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The British Church I’m Not Attending

December 26, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, exercise & fitness, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Happy Boxing Day, y’all.

 

 

Chill, dude. Not that kind of boxing.

Commonly celebrated in England, and countries with substantial ties to/former territories of the Brits (referred to as commonwealth nations   [2] ), Boxing Day has many competing attributed origin stories.  Some say it is a day set aside for giving alms to the poor…

 

 

…but more likely it has to do with the British economic class system – giving the servants one measly day off during the holiday season (they had to work on Christmas Day, preparing their masters’ employers feasts, etc., and could take home the leftovers and receive Christmas Boxes with giftts from their employers on the 26th).

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Speaking Of The Brits
Sub-Department Of Visual Double Takes

Dateline: Saturday; 3 pm-ish, headed home after grocery shopping with MH.  We took a scenic detour, and on a street a half mile or so from our ‘hood we passed a blue road sign on the right.  In this state, blue street signs typically indicate a business or service or other facility, from a hospital or gas station to a winery or store or church or B & B….

The sign read ARISE CHURCH, with an arrow pointing to the right.  But the words were in skinny capital letters, and at the speed we drove by moiself  missed the I, and for a brief moment my mind registered the sign as indicating

ARSE
CHURCH
→

 

Moiself  likes the idea of my city hosting a local chapter of The British Church of the Bum.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Thing To Be Happy About

That would be, the week between Christmas and New Year’s day.

Happy Twixmas, y’all.

 

 

The guidelines for Twixmas sound a lot like recovery from foot surgery.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Real Estate Obfuscate-Speak

They’re not calling them trailer parks anymore, or even manufactured home parks. It’s land lease communities.

The reason I have become familiar with this slight-of-tongue terminology is that I’m keeping up with the real estate market in the vicinity of where daughter Belle lives.    [3]    And while a well-built manufactured home can be attractive in that it’s another option in the overpriced real estate market, it comes with a financial gotcha in that, in the vast majority of the situations, you are buying the manufactured home only, yet paying the lease price for the site it sits on – a price that can be as high or even higher than the mortgage itself (double or triple, in many cases I’ve seen).  You can be fooled into thinking that you are a solely a homeowner, when you are still, in a crucial way, a renter, accruing no equity in the property upon which your home sits.  If the landlord raises that rent, you gotta pay it.

Here is how they try to sell you a scam a pro-land lease community site describes it ( my emphases ):

Land lease communities allow residents to own their homes while leasing the land, offering the best of both worlds: affordability and a community atmosphere. You can find land lease communities across the U.S., and they are especially appealing in areas where high land costs might make property ownership particularly expensive.|
By choosing a land lease community, residents can enjoy the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag.
( excerpt, Inspire Community, “What is a Land Lease” )

 

 

 

…the benefits of homeownership without the hefty price tag.  That’s a new way to shovel it.  If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.  Lovely view of Brooklyn, for only $1300/month, for just the dirt under your feet.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of News From The Recovery Front

Moiself’s  exercise routine needs (temporary) modifications post-foot surgery.  I found a variety of chair exercise videos online:  [4]  cardio, strength, even yoga.   After trying them out I mostly don’t use them, and just modify my regular routines.  But I tune into one chair cardio/weights online video to use as a warmup, because I have developed a certain fondness for the Shiny Happy, over enthusiastic exercise leader.  It’s been six weeks, and so far, hearing her perky malapropisms never gets old: they include her pronouncing muscles as musk skulls, and enthusing about how chair workouts can still be vigorous, especially for those who have some “fiscal limitations.”   [5]

What was (is?) that Reader’s Digest  trope?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Working Your Brain During The Holiday Season

One of my favorite podcasts, People I Mostly Admire (aka  PIMA) is being retired by its host.  PIMA is/was hosted by economist and author  [6]   Steve Levitt.  His PIMA interview with astrophysicist, author and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson was one of my favorites, despite    [7]   the fact that, to moiself, Levitt seemed somewhat intimidated by interviewing a “real” scientist.

 

 

 

The most intriguing part of the interview for moiself  was when Levitt and Tyson discussed hypothesis theory, something that both fascinates and frustrates me. The frustration comes from the fact that, IMO, the ignorance re and/or misinterpretations of the definitions of hypotheses and theories account for a great deal of the misunderstandings laypersons have about science.  Non-scientists tend to think of theories and hypotheses in terms of how the words are used socially and culturally – they see those terms as more akin to opinions and hunches.  Thus, to  Biff The Non-Scientist Who Nevertheless Loves Ranting About Science, the theory of evolution carries about as much weight as does Biff’s Uncle Anus’s pontifications about why his neighbors decorate their lawn with statues of Nordic trolls and Japanese anime characters:   “I have a theory about that….”

 

 

During the interview Levitt was self-critical re the fact that, as he sees it, his discipline –  economics – is not “truly scientific” (despite there being a Nobel prize category for it 😉 ).  By that he meant, economists use different data gathering methods than those working in the so-called hard sciences, and that there is a certain “stickiness” about working with/trying to explain that try to explain things that are often unquantifiable, such as human behavior.

Steve Levitt:
“…it’s not the scientific method, it’s a sensible method, in a data-driven world, you try to figure out what’s going on.  To me what is so disturbing in economics is that everybody knows it’s completely fake, what we do.  And no one talks about it, and everybody pretends to follow the scientific method, when in fact we’re doing nothing like it.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.  Let me first tighten up some of your vocabulary.   If you have an idea about how something works, it’s not a theory, it’s a hypothesis.    [8]

A theory, in science, is an understanding of how things work that not only explains all that it has confronted but that makes *predictions* that have been shown to be accurate going forward. That’s a theory.  Until you have experimental verification you have a hypothesis.

So, you put forth a hypothesis, some of the data don’t quite fit it, and you go back and readjust the hypothesis, that’s just fine.  You readjust the hypothesis, and now it fits the data.  I don’t have a problem with that.  But don’t elevate it to a theory of human behavior until *that* hypothesis makes a prediction you then test.

 I don’t care what you do with your hypothesis; I don’t care how much stitchery and remending you have to do to it – once you present it, and it accounts for the data you have available, that is the *beginning,* that’s not the end. Now, let’s test it.  Can you make a prediction?  Now we’re onto something.  If, after you’ve retooled it, it makes more predictions than you’‘ve ever imagined, bada-bing, let’s call it a new economic theory.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you exercise your brain musk skulls during the holidays;
May that same brain entertain you with visual double-takes;
|May you be able to form hypotheses about your theories;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago.

[2] e.g. Canada, Australia.

[3] She hopes to become a homeowner, within the next couple of years.  A pipe dream, is how so many of her peers view the housing market.

[4] As in…wait for it…exercises that can be done while sitting on a chair and thus keeping weight of the affected foot.

[5] Which might impact you even more than your, ahem, physical limitations, as you cold only afford to watch her free tape, rather than join a gym?

[6] Levitt, with his fellow Steve (Steven Dubner) , is the author of the ground breaking ITAL Freakonomics books, and Dubner hosts the Freakonomics podcast.

[7] or maybe, partially due to?

[8] NdGT deserves a footnote, don’t you think?

[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 Literary Classic I’m Not Sanitizing

December 12, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Me so happy, movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Literary Classic I’m Not Sanitizing

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Gender War, Schmender War

Dateline 1:  Late last week. Scrolling through news headlines from the online newspapers moiself  subscribes to   [2], t rying to find something distracting…but instead (of course?) came upon something that frosted my butt.  A headline mentioned the term, *gender wars.*  That set my teeth on edge, until…

Dateline 2:  Monday, circa 8 am.  Scrolling through my one social media outlet, looking for, finding, as one occasionally does, an I-couldn’t-have-put-it-better encapsulation of a manufactured distraction to a real problem:

A “gender war,” like all wars, is a patriarchal construct of male domination.

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  It turned out that moiself  liked this enough that it was a regular blog feature for 2025.  Will it continue throughout 2026?  Time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!   [3]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [4]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago January, to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 12-8-17 ( The Elbow I’m Not Ignoring ).  This one caught my attention as it is now, technically,   [5]  a memory of a memory:

Department Of Yet Another Blast From The Past
AKA, An Incident I Haven’t Thought About In A Long Time

Specifically, Crazy Bicycle-Riding Man ® .

Dateline: one afternoon, a long time ago in a galaxy at a university far, far away ( UC Davis. )  I was on campus; my first morning class had let out and I had three or so hours before my next class’s midterm exam. Instead of returning to my (off-campus) apartment for lunch I decided to splurge   [6]   and get a sandwich from the campus Coffee House and do my last-minute studying for the exam on the campus Quad.  ‘Twas a glorious spring day; I could have easily spent several hours happily parked by a mini grove of fir trees on the acres of green grass, along with other students studying, eating, napping, or tossing a Frisbee back and forth…

 

 

…but after about 45 minutes I had to move as I just couldn’t take it anymore.

What had begun as a curiosity – what I thought at first was perhaps a stunt or prank – morphed from snarky entertainment into torture by seemingly infinite repetition.

A young man with curly, shoulder-length brown hair was riding a balloon-tire beach bicycle back and forth across the quad length, from north to south and then east to west, all the while singing the Gordon Lightfoot song, If You Could Read My Mind.  He didn’t sing the entire song, only a portion of it:    [7]  

I never knew I could feel this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back

That’s it. Thirty-seven words, which he kept repeating singing.  Over and over.  And over.

It was… fascinating, at first. But ultimately tedious.  After about fifteen minutes, Crazy Bicycle-Riding Man’s path took him within a few feet of me and I caught a glimpse of his glassy blue eyes and realized, He is going to keep doing this until he either passes out or someone makes him stop.

I felt a brief twinge of sorrow for the guy’s obvious…disturbance. But whether or not the man’s break from reality was drug-induced or the result of a mental health crisis, I (like the other students I saw leaving the Quad in droves) was young and impatient, and my sympathy eventually dissolved into annoyance. I lasted another half hour before I gave up and took my books to the library to finish studying.

After all these years, I remember what Crazy Bicycle Riding Man was singing but haven’t a clue as to how I did on the midterm for which I was studying.  Which is perhaps the healthiest way to pass through this world,  n’est ce pas?   [8]

 

This is what the bicycle looked like. Unfortunately, this is not what Crazy Bicycle Riding Man ® looked like.

