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The Nails I’m Not Perfecting

March 6, 2026

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, community, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of Can It Already Be Day Six Of AEDD?

AEDD.  No, it’s not some type of learning disability…you could think of it as a culinary learning (or experimentation) opportunity.

It stands for Asparagus Every Damn Day ® .  To honor both the impending arrival of Spring and my love for asparagus, I challenge moiself  to cook and/or eat asparagus, in some form, every damn day of March.  Last year I had some favorites creations; mostly, I defaulted to what’s-easy-but-I-still-love-it (e.g., oven roasted lemon garlic asparagus spears, creamy   [1] asparagus and green pea soup….).

Gird your proverbial loins and let the wild rumpus begin.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of My Favorite Blast From The Past

Were I asked by Someone to come up with an example of carefree bliss, I would show that Someone this picture.

 

Moiself, son K and daughter Belle (and Mt. Neahkahnie in the background), on Manzanita beach, circa…two decades ago. Picture taken by MH, existential protection provided by Mt. Neahkahnie.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Asshat Tag Line Of The Year [2]

Dateline: last Friday; driving to the Oregon coast, listening to one of my science podcasts.  At the end of the podcast there is an advertisement from one of the podcast’s sponsors.  The ad is for…some kind of service having to do with manicures.  Repeated at least three times during the ad is the service’s enticement/slogan, something about how  “…we all deserve to have perfect nails.”

 

 

And I find moiself  thinking, do these people understand the target audience of this podcast?  And how can the proverbial  we all – or just moiself –  deserve anything having to do with our fingernails?  And is it deserve as in, how we all deserve basic human rights and to be treated with dignity (and not harassed about our less-than-perfect nails)?  And what, exactly, constitutes perfect nails?  And is there a committee, a governing board, which establishes and oversees such a standard of perfection?

And the sheer inanity of this ad is provoking way too many, And and and and questions – which made me want to (should moiself  be offered a free sample of the product) take whatever was being advertised and heave it off the rim of the Grand Canyon.    [3]

Important Note To The Advertising Industry, whether large scale Commercial/Industrial And/Or Small Business Owners: Struck as I was by the astounding vacuousness of the ad’s tag line, I can’t tell you what service it was for.  Which is the ultimate failure of an advertisement, the very purpose of which is to get you to want (or at least remember the name of) the product.

 

I’m assuming these were not the top choice of the Fingernail Perfection Police.

*   *   *

Speaking Of Mormons…

…which I was, two weeks back ( 2-20-26, The Documentary I’m Not Inspired By, re the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping documentary)….

Department Of And Now Some Words About Witnessing

 

 

Relax; it’s a story about Porch Proselytizing®.  There will not be pamphlets left on your front doorstep.  [4]

The prompt for this story is…moiself  saw an article online having to do with someone complaining about having to shoo Porch Preachers away from their front door.

 

 

The above is the sign I made and had laminated 10+ years ago, a larger version of which is on our front porch below our doorbell.  The sign, in my estimate, keeps ~98% of solicitors away.  Before I did the rewording I had another sign up, a cartoon illustrating how we do not want solicitors, but – surprise ! –there was always a Someone who thought it didn’t apply to him.  When moiself  answered the doorbell, realized who the stranger was on my porch/what he was up to, and pointed toward our no soliciting sign, that Someone would say, “Oh, I’m not *selling* anything.  I have good news that’s free…”

 

 

Even before the signage, religious solicitors – Mormon “Elders”   [5]  in particular – left skid marks getting away from my porch, after I’d engaged them and they realized What Kind Of Uppity Woman They Were Dealing With ®. 

 

 

What used to surprise moiself, about the solicitors I personally encountered as well as those I’d known over the years who’d engaged in such activities, was their seeming befuddlement re overwhelmingly receiving less-than-hospitable reactions from those whom they sought to evangelize.  I had to wonder:  from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons to Evangelicals, in their witnessing training, was there not even a smidgen of attention paid to the basic human psychology behind someone not in *your* group being presented with *your* group’s message, with no request from them for your thoughts and/or opinions?

Was there no mention of the reality that it is highly likely that what you are indoctrinated trained to think of as informative/friendly/useful information, will be seen by others as presumptuous?  And that’s because it *is* presumptuous.  A friendly demeanor and/or beatific smile on your face does not dilute the ultimate cluelessness and arrogance of your mission:  you are approaching a stranger, unsolicited by her, knowing nothing about her save for the (likely   [6] ) fact that she does not share your spiritual worldview, which therefore in your worldview means her worldview is deficient…and you think you can (and even should) enlighten her!

 

I bet she can’t wait to hear the good news from white boys wearing even whiter shirts!

 

I remember seeing and hearing my mother deal with the Mormon “Elders”  ( nine out of ten of the proselytizers we got were Mormon ) who would, every couple of months or so, ring the doorbell of our Santa Ana home.  First off, no one who knew our family came to our front door (when I was a young child I didn’t even know if our front door “worked,” or if it was just for show).  We all entered and left the house, along with our friends and neighbors, via our side door or backyard door.  Thus, when there was a ring/knock at the front door we knew it was from a stranger; i.e., someone who didn’t know us.  This Someone, experience taught us, most likely wanted to sell us something, and would ask to speak to “the adult of the house,” so I and my siblings would call for our mother to answer the front door.  But I liked to lurk in the background, to…watch.

 

 

My mother would never confront the Porch Preachers, despite my advice that she should tell them the truth ( that you think they’re whack-doodles ) and not waste anymore of your or their time.  But Mom came of age in the 1950s, meaning she was raised to be a Nice Woman®.  She would listen to their opening spiel, then give her standard, gentle-but-firm, “No thank you; we have our own religion,” response, and wish them a nice day while she gently shut the door.

There was one exception (that I know of) to my mother’s unperturbable niceness with solicitors.  This happened during a weekday, the summer before I entered eighth grade.  A pair of Elders knocked on our front door.  I heard the customary/brief exchange between my mother and the elders, then noticed it was going on longer than usual at the front porch.  I was surprised to hear the rising pitch of a young male voice, followed by my mother sputtering, “Blasphemy!” before slamming the door. 

After commending her display of backbone, I asked what they had said to her.  Instead of simply accepting her brushoff, that pair of snot-nosed albinos   [7]   didn’t do what they should have done at that point – thank her for her time, apologize for disturbing her, and get the fuck off her property.     [8]   Instead, one of them challenged her.   Yes, you may have your own religion, the cadaverously pale, just-past-post-adolescent pompous primnose   [9]   preached to a woman twice his age, but only *our* faith has the “true revealed truth“ (I can’t remember the verbatim exchange, but I remember that phrase, and how I’d guffawed at the redundancy). 

 

“Yes, God is beyond our understanding…but let me tell you about him….”

*   *   *

Department Of And Now For Something (Not So) Completely Different

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week        [10]

( excerpt a scene from the movie  The Big Kahuna.  Three industrial lubricant salesmen, Larry, Phil, and the evangelical Christian Bob, are at a convention in Wichita.  In this incisive scene, Phil is speaking to Bob,  emphases mine.)

“You preaching Jesus is no different than Larry, or anybody else, preaching lubricants.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha, or civil rights, or how to make money in real estate with no money down.  That doesn’t make you a human being.  It makes you a marketing rep.
If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are — just to find out — for no other reason.  Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation, to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore — it’s a pitch — and you’re not a human being.  You’re a marketing rep.”

 

Or perhaps you prefer the wisdom of *this*Big Kahuna (on the far right) from the world of Gidget surfer-movies.

*   *   *

May we all have our own favorite example of bliss;
May you never give a thought to the quality of anyone’s fingernails;
May you enjoy all that damn asparagus;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yet, without cream.  Yep, it’s those dastardly plant-based cooking tricks….

[2] Or more…the century is young.

[3] Please do not take this as any form of encouragement to litter in our beautiful national parks.

[4] At least, not metaphorically, from moiself.  Who knows what happens in *your* neighborhood?

[5] I just love that title, once reserved for revered people of great age and wisdom in the community, now doled out by the LDS to pimply-faced boys who get the respected title simply by being a male age 18 and up, while a kick ass, grown-ass woman like moiself  who is twice their age could never be an Elder in their world.

[6] It’s more than a likely fact, if you are a Mormon missionary.  Mormon missionaries are given a list in the neighborhoods they canvas; they don’t waste time showing up at the houses of other Mormons.  They know whether or you are not Mormon, because they are given that info by the local Mormon church.  Unlike other brands of Christianity, if you are Mormon you do not go to whatever LDS church you like, you go to a certain church – “chapel” –  that has a specific geographical area assigned as “their area.” If you live in that geographical area, you are supposed to go to services at that chapel, and your address is noted.

[7] You’ve never seen how white the white boys can be until Mormon missionaries come to your doorstep.  I used to think they were selectively bred for their lack of melanin.

[8] I probably don’t need to explain that that was *my* 12-year-old-smartass’s interpretation of their responsibilities as uninvited solicitors, and not my mother’s thoughts.   

[9] Yeah, I made that up.  But, you know, right?

[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 Moral Consideration I’m Not Granting

February 27, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, music, nature, politics, radio & podcasts, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Moral Consideration I’m Not Granting

Department Of Now That The Winter Olympics Are Over I Can Get Back To
Considering Issues Of Profound Ethical And Existential Importance®

Host David Marchese:
“What do you think we should *do* with the increasing awareness that more animals might be conscious than we previously thought?  ….we *know* human beings are conscious and we exploit the hell out of other humans all the time.”

Guest Michael Pollan:
“…there’s this whole conversation…that if A.I. is conscious, then we’re going to have to give it moral consideration.  Well, really:  have we given moral consideration to one another?  Have we given moral consideration to the chickens and the cattle that we eat?  The answer is no.  It doesn’t automatically follow.  So, we’re going to have to sort out the ethics.”

 


Michael Pollan:
“Maybe it’s around the ability to suffer.  Maybe that’s where you draw the line…but it’s not as easy as:  Ital you’re conscious, therefore you have all these rights…. Who we grant personhood to is a very subjective human decision.  We give it to corporations, oddly enough, which are not conscious, but there are all sorts of creatures we don’t give it to.  I don’t think we’re entirely rational or consistent in our granting of moral consideration.”
( excerpt from journalist and professor Michael Pollan’s interview with David Marchese,
“Michael Pollan says humanity is about to undergo a revolutionary change,” 2-7-26, NY Times podcast The Interview )

So yeah, there’s that.  Or….

