

There I was, in yet another situation wherein I almost outed moiself  as a humanist and freethinker, that time by disagreeing with the group’s disappointingly naïve, reductionist arguments.  Looking back, I don’t know why the group’s opinions surprised and disappointed me.  Their religion’s theology was so wrong about the natural world, why would it be a shocker that they would also be wrong about the basics of behavioral psychology?

Ethics do not exist in a void – they are only, and always, situational.  It’s uncomplicated to be ethical in theory; your ethics become credible, and are manifest, only when they are applied to a situation.  People who think that ethics or principles are black-and-white issues are morally colorblind.

I rolled up moiself’s  metaphorical sleeves and got to work.

 

 

“Lying is wrong; you shouldn’t lie.”  I used this classic “fact” that most people would agree with, then brought up examples of the telling of Little White Lies ® to spare someone’s feelings.  Let’s say your toddler nephew presents you with the picture he drew of your cat and asks you what you think of his artwork, after which his mother proudly models for you the new designer jeans she just purchased and says, “I’m so excited – my first pair of Calvin Kleins!  But really, do these pants make my ass look fat?”

 

 

Who, under the umbrella of ruthless truthfulness, would

(1)  tell your nephew the truth – you think that the alleged “cat” he rendered (in a series of hideous colors which look like something the cat barfed up) disturbingly resembles a monster from the Alien movies;

(2) answer your sister with the truth – that it’s not the pants that make her ass look fat, it’s her fat ass that makes her ass look fat.

Most of the group agreed with the concept that some “truths” might be less essential than others, and that erring on the side of kindness to spare someone’s feelings is usually an allowable (and sometimes even preferable) course of action.  But a couple of arguers disagreed: they were adamant that even those kind of white lies lead to the slippery slope® of justifiable dishonesty.

Alrighty, the naysayers asked for it.  How about this scenario? I asked:  [4]

Dateline: 6 pm on a weekday.  Responding to the insistent knocking, you open your front door and behold Ray, your friend Janelle’s husband.  Ray is disheveled and wild-eyed, and you know that on the previous day Janelle filed for a restraining on Ray, after he’d pistol-whipped her with his recently purchased handgun.  Ray asks you if you’ve seen Janelle – “She’s not at home; she won’t answer my calls; I’m worried about her…Have you seen her today?  Do you know where she is?”

Not only have you seen Janelle, you know exactly where she is…because you are the one who helped Janelle pack her suitcase and drove her to the women’s shelter.

How can your ethics tell you, in that situation, anything other than to LIE YOUR ASS OFF to Ray?   [5]

Don’t ever lecture me about the evils of situational ethics if your consistent, non-contextual ethics would require you to truthfully answer Ray’s question.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [6] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when I feel gratitude for never having been in situations where I was asked to behave like a Nazi.

 

 

*   *   *

May social media ad content keep you on your (non-condition-stricken) toes;
May you consistently practice situational ethics;
May you always wonder why Billie Joe jumped off that bridge;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1]  Along with what man is the subject of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain.

[2] The Milgrim Experiment was his most famous, and controversial research.  The Milgram experiment examined people’s willingness to obey authority.  Participants in the study were instructed to administer electric shocks to a learner, even when that obedience caused harm to the learner.  The results of the study showed that the majority of participants continued to administer shocks to the maximum level when they were told to do so by the experiment’s authority figure, even when they believed that the shocks were causing serious harm.

[3]  “Situation ethics (contextualism).  In situation ethics, right and wrong depend upon the situation.  There are no universal moral rules or rights – each case is unique and deserves a unique solution.  Situation ethics rejects ‘prefabricated decisions and prescriptive rules’. It teaches that ethical decisions should follow flexible guidelines rather than absolute rules, and be taken on a case by case basis.” (Ethics guide; situation ethics, BBC )

[4] One example which, sadly, I did not have to invent, as several like it were relayed to me by a woman who worked at a domestic violence hotline.

[5] And say whatever else to get him off your porch, after which you telephone (a) the police and (b) the women’s shelter.

[6] 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.

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

The Dawn I’m Not Cracking

May 24, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, school, science, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Dawn I’m Not Cracking

Department Of This Is Neither Here Nor There,
But Now It’s Here

Some Well-Meaning Person ® didn’t deserve the answer they got when they asked this question about my sleeping schedule:

WMP®:
“So then, you get up at the crack of dawn?”

Moiself:
“It’s more like I get up at the butt crack of dawn.”

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of The Mormon Witnessing Story

Not as in, moiself  witnessing to Mormons, or Mormons trying to witness to moiself  (hmm, department of, this department needs a better title?).  This story involves me being a witness to some folk who were attempting to “witness” (read: condemn and harass) a local Mormon congregation, which I somehow manage to link to the story of what happened to my offspring when they visited relatives for a weekend.

Background for the Mormon witnessing story:  a Cliff’s Notes version of why happy heretic moiself  and MH used to be members of a Christian church, and took our children there regularly, for many years.  I’ve known for decades – as far back as when I was a stellar Lutheran Sunday school student    [1]    –  that I am not a religious believer.  However, similar to the experience of many “I-knew-I-was-gay-in-the-third-grade” LGBTQ folk, I mostly kept my non (and even anti-) religious thoughts to moiself,  as there were few-to-no options or role models when it came to being out of that particular closet.  It seemed obvious to moiself, even/especially as a young’un, that myth and superstition ruled the world; thus, the choice (which children don’t have, until they fledge) was to align yourself with the denomination with the least whackadoodle worldviews.

 

 

MH once explained to a friend, who’d questioned MH on his political registration as a Republican despite MH supporting so many causes antithetical to true conservatives, that he felt a duty to support moderate viewpoints within an influential institution that seemed in danger of slipping even further to the right.    [2]    A similar analogy applies as to why MH and I took our children to a church.

