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The Mental Gymnastics I’m Not Doing

March 21, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Me so happy, nature, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, science, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Mental Gymnastics I’m Not Doing

Department Of Good News First
Warning: Entering Parental Bragging Zone

 

 

On Tuesday I found out that daughter Belle, who works as Quality Assurance Manager for Schilling Cider,  passed the exam  [1]  (which was given during the  2025’s CiderCon convention ) to become certified as a professional Pommolier. 

My heart soars like a hawk.   [2]   Ya, hoo!!

 

 

A pommolier is the hard cider industry’s analog to a sommelier.  This, from from the American Cider Association website’s “Meet Our Certified Pommoliers ®  (where Belle will soon be listed):

“Becoming a Certified Pommelier is a remarkable achievement that celebrates dedication, perseverance, and a deep passion for the art and science of cider. It requires hours of rigorous study, sensory analysis practice, and a commitment to mastering the intricacies of cider. From learning about different apple varieties to understanding the complex flavors and aromas of ciders, Certified Pommeliers have honed their skills to expert levels. Their hard work and preparation not only showcase their knowledge and expertise but also exemplify their love for all things cider-related. Cheers to all Certified Pommeliers for their dedication and commitment to the craft!”

MH and I were impressed and also intimidated by the length and breadth of the knowledge Belle would be tested on, from the chemistry of brewing and fermentation to knowledge of/ability to identify obscure European apple varieties.  The test was given in February; she was told results would take (at least)  six weeks.  As we neared the results deadline I was a teensy bit anxious for her (the test is designed to fail at least 80% of those who take it).

Monday noontime I was at my favorite sushi restaurant here in Hillsboro, waiting to meet a friend for lunch, when I got Belle’s text.  I knew that she was at a local (Pacific Northwest) cider conference in Tacoma, and figured that, as she’d done earlier in the day, she was texting between symposiums to share conference stories.  Apparently the involuntary squeal of delight I emitted when I read Belle’s text (“ HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT:  I  DID ITTTTTTTT ”) was loud enough for the two sushi chefs to hear, as they both looked up from slicing saki and maguro, nodded across the sushi bar at me, and said, “Congratulations.”

I thanked them (and the people sitting at the two tables on either side of moiself, who also smiled at/congratulated me), and explained that there indeed was good news, but it was about my daughter….and would you like to know what a pommolier is?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Seasonal News Second

Happy Vernal Equinox, y’all. 

Hope you yogis were inspired to do 108 Sun salutations to mark the turning of the season.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Sign Of The Impending Apocalypse

Dateline: Sunday 9:55-ish: MH and moiself  are sitting in our respective Norwegian “stressless” recliner chairs, after having watched  Ordinary People.  Despite the admittedly comfy chairs’ claim to fame, we are actually stressed – as in, under emotional duress – as each of us has forgotten how achingly devastating the movie is.  We exchange comments about that, then MH grows silent, looks out at his feet resting on his chair’s ottoman, and asks, “Do these socks make my feet look really long?”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Ugly Americans  [3]   Down Under
Sub-Department  Of One Of The More Stupid Attempts At Self-Redemption/Justification Moiself  Has Read In A Long Time…

…the source of which would be the story about an American “social media influencer” (Instagram handle,  Sam Jones from Montana )   [4]   who was visiting Australia.  One evening while traveling on a remote road this influencer spotted a mother and baby wombat off the side of the road.  Instead of acting like a normal/respectful person and taking a photograph of the animals, she exited her vehicle, snatched the baby from its mother and ran back to her car (where she apparently had a camera/phone mounted).  She held the wriggling baby wombat up to record its distress, which she narrated, while both baby and mama wombat squealed their displeasure:

“ ‘Mama’s right there, and she’s pissed, ’ the woman said in a video posted online. She went on to release the joey   [5]   on the roadside in the darkness, illuminated only by her car’s headlights….

The indignation was bipartisan…Tony Burke, said officials would review the woman’s visa to see if any immigration laws had been breached, and that any future applications from her would receive intense scrutiny. The government did not release her name but Australian news media identified her as Samantha Strable.

The drumbeat of criticism included calls to deport the woman. On Friday morning, ABC Australia, the national broadcaster, sent out a news alert saying she had left Australia….

Mark Heinz, a reporter for the Wyoming-based Cowboy State Daily, said he believed the woman in question was…Ms. Strable, whom he had interviewed in 2023 about her enthusiasm for hunting….

In the interview with Mr. Heinz, Ms. Strable, then a resident of Pinedale, Wyo., recounted her adventures of having hunted red stag in Chile with a bow and killed pigs and wallabies in New Zealand. ….

Detailing her pig hunting experience in New Zealand, in which dogs corner wild pigs allowing for the hunter to plunge a knife into the animal’s heart, she said it was ‘intense.’

‘Honestly, I cried,’ she said in the interview. ‘I don’t like killing. I like the hunting, I like the chase. It’s not fun to see anything die.’ “

( excerpts, my emphases, from “Outrage in Australia After American Woman Grabs a Baby Wombat,” by Victoria Kim, NY Times, 3-14-25 )

 

 

No surprise ( to moiself ) that this self-aggrandizing, social media slut influencer who terrified and stressed an infant animal and its mother, is a hunter.  And what a bummer to read that, after all the effort Strable put into her “adventures,” the hunter claims not to enjoy the end result of the hunt.  What a shock, that it wasn’t  fun for Ms. Strable to see the wild pig die – the living creature whom she’d sought out and terrorized by siccing dogs to chase and corner it – the living creature into whose heart she’d then plunged a knife ?!

 

Poor baby.

 

Yo, Strable: None of the animals you killed had to die.  The wild pig didn’t have to die, Ms. Strable. You could have just left it alone.  Or enjoyed the challenge – without using tracking dogs to terrorize the poor creature –  of getting close enough to the pig to take a picture of it.  Or enjoyed the “chase” by chasing a living being (a fellow homo sapiens?) who voluntarily agreed to participate in it.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Wanted Distraction While On The Elliptical;
What I Got Was An Aha Moment

I’ve been doing my pre-breakfast workout for the past few weeks while re-watching some Grey’s Anatomy seasons that I don’t have much memory of.  Dateline: last Friday morning I’m on Season 11; it’s the heart-rending episode where Dr. April Kepper gives birth to her and her husband Dr. Jackson Avery’s doomed/premature baby.  Relevant character background: April is a fervent evangelical Christian;    [6]   Jackson is an atheist.

April is distraught after an ultrasound at 24 weeks gestation gives bad news about her pregnancy.  Further testing reveals that her fetus has the most severe form of a devastating genetic disorder,    [7]  which will cause it to die either before birth or shortly thereafter.  April is gutted by the news, and after learning that her baby’s bones are already starting to break in utero, she opts for what her supportive husband and their OBs and pediatricians recommend as the least awful choice: to induce labor, and thus be able to hold their baby before it dies.

At one point, when April and Jackson are discussing their options, she is a walking open wound, ranting about how unfair it all is.  She’s believed in her god all of her life; she has followed what she thought was her calling, from her god, to be a doctor and to heal the sick; she is a believer; she has tried to do good; she has prayed; she’s done everything right and this is so unfair, so unfair….  She rages on about the unfairness, then adds….

“…and it’s *cruel.”

All her husband can do is listen in supportive agony.  And I found moiself  wondering if    [8]   he was thinking what I was thinking:   that while what has happened is certainly awful, it’s only *cruel* if you believe in (a) god.

It is only cruel because April believes in a god that made this world, and that she believes her god can and does act in this world, which leaves her with only cruel options:

*  either her so-called loving god gave her baby this horrible death sentence, or

* seeing as how April has expressed how she believes her god is all-powerful and all loving and that all over the world, “miracles do happen,” that when no miracle happens it is because her god is choosing not to fix what it could fix.

 

 

Translation:  What is cruel, actually, are her beliefs; what is cruel is her religious faith, which has filled her heart and mind with cruel, supernatural nonsense.

When people experience such tragedies they go through pain and mourning, the what-ifs, the sorrow, the frustration, the anger… This is true for people who hold any religious faith, as well as for people who are religion-free.  All of us suffer when tragedy strikes.

But Humanists, Atheist, Freethinkers, Skeptics – we who are religion-free – do not have the added burden of the gut-twisting sense of betrayal, of second-guessing of what we could have or should have done re our faith-based rituals, of agonizing over what our supposedly all-powerful god did or did not choose to do.  When tragedy strikes, we whose worldviews are free from superstition/religion/theology also suffer the same emotions of grief and loss, *except* for that huge one, because we acknowledge the truth of the natural world.

We know that we are neither punished/cursed by tragedy nor rewarded/blessed by prosperity; we know that when our loved one dies that there is no supernatural cause of, nor relief from, our suffering.  We know that sometimes, shit just happens…which means that a core part of being human is to wade through the shit, relying on and accepting the comfort and support of our fellow human beings.

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Never Get Old   [9]

Welcome to yet another new feature of the new year, which may continue on the third Friday of each month.  Or…not.

When was the last time you rewatched Airplane!    [10] 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“So I’m not really interested in the mental gymnastics that allow a person to believe
in both a loving god and baby cancer. Over and out.”

( anonymous poster on online religious debate bulletin board )

*   *   *

May you have reasons to be audibly delighted in sushi bars;
May you be free from the gut-twisting mental gymnastics of theism;
May you enjoy a joke/scene/song that never gets old;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] given by the American Cider Association, to cider professionals qualified/nominated to take it.

[2] Little Big Man.

[3] The pejorative “Ugly American” originates from a 1958 novel of the same name.  The book portrayed Americans’ attitudes ( be they tourists or business tycoons wishing to do business with/in foreign countries) toward non-Americans as those of ignorance, arrogance, and condescension.  The term has come to mean a stereotype of loud, ill-mannered, insensitive American tourists who offend the citizens of the countries they travel to.

[4] There is a “title” or job description that has had its 15 minutes of bullshit fame and needs to go the way of leech collectors, phrenologists, caddy butchers, and other obsolete professions.

[5] A baby wombat.  Yep, the same term is used for a baby kangaroo.

