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The Dead Man I’m Not Praising

December 1, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Leave a comment

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 Dissing Remembering The Dead

Dateline:  11-21-23.  Longtime friend and college apartment-mate SB posted a link (on social media) to an obituary:  HG, a fiction writer and one of our college’s part-time professors, had died at age 99.

SB’s post sent me on the express train to memory-ville, and I commented with the first thought that came to mind when I read the news:

“Didn’t know he was still alive.”

But I’d edited moiself’s  reaction, which was, in its entirety:

“Didn’t know he was still alive…
I’d assumed he’d died decades ago,
crushed under the massive weight of his own self-regard.”

If I’d read HG’s obituary (I didn’t), I’m sure I’d have run across the compliments from those who liked HG and/or his work.  Still, I doubt that any of the praise and adoration typically cast upon the departed would have equaled or exceeded HG’s own high opinion of himself.

I’d not taken a class from HG, but two of my college apartment mates (SB, and GG) did, during Winter quarter of SB’s and my sophomore year.  During that quarter moiself  heard their stories of HG’s class.  Then, one oh-so-memorable night, I met HG when he came to dinner at our apartment, after which I thanked the gods and my lucky stars – none of which I believed in   [2]   ­– that I was not in his class.

Y’all may be thinking, Wait a minute: a professor came to his student’s apartment, for dinner – for any reason?  How did that happen?

 

 

Yep, he did.  And there’s a wee bit o’ backstory to the how did that happen  part.

 

 

Fall quarter of my sophomore year I took a beginning Creative Writing class.  During the last weeks of class its professor, FT, encouraged me to sign up for another CW course, this one taught by HG:  You have to apply for this class, by submitting a sample of your writing – check with the English department but really, any of your stories that you submitted in my class will get you in.    HG’s class was considered the next step up for those interested in writing fiction, FT told me, and he thought that that was the class for me (It’s obvious you’re no beginner).  I thanked FT for his compliment and encouragement, but told him that although his CW class satisfied a requirement and had fit into my schedule – not that I didn’t enjoy every moment! – I didn’t have room in my schedule for another class that either wasn’t required for my major or didn’t satisfy another degree requirement.

But you will have room for it – this class will be taught in the evening, FT countered.  He asked me about my major.  When I told FT that I was pre-law,   [3]   he affably ribbed me (You’re a writer, not a lawyer).   During the next couple of weeks FT kept asking me if I’d signed up for HG’s class.  I knew his persistence in the matter was in fact a compliment, but I didn’t like revealing my financial situation to those whose business it wasn’t.  The fourth or fifth time FT asked me if I needed a suggestion as to which story to submit for HG’s class application, I told him the truth.  It wasn’t just the class time I had to juggle; I was working to put myself through school.  My days were busy with classes and with my two jobs: my official job at the library, at which I worked both day and evening shifts, and my “unofficial” (read: under the table) job, typing term and research papers for other students   [4]  .  And I needed time for my own homework and papers and a sanity-preserving social life….

My teacher’s persistence hit a nerve.  I loved writing fiction, and he knew it – what better excuse to take the time to do so than to have a class where it was required?  A day or two before the deadline I went to the English department, filled out the very brief application for HG’s class, and gave The Secretary In Charge Of Such Things my sample story.  The secretary told me that HG would read the applicants’ stories by a certain date, and that I should check back on that day for the return of my story and the enrollment decision.

 

My interest in writing was as strong as my dislike of my own typos, as demonstrated in my high school’s journalism class office.

 

I had not asked FT which of my stories he thought I should use.  I decided to submit the one both FT and my CW classmates had voted as “the best,” in a class contest organized by FT.  Years later I would look back upon that contest win (which I found somewhat flattering and mostly embarrassing) as my introduction to that most ubiquitous and vile literary publishing practice: contests, for any and everything, on any and every subject (even on the personal and/or demographic characteristic of the writer), so that you – along with any and every writer, it seems – can, eventually, declare yourself to be “an award winning writer.”   [5]

Once again, I digress.

Two of my apartment mates, SB and GG, also applied to HG’s class.  I assumed that the majority of the applicants would be the Serious Writer® wannabes: pale young men in black turtlenecks who would be submitting their imitative, Cheever/Roth/Updike-styled novel excerpts in which their descriptions of suburban angst, vacant sexual encounters, and hipster misogyny would be mistaken for edgy, clear-eyed commentary on contemporary American mores.  I decided to go for something different.  Figuring HG would like a reprieve from all the derivative, Great American Novel aspirational prose, I submitted something shorter, and humorous (the story which had won my class’s contest).

When I returned to the English department on the appointed day the secretary flipped through the stack of students’ stories on her desk, handed me my mine, and said that I had not been chosen for the class.  I quickly flipped through the pages; my story was unmarked.  “Did HG give a note – any feedback, about why he didn’t like my story?” I asked.  “No,” she said, “it’s not that he didn’t like it.  He didn’t read it.”

“He didn’t even *read* it?” I sputtered.  The secretary’s eyes radiated equal parts pity and frustration as she pointed to several other stories in the pile, stories whose paper clips were stretched much further apart than the one holding my manuscript pages together.  “He didn’t read those stories, either.  All of these” – she gestured at the manuscript in my hand, then at the bulging tomes on her desk – “violated the guidelines.”  She reached into a manilla folder on her desk from which she withdrew the guidelines for HG’s class’s story submissions.  She placed the paper in front of me and tapped her index finger over the second line of the guidelines, as if trying to gain the attention of a third grader with ADHD.  I saw that the guidelines, which I’d not bothered to check, were that stories had to be between 1500 and 4000 words.    [6]   My story, as per the word count listed in the upper right corner of the title page, was 200 words short.

 

 

Part of me was embarrassed that I had been so careless and cavalier; part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t have to do even more time/schedule juggling. Another part of me was soon to become amused beyond expectation, when SB and GG both made it into HG’s class and began relating their experiences therein.     

After the first meeting of HG’s class, when SB shared her rundown of her classmates, it turned out I was right about the guys in black turtlenecks.  By week two of HG’s class, I’d noticed something else about the attire of another of HG’s students – a something else which both amused and confused me, as it was GG’s…outfits.

As GG left that evening for HG’s class I stopped moiself  from asking if she was skipping class and going to a party instead.  Week three, there it was again.  If this had been happening in modern times the present, I would’ve been surreptitiously taking pictures of her with my cell phone and having a petty giggle about it later with my boyfriend.  Instead, by weeks three and four I made sure to invite “witnesses” – select male friends who also knew GG –  over to our apartment, 30 minutes or so before GG left for class.  Their observations confirmed that it wasn’t just my imagination:  no matter what GG had been wearing during the day, she, uh, pimped her ride, as those wacky kids of today say.  Translation: she upscaled her clothing and makeup for HG’s class.

 

 

I tried to come up with a defense for GG to counter my friends’ snickered theories – which were all variations on the theme that either HG was flirting with/hitting on GG and she was responding to his attentions, or that *she* was the one soliciting her professor’s attention.    [7]   Maybe it’s…subconscious?  But soft-fuzzy, form-fitting sweaters, perfectly coiffed hair, makeup and *lipstick* (this was the late 70s; students didn’t dress up for anything, certainly not for class, and although GG had always spent a lot of time on her hair, there was no other class for which she wore *lipstick*)?  Such frills do not unintentionally adorn a person.  Subconscious?

 

Nice try. 

When SB would leave for HG’s class she’d look like her normal self (attractive, casually attired, jeans-and-tee student), while GG looked as if she were going to an audition for a glamour camp counselor.  And the more stories SB and GG told about HG’s class, the more I squirmed to consider that my witness-friends’ observations might be spot on.

The winter quarter rolled on; then one weekend GG announced that professor HG would be coming to our apartment for dinner later that week.  She would make dinner, and she wanted all four of us (SB, moiself, and our fourth apartment mate, LM) to be there.  Ummm…okay…?  GG was obviously eager to host HG; I tried to be supportive, and feigned enthusiasm even as I wondered why, after full day’s work  (or maybe not; I didn’t know HG’s schedule), a grown-ass professor would want to spend time (and have to eat an amateurishly cooked dinner) with four undergraduates….  Ah, yes.  Make that, four twenty-year-old *female* undergraduates.

 

 

Moiself’s  curiosity was stoked; I no longer needed to feign interest in meeting SB’s and GG’s professor.  Assuming my cultural anthropologist mode throughout the before/during/after dinner banter, I spent the evening taking mental notes more than I participated in the conversation.  [8]    Oh, did I mistakenly type, conversation?  It was more of a presentation, just short of a lecture, from HG.  HG was obviously used to and expectant of female adoration.  He evidently and thoroughly enjoyed holding court, attempting to impart his…what was he attempting to impart?  Yeah, okay, he’s been to so many Esalen Institute and other Big Sur retreats he’s lost count, but how indiscreet can he be to think that we are interested in his opinion of Joan Baez’s sexual preferences?  Every story he told practically megaphoned,

Can you believe how cool I am, who I’ve rubbed shoulders
(and other body parts) with; what I have seen and done…
and here I am, in *your* apartment, you lucky lasses !