 

 

 I could search the incredible volume of available videos online and perhaps find an entire channel devoted to showing a continuous loop of All Races Won By Norwegian XC Skiing Æsir-god  Johannes Høsflot Klæbo® . 

 

You know what you need to do.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Five Words You Don’t Hear Me
 (Or Anyone) Saying Very Often…Or At All

  “This Norwegian salad dressing rocks!”

Holy Hel   [2] and Herring Heritage – it seems moiself  is producing a (unintended) Norski theme blog.   [3]

Dateline:  last week.  I finally got around to making this salad dressing, from the innovative mind of Norwegian chef Andreas Viestad.  I’d been intending to do so for some time; now, I want this dressing on every lettuce-based salad I eat, for the rest of my life.

Viestad, who also hosts the PBS show  New Scandinavian Cooking,  pissed off impressed the European gastronomic world by when his cookbook on Norwegian food was selected the “Best Foreign Cookbook in the World” and also was awarded Special Prize Of The Jury at the 2008-2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.  

 

 

Norwegian Salad Dressing
(moiself’s  adaptation of Andreas Viestad’s recipe; serves 2-3)

Viestad’s recipe uses juice from the lettuce offcuts to make a dressing with an intense lettuce flavor. Use your best lettuce for the salad, and the dressing (which will be an intriguing dark green color).

  • 2 to 3 small heads of your favorite/most flavorful lettuce
    – one small head of radicchio or other bitter salad green  [4]
    – 1 t Dijon mustard
    – neutral oil (I use avocado)
    – splash of lemon juice or any vinegar (optional)
    – ground black pepper; and a pinch of fresh or dried dill
    – sea salt to serve

(1) Rinse and tear the greens into bite-sized pieces; dry them in a salad spinner. Set aside the “cutoffs” (inner stems, core, and outer leaves) of the greens.
(2) Juice cutoffs in a juicer; strain juice ( you want  ~ ¼ c ).  [5]
(3)  Add juice to a jar along an equal amount of oil as juice (or less, as moiself  prefers) the Dijon, the spices, and lemon juice/vinegar; shake well to combine.  Mix dressing into the salad leaves, serve w/sea salt sprinkled atop greens.

 

 

Many people who eat salad don’t tend to care about (or even notice) the flavor of the lettuce – it’s all about the dressing.   [6]  Viestad came up with a dressing that uses the bits and pieces of the lettuce that we tend to throw away but where the lettuce flavor is concentrated – almost more lettuce-flavored than the lettuce itself – which is why the greens you use should be your favorites.  Y’all foodies may be thinking, Why would you *trust* any salad recipe from a Norwegian?  Growing lettuce in the high north might sound like a bad idea, but as one Norski “salad farmer” explained to Andreas,   [7]  the far northern farms of Norway have good soil, good water, good light, and the cold night temperatures help the salad greens to grow  “strong, crispy, and tasty.”

The only reason our household now has a juicer is because moiself  wanted to properly make this dressing  [1]  .  I *love love love* this dressing; please try it out, and I must emphasize again that you should do so using the best, flavorful lettuce you can find.  On that subject, I hope I don’t have to remind anyone that storebought   [8]  iceberg “lettuce” is anything other than nasty and flavorless.  My favorite description of iceberg lettuce came from an anonymous post on a food-related bulletin board, from a former restaurant worker:   “…with the experience I got being an employee I can tell you that iceberg lettuce tastes as poor as my life’s decisions….at the end of the day it’s just water with a cell structure.”

 

 

In moiself’s  opinion, it was the preponderance of iceberg lettuce in the Titanic’s food storage holds that actually sank the ship (there was a miscommunication when the first mate radioed for help…and the rest is history).

*   *   *

Department Of Every Senior Person Should Be Taking This Class-
Dang, That Means Me As Well…

Moiself  is having a hard time identifying with that label, as, according to the various demographics (depending on which ones you consult), you enter senior territory at age 55, or not until 60, or 65, or 70, or 75….  I recently took a Zumba class labeled for that (“senior”) demographic.  And now I’m thinking that every person, regardless of age, should also be doing so, if only to provide reason/excuse to get up and shake it instead of sitting on your ass all day  commune with your fellow human beings.

I was trying to think of some activity something to stretch or even test my foot recovery.   [9]   At my most recent postop check (two weeks ago) I asked my doctor if a Zumba class might be good; I’d been searching for something other than what I do at home (neighborhood walking; elliptical and treadmill workouts; yoga; weights and core routines) to give my foot some new challenges.  He asked if I’ve done any Zumba before my surgery.  No; but I used to do a lot of Jane Fonda workout tapes back in 1990s.

 

I did the tapes, but not the spandex.

I told the doc that the classes were held at the local community/senior center, so it’s unlikely they’d include ski jump landing preps or ice-skating quadruple jumps or extreme…whatever.  Thus, I told him, unless he said no, I was planning on checking out the Zumba class.  After briefly examining my foot he gave me his thumbs up–  “Feel free to resume normal activities but don’t push till it hurts/do anything stupid.”

So:  moiself  had my first class on Monday.    [10]   What can I say?  I found it to be so delightful and stimulating that it’s probably banned in countries that frown on people of any age (read: females) moving in ways that distinguish them from infrastructure.

 

“Now, move to the music…can you even hear the music?”


And by moiself  thinking that everyone should take the classes, I don’t mean only the specific brand of class called, Zumba – I’m referring to any exercise class incorporating movement/choreography/what might be called dancing.

Most of us have heard and/or read about how dancing is “good for us;” and most of us don’t have the time or inclination to take formal dance classes, often because we think that you must have a dance partner to do so.  And the latter is not the case in a dance fitness class.

Research on multiple levels of study (involving brain health, psychological and social well-being ) suggests that dance-based workouts help protect against the cognitive decline that can happen as people age.  From what I’ve read, learning dance/choreography workouts (I’m going to invent the acronym DCW   [11]  ) reduces stress by boosting your mood through the release of endorphins, providing an outlet for emotional expression, and, when it’s done in a class with other participants,  [12] creates and strengthens social connections and a sense of belonging.  DCW require focus as you listen to the beat, follow steps, and feel the rhythm – DCW require you to be mindful, as in, putting your mind in the present moment, or more colloquially, paying attention to what you are doing. 

So, DCW aren’t just good for your mood – they’re also also great for your brain and your physical coordination. DW enhance cognitive functions, such as memory and spatial awareness and concentration…and yeah, all that’s fantastic, but it’s also just plain fun.

 

This move is not done in Zumba; still, I challenge you to be in a bad mood when you’re imitating a dog about to pee on a fire hydrant.


Oh yes, the class itself:  the instructor (who was a sub for the usual class teacher) was excellent – both chill and enthusiastic.  Also, it turns out she has a really great name (even though she spells it wrong   [13]  ).   After the first two dance sections, in the five or so seconds of pause before the instructor queued up the next music, moiself  inadvertently blurted out,  “Oh, this is fun!” Apparently, in-class out-bursts are not the norm, as the teacher immediately assured the rest of the class, “She’s new.”   [14]

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [15]

 

( Emma Goldman was Russian-born, radical anarchist activist and lecturer who opposed capitalism and fascism and promoted equality for women, workers’ rights, and free education during the Progressive Era. )

*   *   *

May your lettuce (or your life) be more than just water with a cell structure;
May you find make room for both Issues Of Profound Ethical And Existential Importance® *and* Norwegian sports videos;
May your revolution (and exercise) always encourage dancing;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I tried it with a high-speed blender – nope.

[2] In the Norse pantheon, Hel is the god (female – let’s do away with this “ess” notation, as if the male gender is the default and the female is the decorative afterthought) of death and the netherworld.  Just in case you’re thinking of getting on her good side, Hel’s favorite offerings are tea, chocolate, dried meats, preserved flowers, mead, and raw honey.

[3] Just for a couple of issues.

[4] Soak radicchio or other bitter greens in ice water (helps tame the bitterness) for at least 15m  while you prepare the rest of the recipe, or scroll online for cat videos .

[5] You could also use a heavy duty/high speed blender, like I did the first few times, but this takes some time and it doesn’t work as well, IMO.

[6] Except for MH, who, much to many people’s bewilderment, has always preferred his green salads sans dressing ( he thinks that dressings are or can be a cover for less-than-tasty-greens/other salad ingredients.

[7] In this episode of New Scandinavian Cooking (for which you need a PBS account, I think)

[8] Some home veggie gardeners say that there are varietals that are more palatable.  I think they lie, or at least, exaggerate.

[9] I had surgery on my left foot in Mid-November.

[10] The second today.

[11] For Cance Choreography Workouts…but perhaps for a catchier acronym, Damn Cute Wiggling?

[12] As opposed to doing it alone in your home, to a dvd or online class.

[13] Robin.

[14] Her explanation was probably not necessary, as, from what I could see, all I got was enthusiastic smiles, and no Debbie-Downer Stop Having Fun looks from the other participants.

[15] “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 Documentary I’m Not Inspired By

February 20, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of The Lunar New Year

Happy Year of the Fire Horse, to my SIL and to all who celebrate the Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year).   [1]

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things You’re Not Supposed To Say Or Even Think About When Watching A Supposedly Inspiring Documentary;
Specifically, Netflix’s Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart
Sub-Department Of, Why Isn’t She Pissed Off?

And by “pissed off” moiself  means filled with white-hot rage, the throwing-chairs-out-of-the-windows-of-a-high-rise-building  kind of fury.

The Elizabeth Smart documentary came recommended for me on my Netflix feed last week, and I started watching it one morning as I did my elliptical workout.  It took me several days to get through it; I could only take 15 m or so at a time.  As the days went by, moiself  got more and more angry.  Angry as in, Why Did I Watch This Shit®?  Not that the subject of the documentary was shit; I refer to the integral bullshit contained within the story – the bullshit of religion and religious theology lurking behind the tragedy, the bullshit that is and was, IMO, responsible for it.