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Good Read Spoiled
Sub Department Of Censorious Scrooge Podcast

Dateline: Monday; throughout the day, listening to a podcast while doing various chores.  Moiself  was delighted to find out that the podcast The Allusionist was doing a special episode: a reading of A Christmas Carol.  [9] 

Charles Dickens’ beloved novella was published in 1843.  Up until about a decade ago, for a period of over 20 years I would reread A Christmas Carol every year, one stave  [10]  a night, starting on December 20.  The Allusionist podcast host Helen Zaltzman read the story with occasional/select verbal annotations – using quick,  sotto voce asides to explain Olde English terms, items, concepts or words ( e.g. bedlam; lugubrious; brazier; workhouse/poorhouse ) – which might be unfamiliar to contemporary listeners.

 

 

I’m very familiar with the story, and without thinking about it started reciting some of the dialog from memory, until moiself  was astonished to hear Zaltzman censoring a crucial piece of the story’s dialog.

It happened when Zaltzman was reading Stave Three; specifically, the scene when Ebenezer Scrooge and The Ghost of Christmas Present are watching the Christmas Eve gathering at the humble abode of Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit.  Cratchit’s wife and children are awaiting the return of Bob and the youngest child, Tiny Tim, who’ve gone to a church service.  Frail Tiny Tim has an unnamed debility; he needs leg braces and a crutch to walk.  When Bob and Tiny Tim arrive home they are joyously greeted by the other children, who whisk him off to another room to see the Christmas pudding cooking, while Mrs. Cratchit asks her husband how their beloved Tim behaved during the outing.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

 

 

That is how Dickens wrote the  dialog.  Here is how the podcast host read it (my emphases re her censorship and insertion):

“…he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was  ‘disabled – sanitizing a word’ – and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made disabled beggars walk, and blind men see.”

 

 

Really.

It floored me.  I was already on the floor (exercising), which was a good thing because I might otherwise have fallen over, first from the surprise, and then the indignation.

 

 

She didn’t just do what I just heard her do…right?  I’ve listened to The Allusionist podcast long enough to know that its host (Zaltzman) has sanctimonious speech constable tendencies…even so, it smacked my gob.

 

 

What kind of a  self-crippling, blue-nosed, censorious, patronizing mindset led Zaltzman to decide that we in the 21st century cannot interpret or handle the 18th century vocabulary employed by the 18th century author of a classic, beloved story, and that she must protect us from such vocabulary?

And, justifying her censorship, she notes that she is sanitizing a word.

Sanitizing.

 

 

Who told Zaltzman that cripple/crippled/lame are dirty words, in need of disinfection?  Also, as to her substitution, the term disabled was not used until the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.  And, as MH said, that evening when I told him why my happy-all-day mood ( “I’m getting to listen to A Christmas Carol!” ) had been sullied, “Who decided crippled was unacceptable?”

Evidently Zaltzman decided that word is a pejorative.  But crippled can be – used to be – simply descriptive.  The terms handicapped or disabled cover an incredible spectrum – describing Tiny Tim as disabled tells you little about his condition.  Tim could have been disabled by poor eyesight, or hearing loss, or cognitive or emotional difficulties or a speech impediment or a seizure disorder or….  Crippled is more specific: the reader knows that Tim’s mobility has been compromised.  Dickens used the words that were in use, for those who had difficulty walking/couldn’t walk at all, at the time he wrote the book (and Zaltzman managed to annotate many other of Dickens’ words, without *censoring* them).

Many years ago I listened to several interviews with/retrospetives about the fiction writer Andre Dubus, who had recently died.  Years before his death, Dubus had been hit by a car and crippled – *his* description.  When Dubus was asked by interviewers (and he often was) why he chooses to refer to himself as a cripple or someone who had been crippled, Dubus explained that, as a writer, he appreciated the simple and utilitarian descriptiveness of the term.  He was, in fact, crippled – he could no longer walk.  The term provided factual, useful information, and was in no way critical or insulting to him.

Oy vey.  As Tiny Tim might say, God Bless us, every one (and flaming atheist moiself  would not attempt to censor that character, or put other words in his mouth).  But I could not finish listening to the podcast.  Helen Zaltzman, bah humbug.

And by bah humbug, I mean, “What the fuck?!?!?!?”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

 

*   *   *

May you not be plagued by the humbug of censorship;
May you realize that grown-ass adults to not need you to sanitize
words that *you* find objectionable;
May you have, or one day obtain, fond memories of a bicycle-riding troubadour;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in the pear tree daughter Belle purchased and (with the help of MH) planted many years ago

[2] The Oregonian; The LA Times, The NY Times; The Washington Post…at least one of which may be cancelled by the timme you read this.

[3] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[4] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[5] Due to the fact that I’m re-running it.

[6] Working at the school library to put myself through school, any non-home procured food – even a simple sandwich – was (or felt like) a splurge.

[7] The chorus? Verse? Bridge? Root canal? Help me out, musically literate people.

[8] Not to show off in front of Gallic illiterates, but n’est ce pas? is French for, “The birdhouse smells like stinky feet, does it not?”

[9] specifically, the novelization of the script for The Muppet Christmas Carol, which followed the book almost word for word.

[10] The word Dickens used for chapter.

[11] Via (NPR; other online literary and newscasts)

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

The Friday Letter Limerick I’m Not Sending

November 21, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, Oregon, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Friday Letter Limerick I’m Not Sending

…that’s because I sent it last week.

Background: every Friday moiself  sends a letters to each of my two offspring.  [1]  I begin their letters with either a haiku or a limerick, the subject matter having (loosely) to do with the past week’s news, personal or otherwise.  One week ago today, their respective letters began thusly:

A Limerick For Finally Fixing This Fucking Foot
If under oath, I’d commit perjury
If I said that I don’t dread foot surgery.
Except for childbirth
I’ve a hospital dearth…
Just a wee medical dramaturgery.    [2]

As far as I can tell,   [3]  the surgery went well.  I’ll know more after the first post-op appointment, which will have been yesterday.  This post is being written earlier in the week; I’m using my recovery time to somewhat crib the blog  – as in using the words of other and moiself  so as not to tax my painkiller-addled brain with too much new material.

Crib #1: Here is a version of what my gradually-becoming-less-addled brain reported on Tuesday to a California buddy:

I am now on my fourth day post bunion surgery, which was Friday afternoon. Unlike me, Betty (my post-surgery boot) is photogenic and not at all camera-shy. Here she is taking a respite from our morning project: helping me hobble (crutches) to the kitchen where I do five minutes of prep work, then return to the couch and watch an episode of “New Scandinavian Cooking.”  It’s good rehab viewing.  I figure if those Norwegians can make wild berry pancakes on a snow-covered mountain promontory, then I can take six hours to make a 30-minute casserole in my indoor kitchen.

 

 

I’m off the narcotics today…. Extra strength Tylenol (no autism symptoms to report, yee haw!)  and constant foot elevation are my friends. I’ve discovered that even the non-narcotic pain relievers make me quite tired, or perhaps that’s an effect of the surgery as well, and so I spent a lot of the day looping in and out, mentally.

I’m looking forward to the first postop exam on Thursday: the great unveiling. The doctor is going to unwrap the dressing, inspect his handiwork, then change the dressing… hopefully without passing out from the smell (I must keep the dressing dry and thus am unable to wash the lower leg and foot, although I’m going to have a sponge bath this afternoon – which I’m sure you’ll read about on your favorite social media outlet).  At least I’ll get a glimpse of my toes, which I haven’t seen since before the surgery.

The main issue for me, besides boredom, is the enforced lack of daily exercise until I get the all clear from my surgeon, who has already warned me,  “Now don’t do anything stupid.”  I am trying to be all chill and mindful, just enjoying what comes up on the screen. MH and I are already almost done with, The Good Wife,   [4]   yet another critically acclaimed series that we never watched. I can see why it was acclaimed; also, I like shows that reinforce my decision to *not* go to law school.

I hope things are well and dry in your part of California, which, if I believe the headlines, is washing into the ocean due to heavy rainfall.  We in the Portland metro area remain steadfast in our determination not to let anything rain on our parade, which nowadays includes dressing up in various unicorn, frog, and dinosaur outfits and parading around the Portland ICE center. Life is good.

 

 

*   *   *

Crib #2: Department Of Filling Space With A Right-On Article
About Getting Rid Of Your Crap Precious Stuff

This writer of this article – book summary, really, about Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die – was spot on…I found moiself  wanting to underline everything, and I haven’t even read the book.  But this summary nails the experience my siblings and I had, nine years ago, when our mother died and we returned to So Cal to go through the lifetime of STUFF she (and our father) had accumulated…it now gives me PTSD symptoms when I am around clutter and hoarding.

(these are excerpts from the article I refer to,  Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die,  which I saw on a FB link 11-12-25 ).

The author’s premise is simple and devastating: you think your collections – whether they are perfectly organized and carefully curated or just jammed into rooms and boxes – will matter to someone after you’re gone. They won’t.

This isn’t another gentle guide to organizing your home or finding joy in your possessions. This is a wake-up call about what happens to all your stuff after you die, narrated by someone who clearly has zero patience for sentimental attachment to junk.

 

 

(the book’s author) isn’t being cruel. She’s being honest about what she’s watched happen countless times—families forced to deal with a lifetime of accumulated possessions, feeling guilty with every item they throw away or donate, wishing their loved one had handled this themselves.

1. Your Treasures Are Someone Else’s Burden
(the author) gets brutally specific about this: those family heirlooms you’ve been preserving?  The collections you’ve spent decades building? The perfectly good stuff you’re saving “in case someone needs it”? Nobody wants it badly enough to come get it. What feels like leaving an inheritance is actually leaving a massive chore for people who are already grieving.

2. “Someday” Is Code for Never
All those items you’re keeping for  someday—when you lose weight, when you have time for that hobby, when you get around to fixing it—that someday isn’t coming…. Keeping things for someday is just refusing to admit that this day, right now, is the only one you actually have.

3. Downsizing Now Is a Gift to Everyone, Including You
Getting rid of excess isn’t losing something. It’s gaining space, time, and clarity.

4. Sentimental Value Doesn’t Transfer
This might be the hardest truth: just because something means everything to you doesn’t mean it will mean *anything* to anyone else….
Do not expect others to preserve your memories for you.