HG was SB’s and GG’s teacher.  What did he teach that night?  Although I found HG’s demeanor and anecdotes jaw-droppingly pretentious at the time, my recollection of them did serve me, eventually.  Many years later I modeled a character in one of my stories after HG: “Patrick Glasson,” a professor of creative writing.  The story’s protagonist, Colleen Kiernan, a student in Glasson’s Advanced Fiction Seminar, incurs Glasson’s thinly disguised wrath by challenging his critiques, not being deferential to him, and mostly by being different from the rest of the graduate students in his class, the “pretty young things and scowling young men” who either worshipped Glasson or feared him.  In this excerpt, Colleen approaches Glasson at the end of the class to discuss one of her stories.

…. Glasson tossed Colleen’s manuscript on top of his desk. “What is this?”

Colleen Kiernan fingered the hollow between her collarbones. “The title is on the first page.”

The professor snorted. “So it is.”

Pretty young things and scowling young men gathered their papers and book packs. Colleen’s Seminar in Advanced Fiction comrades scuttled off to their three o’clock classes, pretending not to notice that, once again, their guru and his apostate were at his desk, at odds.

“It’s unfinished, obviously. You said initial drafts were acceptable if…”

“I should have chosen a smaller facility.  A class of thirteen hardly fills this cavernous hall, which might explain the echo. I hear myself reiterating our group’s paradigm — our mantra, if you will.  If you want to be ordinary, write ordinary.”  Professor Glasson exhaled lustily. “No academic preparation is needed for mainstream publication. There are a plethora of How to Write A Damn Fine Novel tutorials.  Check the trade magazines.”

“Check the trades.”  Colleen feigned writing a memo to herself.  “Almost forgot that one.” She set her briefcase on Glasson’s desk, and caught the glint in his bleary eyes. He made no attempt to mask his disdain for the tatty brown canvas attaché Colleen favored over the jewel-toned, Gore Tex shoulder bags that were the totes of choice for pretty young things.

“As I was saying, you said drafts were…”

“This is no class for the conventional. What I have been saying, what they are saying…” Glasson tapped his hirsute finger on the stack of books atop his desk, “is as profound as it is simple. Tell the stories that need telling.” Glasson steepled his fingertips in front of his nose. “If you’d been paying attention you’d have picked up at least the concept of narrative nuance. Post-Joycean streams of interior monologue do not a nuance make.”

Narrative nuance? Hard to discern these past weeks, over the thunderous crash of names dropping from lofty, literary heights. The adventures of Patrick Glasson, erstwhile Swingin’ Sixties Author and B-list celebrity. How many names fell from the Big Sur retreat, where our hero encountered a celebrated folk singer from yon times, and discovered that the angelic soprano was a lesbian predator who pursued pretty young things with banshee-like ferocity?…. We mustn’t forget our hero’s dialogue with the bards frequenting a Bay Area pub notorious for its clientele of IRA sympathizers, said pub having been named for an exploit of his, recorded in his first novel, in which he, his third wife, and a gaggle of second generation Beats revitalized San Francisco’s waning sex-for-poetry scene.

Reverent gazes, front and center. Imagine the thrill of being Him, back then.

 

 

Cutting to the chase:  moiself  found HG to be the most pompous, preening, gossipy, arrogant, name-dropping lech I’d ever met.  He was blatantly “after” GG; his practiced air of seduction gave me the impression that he’d pursued other females in his CW classes and would continue to do so.  The charm and panache he oozed seemed habitual; thus, he even (if ever-so-briefly) focused his powers of seduction on LM and moiself   [9]    after he caught LM shooting me a sympathetic eye roll when I failed to sufficiently mute my WTF  snort at the end of one of HG’s I-did-this-really-cool-thing/know-these-really-cool-people stories.  And by trying to win LM and I over, HG revealed his cards:  he was one of *those* kind of men.  Those Kind Of Men generally view and deal with womenfolk in one of three ways.  There are women they want to fuck, women they don’t want to fuck, and women who remind them of their (or other people’s) mothers.  HG wasn’t sexually interested in LM or moiself ; still, we were females, and had presented him with a challenge by indicating that we were in not in awe of his mere presence nor dazzled by his attentions.

What better way to secure the attentions of Pretty Young Things® who have an honest interest in creative writing than by telling them that he, a Published Author ® , thought that they had potential as a writer?  HG essentially broadcasted that modus operandi.  My feminist sensibilities were both annoyed and embarrassed by GG’s evident hero-worship…and a part of my heart ached for her.  GG had asked me to read several of the stories she’d written for HG’s class assignments.  I honestly liked the majority of what she showed me, even as I cringed on her behalf to imagine what HG was saying to her – how, in so many words and/or gestures and body language, he was giving her the impression that it was getting into her prose, and not into her pants, which interested him the most.

 

 

I hadn’t thought of that HG story in some time.  Today we have more information regarding gender exploitation and what in people’s backgrounds and circumstances makes them vulnerable to abuse (or to being the abuser).  I wish I’d had a more nuanced understanding of the situation, other than what went through my mind at the time, when I was concurrently concerned for and judgmental of a friend (“HG is a lecherous douchebag; why doesn’t GG see it?!”).

The MeToo movement brought the HG story to mind, and had me briefly wondering: if HG were still alive, would he be subject to scrutiny and outing from former students?  Or maybe…whether or not HG offered grades/privileges for sexual attention, maybe he was just a run of the mill/par for the course, approaching middle-age, narcissistic skirt-chaser, unaware of and/or unconcerned with the power imbalance dynamics and ethical violations inherent in pursuing his female students?

 

 

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [10]

 

( Taslima Nasrin, Bangladeshi author, physician, civil rights and freethought and  feminist activist, living in exile since 1994,
after receiving repeated death threats from Islamists and Al Qaeda-linked extremists. )

 

*   *   *

May you be able to speak your mind sans death threats;
May you have no heroes to worship;
May you always remember to check the *#!?%#* guidelines (geesh!);
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] Although it would be years until I was “out” as being religion-free, I was always openly “lucky star” free.

[3] Specifically, a Criminal Justice major.

[4] Looking back, I should have charged so much more for typing the papers for those students whose handwriting was practically illegible (surprisingly, they were mostly engineering majors, not pre-med).

[5] I lampooned the phenomena in one of the few non-fiction pieces I’ve published, the essay, “You Can Be (Or Already Are) An Award-Winning Writer!”  One editor to whom I submitted the essay said he liked it very much and wanted to publish it, but was overruled by his fellow journal editors, and because of that he felt he should warn me that “this will be impossible to publish — everyone (as in, literary journals and magazines) has a contest !!!  and they do not have a sense of humor about that…or themselves….”  Despite his warning I kept submitting the piece, and it was published twice, once heavily edited to remove much of the contest-related snark, and the second time in its original form.

[6] Or the range may have been 1200 – 4500… I can’t remember the exact numbers, only that in my rush to be concise and clever I’d forgotten to check the guidelines.

[7] One of them “asked around,” he told me, and had heard that HG had a reputation for…that.

[8] Yes, it can and has happened.

[9] Although not for a second did I think he would have been interested in us.

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

The Country I’m Not Escaping To

November 17, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Country I’m Not Escaping To

Department Of Given The Headline, Is This Warning Necessary?

Los Angeles Times headline 11-7-23

“Four current and former L.A. Sheriff’s Department employees
died by suicide in a 24-hour span.
warning: This story includes discussion of suicide.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of An Odd Thing That Makes Me Feel Lonely

That would be the show Escape To The Country, a BBC daytime TV show (recommended to moiself  by a friend), wherein current city dwellers search for their dream homes in rural UK areas.    [1]   The ETTC would-be buyers give their budget, desired rural locale, and other what-we-want parameters to a real estate agent, who then shows them three properties for sale.

My afternoon exercise sessions often include working out to a DVD, and a few weeks ago I began watching ETTC during my cooldown/stretching sessions.  Although I found ETTC quite interesting at first (it was fun to imagine traveling to those areas), watching those potential home-in-the-country buyers gradually made me feel…lonely, in a way that was initially hard for me to recognize, much less describe.

 

 

Methinks I have identified the sources of what my mind interpreted as loneliness:

(1) The ETTC buyers are mostly older, often retirees, and are living in a city.  They’re moving to “the country,” where they don’t know anyone and will have few nearby neighbors.   [2]    Aren’t they going to be friendless, at least for a while?

(2)  What an adventure that would be, moving to the English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Ireland countryside (even for those people who are already in Great Britain)!  But the show makes me wonder…has my and MH’s time for such adventures passed?

(3) Even if for some reason MH and I wanted/found a way to relocate to another country (whether permanently or temporarily), we’d be leaving behind family and friends.  Given our life circumstances (read:  “at our age”), would we make new friends, or would we be the proverbial fish   [3]  out of water?   What makes a friend is the willingness and availability to *be* one.  After a certain time, most people already have their friends, and do not have a surplus of time and energy to devote to making new ones.   [4]

 

 

Well, not quite so long.  This story is from sixteen years ago, when I was at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s annual conference, in Madison, WI.  On the day the conference ended, while riding the hotel shuttle to the airport moiself  struck up a conversation with an elderly couple who sat across from me on the shuttle’s bench seats. We chatted about the convention highlights, what a great city Madison was, etc.  Noticing their British accents, I offered that I lived in Oregon, and asked where they were from. They said they’d lived in Connecticut for 15 years but, “as you might guess,” were from England. When I said, Do you mind if I ask why you moved?  they exchanged knowing glances, and the wife said, “This conversation.”