More than one friend or family member has asked moiself, why did I   [3]   join a Christian church ( a very liberal/progressive one, but still, a Christian church) and take my kids to it for years, despite knowing for as far back as I remember thinking about such things (if not for all of my life) that I was not a religious believer?  Well….when MH and I were preparing to have children, I realized that not that much seemed to have changed since I was a child:  religious ideas still seemed to run the world; thus, I wanted my kids to get some firsthand knowledge of it…even as I viewed it (religion) in terms of a disease.  That is, my participation in religion and allowing my kids to experience and learn about religion was done from a medicinal POV. 

 

Yes, really. 

Part of the reasons MH and I joined a church and stayed for so long (until our children were ages 12 and 9, respectively), is that we wanted them to choose or reject religion from knowledge, not ignorance.  Despite (or perhaps, because of ) my conclusions as to the false premises of religion,    [4]   I wanted K and Belle to have an opportunity to learn firsthand about religion.  I thought it was important that they understand religion as a common human/cultural expression and institution, but also important that they be kept free of the repulsive ideas common to most religions, such as they would either be rewarded in a heaven or punished in a hell based on what they think about religion ( thus we joined a “liberal” Christian denomination, the UCC    [5]  ).

We did it as a form of inoculation; we wanted K and Belle to get an education about our nation’s dominant religion, but not in a church where they would hear theologies of condemnation and damnation for those who didn’t agree with cognitive absurdities certain theological tenants.  Frankly, I thought it was (and still think it is  [6]  ) better to expose your children to a relatively benign form of Christianity, like that of the UCC (United Church of Christ denomination) or the Liberal Quakers, than to completely avoid religion.  I have heard this practice referred to as the smallpox theory of religion:  exposure to a mild form of religion is likely to inoculate your children against more virulent forms of religion.  If they didn’t get a mild dose of religion when they were young they might catch a more extreme form of it later on.

 

 

So:  I was a member of a weekly morning book study group at that afore-mentioned UCC church.  Over ten+ years the group read and discussed a theology/comparative religion Ph.D.  student’s worth of books analyzing and comparing (and sometimes rebutting) religious history and theology.   [7]   One morning as the book group session was ending, a church member (who was not a book club member) stopped by to tell us she’d seen something she thought we should know about.  The previous evening she’d read a newspaper story about a group of traveling evangelists who were holding tent revival meetings near the local fairgrounds, and after the meeting the leaders of the revival would go and “witness to” (in the form of picketing outside) churches that they considered to be heretical (Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others.  [8] )  That morning on her way to work she’d driven on a road which passed the local Mormon church, and she saw protestors on the road outside of the church, holding up signs that….condemned the church and its members?  She wasn’t sure; the signs were hard to read, and the road had no safe place to pull over, so she just slowed down and took note.  She wanted to alert us as to what seemed to her to be an obvious case of harassment…and maybe we could do something, show support for those being picketed?

 

 

That piqued moiself’s  interest; after I returned home from book group I did an online search for the news story and found pictures of the traveling revival group (members of a Christian denomination I’d never heard of).  At first, I thought the pictures were historical…or just a case of someone playing dress-up.  The group leaders – all male, of course – were attired in 18th century garb:  black wide-brimmed hats, black duster-length jackets, black pants, black vests over white shirts, skinny bolo-style ties, and black boots.

Later that day, after picking up K from his preschool, I decided to drive by the Mormon church.  Sure enough, there were five men who could have passed for Johnny Cash groupies or impersonators (except that they held signs instead of guitars), picketing on the sidewalk on the east side of the road, by the church’s front lawn.  No other cars were on the road; no pedestrians; no sign of any occupants in the church (whose parking lot was completely empty).  I pulled my car over on the west side of the road, turned off the engine and told K, who was sitting in the back seat, that I wanted to check something and would be back in a sec (he was engrossed in his coloring book; I don’t know if he even heard me).

I had no intention to debate theology (or anything else) with those Men In Black.  I was simply and genuinely curious to find out what their signs said.  What were they doing there, and why?  Did they want to talk with actual Mormons, or just protest, or…?   As I began to cross the street one of the MIB saw me, and began to march toward me.  As I beheld his face, all comparisons to Johnny Cash (except sartorial) fled my mind.

 

 

The man’s eyes were dark, piercing, wild, burning with hatred; his neck veins were visible, purple and throbbing, and he snarled at me, his voice feral with rage:

“What are you doing?!?!?
Get back in your car!  Unless you’re here to help, go away!”

I was taken aback, and tried to respond with a reasonable voice, the kind mental health intervention officers use to talk a potential suicide jumper down from a bridge.

“Everything’s okay…I’m just wondering what your signs say, and what you’re ….”

His voice took on an even more menacing tone as he shifted his grip on the sign he held.  He wielded it like a sword as he approached me.

“GO AWAY NOW !”

Holy shit, I thought, is this looney going to brain me with his Mormon blah blah blasphemy blah blah child molester blah blah hell  sign ?   [9]   I slowly walked backwards ( no way was I turning my back to this psycho ) and flung some vitriol of my own before getting in my car:

“Oh, go home and pray!”

 

 

I know, right?