5. Decluttering Before You Die Is Your Last Act of Consideration
The book’s ultimate message: dealing with your stuff while you’re alive is one of the most loving things you can do for the people you’ll leave behind. They’ll be grieving. The last thing they need is weeks of sorting through your garage, your attic, your closets….
Leave them with memories, not mountains of stuff.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Having Empathetic Support At Home Is The Key To
Successful Post-Surgical Recovery

MH pimped enhanced my temporary accommodations.

 

How long have I been stuck on this couch/behind this TV tray?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

People of all faiths need to remember these Four Great Religious Truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God’s chosen people.
2. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian world.
4. Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters or the liquor store.

( attributed to WHOA   [6] )

 

*   *   *

May you declutter now, and regularly;
May you never burden others with the expectation that they will
preserve your memories for you;
May someone pimp your surgical recovery space;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The snail mail/in an envelope kind of correspondence.

[2] Yeah, poetic license, re me being a writer who used to work in the medical field.  I’m not sure that dramaturgery is a word, but if I were to advise a playwright on my experiences in either writing or, say, working at Planned Parenthood, I’d be practicing being a dramaturge…so, there.

[3] Translation: from what the doctor told me.

[4] “network television’s last great drama.”

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

[6] We Happy Observant Atheists

The Surgical Ordeal I’m Not Recounting

November 14, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, exercise & fitness, extended family, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Surgical Ordeal I’m Not Recounting

That’s because this post was written a day ago.  When it goes live moiself  will be in the hospital, waiting for my foot surgery to begin.

 

Something along these lines.

The Foot Doctor ®, while performing his presurgical assessment, told me I had a strong heart, and robust foot and leg muscles and joint flexibility ( without using the qualifier, “for someone over fifty,”   [1]   which I appreciated ).  I told him that’s likely because I’ve been active/a regular exerciser all my life; thus, my major concerns about the surgery    [2]   involve post-operative restriction of activities.

When discussing post operative care, FD confirmed what I’d read:  much to people’s surprise, recovery from knee and hip replacement surgeries are, in many ways, easier than recovery from foot surgeries.  This is because in the latter case you must keep *all* weight off of the foot for some time post-surgery.  In the joint replacement surgeries, within a few days you are up on your feet – which carry the majority of your weight load – working toward assuming unassisted walking.  Depending on the type of foot surgery, you cannot put *any* weight on your foot for 6-8 weeks.

 

Meet Bertha, my BBB (Big Beautiful Boot).  She’ll be my constant companion for 6-8 weeks.  Yep, I blinged her.

 

 

I told FD that what has kept me in good health pre-surgery will be  (moiself  is guessing) vexing to me post-surgery, in that it will be difficult for me to be only partially ambulatory.

Moiself:
“I assume at my first post-op appointment we’ll go over what exercises and activities I can do to prevent muscular atrophy – I can sit in a chair and do upper body weights?  Chair yoga, and abdominal workouts?  Maybe resistance exercises on the one weight-bearing leg, and…”

FD, giving me a shrewd look:
 “Now, don’t do anything stupid.”

MH’s reaction, when I told him that story:
 “You’ve only seen him a few times, and he knows you already.”

 


*   *   *

Department Of More Considerations

Recovering from surgery during the holiday season.

 

 

Yeah, that sucks.  Is there ever a good time for enforced/limited mobility?   [3]   Only times that are a wee bit less – or more – sucky/inconvenient, right?

So, why not put the surgery off until the new year?  Deciding factor: I want to be well over a half year’s recovery from the surgery for our once-in-a-lifetime, family trip to Iceland next summer, to be in the zone of totality for the 2026 solar eclipse.   [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Star Trek Moments When You Least Expect Them

Dateline:  last Friday, 11 a.m.-ish, doing a streaming/online yoga class.  Midway through the practice the instructor refers to a certain movement she’s adding into the sequence, advising her students to “assimilate that” into their vinyasa flow.

Any Star Trek: The Next Generation fan can guess what immediately popped into moiself’s  mind.

 

 

*    *   *

Department Of Passion, Schmassion – Careful What You “Follow”

Moiself  is not only irritated by but actually opposed to the concept/advice that when it comes to jobs/career paths, people must follow their passion ( there are many variations, including do what you love and the money will follow ).  This is because moiself  sees this tripe-passing-as-wisdom  as exceptionally first/white world privileged and tone deaf – for many reasons, including that it downplays and/or completely misses the fact that any work can have meaning without being what outsiders (or even you) might call meaningful.  [5]

As A Writer ®, along with other folk working in fields considered artistic/passion-following, I’ve often had that tired trope presented as a compliment wrapped up in advice ( “Oh, you’re a writer – you followed your passion!  You’ll never retire/a true artist will always keep creating/you’re so lucky to have been able to pursue your passion….” ).

 

 

Once I became aware of that scenario I tried to follow a healthier path, and for years  [6]  have held on to this perspective:

Be a verb; not a noun.

Don’t be defined by what you do, because you can do other things.
I write, but I may not always be writing.
I don’t have to be a writer for the rest of my life.

What you are doing – whether for more or less lofty career aspirations, or the just-a-job-to-pay-the-bills – or the recreations and hobbies you pursue ( you may run, but are you “a runner”? ) do not necessarily define you.

You can do other things.  Lather; rinse; repeat.

 You.  Can.  Do.  Other.  Things.

A wise perspective on the subject can be found in this excerpt from one of my favorite podcasts ( Hidden Brain, Love 2.0:How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 1;  my emphases ):

 HB host Shankar Vedantam:
” ‘Having a job that pays the bills is great, but even better is doing work that builds on your passions, one that challenges you, that drives you to innovate and excel.’

This message, that the ideal career is one where our work and our passions are neatly aligned, is widespread in American culture. For better or for worse, many of us want our work to do more than just keep a roof over our heads. We want it to reflect who we are.
Our guest…is Jon Jachimowicz, a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School.  Jon, a lot of your work seems to be about stepping back from the pursuit of passion to see it more clearly and accurately. You say that one obstacle to doing this lies in the way that we have moralized passion. What do you mean by that?”

Jon Jachimowicz:
“I think that we have elevated the pursuit of passion to such a high moral level where we are good people for pursuing our passion and vice versa. We’re seen as morally bad people if we don’t pursue our passion. And I think that that is a wrong expectation to have. At best, I think it’s unhelpful….
Amy Wzefsiewski has this really wonderful distinction between meaning and meaningful. Work can have a meaning without in and of itself being meaningful. I can think of my work as having a really important role in my life. It can empower me to do other things. It might allow me to support my family. But in and of itself, that work might not necessarily be meaningful….the reality is that for many people, pursuing work that is meaningful is a luxury…

I think we as a society need to embrace that that is a perfectly great justification to do what it is that we’re doing. I think we would do better by highlighting that for some people, given their life circumstances at some time points, it might actually be more meaningful if they focused on work that isn’t in and of itself something that they’re passionate about, but that might empower them either to pursue their passion later on in life, or to pursue their passion outside of work – which is an equally noble, or in my mind at least, an equally noble way of doing something that we deeply care about.”

SV:
“One other unfortunate consequence of moralizing passion is that passionate people can sometimes be reluctant to give up their passions, even when they should, because they’re afraid that others will think less of them.  I want to play you a clip of a man named Simone Stolzow, who left a traditional career in journalism to become a speaker and a consultant.”

Clip of SS:
“I felt guilty. I felt that I was sort of abandoning a calling, and democracy dies in darkness, and what am I doing – turning off one more light in the room? And will my colleagues and my coworkers ever forgive me? Will I ever be able to publish ever again?”

 

And whatever you do, think twice about following a passion that involves clowns.

 

SV:
“Jon, would you say this is another way in which moralizing passions ends up hurting people who decide to take a different route in their lives?”

JJ:
“Absolutely.  I think part of the challenge is that when we moralize passion in that way, we also worry about how other people might think of us if we were to quit or give up on one passion pursuit. The implication being,  ‘If I am a good person for pursuing a passion, then what must be wrong with me that I’m now giving up on that thing? There must be something inherently morally wrong with me. I must be a bad person for choosing to give up on what it is that I’m passionate about.’

Or at least that’s the belief that people themselves have. What we actually find in the research…is that other people understand that sometimes you need to give up on one passion in order to pursue another, that that’s just what life is like, that you don’t give up on passion pursuit altogether. But from that person’s perspective who’s pursuing a passion, they might really worry, ‘Are other people going to think of me as a lesser person because I’ve given up on that passion?’

And we find that that worry can keep people in jobs that they perhaps initially were really passionate about or where the working conditions perhaps initially were a really good fit, but where for whatever reason, it’s no longer a fit where they’re now having troubles and challenges maintaining that passion or they’re incurring negative outcomes that can harm them in the long run. But they keep on persevering because they worry so much about what other people will say if they were to give up.”

 


*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

Christian apologetics   [8] in a nutshell:      [9]

“My book is true, because it says so right here in my book.”

 

 

*   *   *

May you strive to be a verb;
May you remember that you can do other things;
May you assimilate what needs assimilating;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.   [10]   Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which, for some reason, I’ve been reading a lot, lately.  Seems medical & exercise gurus have enshrined age 50 as some kind of natural divider. As in, life before and after.

[2] Besides, of course, that it works….

[3] As opposed to say, recovering from an accident…this surgery is, technically, elective.

[4] Family, as in, our young adult children actually seem to want to take a trip with their parents.  Us footing the bill helps.

[5] And in most countries/cultures for most of history that meaning has been that your work keeps you and your family alive.

[6] If not decades…but who’s counting?

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

[8] From “apología” a Greek word that means “defense.” Christian apologetics means giving a defense of the Christian faith and theologies.  The problem with Christian apologists is that instead of looking at the available evidence and then drawing conclusions from the evidence, they start out with the conclusion, then look for whatever supports their position while ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

[9] An appropriate container.

[10] And thanks for reading this tenth footnote.

The Home I’m Not Going Back To

October 10, 2025

Robyn Parnell community, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Me so happy, Oregon, Recreation, school, travel, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes!, Zoo , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of You Can’t Go Home Again

Perhaps not.  But – with all apologies to novelist Thomas Wolfe, who perhaps didn’t realize this – you *can* go to your high school reunion, in your hometown.