They chuckled at my bemusement, and the husband went on to clarify:  Both of them were native Brits who’d lived in England all their lives,   [5]  and they’d never had a conversation like this – a warm exchange with a stranger – in their home country.  It simply didn’t happen.  While they considered themselves to be kind and friendly folk, they found Brits in general (“Yes, we realize *we* are also British”) to be rather…cold; distant; hard to get to know.   Traveling outside of England confirmed their opinions, and they decided to retire elsewhere.  Within six months of moving to Connecticut they felt they had more close friends and neighbors than they did in 60 years of living in England.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Problems With Identity Politics

Beware the harmful consequences of good intentions.

 

 

Yeah; beware that ides-thing, as well.

But my beware  is related to a series of decades-old, poignant conversations with a family member about good intentions gone wild, conversations which sprang to mind when I came across an article by academic and writer Freddie deBoer.  I will address those conversations in a future post; on to the article, which is thought-provoking enough for moiself  to devote way too much a modicum of blog bandwidth to the article’s observations and assertions (and I hope my excerpts prompt you to peruse it in its entirety).    [6]

deBoer, a self-described “Marxist of an old school variety,” writes on politics and culture.  His specific interests include media commentary and “critiques of progressive pathologies from the left”: in the case of this article, identity politics activists who advocate for a “community” which in fact does not exist, and who might presume include him in their community, whether or not he wanted to be.  [7]

In deBoer’s intro to his article (excerpted below; my emphases), he notes that although he’s written about certain elements of the disability rights and the disability studies movements (the former a “catchall term frequently used by activists,” the latter an academic field), these complicated subjects are worthy of book-length analysis.  deBoer intends his article to be a “primer,” and warns that ...the people who are responsible for this stuff have good intentions; indeed, that’s part of what makes it all so frustrating and at times tragic. 

 

 

” ‘Disability rights’ rhetoric implies a community of the disabled that does not exist.

A common problem with identity politics is that those who practice it often imply unanimity within broad groups that doesn’t exist (…I refer to the common implication that all Black Americans supported defunding the police in 2020 [despite] polling demonstrating that no such thing was true.)

There are sometimes commonalities that are shared by a large percentage of a given group, but ‘people with disabilities’ is an unusually broad and varied group even compared to others. This is true because all kinds of people can be afflicted with all kinds of disorders, making it unthinkable that we’d ever see (for example) rigid attachment to a given political party among the disabled. More, the experience of disability is dramatically different depending on a given ailment – you can refer to people with psoriasis and with anxiety and with ALS all as ‘people with disabilities,’ but that’s a meaningless exercise…

…(also) many people with disabilities reject being defined that way, which has inherent political and social consequences. All of this diversity undermines any faith we might have in seeing those with disabilities as a coherent political group. Disability activists are forever purporting to speak for all people with disabilities even as many such people completely reject the activist agenda. There is no organizing committee for people who are sick. This has particular consequences given the next point.

Normalizing disability inevitably centers the most normal and sidelines the most severely afflicted. When you insist that there’s nothing wrong with people with disabilities, you are inherently (if usually unwittingly) pushing people who obviously have something wrong with them out of the conversation.…

… autism self-advocacy partisans are so insistent that having autism is not in any sense negative that they have to sideline those whose autism is clearly negative, as it is with profoundly autistic people who are nonverbal or self-harming or unable to control their bathroom function or similar. Such people are an uncomfortable reminder of what autism specifically and disability generally can do, so they are marginalized by those who prefer to maintain a false positivity. …. Anyone who can’t express themselves in a conventional way, whether thanks to cerebral palsy or autism or schizophrenia or any other condition, finds themselves written out of the debate….”

 

 

deBoer notes a disturbing trend of disability/identity rights activists: proclaiming that there is nothing wrong with having a disability and therefore nothing needs to be fixed – that what the disabled suffer most from is a stigma placed upon them by society.

“Once disability becomes identity, treating disability as something bad becomes forbidden. Contemporary disability mores are deeply influenced by the social model of disability, which holds that disabilities themselves are not inherently or intrinsically bad but rather that society has not set itself up in such a way as to accommodate those with disabilities.
It’s certainly true that we should do far more to make the world more accessible, but I don’t think that attitude is productive. I’m perfectly happy to say that being sighted is better than being blind regardless of how society sets itself up, and for the record there are many people with disabilities who find it insulting and callous to be told that there’s nothing wrong with them. Either way, insisting that you simply are your disability sacrifices your autonomy and right to self-define on the altar of an identity that you didn’t choose….

Stigma is nobody’s biggest problem….

A deeply mentally ill person who lives under a bridge has a lot of very real problems, and stigma is not one of them.

… Almost no one who suffers from a serious disability is going to name stigma as the highest hurdle they face. Access to healthcare, housing, and food, achieving basic financial stability, grappling with hopelessness and depression, finding community and love…. All of these things come first. But because of the incentives of identity politics, stigma reigns as the object of fixation…..

( excerpts from “What’s the Problem with Disability Studies and the ‘Disability Rights’ Movement?  Self-appointed spokespeople don’t own disability issues.”
Freddie Deboer, Nov 6, 2023;  my emphases )

 

“If only there was no stigma attached to my disability, I could get into this building, no problem.”

*   *   *

Department Of I Hate To Even Type “Literally,” But Literally,
Chills Ran Up My Spine When I Read This WaPo article

Because in the article was the essence of a recurring dream I had in childhood – a dream that could become reality, according to the article?  Moiself  wrote about this dream in my post of 12-13-2019:

“A major unpleasant memory from my childhood (early 1970’s So Cal) was dealing with smog alerts.  Activities were curtailed; recess and PE classes cancelled….  Flash forward to the present, and whenever we have had ‘low quality’ air alerts – as when the smoke from recent year’s wildfires drifted south or north to the Portland metro area – my watery eyes and that distinctive ‘catch’ I feel in my chest/bronchial tubes takes me back to those wretched smog alert days.

 

And the yoga teacher says, “Remember to breathe deeply…oh, never mind.”

 

In the late 1960s through the early 1980s California’s enactment of innovative, first-in-the-nation, vehicle emission control strategies and standards actually worked, and although the state’s population continued to rise its air quality improved…for a few decades, at least.  [8]   But while politicians and scientists joined forces to cobble together stop-gap measures, a schoolgirl dreamed of a fantastical invention which would solve the problem forever.

During an interval of several months when I was 11 or 12 years old, I had dreams wherein I invented colossal fan/vacuum type devices which, when placed in strategic locations across the state, sucked in air and ran the air through a series of filters, which strained out the polluting particulate matter and compacted the pollutants into bricks, particle boards, and other (non-toxic) building materials. Not only would our air be clean, this invention also protected trees and forests, as the need for lumber was greatly curtailed.

Yep, it seemed realistic to me at the time. The decades passed, and the Scientist/Engineer Who Saved The World…well, it very obviously didn’t turn out to be moiself….”

 

Yeah, okay…but smoky bands of filthy air encircle the globe, and my imagination in all its glory isn’t fixing that….

 

Here is a teaser for the WaPo article which prompted my digression:

“For decades, scientists have tried to figure out ways to reverse climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere…. Companies, researchers and the U.S. government have spent billions of dollars on the research and development of these approaches and yet they remain too expensive to make a substantial dent in carbon emissions.

Now, a start-up says it has discovered a deceptively simple way to take CO2 from the atmosphere and store it for thousands of years. It involves making bricks out of smushed pieces of plants. And it could be a game changer for the growing industry working to pull carbon from the air.”

( excerpts from “The Lego-like way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere,”
The Washington Post, 11-13-23 )

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider your participation in identity politics;
May you risk engaging amiable strangers in conversation;
May you eschew   [10]   using redundant content warnings;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland

[2] Most of the buyers specify wanting a good deal of acreage, for their fantasy of having horses and/or livestock, ample space for gardens, etc.

[3] Pacific Northwest Chinook salmon, most likely.

[4] Nor the motivation to do so, if you are satisfied (and busy) with your current friendship group.

[5] Or at least until 15 years ago.

[6] Which is a writerly way of saying, “read the whole damn thing.”

[7] According to some disability rights activists, DeBoer is part of the disability rights community due to his bipolar disorder.

[8] So Cal air  pollution is rising again.  Rising numbers of people and vehicles outnumber good intentions and inventions. Waaaah.

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

[10] I once tried to come up with a joke about a Spaniard describing how he eats a French delicacy:  ” I eschew the escargot.”  Yup; still working on it.

The Engine I’m Not Revving

November 10, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Engine I’m Not Revving

Department Of WTF?
Sub-Department Of What Could That Possibly Mean?
Sub-Sub Department Of This Is What I Get For Scrolling Through Roku Channel Offerings Late At Night…

…and discover this title of a…show?  Series?  Satire/hallucination?

“Kelsey Grammer’s Historic Battles for America.”

Moiself  is quite certain that neither my high school nor my university history textbooks contained any information on this Frasier actor’s battle contributions.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m In The Process Of Reading This Book
(And Perhaps You Should Be, Too)

“… when I think about the world, there’s no god in or above it. It’s that simple. Ask yourself: Do I think there’s a supernatural being in charge of the universe? If you answer ‘no,’ you’re an atheist. That’s it⁠—you’re done. No suing, signing, marching, debating, or tweeting required. You don’t have to do anything with that information. But if you do choose to share it, you may find you know far more atheists than you thought.”    [1]

 

 

A few years back I was asked by an acquaintance (with whom I was not personally close but who knew me well enough to assume I could answer their question) to recommend books for someone (else?   [2] ) who was “…genuinely interested in understanding a family member who had rejected religion.”  Moiself  made some crack about how actually asking the religion-free person sincere questions might be less expensive and time-consuming….

