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

April 5, 2024

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

Department Of Backfiring Techniques

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Fun With The Same Podcast Episode

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Moderation In All Things

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Unanticipated Joys

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

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

Just sayin.’

 

Son K, still adorable, still adores cats.

 

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

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Department Of Sheer Unadulterated Joy

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

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

 

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

 

Not that they don’t have rules:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, they had me at hijinks.

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [7] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

March 29, 2024

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

Department Of My Phone Dictation Transcriber Knows Me Too Well

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

 

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

 

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

*   *   *

Department Of I Wish It Were Just A Coincidence…

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Timely Reminder For A Timeless Admonition

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Calling Out People Who Are On Your Side

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

March 22, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of Questions That Can No Longer Be Answered

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

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

Dateline :

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

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

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

 I wanted to tell you…something.  Privately.

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moiself:
“Yes, I know.  I knew.”

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

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

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

Nick:
“He told *you*????!?!?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Well, okay.  How’s about poetry?

*   *   *

Department Of The Poetic Form I’m Not Appreciating

 

 

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

 I have no desire
to fit in. 

No plans to walk with the crowd.

I have my own mind,
heart and soul.

I am me

 And it 

has taken me years
to realize

how important that is

  

  

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

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

I just ask myself,

why is that labeled as a poem?

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

Is
it the

arranging?

if so, you can take any opinion,

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

and
general
formatting.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

[7] Cancer; lymphoma, I think.

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

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

The Pranks I’m Not Playing

March 15, 2024

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

Content Warning: Contentious World Affairs

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of…You Know….

 

*   *   *

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

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

* What do you wish you really understood?

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

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

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

* What gives you confidence?

* What book changed your life?

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

“What do you do?”

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

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

 

 

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

(1)  When?

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

* What are you surprised by?

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

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

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

 

 

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

 

But creating such a masterpiece might be worth the risk.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cogent Warnings…

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

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

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

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

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

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

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

[4] It’s happened more than once.

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

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

The “Karen” I’m Not Judging

March 8, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The “Karen” I’m Not Judging

Department Of First Things First

Happy birthday to Son K.

K at age 29 9, demonstrating both his flexibility and artistic sensibility, neither of which
led to the career in interpretive dance he was considering at the time this photo was taken.

*   *   *

Speaking of a delightful person’s birthday, which only happened because his mother gave birth to him, let moiself  segue to….

Department Of Don’t You Want To Listen To The Entire Podcast Now?

Now as in, after reading this delightful quote, from Cat Bohannon, PhD, researcher on the evolution of narrative and cognition and author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, from her interview on the People I Mostly Admire podcast.

“…I talk a surprising amount about penises
for a book about the evolution of the female body.
But because the penis and the vagina co-evolve,
naturally we’re going to have to talk about dong.”

Naturally.

 

 

Here is PIMA host Steven Levitt’s intro to the episode featuring Bohannon:

I did not expect to like this book. I’m generally just not that interested in things that happened 200 million years ago, or even 10,000 years ago…. But in chapter after chapter, Cat Bohannon offers such a fresh and surprising perspective that I couldn’t put the book down…. Are her hypotheses right? I have no idea….But one thing I’m pretty confident about, you will not listen to Cat Bohannon and say she’s boring.

The PIMA episode’s title, Is Gynecology the Best Innovation Ever?, refers to Bohannon’s intriguing proposition re human evolution:  more than our discovery of fire, agriculture, the wheel, and other inventions, human’s survival and flourishing was due to reproductive choice and midwifery, the forerunner to obstetrics/gynecology.  As our Homo habilis ancestors’ brains (and thus their brain buckets – i.e., heads) expanded, the females’ pelvises did not.  Women assisting other women in labor allowed the human population to survive and increase.

 

 

Excerpts from PIMA host Steven Levitt’s interview with Cat Bohannon:

LEVITT:
If you ask people’s opinion about the most important discoveries that humankind has made, common answers might be harnessing fire, agriculture, the advent of language, but you give a different answer…gynecology? How can gynecology be our most important human invention?

BOHANNON:
… Tool use is all about manipulating something in your environment to overcome some inherent problem….  What was our most important innovation in our ancestral line? Well, what were our biggest problems? In evolutionary biology, there’s something called a hard selection. That’s when you have problems with your reproduction because evolution, of course, works by generations building over time, literally making babies, having them survive to have their own babies, and maybe produce more bodies that have this trait that your body has.
Well, if you have something that messes up your reproduction, if it’s hard for you to make a baby, then your line is probably headed for extinction. If human pregnancies are the absolute shit show that they are, that is hard selection. That is our biggest problem.
A chimpanzee, one of the animals that we are most closely related to, both obviously and genetically — a chimp mom’s labor is about 40 minutes. A first-time human mom is about 12 to 16 hours….And that’s before we even try to start squeezing out the actual giant-headed babies that our species likes to make. It’s also true that our pregnancies are longer than you would expect for an animal our size.
And it turns out, the threshold for when we give birth is not necessarily how big the head gets, to get out the small lemon-sized hole, which as we know is problematic. No, it’s actually a metabolic threshold. At what point would building this body any further actually be deleterious to the mother’s body because it’s simply too costly to keep doing it? In other words, we give birth, we go into labor when we do, typically at full term, because doing it any longer would kill us.

