Home

The Emotions I’m Not Second-Guessing

September 11, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holidays, Isms (religion), movies, music, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Department Of This Date In History

Yep. Twenty-five years ago.

*   *   *

Department Of  Yep #2:  This.  Yep; This.

As a longtime reader of (select) advice columns, moiself  has come to think that they can open an interesting window into human motivations and behaviors.  Over the years I have noticed an irritating pattern to many of the letters sent by advice-seekers:  ( trigger alert:  massive generalization ahead)

* A man will report his emotions sans even the slightest modicum of introspection
( “Why doesn’t she understand how she’s annoying me?!?!?” );

* A woman will report her emotions and second-guess herself ( she reports an astoundingly annoying thing – a thing that would even piss off Mr. Rogers or the Dali Llama – which was said or done to her, yet asks,
“Am I right to be annoyed by ___?” )

 

“Yes, you can stop second-guessing yourself, sweetie, your boss really is a flaming asshat.”

 

Aside from the indisputable entertainment value of kitten-bops-enormous-dog’s-nose  videos, social media ‘s worth goes up a few notches when you consider how it can be an effective way of transmitting insightful observations and analyses about the politics of personal relationships.  One such analysis which I recently came across online (from “The Inner Pattern” ) addressed and partially explained the roots behind the complicated advice-column-letter-dynamic moiself  mentions above.

What’s the most damaging thing patriarchy ever pulled off? Convincing everyone that male anger counts as objective reality, but female emotions get filed under subjective instability.

Watch how differently the same emotion gets treated depending on who’s feeling it. He slams a door and it’s “he had a rough day.” She raises her voice once and it’s “she needs to calm down.”

His frustration gets a cause.  Hers gets a diagnosis.

 We grew up watching men’s reactions get treated as data — something to analyze, respond to, take seriously. Meanwhile women’s reactions got treated as noise — something to soothe, dismiss, or wait out. So, we learned early to run our own feelings through a filter before anyone else even heard them. Is this reasonable enough? Am I being too sensitive? Will this get taken seriously or will it just get me labeled?

That filter isn’t caution. It’s conditioning. It’s decades of being taught that our inner world needs to justify itself before it’s allowed to exist.

Your anger was never irrational. It was just never given the same benefit of the doubt his got by default.
(my emphases, FB, first seen by moiself  on  9-5-26)

 

*   *   *

Department Of There Goes The Neighborhood

Dateline:  The morning of August 5; SeaTac airport; Alaska Airline’s first-class lounge; waiting to board our flight to Iceland.  Checking out the massive, multi-buffet table breakfast spread set out for the lounge passengers I see that, on the end buffet table, there is a contraption that look like a 3-D printer.  This machine is labeled, “pancake printer,” and moiself  alerts my family to its presence.  None of us actually want a pancake, but we have to see how it works, and so I press its start button.

Five seconds after I start the pancake printer a woman walks past the side of the buffet table and eyes my family with confusion.  She is dressed in that casual money style   [1]  and holds a plate of pastries which looked like they’d have French-sounding names.  Meanwhile, my family – MH in his tie-dye tee, son K in his black leather jacket /death metal band shirt, daughter Belle in her in Pacific NW/Columbia lumberjack gear, and me in my CatZilla t-shirt – is crowded around the pancake printer. 

 

 

I remain standing while the rest of my family bends forward, practically down on their knees, as they watch a blob of (ostensibly) pancake batter make its way down a series of the printer’s criss-crossing cooking treadmills.  I make eye contact with the woman, and with widened eyes and a knowing nod of my head, I project (or so I intend) an amiable, joking,  yeah right – like we’ve never seen a pancake before  vibe.  In return, her facial expression and body language…

Oh, how can I put it?  So much attitude is succinctly and clearly expressed in the rolling/stink eye stare she flings toward me and mine:

“OMG, who let the Beverly Hillbillies into the first class lounge !?!”

 

Y’all come back now for the pancake breakfast, y’ hear?

*   *   *

Department Of Yeah, The Date…
September 11 Memories

Twenty-five years ago, since those horrific ( and/yet mesmerizingly cinematic  [2]  ) terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  So much has changed in our nation; so much of that change is not for the better, and so much of this not-for-better change has been and is attributed to needing to Get Tough On Terrorism®.

I remember the unscripted eloquence of British PM Tony Blair, who interrupted his planned speech on a domestic issue to express his profound shock and sympathy for the American people and pledge his and his country’s full support for his allies.

 

 

I remember the stark contrast of Blair’s heartfelt articulateness with the glassy-eyed,  aardvark-caught-in-the-headlights expression of the clearly-not-up-to-the-gravity-of-what-lies-ahead “leader” which was George W. Bush.  The only solace I had been able to take from GWB’s mistaken ascendency to the presidency was that, up until 9-11, he had seemed destined to be a one-term president.

 

“Uh, Dad?  Dick Cheney?  Somebody, tell me what to do…”

 

But I’ll let the pundits and historians elaborate on that.  After all these years, moiself  is more interested in the personal stories – select memories, from those at Ground Zero and those of us across the country and out of the country  [3] – of we who were affected by the attacks.  It is the stories of our reactions, the memories of that impactful, holy-shit-am-I-watching-a-movie-or-is-this-real ?!?!?!  day, which we will impart to our children who were too young to remember (or who were born after) the 9-11 attacks.

Moiself  will always know that September 11, 2001 was on a Tuesday, because I was in my home office that morning, getting ready to leave for my Tuesday 7 am book club.  I gathered my book club items – coffee mug,   [4]  purse, jacket, the book the group was currently discussing – and stepped out of the office.  Before I could head down the hallway to the garage, I looked up at the sound of MH’s voice.

MH was standing in the upstairs hallway, leading against the stairway railing, a confused look on his face.  He said he’d been listening to NPR’s  Morning Edition,   [5]   which had just reported that an airplane had hit one of New York City’s World Trade Center Twin Towers.  I replied that I remembered reading, several years ago, that a small/private plane had collided with a large sky scraper in some big city – I found that to be an odd and accident, as you’d think the pilot could see such an enormous building in his path…

MH, still confused, said, no, this was a commercial-sized jet, and the report was that less than a half hour later another jet hit the second tower, and “…what kind of air traffic control mixup or other accident could account for…”

I gasped as I interrupted him: “TWO jets? That’s no accident.”

 

 

After listening to a few news reports I grimly drove to book group, which met in the pastor’s office of our local UCC church.   [6]   Every member of the book group showed up, despite or because of having heard the news.  We all had the same feeling: we wanted to be together.  I was one of the last to arrive, and made my entrance feelings-first:

“Well, we are ALL  FUCKED.  This is how wars start.”

I forget the name of the book we were discussing.  The leader of the group, the pastor, obviously felt some obligation to try to steer us toward the book, even as she was glassy eyed with shock and worry (her beloved sister-in-law was a flight attendant who often worked the American Airlines route from Boston to LAX) . [7]   But (of course) we spent most of the morning discussing the attacks, speculating about all that we knew and did not know, and what might happen in the days to come.

Two weeks later, when details of the terrorist plot were being revealed, the book group again set aside our book for the day and mostly discussed the attacks.  One of the group members brought in an article he’d been reading, written by a foreign correspondent who’d been researching the recruiting process for Islamist terrorist groups.  The article addressed a seemingly unfathomable question:  given the human instinct for preserving one’s own life,  how do you recruit young men for a suicide mission?  The book club member began reading the article’s list of commonalities found among the terrorist recruits:

“…strong ties to hard-core religious beliefs; weak ties to their own families; political idealism; religious and cultural conservatism – and while not necessarily virgins themselves, the young men were attracted by the enticement that their martyrdom would be a righteous deed which would earn them a shortcut to heaven, where they would enjoy the sexual attentions of 72 dark-eyed virgins….”

I heard my own snorting-with-ridicule interruption as if it were coming from somewhere other than my own mouth:

“Yeah, right – that shows you what kind of mindset fanaticism appeals to.  What kind of sexually ignorant, inexperienced idiots want – I mean, seventy-two *virgins*?  That’s an enticement?  Give them just one middle-aged woman who knows what she’s doing…”

I looked around the circle at my book comrades’ wide-eyed, Is that so? expressions, and thought, maybe middle-aged moiself  should have kept that to moiself?

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Not One Damn Recipe

I recently got a new cookbook, which is one of my favorite things to get.  Cookbooks – moiself  tends to read livres de cuisine like novels, as in, getting inspiration from more than actually following a recipe step by step.  After reading through this new book I found moiself  wondering, Why did I order this?

The book’s recipes concentrate on a culture whose cuisine is mostly unfamiliar to me – as do several cookbooks in my collection, so it’s not that.  Sourcing many of the key ingredients would be difficult, but…see previous comment.  It’s just that there was not one recipe that stood out, not one recipe that made me think, I’d like to try that, or work up a variant moiself.  My get a new one get rid of an old one policy,  [8]   has kept my cookbook supply steady at seventy-four. And it will remain at 74 as this new book goes into the list of sixty cookbooks I have recycled.  [9]

 

Woe to anyone who recycles one of my cookbooks.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

A cigarette pack is one of the few consumer products…that practically insults its own customer. Buy a pack and you are greeted by…blunt declarations that your habit may kill you. Governments force tobacco companies to confess the danger directly on the packaging because the evidence is overwhelming: smoking causes cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, and millions of deaths annually….

Yet the satirical image asks a deeply uncomfortable question: if cigarettes require warning labels because they can harm human beings, why do religions—whose histories include crusades, inquisitions, sectarian wars, terrorism, witch hunts, executions for heresy, honor killings, forced conversions, and systematic oppression—escape similar scrutiny?

The meme…exposes an asymmetry in moral outrage.
Society treats physical harm as measurable and ideological harm as sacred.

The irony is brutal. A cigarette company cannot advertise without legal constraints, but a preacher can tell children they deserve eternal torture for doubting a doctrine and still be called a moral authority. Tobacco executives are condemned for manipulating fear and addiction, while some religious institutions have built entire civilizations around fear of invisible punishment….

Imagine if holy books carried labels modeled after cigarette warnings:

WARNING: This ideology has been linked to violence, intolerance, and persecution when interpreted literally.

WARNING: Excessive exposure may impair critical thinking and increase susceptibility to authoritarianism.

( excerpts, Religion: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly )

 

(from my supply of stickers I carry with me when I travel, in case the hotel room has a Gideon bible or other religious book in the dresser drawer.)

 

*   *   *

May you see your emotional reactions as data, not noise;
May you practice the get a new one get rid of an old  one policy;
May you benefit from the experience of even one middle-aged woman who knows what she’s doing;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Like pornography, I know it when I see it, even if I can’t describe it…and so can you.

[2] I watched footage of the two places crashing into the towers, over and over, in a way trying to convince myself that it was real – it seemed like something out of a movie…but CGI was in its infancy then, and a Hollywood special effects crew couldn’t possibly have pulled off such an epic job.

[3] LS, in the Netherlands, are you there?

[4] That was the one day a week that I drank coffee in the morning.

[5] Which was his Monday – Friday morning routine, before he got out of bed and we got our kids breakfast and ready for school.

[6] The church MH and I were members of for years, until we came out of the Happy Heathens® closet.

[7] She had no news about her SIL at that time, but later that day was assured that her SIL was not working that day.

[8] Which I apply to most “things,” from cookbooks to household items to clothing….

[9] As in given away to friends and/or family and/or Goodwill.

[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 Fond Childhood Memories I’m Not Reliving

August 28, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, extended family, family life, friends, games & puzzles, Holidays, movies, politics, school, TV, Uncategorized, Yikes! , , , , Comments Off on The Fond Childhood Memories I’m Not Reliving

It’s time for a…

 

 

Moiself  sincerely hopes that y’all will have a modicum of amusement with these blog reruns from Fridays of August past, while I, along with MH and our offspring K and Belle, are enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime bit of family fun.

 

 

*   *   *

The Fond Childhood Memories I’m Not Reliving ( 8-28-20  )

Department Of Now I’ve Seen Everything

 

Dateline: Wednesday, circa 4pm, outside a grocery store.  A woman who exited the store ahead of me scurries to a spot around 30 feet from the store’s exit door. She pulls a cigarette and lighter from her purse, pulls down her mask and lights up.  She proceeds to take several long, desperate drags of the cigarette, pulling her mask up inbetween, in a bizarre ritual: lower mask; suck on her death sticks; exhale; raise mask; wait five seconds; repeat.

Lady, just take down your mask, go into a filthy public restroom, run your bare hands over every surface and then touch your hands to your face and mouth and rub your eyes. Get it over with.

 

Celebrities like Ben Affleck won’t let a pesky pandemic stop their slow suicide, so why should she?

*   *   *

Department of Yep, This

*   *   *

Department Of My Defund The Police Story

In the ongoing Defund the Police ® debate, some folks declare that an alternative phrase for police reform is needed. It seems that too many (white) people read or hear “defund” and lose their shit react defensively.  They interpret “defund” as doing away with police forces entirely, instead of the how the term is used by reform activists: as shorthand for reallocating funds from police departments to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, (e.g. social, mental health, housing and education services).

Moiself  has heard this defensive reaction explained along these lines:

White people get defensive and even frightened at that notion (doing away with police) because white people associate police with security, in ways that communities of color, because of their collective history with aggressive and discriminatory policing, do not.

