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The Rerun I’m Not Rerunning

May 15, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, health & wellness, Holidays, music, Oregon, Recreation, The Write Stuff (literary life), travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Department Of This Week’s Blog Title Is A Lie

Because moiself  be doing a rerun.  Similar to the monthly Blast From The Past® feature,   [1]  this is a blog segment I ran across while looking for something else.  Specifically, one from ten years ago last month, found while I was lamenting this year’s lack of April Fool’s Day pranks: 

Department Of Fun With Student Drivers

Dateline: Tuesday, early a.m., out for my morning walk, waiting to cross a street. As I watched the cross traffic’s stoplight and saw the green-changing-to-yellow light – the pedestrian’s rewarding indicator that it will soon be your turn to cross the street – I noticed a white sedan slowing down much more deliberately than is usual yet still not managing to come to a complete stop until the car’s front bumper was just a tad into the crosswalk.

My light changed to green, I began to cross the street, and saw the telltale red and yellow logo for a local driving academy on the car’s driver’s door.  A student driver?

 Excellent.

I looked inside the car: the student in the driver’s seat sat ramrod straight, an expression of nervous anticipation drenching her face. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the steering wheel and her gaze was fixed ahead. Her instructor was looking down at a clipboard he held; neither of them seemed aware of my approaching presence.

My instinctive reaction was to throw myself onto the hood of the car and scare the living pee-pee out of both of them.

How I managed to restrain myself, I’ll never know.

But, I did. Okay? 

 Had I gone through with my whimsical notion, ‘twould have made a good – dare I say, even legendary? – April Fool’s Day prank.

You gotta love a day that is devoted to honoring and encouraging practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks both well- and feebly-played. 

The origins of April Fools Day’s are not completely agreed upon by historians, and have been variously attributed. What is agreed upon is that many cultures, going back to the ancient Romans and Egyptians, have set aside days for celebrating jokes and pranksters. Perhaps, as some people have speculated, there’s just something about the day’s timing – the fading of winter and the blooming of spring, which lends itself to the observance of light-hearted frivolity.

 

 

I can recall only a few of the pranks I’ve played on friends, family and co-workers over the years. The memories are silly but fond, and include:

* Sneaking a package of Hydrox cookies   [2]  from the family snack drawer and replacing all the cream fillings in the second row of cookies with toothpaste.

* Showing two positive pregnancy test dipsticks to a newbie Planned Parenthood co-worker and telling her I was pregnant with twins.

* Adding just a couple of drops of blue food coloring to the carton of nonfat milk in my parent’s refrigerator.

* Calling my father at his office and convincing him (if only temporarily) that someone had bought a raffle ticket in his name for the local animal shelter’s fundraising event, he’d won the raffle, and could he please let the shelter know when he was coming to claim his prize: an English Mastiff and a week’s supply – a 100 lb. bag of kibble – of the dog’s food.  [3]

“I don’t get it.  Why would that be funny?”

 

* Swapping my and my siblings’ framed high school graduation pictures, which hung in my parent’s hallway, with pictures of the members of Led Zeppelin.

* Replacing the hard-boiled egg in my sister’s school lunch bag with a raw egg.

* Cutting my finger, smearing my blood on the scissors in co-worker Roger’s cubicle, leaving a note on my computer saying I had been threatened by Roger and feared for my life, then faking my own death and leaving town.

Oops, that’s right – I never got around to implementing the last one.  

As pleasurable as it is to pull off an epic prank, it can be equally fun, IMHO, to have a great prank played on your own self. I hope y’all have a Happy April Fools’ Day…and I hope that I do not regret having made that previous declaration.
( excerpts; 4-1-2016;  The Instinct I’m Not Obeying )

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*   *   *

Department Of Seeing Yourself Through Other Eyes…Or, Not?

Dateline:  Monday morning; scrolling through the previous night’s Nehalem BBQ posts.  The BBQ is an online bulletin board of sorts.  As per its mission statement:

 The BBQ is a free public service provided to the citizens of the Oregon North Coast. It is dedicated to the promotion of community building by establishing a website forum whereon citizens may announce important matters and events, offer goods and services, express needs and provide information of general interest.    [4]

 

 

Moiself  clicks on the post that catches my eye – the one titled,  North Coast Pinball Updates May 2026.  North Coast Pinball is arguably my favorite beach business.  I always spend a couple of hours there at least once a week.  [5]  I adore the owner’s community spirit, his generous, welcoming personality, his freethinking/humanist, feminist politics…and has NCP really been open for five years?  Here is how the post begins:

“Fun fact: we’ve been doing this thing for five years now. Sold 562 used pinballs and 1272 stickers. Rebuilt more flippers than I quite know how to count. Gave away *so* many mystery tokens. Maybe you’ve seen our chess set in the corner; guess how many pieces have gone missing in five years?