 

 

LEVITT:
Yeah, marginal cost becomes greater than marginal benefit. It’s interesting how biology and economics are basically the same thing.

BOHANNON:
Yeah, exactly. So if it’s the case that you end up with a lot of moms that are crippled for life, that die in the process, (then their) offspring die in the process….
But it isn’t just the moment of giving birth that matters for the advent of gynecology, because there’s a long ramp of reproductive history that comes before, and a long tail of a woman living in a female body that comes after….
…the most important thing we ever did was get our hands on the levers of reproduction to overcome our most basic problem, which is that (humans) suck at making babies.
We should be like the giant panda. We should be a curiosity in somebody else’s zoo. We should never have gotten to eight billion people in the world.
But we did. And the only way we did, to be honest, is by building societies that could support the kind of interdependence that helped females give birth in ways that didn’t kill them and cripple them.

 

 

 

*  *   *

Department Of There’s (Usually More Than) Two Sides To Every Story…

Some stories are octagonal, when you get right down to counting the sides. The story of the “Central Park birding incident” has at least four sides, including that of
* the birder
* the news media’s shameful failure to accurately report and follow up on the incident (read: correct their mistakes and oversights),
* social media’s (surprise!) rush to laud and reward the party deemed “innocent” while labeling, judging, and tormenting the party deemed “Karen,”
* the Karen who turns out not to be one.

” ‘Slit your wrists,’ strangers texted me.

‘If anyone deserves prison rape, it’s you,’ people I had never met called me to say.

‘The noble thing to do is to remove yourself from society…so please kill yourself.’

I’m Amy Cooper, but you probably know me as ‘Central Park Karen.’ You may not know my name, but you probably know my story—or at least the two-minute version of the story that was broadcast all over the world without key facts or context. “

 

 

Amy Cooper’s opinion piece was published in Newsweek (their “My Turn” feature) in November.  I just got around to reading it now.  IMO everyone who passed judgement upon her – read: everyone who heard the story as portrayed on your media of choice (including moiself ) –  should read it.

Most people think they know what happened:  the widely promoted narrative was that a racist White woman walking her dog in a Central Park birding area threatened and then called 911 on a Black man, after he told her she needed to leash her dog and began recording her with his cell phone.  Most people don’t know who threw the first punch, so to speak –i.e., who made the first threat – in this incident; most people, in their rush to judgement, don’t know that the story they heard and/or read about left out so many crucial details.

“On May 25, 2020, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when anxieties ran high, I took my dog—whom my life revolved around—for a walk.

I visited Central Park in the morning, during the hours when dogs were allowed off-leash.   [1]   On my way home, I chose to take an unfamiliar path, landing in ‘The Ramble,’ a secluded area of Central Park.

Seconds later, I heard a voice boom: ‘Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.’ I saw a man who began yelling at me that my dog should be on his leash.

Before recording me, Christian Cooper yelled out: ‘If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.’

Those were his exact words. Words Christian admitted to saying, on Facebook, the very day of the incident.

And yes, I was scared.”

I was a female, alone in a secluded area of Central Park, with a man yelling at me and threatening me. As a victim of a sexual assault in my late teens, I was completely panicked for my safety and wellbeing.”

Right there is a situation most women can understand.  Unfortunately, far too many of us (and one is to many) have had experiences with male strangers who’ve yelled at/threatened us.  Skin color, schmin color – the fact that Christian Cooper (the man who confronted Amy Cooper; no relation) is Black did not enter my mind when I read Amy Cooper’s report of their initial encounter.  Instead, what came to mind were the incidents I’ve faced over the years, as a woman hiking/running/walking – simply daring to exist – outside, “alone,” and facing a man’s harassment and threat, regardless of whether or not he thinks I did something to “deserve” it.

Fuck the man’s skin color; fuck his age, or height, accent, apparel….  Because here is an unfortunate truth that women live with:  even without a personal history of sexual assault, most women’s radar would be up in the same situation as Amy Cooper found herself in (my radar went up just reading her account).  And although I might not be as “completely panicked” as she was, I’d be urgently strategizing as to how I could protect moiself  from a man who is threatening, (Jaysus Fecking Keerist!)  I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.

