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The Life Advice I’m Not Giving

April 12, 2024

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

Grief is the price of love.

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

 

 

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

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

The thing about advice is knowing when to ignore it. 

 

*   *   *

Department Of About That Living In The Past

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Knowing moiself, probably a podcast.

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

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

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

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

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

The Pranks I’m Not Playing

March 15, 2024

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

Content Warning: Contentious World Affairs

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of…You Know….

 

*   *   *

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

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

* What do you wish you really understood?

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

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

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

* What gives you confidence?

* What book changed your life?

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

“What do you do?”

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

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

 

 

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

(1)  When?

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

* What are you surprised by?

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

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

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

 

 

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

 

But creating such a masterpiece might be worth the risk.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cogent Warnings…

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

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

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

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

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

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

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

[4] It’s happened more than once.

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

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

The Brain I’m Not Hard-Wiring

February 2, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Brain I’m Not Hard-Wiring

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

Support groups include for those considering doing so include

* Catholics Anonymous

* Former Catholic

* FCC- Former Catholics Connect

* Live Journal

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of Everything You Know Is Wrong

Well, not everything, but it turns out….

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

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

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

  

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

*     *     *

 

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Turns out, I didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Possible Hazards I’m Not Avoiding

January 12, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Possible Hazards I’m Not Avoiding

Department Of Imagine My Surprise

It’s been a while since I received any income from my writing; thus, when I received the yearly royalty statement from the publishing company that publishes the play I’ve written, moiself  was expecting the usual statement showing me the royalty I am owed.  Brief explanation for the folks who are how-publishing-works–impaired:   [1]    depending on the contract, publishing houses/companies, particularly those specializing in plays for off-off-off-off Broadway (as in, for schools, church groups, community theaters), may keep payments in escrow and may not issue a royalty check until the royalties earned are above a certain amount (usually a very, very, small amount).

I’ve had a piddling royalty rollover with that publishing company for years, since the last time someone bought the script for my play.  On December 28 my yearly statement informed me that a check for the June – December 2023 reporting period would be issued, and I received it in early January.  So, although I have writing income to report for 2023, the amount…well, I’m sure if there were actual humans involved in reading my e-filing tax returns, the response I might receive when said reader(s) come across lines 1-9 on my 1040  form might be akin to

 

*   *   *

Department Of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

After not having been to the coast for several weeks,  [2]  MH and I returned to see several “No Access” signs, posted at places which seemed to us to be bafflingly random.

I checked out some local news (social media) groups to find out more about the signs.  Amidst all of the  Seriously?/you’ve got to be kidding posts, someone noted

“(the signs) might have something to do with the lawsuit in Newport…
 Municipalities/counties/state had an injury lawsuit exemption for recreational trails. Someone was hurt on a bridge, sued and won on appeal. The closures are happening in other places as well.”

 

 

Now, this first no access sign we saw was on nothing we’d previously considered to be a trail; rather, it was by a path, at the end of a street about four blocks from our house, which leads ~ 50 feet through dune grass to the beach.

That FB poster is (was?) correct, moiself  thought: there’s a state law declaring that people who hike or bike or walk their dogs along the beach or prance through the forest or otherwise engage in recreational activities (“recreate”) do so at their own risk…I think? I found the statute:

ORS 105.682

Liabilities of owner of land used by public for recreational purposes….

(1) Except as provided by subsection (2) of this section, and subject to the provisions of ORS 105.688 (Applicability of immunities from liability for owner of land), an owner of land is not liable in contract or tort for any personal injury, death or property damage that arises out of the use of the land for recreational purposes,….

when the owner of land either directly or indirectly permits any person to use the land for recreational purposes,…. The limitation on liability provided by this section applies if the principal purpose for entry upon the land is for recreational purposes…

and is not affected if the injury, death or damage occurs while the person entering land is engaging in activities other than the use of the land for recreational purposes….

(2) This section does not limit the liability of an owner of land for intentional injury or damage to a person coming onto land for recreational purposes….

( excerpts; my emphases;  Oregon public statutes )

Another local news group commentor wrote,

“The change came about after someone in Newport got hurt on a city-maintained bridge that was on the WAY to the recreational area and sued.  This has had a huge ripple effect up and down the Coast (and probably throughout the state). Tillamook County closed two access roads to Oceanside, and at next week’s City Council meeting in Rockaway Beach, one of the key agenda items is whether to close all beach access….”

We looked for more information about this lawsuit and its effects in several news outlets.  Here’s the scoop as per the city newsletter, Manzanita Today (1-8-24):

Manzanita Avoids Most Beach Access And Other Trail Closures After Court Decision

“A 2022 decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals and affirmed by the state’s Supreme Court, has forced some coastal cities to close all beach access trails….
The consequences of the court case will likely lead to a legislative fix in the upcoming short session of the Oregon Legislature, but many coastal residents
and visitors may wonder how things got this far.
Here are the facts of the case.
Nicole Fields  [3]  regularly walked her dogs on Agate Beach in Newport and used a city-maintained access trail to reach the beach. One day, as Ms. Fields returned from the beach with her dogs and a friend, she slipped on a bridge and seriously injured her leg. She sued Newport for damages. Newport tried to assert ‘recreational immunity’ under an Oregon law intended to encourage landowners to allow recreational use of their land. Ms. Fields argued that walking on the beach access trail to engage in recreational walking on the beach was not itself recreational. She was just crossing the city’s property to start or finish her recreational activity of walking on the beach. The court decided that a trial court must, in effect, determine what Ms. Fields intended while walking on the trail. Was that part of her recreational activity or did she intend merely to use the trail to get back and forth to the beach?
Thus, whether the City of Newport (and its insurer, CIS Oregon) ultimately prevailed, they would still incur the substantial expense of a jury trial. CIS provides liability insurance to many cities and counties, including Manzanita and Tillamook County. Because of that potential liability, CIS has recommended closure of all improved trails used to access any recreational area….”

 

 

WTF, if only.

“The consequences of the court case will likely lead to a legislative fix in the upcoming short session of the Oregon Legislature.”  Yes, of course.  Unfortunately, human nature being what it is…

 

“It’s your fault I tripped over my own feet!”

 

… that won’t prevent someone from suing when they fall-down-go-boom.  Moiself  understands the no-access signs from a liability point of view (one such lawsuit could wipe out funds for coastal towns and villages).  Still, signs – and apparently, existing laws – mean nothing if someone is determined to sue others for their life choices and/or the random accidents that we are all at risk, from the moment we rise out of bed until we return to said bed at the end of the day.

That dog walker could have slipped on her own rain-slicked driveway, tripped over her shoelaces or down her own front porch stairs, or gotten tangled up in her dog’s leash…..  But, whatever caused her fall, she did it on the pedestrian bridge, and then got around the law by claiming that she was not *yet* recreating, but using the bridge as a passageway to get to where she was *going* to recreate…

 

 

Artful, isn’t it?  Congratulations to her scum-sucking ambulance chasing lawyer attorney for the legal and cognitive gymnastics on that one!

The city newsletter article went on to note that Manzanita’s Public Works Director attempted to limit the number of trail closures by inspecting and rating the condition of every trail within city limits.  He made a chart of city trails, which he ranked in five numerical categories:

1. Poor (many hazards noted);
2. fair (some hazards noted);
3. average (few hazards noted);
4. good (no hazards noted);
5. excellent (no hazards noted)

MH and I were familiar with them all, and know that many of the “trails” on this list are just beach access points and undeveloped road crossings, rather than actual hiking trails.  The chart showed “…the trails that will be closed and signed to warn users to walk at their own risk because of “possible hazards.”

MH beat me to the suggestion:

“Let’s find the most ‘dangerous’ trails and walk on all of them!”

And so we did. We girded our loins and, at our own risk, did all seven trails on the #1 and #2 (Poor and Fair) lists.  Barely escaped with our lives, lemme tell ya.

Possible hazards.

It’s a world of danger out there.  Some people should just never leave their house.

 

Be sure to have your lawyer’s number on speed dial the next time you leave your abode – something like this might be hiding behind the city trash can by the bridge on the way to the trail to the beach….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things We Probably Will Not See Changed In The New Year,
But It Would Be Nice To Try, If Only To Please Miss Manners

(  excerpts from “Miss Manners: What topic most grinds Miss Manners’ gears? Self-philanthropy.”  Oregonlive.com  1-1-24  )

DEAR MISS MANNERS: You must receive a lot of the same, or similar, questions. I’m just wondering: What are the most-asked ones?

GENTLE READER: Well, they are not, as may be supposed, about which fork to use. That is a question posed only by people wanting to declare that manners are trivial. Such people tend to be consistent in not having any….

There is also a topic that always shocks Miss Manners but has become increasing prevalent: blatant greed.

People have gotten shameless about demanding money from family, friends and strangers alike. Even the ubiquitous gift registry, with its transparent whitewash, is giving way to the outright demand for money. Any occasion will do –  birth, death and anything in between –  as an excuse for begging.

It seems to Miss Manners that there are enough serious causes that need addressing before solvent people are justified in engaging in self-philanthropy.”   [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Past Regrets Which Live In The Present

Moiself, after hearing a podcast in which a gay person spoke about not being out in high school due to a fear of being teased and/or bullied, had the following memory flash.

Dateline:

That would be my senior year in high school.  I can’t remember which pep squad member asked me to participate in a short skit the cheerleaders were planning for an end-of-year, Senior class only, school assembly.  I do remember being recruited with the we-need-someone-who’s-not-afraid-to-be-ridiculous-and-that’s-YOU enticement.  I was told that, along with the cheerleaders, the cast of the skit would be three students:  moiself; the school’s best drama student (male), and another male student.  There would be no rehearsal, but we could get out of class early to prepare and thus, since the assembly itself took up one class period, we could skip two classes – sign me up, I said.