None! Well, there was that knight who wandered off one day but it came back before I noticed it was gone.   [6]   Y’all are the best. Thanks for making NCP NCP.

Oh! Also in those five years I wrote a book about the place, which should be out later this month. You can learn more about that at www.mysterytoken.pub.”

 

 

I assume the post was written by NCP’s owner, with whom I am on a friendly/first name basis (moiself  also assumes (1) he is writing the book; (2) trhe book will be self-published).

Wondering how/if he will write about those of us who might be considered regulars of NCP, I follow that link, which leads to this teaser/excerpt:  (my emphases):

Can You Feel It?
stories from North Coast Pinball

“…another day, you may write in your journal that three people, who did not know each other a month ago, who live in three different towns, and who met each other playing pinball in your place, are now out on a hike together. Your journal will reflect a feeling that the purpose of your life has been fulfilled.”

“…five years later you’ll write a weird little book. A book that’s not so much about pinball as it is about how it feels at North Coast Pinball in Nehalem, Oregon….

“A book about what it’s like for the five-year-old peering through the window as you prepare to open. What it’s like for your ten-year-old regular, back once again to improve on his high score. What it’s like for the sullen teenager, dragged against their will on an obligatory family trip….

What it’s like for the sixty-something beach bum who comes in weekly for $20 in tokens, plays each game exactly once, and leaves her leftovers in the community donation jar….

“Holy crap, that’s me,” I blurt out, first to moiself, then to MH.  I read the underlined section of the post to him, then wonder how the book’s author can accurately write a *nonfiction* book about  “what it’s like” for the five-year-old, or the sullen teenager, or the beach bum, without interviewing said characters.  [7]

My reaction surprises moiself.   That (underlined) pretty much describes what I do when I’m there.    I am sixty-something; I do frequent NCP weekly (when in town); I do get $20 in tokens; I do play the games once…but sometimes twice (and not all of them – I avoid the easy ones/the one-token-per-game ones…and when I win a free game I don’t play it again – I like to leave the free game available for a kid to discover); I do make sure to not use up all my tokens so that I may leave the leftovers in the community donation jar.

“But,” I confess to MH, “I don’t know how I feel about being described as a ‘beach bum.’ ”  ( Although I realize that my ubiquitous attire – yoga pants and t- shirts and OR rain/sun hat – are casual to the max and could tilt perceptions of moiself  toward the latter category.)

MH points out to me that the description could fit many people at the coast.   [8]  Nice try, honey.  I’m not a vain person (what would be the point?).   [9]  Still….  Beach bum is one of those phrases that could mean colorful character to some people, or one-step-above-a-grungy/homeless person-and/or-those-men-in-their-eighties-with-their-pants-hiked-up-to-their-nipples-who-patrol-the-beach-with-metal-detectors  to other folks.    [10]

 

Beach bum.  Okay; it’s two words. Until I have evidence otherwise I’ll take the description to be one that is meant with fondness.  And although I’ll maintain my smugness re self-published books, I will buy a copy when it comes out.

 

My high score in one of my fave pinball machines, which I rented from NCP and got to have in our home (terrorizing/entertaining the neighbors) for three months a couple of years ago.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

 

So, what have atheists got against casseroles?

 

*   *   *

May you have unending patience with apprentice drivers;
May you be entertained by how you might be described by others;
May your you enjoy religion-free casseroles;
and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Wherein yours truly posts a segment from a blog of the second Friday of years ago….which I just did last week.  Lazy ass writer that I am.

[2] Anyone else remember the precursor (and competitor) to Oreos?

[3] My sisters making muffled barking sounds to approximate background animal shelter noise was a great help in pulling off this prank.

[4] To post on this BBQ you must be a subscriber or non-subscriber who operates a business on, lives on or has a second home on the Oregon North Coast.

[5] …when I’m at the coast.  That time has been rare since my November foot surgery and now since MH and I cannot easily get to Manzanita unless we can arrange the complicated care for our elderly, kidney-disease stricken cat…

[6] Okay…there is some missing info here.  How did you know it was gone, if you didn’t notice it was gone, and then it was back and so it wasn’t gone? 

[7] Ahn yes:  poetic license.

[8] Perhaps…but how many of them play pinball at the NCP place and in the manner described?

[9] (that would be an exercise in futility – in vain?)

[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 Matchmaker I’m Not Playing

April 3, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Matchmaker I’m Not Playing

 

Department Of Getting All Zen On Y’all’s Asses

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something,
loves something,
and has lost something.