 

 

“Then Christian, who did not own a dog, bizarrely tried to lure my dog to him with treats, immediately raising a red flag.   [2]   News stories of poisoned dogs quickly came to mind.

My mama-bear instincts kicked in. I immediately pulled my dog tight by his collar, fearing that something would happen to him.

Acting from a place of panic and vulnerability, I told Christian that I was going to call the police and what I planned to say, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him from his earlier threat.

Instead, Christian taunted me to call the police. Seeing no other choice, I called 911 and described the man who was threatening me. But due to very spotty service in the park, I had to repeat my description of Christian multiple times.

The 911 tape makes it very clear that the dispatcher couldn’t hear me due to the poor connection—yet this fact went unreported, skewing perceptions of my actions.    [3]

There were never any racial implications to my words. I just felt raw fear, and desperately wanted help.

Later that day, Christian took to Facebook to proudly describe to his followers that he instigated the encounter and boasted that he keeps a bag of dog treats to lure in off-leash dogs.

Consider that for a moment. He admitted to instigating the incident.”

 

 

I’m not a “birder” but I play one on TV but I know a few bird-watching enthusiasts.  I like them, and I like birds.  I like to look at birds and other fauna and flora and have loved hiking in and exploring “natural areas” and nature preserves since moiself  was a wee lass.  I’ve been frustrated innumerable times when I’ve encountered people whom I judge as not being respectful of the protocol when recreating in a woodland, desert, mountain, and/or beach environment (e.g., going off trail and thus contributing to erosion; allowing their dogs off leash where it is not permitted; not cleaning up after their dog; dropping trash, etc.).  Thus, I think I can understand CC’s frustration with what he saw as yet another scofflaw ignoring the rules of a birding area.

There is another protocol worthy of consideration:  how you handle your first encounter with a stranger whom you think/know is violating some kind of rule.  Why assume the worst from the beginning – where does that get you?  Why did CC assume AC was a scofflaw, instead of considering that perhaps this was her first time in the area and/or she didn’t see the signs about leashing dogs in that area?  Why go from zero to 120 at the get-go?  Who appointed CC as The Ramble’s protocol enforcer?

 

 

“I was not the first or only person Christian Cooper had threatened in Central Park.

Jerome Lockett has stated that Christian also aggressively threatened him, luring in his dog. Jerome said he knows of two fellow dog owners who experienced the same behavior from Christian, but they don’t want to come forward because they are white, and Christian is Black. They fear being canceled—as I have been.

None of this was reported.
Stark omissions in coverage completely altered my life.
and there is no correcting after the fact.
I, and others affected by this incident, could only live in the false, hateful narrative.”

( excerpts, emphases mine, “I Was Branded the ‘Central Park Karen’. I Still Live in Hiding.”
Newsweek, My Turn, 11-7-23  )

There are more details in Amy Cooper’s article which deserve your consideration, including the fallout for her life.  After CC’s video went viral, AC had her personal information posted online by trolls, received “hundreds of threatening graphic images, death threats, and hate mail,”  [4]  was fired from her job by her PR-conscious employer (without a chance to defend herself), has had long stretches of unemployment, had to go into hiding, was falsely accused of filing a false police report…. [5]

Meanwhile, Christian Cooper has parlayed his headline-making experience into a career as “The Black Birder,” including a book contract, numerous video and television appearances, a guest essay with the NY Times, and a gig as a host on a National Geographic show, Extraordinary Birder.

Now then: Black men in the USA face a different world than white women and men, no doubt about it.  Shouldn’t Amy Cooper have realized that, given the world we live in, her reporting to the police that she was being harassed by a Black man might put that man’s life in danger?  That is certainly what moiself  thought, at first.  However, if she feared that *she* was in danger, that probability-of-danger-for-him would take a back seat to the urgency of her – of any person’s – instinct for self-protection.  And when you call the police to report that a person is threatening you, guess what they want to know?  A description of the person, which includes gender, ethnicity, age, height, attire….

Also….

Something that seems to have been forgotten, or at least brushed aside, from the Central Park Birding Incident, ® is a something which has gnawed at me even before I read Amy Cooper’s article:

All women walk through a different world than men of any skin tone.
Why are men not cognizant of that reality –  because it’s not theirs?

Why is no one holding Christian Cooper accountable for failing to realize
that yelling at/threatening a lone woman in a secluded area
will cause her to fear for her safety?

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when an Expert In Her Field ®  sez, “we’re going to have to talk about dong.”