Looking back, I’m not sure which book(s) I recommended, I only recall that several came to mind.  If I were asked the same question today, the book I’m currently recently  [3]  would probably be at the top of the list.  This book is aimed more toward encouraging those who are religion-free to be open about that fact; still, I think religious believers could benefit from its perspective as to what their atheist/Freethinker/Bright/humanist friends and neighbors and kin and coworkers deal with.  Also, this book might help religious believers to realize that they know a hella more atheists than they think they do, because most of us, for a variety of reasons, are not out of that “nominally religious” closet.

 

 

“…should you say you’re an atheist even if you believe in ‘god’ as the power of nature or something like that?

Yes. It does no one any favors — not the country, not your neighbors — to say you believe in god metaphorically when there are plenty of people out there who literally believe that god is looking down from heaven deciding which of us to cast into hell.

In fact, when certain believers wield enough political power to turn their god’s presumed preferences into law, I would say it’s dangerous to claim you believe in ‘god’ when what you actually believe in is awe or wonder. (Your ‘god is love’ only lends validity and power to their ‘god hates gays.’)

So ask yourself: Do I think a supernatural being is in charge of the universe?

If you answer ‘no,’ you’re an atheist. That’s it — you’re done….”

 

 

“It shouldn’t be hard to say you don’t believe in god. It shouldn’t be shocking or shameful. I know that I’m moral and respectful and friendly. And the more I say to people that I’m an atheist — me, the mom who taught the kindergarten class about baking with yeast and brought the killer cupcakes to the bake sale — the more people will stop assuming that being an atheist means being … a serial killer.

And then? The more I say I’m an atheist, the more other people will feel comfortable calling themselves atheists. And the stigma will gradually dissolve.

Can you imagine? If we all knew how many of us there are?

It would give everyone permission to be honest with their kids and their friends, to grapple with big questions without having to hold on to beliefs they never embraced.

And it would take away permission, too. Permission to pass laws (or grant exemptions to laws) based on the presumed desires of a fictional creation.  Permission to be cruel to fellow human beings based on Bible verses.  Permission to eschew political action in favor of ‘thoughts and prayers.’

I understand that, to many people, this might sound difficult or risky….

But for everyone else who doesn’t believe in god and hasn’t said so? Consider that your honesty will allow others to be honest, and that your reticence encourages others to keep quiet. Consider that the longer everyone keeps quiet, the longer religion has political and cultural license to hurt people. Consider that the United States — to survive as a secular democracy — needs you now more than ever.

And the next time you find yourself tempted to pretend that you believe in god? Tell the truth instead.”

(excerpts from “American doesn’t need more god.  It needs more atheists”
by Kate Cohen, author of We Of Little Faith: Why I stopped pretending to believe (and maybe you should too),
The Washington Post, opinions essay, 10-3-23, my emphases )

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Oh, wait, except that it’s more of the same….

Department Of “god Is Love” And Other Horseshit Wimpy Analogies

Moiself  didn’t intend for this book to dominate the post, but have you ever read something and thought to yourself, How did this author get inside my head?  Although Cohen grew up in a religion-in-name-and-culture-only family, and I in a practicing Christian (Lutheran) family, I found many similarities to our experiences and mindsets.  I was a little less…hesitant than she seems to have been, when I realized it was time to come out of the religion-free closet, but like her, I was in that closet for many, many years, and for many of the same reasons.  [4]

A difference between Cohen and moiself  is that when asked to label or describe my worldview [5]   I don’t often call moiself  an atheist.  I will happily accept the label if given it, as I view it as an invitation for education.  [6]   Nevertheless, Cohen’s experiences are similar to mine, thus I quote them here (and thus I hope to entice you to buy her book and compare experiences and perspectives yourself).

 

 

“When I mustered the courage to call myself an atheist, I was often gently invited to recant. ‘Now are you an atheist or an agnostic?’ they might say. (Now are you a lesbian or have you just not met the right boy?)

Obviously, they wanted to give me, a person who seems nice, a nicer word. ‘Atheist’ evokes a sneering cynic who thinks believers (and possibly love and puppies too) are beneath him (yes, him). That’s the stereotype….
An agnostic, on the other hand, is just a regular person humble enough to admit what she doesn’t know. She’s not sure there is a god, but she’s not sure there isn’t. Either way is fine! Believers with even a tiny bit of doubt can relate to the agnostic, which is why they sometimes helpfully offer me that label. They want me to be someone they can understand. They want me to be someone they can like. Maybe they even want me to be someone who can like them….

So why don’t I call myself an agnostic? Because I see absolutely no reason to think there might be a god. None. I don’t see some evidence for and some against. I see no evidence for and plenty against.
To be clear: I really don’t think much about whether god exists. I enjoy those British-accented books that sharply articulate every possible argument against god’s existence. I’m grateful they did the work, grateful that all that complex reasoning sits on my shelf like an intellectual battery pack. But I don’t really need them.

My atheism derives naturally from a few simple observations.

1. The Greek myths are obviously stories. The Norse myths are obviously stories. Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard obviously just made that shit up. Extrapolate.

2. Life is confusing and death is scary. Naturally humans want to believe that someone capable is in charge of everything and that we somehow continue to live after we die. But (2a) wanting doesn’t make it so.

3. The holy books that underpin some of the bigger theistic religions are riddled with “facts” now disproved by science and “morality” now disavowed by modern adherents. Extrapolate.

4. The existence of child rape (and other unfathomable cruelties).
As for the argument that god isn’t an actual being capable of or interested in preventing (4) but instead is a sort of cosmic life force / sense of oneness / mystical transcendence, well…then we’re not really talking about theism anymore. If you’re not using the term ‘god” to mean a deity ‘with the capacity to design, to choose, to create,’ a being actively engaged in human affairs, and instead using it ‘as a way of describing Nature itself,’ then you’re falling into the trap that Daniel Dennett calls ‘belief in belief in god.’ He argues in Breaking the Spell   [7]   that we name ‘a throng of deanthropomorphized, intellectualized concepts’ the same thing that believers call their Supreme Being merely so we can say, ‘we all believe in god.

That’s how ingrained it is in us that we’re supposed to believe in ‘god.’ We know the god of the Bible doesn’t make sense, so we give the title to something else. We should stop doing that. As long as a large number of people literally believe that (a) god is looking down from heaven, judging our actions, preferring that women wear dresses or what have you, it’s just misleading to claim that you believe in god metaphorically. Let’s call love ‘love’ and not confuse the issue.

That’s it⁠—why I call myself an atheist….To me, it’s clear there is no god. Or rather, it’s clear that god is made up: of course god exists, as the most powerful, most fascinating, most cited fictional character ever created.”

( excerpts from Kate Cohen’s “We of Little Faith (Why I Stopped Pretending To Believe And Maybe You Should Too), from the chapter dealing with why she doesn’t call herself an agnostic.   my emphases…and some style changes.   [8]  )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Gender, Inclusivity, Exclusivity…Whatever Floats Your Boat

Dateline: last week, searching YouTube TV for viewing options. Here was a summary, which someone got paid to compose, for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” as streamed through the TNT network ( my emphasis):

“Men (Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite)
confront dinosaurs on a Costa Rican island.”

 

“Don’t you confront me, you *man,* you!”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Do You Ever Wonder, What If…?

Dateline: last week, circa 8 am, morning walk, just after having crossed a busy street on my way toward a nearby park. Behind me I hear the distinctive sound of a souped-up car, its driver revving the engine in an attempt to – what, serenade everyone within a mile radius with his pathetic attempt at covering his inadequacies manliness substitute?   [9]  Of all the emotions I expected to feel when I heard that cacophony, moiself  was surprised by the one that enveloped me: gratitude.

I was grateful for something over which I had no control:  what if I’d been born into a different family, time and/or place?  Nature and nurture, they work together, and the jury is deadlocked on when it comes to what is the primary influence shaping Who We Are.  So, Car Revving Dude: besides being a ridiculous waste of money, I consider “souping-up” an auto and engine-revving and other such displays to be ignorant and wasteful.

Now, back to my gratitude, involving both the nature and nurture categories: What if I had been raised in a family and/or neighborhood where that kind of display was considered admirable, and something to strive for ? Even if no one in my family practiced that kind of behavior, what if I was raised, as a female, to consider whatever-makes-a-guy-want-to-do-those-kind-of-things to be attractive – even essential – qualities in a mate?

Sometimes, I just feel lucky. Take it away, Mary Chapin Carpenter.

 

 

*   *   *

 Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [10]

” We won’t know the truth until we tell the truth.”
( Kate Cohen )

 

 

*   *   *

May you never confront dinosaurs without a posse of men;
May you be grateful for not being an engine-revving kind of guy;
May you consider “telling the truth instead” the next time you have an opportunity to hide an essential part of your identity;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] From Kate Cohen’s We of Little Faith: Why I stopped pretending to believe (and maybe you should too)

[2] They never said, “for me,” although I think it might have been.  As in the, “Doctor, I have a question for a friend, who has this rash….”

[3] Which I purchased after reading an excerpt from it in a newspaper’s opinion piece, written by the book’s author.

[4] e.g.,  not wanting to be discounted or experience discrimination; concern over how my children would be viewed and treated….)

[5] or my, ick, “spiritual beliefs,” by someone who doesn’t know any better than to use that term with moiself.