 

And everyone feels better after looking at a picture of a baby sloth wearing pjs.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Theory Of Let Them

I’m not sure if this can – or should – apply to politics in the wider sense; e.g., when it comes to the depredations of The Mandarin Turd Führer and company, we don’t just want to let them.  But in one’s personal dealings, I have found this to be helpful.

 

 

*   *   *

 

Department Of Dude Doesn’t Waste Time
Getting Down To Brass Tacks   [1]

Sub-Department Of Things I Learned From The Older   [2]   Man  Who
Approached Me As I Was Waiting For The Door To Zumba Class To Open

Dateline:  Monday; circa 10:55 am.  An affable, petite, elderly man,   [3]  whose appearance and accent indicated he came from a culture different from mine, approached me and wished me a good morning.  He looked familiar; I’d seen him in class at least once.  Thus, after I returned his greeting, I passed on the information a staff member had given me when I first entered the Rec Center: the Zumba class was going to start a few minutes late, as another group was using the facility.

He nodded, said he’d just come from another Zumba class at Hidden Creek (another Hillsboro Parks & Rec facility), and asked if I was married.

The casual ease with which he spoke his question – which I found to be both a straightforward query and a non-sequitur, given the circumstances – took me by surprise…but not in a threatening way.

“Yes,” I said, “I am married.”

He looked at my left hand, his eyes widening and sparkling with mischievous disbelief when he beheld the modest band on my ring finger (MH and I currently choose to wear plain but colorful silicon bands, which, I have been told, “…don’t look like *real* wedding rings” ).

 

 

“You are married?” he asked again.  I laughed, repeated my marital status affirmation, and decided to return the straightforward-ness: “I take it you are not married, and are looking to meet someone?”

He seemed pleased by my supposition.  Yes, he enthused, he is looking to meet a woman for dating!   He reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved a piece of paper that had his name and phone number on it, and asked me if I would be so kind to take down the information and pass it along to any women I know who might also be looking for companionship.

Moiself  was feeling generous, and said that I would.  As I reached for my phone to take a picture of the paper, I asked if he was using his family for matchmaking ( a common practice in his culture ).  He said he’d decided not to go that route.  I asked him what he sought in a date, and what should I tell prospective dating partners about him?  He told me…

*  He is 78 years old, a retired chemical engineer originally from ____ (another country);

*  He was married for 43 years, has been widowed several years;

*  He frequently visits his daughter, who lives nearby;

*  He doesn’t ask his daughter to “fix him up” because she isn’t happy about him wanting to date;

*  He has looked at online dating apps but is not impressed by them (and he doesn’t do social media);

*  The age of the woman doesn’t matter to him;

*  He offers companionship, kindness, and affection, and seeks the same;

*  He has found that there are two things which people think are important to control in their life:  their diet and their religion.  But he wants people to know that he doesn’t care “about any of that;”

*  “Everyone” at the Hillsboro Recreation centers knows him (he said that after an employee passed by and greeted him by name), because he is so friendly;

* He is open to meeting a woman from any background, *but* not from ____  (his home country).  This is for several reasons, including the “fact” (as he put it)  that after they (women from his culture) are widowed, they don’t look to date or remarry; rather, they join their children’s families and spend their time looking after their grandchildren.

 

I guess I won’t be passing his number on to June.

 

He asked me to stress that he is monogamous (“Not like many other men who,” he said, “flip around”  [4]  ), and that he goes to exercise classes and takes care of himself, “even though with age…” he glanced down, patted his protruding belly, and chuckled.  He then complimented me – “And you obviously take care of yourself” – and touched my upper arm, very lightly and quickly squeezing my bicep.  It was a gesture I might have found insulting and/or icky from someone else, but from him, it was almost…sweet?  Is that ageist, or patronizing of me?  

I found him wistfully charming; not creepy or threatening, and there was an air of both optimism and loneliness about him.  As the Zumba classroom door opened I said something positive about networking ( “Well, that’s how you do it – let others know you’re looking” ) and wished him well in his search.  We shook hands and he bid me farewell.  It turned out he was not going to class.  It also turned out (surprise!  As in, not) “He does that to every woman,” I heard from another female class member, after she asked about the bemused look on my face and I told her about my gentleman solicitor.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes I Feel Like Moiself  Should Wear
A Black Arm Band For My Country

Context: recently messaging a friend from high school, who has lived now for decades overseas, about The State Of Things In My (and formerly, his) Country ® .  My friend’s past experiences include being in the US military and working in health care with mentally ill –  life experiences which, along with being bicultural and multilingual and an expat ( a stranger in a strange land which he has now made his own) – give him a keen and unique perspective on what he sees going on in his native land.   His pithy articulation shredded my heart.  