Sometime in the late 1970s-early 1980s, I read a feature article in a So Cal newspaper about police officer recruitment.  Police chiefs were just starting to realize that for community policing to be effective the police force needed to be representative of all members of the community.  Given the rising number of Vietnamese immigrants in So Cal, local police departments were trying, and mostly failing, to recruit Vietnamese-Americans.  The reason for that failure was not apparent to the majority white police staff, until a cultural liaison enlightened them:

The police forces in Vietnam, and several other Asian countries, were considered to be corrupt, and the average Southeast Asian immigrant’s contact with them had been unpleasant.  Thus, young Asian men   [1]  who might have been interested in being recruited were discouraged from doing so by their parents, who thought policing a dishonorable profession.

There’s a very basic lesson here: your experiences color your perception.

 

Yep, that seems evident on a Psychology 101 level.  Moiself  thinks it’s a bit more far-reaching than that, and ties into the Black Lives Matter movement in a variety of ways and from a variety of perspectives…including the one I am about to share here.

Little known fact about moiself :  from about my 5th to 8th grade years, I hated and feared the police. I held particular fear and loathing for men I suspected were undercover cops in unmarked cars. This is because of an experience I had….

Translation: there is a story to be told.

Key elements of this story (“The Wagner Incident”) became much beloved by my family as the years past.  My parents in particular loved for my older sister and I to recall the tale, and I always obliged.  However, most of my family never knew that I was actually quite traumatized by what happened.

There is (unfortunately or yee-haw! depending on your enjoyment of background information) stage-setting to be done, for this Drama of Shakespearean Importance.  [2]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, my family lived in a house on Martha Lane in Santa Ana (CA).  Martha Lane extended west from a major thoroughfare down to a cross-street (Pacific Ave.) which led to the local community college.   [3]  Across Pacific Ave., Martha Lane continued as a cul-de-sac, where my family’s house was located.    [4]

The Wagners were an older couple  [5]  whose house was on the main part of Martha Lane (ML).  The Wagners had gained a reputation – not a good one – among the other denizens of ML.   Mr. Wagner, occasionally accompanied by Mrs. Wagner, walked their massive dog twice daily around the neighborhood.  They made of one or two loops around the main portion of ML (they did not cross the street to the cul-de-sac), and they let their dog defecate on other people’s lawns. They made no attempt to pick it up the droppings or at least “curb” their dog; they let him go where he wanted to go.   [6]

Some of the neighbors began to come out of their houses and speak to Mr. Wagner as he made his rounds.  At first they politely suggested – then, as time passed and the poop accumulated, they increasingly and more frustratingly demanded – that the Wagners’ dog should do its doggie business at their own home, and not foul other people’s property.  The Wagners ignored all such requests, with Mr. Wagner on a couple of such occasions responding with strongly-worded suggestions as to what the other homeowners could do with his dog’s “business.”

Petty, inconsiderate neighbor shit, so to speak, right? Nothing either novel or earth-shattering.

There were other actions the Wagners took that, looking back, seemed almost intentionally aimed at making them the scourge of the neighborhood.  It was as if the Wagners got some kind of petty pleasure in taunting their neighbors, in particular, the Young People ®.  I can find no other explanation for their behavior.

As a Girl Scout, moiself  had the twice-a-year fundraising duties (which I loathed) of going from house to house in my neighborhood, peddling Girl Scout Cookies in the spring and Girl Scout Calenders    [7]  in the fall.  The Wagners did not have a no soliciting sign on their porch; nevertheless, the first time I rang their doorbell on behalf of the Scouts I received a very snooty dismissal from Mrs. Wagner, when a simple, “We’re not interested” would have sufficed.  The second (and last) time I approached their house as a Girl Scout (having forgotten about the first incident, since six months had passed), Mrs. Wagner apparently saw me coming, and couldn’t wait until I set foot on her porch to reject my sales pitch.   Before I’d taken three steps from the sidewalk to her driveway her front door flew open and she came barreling out of her house.  Her voluminous bat wings shook along with her index finger, which she waggled at me while she bellowed about how she didn’t want to buy anything.

I fled the Wagner driveway with as much dignity as I could muster.  Later, I compared stories with other neighborhood kids, whom, I discovered, had experienced similar treatment when they were seeking donations for, say, a school paper drive or other charities.  The next time I had to do my GS soliciting I remembered my lesson, and as I left the porch of the house *before* the Wagners’ I proceeded on to the house *after* the Wagners’.  As I did so, Mrs. Wagner once again came charging out of the house into her driveway – how strange, I later thought, as she must have been sitting by her front window, just waiting for…what?  For a youngster to yell at? – and proceeded to berate me. Apparently, I was a stand-in for all the neighborhood children, as she began her rant with, “YOU KIDS….”  I hadn’t even made the slightest indication of stopping at her house – I was just walking past it, on the sidewalk!

At least she wasn’t armed with a garden hose.

Sharing and comparing stories – that’s what kids in a ‘hood do. As the years passed the older kids began to compile a hefty dossier of Wagner Incidents, many of them involving the holidays.  A few neighbors told about “Christmas incidents,” stories I cannot now recall,  [8]  and every July 4 we heard about how the Wagners did their own fireworks in the street in front of their house, then loudly complained if their next door or across-the-street neighbor’s – in particular, their neighbor’s children or grandchildren – did the same…or just yelled at teens who were walking on the other side of the street, on their way to a friend’s family’s fireworks party.

October 31 seemed to bring out the worst (or weirdest) in the Wagners. On Halloween night the Wagners always turned their porch light on and hung Halloween decorations on their front door, then were randomly and mystifyingly rude to the kids who rang their doorbell.  In our neighborhood the trick-or-treaters tended to go in groups of four or more children; the Wagners would often single out someone in your group, make disparaging remarks about a costume they didn’t like, then give candy to some kids and not to others.  Sometimes, as if on a whim, they would answer the doorbell, refuse to give candy (from the big jar they had on display) to anyone, and shoo your entire group off their porch.   [9]

 

Like many grade school-aged children, I found the world of adults both baffling and boring. Unless a home contained children of my or my siblings’ ages, I didn’t pay much attention as to who lived in what house on my block. It took a couple of years for it to sink in:  you don’t go to the Wagner‘s house for Halloween…or anything else.

Can you guess what kind of attitude among the neighbors, in particular among the youth of Martha Lane, was engendered by the Wagners, toward the Wagners?

 

“I knew you could, boys and girls.”

 

There were many more incidents that my older sister and her friends shared with moiself  and my friends. Slowly but surely, a vendetta arose. The older kids in the neighborhood had had it with the Wagners, and conspired to tease them at every opportunity. My older sister and her friend rewrote lyrics to the tune of, “We Love You Conrad,” (a song from the Broadway musical, Bye Bye Birdie): 

♫  We hate you Wagners
Oh yes we do
We don’t hate anyone
like you
When you are near us,
P.U.!
Oh Wagners we hate you.  ♫

 

Yeah; I know – hardly cutting-edge satire. Still, I thought my sister and her friend were so clever when sang me that song, and they were obviously proud of themselves.  They taught the song to all the neighborhood kids, and made us all vow to sing it at any Wagner-sighting opportunity.

Things escalated, as they say, from there. 

Early one hot summer night a bunch of us ML kids were hanging out on the corner of Pacific and ML, negotiating which chase/tag game we would play that evening (Green Monster? Hide n’ Seek?)  We spotted Mrs. Wagner up the street, identifiable from even 200 feet away by her towering, glow-in-the-dark white beehive hairdo and imperious, waddling stride.  She was walking her dog, and one of us in the group – I can’t remember who but it might have been me or my older sister – had the brilliant idea to begin humming the Miss America theme song:

♫  There she is…Miss America…
There she is, your ideal…. ♫ 

Silly stuff – hardly the material of celebrity stalking lawsuits.  Even so, it apparently put a burr under Mrs. Wagner’s saddle (or that ridiculous beehive).  Unbeknownst to us kids, when Mrs. Wagner returned home she told her husband what we kids had done, and he called the police and insisted they open a harassment investigation.

We hummed the Miss America song  – that’s what put them over the edge?  We didn’t even sing the words.

 

Also unbeknownst – to me, at that time – were other incidences of kids taking revenge on the Wagners.  Some older teens who lived on the main section of ML had, with their parents’ knowledge and approval, saved some of the “droppings” the Wagner’s dog left on their lawn.  After accumulating several days’ worth, the kids delivered shovelfuls of feces to the Wagner’s lawn.  When this failed to deter Mr. Wagner from his dog walking/dumping, on July Fourth one family’s teenage son played the proverbial, flaming-sack-of-poop prank on the Wagner’s front porch.   [10]

That and other incidences enabled the Wagners to convince the police to open a harassment file…or a case…or whatever it was.

 

” ‘Martha Lane Kids v. Wagner’? – what is this bullshit, Danno”

 

So.  This “case” was going on, without my knowledge.  Then, one day….

 

 

I’ve always wanted to say that.

The story continues, in next week’s post.  ( The Saga I’m Not Ending,” 9-4-2020 )

*   *   *

May you get to say something you’ve always wanted to say;
May you be mindful of how petty neighborhood disputes can escalate;
May you bear with me until next week;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] And it was only men who were being recruited, at that time.

[2] A slight exaggeration.

[3] The imaginatively named, Santa Ana College.

[4] Those two portions of Martha Lane no longer exist. Under eminent domain, the community college took over the properties in the early 1980s. In archetypical, SoCal development fashion, the area where my family house once stood is now a parking lot.

[5] In their late 60s – early 70s?

[6] Do people still use that term?  For the young ‘uns who may be unfamiliar with it, to curb one’s dog involved pulling it off the curb – away from someone’s  lawn or sidewalk – and making it poop in the street gutter.

[7] Anyone remember those?  The Girl Scouts stopped selling them in 2008.

[8] The Wagners scared off Santa’s reindeer with a shotgun?  Nothing would surprise me.

[9] But they would leave the porch light on – the universal sign of “open for business” for trick-or-treaters – and answer the doorbell when the next group of kids came by.  Yep, we watched, to see what happened.

[10] He filled a brown paper bag with the Wagner’s dog’s droppings, put the bag on the Wagner’s front porch, set it afire, rang their doorbell, and hauled ass up the block.  And yes, when Mr. Wagner answered the doorbell he attempted to stamp out the flames….

The Future Vice President’s Campaign I’m Not Consulting On

August 21, 2026

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Me so happy, Oregon, reproductive rights, school, science, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Future Vice President’s Campaign I’m Not Consulting On

It’s time for a…

 

 

Moiself  sincerely hopes that y’all will have a modicum of amusement with these blog reruns from Fridays of August past, while I, along with MH and our offspring K and Belle, are enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime bit of family fun.

 

 

*   *   *

The Future Vice President’s Campaign I’m Not Consulting On
( 8-21-20 )

Department Of Yet Another Silver Lining

The Democratic convention’s pandemic-mindful/physical distancing states’ roll call (in its entirety, here ) – how delightful was that?   The usual political party convention roll call, with the delegates dressed basically the same (we can wear three colors – can you guess what they are?) and wearing those ridiculous straw boater hats, some of which look to be made of styrofoam….it’s beyond boring.

 

Well hellooooo, ladies.

 

Moiself sez let’s do it this way from now on, pandemic or not. We got a brief glimpse into the states’ – and US territories’ – terrain as well as character,  [1]  with a few surprises, too.  Rhode Island calamari – that’s even a thing? Who knew?

*   *   *

Department Of Which Is The More Accurate Adjective?

What the radio podcast host said:
” (name)…is a board-licensed professional counselor.”

What moiself heard;
“(name) …is a bored, licensed professional counselor.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of If Given My Druthers, I’d Like To
Leave The Civics Lesson To Someone Else

What, BTW, are druthers?  In the various idiomatic expressions which use the word, it does seem to be a positive thing. Do I have to wait to be given them, by someone else, or can I get or earn them on my own?   [2]

If it were in my power, I would give all of you your druthers. Wouldn’t it be great if druthers turned out to be something like this:

 

 

Once again, I digress.

Moiself  is thrilled with Joe Biden’s choice of a running mate.  During the Democratic debates, a California friend (MM) and I were exchanging ideas/compliments about the various candidates. In MM’s opinion Sen. Harris, besides being experienced and intelligent and a razor-sharp questioner during Senate hearings, was also not the kind to put up with crap or betrayal – “She’ll put a shiv in you,” MM wrote admiringly.  We both agreed that was a talent sorely needed when dealing with the petty viciousness and mendacity of the Republican congress.  [3]

One of the many, many other things I like about Senator and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris is that I don’t know a thing about her religious/spiritual and/or worldview beliefs.  And I’d like to keep it that way.

Except of course, the Republicans will not stand for that. Even the (secretly) religion-free among them must grovel to the altar of right-wing Jayyy-suuuus  lovers.   #45 figured this out when he was laughing all the way to the bank (or golf course), passing church after church along the way, metaphorically thumbing his nose at them even as he was snickering about how easy it was to bamboozle the congregants.

 

The Republicans will look for every opportunity, during the election and debates,  [4]  to play their piety cards and jab Biden and Harris about their beliefs.  Biden has already fallen into that trap –of talking about his own faith rather than telling those who ask that it’s none of their business as the USA is not a theocracy, and let’s get back to the issues….