Look up the story if you have been living under a rock are one of the few American adults who does not know it.  The basics: Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old, one of six children in a prosperous and respected Mormon family, when she was kidnapped from her family’s Salt Lake City home.  Her abductors, a self-described religious prophet and his wife,  [2]  held Smart captive for nine months.  Smart was sexually assaulted by “the prophet,” and subjected to emotional assaults and physical deprivations by her abductors.  She endured nine months of this until she was rescued by police (after receiving a citizen’s tip) when she and her captors were walking down a street in Sandy, Utah.

At one point in the documentary, after Smart was rescued and returned to her family, there is footage of Smart being referred to as  “… the most prayed-for person in America.”  And that just wrenched my stomach.  I had to turn the documentary off at that point, and returned to it another day. 

 

 

 “… the most prayed for person in America.”  Fat lotta good those hyper-abundant prayers did.  I’m sure Smart herself was the most prayer-ful person in American during her captivity, praying at least fifty bajillion times a day to be delivered from her anguish, each and every time “the prophet” was assaulting her.

People who engage in intercessory prayer seem to do so with the assumptions that (a) their god is listening to them, and (b) their god is capable of acting in our world.   And yet it took their god nine months to get off his holy ass, while a 14-year-old girl was daily – daily – raped by an adult man.  Prayers didn’t stop that.    [3]

BTW: Questions were raised, both in the documentary and in news articles at the time of Smart’s release, about the adult woman (the wife of the “prophet”) complicit in Smart’s kidnapping and abuse.  And I’m thinking, Really? You find this surprising?  The woman was the product of abuse herself – she was a captive within a paranoid, patriarchal religious mindset, where the man is in charge and his word and will ultimately prevails…. Yeah, there’s always the question of one’s own internal sense of right or wrong.  But what happened to that woman, and to Elizabeth Smart, was not a *perversion * of conservative, patriarchal religion, but a sadly logical (if appalling) part of the spectrum.

 

 

Of all the frustratingly heartbreaking situations detailed in the documentary, the “near” rescue got to me the most.  This happened when Smart’s abductors had taken her into a small town   [4]  with them when they needed to purchase supplies.  Smart and the prophet’s wife were always shrouded in Burqa-like garments the few times they were in public, and on this outing, the three of them were stopped and questioned on the street – by a police officer looking for Smart (! ).  The “prophet” abductor answered the officer’s questions about why he refused to let Smart show her face by telling the officer that the girl was his daughter, and that their religion decreed that his daughter must not show her face to any man save for her father and her future husband.

!! The officer accepted that answer, and left without questioning Smart !!

 

 

Smart’s captor’s excuse answer was accepted because he phrased it in terms of “our religion says…”  And in Utah, it’s likely that religious excuses are allowed even more privilege (read:  religion is allowed to excuse a multitude of “sins” and abuses)  than in society as a whole, given the state’s history as a Mormon stronghold and the Mormon religion’s history of polygamy and patriarchy.

Although Smart was eventually freed from almost a year of horrific fear and abuse, I would argue that the cognitive abuse still lingers.  I don’t think Smart has left either her religion in specific or religion in general; thus, IMO, she continues to participate in the system that ultimately spawned and tolerated her abuse in the first place.

I was reminded of a quote by Butterfly McQueen, the actor and civil rights and Freethought activist.  I wish Smart a similar epiphany.   

 

 

Back to the praying for Elizabeth Smart thing.  I recall reading news stories, after Smart was found, reporting that thanks were being “….given to God” by people around the country.  This god was being credited for Smart finally being found.  Now, if you attribute agency to the deity for somehow enabling Smart to be found, you should also acknowledge that that same god set aside its agency to act – that same god sat on its pedophile-observing ass for nine months – while a fourteen-year-old-girl was being tormented, and while her family endured the torment of not knowing where their child was nor what she was going through.

If Smart’s abduction happened today our social media pages would be filled with requests to “pray for Elizabeth and her family.”  Meanwhile, we Freethinkers, atheists, skeptics, and other rational, religion-free folk metaphorically bang our foreheads against the walls of ignorance and superstition as we ponder why, for nine months after Smart was abducted, so many people pled for assistance from their omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, every-caring/ever loving deity who was either absent or stood by  (translation: who did *nothing*) when he was truly needed – when a child was being dragged from her bedroom, her atttacker holding a knife to her neck, at 2 am.   [5]

 

 

Years later, as an adult, Smart became an advocate for survivors of sexual violence.  I kept waiting for the mention of her advocacy work – there was just a sliver of it at the end of the documentary.  Moiself  was not surprised by this; still, I was infuriatingly disappointed that there was not even a cursory forensic analysis, or mention, of why Smart needed to do such advocacy work in the first place.   [6]

I was disappointed that Smart’s feelings of guilt and shame, and of being  “dirty” due to being raped, were only briefly mentioned in the documentary, and that there was little mention of either the specific or general cultural influences of Smart’s – of any person’s – patriarchal conservative religion that is related to – or as moiself  would put it,  directly responsible for – Smart having those feelings.  IMO, almost as sickening as Smart’s abduction/rape is the culture of religiously ordained male dominance which allows such acts to occur in the first place.

Years after her rescue,  [7]   Smart has critiqued the purity culture she was raised in, and which surrounds girls in conservative/evangelical religious families.   This culture implies (read: overtly teaches) that a woman’s/girl’s ultimate worth is not what’s in her heart and head, but between her legs.

“In 2014, during a poignant and emotional speech at Johns Hopkins University, Elizabeth Smart revealed she had received this abstinence-only sex education lesson prior to her being kidnapped from her room as a child. While in captivity, she was then repeatedly raped by her captor. And that lesson – that teacher who told her that she would be a worthless, old piece of gum if she engaged in premarital sex – not only stayed with her, but it also made her wonder whether there was any point in trying to escape.

‘For me, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m that chewed up piece of gum,’ Smart told the audience of gathered listeners. ‘Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away. And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued, if your life still has no value?’ ”    [8]

” Even though male students are encouraged to take these (purity) pledges too, the lessons often focus on young women. For example, a way in which purity pledges are done is where gold rose pins are handed out at Christian youth group events, with a small card attached that says: ‘You are like a beautiful rose. Each time you engage in premarital sex, a precious petal is stripped away. Don’t leave your future husband holding a bare stem. Abstain.’ ”
 (excerpt, “The Negative Implications of the Purity Movement on Young Women.” The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research 15 (2014): 9-18. Paul, Amanda )

 

 

-” ‘ If you have premarital sex you become a ‘chewed up piece of gum.’  ”
Anyone else hear this rhetoric growing up? As a guy I even remember hearing this shit. My poor wife has so much emotional baggage to work through because of the whole impurity bullshit.”

-“Yeah. Just imagine being gang raped as a little girl and then hearing this. And yes, I was dumped by someone who couldn’t stand ‘thinking about the men who already used me’ when he found out about my childhood.”   [9]

– “I got the ‘chewed up piece of gum,’ ‘duct tape that loses its stickiness,’ and was told that as a woman, I start with a jar of M&Ms. Every person I have sex with gets some of my M&Ms. If I’m not careful, I’ll run out of M&Ms and have none left to give my future husband.
I think the one that disgusts me the most is when people talk about women dressing ‘provocatively’ and being assaulted, and make the statement ‘well you wouldn’t expect a dog to stay away from a raw piece of steak.’ So…Women are objects and men are animals. Thanks.”

( excerpts, social media threads on ex-Christians and their experiences
with the purity movement )

 

 

“Where does a woman’s value lie? In her brain? Her heart? Her spirit?

According to right-wing culture warriors, ‘between her legs.’  That’s what underlies the emphasis on virginity as ‘purity,’ and the push for abstinence-only education.  And it has very real consequences, most recently articulated by Elizabeth Smart.

Smart, who was kidnapped and held for months while her captor repeatedly raped her, recently discussed how her religious background made her feel worthless after the first rape – how she understands why others wouldn’t even try to escape, if, like her, they were taught that a sexually ‘impure’ woman had nothing to offer.

“I think it goes even beyond fear, for so many children, especially in sex trafficking. It’s feelings of self-worth. It’s feeling like, ‘Who would ever want me now? I’m worthless.’

That is what it was for me the first time I was raped. I was raised in a very religious household, one that taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other. And that’s how I’d been raised, that’s what I’d always been determined to follow: that when I got married, then and only then would I engage in sex.

After that first rape, I felt crushed. Who could want me now? I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand so easily all too well why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone.”

(  excerpts, “‘Purity’ culture: bad for women, worse for survivors of sexual assault,”
The Guardian, May 2014, by Jill Filipovic )

*   *   *

Department Of Quote Of The Week

“I saw a guy walking down the street, wearing a football jersey.
So I tackled him, because he was asking for it.”
 ( Anonymous )

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

“I’m an atheist, and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I’m puzzled that so many people can’t see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry.”

(  Butterfly McQueen, quoted in Warren Allen Smith’s
Celebrities in Hell. Barricade Books. p. 75. )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have a favorite Celebrity in Hell;
May your life’s worth never be compared to a piece of chewing gum;
May you fight the good fight against patriarchal religion everything;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Except, of course, there are many more countries/cultures that also celebrate the Lunar New Year, primarily but not exclusively Southeast Asian, including Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia….

[2] Whose names are not worthy of taking up column space in this blog.

[3] Perhaps they weren’t specific enough.

[4] They moved frequently, but mostly stayed in an encampment not far from where Smart was abducted.

[5] Exact time unknown; generally referred to as “in the early morning.”

[6] Well, duh/of course not.  This documentary was made with her cooperation, and it needed/wanted a “feel good” ending.

[7] E.g., in speeches during her sexual assault survivors advocacy work.

[8] Exact Reference lost…there were so many, from stories of her speeches…

[9] The poster had been sexually abused.

[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 Hidden Power I’m Not Doubting

February 6, 2026

Robyn Parnell family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Me so happy, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of First Things First

One of my favorite dates is today.  Happy Birthday, She-Who-Was-Not-Intimidated-By-The-Rope-Swing-On-The-Treehouse-Deck.   [1]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why I Will Be A Couch Potato (Luger?) For The Next Three Weeks

The Winter Olympics begin today.

 

Bring on the Norwegians!