 

*   *   *

May we appreciate that we are not “a curiosity in somebody else’s zoo;”
May we wait for the story behind the story before we pass judgement;
May we appreciate the times when we’re going to “have to talk about dong;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] “Off-leash hours in Central Park are from 6:00 am–9:00 am and 9:00 pm–1:00 am.” (from  A Dog’s Guide to Central Park. )

[2] When I read this sentence of her article to MH, before I could go on to the next sentence he said that he’s fear/assume that the guy was intending to poison his dog.

[3] The New York Times reported in October 2020 that Amy had made a second 9-1-1 call against Christian, in which she alleged that Christian had tried to assault her.  However, the Times later made a correction, saying that the second call was when a 9-1-1 dispatcher called *her* back.

[4] Which she still gets, to this day.

[5] The NY prosecutor’s office, feeling the media and political pressure, filed the charges, which were quickly dismissed because Amy Cooper had done no such thing.

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

The Patient I’m Not Taking

March 1, 2024

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

Department Of Another Great Moment In Inclusion/Diversity

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

 

“Yeah baby!”

 

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

I’ll begin again.

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

 

 

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

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

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

“What is it about American colds?”

 

 

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

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

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

Ummm,  ooookkkkaaaayyyy….

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

“No; not in India.”

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

(3) There is no background detail #3.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

CR:
“No way.”

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Socks I’m Not Sizing

February 23, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, games & puzzles, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, school, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Socks I’m Not Sizing

Department Of Spoiler Alerts

* Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
* Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
* We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
* Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
* Here’s looking at you, kid.

After seeing Poor Things last weekend, I have a nominee to add to the list of the American Film Institute’s best/classic movie quotes:

“I must go punch that baby.”

 

Dude, please, let her go punch that baby.

 

And on the subject of movies, have y’all seen the nominees for the 2024 Best Picture Oscar?  One of the best lists in years, moiself  thinks.  I’ve seen eight of the ten films that are nominated…

֍  American Fiction

֍   Anatomy Of A Fall

֍   Barbie

֍   The Holdovers

֍   Killers Of The Flower Moon

֍   Maestro

֍   Oppenheimer

֍   Past Lives

֍   Poor Things

֍   The Zone Of Interest

My favorite fellow movie lover, daughter Belle, was eager to know what I thought of Poor Things, which she’d highly recommended.  Here’s part of our text-versation early Sunday afternoon, as MH and I exited the theater after having seen  Poor Things.

Moiself:
I must go punch that baby!

Belle:
I laughed out loud in the theater when she said that line.

Moiself:
So did we – for several minutes.

Belle:
I was wondering if I should warn you guys about the gratuitous amount of sex scenes. But hey, you’re adults too (haha).

Moiself:
They were mostly just funny.

Belle:
I agree, the whorehouse scenes were practically comical.

Moiself:
I like the fromage joke she told.  That’s something I would do.
I mean telling a joke about cheese, not working in a whorehouse.
Now I don’t know what to root for, for Best Picture…the strongest category the Oscars have had in years, I believe.

Belle:
Yes!
I decided to catch up on Oscar noms today. I finished watching Anatomy (of a Fall) maybe 30 minutes ago, and I’m gonna watch The Holdovers later this afternoon.

Moiself:
I’ve been wanting to watch Anatomy but can’t find a time when MH will agree to it because he thinks it’ll be depressing…just like he can’t find a time for me to watch Killers of the Flower Moon, because more depressing than the subject matter to me is 3 ½ plus hours of watching Leonardo DeCaprio’s pumpkin face.
The Holdovers is really good.
Here’s another nominee that has something to do with Nazis/WWII. I don’t know if I’ll get around to that; there’s been so much done on the subject – done well, of course but still…. Do you know which one I’m talking about?    [1]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Thanks (Mick & Keith) For The Memory

Dateline: last Saturday, 7:45am-ish, driving with MH to meet son K for breakfast.  MH was playing music via his music app’s we-think-you’ll-like-these-songs-because-you-listened-to-these-other-songs  playlist via his car radio.   [2]  The iconic rhythmic intro to  Honky Tonk Women rambles through his car’s speakers, providing me with a flashback to one of the few times in my life when my mother said or did something quite uncharacteristic of her.

Dateline: one late Spring evening when I was in high school.   [3]   For some reason I have the living room all to moiself.   Our house’s only decent stereo/radio console is in the living room, and I have the radio on and the volume up, to distract my brain from a boring homework assignment I’ve been putting off.

As whatever station I’ve tuned to begins playing The Rolling Stone’s Honkey Tonk Women, I hear the hallway door open, and my mother enters the living room.  She cocks her head to one side as she listens to the song, and begins to snap her fingers to HTW’s instantly-recognizable-to-anyone-under-30 syncopation  (hats off to TRS’s stickman extraordinaire, the late great Charlie Watts). 