[6] Short version: as in, how to not define me in terms of someone else, who is a theist.  Calling me an a-theist, as in, not-a-theist, only gives you the most basic clue as to what I do *not* believe, as opposed to what I do believe…so I use the terms Bright, Freethinker, Humanist, etc.

[7] Breaking the Spell: religion as a natural phenomenon.  Another good book you should read; I read it in my (former) church’s book group.

[8] I do not capitalize the word god (although Cohen does), as it is not a proper noun.  In other words, even if you believe in (a) god, its name is not, God.

[9] I’m confident of the pronoun even though the car was behind me and I couldn’t see the driver.  A needlessly revving car?  It’s always a he.

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

The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

October 27, 2023

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, music, politics, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

Department Of Here They Come

Halloween (aka All Hallow’s Eve); Samhain; All Saint’s Day; El Dia de los Muertos; Mischief Night, Diwali…

In the USA and in northern hemisphere countries around the world, there are multiple holidays with a relationship to “our” Halloween.  The relationship is as per the time of year and/or the theme, underlying beliefs, customs or origins of the various celebrations.

Many of these holidays originated as dual celebrations, acknowledgments of times of both death and rebirth, as celebrants marked the end of the harvest season and acknowledged the cold, dark winter to come.

And after Halloween, the holiday season really gets going.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Life Is Tough But It’s Even Tougher If You’re Stupid
Chapter 22467 in a (never-ending) series

“The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity….

Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from?

The most organized attack on Christmas came from the Puritans, who banned celebrations of the holiday in the 17th century because it did not accord with their interpretation of the Bible….”

(“How the ‘War on Christmas’ Controversy Was Created,” NY Times, 12-19-16)

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If Something Seems Familiar, That’s Because It’s Time For
My Annual Holiday Traditions Explained ® Post

What do we vegetarians, vegans, non-meat and/or plant-based eaters
do on Thanksgiving?
( Other than, according to your Aunt Erva, RUIN  IT  FOR  EVERYONE  ELSE.   [1]  )

The above question is an existential dilemma worthy of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, who wrote eloquent discourses on the subjective and objective truths one must juggle when choosing between a cinnamon roll and a chocolate swirl.   [2]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’ll Take Those Segues Where I Can Find Them

Four weeks from today will be the day after feasting, for many of us. Then, just when you’re recovering from the last leftover turkey sandwich/quiche/casserole/enchilada-induced salmonella crisis and really, really need to get outside for some fresh air, here comes the Yule season. You dare not even venture to the mall, lest your eardrums be assaulted from all sides by  Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,  Feliz Navidad, ad nauseum.

This observation provides a convenient segue to my annual, sincere, family-friendly,  [3]

Heathens Declare War On Christmas © post.

 

 

As to those Henny Penny/Chicken Little hysterics proclaiming a so-called “war” on Christmas, a rational person can only assume that they are not LGBTQ, or Jewish or a member of another minority religion, or an ethnic minority – in other words, they’ve never experienced actual bigotry (or actual combat). If they had, it’s likely they would not have trivialized discrimination (or war) with their whining.

The usage of  “Happy Holidays” as an “attack on Christianity” is an invention of right-wing radio talk show hosts.  Happy Holidays is nothing more nor less than an encompassing shorthand greeting – an acknowledgement of the incredible number of celebratory days, religious and otherwise, which in the U.S. is considered to start in October with Halloween, moving on to November with Thanksgiving (although our Canadian neighbors and friends celebrate their Thanksgiving in October) and extends into and through January, with the various New Year’s celebrations.

It is worthwhile to note that while many if not most Americans, Christian or not, celebrate Christmas, there are also some Christians who, on their own or as part of their denomination’s practice or decree (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Worldwide Church of God), do *not* celebrate Christmas   [4]   (nor did our much-ballyhooed forebears, the Pilgrims).  Also, the various Orthodox Christians use calendars which differ from most Protestant and Catholic calendars (a biggie for them at this time of the year is the  Nativity of Christ, which occurs on or around January 7).

Happy Holidays — it’s plural, and for good reason.  It denotes the many celebrations that happen during these months.  People in the northern hemisphere countries, from South Americans and Egyptians to the Celts and Norskis, have marked the Winter Solstice for thousands of years, and many still do.  And some Americans, including our friends, neighbors and co-workers, celebrate holidays that although unconnected with the winter solstice occur near it, such as Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

 

In 2023 the Chinese (lunar) New Year began on Jan 22; In 2024 it will begin on February 10 )

 

Most folks are familiar with the “biggies”- Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. But don’t forget the following holidays, many of which we’ve learned about (or celebrated with) via our children’s teachers and fellow students, and our neighbors and co-workers.

* The Birth of the Prophet (Nov. 12) and Day of the Covenant (Nov. 26) are both Baha’i holy days  (our family has had Baha’i teachers, childcare providers, and neighbors).

* St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6).

* Bodhi Day.  Our Buddhist friends and neighbors celebrate Bodhi Day on December 8 (or on the Sunday immediately preceding).

* Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12).

* St. Lucia Day (Dec. 13) Our Swedish neighbors and friends celebrate St. Lucia Day, as did one of Belle’s and K’s schools, when they were in grade school (Belle, as the oldest 3rd grade girl, got to play St. Lucia).

* Bill of Rights Day (Dec 15).

* Pancha Ganapati Festival (one of the most important Hindu festivals, Dec. 21st through the 25th,  celebrated by many of MH’s coworkers).

* The Winter Solstice (varies, Dec.  21 or 22, this year on the 21st ).

* Little Christmas Eve (Dec.  23) Celebrated by my family, LCE was a custom of the small Norwegian village of my paternal grandfather’s ancestors.

* Boxing Day (Dec. 26), celebrated by our Canadian-American and British-American neighbors and friends.

*Ramadan and/or Eid, the Islamic New Year (as Islam uses a lunar calendar the dates of their holidays varies, but these holidays are usually November-December)

* The Chinese New Year.  I always look forward to wishing my sister-in-law, a naturalized American citizen who is Cantonese by birth, a Gung Hay Fat Choy.  (The Chinese Lunar calendar is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BCE.  The New Year is celebrated on second new moon after the winter solstice, and so can occur in January or February).

This is not a complete list. See why it’s easier to say,  “Happy Holidays?”

The USA is one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world.  To insist on using the term “Merry Christmas” as the all-encompassing seasonal greeting could be seen as an attack on the religious beliefs of all of the Americans who celebrate the other holiday and festivals.  At the least, it denotes the users’ ignorance of their fellow citizens’ beliefs and practices.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Did You Know…

…that the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that, “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”   [5]

…that because of its known pagan origins, Christmas was banned by the Puritans, and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts until 1681.   [6]

 

 

 “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

We Heretics/apostates non-Christians Happy Heathens often hear this question at this time of year.  The inquiry is sometimes presented in ways that imply our celebration (or even acknowledgement) of Christmas is hypocritical.  This implication is the epitome of cheek, when you consider the fact that it is the early Christians who stole a festival from our humanist (pagan) forebears, and not the other way around.

Who doesn’t like a party, for any reason? And we who are religion-free don’t mind sharing seasonal celebrations with religious folk – sans the superstition and government/church mumbo-jumbo –  as long as they accept the fact that the ways we all celebrate this “festive season” predate Christianity by hundreds of years.

 

 

Early Roman Catholic missionaries tried to convert northern Europeans to the RC brand of Christianity, and part of the conversion process was to alter existing religious festivals. The indigenous folk, whom the RC church labeled “barbarians,” quickly discovered that when it came to dealing with missionaries, resistance is futile. The pagans intuitively grasped the concept of natural selection and converted to Christianity to avoid the price (persecution, torture, execution) of staying true to their original beliefs.  But they refused to totally relinquish their traditional celebrations, and so the church, eventually and effectively, simply renamed most of them.    [7]

Pagan practices were given a Christian meaning to wipe out “heathen” revelry.  This was made official church policy in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory the First issued the now infamous edict to his missionaries regarding the traditions of the peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than try to banish native customs and beliefs, missionaries were directed to assimilate them. You find a group of people decorating and/or worshiping a tree? Don’t chop it down or burn it; rather, bless it in the name of the Church.  Allow its continued worship, only tell the people that, instead of celebrating the return of the sun-god in the spring, they are now worshiping the rising from the dead of the Son of God.

( Easter is the one/odd exception, where a pagan celebration was adapted by Christians without a name change. Easter is a word found nowhere in the Bible. It comes from the many variants (Eostra, Ester, Eastra, Eastur….) of a Roman deity, goddess of the dawn “Eos” or “Easter,” whose festival was in the Spring.)

The fir boughs and wreaths, the Yule log, plum pudding, gift exchanges, the feasting, the holly and the ivy and the evergreen tree….It is hard to think of a “Christmas” tradition that does not originate from Teutonic (German), Viking, Celtic and Druid paganism.   [8]   A celebration in the depths of winter – at the time when, to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears to stop its southerly descent before gradually ascending north – is a natural instinct. For thousands of years our Northern Hemisphere ancestors greeted the “reason for the season” – the winter solstice – with festivals of light and gift exchanges and parties.  The Winter Solstice was noted and celebrated long before the Roman Jesus groupies pinched the party.

But, isn’t “Jesus is the reason for the season”?

The reason for the season?  Cool story, bro.  Since you asked; actually, axial tilt is the reason for the season.  For *all* seasons.