Thus, I humbly offer my advice to Ms. Harris – the advice she didn’t solicit from me  [5]  but which I hope she takes:

Don’t fall for Pence’s religious rhetoric claptrap, and make him sorry if he even asks. I know you’re capable of going all prosecutorial on his ass…even though that tactic, if you employed it, would make your advisors reach for the smelling salts as the white evangelicals would clutch their pearls and gasp in horror at The Angry Black Bitch Atheist (whether you are or are not the fourth, you’d definitely be pegged as the first three).  So, yes, I understand how you must go for discretion.

I also hope you don’t mumble platitudes about respecting everyone’s faith journey (although I understand there will be pressure to do so). When – not *if,* as religion will definitely be an issue – the subject of a paticular candidate’s religious beliefs are brought up, don’t ignore it.  Instead, candidly and assertively steer away from the subject, every time it happens, and every time reminding us of why you are doing so:

We are electing presidents and vice presidents here,
not popes and pastors and vicars and decans – or rabbis, imams or mullahs, Zen masters or Lamas, pujaris or gurus….

 

I know, this is important…I’ll ty to stay alert.

 

American citizens hold a diversity of religious opinions. The candidates elected will be the President and Vice President for all the people, including the growing percentage of atheists, agnostics, humanists, Freethinkers Brights – aka, to pollsters and scientists, as the “Nones,” as in, we Americans who are religion-free and/or claim no religious affiliation.

Polls and studies reveal that 23 to 26 % of the US population – approaching one out of every four people – claim “none” for their religion, despite facing open hostility and discrimination from religious believers (and incurring a political liability as well, if they run for office).  And scientists note that these 23-26% figures are conservative estimates.

 “…psychologists…contend that there may be far more atheists than pollsters report because “social pressures favoring religiosity, coupled with stigma against religious disbelief…, might cause people who privately disbelieve in (god[s])  to nonetheless self-present as believers, even in anonymous questionnaires.
To work around this problem of self-reported data, the psychologists employed what is called an unmatched count technique, which has been previously validated for estimating the size of other underreported cohorts…. (Using a) Bayesian probability estimation to compare their results with similar Gallup and Pew polls of 2,000 American adults each…they estimated, with 93 percent certainty, that somewhere between 17 and 35 percent of Americans are atheists, with a “most credible indirect estimate” of 26 percent.
(“The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is rising,”
Scientific American, 4-1-18 )

As a former prosecutor you, Senator Harris, are aware of the average person’s cognitive capacities, so I’ll trust you to condense those statistics into something debate-attention-span appropriate.

After doing so, please give a brief reminder – more like a civics lesson, considering how many Americans know next to nothing about the history of our country’s secular roots – that the USA was the first country to have a totally god-free constitution.  “God” – anyone’s god  – is not mentioned in the US Constitution (nor is Jesus, nor Christianity), not even once.  Religion is only mentioned twice, and then in exclusionary terms: in the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”), and in Article VI, which declares that “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

And do this – remind folks of the facts – Every. Time.

 

 

There will be some ignoramuses (most likely your debate opponent), even among otherwise seemingly articulate members of the press, who will confuse the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution, and will quote the former:

“But wait, what about the part where it says,
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’….”

Here is, yet again, another opportunity for education. Remind the populace of the difference between the two: The Declaration of Independence (an ‘apology’ and call to arms for the American revolution);  and the Constitution of the United States (the new nation’s governing document).

You may also want to be prepared for when some idiot sputters about how his dollar bills say, “In God We Trust”…which he probably doesn’t know was not added to our currency until 1957, during the Commie/Red Scare era, and then he may continue on as how the Pledge of Allegiance contains the phrase, “Under God”…except that until relatively recently, it didn’t:

 The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy… (who) had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.  In its original form it read:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In 1923, the words, “the Flag of the United States of America” were added:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God,” creating the 31-word pledge we say today.
Bellamy’s daughter objected to this alteration.
(“The Pledge of Allegiance,” Historic Documents, usdocuments.org)

You will likely also encounter shade from the historical yahoos who will crow about how the USA was formed as a “Christian nation.” Not only does Constitution make no such claims, we have the confirmation to the opposite, declared and signed by the very founding fathers of our country and the framers of the constitution, in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoly – which was sent to the Senate (by President John Adams).  The entire treaty was read aloud on the Senate floor (including the (in)famous words in Article 11; copies were printed for every Senator; the treaty was ratified by a unanimous vote of all 23 Senators. They knew what they were doing:

Treaty of Tripoli, article 11
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”   [6]

All this history should be enough.  Of course, it won’t be.

So, please, get the message across…in your own astute, succinct way.  Perhaps, a more prime time-palatable version of the following?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Fun With Nature’s Wacky Reproductive Scenarios

“Some sharks give live birth from two uteruses — and that’s not the weirdest part.”

Dateline: earlier this week, listening to a Curiosity Daily podcast. CD is one of my favorite podcasts.  As per their website:

The award-winning Curiosity Daily podcast will help you get smarter about the world around you — every day.
In less than 10 minutes, you’ll get a unique mix of research-based life hacks, the latest science and technology news, and more.

I’m not sure how much smarter CD has helped moiself  to get, but I’m certainly entertained, and armed with interesting trivia facts, by each episode.

A recent segment on sharks which have dual uteri caught my eye (ear?).  The takeaway: many shark species have multiple uteri and give birth to live baby sharks, which hatch from eggs in the uteri.  Before being expelled, the baby sharks which hatch first swim between the uteri, and eat the eggs of their un-hatched siblings, so they can grow faster. In one species, multiple free-swimming baby sharks hatch at the same time and fight to the death inside their shark mom’s uterus.

 

“Congrats, Mom, it’s a boy…I mean, a girl…uh, make that, a cannibal.”


For some petty reason, I enjoy the idea of anti-choicers – most of whom hold a conservative religious dogma which says that their god creates and directs all life (so guess who’s responsible for this preborn carnage?) –  cringing at these facts…even though sibling predation – “siblicide” –  is not unknown in other animals (e.g. the newly hatched chicks of some bird species will attack and eat their smaller siblings, or push them or any unhatched eggs out of the nest).

As with every CD episode, at the end of this one the two hosts recapped what they’d learned.  The male host, whose wife is pregnant, said that he’s been feeling his wife’s belly when the fetus kicks her, and now he’s thinking how “…that is really mild, compared to what sharks do.”  He then declared, “I’m glad I didn’t marry a shark.”

 

“Oh, honey, can you feel them fighting to the death?”

*   *   *

Pun For The Day

Presidential candidate Scissors was forced to withdraw from the race
after failing to find anyone who would run with him.

 

“Do you see what humor they have to put up with, in a so-called ‘free’ society?”

 

*   *   *

May you support politicians in remembering and upholding our country’s secular foundation/roots;
May you have yet another reason to detest that insipid “Baby Sharks” song;
May someone surprise you with the gift of druthers;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] But California should have had a surfer boy standing between those two women.

[2] I could Google this, I know, but sometimes, it’s just more fun to wonder.

[3] Then added that, as much as he admired President Obama, “that was a talent Obama lacked.”  (moiself  ageed).

[4] Are we even going to have debates, this year?

[5] Or, maybe she *did* and her email got caught in the spam folder.

[6] At the time of the Treat, Mediterranean Sea traffic was largely controlled by pirates from the North African Muslim states of the Barbary Coast.  Many European seafaring countries paid a tribute to the Barbary Sultans in exchange for safe passage through the Mediterranean. After the American Revolution, the US was no longer covered by British tribute treaties. The U.S. decided to form tribute treaties with the Barbary States, and given the history of The Crusades, assure the sultans that the US was not going to use the excuse of Christianity vs. Islam to go to war with them.

The Energy Crisis I’m (Still) Not Solving

July 24, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Energy Crisis I’m (Still) Not Solving

Department Of Things That Hold Up Overtime

MH and I have been re-watching the TV series ER.   Aside from some older technology artifacts – the hospital records and procedures are not fully computer-integrated (e.g.,  the staff keeps index card files on certain patients! ) – the issues, both medical and personal, remain, IMO, compelling and contemporary. Except for wanting an old-fashioned schoolmarm’s stick to whack George Clooney’s character on the back (  “Stand up straight!  Look people in the eye!  You’re a doctor, FFS!” ), the performances are spot-on.  Although (for moiself  at least) Clooney’s hangdog/horndog, mannered performance as Dr. Doug Ross takes some getting used to, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how… fresh… everything seems.  It’s fun to rewatch a great episode I haven’t thought of in years, and turn to MH and say, “Oh, wait, I think I remember this…no I don’t/no, wait – something weird is gonna happen here….”

 

Someone who’s on the cusp of being a ginormous movie star and making an obscene amount of money should have better posture.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why Isn’t This A Thing Yet?

Percussive energy is the thing that isn’t, yet.  And it should be.  After all, moiself  blogged about it four years ago ( The Clean Energy Source I’m Not Yet Inventing ). And yet the eyes and ears of the scientific community remain blind and deaf to my far-fetched ranting well-thought proposals?

I wrote about percussive energy as the counterpart, or rather compliment, to solar and wind energy. Short recap:  utilizing all that  tap, tap tap  [1]  of raindrops – as in, designing a surface, which could capture that energy find a way to use or store it (an answer to the old school people who decry “clean” energy by saying,  “Yeah well solar only works when it’s sunny/wind power only works when it’s windy….” ).

The world is still waiting for, still needing, youth science fairs and contests to challenge and/or incentivize their entrants to…basically…save us from ourselves.   Or at least help us out with our existing problems, rather than translate their budding scientific and entrepreneurial skills into designing yet another mind-numbing gaming/entertainment app.

 

Lilly Downs, eighth grader from Osteen, Florida, wins Lemelson Early Inventor Prize winner at her 2025 science fair.   [2]

 

*   *   *

Department Of Gems Discovered While Seeking Something Else

That would be a blog segment from five years ago, specifically 8-20-21 ( The Butt I’m Not Kicking ) where in moiself  wrote about MH’s colonoscopy:

Department Of Post-Procedural Updates

Background info: MH has never been able to roll his rs, which is the main reason, he told me many years ago, that he took German as a foreign language in high school.  He’d thought Spanish would be more useful/practical, but he simply could not roll his rs as is required for the correct pronunciation of many Spanish words, and he was somewhat intimidated/embarrassed by his lack of being able to perform that particular linguistic feat.  And it’s true: over the years, I’ve tried to get him to do it (or trick him into it), and he simple cannot roll his rs.

Dateline: Thursday, 10:50 am. MH is back home after his colonoscopy.  He thinks he’s fine, but it’s obvious to moiself  that the effects of the Versed (the sedative used during the procedure) are still reigning.    [3]    He’s… goofy

He stands at the kitchen counter, looking at the color printout he was given at the hospital, which includes a map of the lower intestines. He begins reading off the “map sites” to me:

MH (in a voice much higher than his usual range):
“The ilium!
The cecum!
The rrrrrrrrrrrectum…”

Moiself:
What?!?!?!  Holy crap; did you hear yourself?!  You rolled your rs!

MH (in miffed toddler mode):
“No I didn’t.”

Moiself:
“Oh yes you did!”

MH proceeds to say “rectum” over and over, drawing out the r sound without rolling it.  But for one glorious, Versed-induced moment, them rs were rolling like a river.

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Not Completely Different
But Similar, As In, Involving A Memory

 

MH and I met in a Lutheran Church.  Yep; yours truly the flaming atheist, Humanist, Freethinker, Skeptic, religion-free apostate/heretic was raised by Lutheran parents and was herself, like her now equally religion-free (  but less flaming  [4]   ) spouse was once an active church member.  But that’s a story for another day (preferably, a day involving cosumption of gin and tonics by both the storetellers and story listeners ).

A momentary digression for Educational Purposes®:  moiself  has been referred to, by other active and former Christians, as both a heretic and an apostate.  Neither word is one I consider pejorative; both are arguable as to their applicability as labels for my beliefs and experiences.  [5].  In general, both labels refer to someone’s rejection of the religion they are/were “in” and/or were raised in.  The difference is in the degree of rejection.  Apostates totally reject or renounce their religion; heretics stay (or attempt to stay) within their religion and/or religious community but openly hold and assert beliefs that contradict their religions’ theologies and doctrines. [6]   (interesting factoid: at some point in time, every new religion/demonization has been accused of heresy/apostasy by their onetime co-religionists).

 

 

Moiself  recently overheard a tidbit of a conversation in which one person was relaying to another their experience of being challenged as to their worthiness of ascending to a certain position in their work. This reminded me of a story shared with moiself  by one of the pastors at Grace Lutheran Church in Palo Alto, the church where MH and I met.

Grace Lutheran was a congregation in the ELCA synod, the most liberal synod or wing of the American Lutheran churches.  At that time (when MH and I were attending) Grace Lutheran had two co-pastors, one male and one female.  I became friendly with both of them, in particular the female pastor, SK.  This was in 1986, and although the ELCA had been ordaining women pastors since 1970, their acceptance was a slow process, and women pastors were not automatically welcomed with open arms.  One afternoon a few months after I’d joined the church SK and I met for tea in downtown Hillsboro.  During our wide-ranging conversation the subject of her being called    [7]  to Grace Lutheran came up.  Specifically, I asked her how smooth the process had been:  did she feel accepted by all of the congregation, or at least the majority?

