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The Surgical Ordeal I’m Not Recounting

November 14, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, exercise & fitness, extended family, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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

 

Something along these lines.

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 


*   *   *

Department Of More Considerations

Recovering from surgery during the holiday season.

 

 

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Star Trek Moments When You Least Expect Them

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

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

 

 

*    *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

Be a verb; not a noun.

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

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

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

 You.  Can.  Do.  Other.  Things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 


*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.   [10]   Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] An appropriate container.

[10] And thanks for reading this tenth footnote.

The Home I’m Not Going Back To

October 10, 2025

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

Department Of You Can’t Go Home Again

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

*   *   *

Department Of The Morning After The Reunion Reflections

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

*   *   *

Department Of Priorities

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

 

 

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

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

Moiself:
“Robyn Parnell; Not A Doctor.”

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

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

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

 

*   *   *

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

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[8] Not to each other.

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

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

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

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

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

The Big D**k I’m Not Swinging

June 20, 2025

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Department Of Thoughts While Walking Around A Farmers’ Market

Dateline:  Last Sunday, with MH, Orenco Farmers’ Market; ~ 11:45a. Moiself  is noticing a long line for one of the market’s food carts.   We approach the cart to see what it is selling, then exchange knowing snickers.  As MH puts it,

“… it is so strange to see a long line for a place serving food
you’d have to pay me to eat.”

That particular cart specialized in biscuits and gravy/biscuits and sausage and gravy.  Even way back when moiself  was the occasional meat eater, I disdained the dish – confession: I find its appearance so repulsive I’ve never even tried it.

To the minority (I’m being optimistic) of y’all who claim to actually like biscuits and gravy:   [1]   that homey dish, which may remind you of family comfort food, has always looked to me to be the result of feeding sausage to Grandma’s dog which then vomits all over a plate of Grandma‘s biscuits.

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Thoughts, These Which Occurred To Moiself @ 5:57a
  On A Father’s Day Sunday Morning

Who “invented” shaving?

Shaving was, for centuries, an already well-established torture grooming option for men before the Roaring 20s and flapper fashions revealed that adult female humans also grow hair on their legs and armpits.  Seeing as how there are few things more frightening to patriarchy – and the “feminine” ideal it created –  than recognizing the natural, biological commonalities of male and female bodies, razors and depilatories became marketed to (read: mandated for) women.

 

 

But Who was the ambitious Phoenician dignitary (or other post-caveman ancestor) to figure out that you could take a blade or hone a stone or another sharp surface and scrape it along certain parts of a man’s skin, to remove the hair growing on the skin   [2]  without removing the skin itself?  And why did that Who think that that – selective body hair removal – would be a worthwhile activity for human men to pursue?

And why were Certain Parts ® chosen for hair removal, while others were left alone?  Shaving targets a man’s face – chin, cheeks, upper lip…not his eyebrows for some reason,   [3] –  but not the hair atop his head.  Why, in most cultures, do men shave their facial hair, but not their forearm or leg hair?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of You Had Me At “We Don’t Understand Yogurt”

Moiself  has no idea what this “We Don’t Understand Yogurt” quote is supposed to reference.  But I had it set for today’s blog, and so it shall stand. Let your imagination run wild.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Big Swinging Dicks

Not my terminology, but that used by the OceanGate     [4]    CEO and founder Stockton Rush ( I don’t know about big or swinging, but that’s a dick name if I ever heard one).  Rush used the BSD term to describe the cadre of egotistical entrepreneurs ( alaJeff Bezos and Elon Musk) which, he told several of his employees, he aspired to join.  No doubt Rush imagined that he would one day be the exemplar of the ITAL Big Swinging Dicks he admired.  And now he is….although not exactly in the way he’d hoped.

In June 2023 Rush, and four passengers who’d paid OceanGate $250,000 each to ride in an OceanGate submersible to see the wreck of the Titanic died when OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded about 90 minutes into its descent, instantly goo-ifying/squashing killing all five people on board.   [5]   Investigations into the disaster   [6]  revealed that warnings had been raised by experts inside and outside of the company, from deep sea explorers to engineers and former OceanGate employees, about Titan’s unique carbon fiber design not being suitable for Titanic-style depths   [7]  – a design which ignored over 60 years of submersible design research and which was described by one former OceanGate employee as an “abomination” and an “inevitable disaster.”

 

Titan submersible, before….

 

Dateline:  last Wednesday, 7:30 am.  Moiself  is watching the Netflix documentary Titan: The Ocean Gates Submersible Disaster.  I’m not sure why I chose it; its near the top of my you-may-find-this-interesting list, and was something to watch while on my morning elliptical workout.  As it began with the recap of the disaster, I wondered to moiself , Other than being appalled by the public resources used (read: money and equipment and manpower wasted) trying to rescue a bunch of privileged multimillionaires from their ill-advised, thrill-seeking adventure, am I really interested in this story?

The answer proved to be yes, yes, and yes.  The film’s documenting of the rise and fall of OceanGate and its CEO is Shakespearean in its themes of ego and hubris, power and ambition, inevitable fate and coveted glory.   

The submersible Titan was made of a material (carbon fiber) that no other submersible – either in Rush’s own company or other companies that produce submersibles – had used, a fact which, to moiself,  screams the question, IF  NO  ONE  ELSE IS  USING  THIS  MATERIAL  TO  GO  THAT  DEEP  IN  THE  OCEAN, MAYBE  THERE’S  A  REALLY  GOOD  REASON  WHY ?!?!?  When Rush was interviewed by a newscaster who raised this fact, Rush actually said, on camera, that once they got through testing the Titan the submersible would be  “ invulnerable.”  The newscaster quickly reminded Rush, “Isn’t that what they said about the Titanic?”

 

“Come home to mama, little Titan.”

 

If you were fictionalizing this story you couldn’t concoct a more classic, almost stereotypical, self-aggrandizing, bullying, grandiose, and ultimately ignorant elitist lead character, whose background of privilege and wealth and money and connections got him a Princeton University degree   [8]  and seed money for his projects.  During the US Coast Guard’s investigation of the disaster, one former OceanGate engineer testified under oath that he quit the company after he asked Rush what would happen if the Titan failed a neutral/third party inspection, and Rush replied that he would “buy myself a congressman.”

 

 

Moiself  found the documentary both fascinating and unnerving.  It reminded me of Werner Herzog’s acclaimed 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man.     [9]    In both films you see a narcissistic megalomaniac unraveling on screen – making rash choices and brazenly overconfident assumptions which lead to their (and other people’s) deaths.  In Stockton Rush’s case, in the end he would literally rather get in a sub that’s going to implode than admit failure (or do what he really needed to do – get some therapy).

Rush’s conceit and aspirational insecurities are vividly on display.  He’d sunk his company’s money and his ego and reputation on this new design that would show all the naysayers what a BSD he was.  He ignored everyone and everything he’d used to help him on the project – his engineers, the test results, even his own monitoring system.  The filmmakers obtained footage of one of Rush’s solo test dives on Titan, which Rush filmed. When the hull began cracking you could see, you could *feel,* his anxiety.  It was all over his face, and he didn’t do another dive for four months after that, until he…until he what?  Just said, WTF?!?!?  He ignored the evidence that the hull would break.  He couldn’t deal with the failure; he pushed his luck…and when that luck ultimately and inevitably ran out, he took other human beings with him.

BSD.  Big Swinging Dick, indeed, that’s what Rush finally was.  But not in the way he’d envisioned.

 

Titan submersible…after.

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Recent Bingo!  Moment

Dateline: last Tuesday, 8:02 am, walking on the beach at Manzanita, listening to a Fresh Air podcast about stand-up comic and American immigrant,  [10]  Atsuko Okatsuka.  Don’t you love it when someone else, at least for a moment, has thought your same thoughts and/or has experienced your same experiences, and comes up with a pithy way to describe it – a phrase or explanation that you can use, then blame it on/attribute it to someone else, if anyone finds the description unpleasant or insulting?

As a standup comic Okatsuka puts herself at the center of attention when she is working, and thus by definition, is “on stage.”  Still, in the interview she showed a unique understanding in answering certain questions or prescriptions often posed to writers, artists and other “creatives” by folks not in those fields, folks and who conflate an artist’s wanting to do the creative work with wanting fame and acclaim for that work:

“Why do you do *___*” or, Why don’t you do *____*?

 

 

My response (often unuttered) has always been on the tip of my snarky little tongue when, over the years, people who’ve judged me amusing and/or clever felt the need to give me unsolicited career advice.  This advice, always phrased in ways to seem complimentary, comes out as some version of

* You should be (should’ve been) a stand-up comic!
*  You should be (should’ve been) an actor, or someone on stage!

Fact is, if or when y’all would truly pay attention and/or look beneath the surface (as did some editors and publishers, who were less than pleased with the results), you would surmise that although I’m one of the more genial people you will meet and am generally fine in one-on-one and very small group situations,  being “on stage“ (or even the idea of it) is something I truly abhor.