“Do I miss my homeland?  No, not really, but I do mourn for it.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received

While listening to the rebroadcast of the No Stupid Questions podcast, What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received   [5]  moiself  didn’t immediately come up with my alternative (as in, Ah, yes, and the best advice I ever received was….”  Instead, I was intrigued by how many possible answers there might be to that question, perhaps as many different pieces of advice as there are advice givers, and seekers.

Podcast host Angela Duckworth:
“The first thing that leaps to mind is I was about 19 or 20 years old. There was a professor named Kay Merseth, who I’m still in touch with. And I remember being unhappy and going to Kay for advice. I can’t exactly remember whether it was another romantic breakup…or more that I was struggling with a career decision. Like: should I go into education, which I really wanted to do, but my dad wouldn’t speak to me after that, or should I become a doctor like he does want me to.

And I remember she said this: ‘Angela, it sounds to me like you really want to make the right decision, the best decision.’ And I nodded. And she said, ‘But life’s not like that. Life is a story. And your job is not to tell the ‘right’ story or even the best story. It’s just to tell a story that you can be proud of.’ And I went away from that day thinking, ‘What the hell did Kay mean? This is too deep for me.’

But I have actually used that advice when I talk to undergraduates in my own course. Now they’re the 19 or 20-year-old, and I’m the professor. And I do think the reason why Kay gave that advice to me — and why I pass it along — is that I think I was a little bit paralyzed by, like, ‘What’s the absolutely correct or best decision?’ And we can’t know. I mean, life is just mostly uncertainty. All we can do is act in a way where we can use the intuition we have. There are many, many paths in life, and who knows how this is going to turn out? But am I doing something that — at the end of the story, will I look back and say, ‘I’m proud of that?’

( Excerpt; my emphases,  No Stupid Questions podcast,
What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received ),

 

 

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“No myths need to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No person god needs to be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need to be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.”

( Neuroscientist, philosopher, meditation teacher, podcast host, author Sam Harris,
excerpt from The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And The Future Of Reason )

 

*   *   *

May you discern when or when not to just  Let Them;
May we do more than wear a black armband for our country;
May your life be the best advice someone else has ever received;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Whence that phrase, which means getting down to the basics or serious business?  And can the tacks-one-is-getting-down-to be of an alloy other than brass?  Getting down to pewter?  Bronze?  Sterling silver?

[2] As in, older than moiself.

[3] Not stooped with age; he had good posture but couldn’t have been more than 5’2″ (and even smaller, were he barefooted).

[4] I think he meant, flit around?

[5] originally aired 8-29-21

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

The Olympics I’m Not Continually Trying To Reference

February 13, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Oregon, radio & podcasts, Recreation, sports, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Olympics I’m Not Continually Trying To Reference

Department Of More Ways To Make Olympic Connections:
Best Name Ever (For Star Trek Fans) For A Ski Jumper

I can’t tell y’all how much I love love love this.

 

 Japanese ski jumper Ryōyū Kobayashi

 

Let me guess: is his signature style called the Maru?

*   *   *

Department Of Nominations For Worst Name
For A Game Or A Sport,
Entry 22 In A Continuing Series

 

 

In this moment of Olympic fervor,  [1]  let us pause for a moment to ponder perhaps one of the most unfortunate names that has ever bestowed upon a non-Olympic sport   [2]   in the English-speaking countries.

Among the many sports beloved in Ireland which have ancient Gaelic origins  [3]  is a game where the objective is for players to use a wooden stick (called a hurley) to hit a cork-cored, leather-covered ball (called a sliotar) either between the opponent’s goalposts or under the goal’s crossbar into a net guarded by a goalkeeper.

This sport is called Hurling.

 

 

I find it to be a joyously unfortunate name for the sport, in its inappropriate/stereotypical appropriateness, given the reputation of the Irish for…how you say…prodigious consumption of alcoholic beverages.  Moiself  supposes that, when it came time to name the game my Irish forbears enjoyed, one of the players suggested,  Why don’t we name it after the stick?  And no one thought to consult their Gaelic crystal ball to realize what the term hurling would come to mean to the euphemism-disposed English language speakers of the future.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of  Nothing To Do With Sports:
When Did It Come To Be That Instead Of Simply Reporting The News,
We Expect Officials To Editorialize About It?

” ‘My heart is with the victims, their families, and all who were impacted by the deadly crash,’ Bass said in a statement thanking first responders and asking the public to avoid the area.”

Tha’s from an LA Times article from last week, quoting LA mayor Karen Bass. who waswas commenting on an accident wherein an elderly driver, who reportedly suffered a medical incident, plowed into a popular area in Westwood, killing and injuring several pedestrians.

Now then: yours truly has been reading the news since I was eight years old, and it seems to moiself  that at a Certain Point In Time®  I cannot definitively mark, a line was crossed.  Where public officials used to merely be the conveyors of  This Something Has Happened, now these officials are also/seemingly obligated to be the public face of mourning and/or personalizing the incident (if it is tragic), for lack of a better term.