SK told me that her call to Grace Lutheran went smoothly, although she was aware that the final vote of the congregation (to accept her call to be one of their pastors) was not unanimous.  On her first Sunday at Grace Lutheran, the leaders of the congregation held a reception for SK in the church’s Fellowship Hall, after the worship service.  The reception wound down after about two hours, which was a relief to SK, who, although grateful for the warm greetings she’d received, was beginning to think her petit frame could not bear another well-meaning handshake or congratulatory hug from the throngs of parishioners who introduced themselves to and welcomed her.

SK headed to the Fellowship Hall kitchen, intent upon helping the staff with KP duty, when one of the few parishioners remaining in the Fellowship Hall approached her.  A Tall Elegantly Dressed Older Woman (TEDOW) smiled broadly at SK, introduced herself as a “long-time” Grace Lutheran member, and said, in a friendly tone of voice that belied the rebuffing sentiment she was about to utter, that she would like to take SK to lunch to tell SK why she had “voted against your call, as I don’t think you belong here.”

SK kept her composure, smiling in return as she thanked TEDOW for the lunch invitation…which SK declined.

Moiself  was impressed by SK’s graciousness under fire, so to speak, and even more so by the rational simplicity of her response:

“No, thank you.  I *am* here; I don’t have to defend my being here.”   [8]

 

“Someone hand me the mic so I can drop it.”

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

*   *   *

May you have fond memories of a loved one’s post-colonoscopy rantings;
May you enjoy binging an old favorite TV series;
May you never have to defend your being where are you;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] And oft times, stomp stomp stomp.

[2] Society for science; Courtesy photo from Lilly Downs.

[3] I suggested he go upstairs and sit or lie down, as he was rather wobbly standing.  He wanted to go up the stairs by himself; I insisted he hold on to the handrail, which he did, while vaulting up the stairs two at a time.  When I snapped at him to slow down he said, “It feels better this way!”

[4] Except when he’s high on Versed and flamboyantly rolling his r’s….

[5] But, I’ll take ’em!

[6] For example, some Unitarians consider themselves Christian, but were/are rejected by other Christian denominations because Unitarians affirm the “unity” of the “one god” and reject the Christian doctrine of the trinity established by the apostle Paul.  Thus they are (in Christian eyes) heretics, not apostates.

[7] Being called refers to the process by which churches find and employ their pastors.  It varies between denomination and churches; here’s the link to ELCA call processes.

[8] I never met TEDOW.  She (and her husband) left the congregation before I began attending.  According to another congregant whom I quizzed about the incident, TEDOW and her husband were opposed to female ordination and also had problems with the other ways in which they felt their church was embracing heresy/leaning more liberal, and when they left Grace Lutheran they made sure that certain people knew they were leaving and were “taking their money” with them (implying that they were generous financial supporters of the church, which, that person I spoke with said, they were *not.*).

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

The Icelandic…*Candy*…I’m Not Looking Forward To Trying

July 17, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Icelandic…*Candy*…I’m Not Looking Forward To Trying

Department Of Judgy Snark Alert

Dateline: Circa 7:45 am; taking my morning constitutional.  In a neighborhood where I sometimes walk, I pass a house that is heavily trashed accessorized: its front yard décor    includes a multitude of plastic multicolored flowers, garden gnomes, smiling animals, faux garden implements stapled to the house’s siding, etc.

A sign on the front door of the house reads,  “This is my happy place.”  My first thought as moiself  reads the sign:

“They misspelled tacky.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Unintentional Reruns
Sub Department Of: The Squirrels Have Returned
( As per The Toxins I’m Not Cleansing, 4-30-21 )

The Very Nice Exterminator Man (VNEM) tried unsuccessfully to stifle his laugh when, as he followed me on the pathway around the side of the house to the place where the squirrels were using our trees to access our roof, he told moiself  that the traps he was going to set were kill traps, and I blurted out an enthusiastic, GOOD!

 

“Wow, it’s a squirrel howitzer,” I said, when I saw the first trap.

 

“Your attitude,” VNEM chuckled – then quickly added, when I turned around to see if he thought I was A Terrible Person ® , “I like it.  It’s, uh…very different…when I’m in Portland.”  He explained that when he’s setting up traps in optimal places ( for where the squirrels are accessing the house ), his Portland clients often ask him – whisper to him, he said – if he can “hide them (the traps) so the neighbors don’t see.”

I correctly surmised that was because they don’t want their neighbors to know about the kill traps.  “Let me guess,” I replied.  “Portlanders fear their neighbors’ judgement because they, like their neighbors, are misinformed.  They think it’s somehow better or more humane to trap the squirrels and ‘relocate/transplant them,’ when they in fact know nothing about squirrels, including that

*  squirrels are highly territorial; thus, depending on how far away they are transplanted, they will find their way back to your property and continue to be a problem/do the damage for which you wanted them gone in the first place, or

* they will be beaten and harassed by other squirrels into whose territory they have been released, [1]  not given a moment’s peace to establish their own territory, much less forage, and they’ll starve to death;

* the majority of Oregon’s squirrels are *not* native, but are introduced species which, through being larger and more aggressive and via spreading new diseases, have taken over the native squirrel population…”

 

“You *do* know a lot about squirrels,” VNEM said, as I finished my Why It’s Okay To Hate Squirrels harangue explanation. 

“Enough to loathe them,” I said.  “Look; I love animals; my diet is 99% plant-based; I escort spiders from our house (even bought a special device that traps, rather than squishes them)…and I detest squirrels.”

Ater one week with the traps up:  the body count is two traps, two dead squirrels.    [2]

The following is not a picture of a dead squirrel.  The Picture That Does Exist But That I’m Not Showing You [3]  is of a squirrel tail trailing out of one of the bazookas, the tail waving in the slight breeze, like a flag of surrender….  [4]

 

She’d never want us trapped in a sloth bazooka, but then, we’d never chew on her house or electric wires and cause hundreds of dollars worth of damage….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Traditional Foods Whose Existence I Acknowledge…

…but will not touch with a ten-foot pole.  Or narwhal tusk.  Or whatever is available to push the hákarl as far away from moiself  as possible.  The idea that you can call such a thing “food” is, IMO, an insult to all which is considered edible.

 

You’ll be safe with me, lady.  Let’s order the tuna casserole instead.

 

Y’all may have heard of hákarl, the infamous Icelandic “delicacy.”  If not, videos of people chunder-spewing immediately after having tried it are just an internet search away.

Ahem.  Written by the person who, attracted by the title, purchased,  Does Anyone Actually Eat This?  Nanna Rögnvaldsdóttir, Iceland’s “best known food writer,” wrote this slim ( 73 pages ) but mildly intimidating book about 16 peculiar Icelandic delicacies.  Besides the better known hákarl – Greenland shark meat that is fermented (read: putrified) in a way to remove the copious amounts of uric acid (read: piss) in the shark’s flesh so that you may eat it and not vomit blood (a common reaction to piss-shark-flesh eating) –  curious culinary minds might want to read about other Icelandic delicacies, including

* Svið (a sheep’s head, halved and singed, then boiled with the brain removed;

* Súrsaðir hrútspungar (sour ram’s testicles) – yep, just that: sheep’s testicles, boiled, pressed into blocks and preserved in fermented whey.  Some Icelanders consider it rude to call the dish by its name; thus, several euphemisms are used to refer to it, including millifótakonfekt ( “between-the-legs candy” );

*Hverabrauð, a hot sprin- baked, dense, pumpernickel-rye bread, which at first sounds rather tame until you get to the details:  “the bread…has a reputation for causing flatulence and is sometimes nicknamed, þrumari, aka, “thunder bread.”

 

Dude, a chase of thunder bread will absorb the urine/blood vomit aftertaste.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Idealism Is Nice,
But Your Age/Gender/Privilege Is Showing

Datelimne: earlier this week; listening to Clear + Vivid podcast, of 6-30-26.  Host Alan Alda’s guest is American journalist, editor and biographer Walter Isaacson. The episode:  Walter Isaacson: Are These Truths Still Self-Evident?  From the episode’s description:

On the eve of our nation’s 250th, Walter Isaacson takes a deep dive into the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. It’s what he calls “the greatest sentence ever written.”

After discussing the history of the declaration and the interpretation and implementation of that so-called “greatest sentence,   [5]   Alda and Isaacson discuss the current fragmentation of our nation and the fact that we seem to have lost our ability to compromise, which is what led to the crafting of Declaration, and later, key elements of the U.S. Constitution.

 

 

( Excerpts; my emphases ):

Alda:
Now, what about the big question…how can we accomplish the return to this great sentence…and make it no longer merely aspirational or largely aspirational, but make it truly happen?  What kind of things need to be done…can be done?

Isaacson:
…Among them is look for ways where we can have shared national service, whether it be being part of civic life in your town or teach for America….

We should form the type of civic organizations that, when you and I grew up …you’d go into town, there’d be the Kiwanis Club, and the Rotary Club, and the bowling League, and the Elks and the Moose.

We all had whatever our religions, whatever our ideologies, we all rubbed elbows together.  And so I think in our daily lives, we can say, how do we do it at a local level?  We can’t do this at a national level now….

My reaction:  Gawd, does he (Isaacson) ever sound old/white/male/upper class!

The community and social institutions Isaacson lists – it’s not a bad thing, IMO, that they’ve faded away and/or drastically lost their impact.  In their heyday they exerted great influence in the business and social lives of their cities, and membership in them and other “fraternal” organizations were steppingstones for business and political success.  But, the we all rubbed elbows together ideal – what orifice did Isaacson pull that out of?

 

“My orafices are none of your beeswax, sweetie.”

 

Those institutions, whether community/civic or fraternal, were *not* welcoming and inclusive.  They required an invitation and/or sponsorship from current members for your membership application to be considered.  If you were white and male (and had an “in”), you had a chance.

Many a story I’ve read about those organizations’ resistance to change.  In particular I remember a community newspaper article about the blowback faced by an Oregon Coast man, a longtime member of his local fraternal organization (Elks, maybe?), who lobbied his fellow members to allow women to join the organization.  He pointed out that his wife and other wives of members already did the lion’s share (  maybe it was the Lions Club!? ) of the work when it came to organizing, setting up (and – surprises! – cleaning up after ) the group’s yearly fundraisers and other events, and that they and other women in the community had expressed interest in joining….  But, no.  His fellow Elks/Lions were content to keep the ladies in auxiliary status.  Women were capable of doing the work, but heaven forbid they get the recognition (and status and influence) of membership.

Two personal examples: Over a decade ago I congratulated an acquaintance of mine when I saw an announcement in the local paper about how she’d joined the local branch of a nationwide service organization (ala Kiwanis Club).  She was one of three businesswomen who’d been invited to “integrate” the previously all male    [6]  club, which had gained a reputation among newer-to-the-area, younger and nonwhite/nonmale city residents as stodgy, elitist and out of touch.  Two years later I saw her at a city event, and told her I’d once again    [7]   intended to support her in the group’s annual fundraising sales, but that I didn’t find her name on the group’s roster.  She rolled her eyes in disgust and told me she’d resigned from the group, as she was tired of banging her head again the proverbial wall.  “All those old men are going to have to die  [8]  before anything will change,” she huffed.   [9]

Another friend of mine started her own business in her small Oregon town, and as her success grew she joined her local Chamber of Commerce.  Her C of C experiences…

* being either ignored and or patronized by old time (read: white male) COC members

* her ideas dismissed/discounted by her male colleagues one minute, then ten minutes later appropriated by another COC member, who presented them as his own

…spurred her to rally other women business owners in her town to form the ____ (name of town) Women’s Business Association.

So yeah, definitely encourage people to get off of social media and find other outlets for personal connection.  But before advocating a return to those old organizations, a remaking of them is in order.

 

And, BTW, what’s so bad about having bees that don’t wax?

*   *   *

Department Of A Documentary I’ll Have To Get Back To

A friend recently sent me a link, along with this message:

 I don’t know if you’ll like this, but this week’s independent lens is about a woman dealing with her father who is the last creationist in their family. I appreciated her struggle.   

The episode he linked me to was released earlier this week by the PBS  documentary series, Independent Lens.  Its title and description: Flood, directed by Katy Scoggin:  A filmmaker revisits her evangelical roots to find connection with her estranged father.

I thanked him and wrote that I’d watch it later.  I did, then sent this reply:

Oh… Holy crap. Figuratively and literally.

I love the Independent Lens documentary series, but I could only get about 20 minutes into this particular documentary before I had to stop watching it. I know there had to be a setup of the filmmaker’s conservative evangelical background in order to establish the estrangement between the filmmaker, who left those beliefs behind, and her father, who still holds them, but still…ICK.

If I never again, no matter the context or pretext, have to hear grownass adults serious singing/discussing about being “washed clean by the blood,” then I will have lived a happy life and can possibly withstand even global warming.