Some of us may remember Wolfe’s admonition/advice, from discussing the themes of his novel Look Homeward, Angel in our high school or college literature classes:

The house, the town, the schools, even the people you remember from your youth and then left in your adulthood – they’ll never be the same, or make you feel the same, as you did when you were young.   [1]   They have all changed…as (of course), have you.  Life moves forward; the only constant is change; the home you left behind can never be reclaimed…but it can constantly be remade in the present.

So yeah, well then.  Dateline:  Saturday October 4.  My high school reunion.

 

Second semester Senior Class Officers:  President AG, Secretary GR, and VEEP (yours truly) in the middle…apparently goosing AG (where is my other hand?).

 

Moiself’s  pre-reunion fears:  That I might be unable to stifle my kneejerk exclamation/observation upon entering the reunion venue ( “Holy déjà vu-ew – who are all these old/gray/fat/balding people – oh, that’s right, they are *us*!” )

Moiself’s  Reality:  “Who are all these happy, well-adjusted, warmhearted, engaging, kind, generous, witty people – oh, how lovely, they’re *us*!”

*   *   *

Department Of The Morning After The Reunion Reflections

This person is so warm, kind,  funny, observant – why didn’t I know him/her better,
and/or hang around her/him more in high school?

Well, simply and most likely because it was a large high school (some 550+ in our senior class) and we were in different classes/activities/friend groups.  Also, people change. Perhaps our respective personalities wouldn’t have been a good fit at the time, like the proverbial clashing combinations of oil and water, cats and dogs, pickled herring and crème fraîche…

 

 

Reunion activities included a tour of the high school campus Friday afternoon followed by dinner at a BBQ joint; the “official” reunion  Saturday evening; an anyone-who’s still-in-town-and-would-like-to-do-so lunch meet-up at a downtown foodcourt mall on Sunday.

My flight arrived Friday eve, too late for the tour…which I’d no interest in, anyway.   [2]   I’d last checked out the campus seven years ago, when I went down to So Cal after my mother died.  While it was nice to see that the school had some kind a sign up referencing one of its name-drop-worthy alums ( Diane Keaton…street?  Sidewalk? Lamppost? Library book return drop? ), I only recognized one or two of the buildings, and felt no positive – or negative – connection.  Which seemed logical, to moiself.  After all, the school (to me) was the people, not the buildings.  It just…wasn’t my school anymore.  Such is The Nature of Things®.  

 

 

I’d left much free time in my trip planning, by both design and circumstances ( I was going to meet up with family who, due to ongoing health issues, could not say when they were available until last minute).  Thus it turned out that I had plenty o’ free time on Saturday before the reunion, and decided to check out some old hangouts:  the Santa Ana Zoo, Norm’s restaurant, and Bowers Museum.

The Santa Ana Zoo – initially known as Prentice Park, was vastly different than I’d remembered, which was a good thing, as the zoo’s animal enclosures from decades ago were PETA-protest worthy.   Although much-improved (and, like most if not all zoological parks today, very conservation-focused), the SAZ is still not an AZA member.  [3]  Even so, I had a good time observing the wildlife.  And the animals were interesting, as well.

 

I had a nice interaction with this ocelot, who seemed to like looking at my hat.

Three of my visit’s highlights included what surrounded me after I’d ordered lunch at the zoo’s café and ate it on a table by the children’s play area/sandpit:

* A tiny boy, picking up pinecones under the trees by an outdoor eating area, toddled over to my table and solemnly presented me with one of his treasures.  His mother was both proud of and astonished by her son’s generosity: “Oh, this is a first!” she gushed.  “He’s so shy, he *never* approaches or even makes eye contact with strangers!”  I reassured her, “Yes, well, I have that effect on men.”

* I overheard (then watched) two different parents – each trying to remain The Reasonable One ® despite their respective, escalating irritation – discussing what had happened and what then should happen re an altercation between their children. Dad A wanted Mom B’s son to apologize to Dad A’s toddler daughter, whom Mom B’s toddler son had pushed over in the sand pit by the swings.  Mom B’s boy wandered off after the encounter (with Dad B chasing after him);  Dad A was not pleased with Mom & Dad Bs’ reluctance to get their toddler to apologize.  “Oh, he’s very young,” was their excuse, which Dad A countered with, “This is how they learn…“, adding,  “Good luck with that,” when Mom B indicated that no apology would be forthcoming ( “They’re just kids; you don’t have to be snippy about it…”  [4]   )

* A family of four – two young men and two older women – sitting two tables away from me, played a game of Uno while they waited for their café food order.  They conversed loud enough so that I didn’t have to eavesdrop to hear the some of the details.  Moiself  surmised that the two young men were, patiently and with good humor, “defending” their sister (yay!), who was somehow a concern for the two older women (who didn’t like the young woman’s…boyfriend?  Job? General life direction?).  Also of interest  to moiself  was how smoothly all four family members switched from Spanish to English and back again, sometimes two or three times within the same sentence.  Not being bilingual moiself   [5],   I couldn’t help but wonder, what is the cause/trigger for them to switch?

 

 

And what a surprise the Bowers Museum turned out to be.  One of the city’s few “cultural” attractions, I remembered Bowers as the bane of Santa Ana schoolchildren, who had to do the obligatory (read: eyeball-evisceratingly boring) field trip to Bowers at least once in their elementary school career.   [6]    While Bower’s original (and beautiful) Spanish mission-style main building was still there, the museum had expanded.  I remembered a few of the old/permanent exhibits, but there were many more, including the featured World of the Terracotta Warriors: New Archaeological Discoveries in Shaanxi in the 21st Century, an impressive traveling exhibit I’d actually read about  [7]  before making the trip to SoCal.

 

 

Alas, I never made it to Norm’s  (I got hungry and lunched at the zoo before heading to Bowers)  I’d intended to send photographic proof of my being there to my older sister and her high school bestie, for whom  Norm’s was a personal/in-joke, involving the less-than-stellar meals (with regard to the food’s taste and quality ) we’d had at that SoCal institution.  The restaurant’s motto was, “Norm’s – We Never Close” ( which I appended with, “No Matter What The Health Department says!” ).

 

“Okay, so the food is meh, but you can get it 24/7!”

 

All of these (and more) trips involved moiself  taking Uber or Lyft , as I’d decided to forgo the hassle of car rental (and navigation of SoCal freeways).  And that was entertainment in its own right.  Really and truly, as I told several friends and family members, for my next trip I might be satisfied just booking different Uber or Lyft rides all day, to…wherever.  Moiself  so enjoyed the conversations I had with the drivers, all of whom were from a variety of different backgrounds and life experiences and who were friendly and eager to share their stories with me and hear mine in return, and who included:

* Jose and Raymundo, both of whom are getting married next week!      [8]

* John, who’s off to Colorado to visit his daughter, who is expecting baby#1 next month!

* Zheng, who lives at the beach even though he can’t afford to, but it’s the beach!

* Michael, who is retired ( “big mistake”) and misses having something to do!

* Abdul, who’s only getting $4 for this fare (so he says) and wants me to know!  [9]

 

Not one of my Uber drivers (but just as friendly).

*   *   *

Department Of Priorities

Dateline: Sunday, 8:15 am, the 61 Hundred Bread bakery in Santa Ana. I arrive early as advised and snagged a couple of loaves of their blue masa sourdough ( “Best sourdough in the universe” ), one to take to my older sister and her husband when I visit them later this afternoon, and one to take back with on the plane, for MH, when I return to Oregon.

 

 

Later in the morning, as I’m doing some prepacking for tomorrow’s flight, I realize I don’t have enough room in my carryon luggage to add the bread, unless I make some sacrifices.  And so, the sparkly black *bling* sneakers I wore to the reunion will stay behind in the hotel room.   [10]

 

*   *   *

The reunion committee, as wonderful as they were for all the details they had to plan and juggle, got my name wrong on the preprinted name tag they provided for attendees.  They had me as “Robyn Parnell Wagnell,” which was one surname too many.  The latter surname belongs to MH’s and my offspring (and is part of my email address; thus, the nametag mixup, I’m assuming).  Not to worry; due to the facts that…

(a) this has happened before with nametags; and
(b) I don’t like premade nametags,

…I’d brought along my own, custom name badge.

There is a story behind why I decided to have my own name tag made.

 

 

Story Dateline: many, many years ago; attending an event wherein people were provided with sharpie pens and those HELLO  MY  NAME  IS stickers.  I am gob smacked by the number of people (and by people I mean, men) who have written their professional credentials after their name, and who are introducing themselves to me ala:

Introduction:
“Hello, I’m Dr. Austin Tayshus.”
 ( Name tag reads:  Austin Tayshus, Ph.D. or M.D. )

This event is neither a medical nor scientific conference, nor a professional gathering of any sort; it’s purely social.  After the fifth or sixth time I encounter what moiself  considers to be this boorish, status-signalling behavior,   [11]   I return to the party check-in table, grab a sharpie, and append my nametag to read,  Robyn Parnell, N.a.D.

Which I have to explain to the next please-be-impressed-by-me Doc who introduces himself, then pretends, for a moment, that he recognizes my credential.

Pretensious Party Person:
“Hello, I’m Dr. Igor Maniac.
And I see you are……uh…’Na.D.”  Yes, oh…Naturo…Allopathic….?

Moiself:
“Robyn Parnell; Not A Doctor.”

Just want to make sure there’s no confusion about that.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

Harold: “You sure have a way with people.”
Maude: “Well, they’re my species.”

 

*   *   *

May you have entertaining encounters with ride service drivers;
May you make any sacrifice necessary to include the sourdough;
May you not need to have the Harold and Maude reference explained to you ; [13]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] And sometimes, that’s a really good thing.

[2] And as for the bbq joint meetup, by the time I’d Ubered to my hotel and checked in, I could have shown up later, but I checked out its menu on line.  Yikes.  Nothing a plant-eater such as moiself  would be interested in eating.  Or even smelling.

[3] I wonder if that’s due to it’s size, or quality of animal exhibits/care, or….?

[4] Oh, the joy of watching that interaction and thinking about how I don’t have to navigate that world anymore.

[5] Being able to curse, insult, and critique the bathroom supplies in several languages doesn’t count as language fluency…I think.

[6] Or whenever we had the city and/or county history/social studies blocks.