“My thoughts are with all of the blah blah blah
who have been impacted by the blah blah blah…”

Which leads me to think…

 

 

Just tell us what happened; don’t think you can make us to feel better about it because of what you say you feel about it.  You’re an elected official with serious responsibilities; I hope you are mostly thinking about those responsibilities, and get on with solving what you could be solving.  Fix the damn potholes; let your heart hurt, if it truly does, in private.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

“Yes, you are.  Drop and gimme fifty, you heartless bastard.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January, last year.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

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

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

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 2-8-13 ( The Awards I’m Not Winning ):

Women in combat. No, I’m not referring to the battles women face in trying to get standard, life-saving treatment at Catholic hospitals.  It’s the military thing, courtesy of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s lifting the military ban on women in combat.

I still can’t wrap my mind around the phrasing: “lifting the ban on women in combat.” Women have been participating – and dying – in wars, in combat, ever since the sorry concept was constructed by some pissed off Neanderthal.  Only now, they can get credit? Lifting the obliviousness about the reality is more like it.

The old saw about protecting the women and children flies and spits and shakes its impertinent ass in the face of the fact that, during wartime, civilian deaths always outnumber military casualties.  And who are the civilians?  The much-vaunted “women and children,” whose protection from the evil, encroaching ___ (insert enemy of choice) is cited as justification for combat.

Objective consideration of a person’s ability to do a job, any job, should be gender-blind.  Most of us civilians – and even a few former and active soldiers, it seems – forget that the majority of those in the armed services never set foot on what used to be called the front or battle lines;   [6]  the majority comprise the support staff, on which the “warriors” depend. Every soldier has to be prepared to fight, but most contribute to the fight through transport, medic, food, equipment procurement, distribution and maintenance positions. Or, as Napoleon Bonaparte, famous military leader and infamous sufferer of Short Man’s Syndrome put it, “An army marches on its stomach.”

Not every male soldier makes the cut (or desires to) for combat positions, and the wash-out rate for the so-called elite combat units is high (the all-volunteer paratroopers units, in which my father served during WWII, had a wash-out rate of over 80%).  Review the standards for the job. Keep the physical and mental standards truly appropriate to the job, and have only those who meet the standards, men and women, young and old, gay and straight, qualify for those positions.

One bubagoo the silly voices raise:  okay then, all of you miss smarty-panties, if all military positions are open to women, what about women registering for the draft?  Well, what about it?

The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8) authorizes Congress “To raise and support Armies…” and goes on to permit the regulation and training of such armies.   [7]   Nowhere is the gender (or age or ethnicity) of these Armies mentioned.  Of course, we can assume that the framers assumed an all-male (and Caucasian) army; nevertheless, but all it says is Congress has the power to raise Armies.

If it served Congress to do so, I have no doubt that women would be drafted in a heartbeat.  Or so was my argument in the late 1970s-early 1980s, when some of us were still trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed.   Register for the draft?  Pass the frigging ERA and I’ll register for your friggin’ draft.

About the appropriate standards.  Police academies used to have minimum height standards which effectively screened out most female – and Asian and Hispanic male – applicants. Thirty-plus years ago I remember reading an article in The Orange County Register about a Vietnamese-American man who desperately wanted to be a cop.  This was at the time when police and fire agencies in California were desperate to increase the number Asian and Hispanic officers.  The man was intelligent and independent   [8]  and eager to serve, kept himself in awesome physical shape – he did everything he could to qualify, and he would have, except that he was ~ an inch shorter than the minimum height requirement.  And, okay, so maybe this part of the story tempers the previous remark about his intelligence, but he decided to re-apply to the academy, and before taking the next physical exam he had his wife repeatedly bonk him on the head with a wooden plank, to try and raise a bump that would get him to the minimum height level.

I don’t know what happened to the bonkers-for-cops dude, but it wasn’t long before anti-height discrimination lawsuits provided the nudge for the police to evaluate their policies, and most agencies subsequently, eventually, eliminated the minimum height requirements.  Unlike the cinematic shoot-’em-up image, the majority of police work involves negotiation skills, keeping cool under pressure, the ability to quickly evaluate and de-escalate dangerous situations…and, yes, kick ass if and when necessary. As police departments around the nation have discovered, if you can pass the police academy training, assessment and examinations (including lifting and dragging a 160 lb dummy, weapons and marksmanship training, tolerate getting pepper-sprayed and tasered), the fact that you’re lacking an inch doesn’t matter.