[6] Which doesn’t stop her from having fervent premarital sex with Jackson in hospital on call rooms – but this seems to be part of the contract those doctors working in Seattle have to sign.

[7]   osteogenesis imperfecta II (aka “brittle bone disease”)

[8] Well, if that character were real….but, although that was fiction, thousands of people face such dilemmas every day, around the world.

[9] At least, to ever-youthful moiself.

[10] Best disaster film parody ever.  In fact, I recall reading a comment from one film historian about how studios stopped making disaster films for a time after that movie’s release, because no one would take them seriously.  

[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 Nothing I’m Not Controlling

February 28, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Nothing I’m Not Controlling

Department Of The First (And Likely Last) Time I’ve Ever Asked This Question

“What is your favorite mice curse?”

Dateline: Last Saturday evening.
Context:  Don’t y’all worry your pretty little heads about that.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Can’t Believe How Good This Is…
And How, Ultimately, Heartbreaking

Best podcast episode…in a long time…or, ever?

This American Life: Ten Things I Don’t Want To Hate About You.  From the intro:

 TAL host Ira Glass:
I think we all have people in our lives who we love, but there’s no talking to them. They have their way of seeing things or doing things, and it’s hard to take. And no matter how you try to talk it out, it goes nowhere. It doesn’t get solved, even if they also want things to change.

We’re devoting our entire show today to a story like that from Zach Mack, who’s a reporter. And the story is about him and his dad and how they both wanted to mend a rift that had grown between them that had lasted for years, but they couldn’t figure out how until Zach’s dad offered a very surprising way out.

Zach’s (and his family’s) story is told in three parts (you can listen to them all at the link).  Part 1: Zach and his father enter into an agreement that could change their entire relationship. (9 minutes)

Part 2: Zach’s mother and sister weigh in on the agreement. (28 minutes)

Part 3: With the year coming to an end, someone is going to have to say, “You were right, and I was wrong.” Will it change anything?

From the intro through the ending credits song ( Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds – gut-punchingly apropos, considering the subject ), this is one of the best, if not *the* best, podcast episodes I’ve ever heard.  And I’m glad I made moiself  listen to it, even as I was trying not to sob at the end.

 

 

*    *    *

Department Of Not Only Is This Food For Thought, It’s So Much Food
That I Might Need The Heimlich Maneuver After Attempting To Ingest It All

We control nothing, but we influence everything.

I’m still mulling over that proclamation/observation, which I heard last week, along with its corollary –  We should all focus less on control, and more on resilience – via the same venue:  the Hidden Brain Podcast  moiself  mentioned in last week’s post.

This week on Hidden Brain, we…look at how we can come to grips with the unpredictable forces that shape our world and turn them to our advantage. We hear a lot these days about separating the signal from the noise. The idea is that there’s a deep order, a solid predictability we can count on, if only we can screen out distracting details, meaningless static. But what if those trivial random factors actually matter? What if they matter a lot? At University College London, political scientist Brian Klaas studies these hidden forces.
( intro to Hidden Brain: Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown )

HB host Shankar Vedantam and guest Brian Klass talked about the intriguing story of Klass’s own history with random factors.  First, they discussed stories of highly consequential historical events – including a phenomenon known in Japan as Kokura’s Luck   [1]  – which underline “…the fact that the interconnectivity of the world means that unexpected and sometimes deeply problematic things arise from the smallest of human choices.”

In 1945, nearing the end of WWII in the Pacific theater,   [2]  a change in the weather had huge consequences for the Japanese cities of Kokura and Nagasaki. Kokura was the primary target for the USA’s second atomic bomb dropping, but a change in Kokura’s cloud cover prompted the bomber crew to choose a secondary target.   [3] 

 

from the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki archives

 

Klass goes on to tell a story from rural American, 1905.  Clara Modlin Jansen and her husband lived on a farm in Wisconsin with their four children, all ages four and younger.  Do that math:  Clara’s been having kids basically nonstop.  At some point the stress of gestating, birthing, and parenting four young children (it is assumed…who actually knows?) overwhelms Clara: she kills her four young children, then takes her own life.

Klass:
“And so…Clara’s husband comes home and discovers that most horrific thing that any human can experience – the single moment where his entire family has been wiped out in this intense act of murderous tragedy….all of them are dead…we can only imagine what that was like.
The reason I tell that story is because the man who came home to that farmhouse was my great grandfather. And what is really striking about it from my perspective is that, because my great grandfather remarried about a decade later to the woman that became my great grandmother, I literally would not exist if those kids did not die. It’s my sort of version of Kokura’s luck.”

 

 

Last week, the same day I listened to the HB podcast, friend CC and I met for one of our regular sushi lunches wherein we discuss and solve the problems of the world.  [4]   I brought up that story, about Klass’s family history, and we each noted our own versions of Kokura’s luck.

Mine included an insight MH shared with me about our family – him reacting as if he’d realized it for the first time – after I’d told him that, giving the current erosion of medical and personal autonomy, it was time to go public ( in my blog post,  The Liberty Loss I’m Not Accepting ) about the fact that I’d had an abortion when I was in college.  That was years before I’d met MH,    [5]   who seemed to gob-smack himself with the realization that it is almost 99% certain we would not have met and married, and thus our offspring K and Belle would not have been born – had I not had that abortion.

The “interconnectivity of the world,” meaning that the unexpected sometimes arises from seemingly random events, also means that the spontaneous abortion (lay person’s term,  miscarriage) – I had not quite two years after son K was born, when MH and I were trying to have another child, means that daughter Belle is who she is her because of that pregnancy fail. 

Of course, you can string this on add ad infinitum item into all sorts of areas (does the world owe the Theory of Relativity to the fact that Albert Einstein’s great great great grandmother existed?    [6]  ) until your cranium feels like it will explode.

 

 

One of the more powerful, cranium-exploding events I remember was from several decades ago, when moiself  was reading about an innovative jailhouse group counseling program for sexual offenders.   [7]   The article, written by two of the program’s founders and counselors, spoke of how sexual offenders were one of the (if not *the*) most difficult class of prisoners to rehabilitate.  This was because rapists ( like most of society at that time, to be frank) tended to blame their victims for the attacks, and thus were highly resistant to behavioral change therapeutic modes.

Somehow, no matter the circumstances, men imprisoned for assaulting women and girls  [8]   asserted that it was the fault of the females they’d assaulted. The cognitive gymnastics involved in an opportunistic predator managing to find a way to blame the 68 year-old woman he raped for being responsible for him breaking into her house and attacking her as she was asleep in her own bed, in her own bedroom – Simone Biles couldn’t do as many flips.  Sexual predators are masters at the craft of speculative fiction.

The counselors wrote about a breakthrough they had one day, in a session of group counseling, wherein they got a convicted serial rapist to open up to the group. This man (“Y” ) was adamant about how every single one of his rape victims was responsible for him stalking and attacking them. The female counselor (“F”) asked Y to describe, to the group, the last assault he committed, after which he was caught, convicted and sent to prison.  F said she wasn’t going to contradict or judge Y, she just truly wanted to know the details, from his POV,  After all, he’d been a “successful” predator for years before being caught.  How did he choose that victim (“X”)?

Y began relating the story, which in itself was a tacit admission of the willfulness of his act – he didn’t contradict F when, in her question to him, she stated that he *chose* his victim ( a fact some of the other men in the group called Y out on later).  But Y didn’t argue with the phrasing of F’s question.

He described how he went out one night to the downtown area of the large city where he lived, and began following random women who crossed his path.  He didn’t know where they were walking from or to – a restaurant, their place of work, a friend’s apartment? – and he mostly followed women walking alone but also honed in on a few who were in groups.  Y followed one lone woman and told himself, “If she turns right at the next corner or keeps going straight ahead, I’ll ‘get’ her.”  The woman turned left.

Y began following a group of four women who were chatting amongst themselves.  He told himself, “If one of them breaks off from the other group, I’ll follow her.”  At the next street corner, three of the women turned left, waving goodnight to their friend, X, who turned right.  As Y followed X for another few blocks, he said to himself, “At the next intersection, If she turns left or continues straight on ahead, she goes free; if she turns right, I’ll get her.”

X was Y’s final assault; he was captured soon afterward.    [9]   At this point in Y’s narrative, F said to Y, “I am curious about something.  You’ve said in the past that every woman you’d raped had brought on her own assault.  What did X do to deserve this attack?  What did X do that prompted you to attack her?”

Y looked at the floor for a good ten seconds, then looked up, squarely into counselor F’s eyes.  Without a trace of emotion Y said, “She turned right.”    [10]

 

 

All these years (decades) later, moiself  still hasn’t gotten over the fact that, for one person in that story – the assailant – true randomness had nothing to do with him committing that most significant act of his life….and for the assault victim, randomness had everything to do with it.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

Many people worry about life’s “meaning.”  Or perhaps they just pretend to worry about it, when they’re not engaged in other things.  I’ve long been convinced that a concern about the ultimate “meaning” or “purpose” of life is a psychological problem masquerading as a philosophical one.

What could life mean?  What does consciousness and its contents, at this moment, mean?  What is its purpose?

Whatever is, all together, simply *is.*  What meaning could there be?

It seems to me that meaning and  purpose are just a distracted person’s imaginary friends.  There is only reality…and we’re not separate from it.
Isn’t that good enough?
(  Sam Harris, Waking Up moment 2-22-25, my emphases )

 

Or you could just consult Monty Python.

*   *   *

May your purpose be to *not* be separate from reality;
May you appreciate the connection between luck and reality;
May your luck include not having a loved one sucked into the vortex of religious certitude
and conspiracy theories;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] In Japan, someone is said to have “Kokura’s luck,” when they manage to avoid a catastrophewithout ever having realized they were in danger.  It refers to the fact that when the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki in 1945, the intended target had been the city of Kokura.

[2] The Pacific Theater (of operations); The European Theater – who is responsible for giving bloody and devastating wars such benign logistical labels?  “Uncle Sam wants you to join the theater!”

[3] As the B-29 was approaching Kokura, ready to drop its payload, the city was obscured by un-forecasted fog and clouds and haze – the crew couldn’t see the bomb site, and didn’t want to risk dropping an atomic bomb and missing.  While they circled a few times, waiting for the weather to change, they realized they were running low on fuel and eventually decided to divert to a secondary target – Nagasaki.