We three students were given “costume” guidelines and the skit scenario/outline.  [5]  Within the scenario we could ad lib the rest (we had no dialogue).

Brief skit summary:  The curtain rose to reveal the auditorium stage, empty but for a bench at center stage, upon which sat a Dorky Boy.  Dorky Boy (the drama student) was tall and skinny, clad in highwater pants, a short sleeved, plaid shirt and bow tie, wore thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses and clutched a lunch box to his stomach.  A provocatively sleazily dressed girl (that’s moiself’s  cue) entered from stage right.

 

My costume was a slit-up-the-side cancan skirt and fishnet stockings, tight fitting sleeveless top (comically stuffed brassiere), too much makeup…similar to this on the classy scale.

 

Sleazy girl strutted across the stage, past the DB.  She turned back and begins to flirt with DB, but he was embarrassed/appalled and tried to ignore her.  She sat down on the bench, he scooted away from her, she scooted toward him…after a few seconds when it looked as if she might end up chasing him around the bench, a Sexy Stoner Surfer Dude®  swaggers in from stage left. SSS Dude had shoulder length, sun-streaked blond-red hair, wore mirror sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, a puka shell necklace, low-slung cutoff shorts which reveal his toned abs, and flip-flop sandals   [6]    SSSD did his own laidback stage strut toward the occupants of the bench.  Sleazy Girl immediately turned her attentions toward the SSSD who, after giving her the once-over, exchanged looks with DB, and the two boys linked arms and pranced off stage.  Sleazy Girl was flabbergasted, and flounced off stage in an indignant huff while the cheerleaders broke into a chorus of…I can’t remember the exact words, but the cheer ended with something like,

“gimme a Q and a U and a E-E-R,
Q-U-E-E-R is what you are.”

 

 

Really.

Yep.  Of course, that was then and this is now.  Still, doesn’t that count, as even a relatively mild case, of high school homophobia, no matter how unintentional (“it’s just supposed to be funny”)?  I knew of at least four teachers at our school, and several students, who were gay (and not out, in the case of the teachers, of course), and later would know of other students I went to school with who were gay but who were not out at the time (even to themselves, in some cases).  But I never thought of how they might react: I never considered that they might think the skit in any way was about targeting or even referring to them.  Here’s how clueless about Such Things®  I was, back then:  I thought the joke was on the character *I* was playing!  As in, she considered herself to be hot stuff, but the cool surfer dude found her so repulsively skanky he’d rather run off with the nerd.

Back to the future: I would like to ask one of those students what they thought of the skit.   [7]   Were they aware of their own sexual orientation at the time, and if so, did the skit make them uncomfortable, or hurt their feelings?  Perhaps they don’t even remember it (it was three minutes out of four years of school), and if so, will it be *my* bringing it up that causes the discomfort?  I have rarely recalled that skit in the decades since high school (I’ve rarely had reasons to do so); still, every ten years or so something sparks that memory, along with my regret for participating in something “comedic” that essentially amounted to punching down.

I don’t know who was responsible for the skit – was it a sketch the cheerleaders had been taught at cheer camp, or did they hear about it from another school’s pep squad?  The head cheerleader was a girl I’d known since junior high, although not well – I knew “of” her more than I knew her (we hung with different academic and friend groups).  We became better acquainted two+ decades after high school, and I was delighted to discover that she is one of the most life-positive, human rights-affirming, feminist, pro-woman, pro-people people I know – a person who would now renounce that skit (if she’d even remember it). Yet another example of how anyone can get caught up in the moment, in a “joke” that might not be so funny….   [8]

 

 

While such an organization was unimaginable when I was in high school, I did a search on the subject and, yee haw!, there is a GSA club in the Santa Ana school district (although, this is not their logo, and the club is now the QSA ).

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

“Religion tries to give us maps of sexuality that are no better than
 a 2,000-year-old map of my hometown.”

( Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality )

 

 

*   *   *

May you make it a goal to avoid self-philanthropy;
May you update both the physical and emotional maps of your hometown;
May you accept the fact that life is composed of possible hazards;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which is most anyone with an EQ greater than their inseam.

[2] due to finishing up with The Kitchen Remo That Ate Our Brains®

[3] The person suing was not mentioned in all of the reports I read, but it is part of the public record now, and I must confess that a part of me wants her to be shamed for this.  I’m sorry she injured her leg; I’m sorry for any person who inures themselves in any way, but sorry does not equal, “someone else’s fault/someone else pays.”

[4] My vote for term of the year…the year is young, I realize.

[5] To call it a plot would be too ambitious.

[6] The student they recruited for that role basically played himself.  No wardrobe changes for him; he even had the puka shells.

[7] I’m thinking of privately messaging him, and asking for his feedback, which I will include in next week’s post, anonymously and if I have his permission.

[8] Sorry; no footnote here.

[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 Santa Claus Story I’m Not Dissing

December 22, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Santa Claus Story I’m Not Dissing

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

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.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

*   *

Department Of  Somehow I Managed Not To Post This To The Store’s Site…

But I’m sharing it with y’all.

Background info:  my adopted village   [2]  of Manzanita (Oregon) has several nicknames, including, Muttzanita.   [3]  It’s a dog-friendly town to say the least, and in the 30 years moiself  has been hanging around the coast I’ve seen the best and worst of dog owners.  I am happy to report that *most* of the dog owners – well, the locals, as in, the ones who actually live at the coast – are good at picking up after their dogs (even though, the, uh, “remnants” of their dog’s solid business still remain, and the liquids blend in…eventually).  Still, there’s a reason (besides the rusty hooks, jagged crab pot wires and other fishing detritus that periodically come ashore with the tide) that, although I walk on the beach every day when I’m at the coast, I don’t do so barefooted.

Dateline: earlier this week. A store at Manzanita, one which I love and where I’ve frequently shopped, posted an ad on their social media page for a new holiday product they are offering for sale:

Stocking stuffer alert!🫧🌊🩵
Our magical Sand & Sea Scrub Bars are blended with sand from Manzanita Beach!

My first thought:  For anyone familiar with – as in, paying attention to –  what gets deposited onto the sands of Manzanita beach, this is not an enticement.   Do the buyers realize that means they will be scrubbing their skin with puppy piss-drenched sand?   [4]

 

Just adding the “magic” ingredient to the sand and sea scrub bars!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yes Virginia, You’re Correct About Santa, But If You Know What’s Good For You You’ll Keep Your Mouth Shut
Sub-Department of Two Santa Stories

I don’t know how old I was when I figured it out, but I can never remember a time when I thought about Santa and “believed” – that is, when I thought about the story of Santa Claus and thought it was true/Santa was real, rather than knowing that he was a character in a story and that my parents actually supplied “Santa’s” gifts under the tree and in our Christmas stockings.  I also cannot remember ever discussing this with my parents, or my siblings, when I was a child.  Moiself  *does* remember the common knowledge about such things:  kids believed in Santa Claus; adults didn’t.  After noting the difference between the respective Christmas presents received by kids and their parents, I thought it in my best interest to keep my mouth shut.

 

 

Look at what kids who “believed in Santa” (even the ones just pretending to believe) found under their Christmas trees:  A miniature, pedal-propelled 1956 Chevy-styled sedan; Barbies and GI Joes; roller skates and skateboards and pogo sticks; Nancy Drew books and Animals of the World almanacs; Lincoln Log sets and Mousetrap games; Tonka trucks and plush stuffed animals.  And what did the adults, the A-Santa-ists, get?  Sockx and neckties; aftershave lotion and talcum powder; stationery and appliances.

I figured out early on that the idea was to go along with the story for as long as possible….which is somewhat related to the reasons why I stayed in religion (read: was not out about my non-belief) for so long.   You get better “presents” when you go along with the pretense.

Then, viola! you’re a grownup with a forehead-smacking moment of realization:  the Santa Claus story is one of the most useful tools ever for freethinkers, in showing how otherwise seemingly kind and intelligent people can agree to promote a lie, even after you ask them a direct question and emphatically request a truthful answer, for what they believe is the greater good (“Oh, honey, of course there is a Santa Claus!”).

“It’s hard to even consider the possibility that Santa isn’t real. Everyone seems to believe he is. As a kid, I heard his name in songs and stories and saw him in movies with very high production values. My mom and dad seemed to believe, batted down my doubts, told me he wanted me to be good and that he always knew if I wasn’t. And what wonderful gifts I received! Except when they were crappy, which I always figured was my fault somehow. All in all, despite the multiple incredible improbabilities involved in believing he was real, I believed – until the day I decided I cared enough about the truth to ask serious questions, at which point the whole façade fell to pieces. Fortunately the good things I had credited him with kept coming, but now I knew they came from the people around me, whom I could now properly thank.

Now go back and read that paragraph again, changing the ninth word from Santa to God.

Santa Claus, my secular friends, is the greatest gift a rational worldview ever had. Our culture has constructed a silly and temporary myth parallel to its silly and permanent one….“

 

 

…as our son began to exhibit the incipient inklings of Kringledoubt, it occurred to me that something powerful was going on. I began to see the Santa paradigm as an unmissable opportunity – the ultimate dry run for a developing inquiring mind….

This is the moment, at the threshold of the question, that the natural inquiry of a child can be primed or choked off. With questions of belief, you have three choices: feed the child a confirmation, feed the child a disconfirmation – or teach the child to fish.

The ‘Yes, Virginia’ crowd will heap implausible nonsense on the poor child, dismissing her doubts with invocations of magic or mystery or the willful suspension of physical law. Only slightly less problematic is the second choice, the debunker who simply informs the child that, yes, Santa is a big fat fraud….