 

Yeah, kinda like this.

 

Translation: book fairs, book signings, author readings and appearances – while highly (and often desperately) sought by aspiring/newbie writers, and (usually) highly appreciated or desired by other, established authors –  were anathema to me.  And I’m fine with that.

Thus, my answer to the Why did you never pursue being a stand-up comic/more public speaking/presentation opportunities to sign books and bask in attention and acclaim…?”   [11]   question:

“Because I don’t have this hole in my heart that I have to fill
with the validation of strangers.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

(Reason # 68). I’m angry that when people run for political office in the Unites States, it’s considered legitimate to grill them about their employment background, their positions on legislation, their positions on social issues, the taxes they’ve paid, even their sexual history… but, it’s considered invasive and intolerant to ask if they believe in talking snakes, demonic possession, magic underwear, magic crackers that turn into the flesh of their god, an earth that was created 6,000 years ago, or a god who put himself on Earth in human form and then sacrificed himself to himself to atone for sins that other people committed and to save humanity from the punishment he himself was planning to dole out.
If someone is going to make decisions about science funding, emerging medical technology, our educational system, and so on… I think it matters if they believe any of that shit, and I bloody well want to know.

( excerpt, Greta Christina’s informative, entertaining, passionately logical, both ferocious and calm, scathing and compassionate analysis of religion, Why Are You Atheists So Angry: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless  )

 

*   *   *

May your life be free from BSD’s;
May your comfort food never look as though it’s been regurgitated;
May you, for whatever reasons, understand yogurt;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] And if this is you, you have my sympathy.

[2] Or so they thought, primitive humans not understanding how hair follicles function.

[3] Except for the occasional unibrow correction.

[4] OceanGate Inc. was a privately-owned company, co-founded by Stockton Rush, based in Washington state’s Puget Sound.  OceanGate manufactured and provided crewed submersibles for tourism, research, and exploration. It ceased operations after the Titan disaster.

[5] The five were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush (who piloted the submersible), British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.

[6] From the US Coast Guard, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, even the US Department of Justice (which was concerned about the company’s financial practices).

[7] The wreck of the Titanic lies some 12,500 feet below the ocean’s surface.

[8] Even though his grades – the documentary shows his Princeton report cards – were hardly Ivy League bragging material (they ranged from B – to D’s and even Fs). 

[9] Focuses on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, a self-proclaimed grizzley bear “expert,” who descends into grandiosity and manic delusion in his quest to “save the bear” and also get himself attention and jump-start his aspiring actor career.  Among Treadwell’s many peculiarities included him faking an Australian accent (he told some people he was from Australia; he was from New York state) or telling people that he was a British orphan (both of his parents survived him).  Moiself  highly recommends you watch this movie…but only once.

[10] technically an “illegal alien” – as a child she was brought to the US from Japan, without proper papers, by her grandmother.

[11] Translation:  I was the worst self-promoter, ever.

[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 Nice Guy Ex-President I’m Not Idolizing

June 6, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, school, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Nice Guy Ex-President I’m Not Idolizing

Department Of Has It Been Long Enough?

It’s been almost six months since the death of Jimmy Carter, the #39 US President.  Carter served in the tumultuous, smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-1979 Energy Crisis,    [1]  post-Watergate years of 1977 – 1981

Yeah, Watergate.  Not even gonna attempt a summary, except to say to those readers too young to remember it, that I never thought I’d miss having a president who goes on national television to defend himself thusly:  “…people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.”   Contrast that with the Current Occupant who has raised crookery to an art form, and who doesn’t give an orange-toupeed rat’s ass if anyone or everyone knows about it.

Ah, but, once again, moiself  digresses.

“We told the truth, obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.”
( Walter Mondale, vice president, summing up the Carter presidency, as quoted in
“Jimmy Carter: Watergate’s final victim,” HNN 12-22-19  )

 

1976 carter-mondale campaign poster

 

After Carter’s death in December (2024), the usual pros and cons of Carter’s public life were listed and discussed by pundits and historians.  Pros including Carter

*brokering the 1978 The Camp David Accords (signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin);

* championing diversity in the justice system by pointing out judicial inequities in representation and appointing more minority judges to the federal judiciary than all previous presidents combined;

* working with human rights organizations and engaging with foreign governments to free political prisoners in countries around the world  [2] 

* shifting US foreign policy to build diplomatic relationships with African nations (his 1978 visit to Liberia and Nigeria were the ITAL first ever state visits of a US president to sub-Saharan Africa.  

But during Carter’s term the country struggled with a new-to-most-folks-in-the-Western-world neologism:  stagflation   [3]   – which was aggravated by the afore-mentioned oil crisis – then the Iran hostage crisis.

Carter was an ethical breath of fresh air after the dishonesty and criminality of Nixon and his henchmen.  Still, critics noted that his much acclaimed “outsider’ status made him ineffective when it came to working with the politics-as-usual members of Congress, many of whom resented what they saw as his “above-it-all” (read: holier than thou) presentation of his political self.

“… James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter came out of nowhere to capture the Democratic nomination for president, eventually winning the presidential election…. Carter’s ‘I’ll never lie to you’ pledge resonated with voters disgusted with the corruption of the Nixon administration….

Jimmy Carter…was an unlikely president who served in difficult times….Being an ‘outsider,’ not part of the Washington D.C. political establishment, was a great asset in the everything-inside-the-beltway-is-corrupt estimation of the public. But what helped him get elected came back to haunt Carter as his inexperience with beltway politics was, in part, his undoing….

As president, Carter attempted to de-pomp the imperial presidency that had blossomed under Nixon. Downsizing the presidency seemed a good idea at the time, but world events conspired to demand a stronger, more in-charge president. Post-Watergate, the public was in a president-bashing mood, and Congress began to flex its muscles, leaving the presidency weaker and more vulnerable than at any time in the previous two generations. Governing in the best of times is difficult enough, but governing in an ‘Age of Cynicism’ and declining trust was all but impossible.”

( excerpts, “The Outsider President,” LMU Magazine, January 2025 )

 

The first former peanut farmer president.

 

Carter is often referred to as “the most successful ex-president,” if by successful you mean someone who tries to do good in the word.  Many of Carter’s predecessors (also and especially his  successor, Reagan) leveraged the ex-president card as a way to make millions in post-presidential speaking gigs.  But Carter used whatever cache he had to establish, fund, and promote NGOs that worked on a variety of national and international human rights causes, from  affordable housing (Habitat for Humanity) to nonpartisan and collaborative conflict resolution, monitoring of elections, and parasitic and infectious disease ratification (The Carter Center).

 

 

Waging peace.  Moiself  loves it, and admires the work Carter  [4]  engaged in post-presidency.  And what a legacy!  here’s just one example: thanks to Carter’s decades-long advocacy, Dracunculiasis, the crippling parasitic affliction aka Guinea-worm disease, is on the brink of being eradicated.   [5]

As much as I admire Carter’s humanitarian work, when I heard all the rush-to-praise that accompanied his death – which accompanies the death of any former leader – I found moiself  biting my tongue about a few of my less-than-charitable-so-close-to-his-demise  critiques of some of his methods.

I admired Carter, but do not idolize him (or anyone); thus, it’s not a feet of clay thing.

 

Nope, not like this at all.

 

’Tis uncomfortable to pick nits about someone who did a crap-ton of good work (and who had cancer).  But equal opportunity picker, that’s moiself.  And when I ran across this several months back – it was not new, but new to me – those nits just begged to be picked, or at least nudged.

“Former U.S. President Carter said on Sunday he believes ‘Jesus would approve of gay marriage.’

“I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,’ Carter, who describes himself as a born-again Christian, told HuffPost Live…..

(Carter) spoke at length in the HuffPost Live video about how his faith has informed his politics. He is promoting his new book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. ”

( excerpts, “Jimmy Carter Says Jesus Would Approve of Gay marriage,”
The Huffington Post )

To repeat: I greatly admire the humanitarian work of former President Jimmy Carter. More ex-presidents would do well to follow his example of using his influence and connections to advance human rights and eschew temptation to pursue lucrative speaking opportunities (yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, George W. Bush). Just as I would pooh-poo a wingnut claiming to speak for what their god would or would not do, sorry, Jimmy, if you use the same tactics you get the same reaction. Doesn’t matter if I approve the message – the idea that anyone thinks that what their deity would or would not approve of should influence civil rights is antithetical to a rational, secular government.

Carter used the same methods – the appeal to what their deity *really* wants or intends;  [1] the selecting citing of scriptures to support their position – that his opponents used to refute his claims.   I recall him doing that several times, regarding several human rights issues, over the course of his post-presidency public life.  For example, while I’m glad he supported women’s rights I cringed when he cited his faith for justification.   [2]

Now, y’all keep in mind that moiself, as a Freethinker-atheist-Bright-Secular humanist, don’t believe in any of these deities I’m about to use in a For The  Sake Of Argument®  example:

Moiself  has to insist that, in fairness, regarding your support for or claims about the political/human issues I might happen to agree with (as in, your positions on social or other issues):   you must appeal to evidence and reason, and not your opinion of some silent deities’ likely take on the issue.  I insist on the same standards from those whose positions you oppose.