[4] And, not to be snooty about it, but the world will be so much better off when it realized that its problems have solutions, and listen to CC’s and my answers!

[5] This was no big secret to close family members and friends; it was a personal matter.  Nor was there any shame behind keeping it personal –  I’d never felt a need to discuss my private medical history with strangers.

[6] Certain philosophical or spiritual traditions hold that Einstein’s “soul” would’ve found a way to be born into someone else’s body, in some other family.

[7] Moiself  majored in Criminal Justice in college, and had intended to go to law school.  For a few years after graduation, I still kept up with my two areas of special interest – feminist civil rights, and prison/sentencing reform.

[8] Of course, men can be assault victims and women perpetrators; the overwhelming majority of scenarios in sexual assault are male perp/female victim, and that’s what the group counseling article was about.

[9] Evidence emerged linking him to several other assaults, some of which he was tried and convicted for.

[10] The rest of the convicts participating in the group discussion had been bone-chillingly quiet during Y’s of how he’d chosen his victim, and at this point they began talking and shouting at once, calling him out on his self-delusion.

[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 Theism I’m Not Promoting

February 7, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, reproductive rights, school, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Theism I’m Not Promoting

Department of Pro Poly…

 

 

…Sub-Department Of Not *That* Kind Of Poly    [1]

Last week friend EHS sent me a link to an article, Monotheists Are The Worst, with the intro, “Thought you might appreciate this.”  So, someone *has* has been reading my screeds against religious nonsense and bigotry thoughtful critiques of the dangers of entangling mythology and supernatural beliefs with cultural institutions and government.

 

 

The article reminded moiself  of the many of the issues my fellow bookies    [2] and I wrangled with during my decade-plus-long participation in a Hillsboro United Church of Christ book study group.   [3]    The books we chose to read and discuss had a connection to religion/spirituality in some way but were nonfiction (so, no scriptures – sorry, any biblical literalists    [4]  ), and ranged from comparative theologies to history and science and politics and biography and philosophy and essay collections….

My summation of the article’s provocative but not unfamiliar (to moiself, at least) premise:  our world’s cycles of progress and regression can be attributed to the fact that over half of the planet’s supernatural-believing peoples subscribe to monotheistic religions.  Monotheism leads to a concentration of power, rigidity and totalitarianism (your god doesn’t share power, so why should your ruler?), and that One True God ® “…never has faults, never varies his thinking, is perfect….”   In monotheistic societies the one god idea extends beyond religion; it is conflated with every aspect of life – particularly, power and leadership – and thus associates the supposed attributes of the One True God ® (e.g., gender and ethnicity) with mortals who share the traits of the One True God ®.   And guess what gender is attributed to every monotheistic god?

 

Our book group never got around to reading this.

 

“Karl Marx called religion the opium of the masses, but I disagree. It’s monotheism that fits this definition only.

In polytheistic religions, gods can have faults. They can have different and contradicting views of things. They can be questioned more. They differ from one another.

It’s harder to say that a society should be ruled by men when goddesses are part of the pantheon you worship. It’s easier to accept people and their differences if your gods don’t all have the same hair color or make the same choices or love the same kind of people.”

( Monotheists Are The Worst: They are how we got here
by Lilith Helstrom; excerpts; my emphases )

Of course, that second supposition –  the alleged flexibility and tolerance fostered by polytheism – doesn’t hold up upon examination.  The prime example would be the historically polytheistic cultures forming what is now Hindu-dominated India.  Hinduism had/has a pantheon of deities,    [5]  whose avatars have different genders and species (not to mention number of limbs…but the human-looking gods in the pantheon have the same hair color as the humans.).  Yet these pantheistic cultures found it quite easy to say that their societies should be ruled by men, then and now.

“India, despite making strides in development in the past three decades, lags behind on gender equality. It ranks 131 of 188 countries on the U.N. Development Program’s Gender Inequality Index Dowry, female infanticide and women’s education are persistent issues despite decades of successive governments’ efforts to address them…..the problems in India are not limited to villages and uneducated people — the behavior of outspoken critics of sexism shows how deeply entrenched these attitudes are.”
( “Why India’s modern women say it’s a ‘burden’ to be female,”
by By Vidhi Doshi, India correspondent for The Washington Post )

 

 

As for polytheism making it “…easier to accept people and their differences,” just ask any practicing Muslim in India about their treatment by the Hindu majority.

Like the Monotheists Are The Worst  author, I am religion-free, and wish that more   [6]  people viewed the world in the same way.  Unlike the author, I do not think that

“….our society would be vastly better, even (if it were still) full of religion, if we had pantheons instead of monotheisms.
Pantheons can absorb new gods. Pantheons can therefore absorb new cultures and types of people. Pantheons can grow and shift as a religion. Pantheons can evolve.
But monotheisms are stuck in one place, stuck in one time, forever, trying to imprison us all with their rigidness.”

But I’m quibbling here, with her use of one adjective:  vastly.  I *do* think society would be better (or at least, different) with pantheisms instead of monotheisms.

And I do think that we’d all be better by considering more beyond-the-ordinary-POV articles like these.   Give it a read, sez moiself.  And thanks for the link, EHS.

 

 

*   *   *

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.   [7] 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m Still Laughing At This

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

The three monotheisms share a series of identical forms of aversion: hatred of reason and intelligence; hatred of freedom; hatred of all books in the name of one book alone; hatred of sexuality, women, and pleasure; hatred of feminine; hatred of body, of desires, of drives. Instead, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam extol faith and belief, obedience and submission, taste for death and longing for the beyond, the asexual angel and chastity, virginity and monogamous love, wife and mother, soul and spirit. In other words, life crucified and nothingness exalted.

 ( Michel Onfray, French writer, philosopher, teacher )   [9]

 

*   *   *

 

May you take time to enjoy an old joke that still gets you laughing;
May you cast a critical eye to the  ___-isms in your own life;
May you devise a pantheon of deities that would be beneficial
(or at least, entertaining) for humankind;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] And why did your mind go there first?

[2] My affectionate name for the book group members.

[3] The church MH and I and our offspring attended, and were members of, until we outed ourselves as religion-free.

[4] Yeah, like there are so many reading *this* heathen’s blog.

[5] Although and actually, from my years of studying and reading about I think it is more accurate to describe Hinduism as a form of polytheistic monotheism –  as in, the multiple deities/avatars are a useful tool for humans to try to understand the incredible and overwhelming abundance of that which is All…which is a lot more complicated issue and deserves more discussion than I care to devote to in a footnote.

[6] Okay, ALL.

[7] 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.

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

[9] I think there should be a ninth footnote.  And now there is.

The Black Armband I’m Not Wearing

January 24, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Black Armband I’m Not Wearing

Can I get a size to fit the entire country?

 

The title of this blog refers to the events of four days past.  This year Monday January 20 was also Inauguration Day, which stole the spotlight from the day which should have been solely devoted to an American hero, Martin Luther King Jr.  Instead, that martyred champion of human rights had to share his legacy’s attention with a traitor to democracy and decency, who, as longtime readers know, cannot be referred to by name in this space.

Several weeks ago I had put a reminder on my calendar, to ask/remind civilized Americans like-minded friends to wear a black armband on 1/20/25.  I’ve donned that symbol of bereavement when my father died, when John Lennon was murdered, and on a few select occasions when I thought a visible sign of mourning was appropriate  [1]

Instead, moiself  tried to channel a variation of the adage  (likely Persian in origin but variants are found across historical/cultural wisdomb literature) which I used to reassure my (now deceased) mother during hard times:   This too shall pass.

 

I did not assure my mother with the kidney stone variation of the adage.

 

This doesn’t mean that I think all will be hunky dory.  The Cheetos Mussolini and his minions will put on a massive shit show for US all, US capitalized as in, the United States.  I know that other countries have survived a range of despots, but doing so comes at a great price, especially to the less powerful.  I also know that such survival will require diligence and vigilance… But then, doesn’t it always?

We have had leaders of decency, integrity, intelligence, equanimity; still, even during the terms of “No Drama Obama”  there could be, ultimately, no relaxing.  The festering turds of racism and Right Wing Fuckery were stewing in their resentment, fermenting and fomenting their schemes, throwing up obstacles wherever they could, waiting for their chance to crawl out from under their rocks. What was that quote, “The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance’?   [2]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Started Off Somewhat Okay….

But not so far under the skin moiself  is mad mad mad mad angry-ass mad, at this debacle of denial from so many US citizens.  I can’t adequately portray my rage and dejection without the use of repetitive, explicit, scatological references…so pictures will have to do, for now.  Pictures, and an excerpt from my blog post from four years ago,  wherein my despair at that time not long after the 2020 presidential election was that, although the Biden-Harris team won, it shouldn’t have been as close as it was.

( excerpts, The Reasons I’m Not Fully Getting Into ):

You must be familiar with how political and human rights leaders call for unity and try to appeal to our so-called better natures when the latest incidents of police brutality, sexism and misogyny, and the country’s history of systemic racism are revealed:

“This is not who we are.”
“We are better than this.”

You’ve heard those phrases before; you’ll hear them again. You may even believe them. But I’m gonna shove my elbow down the throat of the next person who says that within earshot of moiself.  Because, guess what?  This *is* who we are – at least, nearly half of the voting “we.”

At least 73 million of us are not “better than this,” because 73 million Americans were able and willing to set aside, ignore, or explain away the actions, rhetoric and policies of #45 which have fostered an unprecedented rise in displays of hatred, bigotry, and violence.

  “Hate crimes have surged nearly 20 percent during the administration of President Donald Trump, according to a new FBI report on hate crime statistics. The report also shows that hate-motivated murders, largely committed by white supremacists, spiked to their highest number in 28 years.”
( “Hate Crimes Under Trump Surged Nearly 20 Percent Says FBI Report,”
Newsweek, 11-16-20 )

…It haunts me – the voice of an Otherwise Nice-Sounding Man I heard being interviewed (on a radio show) before the election, who said he struggled with his decision.  Despite ONSM‘s misgiving about the “other stuff,” ONSM chose #45 because ONSM‘s stock portfolio had risen.