 

 

 

She then declares that HTW would be a great song “…to do a striptease to.  You know, like Gypsy Rose Lee?”  She begins swaying her hips from side to side, and mimes removing a glove from her left hand, finger by finger, and gestures for me to join her in her…uh…dance.    “C’mon, Rob, try it.”   [4]

 

 

 

*   *   *

 

Lies, lies.  More of the same, as in a potpourri of mostly apolitical blurbs.  After a week’s worth of not-particularly-surprising-but-nonetheless-depressing news from around the world, moiself  feels like taking the blog equivalent of a spa day.

*   *   *

Department Of Oh, That Poor Kid

Dateline: Tuesday morning 7:58 AM.  Nearing the end of my morning constitutional,   [5]  moiself  is walking up a neighborhood street, headed toward home.  Approaching me is a girl riding a bicycle.  [6]  I assume she, like other kids I’ve seen on this street at this time of the day, is headed for the local middle school, which is two blocks behind me.  She has curly, shoulder-length, dark brown hair, thick black rimmed eyeglasses and is wearing khaki pants and a red/blue patterned sweater.  And she is grinning from ear to ear. 

 

I don’t know how important this message is; my pause is to insert background info:

I vary my morning walks, but most of my routes take me around/near the two schools in my neighborhood (one elementary, one middle school) and several street corners which serve as a stop for the high school busses.  If I’m out walking and make eye contact with a person passing by it has been my lifelong habit to briefly greet that person, no matter their age.  But in the past few years, I’ve stopped extending a quick good day if the passersby are of student age.  This is because 99.5% of the time the Young People Of Today ® never return the greeting, and/or seemed annoyed or embarrassed or even alarmed that an adult is recognizing that they are a fellow traveler in this world.  I figure they mostly fail to see me in the first place:  they don’t make eye contact; they’re all looking down at their cellphones (the rare one or two who are not screen-mesmerized are still walking with their heads down).  Someone over age 30?  I’m not on their radar.

BTW, this saying-hi-to-strangers was a custom of mine that one of my college boyfriends found bemusing at first, then alarming, when he realized it was a thing-that-I-do.  We were planning a trip to the East Coast for the summer after my graduation, and he’d spent some time exploring The Big Apple with friends when he was in high school.  “Please don’t to this when we’re in New York,” he advised me, and told me scary incidents he and his friends had experienced, illustrating how making eye contact with or even acknowledging the presence of strangers was an invitation to get mugged.

 

 

Big Smiling Girl’s bike is a beach style contraption with balloon tires; when she is about 50 feet away from me, she stops her attempts to ride it with her hands off the handlebars (the bike was wobbling, quite a bit.)   When she’s about 30 feet in front of me she looks directly at me and chirps an enthusiastic, “Good morning!” I return the greeting; as she pedals past me she adds, “How are you doing?” I turn around and reply, “I’m doing well, thanks, and I hope you are, too.”

It was a sweet moment for me, even as I vacillated between stifling both my laughter and my “Oh dear…” reaction.  The latter is due to the idea that if junior high is anything like I remember it (and my sources tell me it is, if not worse), this girl, by acknowledging and even initiating an exchange with an adult who is not related to her….oy vey.  Why am I so cynical about her likely social standing among her peers?

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Appeal To The NY Times

Gentle Editor of The New York Times game section:

When I open your app on my phone first thing in the morning, and see the game you have chosen to be “on top” (as in, the first game that the app user sees   [7]  ), please refrain from greeting me, under the play button of the game which you currently have as the top choice (Spelling Bee), with the phrase/warning/admonition/challenge (what is it, BTW?),

You missed yesterday’s game.

Moiself  missed nothing.  I used to play Spelling Bee, but it’s been over a year since I have, after for the too many-eth time I became irritated by the narrowness of the game’s word curation choice – a petty complaint to you, perhaps, but one that to me is a matter of honor.  I’m not coming back.

I greatly enjoy your new word game, Connections, and also Wordle, the mini crossword, and Letter Boxed, as I have written here previously  (no need to thank me for the free publicity).  Just stop the nagging, OK?

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

 

 

*   *   *

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

Moiself  hates it when someone whose job it is to help you can’t or won’t admit that they just don’t know something (or that they are wrong):

Dateline:  Monday, 11:30 am shopping at a local sporting goods store for a pair of socks for MH’s half birthday.   [9]    I’m looking for a certain brand of wool socks.  Flipping through the store’s sock selection hanging on the wall by the hiking boots department, I notice that there seems to be no pattern to either the size or brand or color organization of the socks.  I keep thinking I’ve found the pair I’m looking for, then see the sizing info on the price tag, which reads, Womens.