The thing is, I was shaking as I drove home, and for at least an hour afterward.  That encounter had triggered my fight-or-flight reflexes.  It’s difficult to describe, but I’d seen it before:  “it” being that look of righteous, bloodthirsty, savage certainty in that man’s eyes, and in the eyes of Nazi soldiers who were photographed herding Jews and other “undesirables” to a concentration camp; in the gleam in the eyes of the White mob smirking at the camera as they posed by the bodies of the Black men they’d lynched; in the leering, gleeful expressions of the faces in paintings and woodcuts of the priests torturing heretics and the pastors hurling charges of witchcraft against the women they were preparing to burn; in the news pictures of Rwandan Hutus holding the clubs they used to brain their fellow Rwandans (Tutsis) whom they called “cockroaches”… It is a look found in believers across many political and cultural spectrums but which is made even worse – even more deadly – in religious ideologies, which carry added weight via adherents believing they are follow the holy orders of a deity who holds their lives in its hands.

My body shook with an instinctual recognition of danger: of how that man’s eyes broadcast that he was doing the righteous bidding of his angry god, and he would have no problem crushing me if he thought I was in his way.  It was the same shaking I recognized in the voice of my son K, several years later, when he told me about an incident he found disturbing, and frightening.

 

 

Dateline: Several years after that “Mormon witnessing” event.  My sister (“YS”) had invited my son K and my daughter Belle to spend a long weekend with her family (her and her husband and their four children, two of whom are K’s and Belle’s respective ages).  My kids didn’t see their cousins often (they lived 600+ miles away from us) and were eager to spend more time with them.  As I helped my kids pack for their flight, I let them know that, seeing as how it was a weekend visit, it was likely that they would be expected to attend YS’s family’s church on Sunday.  Both K and Belle gave long suffering, oh brother/the-things-we-do-for-family sighs.  I knew YS and hubby held conservative religious beliefs, so I thought it prudent to warn inform my offspring that “their church is different from the one you’re used to…it’ll probably be no big deal, maybe even interesting…. And if there are things said or done that you find strange, just pretend to be cultural anthropologists:  you don’t have to say anything, just observe, and take notes, on a new experience.”

That weekend, K the budding anthropologist got an eye-and-earful, and I got the latter, when K’s time at YS’s church was over.  Under the guise of being homesick, K asked YS if he could use their phone to call me.  He did so from the privacy of YS’s bedroom, and from his first two words I could tell that he was distraught.  K spoke in run-on sentences; he was upset, something about YS’s church…. I got him to calm down, take a few deep breaths, and tell me what happened.  What had he seen or heard that upset him?   One of the things that bothered him the most, he said, was wondering about about his relatives:  “Is this what they think, do they really believe *this*?

*This* turned out to be a basic tenet of almost all religions:  Believing in our theology/scriptures/god is the correct and only way to believe, and those who believe elsewise are wrong, and doomed, and need “saving.”

*This* also turned out to be the focus of the Sunday School class K attended.   [10]

K was in the Sunday School class with his same age cousin, “Oscar.” Just K’s luck, the class topic of the day was witnessing to non-Christians.  Righgt from the get-o, K found the teacher to be a bloviating ignoramus.  K sat in his chair, seething quietly, as the teacher

– described the many ways “non-Christians” are missing out on life and what will happen to them for “rejecting Jesus;”
-expressed his opinions-as-facts about what Buddhist and other “false religions” believe;
– told his students that it was the duty of Christian kids to witness to their friends, family and classmates in order to “save” them.

Several times K bravely raised his hand and, when called upon, challenged statements other kids had made which were demonstrably untrue and/or anti-science, or which made fun of other religions.   [11]    K also said to the teacher that it was unfair to label kids with heir parents’ religion, when kids aren’t old enough to understand or make their own decisions – after all, when it came to religion they had to do what their parents did, go to their parents’ churches… K stopped offering his comments when he realized that the other kids were staring at him, all except for Oscar, wouldn’t make eye contact with him.

The SS teacher told his Sunday school charges that, since it was their duty to witness to non-Christians, they needed to know how to tell if someone is not a Christian.  Who had any ideas as to how to do that?  Eager sheep religious bigots evangelists in training raised their hands to the heavens.  “Oh oh oh, I know, I know – they’d be sinning!” one boy gushed.  K was somehow able to stifle his snort of derision at that remark (they’d be sinning?  Uh…specifics, please?)  “Yeah,” another child chimed in, “they’d probably be mean, and do bad things.”  “They’d look unhappy!” came another suggestion.  “They’d be, like, saying the wrong prayers, Buddhist chants or stuff”…”They’d be sad, or angry, or….”

It went on and on, with the teacher (in K’s view) encouraging his students’ absurdities.  But K had taken to heart one of my most sacred (ahem) teachings – that in the presence of ignorance and bullying, silence implies acquiescence.  Alas and finally, he could no longer remain silent.

“You could just ask them,” K offered.

There was dead silence; all eyes in the classroom turned to him.  The teacher asked K to explain; K replied that if you truly want to know what someone thinks or believes, you should ask them, instead of assuming.

This was near the end of the class; the How To Identifier A Sinner ® discussion continued for another minute, then the teacher led his students in prayer before dismissing the class.  He asked the students to bow their heads and close their eyes and join him in praying for the strength to witness to the unsaved, and for a few other requests K couldn’t remember, and to ask (their) god to “touch the hearts and show the right way to the unbelievers among us.”

 

 

Observant unbeliever that he was, K left his eyes open during the prayer.  He saw that when the teacher made the unbelievers among us remark, several students opened their eyes to take a peek at him, then quickly turned away and shut their eyes….but he’d gotten the message.  As had I, when K told me what had happened.  That S.O.B. bully Sunday School teacher had made my preteen son a target, as the object of a supposed “prayer of concern.”