Other stuff.  As in, #45’s history of sexual harassment and bullying, encouraging and abetting racial and social inequity, white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, & xenophobia; coddling (and imitating) dictators; collusion with Russia & obstruction of Justice, corruption and nepotism and ‘birtherism’ lies and lies lies and more lies…   [3]

If you’ve a strong stomach, you can view (or download a pdf of) the unfortunately-not-yet-complete, “Listing of Trump’s Atrocities,” compiled via years of diligence of the non-profit publisher, McSweeney’s:

 Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them.
Various writers have compiled this list during the course of the Trump administration. Their work has been guided by invaluable journalistic resources, including WTFJHT, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other sources….

Other stuff.  That #45 supporter, and millions like him, claim “This is not who we are,” yet vote for someone  Who  Is  Exactly  That.  And that’s just as bad – no, it’s worse.

The leaders aren’t the problem; they rarely are.  Leaders can do nothing without followers, plus those who claim not to be followers, but are Bystanders and Overlookers.

Leaders can do nothing without followers.

We don’t give that fact the consideration and responsibility it merits.

Charles Manson personally killed no one at the Tate-LaBianca murder scenes; he got his followers to butcher those seven people for him.

Leaders can do nothing without followers.  Perhaps you’ve read about the protestations post-WWII from Italians who claimed not to have supported the policies of their Prime minister, Benito Mussolini, and who thus objected to being called fascists?

“The concentration camps and mass killings of civilians in Yugoslavia and Greece – those happened outside our borders; we don’t really know about that.  And, yeah, we, like, kinda, sorta, maybe knew that here, in our own country, Mussolini suppressed his opponents, dissenters, and social outsiders via physical assaults, imprisonment, economic deprivation, yada yada yada…. But, he made the trains run on time.”   [4]

“This is not who we are.”

It sucks, massively, to realize the contrary.

And so my thoughts still go to dark places, dragged down by the reality of the complicity of millions of my citizens, plus this HOLY CRAP realization:

Joe and Kamala are stand-up, intelligent, competent, compassionate people, but yikes – look at how many problems they have to fix.  What looms largest, exacerbated by #45, are the worldwide effects of global warming.  Biden and Harris accept the obvious, hard truths laid out by science, but without a change in the hearts and minds of Republicans in congress, will we have a repeat of the Obama years, when Republicans’ only policy mandate was to counter everything he tried to do?  Will they continue to stamp their metaphorical toddlers’ feet and tantrum their way through Biden’s term: “NO,  I  WON’T  WON’T  WON’T  WON’T  PLAY  WITH  YOU  AND  YOU  CAN’T  MAKE  ME.”
*   *   *

End of excerpt.  And as for the excerpt’s closing question…it wasn’t meant to be rhetorical, but yeah and of course, that’s just what the GOP did.  And here we are.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Back To The Graphics Of Primal Screams

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Quote Of The Week…

…and hopefully not quote of the century:    [5]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why History Sucks

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Primal Screams Via Graphics

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Simple Pleasures Amidst The Impending Calamities

Moiself  gets an almost inexplicably blissful pleasure from the ivy lights around our kitchen window.  MH hung them up and put them on a timer, so that they turn on without me thinking to turn them on/plug them in…I know I’ll get used to it at some point, but for now, for the past two weeks, whenever they do, it makes me feel…that some things will continue to be a source of tranquility in the world.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Other Things That Give Me Hope

 

attributed to “Childless Cat Lady”

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

May you be able to identify the most dangerous parasite by sight;
May you find your own version of an ivy lights beacon of hope;
May you remember that when you are a follower you empower your leader;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] If only to clue in strangers as to why moiself  might be in a bad mood and/or snap at them for seemingly non- sequitur-ial or inappropriate reasons.

[2] Generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but probably a variant on another utterance by another of the Founding Fathers peers, Wendell Phillips, who was quoting an Irish lawyer.  The Price of Liberty?  Eternal Vigilance.

[3] An extensive list may be found at McSweeney’s: The Complete Listing So Far of Trump’s Atrocities,

[4] Except that, he didn’t.  Like many dictators, Mussolini “…liked to take credit for everything that went right in Italy, even when it didn’t go that well at all. He was particularly fond of saying he was responsible for successful, large-scale public works projects, such as the railroad system.”  (Did Mussolini Really Keep the Trains Running on Time? history.howstuffworks.com  )

[5] Although, what did Katniss do?  She fought on; she did not give up.

[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 Monthly Newsletter I’m Not Reading Right Away

August 30, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Monthly Newsletter I’m Not Reading Right Away

Department Of Boys And Girls, Can You Identify These Magazines?

 

 

 

 

Silly question.  The titles are right there, on the cover, juat like any periodical, right?

Almost.  Here is another example. 

 

 

Girls and boys, can you note the difference?

 

I knew you could.

 

The last picture has the subscriber’s address on it and the return address of the organization; other than that, the cover is ala the proverbial brown paper wrapper.  When you unfold it, you see that it is Freethought Today, the periodical for members of the FFRF – Freedom From Religion Foundation.

 

 

Several years ago I found out from a FFRF board member the reason for the  *discretion*:  when the FFRF first began to publish Freethought Today – with the periodical’s title and other text and graphics on the front cover, just like any other organization’s journal – many members reported that their copies often arrived in their mailboxes having been damaged.  They’d been torn, graffitied, and vandalized with anti-freethought screeds, with article headlines crossed out and threats scribbled across the cover.  Now, who would have motivation to do such a thing? The slogans and threats had a “Christian” (if often scatological, obscenely-worded) theological bent (repent or you f****ing ass**** atheists are going to hell/kill a commie godless bastard for Christ   [1] ).  The logical deduction being that it is the recipients’ Good Christian® friends, or family, or neighbors?  Postal carriers and/or the U.S. P.O. mail sorters?   [2]

 

 

The publishers of Christianity Today   [3]   (founded by Billy Graham),  U.S. Catholic (published by the Claretian Missionaries    [4]  ), Lutheran Life and other religious magazines don’t have to hide the name of their publication lest the magazines be defaced by self-righteous…who?  Atheists and other “non-believers.”?

But the reason why Freethought Today cannot declare itself openly on its front covers is related to why I often put aside the FFRF newsletter when it arrives.  If moiself   is at all in a “tender” mood (read: disgusted with a good number of my fellow human beings), I wait until I’m feeling calmer to read it.   

My attempt to explain this reticence might seem more puzzling than enlightening.  It has to do with the important work that the FFRF does, via education, litigation, and persuasive advocacy.  Their legal department takes on cases on behalf of its members and the public, and ending hundreds of state/church entanglement violations each year, such as prayers and proselytizing in public schools and events, and public funding for religious purposes and religious symbols on public property.

 

 

FFRF lawsuits have removed Ten Commandment displays and Jesus paintings from public schools, stopped city/school board prayer; halted school subsidy of child evangelism, and stopped censorship of freethought displays, literature, and merchandise.

Other FFRF court victories include:

  • Halting federal funds to a bible school offering no academic classes;
  • Ending millions of tax dollars used to repair and maintain churches;
  • Successfully suing the IRS to reinstitute investigations of church politicking. [5]

All this is good news…and all this is frustrating news – frustrating in that they shouldn’t have to do this in the first place.  Each case reported in Freethought Today reminds me of previously reported incidents, and of the sad fact that, because of the sheer number of the cases they take on and the responses they get, for every family who contacts the FFRF for help   [6]   (re their child whose history teacher proselytizes religion and makes anti-science comments in class; re the child of Jewish parents who objected to team prayers led by her Christian soccer coach and was then shunned/harassed by her teammates….) there are hundreds more who stay quiet, not wanting to be discriminated against any more than they already are.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Subject Of This Post

…is important enough for it to be a single subject,  [7]    in moiself’s  opinion.

A dominant worldview –  dominant in terms of numbers of the worldview’s adherents (whether by actual belief, or adherents via the inertia of culture   [8]    ), and not dominant due to the rationality of the worldview’s content –  defines everything in terms of itself.

 A dominant worldview defines everything in terms of itself.  Thus, the religionists have given us the term atheist, to which they want to imbue with a plethora of malicious associations even though the word simply means “not a theist.”  They’ve also provided us with non-believer, another pesky misnomer, as it, like atheist, takes a person who is *not* religious and labels them in religious terms.

There’s plenty of things I “believe” in, but religion ain’t one of them.  If you are religious and looking for an umbrella term for those who are not religious, moiself,  along with many other freethinking folk, prefers religion-free.

 

 

Now I must address the unasked question by including a question of my own, which is why this question – “And, what do *you* believe?” goes unasked.  I can count on the fingers of my two hands (if some of the fingers were missing due to a tragic food processor accident) how many times a religion-believer, upon finding out that I am not “one of them,” shows an interest in what I do believe in.  The majority simply don’t ask; they’re not interested in – or their tone and body language indicate that they are fearful of/uncomfortable with – the possible answers.  They just want to know if you do or do not believe what *they* believe (so that they can accordingly shun/pray for/witness to you).

 

 

 

As for what moiself  believes, I can’t state it any better than this :

Affirmations of Humanism:  A Statement of Principles     [9]

* We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

* We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

* We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

* We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

* We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.

* We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

* We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.

* We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.

* We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

* We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

* We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.

* We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.

* We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.

* We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

* We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.

* We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.

* We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

* We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.

* We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.

* We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

* We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Anyone Looking For A Business Investment Opportunity?

I’m thinking of starting my own yoga studio, wherein students will practice in the nude.  I’m going to call it, Yogi Bare.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

*   *   *

May you take the Humanist creed to heart, no matter what your worldview is;
May you appreciate your right to read uncensored periodicals;
May you strive to be a good guest at the dinner party of your life;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1]  Freethought Today also has a regular feature article, Crankmail, wherein the editors share, printed just as received (in other words, atrocious grammar/spelling/punctuation left as is) “…some of the more ‘out there’ letters and social media comments that we get.”

[2] Who had access to the journal, once it was printed and mailed?

[3]  Masthead here; I’m not sure who the publisher is and which organizations the magazine currently represents, other than “evangelical Christianity.”