[7] But didn’t know it would be at the Bowers Museum.

[8] Not to each other.

[9] His sympathy trolling for a bigger tip – which he didn’t get – was obvious.

[10] Not to worry; they were quite inexpensive.

[11] It’s okay to be proud of your profession, and/or the education you received to get it, but other people also work hard and take pride in their professions sans trumpet-blaring – I couldn’t think of a reason why a person would do that at a social gathering, other than they wanted to accrue some kind of special treatment/elevated status points for being “a doctor” of…whatever.

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

[13] And if you do, may the first thing you do after reading this is find some way to see that movie.

The Everything I’m Not Knowing

October 3, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Everything I’m Not Knowing

Department Of The Argument I Didn’t Win.

This memory flashback is courtesy of the latest episode of the Clear + Vivid podcast, featuring guest Canadian psychologist and author Steven Pinker:

“Steven Pinker: When You Know That I Know That You Know…
It then becomes ‘common knowledge,’ and can be both beneficial – like cementing friendships or empowering peaceful protests – or destructive, causing a run on toilet paper or splitting society into silos, each with their own common knowledge.”

 

 

Dateline: one afternoon in the late 1970s; UC Davis, during moiself’s…junior or senior year?; in most likely an upper-level sociology class (my pre-law major, criminal justice, was offered through the department of sociology).  It was a smaller ( ~ 20-30 students ) class; we were discussing a certain chapter of one of the class’s assigned textbooks.

The discussion began with the professor expressing his distaste regarding the phrases common knowledge and common sense, which the textbook author had used several times in the chapters.  Professor professed that he found those phrases assumptive and reductive: he asserted that there were no such things, and that if common sense and common knowledge truly existed then everyone would have them, and we would not have the scornful descriptors describing their lack; e.g.:

* “You think what? Oh, c’mon; it’s common knowledge that…”

* “What an idiot – he has no common sense…”

Everyone else in the class nodded and uh-huh-ed their assents with the professor’s observation.  But his argument struck me as…insufficient.  I had to disagree, and offered the following, with the intention of encouraging further discussion:

The definition of the adjective common does not mean mandatory, or ever-present.   Something can be common, as in widespread, but that doesn’t mean that *everyone* *everywhere* possesses this “common” thing, or trait.  [1]

 

 

Now it was moiself’s  turn to be the recipient of my classmates’ nods and good point uh-hus…which quickly dissipated as it became obvious that the professor had become somewhat irritated.  He had meant to drop what he’d considered to be a brillante déduction, and then move on.

And so, the discussion…moved on, if you know what I mean.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Good Advice To Remember

The way you walk the path is just as important as where it leads.
( Anonymous  [2]  )

True, that.  Especially if you work for The Ministry of Silly Walks.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Previews

RROTB (Regular Readers Of This Blog ®)  may surmise that Clear + Vivid is one of my favorite podcasts.  But two mentions in one post is, moiself  thinks, a new record.

 

 

A couple of weeks ago  C+V host Alan Alda and the show’s producer had the show’s season premier, wherein they discussed/played excerpts from the upcoming season’s episodes.  Here was one of my favorite previews, [3], from Alda’s conversation with science and writer and climate researcher Kate Marvel, whose new book is titled, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet ( my emphases ):

C+V host Alan Alda:
“…You take a really unusual approach to communication in this book, Kate. When scientists write about science, they almost always avoid emotion every way they can. But you built your book on nine emotions, and under each emotion you tell the powerful stories that led you to have those emotions. It’s so unusual. How did you come to think of doing it that way?

Kate Marvel:
“Yeah, I resisted having emotions for a very long time because I’m a scientist, right? And we’re supposed to be neutral, we’re supposed to be objective…. Just the facts. And that’s how we maintain our credibility by pretending we feel nothing, but that doesn’t make us more believable. That makes us liars. And I realized that I don’t wanna lie.
And I don’t actually…there’s no gulf between getting the facts right and telling good stories about the facts. There’s no conflict between knowing things and feeling things.
And when that clicked for me, that’s when the idea for the book came in.”

Alda:
“Kate Marvel’s opening chapter is on Wonder. Wonder at the power of science to explain why the world is warming. After that she turns to anger.”

Marvel:
“…anger was the easiest chapter for me to write. And you know, I’m angry for the same reason that most people are angry when you think about climate change –  the lack of action and the telling of lies….

One of the things that makes me the most angry is the weaponization of uncertainty. Hmm. The fact that they say, ‘Oh, we don’t know everything” as an excuse to not do anything. And of course we don’t know everything. That’s why I still have a job. That’s why I go to work every day.

If science knew everything, science would be over. And so the fact that there are still things to find out about this planet does not mean that we know nothing. We are sure that greenhouse gases are causing climate change. We’re more sure about that than we are that smoking causes cancer. And the fact that there are still things that we don’t know about the planet, there’s still things we don’t know about how climate change will progress, what it will mean – that absolutely doesn’t mean that we’re not sure that climate change is real. It’s us, it’s happening, it’s dangerous. “

 

This sounds like a job for Science Captain Marvel.

 

Later in the conversation with the same scientist I heard one of the best metaphors (IMO) for our ultimately deadliest   [4]   planetary problem.  This could be helpful to y’all – which includes moiself –  the next time we’re discussing the topic with a person whose comments indicate that they don’t understand the difference between weather and climate.

Alda:
“I wanted to ask Kate about the difference between climate and weather. Years ago I noticed it wasn’t accurate to say that a weather event was an example of climate change because they seemed to be two different realms. But now I see weather events referred to as examples of climate change. So I asked Kate if she could explain that to me.”

Marvel:
“The way that I like to think about weather and climate is you can think of weather as a play that happens every day, but climate is the stage. And so weather is happening against this backdrop that’s set by the climate. And when you change the stage, you change the things that can happen on that stage. You change the stories that can be told, and that’s what’s happening now.
There is no weather that is happening, that’s not happening, against the backdrop of a changed climate. And we know from kind of basic physics what happens when the earth gets warmer…”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Oh And By The Way….

It irritates moiself  when I hear people say “climate change” when they should be saying, “global warming.” And that’s because I remember that there was a concerted effort, over twenty years ago, by conservative Republicans to change the vocabulary in an effort to change hearts and minds.

What conservative spinmeisters/climate change deniers want you to think:

“Climate change, that’s just the way of things – change is normal…
we’ve had lots of changes over the earth’s history….”

 

 

The fact that a more neutral term ( climate change) has become the go-to phrase, replacing the true, more descriptive phrase of *what is actually happening* (global warming – our climate is warming, not cooling ) – is a deliberate, obfuscatory, head-in-the-sand or-up-the-butt tactic.

“In 2002, a memo was written by Frank Luntz for the Republican Party on how to address environmental issues (Luntz, 2002). Luntz suggested that Republicans should update their terminology when discussing the environment, by describing themselves as conservationists, rather than preservationists or environmentalists….
Secondly, he suggested Republicans use the term climate change instead of global warming, as the latter was deemed less controllable, more catastrophic, and more emotionally challenging. It was suggested that these simple changes in terminology would assist the Republicans in winning the environmental debate. “  [5]

( excerpt, ” ‘Global warming’ versus ‘climate change’ “: A replication on the association between political self-identification, question wording, and environmental beliefs,” from ITAL Science Direct: Journal of Environmental Psychology, V. 69, June 2020 )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Question Moiself   [6]
Thinks I Know The Answer To

Which is humanity’s biggest roadblock to progress in fixing our current problems:
opposition (to the solutions), or indifference?

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you personally avoid (and enlighten others who, knowingly or naïvely use)
the weaponization of uncertainty;
May you remember that the fact that we don’t know everything
doesn’t mean that we know nothing;
May you feel free to insert a silly walk as you walk your path;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Obviously not moiself’s  verbatim recollection of what I said.

[2] From a recent guided meditation, so I’m thinking some Buddhist-type anonymous.

[3] which I share here in hopes of enticing some of y’all to tune in to Clear + Vivid.

[4] For humans.  Cockroaches will carry on just fine.

[5] Why aren’t there more footnotes in this post?

[6] unfortunately

[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 Intentions I’m Not Setting

September 26, 2025

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

Moiself  was merely one of the thousands of people who informed certain media and entertainment outlets that their kowtowing to a DICKtatorship cowardice in the face of First Amendment threats has consequences.  This is the email I sent last week to ABC national and local affiliates:

We are saddened to have to cancel our ABC-related accounts (Hulu, Disney) – I am a fan of Grey’s Anatomy and had eagerly awaited the new season – but we feel we have no ethical choice.  We are appalled by the cowardice and submissiveness ABC is broadcasting by its decision to suspend the Jimmy Kimmel Live show.

ABC did this after the Trump administration – which complains about every news and media outlet which does not kiss their a**es bend the knee to their ideological whims – complained about the contents of Kimmel’s comments re Charlie Kirk’s killing.  Yet Kimmel said nothing to disrespect the death of Kirk; rather – and we cannot emphasize this enough – Kimmel did his job.  What Kimmel disrespected was the Trump administration’s frenzied usage of this tragedy for their political gains and aims.  Kimmel did what comics and truth-tellers are *supposed* to do: tell the truth to power.  The purpose of the court jester is to use humor to criticize the (in Trump’s case, would-be) king, something the commoners have neither the power nor the platform to do.

We are cancelling our household Hulu subscription.  Our family will no longer purchase Disney products or services or visit its parks ( We don’t do this lightly; I am a former Disneyland Employee – Hungry Bear Restaurant), and will no longer watch our local ABC affiliate (Portland’s KATU) or any other ABC station.
As is the case with all authoritarian regimes, Trump’s attempts to silence his critics will eventually fail.  But ABC will be left with the legacy of its capitulation to – and thus collaboration with – the censorious would-be dictator and his corrupt courtiers.  ABC has betrayed its trust as a public media outlet; unless ABC reverses (and publicly repudiates) its capitulation, it is no longer trustworthy as either a source of news *or* entertainment.