I for one chose door number three.

‘Some people believe the sleigh is magic,’ I said. ‘Does that sound right to you?’  Initially, boy howdy, did it ever. He wanted to believe, and so was willing to swallow any explanation, no matter how implausible or how tentatively offered. ‘Some people say it isn’t literally a single night,’ I once said, naughtily priming the pump for later inquiries….

I avoided both lying outright and setting myself up as a godlike authority, determined as I was to let him sort this one out himself. And when at last, at the age of nine, in the snowy parking lot of the Target store, to the sound of a Salvation Army bellringer, he asked me point blank if Santa was real – I demurred, just a bit, one last time.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

‘Well…I think all the moms and dads are Santa.’ He smiled at me. ‘Am I right?’

I smiled back. It was the first time he’d asked me directly, and I told him he was right.  ‘So,’ I asked, ‘how do you feel about that?’

He shrugged. ‘That’s fine. Actually, it’s good. The world kind of… I don’t know…makes sense again.’

By allowing our children to participate in the Santa myth and find their own way out of it through skeptical inquiry, we give them a priceless opportunity to see a mass cultural illusion first from the inside, then from the outside. A very casual line of post-Santa questioning can lead kids to recognize how completely we all can snow ourselves if the enticements are attractive enough. Such a lesson, viewed from the top of the hill after exiting a belief system under their own power, can gird kids against the best efforts of the evangelists -– and far better than secondhand knowledge could ever hope to do.

( excerpt from “Santa, The Ultimate Dry Run,”
Parenting Beyond Belief, Dale McGowan;  my emphases )

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Second Santa-related Story

The second Santa-related story comes from a book moiself  has previously/recent blogged about, We Of Little Faith: Why I stopped pretending to believe (and maybe you should too), by Kate Cohen.  BTW, Cohen is not out to convert religious believers; rather, her book aims to support and persuade those who are religion-free to be open about *their* beliefs (and about their mere presence, in this religious rhetoric-saturated world).

In the book’s epilogue the author tells of an encounter she and Lena, the author’s then three-year-old daughter, had in a grocery store checkout line.  It was a few days after Christmas; Lena and her mom were standing behind a father who had his two preschoolers in his cart. The father turned to speak with Lena.

” ‘Did Santa bring you something good this year?’ he asked.

As you know, I grew up Jewish in a small town in Virginia.  And, as you know, I’m fond of Christmas.  When someone wishes me a ‘Merry Christmas’ I typically respond with a hearty, ‘And a Merry Christmas to you.’  but this felt different.  Asking a random child about Santa Claus in Albany, New York, where Yom Kippur is a public school holiday, struck me as a bit careless.

Indeed, my daughter looked confused, even troubled.  I was straining to think of a polite way to tell the guy he was a jerk when Lena did it for me.

Solemnly, she said, ‘Santa Claus is just pretend.’  He looked stricken and came closer, glancing back at his two little cart riders. ‘Don’t tell my kids, okay,’ he said to Lena.  ‘They still think he’s real.’  Lena nodded, accepting the burden of discretion.

I was so proud of her for speaking up, and then so sad that she was immediately asked to keep quiet.  To be a nice girl, she was expected to hold her tongue.  She was expected to hide the truth as she knew it and respect a lie that others had constructed.  A pleasant, harmless lie, you might say.  But a lie, nonetheless. “

( excerpt from Kate Cohen’s, We Of Little Faith:
Why I stopped pretending to believe (and maybe you should too), my emphases )

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [5]

 

*   *   *

May you never feel compelled to respect even “pleasant and harmless” lies:
May you enjoy the beach (and watch your step);
May you have the happiest of whatever you celebrate;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] Why is it called a village, and not a town?  I’m not sure who is the demographics Boss re such things.

[3] The name of the annual “dog festival” held in the late summer in Manzanita.

[4] Or worse.

[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

The Sack I’m Not Peeking Into

December 15, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, school, science , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Sack I’m Not Peeking Into

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

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.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Someone Who Obviously Did Not Reread What She’d
Posted After She Posted It

Background: There’s FB group wherein residents of our fair city post jobs offers, services sought, items for sale, etc.  Dateline:  Monday, 8 am-ish.  MH is scanning the afore-mentioned FB group, and reads me one particular post:

“Hi! I am looking for a professional mobile pet groomer.
I have two small dogs and all they need is nail trim/grind
and their anal gland expressed…. “

That’s *all*?  How did the poster possibly attain even quasi-sentient adulthood without realizing that the phrase, “All they need” – signaling a minimizing of the need which is to follow – is never, ever, appropriately associated with anything to do with anal gland expressions ?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sounds Like A Holiday Themed Porno, If You Ask Moiself

And you did ask, didn’t you?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Petty But Important Grudges To Hold

Why I play the New York Times word game, Letterboxed, but refused to play their game Spelling Bee anymore:

Because when given the right letters in the right places, Letterboxed will let me enter a legitimate if touchy word, e.g., shat, where as Spelling Bee, despite providing the right letters to spell the name of a beautiful African wild cat, would not let me enter the word caracal, because this totally legitimate, not-at-all-controversial-nor-carrying-scatological undertones, is not on the game editor’s “curated list.”    [2]

 

“Curate *this*, NY Times.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of A High School Student Had To Sue Her School District To Do What?

That would be, she had to sue her school district to be able to have a table outside of her school’s cafeteria, with literature available on milk alternatives and plant-based milk options. That’s what Eagle Rock High School senior Marielle Williamson wanted to do.  She’d researched the negative impacts the dairy industry has on both the environment and animal welfare, and wanted her fellow students to know that there are milk alternatives.   

“… But administrators said she could only do so
if she promoted dairy milk as well…. 

(Despite the fact that the school is already promoting dairy products, with “…school hallways covered in ‘Got Milk?’ posters.”)

‘It was kind of like, Wow, this is serious,’ (Williamson) said.
‘The hold the dairy industry has over schools is so strong that I can’t even promote soy milk at my school.’

In May, Williamson, along with the advocacy group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, filed a federal lawsuit against her school administrators and the Los Angeles Unified School District, alleging that her 1st Amendment rights were violated when school officials barred her from sharing material about plant-based milk options without also including information on dairy milk.  The suit also named the U.S. Department of Agriculture….

(editorial comment: The suit was settled by the school – yay!)

The USDA, which did not join the settlement, has filed a motion to dismiss the case, Press said (Deborah Press, general counsel for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine), but Williamson and the committee intend to pursue it and challenge federal statutes that, in part, require schools in the National School Lunch Program to serve cow’s milk during meals as a condition to receive federal funding….

‘LAUSD wasn’t the problem here; they were doing their best to comply with these dogmatic federal rules,’ Press said….

In order to receive a dairy milk substitute, a student is required to provide a note from a doctor or parent citing a medical or dietary need to restrict the student’s choice of milk.

The federal policy also states that schools in the program ‘shall not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk products by the school’ at any time while on school premises or at school events. “

( excerpts, my emphases, from Got milk alternatives? Former student wins settlement from L.A. district over criticism of dairy products,
LA Times, 11-24-23 )

 

“WTF ?”

 

Yeah, WTF.  And, wow.  Who did the dairy industry screw pay off to get that statute into federal law in the first place (a statute I’m guessing few people were aware of, until the lawsuit)?

After the lawsuit was settled, Shannon Haber, a spokesperson for LAUSD, released a statement saying that, “Our Food Services Program follows USDA guidelines, and we continue to support our students with nutritious meals and healthy alternatives for those who have specific dietary requests and requirements.”

Scientists and nutritionists – at least those not employed/paid off by the dairy industry – have long known that “nutritious meals and healthy alternatives” do not need, and probably should not include, dairy products. And, as the article mentioned, “Black, Indigenous, Asian and Latino Americans are among those most likely to suffer from lactose intolerance, which can result in digestive issues including bloating, diarrhea and gas after consuming milk products.”

 


Got diarrhea milk?

 

Oh, and here’s the ethnic makeup of LAUSD students: 74% Hispanic/Latino, 7.3% Black, 5.7% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 0.1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.2% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 10% White.   Yep, nine out of ten LAUSD students are likely to have, to some degree, lactose intolerance or sensitivity. 

Just wondering:  why are we the only mammals who continue to consume milk products after we are weaned, and then, not even products (cheese/milk/cream) made using the milk of our own species?  And yes, this question is coming from someone who thinks Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese is as habit-forming as crack cocaine….   [3]

 

Well, Martha, actually not, but it sure is addictive.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Well Of Course A Middle Child Would Find This Interesting

Moiself  has long had an interest the theories of birth order and sibling relationships as tools to understand the complexities of family bonds.  My interest in this area of family dynamics was heightened when I recently came across a link to an article from The Atlantic on birth order and gender expectations:

“…a contingent of oldest sisters have described the stress of feeling accountable for their family’s happiness, the pressure to succeed, and the impression that they aren’t being cared for in the way they care for others. People have even coined a term for this, ‘eldest-daughter syndrome,’ which speaks to a real social phenomenon, according to Yang Hu, a professor of global sociology. In many cultures, oldest siblings as well as daughters of all ages tend to face high expectations from family members—so people playing both parts are especially likely to take on a large share of household responsibilities, and might deal with more stress as a result. ⁠⁠

The caregiving tendency isn’t an inevitable quality of eldest daughters; rather…it tends to be imposed by family members who are part of a society that presumes that eldest daughters should act a certain way. Birth order does not impact your personality, but it can impact how your family views you. Eldest kids aren’t necessarily more responsible than their siblings; instead, they tend to be given more responsibilities because they are older. Expectations are also influenced by gender. Daughters in particular can be seen as ‘kin keepers,’ performing invisible labor that keeps a family together. ⁠⁠

( excerpts, my emphases, from “The Plight of the Eldest Daughter:
Women are expected to be nurturers.
Firstborns are expected to be exemplars. Being both is exhausting.”
By Sarah Sloat, The Atlantic )

The complexities inherent in birth order theories have always intrigued moiself.  There are sooooooo many variables – the number and gender of the children; the spacing between their births, a child whose mental and/or physical health issues drain monetary, emotional and time resources from the other children, the family’s financial situation….[4] –  too many variables for the theories to be subject to any kind of testing that will hold scientific water, so to speak.