 

*   *   *

Department Of Human Interaction Is Sometimes Disguised As
– or Enhanced By – a Non Sequitur

Dateline:  Tuesday morning; circa 10 am; The Dollar Tree Store‘s Birthday greeting cards section.  [2]   Moiself  is picking out birthday cards, a lot of ’em. To an uninformed observer it might seem that I am choosing them at random, dumping them in my handbasket…but this is not so.  There is method to my madness.  As I grab one card two envelopes come with it, and the extra envelope flutters to the floor.  Only when I reach down to retrieve it do I realize that a woman is standing next to me, in front of the Valentine’s Day card section.

“Excuse me,” I say, as I lean over to pick up the miscreant envelope, which has landed just to the right of her right foot.  “I didn’t mean to fling an empty envelope in your direction.”

She smiles, looks at my handbasket, and I expect her to remark on the number of cards in it (which will eventually total 30).  Instead, she replies, “My daughter was unable to have children, so she adopted four dogs.  I get them all cards for every holiday and special occasion.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Few People Say It Better Than Greta Christina   [3]

“Dear Republicans,

Apparently some of you are having second thoughts. Recent events have led you to question your commitment to Trumpism, and even move away from it. A line has been crossed for you, and you can no longer accept the direction the country is going in.

Am I glad about this? Yes. Do I want you to step away from Trump and the Republican Party, to rethink the path you’ve been on and walk it back? Yes….

But as you walk back this path, you need to realize that it’s not going to be covered with rose petals. A lot of people are extremely angry with you, and we have every right to be. You have done a great deal of harm. The Republican Party has done a great deal of harm — not just in the last month, it’s been doing great harm for a long time — and you’ve been part of that. When you’ve hurt people badly, you need to do more than just say “Oops” and expect to be forgiven. You need to work to fix the harm you’ve done. And the greater the harm, the more work you have to do….

 

 

We warned you this was coming. Even the Republican Party warned you this was coming: the Project 2025 document spelled out their plans in detail. You chose not to listen. Moving forward, you need to be willing to listen. You need to do the kind of listening that involves not talking. You need to not get defensive, not try to justify your actions. You need to stop saying, ‘I didn’t vote for this!’  You absolutely voted for this.”

( excerpts from author, activist, blogger Greta Christina’s
Dear Republicans 1-28-26, my emphases )

*   *   *

Department Of The Hidden Power Of Doubt

“What do you do when you’re not sure?”
( from opening monologue, Doubt:  A Parable, a play by John Patrick Shanley )

 

Last week the podcast Hidden Brain concluded their You 2.0 series   [4]  with, as per the podcast website’s intro,  “…a look at the hidden power of doubt — not as weakness or indecision, but as a tool that helps us make better choices and navigate an uncertain world.”

The episode opens with the story of the little known letter General Eisenhower wrote on the eve of the allied invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, aka, D-Day. There were so many factors at play – including the weather – and an allied victory was far from certain.  Eisenhower drafted what he dreaded, should he have to announce that the mission had failed.  When it became apparent that Operation Overlord was succeeding, Eisenhower crumpled the letter and tossed it in his office trash can.  His military secretary retrieved the letter and kept it, allowing history to see what (IMO) was the true leadership of the man.

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”   [5]

 

 

Time machine to the present:  can you imagine the so-called leader we have today ( The Tantrum-Throwing-Toddler-in-Chief ) writing something like that – taking responsibility so succinctly and directly?  #47 will go to his corpulent casket carping and whining and kicking, blaming others for the political, moral, financial and cultural devastation he leaves in his wake.

Yet again, I digress.

HB podcast host Shankar Vedantam and his guest go on to talk about the power of doubt, which is something we tend not to associate with the stereotype of leadership (confident; decisive; never wavering; unwilling to back down).

“We don’t think of strong leaders as hesitant, doubtful, or unsure of the right answers.   Confidence and determination are admirable traits.  But they also have drawbacks.  Confidence can lead to overconfidence; decisiveness can make leaders less likely to be tolerant of dissent; determination can blind us to risks.
At the University of Virginia’s Darden College of Business, [Bobby] Parmar studies the value of doubt.  He says that by avoiding uncertainty, we miss out on opportunities for growth.”
(excerpts, You 2.0: Trusting Your Doubt,  Hidden Brain Staff / January 26, 2026  )

It’s a thought-provoking presentation of a compelling subject.  Two thumbs up for podcast listeners.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Learning To Lie In Another Language

 Ég  skil  íslensku.

Funny how one of the first phrases I learned in my Plimsleur language app, which I’ve been struggling through like a stuttering pig using daily since last Wednesday, is a total lie:   I understand Icelandic.

 

Yeah, fluency is just around the corner.

 

Adding to the hoax is that five minutes after learning how to say,  I do not understand Icelandic, I have forgotten how to say, I do not understand Icelandic.

Just about every Icelander speaks English ( Ninety-eight plus %! English is a compulsory subject in Icelandic schools ), but still, I want to be a gracious visitor when we go there this summer.  I think this trying-to-learn-some-conversational-Icelandic is going to be one of those things where I have to repeat lesson one seven times before moving on. 

About speaking Icelandic. Knowing that fact (that Icelanders speak English), then bothering to learn to say in Icelandic, Excuse me, do you speak English?  while perhaps respectful in intent, could easily come off as, to an Icelander, Why is this doofus butchering my language when it is totally unnessary to do so?  Obviously, if I’ve bothered to learn anything about the country (including from when MH and I were there three summers ago), I should know that any Icelander whom I address will speak far better English than I speak Icelandic. 

I wish the language course would start off by teaching Icelandic cusswords.  That would be more inspiring.  Of course, there is the internet, where I discovered, farðu í rassgat, which you would hurl as an insult when you are in the kind of situation where you want to advise someone to crawl up your own asshole.  Perhaps I’ll save that one for the United States customs agents.

 

“May your urine burn, you cowardly goat,” will be my backup curse.

*   *   *

Department Of Cool Story, Bro…    [6]

When I recently saw this spot-on summation of Christian theology I was reminded of an acquaintance who, when I came out decades ago as religion-free, resorted to the believers’ last tactic:  when you can’t counter facts and logic and rationality, use fear ( of something only the religious believe in – hellfire/damnation  [7]  ).  He was not amused when moiself, using the following synopsis to do so, laughingly confirmed that I was indeed rejecting his god’s plan for “salvation.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?   [9]
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad
has made the world ugly and bad.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.”

(  Friedrich Nietzsche , as quoted in  The Very Best of Friedrich Nietzsche: Quotes from a Great Thinker, by David Graham,)

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember to fix the harm you’ve done when you realize you’ve done harm;
May you, as much as possible, not find yourself in farðu í rassgat situations;
May you resolve not to find the world ugly and bad;
…and may the hijinks ensue.    [10]

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Belle can still give you the badass, stinkeye look, should the occasion call for it.

[2] Two for $1!

[3] GC is an author, blogger, speaker, LGBTQ and atheist activist.

[4] The podcast does an annual series, at the end of the old/beginning of the new year, exploring the latest in evidence-based understandings offered by behavioral scientists – understandings which may help people improve their lives via establishing good habits/getting rid of bad habits, overcoming emotional, romantic, career-related, and cognitive challenges, etc.

[5] Note that the draft was dated July 5th. In 1966, when the question about this date was put to him, Einsenhower indicated that it was a minor mistake on his part and that he had actually written it on June 5, 1944.  (from D-Day Overlord, Encyclopaedia of the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy )

[6] Not.

[7] It’s a knee slapper, when you think about it:  they try to make *you* afraid of something  that is in fact *their* greatest fear, something which you don’t thing about at all, like pissing off Santa claus.

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

[9] This is serious stuff; no need for a footnote.

[10] See previous footnote.

The Movie I’m Not Casting

January 23, 2026

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

Department Of Movie Directors Looking For Their Next Project

“I worked for somebody that is probably borderline clinical psychopath.  Definitely a narcissist,” said Tony Nissen, a former engineering director at OceanGate.  “How do you manage a person like that who owns the company?”

( excerpt, , The New OceanGate Documentary Dives into the Depths of the Titan Submersible Tragedy.  And it points a finger at CEO Stockton Rush.
Esquire, 6-11-25, by  Eric Francisco )

 

 

Dateline:  I’ve been getting reacquainted with last year’s riveting Netflix documentary, Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster, ten to fifteen minutes at a time, while working out on the elliptical the past few mornings.  [1]  Monday circa 11-11:30 am, I get an AHA flash:  This has to be done.

This being, making a theatrical movie based on the documentary.

Maybe it’s already on some producer’s proverbial drawing board; moiself  thought it ( the first time I saw it, and even more so, as I’m rewatching it.  The story – of the foreseeable and even inevitable implosion of a submersible designed and operated by the American  company OceanGate during a 2023 expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic –  is a Shakespearean fairy tale in scope, with its themes of ambition, ego, hubris, obstinance, punitive pettiness.  OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush was the emperor who wouldn’t listen to his dressers despite desperately needing new clothes for his submersible ride.

Perhaps Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg’s longtime production partner ( Amblin Entertainment ), and Lucasfilm director would consider coming out of her newly-announced-retirement to oversee this project?

Kathleen, call me.  Let’s do lunch and discuss the details.

 

 

First things first, Kathleen ( do you prefer Kath, or Kathy? ):  nail down the director.  Who can handle the technical aspects of filming given the difficult set” (the deep ocean) without sacrificing the primacy of storyline and character; who has a proven record of maintaining that level of tension and interest while telling a “true” story, despite the audience already knowing the ending?  Why, it’s your sister in K, Kathryn Bigelow.

I also have a few casting suggestions:

* Sign Josh Brolin for the lead role.  With his hair dyed white, I can totally envision Brolin channeling Rush’s primal arrogance and aspirations to be a BSD ( “Big Swingin’ Dick” ) like the billionaires Rush admired ( read: Elon Musk; Jeff Bezos );

* Zoe Kazan would be heart-tuggingly excellent as Emily Hammermeister, OceanGate’s assistant to the lead engineer, whose growing concerns about the viability of the submersible were ignored and suppressed, leading to her resignation; 

* Palestinian-American actor and standup comedian Mo Amer would nail it as Joseph Assi, a videographer hired by Rush to film OceanGate’s expeditions; 

* either Simon Pegg or Chris Pine would bring different but equally compelling portrayals of Tony OceanGate engineer Tony Nissen, who was fired by Rush after questioning him about the submersible’s defects;   [2]

* English actor Stephen Graham to play the Scottish engineer David Lochridge , OceanGate’s Director of Marine Operations submersible pilot, who was fired by Rush after warning questioning him about design and safety features.