We talked (translation: I let K sound off) for a long time.  I told him how proud I was of him, and advised him, perhaps mistakenly, that if he was still upset about it, maybe he could talk to his aunt?  He didn’t.  Looking back, it’s probably good that he didn’t.  After hanging up from that call, I was aching for my son despite realizing that what had happened to him was a valuable, Oy, Such is Life ® experience.  I in turn had a milder version of his own shaking experience, as I began to recall similar incidents, including the one with that Raging Mormon Witnessing Dude.

It is viscerally unsettling, to be the target of irrational fear and anger and us v. them ideology, and to realize that something as seemingly innocuous as a Sunday school class can transmit the dynamic of otherness.   It is a basic, almost instinctual fear, IMO, wherein such encounters you have a gut-level realization of the history of your species:  people have been and continue to be judged, shunned, bullied, abused, and even tortured and killed by their fellow human beings because of being The Other/The Heretic/The Unbeliever.  Something deep in my DNA recognized the look in that Raging Mormon Witnessing Dude, and understood the warning my intuition was sending me:

This is how ‘good’ people can, and do, go bad.  Feeling so strongly about something – that this is what your god commands, and those who disagree with you are disagreeing with your god, and not only are they wrong, they are (possessed by) evil  –this is how human beings eventually justify killing other human beings.

When my offspring returned from their visit I asked Belle about her experience at YS’s church.  Being three years younger, the Sunday School class she went to with her same-age cousin was focused more on doing churchy-crafty things, and Belle told me that she really didn’t pay attention to “the rest of it” (read:  any “god talk.”).  Just as Belle did in her own church’s SS class, she ignored the churchy/Jesusy stuff and concentrated on crafting her popsicle stick recreation of Noah’s ark or whatever.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought(s) Of The Week     [12]

* It is immoral to brand children with religion. ‘This is a Catholic child.’ ‘That is a Muslim child.’ I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, ‘That is a Marxist child.’

* Do not ever tell a child, ‘You belong to this religion,’ –  that is child abuse.

* I am persuaded that ‘child abuse’ is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like…eternal hell.

(  Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, author,
one of “The Four Horsemen“)

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when a child has the integrity to challenge and speak the truth to those in power.  This is how people are truly “saved.”

 

*    *    *

May you know when to stand up to bullies;
May you know when it’s wiser to back away from a ruthlessly righteous bully;
May you rise at whatever time around dawn is best for you;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I just got props for being a good student, even though Sunday School teachers didn’t give out grades

[2] MH’s political party registration has changed several times over the years (as has mine, although I’ve been “no party for over a decade now), depending on the candidates and primaries.

[3] and MH, although you’d have to ask him for his own reasons.

[4] Chief among those being that the natural world is the way it is due to a supernatural world.

[5] MH and I both were from families which were members of the most liberal Lutheran denomination, the ALC, which is now the ELCA.

[6] Which is why I’m in favor of comparative religion classes in schools – not teaching the rightness or wrongness of any particular religion, but merely the history and existence of various faiths.

[7] We took turns suggesting books; after I left the church, a fellow long time book study member said he wasn’t surprised, considering the titles and topics I always suggested.

[8] Basically, anyone who wasn’t them was on the wrong side of religion.

[9] The only words I could make out on his sign…there were a lot more

[10] I can’t remember if YS’s church, like many churches, had children and their parents present during the first part of the church service, then about halfway through (before the sermon) dismissed the kids to their Sunday school classes.

[11] Some kids made cutting remarks about Buddhism, Islam and other worldviews.

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

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

The Here Now I’m Not Being

May 17, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, nature, Oregon, science, Wow, YEE HAW! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Here Now I’m Not Being

Department Of First Things First

Happy Syttende Mai  (“sit en day my“), for those of y’all lucky enough to either have Norwegian ancestry or love someone who does.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Mama Nature’s Northern Lights Dance Party

Re last weekend’s solar flare phenomenon: moiself  was  très appreciative of the postings people shared – photos of the heretofore unimaginable splendor of the skies which were taken not from a telescope, but from outside their own homes.

At the beach, MH and I appreciated the rarity of the occasion: for once, Oregon had clear skies when there was a noteworthy astronomical event.

 

 

I missed the spectacle Friday night, perhaps looking too early and thinking, ah well, it’s not here...and then in the morning we saw friends’ pictures they’d taken from the beach dunes.  We went back to that dune on Saturday night, but didn’t see any northern lights.  We still had a lovely time sky-gazing.  The silvery moonlight reflecting off the waves is its own natural phenomenon, worthy of appreciation.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Meditation On Meditation

In my morning meditation I’’ve been unpacking the familiar phrase, Be here now.  Taken from the groundbreaking 1971 book by American erstwhile professor-turned-meditation-guru Ram Dass   [1]    be here now is usually considered to be a prescription, a something-to-do.  But, what about thinking of it not as a prescription, but a *description?*

Moiself  has four meditation apps, three of which I mostly use for their choices of ambient music and timers.  For guided meditations and/or learning, I use Waking Up, which besides also having meditation timers offers a daily guided meditation and an expanding audio library relating to establishing or maintaining a mindfulness/meditation practice.

 

 

After having been away from the app for a time, I opened it a couple of days ago, and decided to skip the Daily Meditation ( my usual choice) to see the new offerings in the library.  Under the practice category I saw The Nature of Now, 11 short sessions    [2]    by scholar, author, and meditation teacher John Astin, and decided to check them out.  But, four days in, I’d only made it past the intro and session one.  I kept repeating session two, Being Here Now, because…well, because of observations like this:

“Be here now….those three words certainly sound like and are often heard as a prescription, something for us to do, something to practice….  In this inquiry however, I’d to flip that notion on its head, and invite you to consider that these words, as with so many others we hear in different teachings, are not so much prescriptions to do something, in order to arrive somewhere else or get ourself to some other state, but rather descriptions of the way things actually are – the way reality already is….