 

  

“Older children are ____.  Only children are _____.  Middle children are ____.“

These generalizations seem to touch some observational keystones, amongst both psychology professionals and us layfolk.  But there are also a bajillion exceptions to the attempts at classification, such as this example: [5]

You are not your parent’s oldest child; you are the fourth of their six children.  But there was such a large gap between their first four the second two offspring (you and your baby sister are the,“Ooops I guess it wasn’t menopause after all!” babies) that your older sisters and brothers were out of the house before you had anything resembling a sibling relationship with them:  throughout your life, they’ve been more like aunts/uncles/distant cousins.  Thus, *experientially,* instead of being a middle or younger/est child, you are the oldest child in a family of two children.

Fitting with everything I’ve read on the subject, The Atlantic article says the research shows that birth order does not confirm personality traits, but it *does* affect how people view you, and treat you, and what their expectations are of you.  And it is fairly well-established that how people treat us impacts how we view and treat ourselves.

 

 

My father was from a family of six children, and he’d told me how his parents’ relations with his siblings influenced how he wanted to raise his own children.   [6]   Several decades ago, when I first started reading articles about how parents respond to different children, I was fascinated by the studies, and they got me to consider my own family experiences.  On more than one visit to my parents’ house I tried to have a conversation with my father about it – get his opinion, basically.  But he would have none of it.

My father was a person with many fine qualities; however, introspection wasn’t one of them, and he wasn’t well-educated.  Despite my attempted explanations to the contrary, I think he took my wanting discuss the subject – of birth order/different expectations; parents’ relationships to different children –  as my wanting an answer to a question that had never occurred to me to ask.  He seemed to think I was implying that he (and our mother) loved certain of their children “more” than others.  No matter how I phrased my questions/observations, he would respond with variations of, “We love you all the same.”

“Your love was never in question,” I tried to assure him.  Finally, in good-natured exasperation (but exasperation nonetheless), I sighed, “You’re not listening….”   [7]   But it was a lost cause.

Years later, after observing friends and family members have and raise their children, and then after MH and I had our own two offspring, I have come to this opinion:

If you truly believe you “love your children all the same,”
then you don’t really love them – or see them – for who they are.

 

 

You can’t love your children *all the same* because your children are not *all the same.*  They need different things from you at different times.

One Of My Siblings (OOMS) has a good life now but had a very difficult time for many years, due in part/IMO to the fact that our parents loved us “all the same.”  Translation:  they parented us all the same, even though we were four different kids and OOMS had different challenges than the other three.  But because the rest of their kids didn’t have those challenges, my parents just didn’t see (or didn’t want to see) the struggles OOMS was going through.  Not to cast blame; they, along with 99% of their peers,   [8]  were simply ignorant re behavioral and mental health issues.  OOMS needed more guidance, more attention, a firmer hand, so to speak.  OOMS wasn’t as self-starting, self-regulating, and motivated and organized as the other three; OOMS was flailing, in many ways.  But this idea of theirs, that they “loved us the same,” led them to assume that OOMS would, eventually, turn out the same.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists
and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.”

( Ernestine Louise Rose, (January 13, 1810 – August 4, 1892)
a…”suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker who has been called the ‘first Jewish feminist.’ )

 

 

*   *   *

May you not try to love everybody “all the same”;
May you steer clear of curated word lists;
May you never need a note from your parent to choose oat milk, FFS;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] I know because I emailed the editor after this had happened to me, and he replied.

[3] Not that moiself  is familiar with crack cocaine, or any kind of highly addictive anesthetic (except for that prescribed me for wisdom teeth extraction all those many years ago), but hey, I like, read things….

[4] “Oldests” and “Onlys” get more of their parents’ time and resources (both are finite qualities, and must be divvied up with the arrival of more children) – this one observation is a fact (one of the few in birth order hypotheses), not a theory. The parents may be financially struggling with the first child, and then get established in their careers and be more economically secure as the years go by…OR, if they have “too many” children (as in more than they can support and/or they get laid off from work….), the financial circumstances can go in the opposite direction…. Just one of the variables to the “rules” of what Oldest and Only get.

[5] From more than one family I’ve known.

[6] That is, he vowed to do things “differently.”

[7] That was a common theme, for conversations with my parents which involved subject matter deeper than the weather or what the kids are doing in school.  If there was any issue that might make them the tiniest bit uncomfortable – and those issues could be difficult to impossible to anticipate – they would reframe what I had said/asked into a question they felt comfortable answering (even if *they* were the ones who’d brought up the uncomfortable issue in the first place!)…or they’d just change the subject.

[8] 99% of any and all of us, at that time.

[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 Oracles I’m Not Consulting

December 8, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, nature, Oregon, science, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Oracles I’m Not Consulting

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

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.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Am I So Lucky To Have Raised A Science *And* Film Nerd?

Dateline: last Saturday, circa 8:50 am.  The following IM message chat ensued between daughter Belle and moiself, after she’d IM’d me the previous evening to let me know she was going to see the new Godzilla movie.

Belle:
Okay Godzilla Minus One was AWESOME….
I know I recommend a lot of movies but I RECOMMEND this one.

Moiself:
I will see it for sure…We’ll see if I can drag MH to it.    [2]

Belle:
It’s a pretty low budget film, but the combination of practical and special effects is really well done, and the story is really solid.
I also really like the Godzilla design.

Moiself :
He doesn’t have a peewee head, I hope.
In some past ones his head was out of proportion to his body, IMO.

Belle:
Sorry, his head is tiny haha.

Moiself:
😵‍💫

Belle:
… the tiny head had never really bothered me. It makes sense for a lizard that lives in land and water. It’s an aerodynamic shape; and, I think the canon is that he feeds off of radiation, so he technically doesn’t need a big mouth to eat anything

Moiself:
This conversation is so going in my next blog post.
You are right, of course. I think I’m reacting to having been imprinted on the original Godzilla, in which he had a much bigger head, more like a T-rex, but your commentary on the design makes sense.

Belle:
Because of course the anatomy of a giant radiation-consuming lizard has to make evolutionary sense!

Moiself:
Doesn’t the radiation trump evolution here?

Belle:
Exactly lol, I’m saying it’s kinda silly to assume the small head is because he doesn’t need to eat things when it’s a totally made-up monster.
But I like the case of evolution gone totally haywire.  That’s more fun.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Later That Same Day….

Dateline: Saturday, WA CO County Fairgrounds convention hall. MH and I attended the Winter Moon Bazaar.  It had been advertised as a “pagan fest,” with

“…Over 100 Vendors: Explore a diverse array of artisanal treasures.
Female Krampus: Witness the enchanting allure of the Winter Moon.
Pagan Spirit: Celebrate the season’s magic and history.
Concessions: Satisfy your cravings with delightful treats.
Workshops and Entertainment…”

We heard about it from a (non-pagan) friend, who had a booth there with her crocheting and other handwork; we decided to stop by to see her and check it out.  The event was sponsored by paganfrye….whose website’s motto, “Your magick begins here,” is probably a better marketing slogan than, “Serving all of your sparkly hokum needs.”  And in case y’all be wondering what that alternative spelling indicates, other than an attempt at being precious… 

 

 

…you can check that out here.

MH and I roamed the convention hall, checking out the booths.  The Winter Moon Bazaar resembled most any other holiday bazaar, except for the dominance of vendors whose products signaled the pagan/wicca theme.  I found moiself  wondering how many of those peddling their witchy wares actually “believe in” or practice Wicca or contemporary paganism.  We saw one of the entertainment moments: dancing by some of the fest’s participants, who were attired in….  There’s no nice way to put it.  I’ll just say moiself  cringed with embarrassment for them – and for any actual Wiccans present, who surely don’t dress like middle-aged women who got drunk at a Walmart post-Halloween costume sale and tried on all the merchandise.

 

 

Son K once told me, after reading up on the various spiritualities which fall under the umbrella of paganism –   [3]   Wicca or witchcraft, druids , pantheistic or theistic-free  – that paganism  reminds him of the “modern” religions, in that its followers ultimately (whether or not consciously), and simply decide to “….pick something they want to believe to be true, and so they devote themselves to that.”

Sounds about right, from moiself’s  POV .  After several interesting conversations with self-identified Wiccans/pagans over the years (in college, and in post-college work situations) I came away with the impression that pagan spiritualities are akin to all other spiritualities.  And therefore they, like all worldviews, are subject to the same critiques and analysis, including the first and foremost, RGP’s First Law of Spiritual Dynamics:

* Open your eyes and get off your knees – don’t worship any one or thing.*

 

 

BTW, did y’all know that Portland was home to the First 24 Hour Church of Elvis?

 

 

The now-defunct FCOE was created by artist (and former corporate lawyer!) Stephanie Pierce.

“For three decades, one of the best known and quirkiest Portland tourist attractions was the 24 Hour Church of Elvis….  For a quarter, visitors could hear a sermon by Elvis, confess their sins, receive the Elvis catechism, or get a photo with the King of Rock and Roll. Pierce also offered Elvis-themed wedding services, including legal weddings for $25, novelty weddings for $5, and coin-operated weddings for $1…”
(excerpt from the Oregon Encyclopedia )

 

 

Alas, despite the 24 hour claim, moiself  was never able to avail myself of the F C of E services, as it was always closed/out of order when I stopped by.