Listening to children reciting the gibberish of theology provokes a physical reaction in me.  It actually twists my stomach, to hear children spewing things they’ve had to memorize but have no idea what they’re talking about.  [10]  Particularly retch-worthy was the scene at the filmmaker’s father’s dinner table, when one of his cherubic blonde granddaughters (maybe four or five years old?), chirps, “I know all vowels: A E I O U!” Then, smiling, she recites in a sing-song voice the first four letters of the alphabet, which she has been taught to link with bible verses:

 “A – All have sinned and  gada fada baba…  ( it’s hard to make out many of the words, as she lisps and runs the words together  [11] )…the glory of god

B – Believe in the lord jesus christ and thou shalt shall be saved

C – Children obey your parents in the lord for this is right

D – Depart from evil and do good….”

It’s child abuse; it’s emotional and intellectual child abuse.  And I can’t watch that, any more than I can stand by and watch someone beat a child and not intervene.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Damn, It’s Inevitable,
But They Rip A Piece Of Your Heart Out When They Go

Nova
( 5/1/2007 -7/8/26 )    [12]

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [13]

 

*   *   *

May your bees continue to wax;
May you remember to never eat a slice of thunder bread before yoga class;
May your sweet tooth steer clear of between-the-legs candy ;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I have seen some epic squirrel territorial battles in a nearby park which I regularly walk through/around – battles that have drawn blood between the combatants (and which unnerved me, years ago, when I didn’t know much about squirrels) and which would make MMA combatants envious.

[2] Upon completing his inspection the VNEM thought one or at most two squirrels were accessing our roof, trying to chew their way into our attics.  Which was somewhat better than the last invasion, which included an entire squirrel family.

[3] But which I sent to select friends/family, who almost certainly wouldn’t rat me out to PETA.

[4] I did send the picture to the exterminator (when he asked if we knew if either of the traps had been sprung), with the caption, “My heart soars like a hawk.”

[5] I disagree with that evaluation.

[6] And mostly all White, despite the city’s growing Hispanic population.

[7] I had donated to the group’s yearly fundraiser only because she was in it.

[8] A lot of them did…but then their nepo-stodgy sons “inherited” their memberships, so change as continues to be slow.

[9] And she even had an “in” – she was the former mayor’s daughter-in-law.

[10] And I have a similar aversion to kids reciting loyalty oaths, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, in schools.  I stopped saying the pledge when I was in the fifth grade.

[11] It’s likely the Christian tenet, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god…” from Romans 3:23

[12] I was so NOT able to even type that last week.

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

The Safe Driver I’m Not Raising

July 10, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, radio & podcasts, school, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Safe Driver I’m Not Raising

Department Of My Work Here Is Done

MH and moiself  recently received this text from daughter Belle:   

“Mom and Dad; you guys raised me to be such a safe driver that I am being urged to drive more dangerously by my friends.”

She then sent a copy of a message from a coworker…

 

…and added, to us:

“but don’t worry, you also raised me to not give in to peer pressure “

*   *   *

Department Of The Things We Rarely Do Via
Venues Which Could End Up On Social Media

That would be tell the truth about knotty issues – truths that may not present ourselves and/or our loved ones in the best of light.

Sub-Department Of The Unflattering Memories I Did Not Write
On The Post Right Before And Then Right After My Late Mother’s Birthday…    [1]

That was because it felt wrong to complain about her on or near that day…although my truth-telling was not so much complaining as it is realizing.

 

 

Department Of Self-Analysis

Dateline:  a weekday some time ago; circa 7:30 am-ish; morning walk while listening to NSQ ( No Stupid Questions ) podcast.  It was a repeat episode:  How Can You Stop Comparing Yourself With Other People?      [2]   The main topic the hosts   [3]  were discussing was – wait for it – comparing yourself to other people. They of course mentioned social media, where it’s very easy to feel yourself dull and/or unfulfilled   [4]  when you look at the posts of other people, and see their pictures of them and their well-mannered, high-achieving children travelling to beautiful, exotic places …

These images came through my earbuds as I was about to take (and then post) a picture of the morning sunlight glistening off the top of the waves at Manzanita beach.  I snickered at moiself,  and resolved to do my part to fight this trend:  Instead of posting a picture of this enviable costal sight I’ll return home, take a picture of the cat litter box, and post that instead.   But before I could make a note to moiself  to actually do that, the  NSQ  hosts distracted me with their comments on aspects of Social Comparisons Theory   [5]  (specifically  upward and downward comparisons).

 

“Having more fun than you’ll ever have – I mean, wish you were here.”

 

“…the upward comparison is what people worry about with social media. You go on Instagram and it’s always sunset, and the wind is always blowing just so, and everyone looks amazing…. that is the dark side of upward social comparison.
‘…

schadenfreude, the idea of taking pleasure in somebody else’s misery, is kind of a form of downward social comparison. When we look down on other people and that, at least temporarily, boosts our self-esteem…”

The talk of upward/downward comparisons brought back a not-so-pleasant memory.  Since I have included in this space ( in, e.g., The Summers I’m Not Forgetting, 6-28-19 ) an epic moment of my mother’s parenting (making me my favorite “fresh” apricot pie for my December birthday), equal time will now be given to an epic parenting failure of hers.

 

 

Backstory: From junior high through high school, the girls in my circle of friends were good-looking.  As in, ranging from beautiful/cute to down-right-gorgeous, in both the face and “figure” departments.  I didn’t befriend them for that reason; that was merely a fact, which was born out by another fact: they each had several of our guy schoolmates either lusting after or sincerely smitten with them.  Moiself, I had conversations, and phone calls.  Initiated by those guys.  About my friends.  With the phone calls, it would typically take the guy who called me many minutes (sometimes over an hour – no exaggeration) to get around to the real reason for his call.

The most memorable of those calls went on for two hours, during which time Guy Friend® AC and I discussed, among other pointless diversions topics, the possible interpretations of the rock group Chicago’s song, 25 or 6 to 4.   [6]    AC was the most prolific phone caller: from his first call,   [7]  to every single time he called, I found out I had to talk around the reason he’d called me.  If I asked him to directly confirm why he’d called, it would take even longer to get to the point – I would finally get around to dragging out of him what he was really after.  [8]  Which was always something along the lines of:  was (my friend) RR going to be at the JV basketball game after school tomorrow, and if not, could I figure out a way to get her to stay after school and watch the game with me, so AC could at least see her there and maybe even get up the courage to talk to her by coming up to the stands after the game to talk with me ( he had no qualms in doing that because, he said, I was “easier to talk to” )?

 

 

After that 2 hr marathon of a call I had a case of dry mouth and brain.  I schlumped into our kitchen, shaking my head to (I thought) moiself  as I reached into a cupboard for a water glass.  My mother was at the sink doing something.  [9]   She noted the puzzled look on my face and asked me what was up.  I told her about AC’s most recent phone call (she was aware of his series of calls), and my other conversations with male friends about my female friends whom they had crushes on/wanted to date.  I told her that I found it all so…odd, and silly.  I couldn’t understand the obsessions; certainly, my friends had positive – and in some cases, outstanding – qualities, which is why I was friends with them.  These guys are missing so much!  They’re intimidated by, for example, LM’s and RR’s beauty or MB’s body…if they’d just talk to them, they’d see how much more they have to offer than their…uh, pulchritudinous-ness….

I was just sharing (what I thought of as) the cluelessness of my male friends and acquaintances.  My mother either misheard or misunderstood the situation, and jumped to the conclusion that instead of being bemused on behalf of my friends I was disappointed by the fact that moiself  was not the object of the same kind of attention.   In an oh-so-awkward, cringe-worthy, kinda-joking-but-kinda not  manner, she began to give me advice I’d not asked for, which began with: Perhaps I needed to find myself a less attractive group of girlfriends?….

 

 

 

Oh yes, she did.

I didn’t let her finish all of her thoughts. I walked away, once again gobsmacked by how someone I’d lived with for all of my life could seemingly not know me at all.  Was I adopted by aliens, or I was I the alien, whom my parents had adopted? 

A tender motherly insight, shared with her daughter: 

If you hang out with homely girls you’ll look more attractive by comparison.

Gotcha.  Message received.

Gee, thanks Mom!

When contemplating the phone call scenarios, never-had-I-ever thought about my own appearance vis-à-vis that of my friends’ until *you* brought it up.  But now, I certainly (and forever, gawdammit, ’cause that’s how memory works    [10]  ) will.

 

 

Decades ago, when I first heard (what was to be a series of comments from friends and family) someone mention my mother’s and moiself’s  facial similarities, I blurted out, “Yep, I got my mother’s bones – she’s 65 now, and I’d like to give them back.”   My mother and I were the two in our family (of six) who looked the most alike, in terms of general facial structure.  When I look back on her boner-of-a-mother-daughter-moment, it is because of this physical similarity   [11]  that I can forgive her ham-handed comments.  I interpreted them as a reflection of her insecurities about *her* own appearance.

All these years later I realize how significant her blundering “counsel” was to me at the time.   Fortunately, all these years later it doesn’t sting with freshness of that moment, but now and then I still feel the wispy, wistful regrets, re the fact that she never really knew me…and it’s too late now.  There can be no answers to the questions I would like to pose to her, given the chance.

 

 

Also, once and again/as she was wont to do, my mother had failed at Communications 101.  That could have been an intimate, kitchen-sink-conversational-moment between the two of us.  I was not asking for her guidance; why couldn’t she have just listened, instead of providing the totally unsolicited (and truly  wretched, ego-deflating) advice that in order to make myself seem more attractive –  which BTW was not my goal in life (which she would have known had she paid the least bit of attention to *who* I was, and what kind of person I was striving to be) –  I should hang out with homely females, or at least ones even less attractive than moiself.

For that incident, and a few others which followed over the years, I am soooooo grateful for not growing up in the world of social media.  I mostly put that situation –  and my mother’s unintentionally   [12]  yet nonetheless degrading comment – out of my mind.  Although it later reared its ugly head several times.   [13]

 

 

Particular head-rearing examples from the After College Years®:  on more than one occasion a man with whom I had a passing acquaintance/lives-down-the-apartment-hallway/met at a mutual friend’s party/co-worker  kind of relationship, asked me about a friend/acquaintance/coworker of mine (or in one case, my younger sister).  As in, he found her attractive and wanted my advice re asking her out.

Not for the first time I was bemused by the request, and not for the first time, my answer was hardly earth-shatteringly original: I encouraged him to approach her directly.  Strike up conversations in the hallway and/or at the mailboxes; pay attention to cues…DUDE, just ask her.  And not for the first time, such basic, straightforward advice of mine was countered with, You just don’t get it, followed by his confession that he found talking to “girls” difficult, to the point of being intimidated.  “But, we are, at this very moment, are talking,” I would point out.  To which he and all the other he’s over the years, would respond with a version of:

“Yeah but, this is different.  I don’t know what it is,
but I can’t talk to a girl I find attractive.
Sure, I can talk with *you,* no problem….”

 

Each time it happened, I decided not to further enlighten the clueless Date Fail Men –    [14]   all of whom, with their obliviously demeaning comments, reminded me of my mother, in ways I didn’t see at the time.

Another reminder came from the source itself, from a letter my mother sent me when I’d been married for less than two years. Not long after MH and I had visited my parents at their home in Santa Ana, I received a four-page letter (two pages of a yellow legal pad, written on both sides) from her, the gist of which is that she and my father had found my then-current hairstyle unattractive.

 

 

Really.  Four pages.

Some of the page space was devoted to examples of people she knew (mostly her age) who’d found a flattering hairstyle in their twenties and stuck with it.     [15]  Was it a matter of money, she posited?  If so, she offered that she and my dad would be happy to pay a competent stylist….  Also, after my and MH’s visit, she felt moved to get out her favorite picture of me, the one where I’m waving goodbye to her and my father after they’d helped me move into the UC Davis dorms the fall of my freshman year.  How sad, she wrote, that I now looked “ten years older” than I did in that picture.

 

 

Holy epitome of obliviousness.  I look ten years older?  Uh, yeah, I’ll take that.  Mom – I am, as of this writing, almost *fourteen years older* than I was when that picture was taken.  Cutting/styling my hair in *any* way ain’t gonna change that.

(And that wasn’t the worst comment/jab.  She also wrote that the way I was currently wearing/styling my hair wasn’t how I had it when MH first met me…and implied that if I looked then how I looked now, he wouldn’t have been attracted to/married me).

After I got over my initial WTF!?!?!? shock, I xeroxed her letter, circled and numbered the major points she made ( so that she could see – and not deny – what she’d written), and wiped the floor with her obtuseness addressed them all in a letter of my own, which I attached to the copy of her letter.  I was brutally upfront:  Your opinion about my hair is the forest you can’t see for all the straggly trees in your way.   Imagine how I felt, getting a four-letter page from my parents essentially telling me how old and unattractive they find me.

I reread the letter one more time before I sent my response, and realized what was at the root of the hairstyle red herring.  Of their four children, I was the one who lived farther away from my parents.  Several times I’d discussed with my siblings how, when I saw our parents in person, I was very cognizant that they were getting older.   [16]   This can be jarring for an adult child to realize, but it is also the Natural Order of Things ®.  What we don’t often think about is that it can happen the other way.  When I’d made the trip to SoCal (which prompted the haircut-diatribe letter) it had been almost a year since I’d seen my parents.  For whatever reasons,  I  looked older to  them.  Now, if a parent notices that their adult child is getting older, what does that say about *their* own aging?