Which, of course, women have been telling men for years.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May the sports you play have no direct or euphemistic references to puking;
May your work never involve public statements about bad news;
May you enjoy finding obscure connections between the names of Olympic athletes
and your favorite TV shows;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] At least – or only – in my household.

[2] Although, “distance plunging” and “live pigeon shooting” were once Olympic sports, so who knows what the future holds?

[3] Others include Gaelic football, Rounders, and Gaelic handball.

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

[5] Was it really over thirteen years ago?

[6] with today’s increasing use of kill-from-afar technologies, and wars of terrorism and insurgencies, “front line”-style warfare may soon be an exhibit in the Smithsonian.

[7] Interestingly, it also states that “no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;” which seems to make our maintaining of our standing armed forces unconstitutional.

[8] He defied his relative’s wishes by wanting to become a cop, a profession seen as dishonorable by many Asian immigrants, who came from countries where the police forces were corrupt.

[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 Fifth Wheeler I’m Not Inheriting

January 30, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Recreation, travel, Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Fifth Wheeler I’m Not Inheriting

Department Of This Is How Life Works, I Guess

Dateline: Monday, late morning.  I received a text from MH, in forming me that his Uncle JW had died “peacefully, I’m told” this morning, and that that was the only information he had so far.  I didn’t know his uncle well; I received the news with no emotion, save for the flat affect of Another piece of family history to log….  And as I was doing so, I remembered my first encounter with JW.

Background:  JW was the youngest of my FIL’s five siblings.  [1]   I met JW a couple of months after MH and I married.  [2]   This was at a time (late 1988) when gay rights issues were predominant in the national news – particularly in California – and fear of AIDS sparked a backlash against anti-discrimination legislation.  JW, who knew that I was a native Californian and that MH and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, steered any conversation he had with me toward “the gay thing.”   He did this during every one of the (few) times he and I were in the same room, which were always at my FIL’s family get-togethers.   [3]

 

 

That first encounter took place when MH and I flew out to Florida to join his parents, who hosted a mini-family reunion/ congrats to MH and Robyn!  gathering at a condo complex in New Smyrna Beach.  One afternoon, as one of MH’s cousins and I were out on the condo’s lanai chatting about our respective favorite beaches, JW, who’d apparently overheard us from inside, joined us on the porch.  He asked me if I’d ever been at a beach and seen two men strolling by the seashore, holding hands.  I said that I had.  JW shook his head and made clucking noises, then said that he didn’t think he could “handle it.”  “Handle what?”  I asked him.  “Oh, you know,” he said, shuddering with…ick discomfort.  “I just couldn’t handle it.”

 

 

I knew what he was getting at, but feigned befuddlement.  What was there to handle, I asked him, other than the sight of two people walking on a beach?  JW said he realized that the theoretical, hand-holding gay couple technically weren’t harming “anyone else,” but that it would make him feel very uncomfortable to see that.

I reminded JW (perhaps, informed would be the more correct way to state it, if moiself  was enlightening JW as to something he hadn’t previously been aware of ) that in many countries around the world, especially those with conservative/religious/strict/oppressive cultural mandates, it is perfectly fine – and is in fact, the norm – for non-romantic, same-gendered friends to show physical affection in public, such as two men walking arm-in-arm or holding hands.  However, in those same countries, a male-female romantic couple (even a couple engaged to be married) would not hold hands or be “physical” in public, lest a sexual liaison be implied.

Knowing this, I asked JW, why would you assume that any two same-gender people you see holding hands are gay?  Perhaps they are expressing affection, as I had done fairly recently, with a female friend whom I hadn’t seen in years – and, yep, wouldn’t you know it, we were at the beach.  As we strolled along the seashore, walking arm in arm, delighted to be in each other’s company, one of us joked about how someone’s bigoted uncle from the Midwest might be  harumpfing to himself about ….those lesbos flaunting it in public.

 

 

My FIL later told me that his lil’ brother’s way of communicating was via teasing – that JW teased people he liked.  I can’t remember my reaction; I probably responded with something mildly snarky.  My lifetime of living in California had made me familiar with that form of teasing, in which someone, for some reason, can’t hold in their prejudice – they just gotta share it with you – but wants to be able to backtrack ( “What are you getting so excited about/can’t you take a joke? I was just teasing.” )

Moiself  finds this next fact neither good nor bad – merely noteworthy:  this story I’ve shared is the strongest memory I have of JW.  Evidently it is also the most lasting impression, as it’s the first that came to mind when MH told me that JW had died.

 

At least we aren’t West Coast lesbians.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Memory File Search:
What Was In That Letter Which Prompted My Response?