 

 

Astin goes on to examine each of the simple three words.  The observations he offers sound so forthright or obvious on the face of it, but are definitely not the way we – or at least, I – “practice” our daily lives:

“See that being requires absolutely no effort or practice in order for it to be so.  It simply is. Existence is already here; effortlessly, and spontaneously….feel the inescapable truth of this:  the fact that every moment, we are.”

I was much younger, in moiself’s  more cynical, late teens,-early twenties, when I first encountered the phrase, “be here now.”  I never gave it much thought, other than to deem it an example of the existential hilarity to be found in woo-woo disciplines of crystal gazers and the like:

“Be here now…oh, wwwwwooooowwwww. As opposed to, Be there then?

Looking back, was I arrogant or merely ignorant?  Most likely a combination of the two.  I certainly was ignorant of the science of meditation.  But that was then and this is now – oooh, speaking of woo…, that’s a phrase from the title of another seminal 1971 book, one of the first of what would be called the coming-of-age or YA genre, by SE Hinton.

 

 

Once again, I digress.

From what I have read and talked about with others, and experienced moiself, a common obstacle for people trying to start or maintain a meditation practice is that meditating is seen as a prescription – as yet another thing that you should be doing because it is good for you, like flossing your teeth or siccing Child Protective Services on parents who wear MAGA hats  taking a daily vitamin supplements.  Due in part to that (mis)understanding, when people approach meditation that way they can find it stressful, because the equanimity or relaxation they are expecting is not immediately apparent; thus, they think they are “doing it wrong” instead of just doing it, sans judgement or expectation and allowing….

This is tricky to articulate.  I’m no meditation expert or teacher, just someone who has a (oft times sporadic) meditation practice.  I can say that the benefits of allowing moiself  to be aware, even if it’s just aware of doing “nothing” other than observing moiself  while I’m doing that nothing, are palpable.  That simple proposition – that be here now is a description, not a prescription – I’m still chewing on it.  It’s a perspective changer, for me, that the reality of our existence, being here, is happening all the time, whether or not we are taking the minutes to sit and realize it that all you have to do is to be a human, being.  Not a human striving, or a human wanting – just a human, be-ing.

That’s enough profundity for today.

 

“Great…that means it’s back to political rants, anti-supernatural invectives, and fart jokes?”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [3]

“[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief.”

( Stephen Batchelor, author, meditation teacher, former Buddhist monk, from
Confession of a Buddhist Atheist )    [4]

 

 

*   *   *

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

I both love it and hate it when I’m trying to be (somewhat) serious, then remember that it has been some time since I’ve included a fart joke in this space, and realize there will be no peace for me until I do.

Q.  What’s the difference between a saloon and an elephant fart?

A.  A saloon is a barroom, and an elephant fart is a BARRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOM.

 

 

*    *    *

May you remember that you don’t have to remember to be here now;
May you have a good viewing seat for Nature’s next astronomical light show;
May you meditate on the utility of political rants,
anti-supernatural invectives, and fart jokes;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] nee Richard Albert.

[2] Each ranging from 3 to 8 minutes long; most around 5m.

[3] “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

[4] Shall we all meditate on the usefulness of footnotes?

The Czechoslovakian Freedom Fighter I’m Not Housing

May 3, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Czechoslovakian Freedom Fighter I’m Not Housing

Department Of Did I Raise My Offspring Right, Or What?

Dateline:  yesterday, noonish.  Son K, who is aware of my preference for dry, subtle humor which mines the nuances and incongruities inherent in trying to lead a life of service and reflection in these coarse and chaotic times, sends me this catchy ditty.  Moiself  hereby nominates the following for Best American Folk Song Ever.  Just try not to sing along (but be warned, definitely NSFW).

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Two Annoying Life Event Trends
I Am Looking Forward To Seeing Combined

Those would be a wedding reception which features a gender reveal, and a robot.

“After the vows, the champagne toasts, the filet mignon and the first dance between the bride and groom — after all the normal wedding stuff — came the cue. The cue for the abnormal wedding stuff.
‘Start waving those hands for the PARTY ROBOT!’
Into the candlelit banquet hall lumbered a menacing eight-foot-tall humanoid machine, pumping his metallic fists to the thumping electronic music, flanked by servers bearing sparklers and trays of dessert.”
(The Robots are coming…for your wedding,” The Washington Post 4-24-24 )

Silly moiself,  googling the idea of gender reveal/wedding, thinking I’d get nothing (but it would still be better, as in, even tackier, to combine it with a wedding reception)….

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Arguably One Of My Favorite Pieces of Jesus Art…

…is a stained glass window at Saint Ignatius College Prep, comedian John Mulaney’s high school, which he and David Letterman visited while filming Mulaney’s appearance on Letterman’s show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

Moiself  can’t help but think that the stained-glass artist who created that panel was a closeted (which, until relatively recently, you had to be) atheist or at least skeptic, as the artist gave JC an eye-rolling, “Oy vey, the horseshit  people believe!?” expression.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of All-Time Great Pranks

This slice o’ life story is courtesy of the six degrees of separation principle vis-à-vis my   [1]  neurons making the connections that they…just make, sometimes.

Dateline: last Saturday 7:45 AM-ish; walking.  The podcast I was listening to reminded me of some actor,   [2]   who reminded me of another actor, which reminded me that one of those actors is either currently or formerly a Scientologist, which brought to mind one of the great pranks ever played on me, which occurred when I was in college at UC Davis.