 

Given the proven track record of both Ks, I’ll let them handle the rest.

 

“…and I owe these awards to Robyn Parnell, who insisted I take on this project and who refused to take screen writing credit despite her many helpful edits to the script….”

*   *   *

Department Of About All Those Uncured Cancers – My Bad

 

 

Moiself  recently reposted this on FB.  I thought of prefacing it with,“Had I written this I would have added the modifier intercessory before prayer,” but you know how that goes (I went on to watch some dancing kitten reel).

 

 

Some FB friends thought I was being rather harsh, including one who wrote, “Prayer may not be for everyone but if a person thinks it help (sic) them, who am I to say ‘no.’ ”  Moiself  is not advocating that we all break into little old lady’s homes and take away their prayer shawls.  As I assured my friend, moiself  simply reminds folks that seemingly benign beliefs practices, such as intercessory prayer, have unintentional but harmful consequences.

“…had I written that, I would’ve modified prayers by adding  intercessory. Prayers for one’s own personal… Enjoyment? Enhancement? Meditative purposes? Fine; whatever floats your boat. But for intercessory purposes, and public announcements of concern ( “I’m praying for the victims of the school, shooting” ), offering prayers is ineffective (and therefore insulting, IMO) and dangerous in that “praying for…” whatever fools people into believing constructive action has been taken when nothing of substance has been done.”

Confession:  back in the day, I was asked to be on my church’s prayer chain.  The workings of such vary from church to church, but in general, a prayer chain or group or committee is a group of people in a church who take prayers requests (via telephone or text, e.g. ) and share them with others in the group, starting with the primary contact who  then shares the request with, creating an unbroken link (“chain”) chain” where each person in the supposedly prays for the request and then passes on the information in a prearranged ( Leader of the group passes on the info to person A, who contacts person B, who contacts….)

 

 

Moiself  accepted the invitation, even as I told the person who invited me (the pastor of my very liberal UCC church, who knew I was a troublemaker freethinker/skeptic)  that I viewed prayer chains as being, essentially, a neighborhood news site for religious folk, who can’t seem to justify action unless there’s some god connection (I left out that second part).

The prayer chain served as a bulletin board/clearing house for news & needs of members and friends of the congregation, from “Alex and Jenny have become first time grandparents!”  to “Bill has just received a cancer diagnosis,” to “Mary’s had knee replacement surgery,” and all the  “joys and sorrows.” in between.

I never – nope, not once  – stopped to pray for the particular need shared when it was passed along to me.    [3]  [4]   Before passing on the information to the next person on the chain I used the tidbit of information I‘d received to brainstorm whether or not there was something I, or someone I knew, could do to help:

* I’ll send a card to Alex & Jenny, or bring them a batch of their favorite cookies to celebrate their good news…

* MH and I can check and see if Bill is going to need a ride to and from his radiation therapy treatments, or if he’d like a friend to play cards with him in the waiting room, or have some meals brought in…

* Mary might need someone to take the cans out to the curb for her on recycling day, or do her grocery shopping while she recovers, or mow her lawn…

It is the knowledge of a situation, of a need, that spurs the reaction which is needed, which is action – not sitting on one’s arse (or groveling on one’s knees), beseeching a nonexistent at best ( or if existent, indifferent, as per all available evidence ), supernatural/sky wizard.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Random Thoughts On Yet Another Reason Why
Not Only Prayer But Religious Belief Itself Is Not Benign

Some critics of religion (or even mildly religious folk themselves) say, What’s the harm in religion, as long as people keep it to themselves and don’t try to have their religious beliefs influence science education, or public policy or whatever?

 

“Hey, good point!”

 

The thing is, any belief in an omniscient/all-powerful deity carries an inherent, ineffective counter to despotism.  After all, if you believe your god is all-powerful and ultimately in charge, the rising fascist in your government…well , he can reasonably claim to be part of your god’s plan…or at least, he is able to be “used” by your god for reasons that might not seem clear at the time.  Throughout history, kings and tyrants have appealed to that reasoning:  “I am here because your god wants (or at least allows) it.  Therefore, to oppose me is to oppose your god.”

 

 

No; seriously.  I’ve heard and read Christians using that “reasoning” to justify the Orange Turdfurher.  They bolster their claim with biblical stories of supremely flawed kings; e.g.,

* King David, who arranged for the husband of a married woman he desired to be killed in battle after he summoned, bedded, and impregnated her  [5]

* King Solomon, who along with his three hundred (300) concubines married seven hundred ( yep, 700 ) wives from the nations his god warned the Israelites never to enter into marriages with, lest they turn away their hearts after their gods (guess what?  they did) , and who used forced labor to build the temple and his own palace, ad nauseum….    [6]

The justification goes,  …”if god was able to use them, he is able to use #47.”

 

 

I so wish I was making this up.

*   *   *

Department Of My Reactions Which Reveal To Moiself  My Low Opinion Of Many Of My Fellow Earthlings

Dateline:  last week watching an episode of Love On The Spectrum.  LOTS, as per its Netflix description is about, “Young adults on the autism spectrum look for true love in this documentary series that ‘revels in the plain, beautiful truths of courtship.’  ” I’d seen LOTS a year or so ago, but didn’t remember all the details. Considering what was in the news I wanted a pick-me-up and I’ve found a series to be…sweet, and good hearted, in many ways.

There was a moment when a couple, both on the autism spectrum, were having a dinner date which was going well, and they decided to extend their time together by going for a walk along the waterfront.  They were both being exuberant and happy and quirky, and overly loud, at least according to most neurodivergent folks’ standards…  I began to get a fearful (but sadly realistic) feeling in the pit of my stomach, centered around the nasty reality of The World We Live In ®:

If those two cheerfully boisterous young people were out on their own, on this date, in public, without a camera crew to protect them, they could be a target for some cretinous person or persons who, for their own cretinous reasons, would the couples’ differences upsetting or offensive.
In plain speak:  the autistic lovebirds would be at risk for assault.

And by persons, I mean, a man, or most likely, two or more men.

 

 

Think about the reports when something like this happens. It’s not a woman, or a group of women friends, who, while out for a stroll along the waterfront or downtown, see another single person or a couple and decide that they are somehow different or offensive or whatever and hassles and/or even beats them up.

And yeah, sorry guys:   it’s not all men ®…but it’s always a man.

 

Some of the LOTS participants.

 

*   *   *

Department Of How Do You Say The Orange Turdführer Venezuelan Spanish?

Haven’t written about this because there are no words.

Oh, wait, of course there are words.  And Congress needs to enforce them unless they lose whatever remaining power they have.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you get out ASAP when you realize your boss is a psychopath;
May you examine whether or not your beliefs are benign;
May you encourage your congressfolk to use their words;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] Trying to get my foot back in shape post-foot surgery.

[2] “I told him I’m not getting in it,” former OceanGate engineering director Tony Nissen said to a panel of Coast Guard investigators, referring to a 2018 conversation in which CEO Stockton Rush allegedly asked Nissen to act as a pilot in an upcoming expedition to the Titanic.  ( ‘I Told Him I’m Not Getting in It’: Former Titan Submersible Engineer Testifies, Sep 16, 2024, Wired, Science section )

[3] I think I was third or fourth in the chain.

[4] So when bill succumbed to his tumor…yep, that was my fault.

[5] Found in 2 Samuel 11-12

[6] Stories found in 1 Kings 9:15-23, 11:1-10)

[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 Name I’m Not Hyphenating

January 16, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Name I’m Not Hyphenating

Department Of The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name…
If It’s Hyphenated

Dateline: Monday morning.  Starting my morning reading the she’s-brilliant-because-moiself-almost-always-approves-of-her-advice  Carolyn Hax’s WAPO column.  The first advice seeker of the morning, “Expecting,” wrote about an issue near and dear to the cockles of my heart: deciding the surname of one’s children when both married partners have “kept” their names:

 My husband and I are expecting our first baby. I didn’t change my name when we got married, so we need to decide what last name to give our child. I’m pretty adamant that we hyphenate, though I don’t really care about order. I’m also open to giving the child some new last name that combines both our names….It’s important to me that we both be identified as equal parents to our child and that there’s no subtle preference given to one parent/family or the other.

My husband thinks we’d be setting our kid up for a lifetime of confusion and challenges by hyphenating. He says when our child gets married, having a hyphen name will cause all kinds of problems. My perspective is that we don’t know that our child will get married at all, and if they do, they can figure it out then! Husband wants to give the kid his last name and have my last name as a middle name, which from my perspective perpetuates sexist ideas about male ownership and lineage…

Is there some other option we’re not thinking of? Are there really problems with hyphenating that I’m not taking seriously?

Hax, as is her wont, has some fun with her opening remarks, while laying the groundwork for addressing the issue-behind-the-issue:

 Expecting:

Hyphens do add some challenges, but it’s not exactly Everest without mittens.

I’ve known dozens of hyphenated people personally, professionally and by association, and none of them were, to my knowledge, wandering around lost in corridors due to failures of identification.

Non-facetiously, none of them to my knowledge have chosen to streamline to one name out of bureaucratic frustration. Hyphenating has been yawned at as within the range of normal naming conventions for decades. Some people and forms will get it wrong, yes. People also get my name wrong every. day. and it’s not hyphenated.   [1]    Or even long. So if your husband hits upon the Great Unscrewuppable Name, then please share. I might switch….

( excerpts, my emphases, Carolyn Hax 1-12-26,
“Husband sees hyphenating name for fairness as too much of a hassle” )

 

 

One of moiself’s many mottos is,  Who knows (or cares) what people say behind your back.   Behind-my-back- criticism of moiself  and/or my life decisions is fine.  If it’s behind my back, well then, I’m not meant to hear it, am I?  Not my chickens, not my circus.  

 

You can have monkeys in *your* circus, if you like.  Thanks to friend CC, my circus has chickens.