 

 

And Woden is the reason the middle of the week is named Wednesday.   [9]   My calling Wednesday  “Wednesday” doesn’t mean I celebrate, worship, or “believe in” Woden.  I don’t insist on renaming either Christmas, or Wednesday.

 

“Now, go fetch me the brazen little sheisskopfs who took the Woden out of Woden’s Day!”

 

The Winter Solstice is the day with the shortest amount of sunlight, and the longest night. In the northern hemisphere it falls on what we now mark as December 21 or 22.  However, it took place on December 25th at the time when the Julian calendar was used.  [10]   The early Romans celebrated the Saturnalia on the Solstice, holding days of feasting and gift exchanges in honor of their god Saturn (Other major deities whose birthdays were celebrated on or about the week of December 25   [11]   included Horis, Huitzilopochtli, Isis, Mithras, Marduk, Osiris, Serapis and Sol).  The Celebration of the Saturnalia was too popular with the Roman pagans for the new Christian church to outlaw it, so the new church renamed the day and reassigned meanings to the traditions.    [12]

In other words, why are some folk concerned with “keeping the Christ in Christmas”  [13]  when we should be keeping the Saturn in Saturnalia?

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
The Approaching Holiday Season Edition

What is a jack-o’-lantern’s favorite literature genre?
Pulp fiction.

My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes right now,
but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.

My cousin is terrified by all of the St. Nicholas displays at the shopping mall.
You might say she’s Claustrophobic.

 

“I told you not to encourage her.”

 

*   *   *

Whatever your favorite seasonal celebrations may be, moiself   wishes you all the best.

May you have the occasion to (with good humor) ruin it for everyone else;
May you find it within yourself to ignore the Black Friday mindset;
May you remember to keep the Saturn in Saturnalia;
…and may the fruitcake-free hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] You have an Aunt Erva, somewhere.  We all do.

[2] Damn right I’m proud of that one.

[3] Well, yeah, as compared to the usual shit I write.

[4] And a grade school friend of mine, whose family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, considered being told, “Merry Christmas” to be an attack on *her* beliefs.

[5] “Increase Mather, A Testimony against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New England” (London, 1687).  See also Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday,” New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

[6] Stephen Nissenbaum, “The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday.”

[7] “Paganism in Christianity.”

[8]  “Learn not the way of the heathen…their customs are vain, for one cuts a tree out of the forest…they deck it with silver and gold…” Jeremiah 10:2-5

[9] Wednesday comes from the Old English Wōdnesdæg, the day of the Germanic god Wodan (aka Odin, highest god in Norse mythology and a big cheese god of the Anglo-Saxons until the seventh century.)

[10] The Julian calendar, adopted by Julius Caesar ~ 46 B.C.E., was off by 11 min/year, and when the Gregorian calendar was established by Pope – wait for it – Gregory,  the solstice was established on 12/22.

[11] The Winter Solstice and the Origins of Christmas, Lee Carter.

[12] In 601 A.D., Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his missionaries regarding wooing potential converts: don’t banish peoples’ customs, incorporate them. If the locals venerate a tree, don’t cut it down; rather, consecrate the tree to JC and allow its continued worship.

[13] And nothing in the various conflicting biblical references to the birth of JC has the nativity occurring in wintertime.

The Spell I’m Not Casting

October 20, 2023

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

Department Of Yeeeeeesssssss! Thought Of The Week

Dateline:  Tuesday morning 7:45 AM-ish; morning walk, stomping through wet leaves, on what promises to be a blustery day. Listening to a Clear + Vivid podcast episode (Laurel Braitman: Writing Wrongs).  Braitman is a writer whose interests and topics include grief, mental health and medicine, and the importance of self-expression and storytelling, especially for doctors and others working “on the frontlines of humanity.

At the end of every C+V podcast, host Alan Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all connected with the concept of communication.  When he asked Braitman question #6, What gives you confidence?  She answered that being outside, in nature; “non-human nature” gives her confidence, and moiself  was intrigued by the way she phrased it:

“I never feel better than when I’m walking through a forest, with no mirror.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Surprising Moiself  By Honoring This Dead Celebrity

That would be Suzanne Somers, who died this week, on the day before her #77 birthday.

Among Somers’ many ventures in life, her Wikipedia bio lists actor, author, businesswoman, and “health spokesperson.”  Let moiself  get that last, dubious moniker out of the way.  I don’t know whether or not that title was self-proclaimed, but Health personified certainly didn’t ask Somers to speak for or represent her, in any way.  And Somers’ crazy-ass nonsense controversial stands on the risks and efficacies of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, her conspiracy-laden critique of the ACA/“Obama care” (a “socialist Ponzi scheme,” really?)   [1]  and promotions of alternative cancer treatments raised the red flags among people who have studied those issues for decades – read: scientists, doctors, medical researchers – people who actually know what they are talking about.  (note: Somers died of a recurrence of breast cancer, for which she had refused the recommended chemotherapy).   [2]

However, she had moiself’s  admiration for two things: her ground-breaking (at the time) fight for salary equity, and her sense of humor.  As per the former, Somers is best known for playing Chrissy Snow, the (not-quite-so) Dumb Blonde®  on the sitcom Three’s Company.  TC was one of the highest rated TV shows in the late 70’s early 80’s, due in most part to the interplay of the three lead actors, and in particular, the between Somers’ and John Ritter’s characters.  When it was time for contract re-negotiations in season 5,  Somers demanded an increase in salary to match what co-star Ritter was making: $150,000 per episode (her salary was $30k/episode).  Nothing against Ritter, but he did not have five times the screen time nor five times as many lines to memorize as Somers – who had at least five times the magazine covers and other publicity ventures for the show.  Nevertheless, he was being paid *five times* what she was, for doing the same thing: costarring on a sitcom.

 

Sound familiar, ladies?

 

Those In Charge Of Such Things® (the network execs) set an example of what happens to women who seek salary equity: they offered Somers a $5k salary increase…and eventually fired her.  Somers went on to score other acting gigs and ascend the throne of informercials and entrepreneurship – she hawked everything from jewelry, clothing (the “Three-Way Poncho,”  [3]  skin care products….  Most memorably, she became the spokeswoman for the toning muscle exercise devices with the memorable names of the Thighmaster and the Buttmaster.  Her promotion of the latter was responsible for my admiration of her humorous timing.

 

 

In the early 90’s, when Somers was promoting the Buttmaster, she took the device everywhere with her. She promoted it on talk shows, in interviews, etc., even when she was doing the gig to ostensibly promote some other aspect of her life (e.g., her Las Vegas stage act). This was also around the time when then Pope John Paul II was touring the United States.  I remember reading about her interview with a reporter who, knowing Somers was raised Catholic, asked Somers what she would do if she were invited to meet the Pope – would she bring along the…uh…exercise device?  Somers said that she would.  Okay, the reporter pressed, but what would she do if the Pope noticed the device and asked her what it was?  Her reply:

“I’d say, ‘It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness.’ ”

 

“I swear to God, ‘Buttmaster.’ ”

 

*   *   *

Department Of The War I’m Not Avoiding Writing About

Except that I kinda/sorta am…because it makes me want to abandon all hope; because it makes moiself  want to apply a Buttmaster to the craniums of some very sincere, well-meaning, rubbish -spouting people, when I hear their responses to Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

“…excellent English translations of both the original Hamas Covenant and its successor can easily be found on the internet.

… the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions. Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives….

The covenant opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan…the document proclaims, ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it’….

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.’ ”

( “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology:  A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions.”
The Atlantic, 10-10-23 )

Truth#1: It is possible for reasonable, good-hearted folks to hold multiple opinions and feelings about this war; it is possible to empathize with a repressed minority, and realize that the injustices experienced by the Palestinians are a breeding ground for violent zealots to recruit hearts and minds to promote and carry out acts of terrorism.

Truth #2: The latter does not excuse the former; never never.  NEVER.

Still, the foreboding admonition (variously attributed to leaders, from President JFK to  MLK, Jr.) comes to mind:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible,
make violent change inevitable.”

I have strong opinions as to the wrongness, both morally and strategically, of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and have been frustrated for – crap, how old am I? – for as long as I can remember,   [4]  about the fact that the so-called leadership on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute attains and maintains power by fomenting fear of and hatred for The Other.  Each side also appeals to their respectively held tenets of their so-called Divine Right to occupy that disputed part of the world.  Neither side seems to fully comprehend that the *only* true security for both sides, for all sides, will be peace.

 

 

But, although left-leaning moiself  has done as much as I can to avoid exposure to such things, I still have heard and read about leftist groups and individuals declaring themselves pro-Palestinian in ways that seem to excuse, via “understanding,” the terrorist attacks by Hamas.  Again, I have been trying to avoid most of this butt-frostingly naive rhetoric, and cringe with embarrassment on behalf of those who lack enough self-awareness to know what they are supporting, when I hear them sanitize the barbarity of the Hamas terrorist attacks as, “anti-colonial resistance.”

To those who think they are supporting a repressed/colonized people: do not fool yourself for one moment into thinking that Hamas is pro-Palestinian.  Palestinians suffer greatly under Hamas.