Last week while searching for my letter to my MIL, written in response to her critique of me keeping my surname after marriage ( the subject of my blog post two weeks ago The Name I’m Not Hyphenating, 1-16-26 ), I came upon a letter from moiself  to my own mother (shared below).  The letter from my mother which prompted my reply is somewhere up in my attic, but I decided it was more fun to suss out, from what I had written, what was the subject of her letter.  Sure enough, it all came back to moiself – little-to-no sussing needed.

It was a kick to read something I’d forgotten about:  my parents’ fond hope – obsession, almost – that one of their four children would want their truck-and-trailer rig after they could no longer use it.

I remember comparing notes with my siblings when our parents purchased what was to be their last RV-setup – a fifth wheeler towed by a pickup truck.

 

Ala this.

 

My comparing-notes suspicions were correct:  all of us were, individually, being consulted by our parental units.  Mom and Dad said they couldn’t decide which they preferred, a self-contained RV or a truck-trailer set up, and “for the future,” wanted to know what *we* preferred, so that it could be handed down to us.  Poor, dear folks – they were surprised ( and definitely hurt ) that none of their offspring wanted…whatever setup they chose.  We all respectively advised some version of, Thanks for thinking of us, but please pick whatever is best for *you,* as we don’t want any kind of RV.

I can read between the lines of the letter to my mother, and recall how bemusing and face-palming I found it when, in her letter to me, she’d tried to appeal to some stereotype of Men-Like-To-Drive-Trucks®, as perhaps a last ditch effort to get at least one of her daughters to consider taking the rig (our brother, my parents’ only son, was a strong no way from the get-go), if only to please her husband by offering him the ultimate manly symbol of manliness:  the opportunity to drive a pickup truck.

Moiself’s  unsolicited, non-RV advice to y’all:  pick a time to go through some of your old family letters, whether in the attic or on your computer files.  You’ll likely be surprised/touched/amused/confused by what you find.

 

 

April 13, 2009

Hi, Mom

Thanks for your letter and sharing your ideas about the truck and RV.  You certainly put some thought into various options, which I appreciate.  I got a chuckle out of the fact that, despite your claim that most men love driving and having a truck, we have  [4]   MH, R____, E___ and R__    – manly men, each in their own way – and not one truck drivin’ dude (as my daughter would say) among the four of them.  It must be something in the water.

A few years back Dad brought up the subject with me.  He said he’d made the offer of the truck & RV to all the Parnell kids (if anyone took him up on it the offer would include compensating the remaining three accordingly – he always strove to be fair, to, as he put it, “even things out,” which was so sweet of him).  He told me everyone had said, “Thank you, but no,” and so he thought he’d eventually sell the setup and put whatever he could get out of it “into the estate.”

Anyway, you’re right about MH and I not wanting the rig.  Although we enjoy kayaking and hiking, etc., we’re not interested in any kind of RV set up.  We do have RVC hookup and parking space, but that is for temporary use only.  Our CC & Rs prohibit us from storing any such vehicles on site.   Even if we took you up on your generous offer to pay for off-site storage, the additional upkeep and insurance wouldn’t be worth it for something we’d use at most once a year (if that often).  RVs can be great for retired folks, who have the flexibility to take longer trips or even just longer weekends, and who have time before the trip itself to do the necessary preparations and also time after the trip for the fix-up, put-back-in-storage chores (and such tasks take longer when the RV is stored off-site).

I’ve fond memories of our family trailer trips, and included in the memories are the fact that those trips were long.  Our family enjoyed the benefits of Dad’s government job – he had something like 25 days of vacation (plus holidays) and often took them all at once in the summer, when we (I mean of course you and Dad) would prep the rig and then take off for weeks.  MH and I simply don’t have that kind of vacation time.   But we do appreciate the offer!

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

 


*   *   *

May you have fun reading between the lines of letters sent and received;
May you remember to keep copies of letters sent and received;
May you agree to disagree with – and challenge – your teasing uncle;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Only one of whom – the second youngest –  survives now.

[2] Although they were invited, I don’t remember JW and his wife attending our wedding, which was across the country from where they lived.

[3] and which were mercifully [from moiself’s  perspective] rare, as MH’s father’s extended family lived 2k+ miles away, in the Midwest and/or South and/or east coast.

[4] My husband, two BILs and brother’s names redacted.  Not quite Epstein-file-redaction worthy, but still….

[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 Life I’m Not Gamifying

December 5, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), category-free rants, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Life I’m Not Gamifying

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 Proof That We Are Doomed

Dateline:  Tuesday; circa 8:15 am; breakfast table talk.  MH and I are discussing the “gamifying” of the apps we both use –e.g.,  the New York Times games – apps which keep score for you, even if you don’t/never asked them to do so and that’s not why you play them (  How long did it take you to solve this morning’s mini crossword?  Ten seconds longer than your average solve time…how many days in a row did you play and win….).