An actual comment moiself  read on FB, regarding a human rights issue ( think LGBTQ rights, immigration reform, women’s bodily autonomy….):

“Any true Christian who understands the life of Jesus
would believe this as well.”

You could put this on any side, of any argument, citing any religion, in the form of a Mad Libs®  Doctrine of applying faith to politics:

* any true ___
(Christian; Muslim: Jew; Hindu; Prosperity Gospel believer)
who reads and understands the ___ _______
( life of Jesus, words of Mohammed, Torah, Bhagavat Gita; Wall Street Journal )
would ______
(believe this as well; believe as I do; feel the same way )
about _____
( insert whatever cause).

While I’m usually glad when liberal religious believers support causes of social justice, I cringe to see them use same tactics/justifications as their conservative counterparts; that is, extrapolating what a “just god” thinks about  Issue X.

Support your causes – fight the good fights based on reason, justice, human rights and realities, utility of existence – not by citing the unprovable notions of an illusory, or fickle at best (given the causes attributed to said deity for a millennium) deity:

* god made separate “races” and segregation – just look at these verses….;

* our god made us equal and supports civil rights – just look at these verses….;

Your arguments and advocacies should stand on their own evidence, and on their own intellectual, physical, and scientific merits, and not on the fluctuating, consistently-behind-the-times, illusory precepts of theology.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [8] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

 

*   *   *

May you not need justifications for treating people kindly;
May you never support your opinions with Mad Libs theology;
May we all be wagers of peace;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Aka (in the USA) as The Oil Crisis, a drop in oil production after the 1978 Iranian revolution, which led to speculation and hoarding and not nearly enough self-examination re our dependency on non-renewable energy sources.

[2] After he left office, Carter continued to work on freeing political prisoners through The Carter Center.

[3] rising inflation paired with a high unemployment rate and sluggish economic growth.

[4] and his fellow activist and humanitarian and the love of his life, his wife, the late Rosalyn Carter.

[5] Which would make it only the second disease in human history, after smallpox, to be eradicated.

[6] Only in this case he didn’t, because there aren’t any Christian scriptures which support – or oppose – gay marriage.  Not matter the translation, the words gay and homosexual do not appear in those ancient texts.  In those times what later folks termed “homosexual acts”  were considered to be just that – acts – and not an outward expression of a sexual orientation, the concept of which didn’t even exist until the late 1800s.

[7] Just as his opponents cited their faith as to, for example, why women shouldn’t be ordained in their churches.

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

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

[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 Plans I’m Not 86-ing

May 23, 2025

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), movies, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, theatre, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of Taking A Break For Art

Is it art? Or is it engineering?
Either way, I will appreciate it while I can,
until the next high tide brings its own critique.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Making A Java Junkie’s Day

Or, morning at least…

Dateline Tuesday; Manzanita (Oregon), 7:35 AM-ish;  walking past Manzanita Coffee Co. A car pulls over driver stays with it as a passenger gets out color.  I saw her reading the sign on the door which listed the shop hours – closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays  [1]   – and her countenance fell, in the way that only other coffee addicts (which I think of to moiself  as, Coff-Dicts, which is too easy to mistake for Coff-*dicks, so perhaps another nickname I should create?) can understand.

Coffee Seeking Woman turned around and looked plaintively at the driver in the car.  Without breaking my stride I approached CSW, waved hello and pointed up the street, and said, “Manzanita News and Espresso is open.”  The beam in her eyes nearly outshone her profusion of gratitude: “Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you!“

 

*   *   *

Department Of She Sells Seashells By The Seashore…Oops

I allude to the recent kerfuffle   [2]    about former FBI director James Comey, whose sharing of a social media post (a picture of the numbers 86 and 47 formed by an arrangement of seashells that he and his wife saw while at a beach) caused an uproar:

“We stood over it and I said, ‘I think it’s some kind of political message.’ She said, ‘86, when I was a server it meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients,’ Comey said. ‘To me, as a kid, it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.’

“47″ was also understood to represent Trump’s current term as 47th president of the United States.

Comey added that it was his wife’s idea to post a photo of the message, a decision that sent Trump’s White House allies into a frenzy.

“She said, ‘You should take a picture of that,’ Comey said. ‘And I did, I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it.’

Many within Trump’s orbit interpreted the “86” as a threat to the president—with some even suggesting that it was a call for his assassination.

Comey strenuously denied these claims, and said he is “not afraid” of the Trump administration’s retribution. ”

( Excerpts, “James Comey Blames His Wife for Cryptic Post That Set MAGA Off,”
The Daily Beast, 5-20-25 )

 

 

I hadn’t heard the term *86* in some time.  Like Comey, I grew up with the idea that it meant to ditch, quash, or get rid of something (e.g., “At the cafe we 86’d our plans to go to the movies after dinner.” ).  I also sympathize with the *nasty* possible meaning behind the two numbers together, although I try to restrain such thoughts.  I keep hoping that #47 will die of natural causes…until I remember what we’re dealing with and remind moiself , Oh yeah, there’s nothing about that man that’s natural….

 

“If you weren’t an atheist I’d smite him for you.”

*   *   *

Department Of The New Podcast I’m Not Listening To

That would be Proxy with Yowei Shaw.  Shaw is a former host of the podcast Invisibilia, which is in my podcast feed.  I enjoy Invisibilia’s use of narrative storytelling to report scientific issues, so I decided to give Proxy a listen when a sample episode of the podcast showed up in my podcast feed.

A description from Proxy’s NPR link:

“ Proxy investigates niche emotional conundrums through conversations with
strangers who have relevant experience.”

The host describes herself as an “emotional investigative journalist.”  Okay; I’ll give it a go.  The sample episode (original airdate 4-22-25) in my feed was titled “Bisexual Wife Guy.”  Preview on the site (which I did not have access to when I began listening to it):

“The case of the bisexual wife guy who got dumped. In this episode, we find a proxy
to stand in for a listener’s ex – another queer woman who left her straight relationship….”

So, the podcast host is talking with “George,”    [3]  (the bisexual-wife-guy-who-got-dumped).  The episode opens with Shaw giving a few specifics about the case, then speaking with George, who says about his decade-plus relationship ending in divorce:

“…it gets really complicated and kind of pricky to talk about, but bottom line, two years ago my partner said, ‘Hey I think I’m bisexual.’….
ultimately, the elephant in the room is…‘Hey, actually, I’m queer and I’m not interested in being with a cis dude anymore.’ “

Then Shaw reads from an email supposedly written by George (which led to her inviting him on the show):

“I’ve not found any support groups or the like for people in my situation, and I’m not saying that should be the priority either.  I just want to better understand in what ways I’ve been perpetuating a system that oppresses LGBTQ people and how I can grow and be better in the future, and ultimately be a human who loves everyone, including myself.”

 

 

I was turned off immediately – which is why I included the modifier supposedly written by George from the email Shaw read.  My gut reaction was, What am I hearing – a pamphlet?  Where are the emotions, motivations, and sincere responses of an actual person?  At first (and second and third and fourth…) listen I thought it might’ve been AI-generated.

Moiself  did listen a bit more, but could not sustain an interest in the podcast episode after the initial setup of some guy claiming he “just wants to understand …” followed by what sounds like phrases he’d get from a cis-dude-reeducation camp.  Where is the anguish, the anger, the despair, of being dumped, out of the blue, by the partner you loved, for whatever reason?

It’s not fair to write something off so soon; I know this on an abstract, intellectual level.  But, in the here and now, I barely have time to keep up with the podcasts moiself  already subscribes to.  Although getting through the backlog is quicker than it used to be, what with my post-election policy of deleting episodes with such angst -inducing titles and/or subject matter descriptions as,

* How Our Democracy Is Going Down The Toilet;

* Fear and Fascism: How America Reached a Political Breaking Point;  [4]

* The Rise Of American Nazism;

*Why The USA’s (Former) Allies Now Despise Us…

I figure moiself’s  incapacitation from a bleeding ulcer is not going to help the cause.

 

 

*  *   *

Department Of One Of My Favorites Ethical Dilemmas…

Favorite because, unlike so many dilemmas, there are more than two or three or five sides to this issue, and no one compelling, *it MUST be this* answer….  Thus, it’s fun (and revealing) to discuss it with others.

This is from a podcast moiself  *is* listening to.    No Stupid Questions, which ended last year, has been replaying some of their favorite episodes.  NSQ’s  Should We Separate The Art From The Artist? episode, hosted by Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner, is as relevant as it was when it first ran (9-27-20).  Certainly, a consensus on the question has not been reached.    [5]

Moiself  tends to think of the question as an octopus-ical ethical dilemma, in that it has multiple tentacles of interpretation and application.