 

To my knowledge/memory I didn’t get any blowback from my side of the family when I kept my surname after marrying MH.  [2]   As to what was said in-front-of-my-back, it came from MH’s family.  After we married there were a couple from testy remarks from MH’s mother and maternal grandmother regarding me keeping my surname.  And both women, when they sent written correspondence to us, addressed the envelope to “Mr. and Mrs. MH” and/or “Robyn and MH.”  They used some version of what I came to think of as my  manhandle; they did this despite us telling them that my name was my name, and despite our having arranged for the officiant of our wedding to end the ceremony by introducing us, “…as wife and husband, Robyn Parnell and MH.”  There was also MH’s uncle, who introduced me to one of his children using  not-my-last-name, despite my having seem him the previous year at a family holiday gathering, where he, and my future MIL and G-MIL, introduced me to their friends and family as, “Robyn Parnell, MH’s friend….”

After a couple of months of this, MH wrote to his mother and grandmother, requesting that they grant me (and him) – the simple courtesy of referring to me by my actual name.

At the beginning of this surname silliness I told a friend how odd it was, to find out that certain people…

“…had no problem remembering my name – two words, four syllables total – when I was single. Then, I get married, and boom – their brain’s long-term memory storage capacity immediately decreased by a couple thousand neurons.  Apparently, it’s my heretofore unrealized superpower.”

My lasso of forgetfulness commands your obedience.

After MH’s request for some R-E-S-P-E-C-T for his wife, I received a three-page letter, from his mother, addressed solely to moiself.  The letter began as such letters begin, with compliments paving the way for the critique.  MIL praised my many fine and unique qualities!!!…and assured me that none of those qualities would be diminished by me showing my love for my husband by assuming a common surname.    [3]

While MH was mortified by the letter ( hellyeah, I showed it to him ), I was…thrilled …is the proper word.  His mother was bothered by this issue – so, don’t let it fester, let’s address it and be done with it.  I like This Kinda Stuff® to be out in the open and on paper.  Unlike phone or even one-on-one conversations, where one party can later deny (or honestly forget) what they said, or accuse you of putting words in their mouth, if it’s in print, there it is.   [4]  My MIL’s letter gave me the opportunity to articulately eviscerate her archaic, patriarchal, women-marginalizing judgements lovingly and firmly refute her “reasoning,” and educate her as to current and historical practices and cultural and personal assumptions behind the giving and taking of surnames.   [5]  Sure, a simple, This is so none of your beeswax  might have sufficed, but the former was so much more fun.

 

(one of the thirty-plus bumper stickers on our old Honda Odyssey)

 

I cannot find that letter to my MIL in my computer files (I save all such correspondence; however, it seems it didn’t survive a systems update from many years ago).  But the sentiments I expressed to her were similarly (if less personally) addressed in a letter I sent, many years later, to one of my favorite magazines, Brain,Child: the magazine for thinking mothers.  This was in regards to an article that appeared in Brain,Child‘s   Debate feature.  My letter    [6]   was published in their Letters to the Editor section.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I get it!”

“How clever!”

“We’ll remember your family!”
(And guess what?  They do.).

It has caused us no trouble, nor even inconvenience.   Even if it did, how long does it take to say, “I’m Robyn Parnell, Belle _____’s mother”   [7]  when you call the doctor or meet your kid’s teacher?

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

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

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

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

If you really want to share the same name with your husband, both of you can change your names.  After all, it is a new family unit you’re creating, isn’t it?  You can look into your joint family histories, or favorite books or mythologies, until you find a name you both like and both change your surname (we have several friends who’ve done this; again, the “wider administrative world” has not imploded).  Many options are consistent with a feminist world view. Taking his name isn’t one of them.    [8]

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

Robyn Parnell, Hillsboro, OR
( excerpt, 12-19-08 Letter to the Editor, Brain,Child magazine )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Observation

Re the letter to Carolyn Hax: the person who objects to a hyphenated or “kept” surname usually wraps their disapproval and/or digging-in-for-the-sake-of-digging-in with the excuse of concern for the future confusion of all of those anonymous, administrative hasslin’, judgmental, *other* people.  Cue the pearl-clutching, “But, what about the children??!?!?!?” …

 

 

…which thinly masquerades as a criticism of your choice to keep…your own fucking name.

If you are married or single, no matter what you did or did not or will or will not choose if you marry, let us all take a meditative millisecond to consider the breathtaking absurdity of why this should even be an issue: keeping Your. Own. Name.

 

 

When this pearl-clutching comes from the wimmenfolk in the family, it is often, IMO, because they take your decision to keep your birth name as an implied criticism of *their* decision to take their husband’s family name…as if they even had a true/no pressure option to choose, back in my MIL’s day.  Or even today, when the patriarchal norms of ownership and possession, of who “counts” in a relationship and whose relationship/family this really is, still linger like the festering odor from that July 4 BBQ when your Uncle Anuss used rancid bacon grease to fry the catfish.

 

 

One of Carolyn Hax’s readers pointed out

Re: Hyphen: I am feeling like this is just a matter of U.S. society getting used to the idea. The Brits have had names like Harumpher Stinkly-Blowhardington for centuries, and they seem to have it figured out.

I read that comment and thought, DANG, I missed the boat!  After all these years….I could’ve told MH’s family I was British and intended to honor my roots by reverting to my original family surname, Petardhoister-Snotsbury-Flapjackington. 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Welcome Mindfulness, Lovingkindness, And Compassion,
But Leave Them At The Door, Along With Your Shoes

At my recent  post-op appointment   [9]   I obtained my doctor’ ok to do some gentle yoga.  But, until my next appointment/assessment of my foot’s healing, any exercise I do – including just walking around in my own home – cannot be barefooted.

Barefoot is the norm for most yoga studios, although I’ve seen yogis wearing socks (and even what looked like ballet slippers) in the classroom during class.  Last week moiself  emailed the owner of the yoga studio where I (up until eight weeks ago) attended classes, re my intent to return to class.  I explained my limitation and asked whether my wearing light-but-supportive shoes (not street shoes) in the classroom was kosher.

I didn’t hear back from him for several days.  I’ve been a studio member since 2017; his replies to emails have always been prompt; thus, I assumed things were copacetic and signed up for the Wednesday evening class.  He got back to me Monday.  His response, after congratulating me on my healing:

“This question has come up before and we have to be consistent. There aren’t any types of shoes allowed in the classroom. Shoes and cell phones in the classroom is what we hear the most about. One time a student didn’t take their shoes off to put their mat down in the classroom. It bothered someone so much, the student followed the other student down the hallway after class to express their feelings.”

 

 

I replied that I understand, and hope to be back in class after my next month’s post-op appointment.  But… Holy Obsessively Mindful Stalker.

What I understand is that the studio has a no-shoes-in-class policy.  What I do not understand is a no-exceptions policy which cannot be modified when a student has exceptional circumstances.  What I cannot understand – what I cannot wrap my blissful brain around – is that a yoga student followed another student down the hallway after class to “express their feelings” about such a trivial matter…a matter which, if it truly was a problem (to anyone other than that one anal-retentive complaining student), should have been handled by the class’s teacher.  [10]

 


There are several reasons why yoga is traditionally practiced in bare feet, including

* to help yogis feel stability, develop balance, and feel connection with the ground/the mat under your feet;

* to keep the practice room clean (shoes track in dirt/although you can change from your street shoes to indoor only/studio shoes, like what dancers do)

* historical and cultural considerations:  in some cultures and traitions it’s considered disrespectful to walk indoors with your shoes on.  Leaving one’s street shoes at the door is a sign of respect, and in yoga it also becomes part of a pre-class ritual, as you step onto your mat and prepare for a shift in attitude and perspective.

 

But I’ve seen/heard of other accommodations for yogis with permanent or temporary physical limitations and disabilities.  [11]   Also, yoga teachers and studios and magazines have been fighting an uphill battle to counter the idea that yoga is for young, super-fit and flexible people who wear size 2 leotards and look like Yoga Journal®  cover models.  The yoga world emphasizes that “Yoga is for Every Body“ (space intentional, get it?), but apparently,  everybody does not include a body requiring a physical support that, the mere sight of it makes a busybody yogi lose her mindful shit and stalk you down a hallway….  [12]

 

Guess it’s back to Irish Yoga for me.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [13]

“We don’t want a piece of the pie – it’s still a patriarchal pie.
We want to change the recipe.”
( bell hooks 1952 – 2021, American author, educator, feminist, activist )

 

 

*   *   *

May you hyphenate as many names as possible;
May you reap the benefits of yoga without acquiring a stalker;
May you find a clever (and tasty) way to change the pie’s recipe;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Ditto to the nth for my name.

[2] Knowing moiself, they expected no less. The only feedback I got was positive, specifically from my father, who confessed to me that he wished my younger sister had also kept her surname (my older sister…there was no question she’d take her husband’s name..to do otherswise would not have been an option in that relationship).

[3] Hey, I would have been happy for MH to take my surname (how’s that for commonality?), but I never asked and he never offered.  We both liked our respective names. 

[4] You can always weasel out with, “that’s not what I meant,” but it’s evident, that’s what you wrote.

[5] Yep, she had no idea what she was getting into.

[6] Which, as per the magazine’s circulation, probably got more readership than any of my published stories.

[7] As is my custom in this blog, my offspring’s first and last names are redacted, as I cling to the outdated notion that there can still be a modicum of privacy remaining in this world.

[8] Now, those last two statements…I’m not the Feminist Police (there was an election, and I lost the position by five votes). Some of my favorite, righteous right-on feminist friends have taken their husbands’ surnames.  The reasons and reasonings can be complicated, and not everyone is attached to their name of birth.

[9] I had foot surgery eight weeks ago, addressed here.

[10] Whatever happened to the yoga mantra of keeping your eyes on your own mat?

[11] Including chairs in class for elderly yogis who have balance and stamina issues.  Also, I have a couple of friends who could not do yoga, or any exercise, barefooted, due to neuropathy and other painful foot conditions.  They bring their own supportive/orthopedic house shoes when they go to other people’s homes where removing shoes is the custom and expectation.

[12]  Following someone down the hallway after a YOGA class to “express their feelings.” It both cracks me up and frosts my butt.  Once again, I may be a fiction writer, but I can’t make up this shit.

[13] “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 Resume I’m Not Updating

January 9, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Isms (religion), politics, school, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Resume I’m Not Updating

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard’s pear tree.   [1]  One last week for this, and then the holiday is officially over (in our front yard, at least).

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Buh-Bye, Betty

 

Happy BLD (Boot Liberation Day) to moiself!