Reverences heaped upon The King of Rock ‘n Roll® aside,  I find the concept of worship to be obsequious, abhorrent, and ultimately dangerous for the human mind and motives.  However, if for some reason people want to devote themselves to the veneration of “forces,” both outside and/or encompassing ourselves, honoring “the forces of nature” (personified or otherwise) seems to me to be more rational than embracing the bizarre theologies of theistic religions, wherein some *supernatural* deity/force is said to be in charge of the *natural* world.

Venerating what we can see, what we know to exist – the change of the seasons, the tides, etc. – well, whatever floats your boat swoons your moon, engages your sage.  Also, I can’t recall hearing of a Wiccan vilifying someone’s sexual orientation or trying to ban books from libraries or insisting that their beliefs about nature be taught in school science classes….  

Except for what seems to be a common connection between the practices of Wicca and the celestial horseshit unicorn feces of astrology, tarot readings and other psychic divination absurdities, what the heck – how harmful can such beliefs be?  Then I visited the website of the person/group  [4]   organizing the event, took a peek, and found…services…offered under a heading called Crows of Fate. ( a small sample; my emphases):

* Flight of Truth – A 5 card draw placed in a cross pattern.
It shows you the truth of your current situation. $20

* Full Flight – A 10 card draw placed in the Celtic Cross fashion.
This draw is best for when you are struggling with a difficult problem. $50

Oracle and other Services
If you have difficulty figuring out what question you should focus on or just need a yes or no answer the Oracle cards are best for such answers at $7 a card.

Psychic Services for Private Events:
Only Tarot and Oracle readings are available for private events….
It will cost $80 to retain my services for the evening….

Psychic Consultations:
I am more than willing to help with any psychic or magical trouble you are having for $10/hr.

…. Please give a basic description of the problem so that I can arrive properly equipped to deal with the problem.  Otherwise you will incur an inconvenience fee of $160.

 

 

And moiself  once thought that theistic religions had the corner on con games.  Anyone ignorant enough to pay for such psychic services will incur more intellectual damage than any $160 inconvenience fee would cost them.

Oh, and this is priceless: psychic consultations which stipulate beforehand, “Please give a basic description of the problem.“   So much for psychic abilities.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of On A Related Subject….

I have blogged previously about the subject – alternative spiritual practices – as in this excerpt from my post of 2-17-17:

As regular readers of this blog know (and new or sporadic readers will likely surmise), I am not a religious person.  I was raised by church-going, Christian parents;  [5]  flirted with/researched a variety of denominations during/post college; was a member (even served as a deacon, holy shit!) of a UCC church    [6]   for many years; happily (read: finally) came out over a decade ago   [7] as a lifelong skeptic-atheist-Freethinker-Bright.

While I hold a modicum of respect for some of the ideals and practices of, say, contemporary non-theistic Buddhism and Unitarianism and Jainism, I find all religions to be more-or-less silly/offensive/just plain fallacious. There is one “spiritual” practice, however, which I can somewhat understand, if only in that it makes a teesny-tiny, infinitesimally wee bit o’ sense:

Ancestor Worship.

 

 

Yes, really.

Make that, ancestor veneration, not worship. For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, get off your knees, open your eyes, and stop bowing your head – nobody should “worship” anything.

Worship: VERB
1.  [with object] Show reverence and adoration for (a deity)
1.1  [no object] Take part in a religious ceremony.
(English Oxford Living Dictionary)

Unlike the claims of religions which have one or more deities, you don’t have to take your ancestors’ existence on “faith”  [8]   – you know they have lived (you yourself are evidence of that); you’ve likely met them one, or two, or sometimes even three generations back. From the photo albums and other heirlooms to the birth certificates, school and county records, family businesses, homes, farmsteads, and kinfolk near and far, you’ve an idea of what they have “given” you, materially, intellectually and emotionally – you’ve some idea what you might be grateful for.

Best of all, you’ve little incentive to argue or go to war with other people over whose interpretation of what their imaginary friend wants is correct. Your neighbor’s ancestors are their business, and yours are yours….

Now then.  By ancestor veneration I’m not talking any kind of belief system wherein the dead are beseeched to intercede on behalf of the living – that’s just as silly as all the others (religions).  I do not believe that my deceased grandparents and parents have a continued existence in a spirit world, nor that their spirits look after moiself  and my family in particular or the world in general, nor that they somehow can influence the fate of the living.  I’m talking about a practice of honor and appreciation, in which a person might use the roads paved and trails blazed by previous generations as a focal point for remembrance and gratitude.

 

Thanks for the dimples, Dad.

 

I’m not sure what brought the previous topic to mind.  A likely suspect is the recent death of my mother.   [9]  Anyway, y’all have my permission to honor your ancestors…as well as my fervent wish that that is as far as your theology goes.  However, as I look at the state of the world, it appears that the old superstitions have some staying power.  As long as people continue to proclaim and dispute whose invisible leader is the bestest, I’d like someone to come up with another dog in the fight.

As the Bay Area’s own Huey Lewis once sang, I Want A New Drug.

Putting it yet another way, y’all have my encouragement (if you are religiously inclined) to come up with a new religion, within the following parameters: in this belief system, it is the men who are required, in one form or another, to cover themselves.

That’s it.

Yep. That’s the entire theology in a nutshell.    [10]

From a light veil or a hijab – make, that, a he-jab  –  to a full-body, Bro burqua, your theology must include all the usual nonsense reasons (modesty; an easily offended diety; protection from your fellow believers who will beat the holy crap out of you if you show any evidence of human form) as to why certain people –  in this case, those with boy parts –  must be covered in public.

Duuuuuuuude – put a scarf on it.

 

We swear on Her Holy name, it doesn’t make your butt look big, no, not at all.

 

*   *   *

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.   [11] 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [12]

“Wicca is just extreme LARPing. Then again, so is every other religion.”
(Oliver Markus Malloy, writer and cartoonist, Inside The Mind of an Introvert

( LARPing = Live Action Role Playing, wherein participants dress in costume, use props,
and act out roles in a fantasy scenarios or multiplayer games. )

*   *   *

May you be conscious of your LARPing;
May you attend at least one holiday bazaar (who *doesn’t* need a felt troll?);
May you remember that popcorn goes well with any Godzilla movie;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] I did, the next evening.

[3] The historical pre-Christian-era religious beliefs of peoples in what are now the European countries and certain areas of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula territories, Syria, and Turkey.

[4] Still not sure exactly what it is.

[5] Lutheran, specifically: what was once called the ALC and now ELCA, for those obsessives interested in denominational nitpicking, It wasn’t one of the “synod” denominations (Missouri & Wisconsin), which are closer to Catholicism in their conservative doctrines (e.g. women cannot be ordained as ministers; liking to snipe about other denominations as being the “not true” faiths) .

[6] Which I have, since leaving, recommended to people who for whatever reasons are looking for a liberal Christian church experience and/or community.

[7] Over 17 years, as of this writing.

[8] Although, especially at Thanksgiving when someone brings up politics, you may have to take them with a helluva big grain of salt.

[9] She died Christmas Eve, 2016.

[10] Which is the proper receptacle for all theologies.

[11] 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.

[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 Graduate Degree I’m Not Googling

October 6, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Graduate Degree I’m Not Googling

Department Of The Most, And Most Profound, Information Contained In Four Words
I’ve Come Across In A Long Time…

…or maybe ever:

Google  isn’t  grad  school.

 

 

Well, of course, we say to ourselves.  But how many times have we fallen into the I-looked-at-this-for-five-minutes-and-now-I-get-it  trap?

“The internet has fed a huge reservoir of good information, but it has also created an explosion of nonsense: technical-sounding nutrition advice about a new dietary supplement that miraculously stimulates the body to convert fat into muscle, financial jargon pushing dubious investment tips, health guidance that promises a miracle treatment your physician doesn’t know about….

Practically everywhere you look on the web, you can find technical information of dubious accuracy. This is not necessarily because we are being deliberately lied to—although *plenty* of that is going on there too—but because the internet is a free, democratic platform. This very freedom and accessibility causes many people to succumb to the illusion of explanatory depth, confidently sharing their newly acquired expertise in some technical information gleaned from reading a single article or watching a couple of videos…“

 

 

“… psychologists noticed in experiments that when people are first exposed to technical information, they usually overestimate how deeply they understand it…. The phrase illusion of explanatory depth was what researchers dubbed their finding. The phenomenon is similar to the famous Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how people with low levels of skill in an activity tend to overrate their competence. One explanation for this is ‘hypocognition,’ that people don’t know what they don’t know…

The overconfidence of people laboring under the illusion of explanatory depth can lead to the spread of misinformation. As researchers have shown, when a person’s confidence is highest though their actual knowledge is low, they become very believable to others—despite not being reliable. And the more inaccurate people are—or perhaps the more they want to believe the validity of their perception—the more they tend to be swayed by their own underinformed overconfidence….

…Just remember: Google isn’t graduate school. Learning about novel ideas is a thrill, and indeed, many researchers believe that interest itself is a positive emotion—a source of pleasure rooted in the evolutionary imperative to learn new things…. But beware your own susceptibility to the illusion of explanatory depth. If you think you understand something technical and complicated after cursory exposure, you might be able to put the knowledge to good use in your life, but you almost certainly don’t understand it well enough to hold forth on the topic.”