A salesperson standing about twenty feet to my left, who has been organizing a sales rack in the adjacent (camping supplies) department, calls out to me, “Are you finding what you’re looking for, ma’am?”  I thank him, say that I’ve found the socks, and am now trying “…to find the right size for my husband – men’s sizing.  I found one in large, but it’s a women’s large, which is as two sizes smaller than a men’s large, and my husband has big feet.”

“All of our socks use unisex sizing,” he responds.

 

And all of our socks use they/them pronouns.

 

Hmmm.  *Some* of the socks are clearly labeled unisex, with a small chart detailing unisex sizing range, but others are not. “Well…noooo,”  I reply, shaking the socks I am holding in my hand.  “I need a men’s large; this is a women’s large.”

“Our socks *all* use unisex sizing,” he insists.

I find the pair I’m looking for, and mutter, “Tell that to them,” pointing to three hanging rows of socks clearly marked Womens, as I head to the store’s checkout counter.

 

…and some of your socks speak French.

 

*   *   *

May the world be filled with junior high nerds who freely greet adults;
May you always find the right-sized (and linguistically appropriate) socks;
May you curate your own list of classic movie lines;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I think that’s Zone of Interest, which, as of this writing, I still have not seen.

[2] That must be moiself’s  record for most vias in a run-on sentence.

[3] Don’t ask what year; I can’t recall, and that detail would neither add to nor detract from the story.

[4] Rob was what my mother called me, until her fourth and last child, my brother Robert (younger than me by 9 ½ years), decided that that nickname was rightfully his. 

[5] When I’m feeling particularly jaunty I use words like “constitutional” instead of walk.

[6] Safety-conscious pedestrian that I am, I am walking on the left side of the street, facing oncoming traffic.  She is riding with traffic, thus, headed toward moiself.

[7] This varies – which game is featured first – although it seems to have been several weeks if not months that Spelling Bee is first.

[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] Our family – MH, son K and daughter Belle and I – celebrate our respective birthdays, and half birthdays, thanks to MH (unknowingly) starting the tradition when he and I were dating. 

The Brain I’m Not Hard-Wiring

February 2, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, 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 Brain I’m Not Hard-Wiring

Department Of Not The Kind Of Story You Want To Start Your Day With
Sub-Department Of It’s Not “All In The Past”

 

( image from Newsweek story 9-18-19,
Illinois Opens 24 Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Cases That Were Never Investigated )

 

Dateline: last Wednesday, 6 AM, scrolling through LA Times headlines.  The words Orange County, where moiself  was born and lived most of my first 18 years, caught my eye; also, I thought I recognized the name of the reporter.   [1]  The article, by LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, is about the first big story Arellano covered as a cub reporter, that of a notorious Catholic priest and sexual abuser.

Father Eleuterio Ramos was a priest in Orange and LA Counties in the 1970s and 1980s.  Ramos was transferred from parish to parish by church officials who knew about Ramo’s history of molesting (in Ramos’s own words, “at least” 25) boys, but – surprise! – never notified the police or removed him from the priesthood.  Here is the entry  (my emphases)  for Ramos on bishopaccountability.org, a website which has documented the abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church since 2003.   

“Full name Eleuterio Victor Al Ramos, Jr. Priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles CA, then the Diocese of Orange when in was created in 1976. In and out of treatment, kept in ministry. Placed on leave in 1985. Sent to a Tijuana Mexico parish in 1985 and put in charge of a children’s ministry. Removed in 1991. Died in 2004. Personnel file released in 1/2013. Wrongful death suit filed in 3/2017 vs the Orange and L.A. dioceses by the widow of an alleged victim who died by suicide in 2015….The victim was altar boy who met Ramos at age 10.”

The story of Ramos, and of what happened to his victims and their attempts to bring him to justice, haunts Arellano to this day, both as a reporter and as a human being. 

“Ramos has cast such a specter over me that when I received a text from attorney John Manly that his firm had reached a large settlement in a clerical sex abuse case, I immediately guessed who the perpetrator was.

The plaintiff alleged that Ramos…molested him…during the 1970s and 1980s. Church leaders…did nothing to stop the abuse, despite repeated warnings from parishioners, staff and even a fellow priest, the lawsuit alleged.

The $10 million settlement…requires the Archdiocese of Los Angeles…to pay $500,000. The Orange diocese will cover the other $9.5 million….

… the plaintiff declined to speak to me. The Times does not identify victims of sexual abuse without their consent.