Way back then the town of Davis had a very active Scientology Center.  I use the term Center deliberately – there was no “Church of Scientology” at that time,   [3]  a fact that Scientologists boastfully emphasized in their recruitment efforts.  When a Scientology proselytizer knocked on your door or approached you on the campus quad, and you as the average student/citizen had no interest in taking the time to challenge Scientology bullshit beliefs, it’s likely you’d use some version of the customary brushoff:

“No thanks/not interested, I have my own religion.”

The eager beaver Scientologist would scoff, “Religion?!? Scientology is *not* a religion!” The Scientology recruiter would use that as an entryway into assuring their target that there’d be no conflict in learning about Scientology – “which, *not* being a religion, would not require any renouncing of your personal religious beliefs – which is a proven/effective method/philosophy combining spirituality and Science ®, to handle stress and show pathways to healthy and successful lives….”

 

 

Moiself  could (and may, eventually) share more stories re my encounters with Scientology adherents at UCD.  Instead, the afore-mentioned prank, which discerning readers will surmise has something to do with Scientology, will now take center stage.

My college boyfriend “Scott,”  [4]   no fan of any supernatural beliefs (including the religions of the dominant culture, one of which I pretended to believe in, at the time), considered Scientology to be the most egregious example of spiritual and intellectual quackery.  As a student who would go on to get undergraduate and graduate degrees in several scientific disciplines, Scott particularly objected to the cult’s organization using the word science in any way shape or form.

I knew that Scott had visited the Scientology Center at least once, to check it out, after I’d amused him with my tales of encountering Scientology recruiters on campus.  Scott and his best friend “Bruce” returned the favor, amusing moiself  and a couple of my apartment mates one evening when they showed up at our apartment, pulled out a small tape recorder from Bruce’s book bag, and played back Scott’s session with a Scientology auditor which, unbeknownst to the auditor, they had surreptitiously recorded with the tape recorder hidden in Bruce’s book bag.

The tape’s audio wasn’t all that great, but we could hear enough to be both flabbergasted and highly entertained, as the auditor asked Scott a series of questions while Scott grasped both handholds of the infamous Scientology E-Meter.

 

 

The E-meter is (was? Are they still using that batshit crazy thang?) a crude electronic device meant to mimic a polygraph, and was used by Scientology auditors (“counselors”) to purportedly “examine a person’s mental state.”  [5]   In terms of sophisticated electronic devices, Scott described the E-Meter as perhaps one or two steps above using a “telephone” consisting of two tin cans connected by kite string.

One evening about a week after Scott entertained us with the E-meter tape, I heard a knock at my apartment door.  My three roommates and I had a lot of regular visitors to our apartment, most of whom just opened the door and announced their arrival – so, someone who actually bothered to knock was something different, maybe even special.  When I opened the door I beheld a young man standing on our welcome mat.  He was carrying some kind of satchel and a piece of paper with a name and address on it.  He looked at me, then past me to my three (all-female) roommates who were in the living room, then down at his paper, then his eyes traveled back up to our apartment door.  He asked if this was 224 A St. apartment 16?  When I replied in the affirmative, he said that he was here at the behest of a man named “Victor Lazlo, who visited the Scientology Center and expressed a desire to  ‘get clear.’ “

VICTOR LAZLO ?!?!?!   [6]

Had I been sipping a beverage there’s no way I could have avoided a classic spit take.

 

 

 

Young Scientology Man seemed undeterred by my and my roommates’ scarcely muffled guffaws.  I got rid of him by throwing him a bone, something ala, “Oh, yeah, Victor – he moved back on campus,” and giving him the dorm address of a male friend of mine.  [7]

 

 

 

*   *   *

A Haiku For Unglamorous Vegetables In Our Weekly Farm Share

Celery root, and
turnips.  I was surprised by
Their very pleasant

aroma, as they
boiled.  Meanwhile, I sauteed leeks
in (plant-based) butter.

Garlic; a pinch each
of white pepper, nutmeg, and
green salt;  [8]  a splash each

of lemon juice, and
veg broth; mashed all together; top with fresh parsley.
Yummers – who knew?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [9] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

“If you think it’s offensive that I call alleged biblical miracles ridiculous, you should ask yourself whether or not it’s ridiculous to insist that Muhammad flew on a winged horse. Or that the earth was hatched from a cosmic egg? Or that Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy, brought billions of his people to earth 75 million years ago and killed them using hydrogen bombs? These are all religious beliefs of others, but that doesn’t mean calling them ridiculous is an insult – it’s an objective fact until proven otherwise.”
(David G. McAfee, journalist and author, of No Sacred Cows: Investigating Myths, Cults, and the Supernatural, and other books)

*   *   *


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

I hate it when I realize that April 1 is way done gone and past, and no one even tried to play an April Fool’s joke on moiself.

 

 

*    *    *

May homely vegetables inspire you to write haiku;
May you appreciate having a creative prank played on you;
May you avoid gluing your __ to your…..you know;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] In olden days referred to as “the six handshakes” principle, Six degrees of separation is the theory the idea that anyone can be connected to any other person via six or fewer social connections – that is, a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.  For example, let’s say that, despite having never been to China or having met him, moiself  claims to have a connection to Chairman Mao Zedong, to whom I am connected, six-degrees style, via my sister-in-law who is from Canton, whose great uncle was an aide to a vice president of the Chinese communist party who served under Mao.  (BTW, my SIL is from Canton, but that’s the only part of that example that is true….I think).

[2] An actor who was not mentioned in the podcast, but, there it is.

[3] The Internal Revenue Service did not recognize Scientology as a “charitable and religious organization” until 1993, after a 37 year dispute and controversial negotiations.

[4] Not his real name.