[4] “a Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men headquartered in Rome.” (Wikipedia)

[5] Examples from What Are FFRF’s Legal Accomplishments?

[6] Most of the plaintiffs in the FFRF lawsuits prefer to remain anonymous, due to the harassment and threats they have received when trying to address their concerns via non-legal means; e.g., going directly to their child’s school or sports team or….

[7] Although, of course, this subject encompasses about a bajillion others….

[8] persons who, if asked re religious affiliation, say that they are Christian, then when you question them re the tenants of Christian theology they either disagree with the tenets or don’t know them… but, when you bring this to their attention, they say they know they’re not Hindu or Buddhist or Jewish and this is a “Christian” country so they identify as that.

[9] Drafted by Paul Kurtz, the founder of Free Inquiry.

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

The Enemy Spy I’m Not Torturing

April 26, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , Comments Off on The Enemy Spy I’m Not Torturing

Department Of Gut Reactions

Dateline: Sunday 2 PM-ish.  MH and I are finishing our very yummers lunch at the Big Wave Café in Manzanita.  MH looks out the window of our booth, toward the cannabis dispensary which is fifty feet south of the cafe.  He reads me the dispensary’s street advertising signs, which proclaim,

Organic Herb
Taste The Difference.

Moiself:
” ‘Cause you don’t wanna ingest any pesticides when you’re smoking that shit.”

 

Your paranoia will be much more eco-friendly.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m Not Mean…But I Do Mean Business

What sparked the following story/memory? That’s a good question (which y’all didn’t ask, but moiself  did).  It might have been the snippets of conversation I heard while having lunch at a local sushi bar, where one person asked antheir friend to describe some “bad” thing they’ve done, that they didn’t think was bad at the time and iit wasn’t anything horrible but in retrospect it might have been a bit over the top….  [1]

Dateline: late 1980s, one weekday morning, at work, which is just a hop, skip, a jump and two labor contractions away from Stanford Hospital.   [2]  Moiself  is in my second year as medical assistant/reproductive health care educator for the OB-GYN practice of Dr. DWB and Nurse Practitioner POM.

I fetch an amniocentesis kit from the supply closet, place it in the ultrasound room, and continue down the hallway, past the other exam rooms and Dr. B’s office.  As I reach the counter of the staff’s work desk I can see, through the window behind the check-in desk, a patient in the waiting room, standing at the window.  The patient introduces herself to JJ, the practice’s accountant, who is doing the day’s appointment check-ins.

Oh please, not her….

I immediately cringe at my silent, kneejerk groan of judgementalism – as well as my surprised reaction.  After all, *I* was the one responsible for getting everything ready for the day’s schedule of patients, which means that on the previous afternoon I’d seen the name, pulled the chart, noted the appointment parameters, and thus, theoretically, knew that “TP” was coming in for her annual exam.  But it wasn’t until I saw TP’s face that I remembered who she was, from her appointment a year ago.

 

 

I’d been warned about this patient from the office manager, who’d been with the practice several years before moiself.  There are patients you’d love to see more frequently, and there are…others.  TP, with her imperious bearing and overt sense of entitlement, definitely fit into the *others* category.   [3]    We had frequent dealings with pompous assholery (this was Palo Alto, after all) – that wasn’t the issue.  The warning I’d received concerned the fact that TP brought her daughter to her exams, despite having been nicely but firmly instructed to please *not* do so after the first time she’d brought her then three-year-old to mommy’s pap smear appointment.

I recalled the previous year, when TP’s child, whom moiself  shall refer to as Pico (as in, Pico Monsteri   [4] )   was around six years old.  Upon checking her in for her appointment, I’d noticed that TP had brought Pico, and no one else was with her to watch Pico.  I knew TP’s background; she had friends and family living nearby and she and her husband were filthy rich would have had no problem affording a sitter.  When I started to ask TP about where Pico would stay during her appointment she cut me off with a wave of her hand, assuring me and the rest of the staff that Pico was “mature for her age,” and would amuse herself in the waiting room while TP was in the exam room…and besides, if Pico needed anything, “you girls can just watch her for a bit.”

 

 

The office manager cut me off as I began to respond to TP that we’re working in a medical practice and are not babysitters…geesh!  First cut off by the patient, and now by my supposed comrade.  Thus, five minutes after I’d taken TP back to her exam room, when Pico opened the door to the waiting room and asked for (read: demanded that) someone to read her a book, I took her straight to the office manager (“She’s all yours.“). 

Okay; so; it’s a year later; maybe there’s been some…uh, growth, in a year?  TP is back; listening to her check in with JJ I can tell  she’s still Her Haughtiness, and Pico is still with her and still obnoxious precocious.  But mostly, Pico is still a young child – not a good fit for a gynecological exam room, no matter what mommy’s delusions opinions are as to her child’s specialness.

When I call TP back to an exam room, Pico follows her mother down the hallway.  I ask if it is TP’s wish that Pico be in the exam room with her?  If so,   [5]   I can check with Dr. B to see if that’s okay, then call Pico back to the room when the doctor is ready to see TP, but after I get TP settled for her exam I cannot leave her and her child alone in the room, as there are medical instruments and “potions” and such in the room that are not safe for….

TP laughs dismissively.  “She’ll be fine right here,” she says, gesturing to what I called backstage – our office and work area (which included our lab and sink and patient restroom) – and not the waiting room.   Using my best bared-teeth-disguised-as-a-smile, I try once more to explain to TP that we had medical instruments and urine samples coming in and out of exam rooms and in and out of lab areas – backstage is neither an appropriate nor safe area for her child, whom, we had noted from past visits, was not content to sit in the waiting room and read a book or magazine….  [6]

“She’ll be fine,” TP repeats, adding, “I told her that you *girls* would keep her busy.”

 

 

I inform TP that JJ will escort Pico back to the waiting room, which JJ does (after throwing a bit of stink eye my way) while I take TP to her exam room.

After I’ve prepped TP for her exam, I catch Dr. B in the hallway as he exits another exam room.  I hand him TP’s chart, tell him that she is his next patient, remind him of who she is and that she’d brought her kid with her even after we’d asked her, last year, and this year when she scheduled her appointment, *not* to do so….

Dr. B, busy as always (and behind schedule as always), was not one to confront a patient about such matters.  He glances through TP’s chart, knocks on her exam room before entering, gives me one of his enigmatic smirks, and says, “Handle it.”

 

 

So, I handle it.

About four minutes after Dr. B enters her mother’s exam room, Pico opens the waiting room door and marches through, just as I am escorting a used speculum to the autoclave area.  JJ is on the phone with a patient; I dump the speculum in the lab sink and, as I wash my hands, ask Pico if she’s come back to use the restroom.

“My mommy told me I could wait back here and that you’d play with me.” Pico brazenly walks around the front desk and sits down on what would have been my chair.

“Well, then,” I say.  “Okay….  How would you like to play a game?”  Before she can answer I giggle and shake my head. “Oops; never mind.  This is a really cool game; I don’t think you’re old enough to handle it.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!  Yes I can!  She leaps up from the chair and claps her hands.  “Please, I can play it!”

“It’s called… “I pause for dramatic effect, “Captured By The KGB.”

 

 

JJ, still on the phone, shoots me a sideways, what-are-you-up-to? glance.

I steer Pico back to the chair and explain the game to her:  She is an undercover spy, on a secret mission for her country.  But the Russian secret police have captured her and are going to interrogate her – “Do you know what interrogate means?”

I can tell she doesn’t, but she enthusiastically nods her head.

“The Russians consider you to be an enemy spy, but you are an American hero, and the free world is depending on you.  The Russians have special powers: when they question you, if they look into your eyes, they can get you to say anything.  So, you must sit here, cross your arms like this (I fold her arms across her chest) and squeeze your eyes shut as tightly as you can, that’s good!  Remember, they’ll try to trick you, to get you to open your eyes and speak to them so that they can use their mind control tricks on you.”

The American spy remains in her chair, silent, her arms clutching her torso, her eyes squinched into slits, while I finish prepping the ultrasound room for an upcoming amniocentesis.  When I return to the front desk, Pico is beginning to fidget.  I see her eyelids flutter – “Uh uh,” I warn her, “The KGB is right here!  Don’t let them see that you can see them.”

“I don’t like this game,” she whines.  “I’m tired of this game.”

“SHHH, THEY CAN HEAR YOU.”   I assure her of her importance, and how she MUST be silent, and keep her eyes shut and her arms crossed.

As I pull charts for the next day’s appointments and arrange test result callbacks on my desk, I tell Pico that she is doing well.  Her chin begins to quiver, and she emits soft whimpers.  “You must stay strong,” I assure her, “and those evil Russians won’t get any information out of you.”

“Robyn!” JJ puts her hand over her phone’s mouthpiece and softly hisses at me. “Do something!”  Just as it seems that Pico is going to burst into tears, Dr. B exits TP’s exam room.  Pico jumps up from my chair and wipes at her eyes; I pat her on the shoulder and say, “Good job – you were so brave!  Those bad agents are gone now.”

Dr. B looks at Pico, at me, then back at Pico; we hear the exam door open, and Pico races down the hallway and flings herself at her mother.  “Mommy!  I want to go home now.”  Pico tugs at her mother’s sleeve.  “Can we go home now?”

“What’s going on?” Dr. B asks.  I say nothing; JJ quickly offers up, “I’m sure *Robyn* will be happy to explain it to you.  It’s…top secret. Spy stuff.”  

It is my turn to smirk enigmatically.  “I *could* tell you,” I murmur to Dr. B, as I stride past him on my way to the ultrasound room, “but I’d have to kill you.”

During my next three years with the practice, TP has three more annual exams.  She never again brings her daughter with her.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

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

I hate it when moiself  finds out that some celebrity/ (in)famous person whom I thought was dead, isn’t.   [8]

 

 

*   *   *

May you refrain from smoking anything, pesticide-free or otherwise;
May never expect anyone to act as unpaid sitters for your child;
May you remain strong despite enduring nefarious KGB tactics;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I wish I could have heard their stories, but they stood up, continuing to converse as they left the restaurant.

[2] Palo Alto, CA.

[3] She’d likely get the “Karen” label, today.