Regretfully but firmly yours,

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Just Wondering:
Question 497 In The Unending Series

Soon I’ll be traveling to Southern California to attend moiself’s  high school reunion.   [1]   In preparation for the trip, I checked my ride service apps to make sure they still remember me (I don’t use them often; I will not be renting a car).  I’ve discovered I’ve apparently either chosen    [2]  ( or been assigned? ) Lyft’s WOMEN+ CONNECT service:

“WOMEN+ CONNECT
Rides for women, by women
We’re driving change one ride at a time. Now, women and nonbinary drivers can turn on Women+ Connect to increase their chances of matching with more women and nonbinary riders.”

Oh; okay; sure.

When using the Lyft and  Uber services I’ve had both women and men drivers (where they registered on any binary scale, I have no idea).  I’ve yet to notice a difference in service that I’d attribute to gender.   [3]

And then I got to thinking…

…yeah, always a dangerous endeavor.

Ahem.

I never got the memo re what makes a person want to identify as binary or non-binary, nor have I felt any pressure/had even a dash of desire to claim either…uh…( one of the two..therefore, a binary choice? ) label.

One of the cool (or frustrating, depending on where you are on the linguistic stick-in-the-mud  scale ) things about language is that it expands and evolves:   words take on new and additional – and sometimes *really* entertaining  [4]  – meanings.  Still, moiself  must confess that when I hear the word  binary my default thinking steers me toward the word’s original definition, as an adjective typically applied to mathematical systems and computer programming     [5]  consisting of or identified by two things or parts, as in a system of numbers ( the binary digits 0 and 1) or a formula incorporating a choice of two alternatives (e.g., on-off or  yes-no ).

 And then I got to thinking: if you identify as non-binary (however you define the criteria), does that mean that you in turn identify everyone who does *not* identify as non-binary as binary?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Empirical Question Of The Year

Are yellowjackets helpful pollinators/vital members of the pollinator ecosystem,  [6] or just the bellicose bullies of the wasp world – heartless bastards who swarm and sting for no apparent reason?

Moiself  knows what ecologists and entomologists want me to think.  But really, yellowjackets are *so* obnoxious.  And the fact that they can sting multiple times without paying the ultimate price, as honeybees must do, only adds to their predilection for arrogance, IMO.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Remedy I Hope To Never Use

Dateline:  9-19-25, 3pm-ish; at a local pharmacy checking in to receive my COVID vaccine.  Moiself  sees a sign at the pharmacy check-in window informing clients that Naloxone may be obtained there.  MH shows up for his vaccines ( COVID and influenza   [7] )  not long after I check in, and in addition to our vaccines we end up getting two packages of Naloxone, one to for my car and one for his.

I thought of the practicality having a dose of Naloxone – which rapidly reverses an opioid overdose – several years ago, after I first read of its availability to the general public.  But my second thought at the time was one informed by…to put it delicately, compassion fatigue.  As in, after reading/hearing paramedics’ and police officers’ and hospital emergency room staff’s stories of doing multiple, serial revivals on the same person, (sometimes more than once a day), only to have that same person they’d revived three times come in the next day or week dead from an opioid overdose, moiself  thought,  If someone is stupid enough to use that shit I’m not going to waste time and resources “saving” them today so that they can kill themselves tomorrow.

 

 

Well, maybe not, Martha.  After encountering more/recent stories of how many people have OD’d on fentanyl (and other opioids) completely unintentionally…

– they intentionally ingested something, from an illicit drug to a totally benign medication or substance that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with, say fentanyl, or
– they unintentionally were dosed with fentanyl or another opioid ( read; they were, essentially, poisoned ) by having, e.g., a beverage that was spiked, by someone they knew (who thought it would be a funny joke to play on them,  har de har har! ) or a total stranger  

 

 

…I thought it prudent to be prepared to help out, no matter the circumstances.  I think of it (having Naloxone in my car) as another insurance policy:  it’s good to have, and I hope to never have cause to use it.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Another Small Step Toward Understanding

Y’all have that friend, family member, coworker, who seems (mostly) otherwise rational but who can drive you face-palm-slapping batty with their persistent denial of evolution or other processes and principles of science?  Here is some understanding – not for them to understand science, but for you to understand them.

This opinion piece recently appeared in the Washington Post.  Moiself  is a WaPo  subscriber; if you hit a paywall for this article, it’s worth it, to gain a modicum of consideration from the experiences and perspectives of someone who once fit into that (science-denier) category.

 

 

I highly, highly recommend this read.  The author is a former religious missionary  [8]  turned scientist, with a valuable, first-hand view of how just “following the facts” of science is a difficult thing to do for so many people, in part because of another fact of science: how we evolved, as humans, to view the world and the places we and other people fit into it.

“The moment I finally admitted that evolution was real didn’t feel liberating. It felt like grief. I had spent years running up against hard evidence that, despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t refute. I was in the shower, and I cried inconsolably. Accepting evolution meant more than just accepting a scientific theory. It meant leaving my community and almost every friend I had ever known, and it was the final nail in the coffin of my arranged marriage.
Those tears were a response forged in the Paleolithic era. We are not meant to find it easy to leave our tribe because, back when caves were prime real estate, leaving your tribe was a death sentence. My anguish was biologically ingrained over hundreds of thousands of years. That ancient biology explains why so many people still reject ‘the science.’ ””

( excerpt, “I’m a former creationist.  Here’s why ‘Follow the science’ failed.”
  by Ella Al-Shamahi )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Setting Your Intentions

It is a common practice at the beginning of a yoga class – whether the class is live (in a yoga studio), or streaming, or in a yoga workout tape or DVD – for the teacher to suggest that you  “set your intention” for the class.

Intention as in, asking yourself a question, from the purely logistical to the profound ( e.g., Why did I come to this class today?  Why do I do yoga in the first place? ) or consciously choosing a purpose or affirmation to focus on during your practice, as a way to stay present ( aka mindful ) beyond just performing another set of physical exercises.  

Sometimes I do this — set an intention.  Sometimes I don’t.   And one time recently at the beginning of a yoga class, when the teacher mentioned (amid a soundtrack of soothing background music) that yogis might want to take a brief moment to set an intention, moiself  had a most un-yoga thought:

My intention is to kick some Yoga ass.

Which, once again, reminded me of how my thoughts and attitudes often affirm another yoga truism:

“It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect.”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

*   *   *

May you avoid being bullied by yellowjackets;
May you never have a reason to use administer opioid overdose reversal medicine;
May you enjoy reading the blog posts you read (mine, or someone else’s),
whether or not you set an intention to do so;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yikes.

[2] I don’t remember doing so.

[3] Anyone of any gender can overdo the personal scents, as did one driver whose cologne was so overwhelming I rolled down both backseat windows and stifled the urge to tell him, “Whatever you’re trying to cover up, I’m sure your natural body odor is far better than this perfumed stink bomb.”

[4] I refer, of course, to all the euphemisms for farting.

[5] You can get an idea of my age from my using that term, instead of “coding.”

[6] I recently posed the question to two certified Master Gardeners ® at a farmer’s market, and their answer was no, not really.  Yellowjackets are primarily predators and scavengers…which does help to clean up their surrounding by consuming dead and decaying animals (think of them as tiny vultures).  Yellowjackets are neither efficient nor intentional pollinators, but do transfer some pollen as they fly about, bumping into plants while looking for other insects and animals to harass and torture….  These were not the Master Gardeners’ exact words.

[7] I had had the influenzas vaccine three days earlier; at the time, due to the dickheads “in charge” of health misinformation, I could not yet get this year’s COVID vaccine.

[8] “I’ll show ’em – I’ll study their evidence and find all the flaws and refute their theories!”

[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 Political Karma I’m Not Mourning

September 19, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Political Karma I’m Not Mourning

Let’s get this out of the way.

Department Of He Who Lives  Like A Dick Shall Die By Another Dick  By The Sword
Shall Die By The Sword   [1]

Sub-Department Of Poetic Justice

“So we need to be very clear:  we are not going to get gun deaths to zero.  It will not happen.  You can significantly reduce them, by having more fathers in the home….”

 

 

“…or having armed guards in front of schools.
We should have an honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.  You will never live in a society where you have an armed citizenry and you don’t have a single gun death.  That is nonsense; it’s drivel.

But I am – I think it’s worth it.  I think it’s worth to have a cost, unfortunately, of some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other   [2]  god-given rights.  That is a prudent deal.”

( Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder,
speaking in April 2023 during a TPUSA Faith event.  [3]  )

Sure, Charlie, let’s make a (prudent?) deal. 

Sounds like Charlie Kirk would have approved of his own death’s cost-worthiness.

Oh yeah, re having fathers in the home reducing gun violence?

 

 

Kirk’s alleged shooter had a father in the home.

And it is from their fathers/their homes that most young shooters get their guns.  [4]   [5]

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Death Moiself  Would Have Mourned    [6]
Sub-Department Of A Weak-In-The-Knees Moment

Dateline:  Monday, 8:14 am; in my car on the way to pick up MH after he’d taken his car to the dealer for service.  I pull up to a stop sign and wait to turn left, onto a busy east-west street.  The cross traffic has the right of way and does not stop, except for a pedestrian crosswalk with a blinking light which is activated when its button is pushed by a pedestrian.

 

Kinda like this.

 

This crosswalk is activated frequently in the mornings and again in the afternoons, by kids going to/returning from two schools in our neighborhood (one elementary and one middle school).   A girl who looks like she is in the middle-school-age range is on the other side of the busy street; she has pushed the crosswalk activation button, and the crosswalk’s lights begin to blink.  Traffic coming from the east stops; traffic from the west does not.

Moiself  counts westbound four cars – WTF ?!?!? –  which, one by one, and with plenty of space inbetween them, cruise through the crosswalk, ignoring the flashing lights.  I gesture (futilely) to the cars’ drivers as they do so; after the fourth car-which-doesn’t-stop, the girl, still waiting by the crosswalk, looks across the street at me – we make eye contact – and gives me a shoulder-shrugging, What can I do?  expression.   Finally, a fifth car stops, and the girl is able to cross the street safely…and that is my weak-in-the-knees moment.

I feel my knees getting weak, even though I’m not standing, I’m sitting in the car.  My wobbly-knees moment is because I’m thinking of all of the times I’ve been at that same crossing:  I’ve seen how kids hit the button, watch for the crosswalk lights, and as soon as the lights start flashing the kids cross the street.  They do not look to see if cars have paid attention and are actually stopping; they looking down at their phones (unfortunately, the most common scenario) or chat with their friends. I’m so glad that girl was paying attention when so many cars were not – I’m so glad that when the lights begin to flash she waited and looked both ways to discover if it was indeed safe to cross the street….