[5] As in, if used by a properly trained (ahem) auditor, the device can allow the operator to “see a thought”  and uncover hidden lies and other thought “crimes. “

[6] A key character in the movie Casablanca, Victor Lazlo (played by Paul Heinreid) was the heroic Czechoslovakian resistance leader, and unintended rival to (Humphrey Bogart’s) Rick Blaine for the affections of Ilsa Lund, Lazlo’s wife (played by Ingrid Bergman).

[7] Damn! All these years later, I think I’d forgotten to ask them if the guy ever showed up.

[8] What I used in place of most salt, for cooking now – this may save the planet.  Check it out: https://www.trygreensalt.com/

[9] 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.

[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

The Enemy Spy I’m Not Torturing

April 26, 2024

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

Department Of Gut Reactions

Dateline: Sunday 2 PM-ish.  MH and I are finishing our very yummers lunch at the Big Wave Café in Manzanita.  MH looks out the window of our booth, toward the cannabis dispensary which is fifty feet south of the cafe.  He reads me the dispensary’s street advertising signs, which proclaim,

Organic Herb
Taste The Difference.

Moiself:
” ‘Cause you don’t wanna ingest any pesticides when you’re smoking that shit.”

 

Your paranoia will be much more eco-friendly.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m Not Mean…But I Do Mean Business

What sparked the following story/memory? That’s a good question (which y’all didn’t ask, but moiself  did).  It might have been the snippets of conversation I heard while having lunch at a local sushi bar, where one person asked antheir friend to describe some “bad” thing they’ve done, that they didn’t think was bad at the time and iit wasn’t anything horrible but in retrospect it might have been a bit over the top….  [1]

Dateline: late 1980s, one weekday morning, at work, which is just a hop, skip, a jump and two labor contractions away from Stanford Hospital.   [2]  Moiself  is in my second year as medical assistant/reproductive health care educator for the OB-GYN practice of Dr. DWB and Nurse Practitioner POM.

I fetch an amniocentesis kit from the supply closet, place it in the ultrasound room, and continue down the hallway, past the other exam rooms and Dr. B’s office.  As I reach the counter of the staff’s work desk I can see, through the window behind the check-in desk, a patient in the waiting room, standing at the window.  The patient introduces herself to JJ, the practice’s accountant, who is doing the day’s appointment check-ins.

Oh please, not her….

I immediately cringe at my silent, kneejerk groan of judgementalism – as well as my surprised reaction.  After all, *I* was the one responsible for getting everything ready for the day’s schedule of patients, which means that on the previous afternoon I’d seen the name, pulled the chart, noted the appointment parameters, and thus, theoretically, knew that “TP” was coming in for her annual exam.  But it wasn’t until I saw TP’s face that I remembered who she was, from her appointment a year ago.

 

 

I’d been warned about this patient from the office manager, who’d been with the practice several years before moiself.  There are patients you’d love to see more frequently, and there are…others.  TP, with her imperious bearing and overt sense of entitlement, definitely fit into the *others* category.   [3]    We had frequent dealings with pompous assholery (this was Palo Alto, after all) – that wasn’t the issue.  The warning I’d received concerned the fact that TP brought her daughter to her exams, despite having been nicely but firmly instructed to please *not* do so after the first time she’d brought her then three-year-old to mommy’s pap smear appointment.

I recalled the previous year, when TP’s child, whom moiself  shall refer to as Pico (as in, Pico Monsteri   [4] )   was around six years old.  Upon checking her in for her appointment, I’d noticed that TP had brought Pico, and no one else was with her to watch Pico.  I knew TP’s background; she had friends and family living nearby and she and her husband were filthy rich would have had no problem affording a sitter.  When I started to ask TP about where Pico would stay during her appointment she cut me off with a wave of her hand, assuring me and the rest of the staff that Pico was “mature for her age,” and would amuse herself in the waiting room while TP was in the exam room…and besides, if Pico needed anything, “you girls can just watch her for a bit.”

 

 

The office manager cut me off as I began to respond to TP that we’re working in a medical practice and are not babysitters…geesh!  First cut off by the patient, and now by my supposed comrade.  Thus, five minutes after I’d taken TP back to her exam room, when Pico opened the door to the waiting room and asked for (read: demanded that) someone to read her a book, I took her straight to the office manager (“She’s all yours.“). 

Okay; so; it’s a year later; maybe there’s been some…uh, growth, in a year?  TP is back; listening to her check in with JJ I can tell  she’s still Her Haughtiness, and Pico is still with her and still obnoxious precocious.  But mostly, Pico is still a young child – not a good fit for a gynecological exam room, no matter what mommy’s delusions opinions are as to her child’s specialness.

When I call TP back to an exam room, Pico follows her mother down the hallway.  I ask if it is TP’s wish that Pico be in the exam room with her?  If so,   [5]   I can check with Dr. B to see if that’s okay, then call Pico back to the room when the doctor is ready to see TP, but after I get TP settled for her exam I cannot leave her and her child alone in the room, as there are medical instruments and “potions” and such in the room that are not safe for….

TP laughs dismissively.  “She’ll be fine right here,” she says, gesturing to what I called backstage – our office and work area (which included our lab and sink and patient restroom) – and not the waiting room.   Using my best bared-teeth-disguised-as-a-smile, I try once more to explain to TP that we had medical instruments and urine samples coming in and out of exam rooms and in and out of lab areas – backstage is neither an appropriate nor safe area for her child, whom, we had noted from past visits, was not content to sit in the waiting room and read a book or magazine….  [6]

“She’ll be fine,” TP repeats, adding, “I told her that you *girls* would keep her busy.”

 

 

I inform TP that JJ will escort Pico back to the waiting room, which JJ does (after throwing a bit of stink eye my way) while I take TP to her exam room.