[4] I was told that term is Finnish slang for little monster.

[5] Over the years I recall a few women who wanted their daughters to be with them in the exam room (as a form of “education,”), usually for a routine OB visit, but always when the girls were older – teens or preteens.

[6] We did have appropriate-aged reading materials for kids, as well as a few toys, in the waiting room.

[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] Feel free to let your mind roam on that one.

The Life Advice I’m Not Giving

April 12, 2024

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

Grief is the price of love.

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

 

 

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

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

The thing about advice is knowing when to ignore it. 

 

*   *   *

Department Of About That Living In The Past

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Knowing moiself, probably a podcast.

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

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

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

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

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

The Existential Crisis I’m Not Blaming On The Parking Lot

April 5, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, category-free rants, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Existential Crisis I’m Not Blaming On The Parking Lot

Department Of Backfiring Techniques

Text message on moiself’s  cellphone, from an unidentified number:

“To all ______(political candidate) supporters,
please do not click away from this important message….”

Congratulations, sender. You have just guaranteed that moiself  will “click away.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of One More Disturbing Consideration (About AI)
In An Otherwise Enjoyable Exchange Between Two Interesting People

“Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio, has long been fascinated by the physicist Richard Feynman. As has Alan. Stephen has devoted a year to making a remarkable podcast series on Feynman, and Alan has played Feynman on the stage for a year. They compare notes on what they’ve come to learn about him.”

This is the intro to Freakonomics podcast host Stephen Dubner’s guest appearance on Clear + Vivid most recent episode, Feynman On Our Mind.  In their wide-ranging conversation about any and all things Feynman, Dubner and C+V host Alda talked about AI and our relationships, and Dubner posed a question about how, if AI obtains sentience, might we, in some ways, regress to the time humans did not understand their universe and left it to religion and religious authorities to explain the world to them?   [1]  

 

 

Alda and Dubner miss  the late great Feynman’s curiosity about *everything,* and his ability to identify and weigh complex problems – on all subjects, not just physics. They wished they could have his commentary on how the advances in technology affect humankind, as it seemd to lead to fewer people understanding how our physical world works, and thus we defer understanding to…well, to whom?  It used to be to the religious authorities, then to “the experts,” and now it’s to machines; i.e., computers.

Dubner:
“…I think one of the most interesting arguments about AI and what’s going to happen – how we will integrate with AI…is that if AI really becomes sentient and omnipresent in a way that it’s just beginning to gain a foothold, might we humans revert to something like the pre-Enlightenment, where religious thinking dominated, where when rather than thinking for yourself about natural processes and decision making and so on, you kind of defer.

In the old days, many many many people deferred to some kind of deity; is it possible that in the near term, people will defer to a different kind of supernatural intelligence in the form of AI, and therefore, stop thinking so much for ourselves?

And if that’s the case, what are we humans going to do?  Are we going to take what we do well and do that even better, or are we gonna kinda give up and let ourselves turn into…  We can be – the way we treat our dogs, now in wealthy societies, we often care about them more than we care about  our fellow humans.  It wasn’t like that a couple of hundred years ago – dogs were work animals.  So, are we bound to become the pets of the AI, or do we have something to contribute?

I think these are the big fundamental questions that we’re all wrestling with…. Feynman would have been a phenomenal person to think about that…to sort the wheat from the chaff, the BS from the reality, and sort the pompous, self-aggrandizing behavior from the intelligent behavior….  So yeah, even though I never knew him, I miss him.”

 

Why does it seem like the people working on AI have never watched any science fiction?

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Fun With The Same Podcast Episode

As moiself  has mentioned previously/just recently in this blog ( “The Pranks I’m Not Playing” 3-15-24 ), at the end of each episode of the Clear + Vivid blog, host Alan Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all of which have some relation to the idea of communication. Here is how C+V guest Dubner answered the seventh question.

Alda:
“Suppose you’re sitting at a dinner table next to someone you’ve never met before.  How do you begin a genuine conversation?”

Dubner:
“I once made a podcast with a friend of mine…..and I asked him some version of that question, and he gave me an answer that I thought was not very good, and now I realize it was very very very good.  It’s a very simple question: ‘Where are you from?’ and that question is not just one little piece of factual, geographic location, it is an invitation to that person so say, tell me who you are.  Tell me the version of who you are that you want to tell me, and then we’ll take it from there. It’s just also as non-invasive as it gets…unless they were born in a Gulag in Siberia or whatnot….”

As I reflect on it, I think that question might be “better” than my strategies  [2]   (depending on the circumstances and the person with whom you are trying to converse). “Where Are You From?” can be deceptively reassuring/non-threatening, and thus draw out a reticent person.  That question leaves you free to interpret how far back you want to go: where (physical/geographic) you were born, or perhaps the locale you’ve chosen as an adult, or “from” in a metaphorical/intellectual sense, or some combination of whatever criteria fits your definition of your roots.

If I moiself  was asked, “So, where are you from?….

 

 

Dateline: decades ago, one weekend when I and my college boyfriend were visiting my parents in their new (to them) Santa Ana home.  I wanted to show BF where I was “from,” and we drove a mile or so from my parents’ new home to 1509 Martha Lane, the address which had been home for most of my childhood.   [3]  Except that there was (and is) no more 1509 Martha Lane.   The reason my parents were in a new home is because during my freshman year at UCD, Santa Ana college (SAC), the junior college that had been my family home’s expanded “back yard” playground, did what they had been threatening to do for years:  SAC enacted Eminent Domain.  [4]   They annexed our cul-de-sac street, and a few other nearby streets.  The homeowners were compensated and their houses auctioned off.   [5]   Martha Lane became a college parking lot.

The thing is, on the lot where our house once stood, SAC left standing two of our trees.  The towering pine in our backyard – from whose top branches my siblings and friends and I used to watch the Angel’s stadium halo light up – along with our apricot, lemon, plum, peach, and banana trees and pomegranate bushes were all gone, but still standing, surrounded by concrete, were our two Japanese elms – the one in the backyard and the one in the front yard.  Using those trees as a guideline, I traced out for my BF where my house had been.  “Look!” I said, estimating paces from the front elm to a spot between painted lines delineating several parking spaces, “this was my bedroom!”

As we got into BF’s car to head back to my parent’s house, I started to wax philosophical, about how *this* – I indicated the parking lot – might explain a lot of my mindset, or my outlook on life.  Understand my roots and the impact of my So Cal heritage:  “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”   Yep, they did, but I can still look at a parking lot and see an outline of my childhood….

BF didn’t find my waxings as profound as moiself  did.  His loss.  Take it away, Joni.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Moderation In All Things

Just in case ya’ll may have been even momentarily concerned for my emotional stability when I relived the afore-mentioned existential crisis, two hours after reliving that  my-childhood-home-is-a-parking-lot incident, moiself  got tickets to a local movie theater and saw Godzilla x Kong.   

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Unanticipated Joys

As per both my personal experiences and observations of fellow homo sapiens: perhaps the most surprising thing about parenthood,  which moiself  did not anticipate, is the sheer/utter/simple delight of having an adult relationship with your children (that is, a relationship with them, as adults, when they are adults).

You will never have (nor want, I hope) a peer-like relationship with your offspring; regardless of their age, there will always be the parent-child dynamic.  But the privilege of seeing them grow into the kind of people you would choose to spend time with, even if you weren’t related?  Words like incomparable spring to mind.

Just sayin.’

 

Son K, still adorable, still adores cats.

 

Daughter Belle, still as cute, with slightly better table manners.

*   *   *

Department Of Sheer Unadulterated Joy

Another surprising source of bliss is watching that phenomenon which is Savannah Bananas Baseball.  Not that I’ve been able to do so in person – their home stadium is in Georgia, and their tickets are sold out even before their seasons begin.

If anything is stressing me out, I search the ‘net for some Bananas clips. Seriously, this is how baseball should be played and enjoyed.

 

No rule *against* having a pitcher on stilts, is there?

 

Not that they don’t have rules:

RULE 1: WIN THE INNING, GET THE POINT
Every inning is worth one point. The team that gets the most runs in an inning, gets a point for that inning, except for the last inning, where every run counts.

RULE 2: TWO HOUR TIME LIMIT
You get the idea. No new inning can be started after 2 hours. In the last inning of the game, every run counts.

RULE 3: NO STEPPING OUT
If the hitter steps out of the box, it’s a strike.

RULE 4: NO BUNTING.
Bunting sucks. If a hitter bunts, they are ejected from the game.

RULE 5: BATTERS CAN STEAL FIRST
On any pitch of an at-bat, the hitter can try to steal first base. This can happen on a pass ball, wild pitch, or any time the hitter chooses.

RULE 6: NO WALKS ALLOWED
If a pitcher throws ball four, it becomes a sprint. The hitter will take off running while every defensive player on the field must touch the ball before it becomes live. The hitter can advance to as many bases as they want.

RULE 7: NO MOUND VISITS ALLOWED
Let’s keep the game moving. No mound visits from the coach, catcher, or any other player at any time. Hype your pitcher up from afar if needed.

RULE 8: IF A FAN CATCHES A FOUL BALL, IT’S AN OUT

( …and so on…  From Banana Ball Rules, bananaball.com )

For those of you unfortunates who’ve never heard of the Bananas, nor their unique, alternative “Banana Ball” format for baseball, some brief descriptions excerpted (my emphases) from their Wikipedia entry:

The Savannah Bananas are an exhibition barnstorming baseball team based in Savannah, Georgia…until  2022, the Bananas competed as a collegiate summer baseball team ….  However, after the growth of their alternate “Banana Ball” format, the team transitioned entirely to exhibition games against their partner touring teams… the team has been featured by ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, CNN 10, and Sports Illustrated because of its on-field hijinks and viral videos.

Yeah, they had me at hijinks.

On-field hijinks include dancing.  At the drop of a hat (or mitt…or bat….).

 

The Bananas’ rendition of Dirty Dancing’s “I Had The Time Of My Life” finale.

 

Some of the Bananas fans’ fave team dances from last year can be found here.