 

 

Here is the gist of how I ended the response to my mother, followed by my signoff:

I get it, Mom, even though you obviously don’t.  Since we share some bone structure/facial similarity, if you notice that I seem older to you, well then, what does that say about *you*?  I hate the be the one to break it to you, but you are – surprise! – getting older.  And you need to deal with whatever issues you have about that before dumping your own insecurities onto one of your children.

I love you because you’re my mother,
but I don’t like you very much right now.

She telephoned me as soon as she received my letter.  She apologized, said she was so embarrassed for having sent the letter; she asked me to throw it away, and she promised that she would throw away her copy.

I can’t remember how I phrased my bald-faced lie.   [17]  I agreed with her request, even though I had NO intention of throwing that letter away –  Are you effin’ kidding me? This is exhibit A.  No way was I giving her the nonexistence of the letter as a proof of her likely denial ( “I never said, would never say, such a thing” ! ), should the subject ever come up again.

*   *   *

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [18]

 “If the veil of self-condemnation, inherited shame, religious fear, and psychological self-rejection were finally pulled back, we might discover something terrifying to systems built on control: that human beings are not cosmic mistakes in need of metaphysical cover-up. We are expressions of existence itself, carrying immense depth, creativity, consciousness, relational capacity, beauty, and becoming within us.”

( Jim Palmer, Author, Professor, “Post-Religion Spiritual Director,”
Founder at The Center for Non-Religious Spirituality,
excerpt from his FB post on sin and shame and control )

 

*   *   *

May your safe driving inspire (or intimidate) your friends;
May you talk to people you’re crushing on directly, instead of going through mutual friends;
May you share the hidden meaning (if you figure it out) behind Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Those blog posts would be either the last Friday of June or first Friday of July.

[2] Originally aired 8-9-2020.

[3] Psychologist and author Angela Duckworth and economist and Author Stephen Dubner.

[4] The FOMO experience…which sometimes seems to be the primary purpose of social media.

[5] Nutshell presentation: Social comparison helps us evaluate ourselves by comparing our traits and abilities to others.  The upside: – upward comparisons may push us to improve; downward comparisons make us feel better about ourselves.  Either way, comparing ourselves can also lead to misleading judgments about our abilities.

[6] (aside from it’s amazing guitar solo, what was the song really  about?)  

[7] We were somewhat friendly and were in a couple of classes together.  The first call came as a surprise, as he’d never asked for my phone number.  He must have gotten it from that retro form of information dissemination, the phone book.

[8] I never hung up on him; the calls – thanks in great part to MY conversational skills –wandered into some really interesting and entertaining territories (e.g. music and art and politics)…. Or so I thought when I was seventeen.

[9] Not the dishes – that was my after-dinner chore.

[10] Many a psychological and/or neurological study has shown that “…insults linger longer than praise or compliments….”  (“Spoken Insults Stir Up More Brain Activity Than Compliments And Linger For Longer, Too,” sciencealert, 9-4-22), and that humiliation is the strongest emotion we can feel (“Does This Brain Research Prove That Humiliation Is the Most Intense Human Emotion?  Wired.com)

[11] Which I always found ironic, once it surfaced, as we were the two least alike (re interests, personalities, worldview) in the family.

[12] Gaaaawwwwd, I hope so.

[13] yes, times plural, as in, this happened more than once.

[14] Several of whom later tried asking me out, perhaps as a form of practice.

[15] even in their sixties, which I found hidebound, and not flattering

[16] Even so, I never wrote to them, telling them how old they were looking….

[17] Framed by an unattractive hairstyle!

[18] “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 Enlightenment (Still) I’m Not Ingesting

June 26, 2026

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, sports, The Write Stuff (literary life), Uncategorized, Wow, YEE HAW! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Enlightenment (Still) I’m Not Ingesting

Department Of My Favorite I KNEW IT Headline

That would be from this book review:

The guru who loved to lie:
The wild celebrity and dark secrets of author Carlos Castaneda

 ( review excerpt ):“The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.

That book (…and those that followed) seduced millions of readers….That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Casteneda, reveals the depth of his deception — and…how easily people can be taken in by it.

‘He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,’ Marshall writes. ‘He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.’…

Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s…he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books.

His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of The Teachings spoke effervescently about both.

It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups… were massive bestsellers.”

 

 

The writings of trained   [1] anthropologist Castaneda, in particular his Don Juan series, were all the rage during my early college years.  If often seemed that, when walking down the residence hall hallways, you couldn’t spit (and I did try) without encountering a fellow student, slumped outside their dorm room, taking a break from cramming for their chemistry midterm by searching for some stoner wisdom from the mythical   [2]  Yaqui “Man of Knowledge” Don Juan Matus.  Castaneda’s books portrayed Don Juan as a shaman (of the indigenous Yaqui people) who imparted his wisdom to Castenada via a purported apprenticeship Casteneda had with Don Juan in the early 1960s.

I tried to understand the appeal by reading  [3] the first and some of the second of what would eventually be a series of quasi-spiritual drivel nine books.    [4]   My reaction to what I read was further evidence to moiself  that I would never be as hip as my comrades…and I was relieved to be so.

I only said, You realize he made up all that shit?!?!  a few times to Castenada/Don Juan true believers.  The reactions my skepticism received made me realize that if the reason for my lack of mystical illumination after reading the books – the reason moiself  couldn’t understand the deep spiritual enlightenment wisdom of the books’ teachings –  was that I wasn’t stoned while reading them (as one devoted Castenda follower informed me), then that was a burden I was willing to shoulder.  I got more enlightenment, and a better use of my time, via playing a game of racquetball with friends.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Sometimes The Analogy Can’t Be Stretched

Dateline: Sunday 2:52 pm, listening to a TED Talk podcast, Sports Psychology For Everyone: The Psychology of Winning (and Losing).  Some interesting stuff there, including interviews with sports stars and behavioral scientists.  The hour-long podcast is divided into four segments:

* Soccer legend Abby Wambach reflects on the most iconic goal of her career

* Why we choke under pressure, according to a cognitive scientist

* Why we love watching sports

* Don’t be afraid of failure. Instead, embrace the near-win

The third segment had some key insights into why some sports develop and maintain a loyal audience while others – e.g., women’s sports – have a harder time doing so.  Obstacles include good old-fashioned sexism…

 

 

…coupled with cultural traditions, familiarity, and generational inheritance.

Journalist Kate Fagan:

“When I worked at ESPN…I was always pitching women’s sports stories.

It almost never worked. Every once in a while, it would work. But this thing would happen when we would do a women’s sports segment.  Many of the other men on the segment – they didn’t really do their homework.  So they were kind of blah, then the segment would be kind of blah. There’s actually a term for this.  It’s called  gender bland. And then the segment would end, and the producer would be like, ‘See, this is why we never do women’s sports, ’cause they’re boring.

When a men’s segment fell flat, the problem was us. We would redo it.  All right, come on, do your homework. Pick it up. We’re doing that again. When a segment on women’s sports fell flat, the problem was women’s sports.
The reality is that, just existing in our culture, you will know a dozen men’s storylines… these things are literally push-notified to your phone. Or you’re at a bar or a doctor’s office, and the talking heads are giving you the latest NBA drama. In America, osmosis will have you knowing men’s sports storylines…”

 

 

Fagan:

“There’s so many veins of generational inheritance in sports. There’s the one that does take time and literal family generations where you can actually say, Why am I a New York Met fan? Well, ’cause my grandpa was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And then they left for LA. And then the next team that we got was the New York Mets…. And there’s something bigger than yourself about that.
I think why we love sports at its core is for the culture and community of it. And whether it’s your literal community, it’s like your city team, or you live out of state, and it’s your grandmother’s favorite team…That’s all part of community as well.

And then pair that – and they often go hand in hand – with cultural value….We want to be in on what culture is talking about.”

 

 

Fagan and other podcast guest spoke of factors that get people interested in more obscure/not-so-popular-in-our-culture sports  – factors such as when we understand the stakes to the games and the storylines within them (e.g., the underdog USA ice hockey team battling the heavily favored USSR team; the Romanian gymnast struggling in poverty…).  Then Fagan shared a story of how her father, who taught her basketball, guided her with two pieces of advice about the game, which she applies to life today:

” ‘Always make your last dribble the hardest’….

The other one I loved was…‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’
And that’s a standard basketball one, but…my wife and I will say it to each other all the time when we want to do something we’re not sure we should. It’s like, ‘Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ “

Moiself’s  mind immediately began trying to analogize that shot-taking adage to other sports and activities.  For some reason, rock climbing was the first one I thought of:

“You survive 100 percent of the cliffs you don’t fall off of
from the mountains you don’t climb….”

Hmmmm?  Needs more work to reach pithy aphorism status.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why AI Sucks

Moiself  looks forward to AI applications that can assist doctors to more quickly distinguish between benign and malignant tumors, and which can also help medical researchers fine-tune existing/invent new treatments and for illnesses from cancer to tuberculosis…and help scientists discover non-toxic ways to eliminate air- and waterborne pollutants and develop non-toxic, renewable energy sources…

As for the rest, this sums up my feelings and fears.  When it comes to writing (both fiction and nonfiction/journalism) and the creative arts, don’t be fooled by a seemingly bland term like, Artificial Intelligence.  It’s counterfeit coding ; it’s plagiarism software.

 

 

BTW, that ingestion of written output…without consent, compensation, and credit…?  It’s happened to moiself.

BTW 2.0: for any other published writers out there, whether or not you are involved in one of the many class action lawsuits re AI-enabled pirating,    [5]   AI-enabled pirating of your work has already happened or will happen to you, whether or not you are aware of it.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

 

 

*   *   *

May you be able to spot spiritual flim-flam;
May you not be the easiest person to fool;
May you not fall off of the cliffs you do not climb;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] But never professionally employed as an anthropologist.

[2] As in, Casteneda pulled Don Juan (and their encounters) out of his ass.

[3] By the second book, it was more like skimming, as I found it so uninteresting I couldn’t concentrate on paying actual attention to the twaddle.

[4] The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power, The Eagle’s Gift, The Fire From Within, The Power of Silence, The Art of Dreaming.

[5] I am one of the many parties to the Anthropic CA lawsuit. 

[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 Popovers I’m Not Baking

May 1, 2026

Robyn Parnell foodie, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Popovers I’m Not Baking

Department Of Not One Damn Popover Was Ever Baked In Our Home

Moiself  has nothing against popovers.  I didn’t really know what they were before I got married, then had little interest afterward when someone described them to me as dinner rolls on steroids.  Perhaps I had a lingering case of PPA (Premarital Popover Aversion)…?

 

 

MH’s and my wedding anniversary was this past week.  Somehow, this memory popped (sorry)    [1]   to mind:

Dateline:  However many years ago; some place in Palo Alto, CA; wedding reception of MH and moiself.  I have been roped into small talk with a large man, one of the many  Perfectly Nice People Whom I’ve Never Met Before And Whom MH Knows Only Vaguely Because They Are Relatives/Friends Of His Parents ® .

This PNPWINMBAWMKOVBTAR/FOHP is an older man who decides to engage me in conversation (translation: I listen to him talk about) the wedding present he and his wife got us: a popover pan.

 

Popover pan, sans popovers

 

A popover pan.  This is the first time I’ve heard of such a specific piece of baking equipment (the Parnells were not a popover-consuming family).   “I said, ‘Let’s get them a popover pan,’ “ this man tells me, recreating the pivotal gift-giving conversation he had with his wife.  He also tells me, with evident pride in overturning the stereotypical, who-buys-the-wedding gift assumptions, that *he himself* volunteered to purchase and wrap the pan!  And that he was happy to do so!  Because,  “I always loved it when my wife made me popovers, and I hope that MH will have the same experience.”   [2]

I thank him, drain my glass of champagne in two gulps, and say, (while beaming the most oblivious-to-sexist-expectations smile that I can muster)   [3]  “I’m looking forward to MH learning to bake us popovers!”

 

Another happy couple looks forward to consecrating their marriage with the popover experience.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Not What We Were Looking For, But A Fun Surprise

Dateline:  last week; MH and I searching closets, file cabinets, the attic, the We-never-would-have-moved-them-here drawers….   When we had the house interior painted many months back, MH cleared out the room where our treasured LPs and cassettes were kept.  [4].  And now we can’t find them.

Moiself  is seeking one tape in particular, which has to do with our “date night.”  When we’re in town, we go to Mcmenamin’s Rock Creek Tavern, which has Irish Music night every Sunday.

 

 

We’ve become friendly with several of the Rock Creek staff.  There are two newer servers – a brother and sister,   [5]  both of whom are into (what they call) “retro” music.  I asked the young woman, “Nellie,” for examples of what she considered retro she mentioned several singers/bands (which I recognized as the soundtrack from my retro youth).  When Nellie said that she really liked Joan Jett, I said, “I’m going to impress you, then.”

I told Nellie about having seen JJ twice in concert – once when Jett was with The Runaways,    [6]    and once with her band Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.  And as if that wasn’t impressive enough…

 

 

…many years ago my grooviest friend in the world, former WWDC 101 disc jockey EDK, met Ms. Jett when she was in DC for a concert.  Jett visited the radio station, as bands often do when they’re on tour.  While she was there EDK asked her to record some station promos, AND wish me a happy birthday, which he recorded and sent to me on tape.