Poor Palestinians; they can’t catch a break.  While “Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continued to face Israel’s oppression, domination, fragmentation and segregation under its brutal occupation and apartheid,” the Palestinian authorities continue to “…heavily restrict freedom of expression, association and assembly,” and hold “scores of people in arbitrary detention and subjected many to torture and other ill-treatment,” have carried out executions and committed war crimes, such as those in 2022 during three days of fighting with Israel, when Hamas used “…unguided rockets in populated civilian areas and killing at least seven Palestinian civilians.”    [5]

 

 

Good people of the Earth:  absolutely, advocate for the right of Palestinians to be able to have a homeland and to determine their own destiny.  And absolutely *open your eyes* and know that the radical régime of Hamas will have none of the latter, for anyone, least of all their own people, whom they oppress under the guise of governing.

What are the values you want to support, for all people, everywhere?

 * Civil rights; women’s rights; LGBTQ rights?

* Freedom of – and *from* –  religion?

* Democratic enfranchisement of all citizens?

* The right of children – boys *and* girls –  to be educated
(in subjects other than memorizing the Quran and Islamic doctrine)?

* The right of all people to live in peace?

Hamas supports None. Of. That.

Hamas supports Islamism, and sharia law.   [6]  But just not any kind of Islamism – it must be *their* flavor (Hamas are Sunni, and they have harassed and assaulted Palestinian Muslims who are Shia).

With Hamas, as with other extremist groups, the world is entirely binary.   [7]      You must be Muslim – and not even being Muslim is enough – you must be the right kind of Muslim,  [8]  you must *their* kind – or you are an infidel, worthy of death.

 

 

 

“If you’re an LGBTQ+ parent, you should worry about Hamas gunning down your kids. Did that get your attention? Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Guess what? Hamas feels the same way about LGBTQ+ people and their families as they do about Israelis. Let me make this crystal clear: If an LGBTQ+ family moved into Gaza, Hamas would kill them. LGBTQ+ Palestinians are afraid to let their families know they are gay for fear that they will be murdered. Many have been killed — or successfully escaped — as reported in PGN and in media around the world.

Hate is hate.

Like many of you watching the carnage in Israel this week, my sorrow and outrage were too much to bear. Seeing the bloodshed of toddlers having their throats slit; pictures of mothers, children, and Holocaust survivors being kidnapped; and whole villages being gunned down was more than any civilized person should witness. But it’s not just Israelis that Hamas hates. They hate you as well. And when I say ‘you,’ I mean ‘LGBTQ+ people.’ Much like how they feel about Israel, they believe we should not exist as well.

Yet, there are members of our community who are so full of self-hate or are so masochistic that they would love the person that would kill them? They praise Hamas and make apologies for their actions this week. Some go as far as to support what Hamas did this week. Think about that: Supporting the kidnapping of a woman who survived the Holocaust. Supporting an organization that wants, and has always wanted, the genocide of an entire race.”

( “Hamas hates you as well,” Philadelphia Gay News, 10-11-23 )

 

 

As I type this, the world awaits Israel’s responses,  short and long term.  Hamas gave no warning before their assaults upon Israeli civilians, because civilian carnage was what Hamas intended.  The Israeli government and military will go after Hamas – they *have to* go after Hamas.  Sadly but inevitably, there will be heavy civilian Palestinian casualties, despite Israel’s warning for civilians to evacuate.  The Hamas operatives will embed/hide among the civilian populace of their own people, because that’s what terrorists do.

 

 

A day or so after the Hamas attack I saw that someone had posted the above, an “inspirational” picture on FB – a picture which has been making its way around social media.  The picture showed three tween-age-ish boys, each looking somewhat awkwardly into the camera (as in, “my parents made me do this”), each dressed in the garb of and/or holding icons of their respective family’s religion:   [9]  Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the three monotheistic faiths which have historical ties to Jerusalem.   Somewhere in the text accompanying the first post moiself  saw was a request for “prayers for peace.”

Yeah, knock yourself out hearing those prayers, Yaweh, Jesus, and Allah.  Because that’s been working so well for seventy-five years.   [10]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If I Were A Witch And Had The World’s Most Powerful Wand
And The Greatest Spell-Casting Ability In History…

I’d wave my wand in the direction of the Middle East while muttering, Absurdum religioso evanesce, and turn all of its hatred-holding residents into a bucket full of gentle, contented baby sloths.

 

 

*   *   * 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

 

( Luke 12: 49-52 for context )

 

*   *   *

May you walk through a forest with no mirrors;
May you never excuse barbarity, even when enacted on behalf of the oppressed;
May you sieze the opportunity to say, “It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] see The New Republic’s  Susanne Sommers is a dangerous medical hack for an entertaining summary of her stands on those issues.

[2] She did, however, allow some “conventional” treatment of her disease, including radiation therapy.

[3] Does that sound vaguely… suggestive…or is it just moiself ?

[4]  “As in, why is this fucking mess still such a fucking mess?!?!?!”  And in my less noble moments, I confess to having thoughts like “Put a dome over the entire area, let those who want/agree to live together in peace get out, and enclose the others and let them hate themselves to death and leave the rest of the world out of their violence and chaos….”

[5] Amnesty International, Palestine (state of).

[6] Islamism in the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia) The Islamic group Swords of Truth threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they didn’t wear strict Islamic dress. “We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation,” their statement said.

[7] And good luck being “gender queer,” or political or cultural queer, in that world – they allow for no such gray areas in sexuality (or just about any aspect of life). They will, however, allow for a red area, which will be around your throat or other parts of your body, after you are executed for “moral turpitude” (the Hamas term for homosexuality).

[8] Sunni, and not Shia, Whabbi, Salafi, Berelvi, Sufi, or Deobandiite….

[9] Notice I don’t say, “*his* faith…even though there is a 90+% chance those boys will take on the rites and superstitions of their parents, especially in that part of the world.  I think it’s a form of child abuse, to declare a child is a certain religion, when, realistically, children have no say in it, no independent choice in the matter.  It’s equally abusive/absurd to say, that an 11-year-old boy is a Republican, when he is a child of two registered Republican parents.

[10] The modern state of Israel was established by a UN resolution in 1948.

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

The Important Life Decision Change I’m Not Regretting

October 13, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Important Life Decision Change I’m Not Regretting

Department Of Do Something Guaranteed To Make You Feel Smarter
(Or Maybe Just A Little Less Oblivious)

It’s much easier than you think.  Just listen the Ologies podcast (Cosmology: the Universe, Part I, with Katie Mack) in which host Alie Ward chats with theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack about way cool things about the universe and how cosmologists study them, including by using The Large Hadron Collider.

You’ve heard of the LHC; you vaguely recall that it’s that huge, circular, underground, atom-smashing thing, somewhere in Switzerland.

 

 

But wait, y’all protest:  “Uh…trying to understand that stuff will definitely *not* make me feel smarter – I remember atoms but haven’t been required remember specifics since high school.”  Not to worry.  Writer, actor, science geek and podcast host Ward has got your back.  In her own entertainingly profane inimitable way, she makes it easier for you, with her Cliff Notes® take on the LHC, which includes a story offering a bit of cosmic perspective (my emphases):

Alie Ward:
“… The Large Hadron Collider is…a circular tunnel…over 500 feet deep in some parts and is 17 miles around. It is the largest machine in the world. This thing consists of over 1,200 magnets, and they’re cooled to a temperature colder than outer space. The magnets accelerate protons to almost the speed of light and then the protons are bashed together….

…Matter is stuff. Molecules are some atoms stuck together. Atoms are made of a nucleus – a little cluster of neutrons and protons. Protons have a positive charge – pro. Electrons have an equal negative charge, and electrons are…zooming around…outside the nucleus. The neutrons and protons…in the nucleus, those are made of smaller particles called quarks. The quarks come in a couple different varieties.

What gives these particles their mass? What are they? Where do they come from? We’ve got all these tiny things that make up matter….
there is a field called the Higgs field….How a particle interact with the Higgs field gives it its mass, kind of like drag in water. Higgs bosons are particles that are an excitation of the Higgs field, kind of like a drop of water splashing from an ocean. The Large Hadron Collider smashed protons together to see if they could prove that the Higgs boson exists, and guess what, bitches? It does.  The Large Hadron Collider, one of the things it does: smashes protons together in to smaller things to figure out why matter has mass. There you go.

Also, the Large Hadron Collider accidentally has its name spelled wrong on its own website as ‘Large Hard-on Collider.’ Once would be mortifying, but what if they did it more than once? Like twice? Or five times? That’s impossible. Is it? Because a search on their site revealed they’d spelled it “Large Hardon Collider” ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE times!… . So whenever you’re like, ‘I don’t understand this stuff. Maybe I’m just not smart enough.’ Just think: someone typed in ‘Large Hardon Collider’ over 150 times. And they built the thing.”

 

(I decided against googling for a picture to illustrate a ‘large hard-on collider.’  Y’all will have to settle for this image of a hard-headed objects collision, which (fingers crossed) won’t get my internet search history forwarded to the FBI.)