MH uses the term gamifying, which I haven’t heard before but immediately “get.”    Moiself  understands gamifying as –

the incorporating of game design principles (accruing points, keeping score, applying rules, competing with others and/or yourself)  and features into non-game activities and circumstances

– as a marketing/behavioral design feature to cultivate commitments to products and services.  Translation:  yet another design feature to get you to use more/buy more.

 

 

I told MH that I’d experienced the gamifying creep in other apps, such as my meditation apps and yoga streaming classes, which note how many times per week/days in a row I’ve used their daily meditation and/or yoga practice.  Perhaps the fact that I find this irksome means I need more meditation/yoga/mindfulness in my life, but when, for example, the Calm app   [2]   shows me a weekly calendar with the days marked when I did their guided daily mediation (and thus when I didn’t), I feel like talking back to the app ( “Stop belying your name!  It doesn’t make me feel calm when you point out the days you think I missed or skipped.  I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but just because I didn’t meditate/do yoga with *you* today doesn’t mean I didn’t do it at all….Sorry, but you’re not the only fish in the sea app on my phone….” ).

 

 

Perhaps some folks find these reminders/trackers helpful, even motivating. Great; whatever levitates your zafu cushion floats your boat.  But, why not have them be elective, as in, you must opt in to such features instead of having them be the default.  For moiself, such reminders/trackers erase that fine line between encouraging and nagging.

Once again, I digress: this (the gamifying of everything) is not the proof that We are doomed.  That came when MH reached across the table to show me what had just popped up on his cellphone screen.   “Do you get these ads?” he asked, indicating the Anti Flatbutt technology ad (featuring a man’s buttocks clad in a tight pair of pants) on his screen.  Sighing with world-weary commiseration, I said, yes, I’d noticed that ad popping up at least once on my phone.  And while moiself  appreciates seeing such a make-believe “problem” being marketed to men for a change, with all of the actual problems going on in the world – compelling problems which we need technology to solve or at least acknowledge and address – the existence of this particular ad may be the tipping point:  there is no (or at least, little) hope.  Is it time for us to buy the Doomsday RV®?    [3]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes A Lousy Book Has A Lousy Cover

We’ve all heard the aphorism:

Never/Don’t/You Can’t/You shouldn’t:
judge a book by its cover.

I recently (over) heard it used, in a public place, where Person #1 was chiding another person for making what Person #1 thought was an incorrect or rash assessment.  I often find that trite, book-cover-judging, non-trusim to be dismissive and erroneous when it used to advise or admonish someone else for doing…simply what people do. So often in life that’s exactly what we have to do, when we have incomplete or partial information, or simply not enough time, but have to make a choice or decision.

Everyone is a judge, in and of their own life.  And most everyone is accused at some point, when practicing the fine art of judging, as being judgmental.  

 

 

That term gets a bad rap if I do say so moiself.    [4]  Every time I choose this and not that –  from the significant decision of voting for a presidential candidate to the relatively minor but necessary-at-the-time decision of which dressing I want the waiter to bring for my salad… and all choices above and beyond and in between – unless I’m flipping a coin, I’m making a judgment that one choice is “better” – for me, my circumstances, my family, the planet…name your variable.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

May your life be free from gamifying;
May you be considerate with the judgements you need to make
(and be free to change them when they prove incorrect/unsuitable);
May you have a sympathetic jury when you are brought to trial for bitch-slapping the obsequious dude who rang your doorbell, ignoring your no soliciting sign, and tried to sell you his anti-flat butt technology;

…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] Which I’ve mentioned before in this space and which I used on a regular basis.

[3] MH and I can never get an RV, because I have informed our offspring that if they ever discover that we have bought one it will be a signal that we have given up on humanity and plan to hit the road and see everything we can see because the climate change/MAGA-idiocracy-induced apocalypse is just around the corner.

[4] And I just did.

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

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

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

The Surgical Ordeal I’m Not Recounting

November 14, 2025

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

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

 

Something along these lines.

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 


*   *   *

Department Of More Considerations

Recovering from surgery during the holiday season.

 

 

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Star Trek Moments When You Least Expect Them

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

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

 

 

*    *   *

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

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

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

 

 

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

Be a verb; not a noun.

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

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

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

 You.  Can.  Do.  Other.  Things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 


*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.   [10]   Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] An appropriate container.

[10] And thanks for reading this tenth footnote.

The Home I’m Not Going Back To

October 10, 2025

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

Department Of You Can’t Go Home Again

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

*   *   *

Department Of The Morning After The Reunion Reflections

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

*   *   *

Department Of Priorities

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

 

 

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

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

Moiself:
“Robyn Parnell; Not A Doctor.”

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

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

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

 

*   *   *

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

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[8] Not to each other.

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

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

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

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

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

The 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

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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

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