(  excerpts from, “Google Isn’t Grad School: Having so much information at our fingertips is useful but seductive, easily fooling us into thinking we know more than we do,”
The Atlantic, 7-6-23.  my emphases. )

 

Are y’all falling prey to the illusion of explanatory depth by thinking you understand the illusion of explanatory depth by reading these excerpts?  Tricky of moiself , eh?    [1]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Recent Article Which Ties In To A Previous Blog

That would be my post from 8-25, which dealt, in part, with the social and environmental consequences of street camping.   [2]

“On a scorching July morning, (Bureau of Environmental Services security manager) Keith Moen checked the steel barrier gate at the West Lents Floodplain, a natural area just off the Springwater Corridor Trail in outer Southeast Portland…. Moen noted a steel bollard missing at the entrance to the Springwater trail, meaning cars could again illegally drive onto the paved path and into the natural area.

As he inspected the floodplain, Moen walked past a shopping cart brimming with garbage and over a metal bridge spanning trash-strewn Johnson Creek….

…since the advent of the pandemic, the bureau’s land managers and environmental advocates have sounded an alarm about the escalating human-caused degradation of the city’s wildlife habitat zones, floodplains, rivers and streams, wetlands and wildfire hazard zones and are seeking ways to protect them….  Policies meant to address homelessness have exacerbated the damage in natural areas….   …the encampments and their detritus have kept people away from nature, especially in neighborhoods that are home to large numbers of low-income residents, people of color, immigrants and refugees, whose use of natural areas already tends to be limited.

‘The ecological damage from the camping is tremendous – decades of work, millions and millions of public dollars wasted,’ said Bob Sallinger, the former conservation director of Portland Audubon and now urban conservation director for the nonprofit Willamette Riverkeepers.  ‘Trees have been cut down, vegetation has been trampled, water quality has been degraded…The amount of garbage, including hazardous waste, on these natural sites is remarkable’….

city land managers said they have seen a sharp increase in the number and size of encampments in protected wooded properties and along waterways….

Many of the spots fall under special city zoning and are considered ‘critical green infrastructure,’ said Ken Finney, a supervisor with the Bureau of Environmental Services who oversees the natural areas restoration program. …‘We don’t see them as just empty open spaces, but as fully functioning, complex systems…They provide specific ecosystem services to our city, including reducing flooding, managing stormwater and improving water quality. They also improve the air we breathe, protect us from extreme heat and sequester carbon….‘ “

( Hidden toll of homeless crisis: Portland’s prized natural areas ,
Oregon live.com, my emphases )

 

 

Seven years ago, (then) Portland mayor Charlie Hales enacted his controversial plan  to allow overnight tent camping in certain city locations.  Hales’ plan, like so many policies and proposals regarding homelessness, was well-intentioned but poorly-thought out.  Hales eventually reversed his policy (saying it was “misunderstood”), but – surprise  – word had gotten out (“Hey, let’s hop the freight to Portland – they let you camp on the sidewalks and natural areas.“).

Does moiself  risk being called heartless or NIMBY or other pejoratives by pointing out that allowing encampments in wildlife corridors is stupid, stupid, stupid?  Bring it on.  It’s not a contest (“Do you care about environmental degradation or do you care about homelessness?  It’s one or the other.”). We are not the only creatures on this planet; all species need clean air/water to survive.

“Camp Serenity” was part of a homeless population along the Springwater Corridor Trail.  Moiself  remembers watching an interview    [3]   with one of the camp’s self-proclaimed “leaders,” who made lofty claims about how the camp was self-policing: “Camp Serenity/Zero Tolerance – as in no tolerance for hard drugs  [4] – has a code of conduct. Campers choose a leader and others for chores such as security and trash cleanup.”

 

 

At the time moiself  was a wee bit abashed by my cynicism re the leader’s proclamations; my skepticism was verified several months later, when I watched and read other interviews, this time with those in charge of cleaning up Camp Serenity and other sites along the wildlife corridor. Not only had residents of neighborhoods abutting the corridor been harassed and attacked by occupants of the camps, when the camps were finally cleared out the workers who did so had to wear hazmat protective gear as they cleaned up the corridor.  The trash and filth – including discarded syringes and other hazardous drug paraphernalia –  and damage to the erstwhile wildlife corridor/former encampment was so intense, cleanup workers were consulting EPA guidelines for advice on toxic waste site management.

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month 

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

“We all know there are all kinds of things that religion is incompatible with — democracy, science, social equity, rational debate, blind justice.  But it is sometimes thought that being an environmentalist is compatible with religious belief. That you could divorce irrational beliefs about imaginary friends, the subordinate role of women, and the importance of neoconservative government from rational concerns about the state of the planet. Sorry, can’t be done.      [7]

To be a greenie concerned about the future of the planet, you have to, well, be concerned about the future of the planet. Religious people, even putting aside the Left Behind loonies, aren’t really concerned, because they have an imaginary friend who will look after them if they are good and pray hard and wear the right clothes…”

( “Green and Atheist: The Incompatibility of Religion and Environmentalism,”
Davis Horton,   [8]   huffpo.com )

 

*   *   *

May you stay free from the illusion of explanatory depth;
May you keep in mind that you don’t know what you don’t know;
May you celebrate your own term as Employee of the Month;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I’d advise reading the entire article.  You still won’t be an expert, but that’s okay.

[2] Whether by homeless persons or “van life” aficionados.

[3] On the local news, one of the network channels or Oregon’s PBS?

[4] And what was the definition of  a “hard” drug – any drug someone else was using, but not you?

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

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

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

[7] Time for another footnote!

[8] From huffpo biography:  “David Horton is a writer and polymath with qualifications in both science and the arts (BA, BSc, MSc, PhD, DLitt), and has had professional careers (and done research work) in biology, archaeology, publishing and farming, extending over 30 years. He has published some 100 scientific papers and a number of books on biology and archaeology. Now retired to become a professional writer and farmer, he screams often at the tv news bulletins, blogs, writes columns for local newspapers, gives talks to environmental groups, lectures occasionally in local colleges, and continues to work on his interest in the environment.”

 

The Common Ground I’m Not Forging

September 22, 2023

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

Department Of This Is Beyond Depressing
Sub-Department Of Are We Abetting A Nation Of Crybaby Snitches?

“As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items….
Everything was ready, but Wood didn’t leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.

Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me,’ a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.

The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students ‘feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress’ on account of their race.”

( excerpted from, “Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?: Mary Wood’s school reprimanded her for teaching a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now she hopes her bond with students can survive South Carolina’s new laws.”
By Hannah Natanson, The Washington Post, 9-18-23 )

 

 

I read Between the World and Me.  I think every American should read Between the World and Me.  I wish that a book like Between the World and Me had been published when I was in my American History and social studies classes in high school, and if it had been, I know we would have been able to read and discuss it.

Gaaaawwwwd, it makes me feel old, to read about this shameful South Carolina policy.  Old in a different way than the usual, “In my day…” story, which is often the tag line for a Good Old Days ®  conservative cultural sentiment.

Why does it seem as if we are going backwards?   [1]  Moiself  was able to benefit from so many high school classroom topics and discussions that some people, apparently, would find “controversial” (read: threatening) today, but that which we students managed to deal with.  Isn’t that the point of education?

 

 

I remember when a couple of friends of mine, who were taking the Logic class given by one of our high school’s most respected teachers, told me about how they were frustrated after a classroom discussion wherein a student brought up the topic of religion: this student thought that some idea(s) presented in the class threatened his religion in particular and/or dismissed the idea of taking something “on faith” in general, and wanted the class to discuss it.  Being a class on logic, i.e., a class on learning to employ and evaluate different kinds of arguments   [2]   and learning how to recognize good or bad arguments, students who made illogical and or unsubstantiated claims re their religion were challenged, and the mistakes in their arguments and claims were pointed out to them, by both the teacher *and* by fellow students.

( I sooooooooo wanted to be in that class!   [3] )

I listened to my friends’ recounting of the class’s discussion; I pointed out where I thought the other students and teachers had made excellent points, and gave my friends the, “Hey, chin up – this is good for you!” support.  My friends accepted my feedback – one of them had to pout for a minute, as she was initially put out by the fact that I didn’t just jump to her defense, no matter what, but she was thoughtful and gracious about it.

And that was that.

It never occurred them to run whining to their parents like a tantruming toddler:

“Mommy, Daddy, that mean Mr. Guggenheim made me feel uncomfortable!
My teacher corrected me when I made false assertions
and used faulty reasoning!
My teacher introduced me to new ideas!
My teacher attempted to teach!
WAAAAAAHHHHHH! “

 

 

What’s with students – in an *Advanced Placement* class –  turning into narcs?  WTF  ?!?!?!  Coate’s book is just the kind of thought-provoking material “advanced” students should be reading and discussing.

This is yet another sad example of the wimping out by and dumbing down of the American student, and it is happening on all sides of the cultural and political spectrum.  Those college students who essentially put their hands over their ears and assume the nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah I can’t hear you posture, as they bleat, “We feel threatened! We need safe spaces in order to learn!” while they shout down and/or attempt to censor professors and guest speakers with whom they disagree?  Same coin; opposite side.

And what kind of parents would report a teacher for…..arrrrghhh.  My own parents were conservative, both with regards to politics and religion, but it never would have occurred to them   [4]   to presume to tell my teachers what and how to teach.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Don’t Give A Rat’s Ass About What Percentage Of Tag Fees Go Toward So-Called “Conservation Efforts,”
I Wish All Hunters Would Hunt Each Other And Leave Other Creatures Alone

Yet another misguided attempt at forging common ground. Because, yeah, what can unite us human beings – despite our differences in skin color, origin, religion, ethnicity, etc. –  is the All-American ® desire to kill other living beings for the sheer, bloodthirsty fun of it sport.