Do you have the right (or the obligation) to separate the art from the artist?

 

 

DUCKWORTH:
“Did you know that the Rhodes Scholarship was founded on blood money?”

DUBNER:
“Did you know that *everything* was founded on blood money,
if you go back far enough?”

“Today on the show: In the era of cancel culture, should we still be able to enjoy the art of
problematic artists?”   (excerpt from NSQ episode transcript )

Re historically great works produced by artists  [6]  whom we later discovered led ethically sketchy (or downright reprehensible) lives:  I am comfortable with people making their own decisions as to whether they will honor/enjoy or boycott the work of such artists.  This holds true (for moiself ) even if such artists’ work would be judged today as subtly or even openly promoting racism, imperialism, sexism, classism, nihilism, poor dental hygiene….

The past is…wait for the Zen-like profundity…the past.  That was then; this is now.  I’m not convinced of the value of spending time, money and emotional energy judging the centuries-dead by their descendants’ twenty-first century values.

That said, if you think you should never again read any book by Charles Dickens because you learned that the man who wrote so eloquently about the plight of the poor and downtrodden in Victorian England was a SOB to his own family, then…don’t.  Let that conviction float your boat, but don’t try to sell moiself  on the notion that I cannot be A Good Person ® if I enjoy re-reading A Christmas Carol during the yuletide season.

When it comes to the art of the present, I am more comfortable drawing harder lines. Some hip-hopper rapping about what he’s going to do to his bitches and hos – nope, sorry, he’s not getting any of my business.   [7]

Harry Sanborn:
“Hey, some people see rap as poetry.”

Erica Barry:
“Yeah, but c’mon, how many words can you rhyme with bitch?”

 

 

Doobie-drenched rapper Snoop Dogg is now more known for his commercial ventures – e.g., , his unlikely friendship with Martha Stewart and his amusing gig as the USA’s Olympic Games ultimate fan – than for his rap career of decades ago.   And he refuses to disavow his earlier work for its sexism and misogyny and violent imagery – he says that the existence of such in his lyrics is evidence of how much he’s changed and grown.

I’ve no idea whether Mr. Dogg is truly repent-ive, or just cannily re-inventive.  Since he doesn’t seem to run from the controversy, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Even if I were not so inclined, it’s not as if moiself  boycotting misogynistic and homophobic hip-hop songs would have any influence whatsoever.

 

 

Something closer to my intellectual and artistic home is the work of a comedian, writer and filmmaker whose books and movies I read and watched…until I didn’t.

I enjoyed much of Woody Allen’s work in the past, but there were always aspects about his movies that bothered me – recurrent themes and scenes (which were pooh-poohed by two boyfriends of mine, when I brought it up) which came to a stunning, forehead-slapping, AHA moment when Allen’s abuse of his biological daughter and his affair with his de facto stepdaughter were revealed. It was a no brainer – no more, for me.

But…damn.

There was – is – so much I loved about the movie Hannah And Her Sisters, including the fact that when I saw it in the theater  [8]   for the first time  the entire audience gasped – in astonishment, appreciation, and approval – as Allen’s character found love and unexpected joy, with a woman who was his equal on many levels (age, artistic talent, neuroticism…). It’s one of my favorite movie endings ever, and it used to be one of my favorite movies. And occasionally, I do want to watch it, again…. [9]

 

 

Many years ago a high school friend confessed to me ( as in, “Don’t tell anybody, but….”) that he liked the Frito-Lay commercials featuring the cartoon mascot, The Frito Bandito, despite having had many of his fellow Chicanos lecture him as to why he shouldn’t.  They warned him: if he said anything positive about the bandidto, or any other representation of Latino culture that could be seen as (read: that those self-appointed gatekeepers had interpreted as ) racist, or promoting ethnic stereotypes, that meant he was a coconut.   [10]

 

 

I’ll leave it to my Jewish friends to decide for themselves whether or not to listen to Ride of the Valkyries (or any works of the German composer Wagner ), or whether or not to enjoy or boycott the entire bibliography of William Shakespeare because among the works of that brilliant poet and playwright is the widely (but not exclusively) held as antisemitic play, The Merchant of Venice.

My feminist sisters are welcome to listen and even sing along to last century’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside,“ despite the fact that when I listen to it with contemporary ears, there’s no way around it, that holiday classic is…uh…kinda rapey.  But there are bigger feminist fish to fry, and many people listen to that song because it reminds them of their grandparents’ generation. Now, were a contemporary singer to record a holiday tune about a man insistently inviting (pressuring?) his reluctant date to spend the night with him, to the point of intimating that he was spiking her drink? Yep, that would raise my cancellation hackles.

 

 

John Lennon created some of my favorite music on the planet.  Lennon was also – by many accounts of those who loved and admired him – prone to bouts of jealous, narcissistic, violent rages (primarily expressed emotionally, but also physically).  Knowing this about him, can I still enjoy his great body of work, during and after The Beatles? The same musician who wrote the spiteful, Run For Your Life –  with lyrics ( “Well I’d rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man…” ) I recognized as creepy/controlling/stalker-y even when I was a third-grader –   later wrote the beautiful/haunting/yearning/evocative songs In My Life, Imagine, Across The Universe….

If moiself  demanded total ethical and human rights purity from people working in any art form, I could never again watch any movie or TV show, listen to a song, appreciate live theater, or read a book, because until these art forms have all been taken over/supplanted by AI, they will continue to be produced by flawed human beings. It’s a line I think all people with EQs and IQs greater than their shoe size should endeavor to carefully discern and not write in stone.

Yes, that means constant…vigilance, or maybe, mindfulness?  Or maybe just the simple dictum of paying attention to what, by your patronage, you implicitly or explicitly support.

DUBNER:
“…it’s the slippery-slope argument….a philosopher named Janna Thompson….

made an argument against cancel culture: ‘If the character of the artist becomes a criterion for judging art, then the door is open to the exclusion of artists because they belong to a despised group, or because they’ve said or done things that many people do not like.’ So, going back to the Nazis — because all roads seem to lead to the Nazis today — that’s what the labeling of ‘degenerate art’ was all about. Some of it was based on aesthetic principles, but it was also based on the ethnicity or politics of the artists who created it. So, do you want that too?”

…I will make one last argument against canceling, just generally. Let’s go back to politics for a second. So, one thing I personally find suboptimal about the American two-party duopoly is that it essentially forces people to go all in on either the red team or the blue team. If you want to be blue, you’ve gotta be all blue. If you want to be red, you gotta be all red.” 

DUCKWORTH:
“No purple.”

DUBNER:
“No mixing and matching of policy—”

DUCKWORTH:
“No plaid.” 

DUBNER:
“…Yeah. No plaid….

that’s the kind of doctrinaire cancelation that, in my view, harms the political process more than anything. This deep, deep, deep self-siloing. So I would say that, yes, we probably should learn to separate the politician from the policy and the art from the artist. I would take it as a sign of maturity, a sign of thoughtfulness and consideration. And I’m in favor of all of those things, for the record.”

( transcript excerpts my emphases, Should we separate the art from the artist?
NSQ Episode 20 )

 

What if you’re self-siloing, but in a purple silo?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“What is wanted is not the will to believe but the will to find out,
which is the exact opposite.”

( Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970, British pro-pacifism anti-religion philosopher, logician, mathematician, politician, author. )

*   *   *

May we all, when it comes to politics and art, learn to accept the purple;
May we see art in engineering and engineering in art;
May we express ourselves in ways that do make us not sound lik
AI-produced pamphlets;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] This is often the case with coastal businesses.  They are open on the weekends and on Mondays (for the spillover tourist business), but closed Tues & Wed.

[2] What a great word.  I’d like to think it’s Irish in origin.  Let’s all strive to use it in a sentence today, shall we, class?

[3] The usual disclaimer:  not his real name.

[4] Actual title of this Institute For New Economic Thinking podcast.

[5] I’ve blogged about it in the past, and doing so surprisingly (to no one) did not settle the matter.

[6] painters; composers; authors; playwrights…

[7] An I’m sure he’s losing sleep over that.  Middle aged white ladies don’t like my shit – I’d better change.

[8] an “arty” cinema in Palo Alto, where everyone in the audience gave off the vibe of being familiar with all of Allen’s movies

[9] If there’s some way to do so without funneling any money to Allen, I mean, not even a 5₵ cent royalty.