In a statement, spokesperson Jarryd Gonzales said that the diocese ‘deeply regrets any past incidences of sexual abuse,’ adding that ‘the allegations in this case date back more than 40 years and do not reflect the Diocese of Orange as it stands today.’ “

( excerpts from Arellano’s column, “A pedophile priest. A $10-million payout. A monster who won’t leave my life.”  ( LA times, 1-25-24 )

 

 

Moiself  is genuinely sorry that Arellano (and other reporters who’ve worked on the thousands of priest sexual abuse stories) continues to be haunted by the story he covered. What haunts me is the WTF?  WTF?!?!?   quote from that church spokesperson – about how the abuse “do not reflect what the diocese is today.” Okay, it doesn’t haunt me so much as it frosts my butt to think that people might read that obscene muddling statement and say, “Oh, well, yes, that was then and this is now.”  It’s a line I’ve read about from so many other Catholic church spokes-folks I figure it must be in the first chapter of their, “How to Handle Those Pesky Sex Abuse Settlements” handbook:

“The allegations in this case date back more than ___years and do not reflect the Diocese of ____ as it stands today.”

 

 

WRONG.   Excusez-moi, Mr. Spokesperson, but the abuse does in fact reflect what the diocese – what the Catholic church – is today.  Of course it does.  The whole point of your religion is that the past lives in the present, and that the stories and protocols of the past determine the future. 

Yep, this shill spokesdude wants us to believe that this darned abuse thing is “all in the past.”   Um, hello, the Catholic Church is *all about* the past!  Roman Catholicism is, as all Christian religions are, based on stories and mythologies from Iron Age, pre-scientific cultures, and as such, it struggles desperately to concoct and maintain its relevancy in the present and future.  The church clings to ancient legends and scriptures and bizarre rituals (e.g. the metaphorical cannibalism of the rite of communion), which they sometimes try to pass off as symbolic or allegorical despite their own theologies of literalism (i.e. transubstantiation).     [2]  

 

 

Their theologies and the power they hold over adherents come from the past; they continue to live in the past, and look how they react when their past catches up to them?

The Catholic church’s leaders have, for over a millennia, been appointed by a cabal of their brothers who claim to be voting in response to the spirit of their god.  This spirit led them to elect centuries of buffoons and also downright evil men, including but not limited to Pope Stephen VI  who ordered his deceased predecessor exhumed and his fingers cut off; Pope John XII, whose worldly ways included gambling, incest, murder (he himself was killed by the man who caught him in flagrante delicto with his wife); Pope Urban VI, who was disappointed that he didn’t hear enough screaming when the Cardinals who had turned against him were tortured.   [3]

The church leaders and their brotherhood continue to cling to misogynistic, homophobic, medieval policies which were formulated and are enforced by a hierarchy of, as a self-described recovering Catholic once told me, “Men who’ll dress like women but refuse to ordain them.”

 

 

The RC’s sexual abuse scandals and their aftermath are not in the past – they are in the here and now, and shall continue to be, until RC adherents say enough is enough, and take their arses and their checkbooks  ( how many RCs truly comprehend that their donations “to god” go to pay off priest sexual abuse lawsuits?    [4]   )  out of the pews and into the light.

Support groups include for those considering doing so include

* Catholics Anonymous

* Former Catholic

* FCC- Former Catholics Connect

* Live Journal

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of Everything You Know Is Wrong

Well, not everything, but it turns out….

“Psychology is a bit of a double-edged sword, because it is so intuitively interesting to all of us. And the positive side is that we’re all psychologists in everyday life.
We all know — or at least think we know — something about love and memory, and friendships and dreams and things like that. The downside though is that because something seems familiar it may sometimes seem understandable. There’s a very hungry, very receptive audience for psychological books on positive psychology, emotions, love, relationships, infidelity. That’s all good.
But the danger, I think, is we can very easily push our wonder buttons and push our interest buttons using pseudo-science rather than science.”

That teaser ( my emphases) is a quote from Scott Lilienfeld, clinical psychologist and  professor of psychology at Emory University, from his interview with host Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics podcast, “Five Psychology Terms You’re Probably Misusing” ( my emphases ).  Lilienfeld authored a paper called “Fifty Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid: a List of Inaccurate, Misleading, Misused, Ambiguous, and Logically Confused Words and Phrases,” and the book Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology.  For this interview, he (and other guest scientists and journalists) stick with a mere five common myths of psychology.  Dubner’s take on the book:

 “…this book is incredibly fun; I love it. It’s hugely enjoyable on the one hand, but also hugely sobering on the other…. Because basically you’re saying that all these things — all these ideas that people love to embrace and talk about and pass on — are somewhere between bogus and trumped up.“

  

 

The things-we-get-wrong include believing that the following concepts are true:

* statistically significant = statistically reliable
* bystander apathy
* personality type
* Some people are left-brained while other people are right-brained
* The brain is “hard-wired”

Sharon Begley, a journalist specializing in neuroscience and the neuroplasticity of the brain, joined the conversation to discuss this latter myth.