And I am trying to understand – definitely not excuse – the four drivers coming from the west who did not stop when they had plenty of time to do so.  Okay; they’re heading east; maybe the morning sun is in their eyes?  But after girl crosses safely and I am able to turn east, onto the same road and into the same sun, I notice that it’s bright but not *blinding* bright, and I can see everything ahead of moiself  just fine.

What could have been so important that those drivers zoned out or….aaaarrrrgggghhh.  And where’s a traffic cop when you need one?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of An Unexpected Source of Life Wisdom

Dateline: Tuesday; 6:25 am, listening to the daily meditation in my Calm app. It’s a different meditation every day; thus, I had no expectations for what the subject would be, but certainly among the expectations I did not have was to hear a quote from  Kung Fu Panda – specifically, from Turtle Master® Oogway    [7]    :

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift, which is why it is called the present.”

I *have* encountered this motivational quote several times, but never heard it attributed to a turtle master.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Post- US Open Tennis Championships Thoughts

“Years ago, I was watching a women’s Grand Slam tennis match with a friend who isn’t a sports fan. My friend appreciated the skills of the players — the shots, the gets, the athleticism — but she liked the tennis couture more. The match was a two-setter, rather quick and seemingly effortless.

The next time we watched a match together, it happened to be the 2012 Australian Open final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. As the slugfest of a five-setter ended, both of us drained and exhilarated, my friend commented: ‘I guess five sets would be too much, physically, for the women.’  Flabbergasted, I turned to her and said, ‘You’re saying this to me?’

Alas, my friend is not alone in her assumptions about the endurance of female athletes. Consider: In Thursday’s women’s U.S. Open semifinal, Amanda Anisimova beat Naomi Osaka in the third set, but could Osaka have come back in a fourth? After taking in the four-set dogfight between Djokovic and Taylor Fritz, I was thirsty to see Anisimova and Osaka scrap further. The unsubtle message of professional tennis is that women don’t have what it takes for that.

After Djokovic and Nadal’s epic 2012 down under final, the exhausted players couldn’t even remain standing all the way through the trophy ceremony….”

  (excerpts, from “Grand Slam tennis tells women they lack stamina of men.
I know something about endurance: If the men can play five sets, so can the women.”
 (Opinion by Diana Nyad, The Washington Post 9-6-25 )

 

Moiself  is an occasional watcher of televised tennis matches. I understand the point that Nyad ( arguably the greatest endurance athlete ever ) is making…but, hell no. I do *not* want the women’s tennis matches to be the best three of five.

 

 

Yes, really.  And that’s because I also do not want the *men’s* tennis matches to be best of five – it’s too damn long.  For every Djokovic/Nadal five set epic there are a hundred interminable, someone, please-oh-please-can-someone-just-lose-or-win-and-get-this-over-with?!?!  matches.

If it’s a test of stamina (as well as tennis skills,) which seems to be is the point for the best three of five, then why not have the contestant play the best five of seven games?  Or the best seven of nine?

 

I believe that would be me.

 

Or why not determine the true champion via the best of nine games played every day over three days?

 

Do. Not. Listen To. Her.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Know…But I Don’t Understand

How do some words take on, or rather get assigned, politically loaded meanings? When did someone send out a memo to like-minded racist sexist homophobic conservative paranoiacs political partisans that they needed to make being *woke* a bad thing?

Moiself  gets how words and meanings drift and evolve and acquire additional meanings, from the entertaining to the politically and culturally loaded.  But for so long (decades, even centuries) the primary definitions of woke (a slang or contraction of awoke) had to do with it being the past tense of awake –  as in, to wake up from sleeping.

It became a shorthand adjective for someone who paid attention because that’s what you would tell someone who wasn’t paying attention, either literally, or metaphorically:  wake up, pay attention, snap out of it!

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

A Simple Question Which Is Never Answered

To religious friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, or anyone who believes that their faith commands them to witness to those who are either religion-free or who hold different religious beliefs:

 

 

*   *   *

May you not trust the blinking lights to protect you from
your own or other’s inattention;
May you be content with the best two out of three sets;
May you wake up!  Pay Attention!  Snap Out of It!
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Matthew 26:52

[2] Yeah, and the right to guns is listed where in Charlie Kirk’s scriptures?

[3] I had no idea re this organization, their aims or even their existance, but the sniff of theocracy is in the air when you look at their spooky website:  “America Needs A Strong Church.  TPUSA Faith exists to unite the Church around primary doctrine and to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit.”

[4] Including “our” own major exhibit in the school shooting hall of infamy:  Oregon’s 1998 Thurston High shooting.

[5] “Most school shooters get their guns from home – and during the pandemic, the number of firearms in households with teenagers went up.”  ( Institute Of Firearm Injury Prevention, University Of Michigan )

[6] It didn’t happen – very glad about that.

[7] I’ve not seen the movie; I trust there is some kind of zen turtle master character.

[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 Thoughts And Prayers I’m Not Sending

September 5, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Thoughts And Prayers I’m Not Sending

Department Of Just Another Day In The US of A:
( Translation: Another Church/School Shooting )

 

 

“…yet again the same stale ritual has unfolded: politicians sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ instead of offering solutions.

But this time, some prominent figures are refusing to let that go unchallenged.

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki cut through the platitudes, posting on X: ‘Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayer does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.’

She’s right. Prayer doesn’t stop bullets. It doesn’t heal wounds. It doesn’t change laws. It doesn’t keep parents from burying their children.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made the point even more starkly: ‘Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.’

The victims of this atrocity were in church, being led in prayer, when the shooter opened fire. If ever there were a test of the supposed ‘power of prayer,’ this was it. And it failed in the most heartbreaking way imaginable.

Instead of reckoning with that reality, White House officials have attacked Psaki and Frey for being ‘disrespectful.’  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance both accused ‘the left’ of mocking faith. But nobody is mocking grieving families. What’s being called out is the political cowardice that hides behind prayer as a substitute for policy.

During a press briefing, Leavitt said: ‘I saw the comments of Ms. Psaki and frankly I think they’re incredibly insensitive and disrespectful to the tens of millions of Americans of faith across this country who believe in the power of prayer, who believe that prayer works.’

Even more outrageously, Leavitt shared a post blaming ‘demonic forces’ for the Minneapolis shooting.

It doesn’t matter how many people ‘believe’ in the power of prayer (or demons) — belief doesn’t make it real….    [1]

…Politicians pray publicly (or at least tell us they’re praying ad nauseam), then do nothing. The cycle repeats, and children keep dying.

It’s not ‘disrespectful’ to point out the obvious — it’s disrespectful to the victims to pretend prayer is the answer.”

( Excerpts, my emphases, “If prayer worked,
the Minneapolis children would still be alive,” Chris Line, FFRF blog, 8-29-25 )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Parrot Sums Up The Only Rational Reaction
To The Latest White House Blatherings Statements

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Interesting People   [2]

Herman Pontzer, researcher and professor of evolutionary anthropology and Global Health at Duke University, studies the interesting (IMO) traits and behaviors of his (and our    [3] ) species.  He shares many of those observations in the latest Clear + Vivid podcast

“Unlike most other land animals, we can live almost anywhere: from deserts, to mountains, rain forests, even the arctic. We are supremely adaptable, and that adaptability has led to our diversity – not only in our biology, but also in our cultures.”
( Episode description, Clear + Vivid podcast,
Herman Pontzer: Diversity: Humanity’s Superpower )

That seems like a simple enough observation.  But that fact – that human beings, like news about the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce engagement, can be found all over the planet – is something moiself  hasn’t often considered.

And speaking of planet-wide infestation, don’t the two lovebirds deserve the obligatory, celebrity name mash up?  Traylor?  Swiftce?

 

 

Once again, I digress.

Other than insects, homo sapiens is arguably the most adaptable life form on the planet.   [4]  .  Check out Pontzer’s interview, for human being trait tidbits such as….

  (  C + V podcast host) Alan Alda:
“What about the notion of race?  Does race exist,
or is a phrase that’s used when it’s convenient?”

Herman Ponzer:
“The answer is it’s a socially constructed grouping…we like to put people in groups, and use them as a sort of in-group out-group way of dividing up our world.

  So, race means different things around the globe. And people divide up their world into different races or categories using different criteria. That just goes to show you how flexible and cultural it is.  There’s no real hard edges around human groups at all.  In fact, we’re such a recent species that all humans around the globe are 99.99% similar genetically.  There aren’t any kind of genetic boxes you can put people in easily.  In the U.S., we use skin color historically, as a sort of racial categorization.  And it’s true that skin color is a biological trait, right?

I mean, it has to do with how much melanin your skin makes.  So, in that sense, skin color is a biological trait.

But even there, as I like to tell my students, until the late 1800s – early 1900s, having white skin wasn’t enough to make you white.

If you were Irish or Italian, an immigrant in the States,
you were still considered black.”

Alda:
” I remember almost dropping your book out of my hand when I read that.
You can hardly get whiter than Irish people.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of  “No Shit?!” Titles

From  Fresh Air interview, 8-21-25, Robert Reich: The Baby Boomers Fell Short

“Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich…opens his new memoir, Coming Up Short,
with an apology on behalf of the Baby Boom generation
for failing to build a more just society.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Nothing Like A Walk In The Fresh Air To Begin Your Day

Dateline: Thursday; 7:41 AM; morning walk. My nose detects it before I see it, and I look around for the carcass of a dead Mephitis mephitis, which moiself  has on at least three occasions spotted while walking past the fields near the Fairgrounds light rail station.  Instead, as I turn the bend in the pathway parallelling the fields I see a man and a dog walking toward me.  The man puffs on a spliff and his dog huffs and strains against its leash.  As the man nears me the stench increases.

I feel my shoulders slump, as I consider the fetid fact that there are people in this world who like to – or feel like they have to    [5] – begin their day polluting their pulmonary packets with the aroma of skunk roadkill.

 

 

*    *   *

Department Of Right Now It’s Like This

“Early one morning an intrepid traveler started down a long and dusty road.  Before long, he came upon a shepherd tending to his flock.  The traveler asked, ‘What kind of weather are we going to have today?’ The shepherd answered, “The kind of weather I like.’  The traveler asked, ‘But how do you know it will be the kind of weather you like?’  The shepherd answered, ‘Having found out, sir, that I cannot always get what I like, I have learned to always like what I get.  So, I am quite sure we will have the kind of weather I like.’