[10]  Pejorative for a Mexican-American who by not conforming to ethnic stereotypes was also somehow seen as ashamed of their heritage: “brown on the outside, white on the inside.“

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

The Waste I’m Not Disposing Of

February 21, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Department Of Lost In Translation

“Thank you for helping us protect the habitats and wildlife of Connemara National Park. When you enjoy responsible outdoor recreation here, you help us preserve the Connemara wilderness and everything that makes it unique.”
(Intro to the Protect Nature/Useful Tips page
of the Connemara National Park’s website

Certainly, the Irish have a unique way of seeing the world.  Despite knowing this, while starting to research visiting Ireland’s Connemara National Park moiself  did a double take when I came upon this symbol on the park’s website, under the heading of “dispose of waste properly.”  It was only after I read the accompanying blurb that I realized it was referring to garbage and litter, rather than…uh…human…waste.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Never Get Old   [1]

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Blast From The Past
Sub-Department Of Genius, Schmenius

Perhaps I’ve told this story before;  perhaps I’ll tell it again someday.

Dateline:

 

…more like 26-ish years ago.  This memory prompt happened earlier this week, when  I drove past the turn off road that led to our offspring’s favorite preschool/day care ( the owner/teacher called it, “Kids in the Country”), which was on a farm in southwest Hillsboro.  I remembereded how enchanted I was when, one day after I picked up son K from KITC, we spent the ride home with him telling me about the life cycle of an aphid ( KITC’s  project that week had been getting the kids to look intently at plants growing in the field, and learning about the insects that lived – either symbiotically or parasitically – on and around the plants ).  Stories like that from K were plentiful; the KITC kids  spent a lot of time playing and observing “nature” in the fields surrounding the house.

One afternoon when I’d picked him up from KITC, K was unusually – as in, completely – quiet.  I glanced at him occasionally via the rear-view mirror; he seemed to be mulling over something.  Eventually, apropos of nothing, he spoke up.

K:
“Mom?”

Moiself:
Yes?”

K:
“Ball  and tall  rhyme, but  ball  and  boy  illiterate.”

Moiself:
“That’s correct.”

Moiself  was gob-smacked; my heart swelled with parental pride ( read: hubris ) as I thought, He’s not yet five years old, yet K knows the difference between rhyme and alliteration!  I’m raising a effin’ genius.

Before my brain completed the thought, Belle, strapped in her car seat next to K, said something which annoyed him.  He turned to face his younger sister and spouted:

“Poo-poo stinky baby butt face!”

 Mission control to Robyn; please return to earth.

OK, that’s more like it.

 

Sure, and every kid gets a trophy.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Random Thoughts About Random Chance

But first, a recommendation for a podcast listen:

“ ‘ Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’
It’s been 45 years since John Lennon sang that line, yet it’s an idea that continues to speak to an uncomfortable truth. While we all like to think we have some measure of control over how our lives will unfold, our plans are often upended by unknown events and curveballs we couldn’t have predicted. This week, we conclude our Wellness 2.0 series by talking with political scientist Brian Klaas. He studies how we respond to the random events that shape our lives….”
( excerpts from the introduction/ description of
“Wellness 2.0: The Art Of The Unknown”Hidden Brain podcast, 1-27-25 ).

I’ve often thought that the study of random chance and luck –  or just the acknowledgment of their existence – might reduce human hubris in the world.   [2]   In some religious traditions and theologies, it’s almost heresy to speak of randomness events as having significant consequences in peoples’ lives, because the acknowledgement of that truth poses a problem for the quasi-spirituality of Everything happens for a reason – a daft phrase which sugar coats a difficult truth (“I don’t know why that happened/Hey, shit happens”).

Many people, and almost all religious worldviews, do not respond well to randomness.  This is because the certitude with which they promote themselves/their theologies (“we/our god/the great spirit of the cosmos has all the answers and is in control, don’t you worry”) erodes in the face of the admission of unpredictability.  New Age, woo-woo spiritualities have this problem as well.

Personally, moiself  thinks the next person who offers me Everything happens for a reason  as a response to and/or an explanation for human tragedy should be pelted by moiself  with chains of spiky, healing crystals.  Then, when the Everything happens for a reason numbskull asks, WTF is up?!?, I will respond with something along the lines of, “Well, it’s like you said: Everything happens for a reason, and since this thing is happening to you, it is happening  for a reason…and I must have a pretty good reason to want to shove this rainbow moonstone   [3]    up your ass.”

 

More on this next week.

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of Lost In Translation, The Pathetic Sequel

“Pope Francis sharply criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in an unusual open letter to America’s Catholic bishops…, saying criminalising migrants and taking measures built on force ‘will end badly.’.
The pope, who last month called Trump’s plan to deport millions of migrants a ‘disgrace,’ said it was wrong to assume that all undocumented immigrants were criminals.
‘I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church … not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,’ said the pontiff….
‘What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly,’ he said.
In Tuesday’s letter, Francis also appeared to respond indirectly to Vice President JD Vance’s defence of the deportations.
Vance, a Catholic, defended the crackdown in a January social media post by referring to an early Catholic theological concept known as the ‘ordo amoris,’ or ‘order of love,’ to suggest that Catholics must give priority to non-immigrants.
The pope said: ‘The true ‘ordo amoris’ that must be promoted (is) … by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.’ “

( “Pope Francis tells US bishops Trump’s immigration policy ‘will end badly’,”
Reuters, 2-11-25 )

 

 

It was inevitable.  Catholic convert and he-who-puts-the-Vice-in-Vice-President, JD Lance – if for no other reason than to counter criticism of his principles after he was compassion and theology-shamed by his pope – was gonna have to speak about love.

But Vance’s version of love, like that of the love often spoken of/taught by patriarchal religions, is hierarchal.

Just as there is a conservative Christian hierarchy of family – god, husband, wife, children – there is also in that worldview a hierarchy, a prioritization, of love. First you love  here, then you love  there; first, you love this, your god, and *then* you can love your family, and then you can love your neighbor, and then you can love your… As a circle widens you can finally drop the possessive – “your” –  and, assuming there’s some leftovers, try to love those people who have little or no personal relationship to you.

In this politically conservative-informed theology, you love your deity first, then “you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world” as Vance told a Fox News interviewer.

Y’all who subscribe to (or used to, or don’t any more but still have some admiration for) Jesus’s all inclusive, the-well-never-runs-dry  teachings about love, might be interested in the Gospel of Vance, in which Jesus’ lessons from scripture translates thusly:

America First.

I know; a link to a Fox News interview with JD Vance.  Ick.  I had to do an industrial strength sanitization to my eyes and the ears after listening to the clip, and then my fingers and keyboards after providing the link:

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [4]

 “Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture.
Reasonable – that is, human – men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.”
(  Alan Watts, The Way Of Zen )

 

 

*   *   *

May you cherish the memory of when you understood
the difference between rhyme and alliteration;
May you acknowledge Random Chance and her sister, Luck;
May you see the life that happens while you’re making other plans;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] At least, to ever-youthful moiself.  Welcome to yet another new feature of the new year, which may continue on the third Friday of each month.  Or…not.

[2] Particularly that of the “I Pulled Myself Up By My Own Bootstraps” variety.

[3] “Rainbow Moonstone – Infused with feminine energy, this stone promotes the wisdom to accept the rise and fall, as well as the changing cycles in creative life. Constantly forcing creative energy can actually hold us back – this potent crystal helps us to go with the ebb and flow.”  ( The World’s Most Powerful Crystals )

[4] “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 Best Question I’m Not Asking

December 20, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Isms (religion), movies, theatre, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Best Question I’m Not Asking

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 Creative Metaphors I’m Going To Regret

Dateline: my birthday, earlier this week.  We did our main celebrating the previous day, inviting friends and our offspring to join us for lunch and a couple of hours perusing the Portland Art Museum’s two current, well-presented, special exhibitions:

* Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm.     [2]

* Psychedelic Rock Posters and Fashion of the 1960s   [3]

 

 

On my bday itself moiself  just wanted a quiet evening at home.  After the proverbial comedy of errors re what we would order (takeout) for my bday dinner,    [4]   MH returned from his quest with za from Pizza Schmizza;   [5]   specifically, five slices of two (of their seven available) veggie options: Margherita and Extreme Veggie.  The latter’s toppings included black olive slices, which MH loathes.    [6]

MH and I sat in our respective chairs in the family room, enjoying our za and watching a recording of the most recent SNL episode. Our elderly cat, Nova, assumed her customary, après-diner  position (on MH’s lap).

 

Keeping it warm for her favorite human.

 

I glanced over at MH, and saw Nova investigating what was left of MH’s dinner.  His plate was empty save for a pile of  ~12 olive slices (each with a smidge of cheese clinging to them) that he had meticulously removed from his Extreme Veggie slice.

For some reason (other than knowing of MH’s antipathy toward olives?), I began wondering aloud, “Hmm, what must that pile look like, to you or other olive haters?”   As soon as the answer left my mouth, I realized I was in danger of regretting it:

“Satan’s assholes?”

 

Bet ya can’t eat just one.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Only  Sometimes?

Sometimes I loathe certain members of my species.  Like the asshat driver who delayed Belle’s train this past weekend AND sent one of the train employees to the hospital.