And as for team selection, not only do the players have to have genuine and even extraordinary talent (check out this footage of a “360 tornado catch” by a Banana outfielder),  but moiself  swears there must be a face and body…uh…selection during team tryouts process.  Because dem boys be hot.   [6]

The most exuberant dancer is one you’d guess – it’s the home plate umpire.  Dude doesn’t make it in the hot bod department, but he knows how to shake his baseball booty.

 

 

*   *   *

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.   [7] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

 

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when you find the perfect spot for the duck feet.

 

 

*   *   *

May you always feel free to click away from annoying texts;
May you enjoy present-day relationships with (yours or other people’s) now-adult kids;
May you have the time of your life at a Savannah Bananas game;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Of course, the religious authorities’ “God did it” is a non-explanation, but their “God did it,” followed by, “so stop questioning things or else this all-knowing all-loving god will put you on the fast track to hell” was sufficient inspiration for keeping mouths – and minds – shut.

[2] Asking a question like,  What are you thinking about lately/ What occupies your thoughts these days?  What are you surprised by?  Tell me about the last time you were surprised/scared/overjoyed/disgusted?    Or, simply start out by finding a commonality, as with the dinner table scenario (“So, what’s your connection to [the host] – how did you meet?” )

[3] Save for two years in San Diego, where I started school (K and grade 1), when my father was temporarily transferred for his work.  We rented out the Santa Ana house and returned to it the summer before I entered grade 2.

[4] the right and power of a government or to annex private property for public use, with payment of compensation.

[5] To people who bought them at a greatly discounted price, and then paid to have them shipped to empty lots, etc.

[6] Hellyeah, I look.   I am decades happily married, but I’m not dead.

[7] 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.

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

The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

March 29, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Mother Of All Drag Queens I’m Not Dissing

Department Of My Phone Dictation Transcriber Knows Me Too Well

Dateline: Sunday, circa 3:30p; out for a walk.  Moiself  discovers this delightful agricultural (in my mind) scene, takes a picture, and sends it to friend CC, with a caption.  In the caption I mean to say “crop;” only when CC reacts do I see what my phone decides the translation should read.

 

my caption “Looks like a good crap this year.  They are usually ready for picking by June, but with global warming, we may be harvesting in May.”

 

I explain the mix-up to CC.  Her response: “I guessed that could have gone either way.”

*   *   *

Department Of I Wish It Were Just A Coincidence…

…but, unfortunately, it’s a timely issue.  Again.  *Still.*

That coincidence would be my friend Suzanne Mathis McQueen’s sharing of an article on Tuesday, which she wrote in 2019 It’s our fertilized eggs they want, and which today she says might be retitled, Fair Warning; thus, she added a 2024-worthy addendum.  Check out the article, and while you’re at it, you might want to check out SMM’s other writings and ventures.  An “author ~ publisher ~ nature nerd ~ dragon tamer ~ womb wisdom educator ~ reproductive rights protector,” she is a person of many hats and talents.

Oh yeah, the coincidence:  on Monday, apropos of too many news nudges, moiself  had been thinking…*once again*  [1] …about how attempting to control/legislate the ways a woman uses her reproductive parts is the most fundamental violation of human rights.

I was thinking about how this right for human beings to be in charge of their own bodies is of paramount importance, and that for all of humanity, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy should take precedence – even over a man’s right to do the same.   [2]   Why, you may ask rhetorically?  Because yon uteri is where we all come from.

AI  hasn’t completely taken over everything;   [3]   a pregnancy is still launched and nurtured inside a woman’s body.  But, according to the forces of evil,    [4]   although a woman is somehow capable enough to conceive in the first place, how she handles that bundle o’ DNA…well, she’s just not competent or principled enough to do it without governmental guidance interference.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Timely Reminder For A Timeless Admonition

Timely as in what SCOTUS is considering this week (a case related to contraception), timeless in that the wisdom of Christopher Hitchens warns us even today, from his way-too-early grave, about the dangers of fanaticism encapsulated in one very misunderstood foe of a woman’s – of any person’s – physical (or spiritual) autonomy.

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty.   [5]  She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
(Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice )

If you have ever uttered a kind word/held a generous thought for MT – and why wouldn’t you, based on the Catholic Church’s very successful propaganda about her ? – you owe it to your intellect to read The Missionary Position…or just read the Cliff Note’s version in my post from three years ago ( The Lot I’m Not Accepting; Department Of Name Dropping And Saint Shaming ).  Or watch this documentary:  Hell’s Angel.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Seriously, What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Here is the earwig which awakened moiself  early last Saturday am: Cher’s number one hit from *fifty* years ago, the now cringe-worthy, non-PC song, Half-Breed. 

Of all the things to reflect on at 3 am….

 

 

I remember assuming at the time the song was popular (~ 1973) that the song must have been written by a White man.   [6]   Even as the child I was, I didn’t think then, and don’t think today, that the song was “racist” and/or “bigoted ” –  kneejerk epithets that would certainly be flung at it now.  It wasn’t racist; it was just stupid.  Like most “Indian” stories told from a White perspective, the song’s lyrics (and music) used clichés for how cliché’s typically are used for: to present a viewpoint that is simply and profoundly wrong.

The lyrics portray the lament of a young woman, the daughter of a White father and a Cherokee mother, who is rejected by both sides of her lineage.  But the opening verse about that rejection is inaccurate.

“My father married a pure Cherokee/
My mother’s people were ashamed of me/
The Indians said that I was white by law/
The White Man always called me ‘Indian Squaw’….”

Many North American native peoples, particularly those of the Southeast and Southwest tribal nations, were/are matrilineal – that is, tracing their lineage on the mother’s side – as are the Cherokee.  Thus, the tragic mulatto of the song, while she may have been subjected to White Man pejoratives, would have been accepted as a Cherokee, by the Cherokee.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Calling Out People Who Are On Your Side

Comedian Patton Oswalt so profanely described, in one of his comedy specials (“Talking for Clapping”), getting in trouble for using “the wrong words.”  Even way back X# of years ago (six, to be precise), he appears to be a kindred spirit with moiself  in terms of being frustrated with progressives who not only kick themselves in the foot but also kick other so-called progressive’s feet, by focusing on the wrong things.  Translation: Calling out people who are on your side – are you nuts?  

“…And it’s really hard now because, look: I could not be a more committed, progressive, feminist, pro-gay, pro-transgender person, but I cannot keep up with the fucking glossary of correct terms, goddammit.  I’m trying…I want to help but holy fuck, it’s like the secret club password, they change it every week, and then you’re in trouble:   ‘That’s not that’s the word we use.’  ‘Fuck you – it was last week!’

Ru Paul – RU PAUL, got into shit for saying tranny. Ru fucking Paul!!!  Ru Paul, she laid down on the barbed wire of discrimination throughout the seventies and eighties so this new generation could run across her back and yell at her for saying tranny?  WTF?!?!”

 

“Don’t even think about siccing your word cops on Saint Ru.”

 

A bit later in his routine, Patton expands on a central point of his, which is that you should try to discern a person’s heart and intentions when they mess up on the vocabulary, because the thing is….

“…BTW, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, if you get hung up on words, then you’re going to let a lot of evil MFers slip through.
Because evil people learn the correct terms very quickly.  They’re the first ones to learn it so they can smuggle their evil shit through, by saying everything correctly even though they’re hiding really bad shit in it.

And a lot of times, the good guys, eh, they fuck up a couple of words, but listen to their hearts.

All right: I’m gonna give you two guys right now. One of em’s is a good guy and one of em’s is a bad guy – I’m not gonna tell you which one….

Here’s guy #1: ‘While I happen to be heteronormative and certainly respect people who have alternative lifestyles including gay, bi, lesbian, omni or transsexual, I still think that heteronormative behavior is a biological imperative for propagating the species and I believe that does deserve the highest priority….’

Here’s guy #2: ”Well a couple of fags wanna get married or some dykes they wanna be men, how the fuck does that affect you, asshole?

Hey, if there’s some tranny out there it’s like, ‘Hey I don’t want a dick no more, I want a vagina,’ then boom, guess what – it’s a she now, or whatever the fuck, she, it – I don’t know, whatever they wanna call themselves, that’s it, it don’t affect you.

If you see some guy, I don’t care if he’s got a chooch that looks like a Boris Karloff horror movie, I don’t care, you gotta share the planet with that guy, or that girl, I don’t fucking know – they’ll tell me, right?’

The second guy was the good guy….who probably looks like an asshole, probably is wearing kinda rednecky shit.  The first guy is probably at a nice coffee bar….”

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when something reminds me of a really bad/good pun sequence moiself  hasn’t thought of in ages.

 

 

*   *   *

May you try not to confuse crop with crap;
May you differentiate discernment and distraction; specifically: try to discern what someone says rather than be distracted by how they’re saying it;
May your early mornings not be haunted by Cher songs from the 70s;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I hate hate, hate, hate, hate the fact that these thoughts can and will occurs to me at all, but given the political climate….

[2] Despite the fact that these rights are not in competition, no matter what the withered, Pope-sucking, Holy Joe windbags on SCOTUS may want you to think.

[3] Yeah, I know, the century is young….

[4] Read: The religious right, and extreme social and political conservatives of any religion or worldview.

[5] There is a BIG, big difference, and if y’all don’t already know about it, you should learn.

[6] Actually, a White songwriting couple, Mary Dean and Al Capps.

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

The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

March 22, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

Department Of Read This Book If You’ve Ever Watched TV/Seen A Movie  [1]

Ed Zwick, he of the multi-slash identities, who as a creator/producer/writer/director  brought us iconic/groundbreaking, continuing storyline TV series (thirtysomething; My So-Called Life) and epic movies (including Glory; Legends of the Fall; Courage Under Fire; Courage Under Fire ),  has written an perceptive and entertaining memoir about his years in “the business.”

In Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:  My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, Zwick presents a behind the scenes peek into how the Hollywood sausage is made.   [2]   ‘Tis a world far removed from my own…or so I thought.  Then I read Zwick’s book, and found moiself  identifying with many of his observations and insights.  His articulations of the hazards of filmmaking echoed much of what I found loathsome about the business end of writing fiction.  I’ll share just two of those, and leave the rest for y’all to discover

“Praise makes you its prisoner.  It’s the spike in your arm where the first taste is free.  And when it comes from the critics, it’s the hangman saying you have a pretty neck.  If I choose to read the good reviews, I’d better read the bad ones, too.”