“Hunters of Color, founded in Corvallis in 2020…is a nonprofit intent on diversifying the outdoors, specifically hunting. The organization has flourished since its inception, with ambassadors in Texas, Washington, New Mexico and many more states. It offers a mentorship program, hands-on restoration opportunities and anti-racist education services. The organization aims to confront and remove barriers for people of color interested in hunting.”
( excerpt from “The outdoors are for everyone:
Oregon nonprofit aims to diversify hunting,” Oregonlive.com )

 

 

*   *   *

The Podcast I’m Looking Forward To
(Sub-Department Of Note To Moiself:
Time To Stop Complaining And Appreciate Something)

Moiself  has a long line of podcast episodes in my listening queue, but the one going to the top of the list will be the one that was previewed on the last Clear + Vivid podcast I listened to, which was C+V host Alan Alda’s interview with Maya Shankar. Shankar, a gifted violinist, had her hard work and dreams smashed by an injury which ended her dream of a musical career.  Yet it was the end of that dream, and that career, which led Shankar down another path: to a PhD in neuroscience…which led her to being appointed to science advisory posts with both the Obama administration and the United Nations.

As if that episode wasn’t interesting enough (and it was), here was the teaser for the next C+V episode, featuring Matt Walker, the “…go-to expert on everything to do with sleep, from how it keeps both mind and body healthy to why we dream.

(Walker speaking; my emphases):
“I often think of dream sleep as a Google search gone wrong.  Let’s say that I type into Google, ‘Alan Alda,’ and the first page is all of your…accomplishments, but then I go to page twenty, it’s about a field hockey game in Utah, and I think, ‘Hang on a second, that’s not…’  but if I read it and I look, there’s a very distant, very non-obvious association.  When you start to collide things together that shouldn’t normally go together, it sounds like the biological basis of creativity.
And no wonder, as a consequence, no one has ever told you, ‘Alan, you should really stay awake on a problem.’

 

 

How can I not resist a preview like that?

Sometimes I feel as if Alda and his C+V staff write their podcast episode previews for an audience of one: moiself.  The podcast’s focus is on communication; host Alda has a passion for the subject, both as an actor and as a lifelong science devotee (Alda hosted Scientific American Frontiers, and founded Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.)

Here is the mission statement for C+V:

“Learn to connect better with others in every area of your life. Immerse yourself in spirited conversations with people who know how hard it is, and yet how good it feels, to really connect with other people – whether it’s one person, an audience or a whole country.
You’ll know many of the people in these conversations – they are luminaries in our culture. Some you may not know. But what links them all is their powerful ability to relate and communicate. It’s something we need now more than ever.”

Alda’s guests include many scientists, but not exclusively.  He interviews people from across the spectrum of professions, including music and art.  One of his most memorable guests (IMO) was Paul McCartney.  Alda spoke with McCartney about communicating through music and the process of composing a song.  Some of Paul’s songs he crafted deliberatly:  When Paul was struggling with his grief over John Lennon’s death, Paul’s late wife Linda, knowing music was the vehicle through which her husband dealt with emotional issues, suggested he write about his feelings for his childhood friend and former Beatles bandmate…and that prompt resulted in McCartney’s heartfelt song, Here Today.  [5]    Other times, McCartney noted, although he would still apply his musical skill and experience in fine-tuning a song, the original idea for a song appeared organically, or out-of-the blue, as when he awoke one morning with the complete melody for Yesterday in his head, after having “composed” it in a dream.    [6]

Here are just a few of the guests and subject titles of recent C+V podcasts. 

* Adam Mastroianni: Why You So Often Get It Wrong
* Nancy Kanwisher: Your Brain is a Swiss Army Knife
* Dan Levitt: You Are Stardust. Really.
* Adam Gopnik: The Joy of Getting Good at Something Hard
*  Brenna Hassett: Why We Are Weird

So, if you haven’t already…check it out!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Reasons To Read Your Junk Mail

Because you may just stumble upon gems like this:

Robyn, you’re invited to a FREE Seminar and Meal!
Presented by
SMART CREMATION – your local pre-planning experts.

*Smart* cremation.  As opposed to, uh, foolish or stupid cremation, where you, like, stumble into the crematorium chamber when you’re not really dead yet?

Also head-scratch worthy: the invitation’s envelope was addressed to, “The Robyn Parnell Family.”  Hmm.  Does my family have plans for me, to which I am not privy?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you not “stay awake on it” when contemplating your next challenge;
May you occasionally, actually, read your junk mail;
May you creatively “collide things which shouldn’t go together”;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Perhaps because WE ARE.

[2] Such as categorical syllogistic logic, propositional logic, predicate logic….

[3] But, alas, I was never able to fit it into my schedule, which was weighed down with everything else I either wanted to or had to take, and the class was offered only once a semester, at one time of the day.

[4] And I did ask them about it – about what they would do in similar circumstances –  years ago.  This was when I’d read an article about students complaining to parents about a teacher teaching something that the student didn’t like – something which was not factually incorrect, or presented in a rude or condescending or nasty way, but a mere fact, which made the student (translate: a fact which their parents had told them was not a fact, as in something about religion and/or the civil War) uncomfortable.

[5] from the album, Tug of War. 

[6] The song, with over 1600 cover versions, is the most covered song in music history.

[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 Existential Concepts I’m Not Debating

September 15, 2023

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, radio & podcasts, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Existential Concepts I’m Not Debating

Department Of My Work Here Is Done
Exhibit A.9995

Can anything match the parental pride such as that experienced by moiself, when son K’s first reaction upon reading the name of the offender in the news article, Serial flasher gets long sentence for exposing himself… was, “It’s the role he was born to play.”

“Washington County Circuit Judge…handed down a sentence…to Michael G. Dick, who pleaded guilty to two counts of felony public indecency…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Spending Too Much Time Thinking About
An Existentially Inconsequential Concept.

As heard on a commercial for Saatva dog beds ( the ad was in a recent Hidden Brain podcast, “Be kind to Yourself “):

.”…these dogs beds are not your typical slabs of foam covered in polyester.  They are true inner spring mattresses that provide unparalleled back support and proper spine alignment for dogs of all sizes….”

I can’t remember if it was on an earlier HB episode or a different podcast where I also heard an ad for Saatva dog beds, in which it was claimed that a Saatva dog bed is the mattress “your dog deserves.”

This sterling example of the sentimentally manipulative capacity of marketing got me to wondering: How can a dog *deserve* a certain kind of dog bed?

 

 

deserve
transitive verb: to be worthy of : MERIT
(“deserves another chance”)
intransitive verb: to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital
( from Merriam-webster online dictionary )

I can understand a dog wanting something (a tummy rub) or needing something (a drink of water); I can understand a person wanting or needing something for their dog (a trip to the dog park; a leash).  I can understand a person rewarding their dog for a specific act – with the reward directly connected to the act so that the dog understands that it did what was asked of it (e.g., giving the dog a treat for obeying a command to sit or heel…), and thus you can say the dog “earned” or merited the treat.

But how does a dog merit a piece of furniture that will be given to it – *must* be given to it (it’s not like the dog can take its Mastercard and go to Petsmart) –  by its human?

 

 

I don’t know about that superlative.  A dog meriting a bed is perhaps not the greatest mystery.  But it does get me to wondering, about other mysteries of life and human behavior (this dog bed thing has everything to do with human motivations and almost nothing to do with dogs),  including….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Existentially Consequential Concepts Which Deserve All The Time In The World To Contemplate…
Despite My Doing So Not Making A Damn Bit Of Difference

Sub-Department Of I Blame Vladimir Putin,
For Everything…

…including the fact that beloved friends are going through a grueling Something which has afflicted them, for reasons unrelated to them personally and/or anything they may have done.  Like Putin vis-à-vis the Ukrainians, there is this Something out there which is trying to torment and kill them, for no rational reason.

The cosmos is full of beauty and wonder and misfortune and pain, all of it unevenly and randomly distributed.  Understanding this phenomenon is the key to equanimity…along with being able to tell the truth in all circumstances.  Say, this is dreadful, when it is dreadful; cry when you have to and laugh when you can. 

 

 

Moiself  knows that disease organisms, like all primitive of life forms, just do what they do: try to survive and replicate.  Got it.  But, dammit it, you flaming asshole tumors, pretend for one nanosecond that you have sentience.  Get some self-awareness here:  if you kill the host, you die, too, HELLO !?!?!?.

We humanist/religion-free folk know that such afflictions are not personal: we know we’re not being punished when illness and injury occur, nor are we being rewarded when we somehow avoid or recover from the same calamities which afflict others.  Still, as human beings; we suffer when hurt.  At least we are spared the suffering from cognitive dissonance and the mental gymnastics that come with trying to live with and justify concepts such as karma and fate and believing the existence of deities which are supposedly all-powerful and thus *could* choose to alter the Something…but simply *don’t.* 

So, we can admit upfront that contending with lethal illnesses et al sucks, as in,
“This is massively, putridly, ginormously, donkey-dong sucking….”

 

“Hey! I thought you weren’t going to get personal?”

 

….even as we live in a world where, come yet another day, there will also be the mixture of the profound and the mundane to be appreciated, in, say, the sight of the morning dew sparkling on the araneus diadematus’s web, which she’s anchored between the raspberry bushes and the recycling bin. And neither phenomenon – the simple but stunning example of the splendor of the natural world, and the specific ordeal of the illness we battle in that same world – is one we either caused or merited.

 

 

The late great Roger Ebert, noted film critic and freethinker,   [1]    shared his thoughts about his then-imminent death in his blog post, Go Gentle Into That Good Night.  This was during a time when Ebert’s mental faculties were as sharp as ever despite his body having been ravaged by both his disease and the treatments for that disease.  His perspective is one that is shared by many humanist/religion-free thinkers.  It is a lovely meditation (excerpted here), the entirety of which is worth reading and rereading, no matter what your worldview is regarding your own mortality or that of a loved one. 