Belle was coming down for a quick/overnight visit, via Amtrak from Washington, to join MH and I and friends in celebrating my birthday at the above-mentioned art museum.  She didn’t have much time in her weekend schedule, but went to the trouble to get train tickets, which I greatly appreciated.  Ten minutes after she boarded the train to Portland we got a text from her, alerting us that the train had stopped.  The train passengers were told at first that the delay was due to a “track obstruction,” an explanation which was later expanded into, “debris coming into contact with train equipment.”  As the time passed Belle sent further clarifications:

“Okay, apparently at a crossing someone in a car hit the railguard and broke it because  they didn’t want to wait, and then our train ran into the broken guard and it smashed out the driver/engineer’s windows.
We’re going to a rail yard about a mile away to turn the train around and use the other (unbroken) engine at the other end instead.
They said the driver is okay. The train driver that is.”   [7]

Two hours later:

“Trail stillllllll hasn’t turned around.  Waiting for freight trains to get out of the way.”

An hour after that:

“Oof, apparently it took extra long because they did actually have to
take the engineer to the hospital.”

The train arrived in Portland three hours late.   No word on the condition of the engineer.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Succinct Review Of A Holiday Release Movie
( Sub-Department Of:  Filler Alert )

The musical Wicked had a running time of two hours forty-five minutes (three hours total, including the 15 minute intermission between Act 1 and Act 2).    [8]

The movie Wicked has a run time of 2 hours forty minutes…three hours total, including the previews of coming attractions…and only covers Act 1 of the play ( “The adaptation was split into two parts to avoid cutting plot points and expand the characters’ journeys and relationships.” ).

 

“Remember to schedule a pee break – pass it on.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of What Is The Best Question?

The best question…to?  For?  About what?

Yep, the question itself is almost totally subjective and context dependent.  But moiself  woke up Wednesday morning with that question in mind, and I’d love to hear other’s opinions.

Here’s a sample of best questions that sprung to my mind:

* May I give you a foot rub?

* Would you like to hold your grandbaby?

* May we help you practice your acceptance speech?

* Paper or plastic?

* Where shall we take our honeymoon?

* How would you like to celebrate your promotion?

*Where shall we park the new Porsche?

* Would you like fries with that?

*  Would you like conscious sedation or general anesthesia
during your colonoscopy?

* Vaccinations are up-to-date – would you like to take your new kitten home this afternoon?

* Would you like a complimentary upgrade to first class?

* Indoor or outdoor court for your pickleball lesson with Ryan Gosling?

* May I send you a picture of a pajama-wearing baby sloth?

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you never think your time is so important that you must smash through a railroad crossing guardrail;
May you have no culinary loathing equivalent to Satan’s assholes;
May someone ask you *your* best question;
…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] More than 250 “recently rediscovered photographs from Paul McCartney’s personal archives,” taken by McCartney during a pivotal period as The Beatles grew from British faves to international stars.

[3] Featuring more than 200 iconic rock posters, of a specific style first designed by graphic artists in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.  The posters’ instantly recognizable patterns – a combination of seemingly pulsating neon colors, unique lettering, and witty (and sometimes sexually and/or pharmaceutically suggestive) design – quickly spread around the nation as other poster artists used this new, psychedelic graphic language to promote rock concerts.   The exhibition also showcased the eclectic fashions of the psychedelic clothing styles.

[4] Our favorite downtown pizza restaurant forgot to turn off their online ordering; they were closed for their holiday party…someone noticed our order and called MH back to say, oops.

[5] A local chain, started in Hillsboro some 20+ years ago by two expat New Yawk bros, now with 20+pub ‘n grub style places in Oregon (and one in Washington).

[6] Black; Green; Kalamata, Nicoise; Castelvetrano….you name the olive, MH dislikes it.  Which is great for me as if we’re dining out and the salad or pasta has kalamatas, as then I get his.

[7] As you might imagine, few passengers were holding charitable thoughts about the okay-ness of the car’s driver.

[8] I saw the play, when it was touring.  I highly recommend it – you’ll never look at The Wizard of Oz story in the same way.

[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 Tournament I’m Not Attending

November 1, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, radio & podcasts, Recreation, sports, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Tournament I’m Not Attending

What would ushering in the holiday season be without The Dropkick Murphys?

 

 

Speaking of holidays….

*   *   *

Department Of Trying Not To Snarl At Children…

…who nevertheless deserved it.  Dateline: last night.   We had a great group of Halloween visitors to our porch, with four notable exceptions.

We had seventy-one trick-or-treaters.  I know this because I keep track, every year, which helps us estimate how much we may need for the next year’s Halloween stash.  It’s fairly easy to do: instead of counting the trick-or-treaters, we count the remaining candy/snacks, as we know how much we start with and we give one to each kid.  And it’s a pretty good “one” – e.g. an assortment of full size candy bars or mini boxes of animal crackers, single serving bags of pretzels and potato chips.  This year the count would have been 75 if I’d just counted the remaining treats but it was actually 71, as a group of four were double-dippers.   The DDs were two girls and two boys, approximate ages…8-11(?).  A girl in a green sequined dress (“Ilsa” from Frozen…I ask each trick-or-treater to identify their costume if I can’t guess it outright), a blonde girl in a pink…something (“A unicorn,” she said, although I never would have guessed),  two masked boys, one a transformer and another who was some kind of…storm trooper?

They returned to our house a mere 10 minutes after their first visit (not a good strategy if you’re trying to cheat the system).  They tried to blend in among another group of trick-or-treaters.  I held out the bowl for the first group, who, like all the others kids up until then, were cute and enthusiastic and kind and thankful as they chose their treats.  Then the DDers pushed their way to the front, and I recognized them. “Uh…you’ve already been here,” I said to Ilsa.  “No, we haven’t,“ she lied.  “Yes, you have – I recognize your costume, you’re Isla,” I said.  The unicorn also denied she’d been to our house earlier, even as I also identified her costume…even as stormtrooper boy grabbed a bag of chips and quickly backed off our porch.  “No, you’re the unicorn, and your group was here earlier,” I said.  The second boy (transformer) hesitated; I could sense his embarrassment from behind his mask as he whispered to the two girls, “She’s right; c’mon, let’s go.” Ilsa averted her eyes as she spouted her second denial, and grabbed another candy bar.   “That’s rude; it’s one per person,” I said.  The unicorn also grabbed a treat from the bowl, sassily proclaiming as she skipped away, “Well, we’re getting another one no matter what.”

Unicorn, my ass.  Greedy little bitch.

(Oh, and after that, moiself  reached and and put a bag of pretzels in transformer’s hands as he stood there, looking chagrined.  “Here,” I said. “At least you were honest about it.”)

 

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of Fun With Radio Ads

With two ads, to be specific.

Dateline: last Monday, circa 11 am, driving to  Trader Joe’s.  Ad#1:  My car’s radio was on but the volume was quite low; I missed the first few seconds of the spot, which was from a company supporting a sporting tournament.  What I made out was the ad’s narrator proudly announcing that his company was sponsoring “…a fecal tournament…”

 

 

… Which, I discovered when I immediately cranked up the volume, turned out to be a  FIFA   [1]   tournament.

Ad #2:  Driving on to TJ’s, with the volume at normal listening level, I did not miss the next ad.   It was a PSA, actually, for a group whose goal was to raise awareness for prostate cancer screening.   I am aware that one of the obstacles in getting men to see their doctor for a prostate exam is because of their fear that, should cancer be discovered, prostate surgery is known to cause of a variety of unpleasant side effects.  Perhaps the most common side effect is the nerve damage during a prostatectomy which can cause incontinence.    [2]   Which is why moiself  thought, at the end of the PSA where the sponsor’s name was given, that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to announce that the prostate cancer testing sponsor was Depends.

 

 

Just sayin.’

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of They’re Forgetting A Really Important Factor

Moiself  was reading an article (source forgotten, as I got caught up in the subject matter) about why many young(er) Americans – labeled as Millennials, Gen Z and Y, et al – say they do not plan to have children.  This caught my attention, for both broader cultural and also personal reasons.

A close friend of mine has noticed, and discussed with moiself, how rare it is that the offspring of our particular peers are having children.  This concerns us both, particularly when we consider how the having-no-kids reasoners are thoughtful, empathetic, politically and scientifically aware, intelligent, well-educated, and otherwise just the kind of people you *want* to be raising the next generations.

Are y’all worried about Armageddon, in whatever form you imagine it?   [3]    Have a stake in the future; raise your child “right” – raise her to cultivate curiousity about the way things work, and to be compassionate and involved and with a sense of perspective, and she just may be one of the ones to solve global warming, renewable energy, the pollution of forever chemicals – there is no shortage of good to be done.

Besides, if you and your peers don’t reproduce, guess what kind of breeders the world is left with?  Those who have little to no concern for their fellow human beings and especially for the planet, which they view as their deity’s gift for them, and a gift which their theologies tell them is not their ultimate destination, so who cares about a little trash in the rest area ( e.g. Jesus is going to rescue them, so why give a holy fuck about Pacific Islanders’ disappearing lands or starving polar bears ) ?