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes Say Never To Never Saying Never

“Dyanna Volek was never someone who dreamed of becoming a mother.
From an early age, she knew deep down that she didn’t want children…. ‘I’m always looking forward to the next thing,’ said Volek, who works in local government in San Francisco. ‘Being a parent was never one of them.’ ”
( excerpts from “Why more women are choosing not to have kids,”
CNN 9-25-23 )

* I’m afraid that I’m going to end up like my biological mom.
* I don’t like the idea of giving birth and changing my body.
* I feel like I am too selfish to have a child.
* I don’t want to lose myself as an individual.
* Having kids would mean having to be in that caring position for the rest of my life.
* I think the world is going to shit.
* I don’t want to subconsciously become like my mother.
* Honestly? I don’t like most kids.
(excerpts, 19 Women Got Brutally Honest About Why They Don’t Want Kids; )

 

 

“I can’t stand the way social media has idealised motherhood
at the expense of women and children.”
( wearechildfree.com )

“There should be no guilt in choosing a life path without my own children, yet I still…can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing some vital part of womanhood because I have never felt ‘baby fever.’ … I will not have kids, and I believe the decision is the right one for me, full stop. ”
( excerpts from “I don’t want children, but sometimes I want to want them,”
insider.com )

“____explained that the main factor for her (in not wanting children) was the disproportionate amount of work she would have to do as a mother compared to if she was a father.  She explained that dads get to be the ‘cool parent’, while mothers are categorized by any number of misogynist tropes like being overly smothering or nagging.  And also, just having to do a lot more work.
‘People have always asked me, do you have kids?…they love asking me if I have kids.  And I say, ‘No, I will not be having kids. And would you like to know why?’  And they say, of course.  And I say, ‘I would love, love, love to be a parent. I would love to be a dad. I don’t get that choice.’ ”
( excerpts from Single Woman Explains why she doesn’t want kids…;   )

 

 

Moiself has been seeing a lot of these kind of articles recently.  [1]  Is it just my imagination, or is there an increase in stories written about young women deciding not to have children,   [2]  and articles written by the young women in question, defending/explaining their decisions to be childfree?

“I love children…. But I don’t plan on having any of my own.
It took me a long time to be able to say that out loud. And by ‘out loud’ I mean whispering it with a hint of uncertainty so as not to offend. Because when you’re a married woman of a certain age with no kids, people have questions. Fertility advice. Pity. Judgment. Lots of judgment….

…the pressure to procreate comes from so many directions I’m considering pitching a ‘Walking Dead’ spinoff where the child free are the living and everyone else are zombies trying to turn us. But it’s a comedy so no one dies, except on the inside….
My mom-friends often confide in me the inequities of motherhood — how the childcare duties fall mostly on them and their bodies have shifted to the side and down. They lament the loss of time for personal, career or creative pursuits of their own. So, when I told one friend in an uncertain whisper that I wasn’t planning to have children, I was shocked by her reaction: ‘Telling people you don’t want kids is like telling people you’re vegan. It’s not about your healthy choices. It’s about making other people feel bad about their choices.’ And then she prayed I’d change my mind because having kids is the best.

I promise she’s not a monster. She’s a zombie, and that’s just what zombies do….

Life is about choices. Having them (or not). Owning them. And sometimes regretting them — but I would argue even that’s a choice. Because often there’s really no right or wrong decision, there’s just the one you make and you do your best to be happy.”
(excerpts from Opinion: “I chose to be child free. (The correct response is ‘Congratulations!’)”  LA Times 8-19-23 )

I read these articles about and by young women explaining themselves – and BTW, it’s *always* women doing the explaining.  Men, too, can struggle over the decision to have children, but there are nowhere near the same cultural pressures and expectations for men to become fathers – it is not locked up with society’s definition-as-a-person as it is with women.

 

 

I understand, and agree with, many if not most of the reasons and observations, both personal and societal, that the I-am-not-going-to-procreate women recount in these articles.  And while I am supportive of these decisions, many of them often seem to be…missing something…in their reasoning.  And moiself  can’t help but compare and contrast the stories they tell to my own situation and decisions.

For the first three decades of my life moiself  declared (and honestly believed) that I did not want to/was not going to have children, and probably would not get married.  Then, I went and did both.  I met MH when I was 28; we married when I was 31, and welcomed our son K and then our daughter Belle    [3]   when I was in my mid-late thirties.

As MH and I raised our very-much-planned-and-wanted   [4]   kids, when it was age-appropriate to do so, moiself  shared with them Robyn’s Realities ®  about marriage and family:  There are no Everyone-must-do-this/live-like-this-to-be-fulfilled rules:

* You can be single and be happy;
* You can be single and be miserable;
* You can be married and be happy;
* You can be married and be miserable;
* You can be happy if you and your spouse have children;
* You can be happy if you and your spouse are childfree….   [5]

But it wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized something key about my earlier, I-will-not-be-a-parent mindset.  It was not that I merely changed my mind about a major life issue.   [6]  It was that I had based that decision on my life – from my teens to early thirties, and how I viewed the trajectory of that life – as the single person I was. It was a decision made totally out of context of being in a committed relationship, which is the only way I would have even remotely considered having and raising a child.  It was a decision based on what I (thought I) knew about moiself, and not moiself-and-MH…because there was no moiself-and-MH.   [7]

 

 

There are people, men as well as women, who claim to have known from an early age that being a parent is what they’ve always wanted.  There are women I’ve known who said they’d “always” wanted to have children, and if that opportunity did not arise within a relationship, they vowed to pursue single parenthood.  Then there are the rest – the majority, in my opinion and experience.  When it comes to having or not having kids, these not-yet-married-or-partnered girls and women express slight to strong preferences either way, but acknowledge their decision might ultimately depend on their relationship with their potential parental partner.

Let’s say you’re one of those women:  you are single, and when you consider parenthood or are asked by friends/family/coworkers/your doctor/your barista about your procreative plans,    [8]  you say that you would do so only within the context of marriage/a committed partnership.  As in, even if you had a strong preference for having and raising a child someday you know you will never pursue that as a single parent.  So, if you are single and you consider the option of having children and conclude, “I’m not going to have kids,” you are making the decision sans complete data.  That is, you are imagining something you would never do, so your imaginations are going to be negative – what you think about what being a mother would be like could only be about what it would be like for you, alone, because you have no parent-partner.  There is no Other Parent (yet), to imagine how you would be a family, together.

Am I making sense here?

 

 

When I met the man-who-would-become-MH, as our relationship deepened we began to talk about Such Things ®.  MH married me with the understanding that, although he would like us to have children, for moiself  it was not a sure thing.  I married MH with the understanding that, while I’d always thought being a mother was not for me, MH and I would consider this parenthood adventure thing.

Our decision to have children was an outgrowth of *our* relationship.  It was vital to moiself  to see how we worked together, as life partners.   [9]  In my years of working in women’s reproductive health care, I saw too many  [10]  married women who were essentially single moms, with regard to their husbands’ participation in the physical, intellectual, time and emotional investment in child-rearing.  After five years of marriage to MH, I was assured enough to take the reproductive plunge.  More significantly, I also anticipated the rewards, the adventure, of being “part of it all” with him, part of the circle of life (take it away, Elton!), which is why all of us are here in the first place.

 

 

Despite having no time travel/alternate reality technology with which I can confirm this belief I am about to state, I believe that I would have had equally significant – just different –  highlights and low points in my life if I’d remained childfree (whether with MH, or another partner, or as a single person).  That being said, raising my offspring – watching them become the kind, intelligent, curiosity-filled, artistic, witty, science-oriented, free-thinking, compassionate, nature-appreciating, cat-loving, do-the-right-thing people that they are – has been a, if not the, highlight of my life.  I look forward to knowing them for as long as I can:  it has been has been and is a challenging, rewarding, exhausting, energizing, surprising, sometimes agonizing, and more often kick-ass-fun, pee-your-pants-with-laughter  experience, and remains an ongoing source of joy. 

When I read these I-am-never-going-to-have-kids articles, having been there moiself  I can identify with many if not most of the sentiments expressed therein.  I also understand that few things can be more irritating that the smug, condescending responses which are all too commonly flung at the declared child-free woman:  “Oh, you’ll change your mind, after all I/she/they did….”  I moiself have had those experiences and heard those comments (and I moiself  have changed my mind, moiself ).  Even so, I’d advise any young woman who would ask to keep an open mind: never say never….and congratulations, on whatever you decide.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

“The main goal of education should always be to learn how to learn, to become an independent thinker….
…evangelism of children seeks to cut off the process of independent thought before it begins. It’s this aspect of religious indoctrination that is most unacceptable—the idea that doubt is bad, that unquestioning acceptance is good, that there is only one possible right answer, and that someone else has already figured out what that answer is…
(1) Always question authority;
(2) when in doubt, see rule 1.”

( professor, writer, philanthropist Dale McGowan; excerpts from
Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion )

 

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider the contexts of your major life decisions;
May you enjoy your own particular dance steps in The Circle of Life;
May you be daring enough to do an internet search for “large hard-on collider”
(and discreetly let moiself  know the results);
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Some of these articles are written about demographic studies that show that “nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s.” (Pew Research center)

[2] As opposed to having no children due to infertility issues.

[3] They are three years apart, lest you think this was some kind of Irish twins situation.

[4] More than one longtime acquaintance of myself, knowing I’d never expressed any interest in parenthood, when hearing the news of my pregnancies had a kneejerk reaction of spewing something along the lines of, “Uh, was this intentional –oops, sorry, of course it was, or must have been…I mean, she worked for Planned Parenthood…okay, I’ll just shut up now….”

[5] And I always refer to the state thusly, instead of the vile (IMO), lacking-something label, “childless.”

[6] as I have done throughout my life and doubtless will do again.

[7] I had other boyfriends/potential life partners pre-MH, most of whom made it known that they wanted, eventually, to have kids.

[8] And if you are a grown-ass woman who has not yet had a child, someone will always ask you.

[9] And If I had married someone else, it is entirely possibly I’d also be happily married at this point and be childfree.

[10] Any is too many.

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

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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