 

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of No Chairs Were Flung Harmed By The Making Of This Rant

 

 

When moiself  has heard the “But, not all men…” line – spoken when someone attempts to derail the subject when I have been pointing out misogynist behavior and culture – I have somehow managed not give into my gut reaction, which is to fling a chair at the face of the  “But, not all men…” (corollary, “But I’m a good Guy® … )”, spewer.  [2]

Now I have another option.  I can refer the misguided defenders of Good Men® to this explains-it-all essay by the astute Dawn Villines.  Read it all after you enjoy this excerpt.

 

 

“Good men care about oppression. They care about the lived experiences of women. They understand that, without listening to women, they cannot learn what women experience. They believe women. When women share their experiences and your responses is, ‘But not all men!’ you undermine those experiences. You show no concern for oppression. You are not behaving as a good guy.

Imagine a friend was sharing with you that they had cancer. You wouldn’t jump in and proclaim that not all people have cancer, now, would you?

There’s also the now-infamous thought exercise of not all snakes. Imagine being put into a box with snakes. Only a few are venomous. ‘It’s not all snakes! What are you so worried about?!’

This is what life is like as a woman. It is irrelevant that there are some nice guys out there. It’s irrelevant even in a world where most guys are decent, because so many guys are not decent. So we have to act as if all men are a danger, because we know also that when men victimize us, society won’t believe us—and that random people will pop into the discussion to tell us that our suffering doesn’t matter because it’s not all men.”

( excerpt, Hello You’ve Reached Not All Men hotline, by Dawn Villines, )

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of An Appropriate Container

Christian theology in a nutshell:

A Short History of God   [3]

  1. Creates Adam and Eve
  2. Creates Evil
  3. Populates the world through incest
  4. Surprised that the evil exists
  5. Clueless about how to deal with evil
  6. Drowns the entire planet, saving one small family of very skilled ship builders
  7. Populates the world through incest…again
  8. Surprised the evil exists…again
  9. Sends diseases, starvation, plagues, tsunamis, etc.
  10. Still bewildered by the existence of evil
  11. Blames the devil…that he created
  12. Rapes a girl so she’ll give birth to himself as his own son so that we can torture and kill him/his son so that he can forgive us for being so evil
  13. Says “just joking” three days later and brings his son back to life
  14. Claims omniscience and omnipotence
  15. Expects to be worshipped for his wisdom

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

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

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [4]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [5]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

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

 

 

Here’s an excerpt from my January 8, 2016 blog (The Dr. Seuss Book I’m Not Reading).  I spun the wheel, picked a January ten years ago…and now I’m reminded of why I write this blog.  I’d forgotten this poignant memory, which wiped me out for the rest of the day, after I reread it:

My Mother’s Resumé

Last week my older sister forwarded a text she’d received from CG, one of our mother’s caregivers. The subject was, “Mom wants to pitch in.”

(It was a ) Good day here. Your mom was making her resumé for a while in her office. She feels that she should be working. I didn’t want to dampen her hopes but we talked about being a volunteer which of course would be too much….

I got a kick out of it…for a moment. The image of my mother making her resumé – is cute, funny, sweet – make that, bittersweet. And now a part of me wants to know: did mom follow through, and what would be on it if she did? What would this 87-year-old woman (who is not always cognizant of her own age   [6]  ) list on her resumé?

 

 

My mother was the youngest of four daughters – her parents’ midlife, “oops” baby.    [7]

Like most women of her generation, my mother had little hope for independence as an adult and was, essentially, sentenced to life with her parents until/unless she married.

She moved with her mother and father to Santa Ana (CA) after her father retired from his job in Cass Lake (MN), an event which coincided with Mom’s high school graduation.

Mom enrolled in the local community college, got an A.A. degree, and managed to land a job with the Post Office.

I gathered from the stories she told me over the years that she loved her job. Although she still lived with her parents,   [8]  she was thrilled by the promise of even a modicum of independence that arose from earning her own money – she was saving up to buy her very own car; she really liked the styling on the Chevy Bel Aire! – even as she was less than thrilled (read: downright resentful) to be privy to the status and higher salaries of her fellow Post Office employees, all older than her and male, whom she described as slack-off, ineffectual, Civil-Service-for-life “geezers” whose jobs she felt she could do so much better (and sometimes did, but without credit) but would never be hired for or promoted to.

And then she got married.

She transferred her savings into the account of he-who-would-be-my-father, and their joint monies went for the deposit for their apartment, and a couple of years later, after my older sister was born, the down payment for their first house.

Oh, and she had to quit her one and only “real” job after she got married.

 

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds…but married women give ’em the willies.

 

What do you mean, you had to quit your job when you got married? Why?

No matter how many times I asked that question   [9]  I never received a satisfactory answer. This was because

(a) there can be no satisfactory answer to a rational question about an absurd situation;
(b) my mother, hardly the bastion of feminist consciousness and one of the least
introspective and politically conscious persons I’ve ever known,
didn’t understand the why herself.

When I’d press her, she’d say that she didn’t know if it was codified Post Office policy, but it was common knowledge that only single women were hired for such clerical work.  Her supervisor informed her, when she told him she was engaged, that she could remain at her position “until that time,” but that she’d have to quit her job when she got married.

 

It’s been 60 –  sixty!? – years since my mother had worked for pay. She worked nonetheless and of course for all those years, in a job of total dependency – a job which wasn’t even called a job, and for which there was little-to-no recognition outside that from the family which “employed” her.  She played by the rules; she heeded the porous platitudes from the male-worshipping culture which spawned, formed, defined and limited her: 

We won’t let you be a scientist   [10]   but you will have
the-most-important-job-in-the-world-as-wife-and-mother!

That same ManSociety neglected to mention that, lofty rhetoric aside, it placed little value in that “most important” of jobs, which by the way and don’t you worry your pretty little head about this  will leave you completely financially dependent upon your husband and without translatable, marketable experience and skills.

 


And now, ’tis 2016.  Seemingly apropos of nothing, a sweet, memory-addled, elderly widow-woman wants to update her resumé.  If she were physically and mentally able to seek employment, what would she be qualified to do?   [11]  

I won’t ask, in my next phone call with her, how her resumé is shaping up.  It would only confuse and upset her; she’ll have no memory that she mentioned her project to CG.  She will have forgotten; I can’t.  It’s gnawing at me, in a wistful way that makes me think about the last book Dr. Seuss never wrote: Oh, the Places You Could Have Gone.

I’d like to think that, if only for a moment, when my mother was thinking about writing her resumé she was reaching for the proverbial stars, and genuinely if only fleetingly thought she had a chance at applying for something important and exciting.  Astronaut camp counselor?  Postmaster general?  Chevrolet design engineer?  Hell’s bells, what good is a stalling memory if you can’t jump start it and take a joy ride every now and then?

 

1954 Chevrolet BelAire

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

*   *   *

May you never need a referral to the  Not All Men hotline;
May you reach for the proverbial stars when updating your life’s resumé;
May we all go bowling instead
( and ride to the bowling alley in 1954 Chevrolet BelAire! );
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] Lest you think me superior in my self-control, fact is there are rarely fling-worthy chairs in my vicinity.

[3] Would love to give attribution…but can’t find it.

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

[5] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[6] My mother suffers from a variety of age-related ailments, including memory impairments.

[7] And the fact that she knows the history of her “embarrassing” birth – that she was told by her parents that her “arrival” was an embarrassment to them – explains a lot, IMHO, about many aspects of her personality.

[8] Apartment complexes/landlords would not rent units to unmarried women.

[9] I stopped asking around the time when I was in high school, when, thanks to the Second Wave of Feminism, I “got it.”

[10] My mother’s high school physics teacher announced on the first day of class that he would not teach science to female students and fhe wanted them to leave the classroom. My mother’s mother intervened with the principal, and the teacher begrudgingly let the girls stay in his classroom but continued to slight them (including my mother, who would go on to be her class valedictorian). He never looked at them during his lectures and ignored their raised hands when he asked for questions…with one exception. He agreed to teach my mother’s best friend, Dorothy, because “It is obvious Dorothy will never marry,” and thus she’d need to be educated to support herself (Dorothy had been facially disfigured at birth by the inept, forceps-wielding doctor who delivered her).  This story was first told to me when I was taking physics in high school. I’d commented on something we’d learned in class, and my mother told me she’d never found physics very interesting. Imagine that.

[11] Please don’t say, Walmart greeter. Gawdammit, I heard ya.

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

The Resolutions I’m Still Not Making

January 2, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holidays, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Resolutions I’m Still Not Making

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

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

New Year’s Reflections   [2]

I’ve come full circle, and perhaps another 45 degrees, on the whole New Year’s Resolutions Thing ®.  As an adolescent I was intrigued by the idea of making New Year’s Resolutions – or at least I was the first time I heard an adult talking about it. Then in young adulthood   [3]   I thought, oh puhleeeease, what a crock. Whenever I was asked about my NYR‘s I’d reply that I had already, several years ago, made the only resolution I’d ever kept: to never make another NYR ( moiself’s  past failed resolutions included, “Be taller,” and “Do not engage in audible eye-rolling when someone mentions their detox cleanse.” ).

 

 

Now, I think NYR are a fine idea. Yeah, resolve to “do better,” however and whenever you can and whatever that entails for you.  Of course, you don’t have to wait for the start of a new year to do so, but after all, the world is full of arbitrary limits, guidelines and restrictions,    [4]    so what the heck.

Some of my resolutions for this year are more profound than others; all shall remain private, save for this seemingly hackneyed one which, if kept, has a good chance of turning out to be the most nourishing to body and psyche:   Have more fun.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of It is Too Early To Tell, But I Still Don’t Think It’s Working.

That  it’s would be my father’s family tradition to ring in the new year.

☼  Hoppin’ John Spicy Collards and Black-eyed Peas Scramble   [5]
☼  Green Chilie Corn bread

Yesterday moiself’s  New Year’s Day menu (listed above) once again included a dish featuring black-eyed peas. I have done this for…decades, I guess. I do this in honor of my father and his heritage: specifically, his family’s tradition of eating black-eyed peas, collards and cornbread on New Year’s Day – an act of culinary optimism which was supposed to bring good luck for the coming year.