The shepherd chose to be open and flexible to what life gave him. By accepting what he could not change, the shepherd practiced non-resistance. It was as though his personal mantra was, ‘Right now, it’s like this.’  So the next time life throws you a curveball…try recalling on that phrase:

 ‘Right now, it’s like this.”

Do your best to bring a spirit of non-resistance to the situations you can’t change, and challenge yourself to accept what is.  In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘The best thing one can do when it’s raining is let it rain.’ “

( excerpt, Daily Calm meditation app, 8-26-25, It’s Like This )

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

( Doug Stanhope is an American comedian, author, and activist  [8]   )

*   *   *

May you not categorize people because it is convenient for you to do so;
May you understand that believing in something doesn’t make it real;
May you let it rain when it’s raining;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Amen, sez the atheist.

[2] Why would interesting people need a footnoate?

[3] Okay; moiself  is assuming a commonality of species among readers of this blog.

[4] Much to the detriment of other species whom we’ve wiped out due to hunting and habitat destruction….

[5] Oh, yeah dude, weed is so *not* not addictive. 

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

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

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

[8] And there is no footnote for him here.

The “Ultimate Writers’ Guide” I’m Not Writing

August 29, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The “Ultimate Writers’ Guide” I’m Not Writing

This story, attributed to Jewish-Austrian philosopher Martin Buber, (“Tales of the Hasidim”),  is making the rounds on FB.  As one commenter noted, Buber’s tale is a convoluted way of admitting that the concept of a divine deity should be unnecessary….

 ( Buber story post; my emphases )
A rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?” After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists,” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion.

You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right.

When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say ‘I’ll pray that God will help you.’ Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say ‘I will help you’.”

 

 

For that moment?  No; You should “become an atheist”   [1]  for all the moments when you have helped other people; for all the times when other people help people, without “miraculous”/deistic intervention, which is – no matter what you have been taught to think, is you, a person, acting, not your god – always. Always.

How’s about y’all who are religious just skip the middle layer of bureaucracy and leave out the unnecessary and functionally impotent deity – whom you believe parted the Red Sea and performed other “miracles” but who can’t mow your neighbor Fred’s lawn when Fred is recovering from chemotherapy, and so you do it?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Wholesome Family Games Night
Wheel of Fortune, Public Service Edition

 

“I’d like to solve the puzzle.”

*    *   *

Department Of You Know You Need This
Sub-Department Of, Only 129 nicknames for the Tangerine Terrorist?

Select goodies from the website, 129 Insulting tR***   [2]  Nicknames You Must Know— Choose Your Favorite!

Cheeto Satan
Trumpoleon
The Incontinental Divider
Vladdy’s Boy
Mango Mussolini
Our Fondling Father
Tsar Trumplingrad
Sweet Potato Hitler
Pumpkin Spiced Stalin
Kim Don Un
President Donald McDonald’s
The Lyin’ King
Don the Con
Cheetolini

Comedian and late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel also weighed in with his and his writers’ collection:Don Whoreleon

Napoleon Bone-Aspur
Nostra-Dumbass
All Caps-Tain Kangaroo
Founding Farter
Teddy Dozevelt
Gaseous Clay
Dopey McGropey
Lepre-Con Man
Al Ca-Porn
The Shart of the Deal
Nelson Tandela
Greedy McGolfy
Yabba Dabba Doofus
His MAGA-Sty
Donald Duck the Draft
The Notorious P.I.G.
Hair Mussolini
Con-Mander-In-Chief
Phony Soprano
The Ayatollah Complaini
Presidementia
Stable McGenius
The Tanchurian Candidate
Tannibal Lecter
Scammy Davis Jr.
The MAGA-Lorian
Vladimir Gluten
HippoPOTUS
Darth Tax Evader
The Tan of La Mancha
MAGATHA Christie
Grab-Ass Grandpa
Orange Julius Caesar
Dictator Tot
Quid Pro Combover
The Lock-Her-Up-Ness Monster
General Lie-Senhower
Alexander Scamilton
Jabba The Pizza Hut
and Pumpkin McPornhumper

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Meet Your Brain
 Part 391 in A Never-Ending Series

We neurological layfolk – as well as the writers of popular psychology/medicine articles – tend to separate realms when we talk about how the human brain (supposedly) functions.  We speak and write about some people who have great cognitive skills and people who are stronger with emotional skills ( using terms like IQ and EQ, for example ), often in binary or at least separate terms. Let’s all stop doing that, right now.

 

 

Yes; really.  Bonk yourself on the head if you find yourself doing that.   [3]

“I think our traditional Western philosophies too often separate cognition and emotion; we think that there are cognitive skills and that there are emotional skills…and that maybe those two things impact on each other, right?  But actually, that’s the wrong way to think about it.

They are two differ dimensions of the same thing.  Thinking is inherently cognitive and emotional, *always,* at the same time.  And we can look at thinking from a cognitive lens and analyze the cognitive dimensions of what’s going on – and it’s important to do that – and we can look at thinking from an affective lens, and analyze the emotional engagement that’s going on, but actually both of those things are simultaneously happening, in an integrative way, *always*, when people are alive – when they’re moving through the world, adapting and engaging with things around them.”

(  Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, USC professor of neuroscience; director
of the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education.
Excerpt from her interview on the Hidden Brain podcast, “How Our Brains Learn.” )

 

 

 

*   *   *

Depart Of WTF Is Going On
Sub-Department Of A Writer’s Life

Chapter 952 In The Never-Ending Series, The Rights To Which
Have Yet To Be Optioned For A Major Motion Picture ®

After years of the proverbial radio silence since my juvenile novel  The Mighty Quinn went out of print, in the past couple of weeks moiself  has received several complimentary emails from who-the-heck-are-these-people  who  apparently   [4]  want to show me how they can maximize my book sales and impact my presence on social media, ad nauseum ad scam-eum, etc.  One example:

From: redacted <redacted@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2025 7:42 AM
To: ( moiself’s  main email address    [5]  )
Subject: The Mighty Quinn

Dear Robyn Parnell,
“The Mighty Quinn is a delightful mix of humor, heart, and clever storytelling. Quinn’s journey through school struggles, bullies, and unexpected friendships is both relatable and entertaining. The way you balance lighthearted moments with real challenges makes this story shine for young readers and adults alike. Katie DeYoe’s illustrations   [6]  also add a wonderful layer that brings Quinn’s world vividly to life. I’d love to hear what inspired you to create Quinn’s character and the whimsical yet meaningful adventures he experiences.”

Moiself’s  reply:
Dear Mr. Redacted,
Who are you and what are you selling?

Here is my favorite one (so far).
The email’s subject line: “Show Don’t Tell – The Ultimate Writers’ Guide

“Hi Robyn, your guide feels like a true gift to writers at every stage. By breaking down ‘show, don’t tell’ into practical, achievable steps with clear examples, you demystify one of the most essential and misunderstood craft elements. What drew you to make this guide so hands-on, with exercises that invite writers to immediately apply what they learn?”

 

 

Spoiler:  I have written no such guide.

Nor do I ever recommend that one-dimensional sop – show; don’t tell – which unfortunately passes as classical (and simplistic and therefore bad, IMO) advice.   Show and tell; good writing does both.

What’s going on?  Can I blame AI for this?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Sensitivity Of Things

The Sensitivity of Things – Mono no Aware 物の哀れ   – is variously described as an awareness for the fragility of the existence, of life in all forms, and appreciation for its beauty while acknowledging the gentle sadness of its passing.  Moiself  had heard of the concept in passing,  then recently it was the subject of one of my Calm app morning meditations.

“It’s natural to seek a sense of stability and forever-ness.  Change and uncertainty can feel stressful and scary.  To recognize that everything that begins is to acknowledge our mortality, which isn’t a warm and fuzzy prospect.  But there’s great wisdom in the view that everything is changing and ephemeral.  Nothing is permanent.  Today, the tallest tree in the woods.  Tomorrow, a log of carbon lying on the forest floor.  Today, a massive glowing star; tomorrow, a disparate cloud of cooling elements.

 


 Webb Space Telescope images

 

It’s understandable to fear change, but there’s so much to be gained by accepting impermanence, rolling with it, even seeing the beauty in it.  For it’s only because life ends that our years on this earth are so precious.  Only because of the harsh winds of winter that we drink up every sun-drenched moment of summer.

Mindfulness encourages us to see that it’s not the nature of impermanence that causes us to suffer, it’s our desire for things to be permanent that causes us to suffer.  By accepting impermanence, we open to reality and find deeper fulfillment in our lives.

There’s a wonderful Japanese term, for which there isn’t a precise English translation – a term, mono no aware, loosely means a sensitivity to ephemera.   The bittersweet feeling of seeing things change is the wistful awareness of the transitory nature of existence.

Since everything we see all around us will one day be gone ,we must appreciate every millisecond.  According to this idea, cheery blossoms are not only beautiful despite only blossoming for two weeks a year, they are beautiful *because* they only blossom for two weeks once a year. 

As Jack Kornfield     [7]   said, ‘Like a sandcastle, all is temporary.
Build it.  Tend it.  Enjoy it.  And when the time comes, let it go.’ “

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

 


( Becky Vollmer )

 

*   *   *

May you cultivate and appreciate a sensitivity to ephemera;
May you “act like an atheist” when someone needs help;
May you be reassured by the knowledge of the impermanence of the influence
of Genghis Don, and bask in the never-ending satisfaction achieved by
engaging in petty derision of that Commander-In-Thief;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which is not actually a thing and there is no ism or credos to adopt – it’s just one term for being religion-free, which unfortunately defines you in terms of religion (a-theism – without theism).

[2] Moiself  cannot bear to have his unredacted name in my blog, even when quoting others.

[3] And note that you will experience the bonk in several realms, including the cognitive, emotional, and physical realms: ouch.

[4] They offer little-to-nothing in the way of identification and/or professional credentials.

[5] I have several.

[6] Actually, the illustrations were done by a wife-husband team, Katie De Yoe  and Aaron DeYoe. 

[7] American writer and teacher, who trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand.

[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

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