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear… I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris…

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Because I Was Trying To Avoid Something I Need To Work On,
And For Some Reason Had A Flash Back To This Topic

That topic, broadly speaking, would be co-worker relationships.  Most of us have had a combination of ups and downs in that category, but have you ever had a coworker for whom your mere presence was apparently so annoying that it motivated them to play a petty (but delightfully so) prank on you?

Last week my remembrance of one such “relationship” resulted in a FB post from moiself.  And now, my social media secret is revealed: the main reason for almost any story I post (or tell at the dinner table) is related to what inspires 5-year-olds to play doctor:  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.  I love to hear and read the stories of others, so I share one of mine, as a prompt.

 

 

My post:

“Okay, it’s another thinly disguised story prompt (I’ll show you mine if you show me yours): please share any similar stories you may have re a really poor relationship you had with a petty, nasty, bigoted, misogynist, and/or just plain stupid coworker, which led to an amusing incident.
Here’s mine: On my first day back on at second season of a summer job (Disneyland; The Hungry Bear Restaurant), one of the kitchen crew clicked the play button on a mini-cassette recorder he had in his pocket, and serenaded me with Elton John’s, ‘The Bitch is Back.’ “

And dammit, although I got comments, for the first time no one shared a similar story.    [2]

As you can imagine, this workplace incident didn’t happen out of nowhere.  A friend requested the backstory; and so:   [3]

 

 

At the end of my senior year in high school, anticipating the need to earn college tuition money, I began working weekends at Disneyland.  I obtained “seasonal” worker status, which was the status of the majority of my male and female coworkers with whom I shared summer shifts at  Disneyland’s Hungry Bear Restaurant (HBR).   [4]   Once we were hired by The Happiest Place on Earth®, if we seasonals worked the entire summer season and at least one other holiday season (winter or spring breaks; Thanksgiving…) we were guaranteed a job for the following summer. 

The serenader in question – moiself  will refer to him as Kid Rock  [5]  ( who wasn’t a thing then, but if he had been, I think my serenader would have been a *big* fan ).

Kid was a boor from the moment I met him.  His square-jawed face’s limited repertoire of expressions were all variations of a smirk, and he oozed dumb jock attitudes and mannerisms.  Moiself  initially experienced a wee bit o’ guilt for judging him at first glance, until my second, and third, and one hundred seventeenth glances and encounters (as well as my observations of his interactions with others) confirmed my stereotyping assessment astute perception of who and what he was.

With his male coworkers, Kid was constantly jockeying for position, ingratiating himself with his kitchen shift managers, and attempting metaphorical pissing matches with the other kitchen guys.  [6]   He considered himself to be above his peers (although they were all doing the same job, at the same pay scale), even as he courted their respect (or fear) for being a “player,” with an edgy (read: mean and stupid) sense of humor.  The nice guys in the kitchen crew (and there were several) earned Kid’s contempt, because being a nice guy meant being well thought of by the HBR females (we were “the girls,” of course).

 

“I can smell that creep from here.”

 

No surprise, Kid also had a binary way of relating to the HBR females: they were either objects of his sexual desire or not worthy of it.  His preferred mode of communication with female co-workers was a combination of peacock preening, barely-masked sexual come-ons, and furtive insults (aka, “jokes”).  He got giggles from some of the girls, but, as I observed, those girls seemed to be giggling to mask their unease, and trying to prove that they could “take a joke” and weren’t prudes.  If Kid’s thinly disguised sexual banter was rejected by a girl, he’d let it be known that he hadn’t really wanted her at all – he’d just been trying to make her feel better, because she was unattractive.  I saw him behave this way with *every* female at HBR, with the exception of one of the counter area managers, whose slight but noticeable physical disability effectively neutered her in his eyes.

And, as was typical of many guys of the time (even the not-so-loathsome ones), when Kid complained about his male coworkers he was able to do so using specific language re what bothered him about their actions:  they’d been slow on the grill, had been late to their shift, had burned a batch of onion rings, had neglected key steps in their closing shift, had acted too passively, or aggressively…..  Any complaints he had about a female coworker came under the cover-all of critiquing her very essence, with no particulars as to behavior:  “She’s just a bitch.”

 

 

Kid’s attempts at titillating braggadocio didn’t impress moiself  (SURPRISE !), and I limited our interactions as much as possible.  Whenever possible, I ignored him.  Therefore, of course (and, yay!), he had to announce to one and all that he didn’t find me appealing.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  It took me awhile to figure out the source of his irritation with moiself  because I didn’t spend much time considering it – which was, for him, the issue.  He seemed continually annoyed by my lack of interest in what he had to say, about anything.  

 

 

In Kid’s eyes, I had committed the worst sin possible for a female:  I’d indicated, not by saying so but by merely not engaging with him, that I had no interest in his opinion of me.  I did not wear his taunts and insults as a badge of honor (as did a couple of my bad ass, feminist HBR colleagues), I simply stopped hearing them.  I realized for the first time what it meant to hold someone beneath contempt.  Strong emotions, including contempt, require effort and time to maintain.  To moiself, Kid was just…macho flotsam.

I did not engage Kid in the repartee – playful, and with occasional double-entendre overtones –  that I did with the “nice guys” and my female colleagues. We were all mostly within three years of one another, age-wise; naturally, there was workplace banter and casual flirtation and good-natured kidding bordering on insults.  With regard to the latter I punched up, never down, with both male and female colleagues.  The few guys who harbored a nasty streak stayed clear of me, after one of them, the Assistant Shift “Chef,”   [7]   tested my limits on my first week on the job.  He did this with (what I later found out was) his standard routine with which he teased the new counter girls:

Assistant Shift Chef summoned me to the kitchen area, informing me that it was SOP to give counter girls a tour of the kitchen facility, even though they’d be working out front (later I was told that he always did this “tour” with others present, as having an audience was a key component of his routine.)  Under the pretense of wanting my opinion about a possible flaw in Disneyland’s chef’s apron design, which seemed to have pockets and a seam or something no one could quite figure out, he reached down, fingered the outline of his crotch, and ask Newby Counter Girl ® moiself, “Do you know what this is?”

I’d been informed re the HBR hierarchy on my first day at work.  Despite his title, Assistant Shift Chef had no authority over me (or any female HBR female), so I decided to go for it.

“Hmmm.” I assumed a wide stance, one hand on my hip and the other slowly stroking my chin in a gesture of solemn deliberation.  “Wait; don’t tell me, this is familiar…Oh!  I know!  It looks like it a penis, only smaller.”   [8]

Assistant Shift Chef guffawed heartily, as if he had collaborated with me on the joke.  Still, I noticed (and savored) the nanosecond of terror and humiliation which flashed across his eyes, just after my line sunk in and before his crew began to whoop it up.

Once again, I digress.

The first day I returned to HBG for my second summer season (after my freshman year of college), I was delighted to see that several of my favorite seasonal employees had also returned…oh yeah, and there was also the Kid.  Although, maybe he’d been there all year?  I can’t remember if Kid had been a year-round employee or was another seasonal worker (all of whom were college students – the idea of Kid in any institution of higher learning never occurred to moiself).

Anyway, Kid had obviously been alerted to my return.  He waited at the rear of the pack welcoming me back, and after the rest of us had exchanged greetings, he removed the mini cassette player from his pocket and pressed play.  This time, I was the one with the genuine smirk on my face.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Entertaining The Donations Dude

Dateline:  Monday; 1:30 pm-ish; Goodwill donations center.  The guy helping me unload the donations from my car engages me in small talk about the current mugginess and upcoming weather forecast.  I hand him a bag full of books; he points to a book at the top of the bag, whose title is something like, Staying Sane In An Irrational World.

“Well now, what’s that about?” he asks.

“Who knows,” moiself  shrugs.  “It’s a book of empty pages.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
( Christopher Hitchens,  God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything )

 

 

*   *   *

May your pets somehow obtain the furniture (you think) they deserve;
May the book of your life not be filled with empty pages;
May you live long enough to find out that which makes you happy;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Ebert, who grew up Catholic, chose not to define his religious beliefs, saying he is not an atheist and not a believer. He clarified his religious views in a blog post called “How I believe in God.” He said, “I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist — which I am. If I were to say I don’t believe God exists, that wouldn’t mean I believe God doesn’t exist. Nor does it mean I don’t know, which implies that I could know.”  (from Roger Ebert entry, ffrf.org  )

[2] Perhaps there were none to share; perhaps all of my FB friends have been beloved (or at least tolerated) by even the most neanderthal of their colleagues.

[3] Thanks, RU, although I’d already considered sharing more of the details.

[4] Which, as more than one dissatisfied patron told me (as if I were responsible for the name or had any influence in *any* Disneyland policy) : “Shee-it, girl, this ain’t no restaurant, this is a burger and fries joint.”  Or a glorified fast food place, with no table service…aka, in Disney-speak, a “quick service eatery.”

[5] I am happy to report that although I’ll never forget his face I cannot recall that co-worker’s name (nor would I used it in this space, even if I did remember it).

[6] At that time, D-Land’s various food attractions staff were sex-segregated with respect to responsibilities: males in the kitchen, running the fryers and grills and stocking the food wells, and females upfront – the “counter girls”, taking the guest’s orders, receiving payment, and “boxing” and giving to guests the food and drinks.

[7] I can’t believe that title (chef?) was given to the dude who was in charge of the run-the burgers-through-the-grill machine line.

[8] A thousand thanks to seventh grade PE teacher Mrs. Ewing, who suggested a version of that response to flashers and other harassers.

[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

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