 

 

Despite consuming black-eyed peas every New Year’s day, my father’s family remained dirt-poor sharecroppers.    [6]   Every year, as I bring whatever black-eyed pea dish I’m making to my family table, I can’t help but wonder: just once, did a brave soul in my father’s family– possibly his adored, spunky younger sister, Lucile – when presented with yet another bowl of black-eyed peas and the directive to, Eat up, y’all, it’ll bring us good luck in the coming year!, look around at the ramshackle farmhouse and her barefooted siblings  [7]  and mutter, “It still ain’t workin.’ “

*   *   *

Department Of A Thing I Have Just Now Learned
Sub-Department Of WTF Is Wrong With Me,   [8]  Adjacent
To The Department Of Starting The Year With A Clean Slate

Dateline: last weekend; listening to one of Fresh Air’s year -end shows, when they replay some of their favorites of the year’s interviews/shows. This one was on the making of the now-iconic Bruce Springsteen song, “Born to Run.”

At the point in the show when FA host Terry Gross quoted some of the song’s evocative lyrics, I snickered to moiself, “That’s so funny – has Terry misheard that line, all these years, or is she being censored?”

I decided to look up the lyrics, for gloating purposes…and…

* apparently, someone was mishearing the line, all these years;
*  apparently, that someone wasn’t Terry Gross;
* apparently, the line is indeed, as TG quoted,
“…baby this town rips the bones from your back,”
and not, as moiself  has been hearing,
“…baby this town rips the balls from your back…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of May The New Year Educate These Abominable Twits

On 12-28 Suzanne Mathis McQueen, my right-on-sister friend who is also an author, entrepreneur, and feminist inspirational leader,  [9]    posted a most concisely articulate takedown of the right’s miseducation and hysteria re immigration.  She was moved to do so in response to recent remarks made by Vice President J.D. “Jeering Doofus” Vance and top White House aide and racist policy formatter Stephen Miller – and oh please, ye deities who do not exist, ease the pain from having  Vice President accompany the name of such a festering turd of political, spiritual, and educational fraudulence….

Once again, I digress.

 


Veep J. D. “Judgmental Dickhead” Vance, speaking at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona on 12/21, hyped up the slavering crowd of religious and racial bigots attending the event by claiming that, thanks to the current administration’s war on DEI, “You don’t have to apologize for being White anymore.”  A few days later, top White House aide Stephen Miller, after chugging too much bootleg eggnog,    [10]   posted a batshit crazy anti-immigrant rant after watching a 1967 TV ( The Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas ), featuring two of the USA’s favorite entertainers at the time and – heads up Miller – both sons of first generation immigrant parents.

 

 

Really.  I can’t make up this shit.

Here is SMM’s post ( my emphases ).   The fact that those whom SMM addresses evidently lack the introspection and cognitive flexibility to consider (much less understand, or agree with) her lucid presentation in no way negates the observable truths she so forthrightly states. 

Dear JD Vance:
No one’s asking you to apologize for being white.
I’m asking you to apologize for being so appallingly stupid about being white. 

Dear Stephen Miller:
My guess is that you have zero percent indigenous (to this landmass) in you
– ya know, the folks who were on this continent for 23-30 THOUSAND years –
which includes the Mexicans.

Whenever your white family came to this land, from wherever they came, they did so to find a better life, which was no more than 400-ish years ago, or less.

Which means, like me, you are a descendant of immigrants.

And…if you came from these first immigrants, your family, as part of a societal group of immigrants, did not assimilate into the local culture. They took resources, were a burden on the local society, nearly wiped them all out, and cruelly forced them out of their lush homelands onto desolate land.

And if your family doesn’t come from these first immigrants, your immigrant family benefitted from what had been set up for them by the first ones.

Stephen, again, you come from immigrants.

Perhaps this is why you’re afraid of not-white people or other immigrants. Perhaps you’re afraid they’ll take back the land of their people, or not assimilate and instead conquer – physically or intellectually. Your fear lives steeped within your cellular memory of history – of not wanting the same to happen to you.

While we can’t change that history, humans are designed to grow and learn if they want to. We can create win-win immigration standards that serve, protect, and respect all.

Repeating history that caused harm is dangerously ignorant.

Repeating history that caused harm and claiming to love Jesus
all in the same philosophy, is blasphemous.

Jesus wasn’t a bigot.  End of story.  Let’s move on.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Maybe Next Year We’ll Tweak This Holiday Tradition

Background: Over the years several of moiself’s  Jewish friends, acquaintances and/or coworkers/co-travelers, who told me that they were convinced that I was Jewish but “didn’t know it,” recommended that I go out for Chinese food on Christmas day.  I decided that this was the year…so…where to go?  When MH and I moved to Hillsboro  [11]   we were profoundly disappointed in the quality of the Chinese eateries available.   [12]  Eventually we stopped asking for recommendations from friends and neighbors, so as to not have to disappoint them later when they asked for our reviews.  We’d moved up from the San Francisco Bay Area, and had taken for granted the plethora of outstanding Chinese restaurants (not, ahem, Chinese American restaurants ) available…and in our experiences/opinions, none of what Hillsboro (or even Portland) had to offer measured up to Jing Jing.   [13]

 

 

Dateline: Christmas Day, 12:20 pm; getting ready for our 12:30p lunch reservations; donning my Yule season sock and shoe (singular this year – only my right foot can accommodate festive hosiery as the other is in a surgical boot).

 

 

My phone beeps; friend JWW texts me her season’s greetings, which I return.

Moiself:
“And Merry Christmas to you!
MH and K and I are about to celebrate our inner Jew and
go have Chinese food for lunch.”

JWW:
“Great idea.  Where are you going to eat?”

Moiself:
” ( restaurant name redacted ).  Haven’t been there in years.”

JWW:
“American Chinese.  Let me know how it is.  I miss American Chinese.”

One hour later, at the restaurant waiting for the check, I let her know.

Moiself (texting) to JWW:

“You *miss* American Chinese?  Seriously?
I could make food just as bland and never leave home….
Actually, it’s pretty funny.
I ate all of my dish ( aptly described on the menu as tofu and vegetables with brown sauce, and although there was no discernible flavor, the sauce was indeed brown) because I was very hungry…
but this is some of the most boring food I have ever had.
I guess it’s a good sign when you’re at the type of restaurant where the server never bothers to ask you how things are, because then you don’t have to lie about the food, or say something like, “Well, it’s in my stomach….”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [14] 

 

 

One of the many things moiself  dares to hope that, in the new year, scientists like the late greats Rosalind Franklin and Jane Goodall will experience less of the “damage of gender harassment”  and The Matilda Effect   [15]     (note that I am not wishing for a complete elimination of the gender bias – I’m not that naïve).

*   *   *

May you decide what kind of difference you want to make;
May that difference be the “luck” you make for the New Year;
May you have good luck no matter what you ate on January 1;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] As in, from the beginning of my blog of seven years ago.

[3] I think that should encompass ages 20 – 56.

[4] e.g. you are no more capable of making discerning political choices the day before your 18th birthday than you are the day of your 18th birthday; still, you can’t register to vote when you are age 17 years 364 days….

[5] What made John hoppin’ was the addition of black-eyed peas.

[6] Make that, “tenant farmers,” as sharecroppers was considered a pejorative label.

[7] My father’s parents couldn’t afford shoes for all six of their children, so as the elder kids got shoes they handed them down to the younger siblings. You got to wear shoes if there were a pair that happened to fit you. My father went to his proverbial grave not knowing that my mother had shared the story, with my sisters and I, of how our dad was embarrassed as a child when he showed up barefoot at school and was teased by the townie kids, who called him a dumb barefoot farm boy.  And the shack house he was raised in literally had dirt floors in some of the rooms.

[8] Don’t answer that.

[9] As per her Wikipedia page, so there!

[10] Can you think of any other reason he made the connection?

[11] Thirty five years ago as of next month.  Yikes.

[12] And not just in Hillsboro, even in Portland.

[13] Which closed after 38 years of business – they got priced out of downtown Palo Alto.  DAMN.

[14] “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

[15] “Gender harassment…defined as disrespecting, demeaning, and deprecating women and their work, abilities, and accomplishments, simply because they are women…is by far the most prevalent form of sexual harassment in academic science…. (Rosalind) Franklin…is among history’s most prominent subjects of…the Matilda Effect: the practice of ascribing women’s accomplishments to men. An expert in x-ray crystallography, Franklin led the team that created what has been called ‘arguably the most important photo ever taken,’ the celebrated Photo 51, which revealed the helical structure of DNA.  When the structure was published in 1953, however, Franklin…was not among the authors. Her crucial contribution was mentioned cursorily at the end of the article as having ‘stimulated’ the authors, James Watson and Francis Crick…who, with their paper, gained priority as discoverers…. Comments from Watson and Crick reveal the gender harassment that Franklin endured in the lab. Throughout The Double Helix, Watson’s famous 1968 book recounting the race to the famous structure, Watson condescendingly refers to Franklin as ‘Rosy,’ a nickname never used to her face. ‘There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents,’ he writes, though neglecting to critique his male colleagues’ cosmetic or sartorial choices…. He adds that her ‘belligerent moods’ interfered with Wilkins’ ability to ‘maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA.’ For that reason, ‘[c]learly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person’s lab.’ In the 1993 book Nobel Prize Women in Science, Crick was quoted as saying, ‘I’m afraid we always used to adopt—let’s say, a patronizing attitude towards her.’ ”  ( Excerpts from ITAL Rosalind Franklin and the damage of gender harassment, by Beryl Lieff Benderly,  science.org 8-1-18 )

The British Church I’m Not Attending

December 26, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, exercise & fitness, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The British Church I’m Not Attending

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

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

 

*   *   *

Happy Boxing Day, y’all.

 

 

Chill, dude. Not that kind of boxing.

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

ARSE
CHURCH
→

 

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Thing To Be Happy About

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

Happy Twixmas, y’all.

 

 

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of Real Estate Obfuscate-Speak

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of News From The Recovery Front

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

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Working Your Brain During The Holiday Season

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] e.g. Canada, Australia.

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

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

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

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

[7] or maybe, partially due to?

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

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

The Literary Classic I’m Not Sanitizing

December 12, 2025

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

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

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Gender War, Schmender War

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

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

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

Specifically, Crazy Bicycle-Riding Man ® .

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

Really.

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

Sanitizing.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

[4] Was it really over twelve years ago?

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

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

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

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

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

[10] The word Dickens used for chapter.

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

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

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