LILIENFELD:
I think in the overwhelming majority of cases in which it’s used, “hard-wired” is really misleading and I think sometimes potentially pernicious because it can lead people into assuming that certain behaviors cannot be changed….

BEGLEY:
If you say it’s hard-wired, implicitly — or actually not that implicitly, quite explicitly — the message is, you can’t change that.

Just as if you wanted to go into your computer’s hard drive with a teeny little screwdriver and start messing around with those integrated circuits to change something, that will not work out very well.

But the hard-wired idea didn’t originate with computing.
The history of neuroscience has shown us that even going back centuries, whatever was the prevailing cool mechanical machine, device, whatever, that was the metaphor that people appealed to. So the brain was compared to a counting machine, to a clock. And then computers burst on the scene and so people said, “Well, then the brain is like a computer.” But one of the most important discoveries in neuroscience over the last few years has been, in fact, that all that hard-wired stuff is completely wrong in very fundamental ways.

LILIENFELD:
There are very few — if any — psychological attributes that are strictly genetically determined, strictly hard-wired into the brain.

BEGLEY:
This realization has also led to treatments for major depressive disorder, because there’s a clear neurocircuitry underlying it. O.C.D., which reflects over-activity in a particular circuit, through the form of therapy called cognitive behavior therapy, the over-activity in that circuit can be quieted just as much as if people take the medications that are prescribed for O.C.D.

After a brief discussion of how the brain’s flexibility, including the fact that it can be trained to control different body parts after a stroke, Begley suggests it may be time to “trade in the hard-wired metaphor for a less misleading one.”

BEGLEY:
… The brain is more like an Etch-a-Sketch. You can seem to incise lines on it, and they look for all the world like they’re real, but with a little bit of shaking up, you can make significant changes.

 

 

I recommend a listen to this fascinating topic, presented with, as host Dubner puts it, “a dose of humility, along with a plea for good science.”  And, on the topic of bystander apathy, after the guests debunk much of the infamous Kitty Genovese story, Dubner has a cogent warning for us all:

“The moral of the story, I guess,
is to always be careful of what you think you know.”

*     *     *

 

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]

“… the Vatican issued its first new policy statement since a torrent of sex abuse cases around the world began last year….

But what the new guidelines could have done, but failed to, was to require churches to report complaints of sexual abuse to law enforcement.  Nor do they set up any chain of accountability for church hierarchy who may abet sex abusers….

As if all that weren’t enough to make that vein on your forehead throb just a little more insistently, in among all the strong words for sex abusers and heretics was the classification of the ordination of women to a ‘grave crime,’ punishable by excommunication.
Let me think: women ministering the sacraments, priests raping children. Women ministering the sacraments, priests raping children. Still not seeing them on quite an equal level yet….”

Mary Elizabeth Williams, American writer, in
“The Vatican’s new sex abuse guideline misstep: The church’s tougher new stand on the issue still disappoints — and manages to insult women.”
salon.com 7-15-10 )

 

 

*   *   *

May we be careful of what we think we know;
May we stop thinking, How did it get to be February?;
May your brain be more organized than any of moiself’s Etch-a-sketch drawings;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Turns out, I didn’t.

[2] The doctrine of transubstantiation holds that “the bread and wine at the consecration become Christ’s actual body and blood.”  Yum!  If you want to delve deeper into this primitive, Jesus-is-the-ultimate-animal-sacrifice shit ritual, read the explanation in the primer written for Catholics by Catholics, in the website Catholic Answers:  Transubstantiation for Beginners

[3] More fun and links to the lives of “The Bad Popes” are just an internet search away, or here on Wikipedia.

[4]  In figures only through 2018, over $1.2 billion in the USA alone (from “Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases“, Wikipedia).

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

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

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

The Affirmations I’m Not Reciting

January 26, 2024

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of Useless But Fun Statistics

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

Year / movies seen in a movie theater

* 2017 / 15 plus   [7]

* 2018 / 52

* 2019 / 54

* 2020 / 12

* 2021 / 29

* 2022 / 19

* 2023 / 16

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

 

With a notable exception for most all things Godzilla

 

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

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

 

 

BTW, my American Fiction review:

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

[7] I began keeping tally midyear.

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

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

The Surname I’m Not Forsaking

January 19, 2024

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

Department Of Yeah What He Said

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

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

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

 

 

Behold my missive, in its entirety:  [1]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robyn Parnell
Hillsboro, OR

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

How can she expect us to remember!  The horror!

 

Once again, I digress.

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Lightbulb Moments

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

Churches are habituaries.

 

 

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

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

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] The letter was marginally edited for publication.

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

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

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

[5] You bet I showed it to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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