Nellie’s eyes widened with delight; she begged me to bring in the tape and play it for her.

We.  Cannot.  Find.  That.  Tape.   [7]

But here’s something MH did find, in a file of old tax returns.  He took pictures of the letter I’d written to the IRS (after our first filing as a married couple), and sent the pictures to our offspring:   “While searching for other archived items, I came across this.  Thought you might enjoy reading some nonfiction writing by your mother.”  Transcript (with address/personal details redacted) below.

I have only the barest memory of writing the letter, and of the bureaucratic injustice which spurred me to do so.  But after reading it I told MH, “Yep; sounds like me.”  What’s nice is that I got the unexpected: a personal response, from a government bureaucrat!  And it was a good one (I’ll spare you that transcript) …although, as MH noted, you can consider it ironic or fitting, given the subject, that the IRS’ response letter is signed with a woman’s name, signing for the (male) IRS Director of Returns.

 

You may want to sit down; lest you be overcome with excitement.

 

Internal Revenue Service; Attn:  IRS Reports Clearance Officer

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you regarding an inaccuracy on my Federal Income Tax refund check.

My husband and I filed joint returns for ____ (year). I have attached a copy of our Federal Income Tax refund check, which, as you can see, is made payable to “____  (  MH’s first name and middle initial and surname)  and “Roby _____ (MH’s surname).  While my husband’s name is indeed ____ (MH’s first name and middle initial and surname), my last name is Parnell.  I am not Robyn _____ (MH’s surname) (and I am most certainly not “Roby MH’s surname”); there is no Robyn ____ ( MH’s surname) that I am aware of who is married to my husband and who has my Social Security number.

Two areas of interest regarding this matter:

  1. a space for Spouse’s Signature (“if joint return BOTH must sign”) is provided on the 1040 form, yet there is no space, at the beginning of the form, for spouse’s name to be printed, although there is a space for spouse’s SSN.
  2. despite not having a space to record my name, my Social Security number was provided, as was my signature, which, while admittedly not renowned for its legibility, is obviously not of someone whose last name begins with the letter “W.” I kept my birthname at marriage, as did my husband.  I have never been “Robyn ____ (MH’s surname”) – the name is not mine, nor does it appear on any of my legal or personal records, nor is it associated with ____ (my SSN).

Taking all of this in to account – and not for one moment daring to assume that a governmental agency would change my name without my knowledge, consent or request to perhaps follow a sexist, outdated assumption of what happens to the surname of a woman when she marries – I am at a loss to figure out how that name got on our check.  Perhaps someone at the IRS can enlighten me?

(Don’t be too hard on yourselves – the state of California didn’t do any better. We also filed a joint state income tax return, with my name listed as filer and my husband’s SS# listed as “Spouse.”  Our state refund check was made payable to two different versions of my name, neither of which even remotely resembled my husband’s name).

A friend of mine encountered a similar situation last year:  her federal refund check was made payable to her and her husband, each listed as having her husband’s surname, which is not her surname, professionally, personally or otherwise.  Both endorsed the check as it was written, per their banker’s instructions.  A few weeks after depositing the check they received letters from the IRS inquiring as to who the second payee was who endorsed the check, as they have no records of any such person – the name they erroneously put on the check – having my friend’s Social Security number!

If this seems like small potatoes to you – “What’s a few letters changed here and there” – consider what would happen if I or any taxpayer had such a cavalier attitude toward listing and recording our expenses and deductions (“What’s a few numbers or decimal points changed or eliminated”)…we’d be in holy hot water (bureaucratically speaking, of course) quicker than you could say, “Subtract line 30 from line 23.”

IRS Commissioner Gibbs writes “…working together with you, I believe we jointly (my emphasis) can find ways to make taxes less taxing for all of us.” *   By bringing this matter to your attention, I am trying to do my part.

Thank you for your consideration.  I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely, your “valued customer,” *

Robyn Parnell

cc: – Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project
-Lawrence B. Gibbs, IRS Commissioner

* quotes taken from the From the Commissioner letter in the 1040 forms and instructions booklet.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“New rule: If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that’s one of those services that goes along with paying in.  I’ll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.”
(  Bill Maher, “Real Time,” 2-17-2006 )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have your own version of a popover experience;
May you have a memorable communiqué with a bureaucrat;
May you get the services you pay (not pray) for;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Not sorry.

[2] I still remember his odd (to me) choice of words…but then, a popover ignoramus such as moiself  might not know that having popovers is an experience.

[3] And that was my second of what would be many glasses of bubbly that night, so there was mustering to be done.

[4] After doing a major culling of them

[5] They are so adorable, I can’t stand it…and I almost wrote that in all caps

[6] The opening band was Cheap Trick!

[7] Nor can we find a lot of others, and some really cool LPs…but, as my father used to say, “It’ll turn up.”

[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 Breath I’m Not Holding

April 17, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Breath I’m Not Holding

Department Of Reasons For That Take A Deep Breath Truism

“The way we breathe has a direct and immediate impact on the state of our mind, emotions, and nervous system.  When we’re agitated or anxious, our breath is often quick and shallow.  When we’re calm, and grounded, it tends to be long and deep.  So, it’s helpful to remember that we can deliberately alter our breath when we want to soften stress or anxiety.…
we can always call on this tool, lengthening our inhales and exhales, in order to regulate our stress response, and gain a sense of calm.”
(   Calm meditation, app, “Breath in Three Acts,” 4-6-26 )

*   *   * 

Department Of Powerful People Have The Privilege Of Ignorance
Sub-Department Of Reasons To Use The Calming Breath Tools

“It is an old truism that knowledge is power. The inverse — that power is often ignorance — is rarely discussed.
The powerful swathe themselves in obliviousness in order to avoid the pain of others and their own relationship to that pain. There’s a large category of acts hidden from people with standing: the more you are, the less you know….”
( excerpt, Rebecca Solnit, “Nobody Knows,” Harpers Magazine )

 

 

A few days ago, when moiself  ran across Rebecca Solnit‘s above cited article, I was reminded of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor’s recent and right-on critique of her colleagues’ obliviousness to the realities in daily lives of non-one-percenters such as themselves.

( excerpts, my emphases/additions, “Supreme Court’s Sotomayor slams colleague Kavanaugh for ICE ruling,”  USA Today, 4-9-26 ):

“Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took a swipe at fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh… for his recent opinion in an immigration case….

Sotomayor spoke about the court’s divided decision in September 2025 that allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration-related stops….

Over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices, including Sotomayor’s, the court blocked a lower court ruling that said federal agents need to have reasonable suspicion that the person they’re questioning is in the country illegally….   [1]

‘I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,’ Sotomayor said, referencing Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion…. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.’

Sotomayor added, ‘Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,’ she said of those detained. ‘And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.’ ….

In his opinion for the court, Kavanaugh lied  blew smoke out of his prep school Ivy League ass  made up crap about something he knows nothing about said that legal residents’ encounters with immigration agents are ‘typically brief,’ and impacted individuals ‘promptly go free.’

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of New Great Term From A Book I Might Read

*Might read,* as in, Get in line with the 158 books ahead of you on my list.  But, as is often the case with my reading list, the lastest, newest/shiny entry kicks the others to the rear.  Sigh.  There’s no fighting evolution.

 

 

Oh yes the term:  safetyism.  Before I even read the definition I suspected what it was;…moiself  knew it was a name for something I’d previously had no name for – a phenomenon that both alarmed and infuriated me when I saw it creeping into my children’s college experiences.    [2]

This term came from a book review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.  I’ll post my favorite excerpts of the review, with moiself’s  sincere apology for my boneheaded neglect to note where I saw the review and thus give proper attribution.   [3]

The Coddling of the … reviewer admitted being skeptical about a book whose title could have heralded a tirade from middle-aged professors about how “today’s students are too soft and whiny.”   Instead, the reviewer noted, the book’s authors point out the disturbing data of what is happening on college campuses:  the rise of trigger warnings, safe spaces, disinvited speakers, student protests shutting down debate – linked with the dramatic and documented rise in anxiety and depression among young people. The book does not blame young people for these particular problems; rather, it lays responsibility on the bad ideas that youth are being taught by well-meaning adults.

 

 

As someone even wiser than moiself    [4]  wrote,

“…despite their theoretical benefits, protected educational experiences [safe spaces]  often fail to instill the most important attributes of a liberal education: critical thinking, persuasive argumentation, close reading, and cultural understanding. Indeed, students’ desire for safe spaces can limit their ability to traverse the real world—where strong disagreements and challenging experiences are part of life….  I know my campus is not a protective bubble that can shield students from reality. Rather, it’s a microcosm of the real world—and I’m not doing my job as an educator if I perpetuate the illusion of safety at the expense of challenging students’ ideas and beliefs.

As a Black man who teaches Shakespeare at a predominantly white institution, I realized years ago that the classroom can never be a safe space. When I teach Othello, a tragedy replete with anti-Black racism and misogyny, am I safe from silent criticisms that I’m an assimilated Black person with a ‘white voice’ teaching a white author? If there is only one Black female student in the class, is she safe? Rather than asking a non-Black colleague to teach the play for me, I lean into discomfort and use it to my pedagogical advantage. I carefully address whatever arises from the class’s collective exposure to the text and its racist moments, because that is my job as a professor.

In my classroom, I eschew safe space rhetoric—such as the truism that all opinions are equally valid—in favor of a pedagogical practice I call ‘productive discomfort.’ This practice leans into difficult discourses on a variety of contentious topics and fearlessly engages students’ personal backgrounds, identities, and experiences. It uses the learning process to expand the boundaries of students’ comfort zones by challenging their existing assumptions and biases.”

(  excerpt, “Discomfort Is the Point: Why ‘safe spaces’ do a disservice to students,” by David Sterling Brown, AAC&U, Winter 2024 )

 

“Education should disrupt the status quo and promote critical thinking.”

 

Yet again, I digress.

What follows are excerpts from the The Coddling of the American Mind review, with my emphases. I have not yet read the book; thus, my emphases of the reviewer’s statements mark *my* concerns – ones I’ve amassed over the past decade, from my offsprings’ experiences as well as from my own readings and observations.  One example: although content/trigger warnings and attempts to establish colleges as safe spaces where students are promised refuge from being “offended” may feel like a kindness in the moment, IMO these policies impinge on free speech, suppress open discussion of complex issues, throttle academic and intellectual diversity, and ultimately (and perhaps most importantly) hinder young people in building resilience.

“Lukianoff and Haidt [the books’ two authors] are not conservatives….both lean left politically. That matters, because this book is not a right-wing attack on campus culture. It’s a liberal critique of things that have gone wrong inside liberal spaces….

The central argument is simple: three bad ideas have spread through American universities (and increasingly through K-12 schools, workplaces, and families). These ideas sound good on the surface. But they are toxic. They make students more anxious, more depressed, and less prepared for adult life.

The three bad ideas are:

  1. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.’  This is the opposite of the old saying. It teaches that discomfort, emotional pain, and offense are dangerous. So, we must protect people from them. The problem is that avoidance makes anxiety worse, not better. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety, teaches the exact opposite: you have to face your fears to overcome them.

  2. ‘Always trust your feelings.’  This sounds empowering. But your feelings are not always reliable guides to reality. Anxiety tells you there’s a threat when there isn’t. Anger can be based on a misinterpretation. If you always trust your feelings without questioning them, you become a prisoner of your own emotional reactions.
  1. ‘Life is a battle between good people and evil people.’  This is the us-versus-them mindset. It divides the world into oppressors and victims. It leaves no room for nuance, context, or good-faith disagreement. And it makes every conflict into a moral crusade where compromise is betrayal….

Here are four things the reviewer learned from the book ( again, excerpts from the review, my emphases ):

“1. Safetyism is not the same as safety.

The authors coin the term “safetyism” to describe a culture where emotional safety is treated as more important than intellectual freedom. Actual safety protects you from physical harm. Safetyism protects you from ideas that might make you uncomfortable. The problem is that you can’t learn in a discomfort-free environment. Learning requires challenge.

2. The rise in anxiety and depression is real and alarming.   [5]

3. Antifragility is a real thing.

The book borrows Nassim Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragile’ things    [6]  that get stronger when they’re stressed (e.g. bones, muscles, immune systems) Minds can be antifragile too. But only if they’re exposed to manageable challenges. Protecting kids from every stressor makes them fragile, not safe.

 

 

4. You can be compassionate and still allow discomfort.

One of the book’s most important distinctions. Compassion does not mean removing every obstacle. Sometimes compassion means letting someone struggle, fail, and figure it out.

The book ends with a line that has stuck with me:
‘Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.’

That’s it. That’s the whole argument. We have been so focused on smoothing the road, removing every bump, every uncomfortable idea, every moment of potential distress, that we forgot to prepare the child. And now we have a generation that is more anxious, more depressed, and less resilient than any in recent memory.”

 

I’ll drink to that.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember that discomfort is the point of learning;
May you call out mind-coddling when you see it;
May you always have room for nuance, context, and good-faith disagreement;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Other than what they’re doing now, which is blatant racial profiling.

[2] I don’t know if it went as far back as high school – I don’t recall K or Belle mentioning “safe spaces” or “trigger/content warnings” then –  but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was already there.