After I’ve prepped TP for her exam, I catch Dr. B in the hallway as he exits another exam room.  I hand him TP’s chart, tell him that she is his next patient, remind him of who she is and that she’d brought her kid with her even after we’d asked her, last year, and this year when she scheduled her appointment, *not* to do so….

Dr. B, busy as always (and behind schedule as always), was not one to confront a patient about such matters.  He glances through TP’s chart, knocks on her exam room before entering, gives me one of his enigmatic smirks, and says, “Handle it.”

 

 

So, I handle it.

About four minutes after Dr. B enters her mother’s exam room, Pico opens the waiting room door and marches through, just as I am escorting a used speculum to the autoclave area.  JJ is on the phone with a patient; I dump the speculum in the lab sink and, as I wash my hands, ask Pico if she’s come back to use the restroom.

“My mommy told me I could wait back here and that you’d play with me.” Pico brazenly walks around the front desk and sits down on what would have been my chair.

“Well, then,” I say.  “Okay….  How would you like to play a game?”  Before she can answer I giggle and shake my head. “Oops; never mind.  This is a really cool game; I don’t think you’re old enough to handle it.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!  Yes I can!  She leaps up from the chair and claps her hands.  “Please, I can play it!”

“It’s called… “I pause for dramatic effect, “Captured By The KGB.”

 

 

JJ, still on the phone, shoots me a sideways, what-are-you-up-to? glance.

I steer Pico back to the chair and explain the game to her:  She is an undercover spy, on a secret mission for her country.  But the Russian secret police have captured her and are going to interrogate her – “Do you know what interrogate means?”

I can tell she doesn’t, but she enthusiastically nods her head.

“The Russians consider you to be an enemy spy, but you are an American hero, and the free world is depending on you.  The Russians have special powers: when they question you, if they look into your eyes, they can get you to say anything.  So, you must sit here, cross your arms like this (I fold her arms across her chest) and squeeze your eyes shut as tightly as you can, that’s good!  Remember, they’ll try to trick you, to get you to open your eyes and speak to them so that they can use their mind control tricks on you.”

The American spy remains in her chair, silent, her arms clutching her torso, her eyes squinched into slits, while I finish prepping the ultrasound room for an upcoming amniocentesis.  When I return to the front desk, Pico is beginning to fidget.  I see her eyelids flutter – “Uh uh,” I warn her, “The KGB is right here!  Don’t let them see that you can see them.”

“I don’t like this game,” she whines.  “I’m tired of this game.”

“SHHH, THEY CAN HEAR YOU.”   I assure her of her importance, and how she MUST be silent, and keep her eyes shut and her arms crossed.

As I pull charts for the next day’s appointments and arrange test result callbacks on my desk, I tell Pico that she is doing well.  Her chin begins to quiver, and she emits soft whimpers.  “You must stay strong,” I assure her, “and those evil Russians won’t get any information out of you.”

“Robyn!” JJ puts her hand over her phone’s mouthpiece and softly hisses at me. “Do something!”  Just as it seems that Pico is going to burst into tears, Dr. B exits TP’s exam room.  Pico jumps up from my chair and wipes at her eyes; I pat her on the shoulder and say, “Good job – you were so brave!  Those bad agents are gone now.”

Dr. B looks at Pico, at me, then back at Pico; we hear the exam door open, and Pico races down the hallway and flings herself at her mother.  “Mommy!  I want to go home now.”  Pico tugs at her mother’s sleeve.  “Can we go home now?”

“What’s going on?” Dr. B asks.  I say nothing; JJ quickly offers up, “I’m sure *Robyn* will be happy to explain it to you.  It’s…top secret. Spy stuff.”  

It is my turn to smirk enigmatically.  “I *could* tell you,” I murmur to Dr. B, as I stride past him on my way to the ultrasound room, “but I’d have to kill you.”

During my next three years with the practice, TP has three more annual exams.  She never again brings her daughter with her.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

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

I hate it when moiself  finds out that some celebrity/ (in)famous person whom I thought was dead, isn’t.   [8]

 

 

*   *   *

May you refrain from smoking anything, pesticide-free or otherwise;
May never expect anyone to act as unpaid sitters for your child;
May you remain strong despite enduring nefarious KGB tactics;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I wish I could have heard their stories, but they stood up, continuing to converse as they left the restaurant.

[2] Palo Alto, CA.

[3] She’d likely get the “Karen” label, today.

[4] I was told that term is Finnish slang for little monster.

[5] Over the years I recall a few women who wanted their daughters to be with them in the exam room (as a form of “education,”), usually for a routine OB visit, but always when the girls were older – teens or preteens.

[6] We did have appropriate-aged reading materials for kids, as well as a few toys, in the waiting room.

[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] Feel free to let your mind roam on that one.

The IEDs I’m Not Detecting

April 19, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The IEDs I’m Not Detecting

 

Department Of That Which Warms The Cockles Of My Heart

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

 

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

*   *   *

Department Of War Is Hell

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

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

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

 

Can you detect the difference?

 

*   *   *

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

Uta  and Hagen.

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

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

 

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

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

 

Now you know.

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Mother
(she shrugged off a non-answer)

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

 

 

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

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

My Mother:
“Right.”

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

My Mother:
(Shakes her head and smiles condescendingly)

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

My Mother:
” It just is.”

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

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

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

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

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

 

I am woman; hear me roar….

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

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

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

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

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sixty-four, at last count.

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

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

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

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

[6] Insert whatever euphemism for, that old.

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

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

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

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

The Life Advice I’m Not Giving

April 12, 2024

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

Grief is the price of love.

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

 

 

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

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

The thing about advice is knowing when to ignore it. 

 

*   *   *

Department Of About That Living In The Past

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Knowing moiself, probably a podcast.

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

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

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

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

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

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