In this second excerpt, replace “executives” with “publishers” and/or “editors,” and include in his crop of new phrases “content provider” and “author’s platform,” and “cultural appropriation,” and you’ve got my take of the current culture of book publishing.

“After fifty years of getting their notes, the sum creative contribution from all but a few truly gifted executives might be reduced to four words:  ‘Faster. Dumber. More likable.’  Every script ‘needs work,’ every first cut is ‘eighty percent there.’  In the new millennial Hollywood, the legacy of Silicon Valley start-up culture is felt everywhere.  Everything is decided by ‘the group.’  An idea needs to be ‘socialized.’  But since when is consensus the best way to judge art?  Is homogeneity really the goal?  Each year they introduce a crop of new phrases:  ‘edge it up,’ ‘backload it,’ ‘unpack it,’ ‘lean into it’…”

( excerpts from Ed Zwick’s,
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:  My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood )

 

*   *   *

Department Of Questions That Can No Longer Be Answered

A recent No Stupid Questions podcast has an interesting (and perhaps ultimately unanswerable) question for a title: Is It Good Or Bad To Keep Secrets?

That’s a fascinating topic for discussion, moiself  thought.  As I began to listen to the episode it was clear that the focus was on keeping secrets that you were holding about yourself.  Nevertheless, from the first moments of the podcast, when I heard the episode’s title, my hippocampus and other temporal lobe structures   [3]  fixated on the idea of keeping “secrets” (or information) that, as the saying goes, aren’t yours to tell.  As in, Other People’s Secrets ®.

Dateline :

… which would be my junior year in college, at UC Davis.  Late one weekday evening my friend Logan   [4]   called to ask if I wanted to go “Jazzcuzziing.®”  Backstory:  Jazzcuzziing ®  was a verb amongst a certain group of my friends.  Founding members of this friend group had scoped out apartment complexes in Davis which had swimming pools and hot tubs (Jacuzzis) and sometimes even saunas   [5]   that anyone could use (translation: those facilities were intended for the renters, but the apartment complex grounds were inadequately fenced, and it was easy for non-renters who knew the layout of the complex to gain entry).

A group of us would do this about once a week, later in the evening before the facilities’ official closing times (midnight on Mondays-Fridays).  Experienced Jazzcuzziers knew to only accept a Jazzcuzziing ®  invitation when you were done with your homework/paper writing/exam prep, or had decided you were done with such academics for the night…because after the watery relaxation session your mind wasn’t good for anything related to scholarly assignments.

When Logan picked me up, something felt…different. I’d assumed there would be at least three others in Logan’s car, but me getting into the passenger’s seat made only two of us. I asked where brothers Nick and Mick were, and JJ, etc. – were they meeting us there? As Logan drove away from my apartment complex and headed toward our Jazzcuzzi destination he said,

 I wanted to tell you…something.  Privately.

He spoke in a subdued, I’m serious manner that I hadn’t known he’d possessed.  I turned in the passenger seat to look directly at him; when he made eye contact with me I saw no trace of the amiable, waggish, even flirtatious look that seemed to be his default mode.

Logan began telling his something by asking me what I knew about (his former girlfriend), Kathleen.

I put his former girlfriend parenthetically because I’d never been sure what Logan’s and Kathleen’s relationship was.  I was vaguely aware that, months earlier, Kathleen had seemingly disappeared from UCD; the story was that she’d transferred to another college to change her major?  Yes, Logan confirmed, Kathleen had left school.  But not because of her major.  She’d gone up north, to Montana.  A week ago Friday Logan had received a phone call from her, after which he drove all night to where Kathleen was staying.  He arrived “just in time,” which was shortly before Kathleen gave birth to a child – their child – which she was going to put up for adoption.

 

 

“I have a daughter,” Logan said, almost inaudibly.  He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

When he spoke about how he and Kathleen had found out she was pregnant and how they’d deliberated their options I asked if they had considered keeping and raising the child, or having an abortion, or…. “Oh, no.” Logan adamantly cut me off when I mentioned the A-word. “I wouldn’t allow that.”

I remember thinking, Oh, so *you* wouldn’t allow it?  But you will “allow” yourself to stay here, continuing with your life as if nothing has changed, while you “allow” Kathleen to put her life on hold, leave the state and her friends and her studies….  But I kept such thoughts to moiself.  Logan was agitated and distraught, and on the verge of tears at several points.  For reasons he never revealed to me he’d chosen to share his pain with me.  It was no time for me to lecture him on society’s (and his) sexist expectations for what Kathleen should be “allowed” to do with her life.

 

 

One Saturday night, a few weeks after Logan’s revelation, I was with a group of friends, including Logan and the usual Jazzcuzziers, at JJ’s apartment, playing backgammon and other board games and shooting the shit.  Someone said something about how they hadn’t seen Kathleen around, and Logan mentioned the college transfer cover story.  Logan was sitting directly across from me; I was beyond careful *not* to make eye contact with him.  I felt a tightness in my throat and gut as I thought, not for the last time, “I wish he hadn’t told me.” I wished he hadn’t momentarily relieved part of his burden by placing it on me….  And I immediately regretted having such harsh thoughts.

A few months later Nick told me that Kathleen had returned to UCD, and he repeated the story he’d heard from Logan: Kathleen had transferred to another university, thinking it would be better for her major, but after a couple of quarters she realized that Davis was the place to be. As far as I know, Logan and Kathleen did not resume their relationship.

Nick and I kept in touch after college, with phone calls and letters and occasional in-person visits.  Fast-forward 20+ years, to one of the rare but wonderful times when I was reunited with Nick in person.  I was visiting Nick and his family at their San Francisco home; his delightful   [6]    wife gave us her blessing (read: shooed us out of their house so as not to bore her and their kids) to go out and have dinner at an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks away and yak about our college days.  As we were sharing antipasti and chianti and what each of us knew about what mutual friends were doing, Nick announced that he had some juicy news to tell me.  He’d seen Logan recently, for the first time in years, and he’d learned something about Logan and Kathleen.

Nick:
“They had a kid, junior year – Kathleen left school, and had a baby!
And they kept that from everyone!”

Moiself  (nodding my head as I reached for a kalamata olive and took another sip of the wine which impeded my intention to don my Oh-Wow-Really?!?!?! face):
“Yeah.”

Nick (looking across the restaurant table at me, surprised by my lack of surprise at what he’d just told me):
“Yeah.’?  Did you hear what I said?”

Moiself:
“Yes, I know.  I knew.”

Nick (incredulously):
“How did you know?”

Moiself:
“Because Logan told me.  The weekend after Kathleen gave birth.”

I’m not sure which emotion was strongest on Nick’s face: shock, disbelief, pain, or disappointment.

Nick:
“He told *you*????!?!?”

Moiself:
“Yep.  I was as surprised as…”

Nick:
“Why didn’t he tell *me*?!  Or ….”
( He named his brother, Mick, and two more of their Close Guy Friends.® )
“We were so close – he didn’t tell his best friends?”

Moiself:
“Maybe that’s why he told me – because I wasn’t his closest friend.
I figured he just needed to tell someone, and he pegged me as empathetic, or…
I don’t know.  I don’t know his reasons for confiding in me.  He never told me why, and I never asked.”

Nick:
“You kept this secret, all these years?  Why didn’t *you* tell me?”

Moiself:
“Because Logan asked me not to tell anyone.”

It was as simple as that. I could tell Nick wanted to press it further, but didn’t know how do so without…well, without looking like a jerk who was disappointed in one friend for not betraying another friend’s confidence.

I don’t know if Nick ever asked Logan about the part of the secret that seemed most important to Nick – why Logan had confided in me, and not his “closest” guy friends.  A year or so after Nick’s and my conversation, it was too late to find out.  Logan died, far too young,   [7]   and took whatever remaining secrets he had with him.

 

Well, okay.  How’s about poetry?

*   *   *

Department Of The Poetic Form I’m Not Appreciating

 

 

I’ve read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.
( John Barrymore )

 I have no desire
to fit in. 

No plans to walk with the crowd.

I have my own mind,
heart and soul.

I am me

 And it 

has taken me years
to realize

how important that is

  

  

Moiself  saw the above poem recently (posted on FB).  I’m not the first nor the last writer or non-writer who scorns   [8]   free verse as anything other than what it seems to me to be: an attempt to be poetic (for whatever reasons, perhaps to obtain what the writer feels is the artistic cred/prestige of the title, “poet,”) without being willing to put in the work of crafting poetry.

That’s not to say that I do not appreciate or understand the sentiments expressed in the above poem, or ones like it.

I just ask myself,

why is that labeled as a poem?

Why is it not,
simply and straightforwardly,
evocative
and beautiful
prose?

Is
it the

arranging?

if so, you can take any opinion,

sentiment,
or statement, and make it poetic
due to spacing
and punctuation

and
general
formatting.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

“Christianity is the religion of love and forgiveness. And if you don’t believe that
you’ll burn in a pit of hell for all eternity.”

( Moiself, x years ago, when asked to give a summary
of Christian witnessing in 25 words or less )

 

 

*   *   *

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

I love it when the rhodies (by the pear tree that daughter Belle planted) decide to burst forth on the first day of spring.

 

 

*   *   *

May you choose well those in whom you confide your secrets;
May you keep
Your free verse
To
yourself;
May you appreciate the behind-the-scenes tales of art;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] A little more subtle entreaty than “Everyone Should Read This Book.”

[2]  Vegans beware; it’s a backstabbing meat market in many aspects…and now I’ll stop with the butchered (oops!) food metaphors.  You’re welcome.

[3] The parts of the brain currently thought to control long term memory.

[4] All names in this story are not the characters’ real names.  They are, of course, some people’s real names…just not the people mentioned in this story.

[5] Or sometimes, all three!  I wonder how many capillaries I burst, going from swimming pool, to jacuzzi, to sauna, to pool, and back again.

[6] Don’t you love it when your friends marry someone that you think is simply mahvelous?

[7] Cancer; lymphoma, I think.

[8] Or as a fan of the genre might say, just doesn’t “understand.”

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

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