 

 

Aside from the practical (not being able to find a compatible and stable life partner; simply never having wanted to be a parent), the reasons many young Gens give for not planning on having kids vary.  From concern for the world in general to themselves in particular, their reasons include:

* financial insecurity (i.e., the high costs of childcare and housing);

* self-awareness about physical and mental health issues ( depression, anxiety and other stress-related issues are documented as being higher in Millennials Gen Y & Z, some of whom wonder if it is right for them to raise a child when they see themselves as not emotionally secure );

* worries about the increasing world-wide population (despite the fact that many so-called “first world” nations currently have a negative growth, as in, low reproductive rates which will not sustain their population );

* worries about climate change and what kind of world their children would inherit;

* for women especially, the realization of broader options/ feeling free from constricting social and gender roles of past generations ( no longer being “required” or relegated to having mother/wife as your primary role in life );

* worries that the sacrifices required for parenthood don’t align with their personal and/or career goals.

 

 

When I read this article, and others like it, I’ve found moiself  fidgeting at what the author(s) are leaving out, in terms of addressing the many factors involved in raising a family.  Who speaks for the positives, for the rewards – both personal and societal – and for the adventure of being part of (cue Elton John) The Circle of Life ?

By saying that, I am not *at all* dismissing or explaining away those legitimate concerns which lead some people to choose not to have children – concerns I moiself  had at one time, and still due to an extent.  I was one of those Not Gonna Do It ® people; I changed my mind as the circumstances of my life changed.  I later realized that my stance – I’m never getting married/having children – was based on false, or at least inadequate, information (as in, I’d made that declaration by moiself, not as part of a life partnership, and was thus imagining myself as a single parent, which is something I’d never choose ).

I’m just sayin’ that there’s one thing, one Really. Big. Thing.  that the naysayers are leaving out, when it comes to having children and raising a family:

How  much  fun  it  can be.

 

Found a compatible partner….

 

….and was still joyfully surprised by what fun was in store.

 

*   *   *

 

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself .  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [4]

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

“Along with the usual secular values (such as appropriate tolerance/intolerance, morality, critical thinking, appreciation for reason and science), don’t forget to impart social graces, playfulness, and humor. Those go far in our short existences.”

( Dale McGowan, professor and author of Parenting Beyond Belief:
On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion )

 

*   *   *

May you appreciate the season that is upon us;
May you remember how much fun difficult things can be;
May you be joyfully surprised by what’s in store;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] The acronym is for Federation Internationale de Football Association, the world’s professional soccer governing body.

[2] Usually temporary but sometimes…not.

[3] Hopefully with regards to global warming and how we are trashing our only home (planet This), as in, visible and tangible, and not silly religious apocalyptic scenarios.opefully

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

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

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

The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

October 25, 2024

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, community, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

Department Of But First, This Public Service Announcement

Moiself  was on a podcast! Or, at least my voice was.

As longtime or even new readers of this blog have surmised, I regularly listen to a variety of podcasts.  Most of them may be categorized, as per subject matter, as having to do with the incredibly broad topics of science, the brain, and human behavior as seen and analyzed through a variety of perspectives.    [1]

One of my favorites of these podcasts is No Stupid Questions.  Near the end of each NSQ episode the hosts ask for listener feedback, via sending a voice recording to the show’s email address. At the end of each episode two or three listener comments regarding previous episodes are played.

Dateline:  Sunday morning walk; circa 7:50 am; listening to the latest NSQ podcast ( #216: Why Do We Make Excuses? ) I was surprised to hear *my* voice memo played at the end of the show, proving feedback to the previous week’s episode ( #215: Is It Okay To Do The Right Thing For The Wrong Reason? ).

I shouldn’t have been surprised – after all, *I* made the memo and emailed it to the show – but within a week I’d forgotten that I’d done so.  As is often par for the course when it comes to hearing your own voice on tape, at first moiself  didn’t even realize that it was my voice, until a couple of sentences in when I recognized the content ( Oh yeah, that’s me…yikes, that’s me?  Crap, I can hear the remnants of the slight lisp I had as a child [addressed in this blog], which resurfaces when I’m tired or need a glass of water…and danged if I don’t hear the echo of my family tones – specifically, my two sisters’ – in my own voice….).

 

 

 
You’d have to listen to this podcast episode (or scroll forward to approx.. 38:09, or read the transcript here) to get to the listener comments regarding the previous episode.  As previously mentioned, the episode I commented upon addressed the subject of “Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons,” as in, does that somehow negate the good deed or the right thing that you did?  I also liked the perspective of the comment which played after mine, from “Ian,” (a fellow Oregonian!), who pointed out the hidden problems and unexpected consequences in doing the right thing for the right reasons.

 

 

On to the main event.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Here They Come

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

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

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

And after Halloween, the holiday season really gets going.

 

 

*   *   *

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

 “The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity….
Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from?
The most organized attack on Christmas came from the Puritans, who banned celebrations of the holiday in the 17th century because it did not accord with their interpretation of the Bible….”
(“How the ‘War on Christmas’ Controversy Was Created,” NY Times, 12-19-16)

 

 

*   *   *

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

What do we vegetarians, vegans, non-meat and/or plant-based eaters
do on Thanksgiving?
( Other than, according to your Aunt Erva, RUIN  IT  FOR  EVERYONE  ELSE.   [2]  )

The above question is an existential dilemma worthy of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, who wrote eloquent discourses on the subjective and objective truths one must juggle when choosing between a cinnamon roll and a chocolate swirl.   [3]

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

This observation provides a convenient segue to my annual, sincere, family-friendly,  [4]

Heathens Declare War On Christmas © post.

 

 

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

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

It is worthwhile to note that while many if not most Americans, Christian or not, celebrate Christmas, there are also some Christians who, on their own or as part of their denomination’s practice or decree (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Worldwide Church of God), do *not* celebrate Christmas   [5]   (nor did our much-ballyhooed forebears, the Pilgrims).  Also, the various Orthodox Christian denominations use calendars which differ from most Protestant and Catholic calendars (a biggie for them at this time of the year is the Nativity of Christ, which occurs on or around January 7).

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

 

In 2024 the Chinese (lunar) New Year began on on February10; in 2025 it will begin on January 29

 

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

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

* St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6).

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

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

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

* Bill of Rights Day (Dec 15).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Did You Know…

…that the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that, “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”   [6]

…that because of its known pagan origins, Christmas was banned by the Puritans, and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts until 1681.   [7]

 

 

 “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

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

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

 

 

Early Roman Catholic missionaries tried to convert northern Europeans to the RC brand of Christianity, and part of the conversion process was to alter the pagan’s existing religious festivals. The indigenous folk, whom the RC church labeled “barbarians,” quickly discovered that when it came to dealing with missionaries, resistance is futile. The pagans intuitively grasped the concept of natural selection and converted to Christianity to avoid the price (persecution, torture, execution) of staying true to their original beliefs.  But they refused to totally relinquish their traditional celebrations, and so the church, eventually and effectively, simply renamed most of them.    [8]

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

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

The fir boughs and wreaths; the Yule log; plum pudding; gift exchanges; feasting; the holly and the ivy and the evergreen tree….It is hard to think of a “Christmas” tradition that does not originate from Teutonic (German), Viking, Celtic and Druid paganism.   [9]   A celebration in the depths of winter – at the time when, to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears to stop its southerly descent before gradually ascending north – is a natural instinct. For thousands of years our Northern Hemisphere ancestors greeted the “reason for the season” – the winter solstice – with festivals of light and gift exchanges and parties.  The Winter Solstice was noted and celebrated long before the Roman Jesus groupies pinched the party.

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

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

 

 

And Woden is the reason the middle of the week is named Wednesday.   [10]   My calling Wednesday “Wednesday” doesn’t mean I celebrate, worship, or “believe in” Woden.  I don’t insist on renaming either Christmas or Wednesday.

 

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

 

The Winter Solstice is the day with the shortest amount of sunlight, and the longest night. In the northern hemisphere it falls on what we now mark as December 21 or 22.  However, it took place on December 25th at the time when the Julian calendar was used.  [11]   The early Romans celebrated the Saturnalia on the Solstice, holding days of feasting and gift exchanges in honor of their god Saturn ( Other major deities whose birthdays were celebrated on or about the week of December 25   [12]   included Horis, Huitzilopochtli, Isis, Mithras, Marduk, Osiris, Serapis and Sol ).  The Celebration of the Saturnalia was too popular with the Roman pagans for the new Christian church to outlaw it, so the new church renamed the day and reassigned meanings to the traditions.    [13]

In other words, why are some folk concerned with “keeping the Christ in Christmas”  [14]  when we should be keeping the Saturn in Saturnalia?

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I will dump them all the first time I catch wind (no, not intended) of the first all elephant/fart joke podcast.