[3] I copied/wrote down portions, so it must have been online…Facebook?  One of my many newspaper online subscriptions? ACVATTWAFNB  (All Cat Videos All The Time With A Few News Breaks)?

[4] Gasp – they exist.  By the thousands…..

[5] Most of us have heard about the skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression; the book presents data linking this to social media, the decline of free play, and the rise of safetyism.

[6] Nassim Taleb is a Lebanese-American author, professor, mathematician.  His book cited here is  Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,

[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 Healthy Skepticism I’m Not Having Trouble Applying

April 10, 2026

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life) , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Healthy Skepticism I’m Not Having Trouble Applying

Department Of But First, Set Aside The Skepticism For:
More Proof That Everything Circles Around

Dateline: Tuesday 4:29p, reading a blurb in The Week magazine’s “guide to what’s worth watching.” I come upon a blurb that makes me shriek with joy, and search my blog history for the story I know is there.  Here, from 10-27-17 (   The Studio I’m Not Touring ), is an excerpt of my relating a Parnell family story to my family

Remember the story I’ve told you, when I was in grade school, and one night at the dinner table my dad was teasing my mom about her name….

For the benefit of those not related to me or who haven’t heard the story,   [1]  a wee bit o’ background info: my mother’s birth surname was Hole.   [2]  Yes,  Hole.  I sometimes teased her, about why her own mother didn’t keep her surname Moran but instead was willing to take on her husband’s…unique…family name: It really must have been love, or desperation….

Yeah, so, the story.  At the family dinner table, occupied as per usual by my parents and their four children (on this particular night oh-so-many years ago, my older sister, younger sister and I were all in grade school, and our brother was an infant):

After my father’s customary  So, tell me about your day? query, we dove into yet another round of thematic banter. Our family dinner table dialogues tended to focus on one subject, which was never (or rarely) intentional or pre-planned, but rather tangential from something which had happened to one of the Parnell siblings  [3]   at school. On that evening, I shared a story about a kid who had been teased on the playground about his name: the combination of his first name and last name made for some tease-worthy rhyme schemes.   [4]

Marion Parnell said she felt sorry for the poor boy. Growing up with her particular last name, she knew exactly how he felt:

“My father was always telling my sisters and I how, in Norway, Hole was a respectable, upper class, landowners’ name. I lost track of how many times he told us we should be proud of our name. He just couldn’t understand how it was for us, because in America, it was just HOLE.  Oh, I heard it all the time, the jokes: ‘Look, here comes Marion Hole, hole-in-the-ground…don’t fall into a hole!’ “

(I had also lost count of how many times I’d heard about Hole-is-a-proud-Norwegian-name assurances, and had come to think that our maternal grandfather had made that up to make our mother feel better.  I’d never heard of anyone, of any ethnic background, with that name.)

 

Still with me? You deserve The Order of the Pretty Purple Toe ® award.

 

My mother took little comfort from me telling her that her peers had been pretty lame in the joke department:  ” ‘Marion Hole-in-the-ground’? I can think of a lot worse things to do with a name like…”

Chester Parnell jumped in, to save me from embarrassing my mother. Or so I thought.

“Well, Robbie Doll, you know what your mom’s middle name is?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Alberta?”

“That’s right,” Chet nodded enthusiastically. “But you know, she was so beautiful, I never had any second thoughts about marrying an  A. Hole.”

This produced shrieks of delight from the three Parnell daughters – first from me (my shriek decibel count was boosted by my pride in being the first one to “get it”), followed a few seconds later by my older sister, and then by my younger sister, who probably didn’t get the reference but knew something hilarious must have been said by the way her older sisters and father were reacting.

Mom had that tense/amused, try-to-be-a-good-sport look on her face.  Dad gazed across the table at her with impish affection – I knew something even better was coming up.

Chester B. Parnell: “Tell them about your cousin.”

Marion A. Hole Parnell (baring her teeth): “I don’t want to tell them about my cousin.”

Chet:  “Tell them about your cousin. What was his name?”

Marion: (muttering) “His name was Harry.”

Chet: “And it wasn’t a nickname – his real name wasn’t Harold? And he didn’t have a middle name – just a first and last name?”

Marion: “That’s right.”

Mom, of course, knew where this was heading. She tried to act as if she were miffed, but I could see the corners of her mouth beginning to twitch.

Chet: “And so his name was…?”

Marion (deep breath): “Harry Hole.”

Professional stand-up comics would kill to get an audience response akin to that which erupted that evening, in the smallest of venues, the Parnell kitchen dining nook.

*   *   *

Back to the present; specifically, Tuesday, when moiself  comes across the blurb in The Week magazine and shrieks aloud, My mom’s cousin!!

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Post Easter Reflections

It’s the week after the weekend of the most holy Christian festival that ironically   [5]  has the most un-Christian name.  What we call Easter, as with most Christian holidays, consists in large part of the ancient rites and myths of paganism and other spiritualities which were incorporated into the Christian myths  (see this Longest Blog Footnote So Far ® for details, should that float your boat.  [6]  )

Three years ago, around this time of year, this was included in my blog:

Department Of Uh, Since You’ve Asked, That Would Be, “No”

Last Sunday a FBF (Facebook Friend) began her post thusly:

Happy Easter, everyone! Can I share what it means to me?

FBF went on to – surprise! – offer her testimony for Jesus, without waiting for an answer to her question.

 

 

Moiself   remembered that post on Monday, when I saw a different post on social media – a post which, if I had a different relationship with that FBF, I would forward to her, and possibly even ask for her reaction/opinion.   

For my Christian readers, family and friends – and yessirreeebobsurprise! I do have them –  I assume they call themselves Christian because they go to a Christian church and/or believe they have committed to “follow Jesus.”

Having been raised in that background, it has always – and especially around this time of year – been a source of forehead-bonking wonder to moiself  that there seems to be little understanding by Christians that their Jesus is never quoted in their scriptures as saying,  “Oh, yeah, along with the teachings and good deed admonitions I’m leaving y’all with, here’s the most important thing: please remember to start a new religion, and name it after me.”

Former Christian evangelical divinity student Jim Palmer’s new ministry seems to be to “minister” to former literalists such as himself ( from Palmer’s  writings moiself  has seen so far, I gather Palmer would still claim to follow [some]  words/example of Jesus, but not Christianity).  For the sake of relative brevity, moiself  will assume that most Christians accept their Biblical scriptures as reliable.  [7]  It is to those Christians that I’d like to direct to one of Palmer’s writings, which contain some abundant food for thought (an entire life’s rations, I’d say) about how Christianity ≠ Jesus ≠  Christianity:   

It still surprises people who haven’t looked closely that Jesus and Christianity are not the same thing. Not even close. Jesus was not a Christian. He didn’t start Christianity. He didn’t write a creed, build an institution, or outline a belief system that would later dominate empires. You can’t blame Christian nationalism on Jesus. You can’t even cleanly blame Christianity on him. What exists today under his name is something that formed after him, around him, and in many ways, in spite of him.

What we call Christianity is largely shaped by the Apostle Paul and later by the political machinery of the early church. Most of the New Testament isn’t Jesus talking, it’s Paul interpreting. Then you have centuries of councils, debates, and power plays where theology gets hammered into place by people trying to stabilize a movement that was never meant to be stabilized. Read the creeds. They are packed with metaphysical claims about Jesus, yet strangely quiet about the actual things he taught. It’s a lot of doctrine, very little Jesus.

Then Constantine shows up and everything shifts. After the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Christianity goes from a grassroots, disruptive movement to a state-sanctioned tool. Legalized, institutionalized, and eventually weaponized. What began as something subversive becomes something that props up empires. By the time you get to Nicaea, Jesus is being defined in ways that would likely leave him scratching his head. The question isn’t just who Jesus was. It’s who needed him to be what they said he was.

Christianity didn’t just elevate Jesus. It insulated people from him. Turning him into God conveniently removes the pressure of actually following him. If he’s divine in a way you can never be, then you don’t have to wrestle with his humanity or your own. You can worship instead of embody. You can believe instead of live. It’s a brilliant move if your goal is control. Not so great if your goal is transformation.

Strip away the layers of theology, politics, and institutional spin, and you find something far more dangerous than what Christianity preserved. Jesus wasn’t executed for starting a religion. He was executed for disrupting one. He challenged the alliance between religious authority and political power, and he did it without holding any official position himself. That’s what made him dangerous. He didn’t oppose the system by building a rival system. He made the existing one look unnecessary.

The Romans didn’t crucify nobodies. Jesus mattered. Not because he held power, but because he exposed it. His message stirred hope, and hope is not harmless. Hope destabilizes systems that rely on resignation. It wakes people up. It makes them harder to control. Jesus told people to stop outsourcing their authority, to stop deferring to religious gatekeepers, and to trust what was alive and true within themselves. That’s not religion. That’s a direct threat to anyone who benefits from people staying dependent.

Every time Jesus spoke, he was pulling another block out of the structure holding everything in place. He didn’t need an army. He didn’t need a platform. His clarity did the damage. He revealed that the system people thought they needed wasn’t necessary in the way they had been told. And once people start to see that, the whole thing begins to wobble.

What’s ironic is that the religion built in his name ended up doing the opposite of what he did. It rebuilt the very structures he exposed. It reintroduced authority, hierarchy, and dependency, then stamped his name on it for legitimacy. And now, two thousand years later, Jesus is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Talked about endlessly, but rarely recognized.

Jesus might be the most famous missing person in history. Not because he disappeared, but because the institution built around him made sure you wouldn’t find him.

(excerpts, my emphases, Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy  )

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [8]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [9]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

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

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 4-10-25 ( The Bird I’m Not Calling  ).

Department of Seasonal Poor Taste

Content warning:  Well, duh.

My (belated) Easter sex joke:

He is risen!
He is risen, indeed!  [10]

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“I HAVE AN EASTER challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born.

Believers should eagerly take up this challenge, since without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. Paul wrote, ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain…. ‘ (I Corinthians 15:14-15)

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul’s tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened….”

 

 

Protestants and Catholics seem to have no trouble applying healthy skepticism to the miracles of Islam, or to the ‘historical’ visit between Joseph Smith and the angel Moroni. Why should Christians treat their own outrageous claims any differently?…

[Thomas] Paine points out that everything in the bible is hearsay. For example, the message at the tomb (if it happened at all) took this path, at minimum, before it got to our eyes: God, angel(s), Mary, disciples, Gospel writers, copyists, translators. (The Gospels are all anonymous and we have no original versions.)

But first things first: Christians, either tell me exactly what happened on Easter Sunday, or let’s leave the Jesus myth buried next to Eastre (Ishtar, Astarte), the pagan Goddess of Spring after whom your holiday was named.

( Excerpts, Leave No Stone Unturned: an Easter Challenge for Christians
Freethought Today, by Dan Barker )

 

Then, like now, you’d think somebody at the time would have noticed zombies walking around….

*   *   *

May you enjoy the rites of spring, no matter what natural processes and/or mythical beings you attribute them to;
May you apply a healthy skepticism to all supernatural claims;
May you always notice when zombies are walking around;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The latter group would not include anyone within a twenty mile radius of my dining table.

[2] Which is why, once my feminist worldview began to develop, I told her it was completely understandable that she never even considering retaining her birth name upon marriage

[3] Which translates into, usually moiself . Things were always happening to moiself .

[4] And although I remember with vivid clarity the conversation that ensued from me sharing that story about the kid being teased re his name, to this day I cannot recall what the kid’s name was – something along the lines of Bart Katz, which of course got turned into Barfing Cats or Fart Cats or the like.

[5] Or fittingly, according to your POV.

[6] When early Christian missionaries encountered the tribes of the north, they attempted to convert them to Christianity and, of course, alter their existing religious observations.  They did so in a clandestine manner, as suggested by church authorities and finally “officialized” in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory I issued an edict to his missionaries regarding the customs of peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than banish native customs and beliefs, the pope had his missionaries incorporate them (e.g., if people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, Greg I advised missionaries to consecrate the tree to Christ).

 

Early Christians holy day observances coincided with celebrations that already existed.  And as with almost all “Christian” holidays, Easter was originally a festival of another religion, and derives from a variety of pagan celebrations.  It made sense to Christians to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian celebration.   Still, every Easter, many Christian parents are put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain to the kiddies why the torture, execution, and supposed resurrection of Jesus is celebrated with colored eggs and cute widdle bunnies.  Uncomfortable, in that most adult Christians have only a vague clue about the connection.  Some grant that Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover celebration.  However, seeing as how Yahweh didn’t send a plague of egg-hiding rabbits into Egypt, the link seems rather feeble.

 

The name of the holiday, “Easter,” is the name of a pagan goddess, and was identified as the source of the holiday’s name by “The Venerable Bede” (672-735 CE), a Christian theologian (in his book De Ratione Temporum.) The name “Easter” has many variations (Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Ester, Eastra, Eastur, Austron, etc.) but all of these come from the same Roman deity, the goddess of the dawn, named “Eos” or “Easter.”

 

[7]  The refutations of that assumption, along with the problems which come from assuming such veracity and/or the reliability of scriptural sources, are just a google search away.

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

[9] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[10] For those not familiar with churchy stuff, this is the traditional Paschal greeting.

[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

Older Entries