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

[3] Damn right I’m proud of that one.

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

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

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

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

[8] “Paganism in Christianity.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spiders I’m Not Stopping

August 16, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, games & puzzles, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, sports, travel, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Spiders I’m Not Stopping

Department Of A Helpful Morning Routine

Dateline: Monday, 5:45 am-ish. I’d left my yoga pants on the bathroom floor overnight.  As I picked them up I shook them, as moiself  would with any article of clothing before putting it on, to get out the wrinkles or whatever, and a spider    [1]    made an athletic if somewhat startling ( to moiself ) exit from one of the pant legs, where she had apparently spent a restful evening. 

Or perhaps she was preparing me for a yoga pose: the Utkata Konasana variation known colloquially as,  spider pose. 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Just Wondering…
(But Not Enough To Follow The Link For The Ad)

Dateline: Tuesday morning, 5:37 AM. After finishing the last of my  New York Times word games I went on to another word game:  Waffle.   After finishing the daily word waffle, an advertisement popped up on my phone screen.  The ad consisted of graphic of a black spider with long spindly legs, along with the phrase, “Way to stop spiders.”

Although I quickly scrolled past that on my way to the waffle royale,   [2]   I was distracted by, and kept thinking about, the ad’s grammatically imprecise teaser:

Way to stop spiders.

 

 

Huh? Way to stop spiders?  As in, *a* way or *the best* way to stop spiders, as opposed to a slang-ish congratulatory phrase one might confer upon an exterminator:

( Duuuude, way to stop spiders! )

And if it’s the former, “stop spiders” from…what, exactly?  From merely existing?  From getting inside your house?  From…

* building their webs across the armrests of your TV chair?

* weaving their web in the corner of your living room and successfully reproducing so that when their egg sac hatches around Christmas time dozens if not hundreds of baby spiders burst forth and land on your Christmas tree?    [3]

* registering to vote?

* taking Black jobs?

* crawling inside your yoga pants and startling you in the morning (ahem)?

* inviting their spider friends over to sample and then critique your steamed mixed veggies with Indonesian style peanut sauce?

* going down the rabbit hole of political psychosis and weaving tiny red hats instead of webs and screaming at you at the top of their thin, quavery, high-pitched arachnid voices, “Oh look, Karen, it’s another bleeding heart woke liberal!” when you open the door and shoe out a fly that had gotten inside your kitchen instead of squashing the fly with a rolled-up issue of last month’s  The Atlantic ?

Like I said, I didn’t follow the link, so I guess we’ll all just have to speculate.

 

Not that I have anything against spiders wearing hats.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Olympic Reflections

As previously noted in this space, I love watching the Olympic Games, both the summer and winter versions.  I saw many outstanding performances in these summer games; among my favorites was the men’s 5000-meter race.  I found moiself,  much to my surprise and embarrassment, shouting at my TV screen ( “WTF?!?!?  WT effin’ F is he doing – how can he just do that?!?!!?! “) as I watched the Norwegian entrant, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, with less than 600 meters left in the race and seemingly hemmed in by the other runners, shift into a gear that the other runners – including the four ahead of him – did not seem to have.  And he looked so casual while doing it; it’s as if he suddenly reminded himself, Oh, sure, you betcha, it’s time for me to get in front.  And as the other runners gasped and flailed with effort, Ingebrigtsen just…ran faster.

 

“To do: Check the lefse and pickled herring supply when you get home; get a new setdesdal sweater for cross country ski season,
hmm, what else was on the list – oh, yah, win the 5k….”

It’s a two year wait until the Winter Games in in Italy, and four years until the next Summer Games in Los Angeles.  I’m in the process of withdrawal, from not having the luxury of sitting in the comfy chair ® for hours during and after dinner, clicking a few buttons on the remote to decide among a plethora of volleyball games or rugby matches or kayak races or fencing/skateboarding/BMX biking/gymnastics/track & field events to choose from.

Alas and yep, the games are over now, so it’s time to thoughtfully consider some of the existential issues brought up by such an amazing series of athletic contests complain.

 

 

Is it just my imagination, or, as indicated by their behavior before/after/during their events and also by what they said during interviews preceding and following their events, that the self-opinions held by many Olympic athletes has exceeded the heights of years past?

Robust egotism should be neither surprising nor unexpected from athletes who devote years to pursuit of excellence in honing what are essentially it’s-all-about-me pursuits and skills.  Still, according to a study I just made up, the literal and metaphorical chest-thumping on display in the 2024 Summer Olympics was 48% greater than such displays in previous summer Olympics.

Some of those immodest exhibitions I blame squarely on the influence of social media in all aspects of young(er) people’s lives (the ages of the vast majority of the Olympic athletes are between 20 – 30).

And although the Games are already a spectacle of Olympic proportions…

 

 

(sorry) …but it seemed that for many of the participants – who were perhaps keeping in mind their post-athletic careers hawking athletic gear and junk food – you can never have too much showtime.

 

 

Of particular annoyance to moiself  was how the athletes were introduced in too many certain venues, such as when entering the aquatics center or track and field stadium.  The booming voice from stadium PA system would announce name of the individual and/or team members competing in the next event, followed by the athlete(s) strutting through the entrance to the stadium field, pausing to perform flirty and/or self-aggrandizing versions of I’m-ready-for-my-selfie!/I’m-number-one! poses and gestures

Uh, hashtag, SpareMe.

Now, I don’t know exactly who is to blame for this – the host country’s Olympic organizing committee?  But isn’t this something that, even if it was “foisted” upon the athletes (“BTW, this is how we’re going to introduce you”) couldn’t they just have refused to go along with the peacock-ish preening and simply given a wave of acknowledgement to the cheering crowds?

So many of the entrances seemed to have been coordinated, as in choreographed, exhibitions.  I’m all for athletes   [4]   having fun in the moment, but the prancing and posing seemed anything but spontaneous.

 

 

I mentioned previously in this space about having watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony.  Full disclosure: I watched less than half of it – I mostly just saw the flotilla of athletes cruising down the Seine, followed by that mesmerizing metal horse – and missed the vocal performances and some of the other presentations that some people found controversial.  The closing ceremonies have always held little interest for me (bbbbooooooorrrrrring), and true to self, I once again didn’t watch them, although for a brief moment moiself  considered doing so.  My customary lack-of-interest was stoked when word was leaked that the Hollywood poster boy for refusing-to-age-gracefully-or-intelligently,    [5]   Tom Cruise, was going to be featured in a stunt symbolizing the passing of the Olympic flame to Los Angeles.

 

Awww, poor baby.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought(s) Of The Week     [6]

“In the end, I am just a guy wearing spandex that turns left really fast.”
( Canadian Olivier Jean,   [7]   short-track skater,
2010 Olympic Gold Medalist in the 500 meter relay )

“Curling is not a sport.
I called my grandmother and told her she could win a gold medal
because they have dusting in the Olympics now.”
( Charles Barkley,   [8]  American former basketball player and verbal raconteur )

 

 

*   *   *

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

I hated it when the NBC Olympic coverage team apparently thought it was equally exciting for viewers to watch celebrities watch an Olympic event –

* here’s Seth Rogan watching the Artistic Gymnastics Women’s All-Around Final!
* And Martha Stewert at the same event!
* Mick Jagger is at the fencing competition!
* See Spike Lee cheering for the US women’s water polo team!
* Bill Gates spotted at the Tennis Men’s Singles First Round match!
*wow – Elizabeth Banks, Judd Apatow, and Leslie Mann watch beach volleyball!
* Look, it’s Jason and Kylie Kelce at Women’s Rugby 7s!    [9]

–  as it was to watch the event itself.   [10]

 

“Here’s Snoop Dogg, high up in the stands….”             Well, of course he is.

 

*   *   *

May you not try to stop spiders (from anything);
May you be mistaken for a celebrity when watching a sporting event;
May you never challenge Charles Barkley’s grandmother to a dusting race;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I have been finding a lot of spiders in the bathroom recently, but have not found a nest or remnant of egg sacks or any kind of entry point.

[2] “the premium daily treat.”

[3] This happened to us some twenty plus years ago.

[4] For anyone!

[5] which moiself  blames on, among other factors, Cruise’s combination of a Hollywood doctor’s plastic surgery expertise, and Scientology.

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

[7] I don’t actually know if Jean is a freethinker, but with a refreshing perspective like that, he probably is.

[8] Same with Barkley re his worldview status.  But he slams Christian conservatives re their bigotry, and that’s down by moiself.

[9] These are…”name” people?  How can I be impressed by their attendance when I don’t know (or care) who they are?  I remember a quip from comedian Jay Leno, something along the lines of, “You’re not a celebrity unless my mother knows who you are.”

[10] There were several times, when watching the NBC coverage (MH and I also had other coverage with different schedules and announcers, which is what we mostly watched) when action in a game or other event was missed when the cameras cut to show celebrities in the crowds.

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