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The Secret I’m No Longer Keeping

March 22, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

*   *   *

Department Of Questions That Can No Longer Be Answered

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

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

Dateline :

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

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

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

 I wanted to tell you…something.  Privately.

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moiself:
“Yes, I know.  I knew.”

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

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

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

Nick:
“He told *you*????!?!?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Well, okay.  How’s about poetry?

*   *   *

Department Of The Poetic Form I’m Not Appreciating

 

 

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

 I have no desire
to fit in. 

No plans to walk with the crowd.

I have my own mind,
heart and soul.

I am me

 And it 

has taken me years
to realize

how important that is

  

  

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

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

I just ask myself,

why is that labeled as a poem?

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

Is
it the

arranging?

if so, you can take any opinion,

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

and
general
formatting.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

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

 

 

*   *   *

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

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

[7] Cancer; lymphoma, I think.

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

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

The Pranks I’m Not Playing

March 15, 2024

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

Content Warning: Contentious World Affairs

“…if Israel is going to be accused of genocide
(which is a misuse/misunderstanding of the term, as the writer explains in the article)
regardless of its actions, it has that much less incentive to show restraint in its effort to defeat an enemy that is *avowedly* genocidal.   [1]
Indeed, it’s worth noting that those loudly calling for a cease-fire to stop Israel’s genocide typically fail to call for Hamas to surrender.
That would stop the bloodshed, by any name, immediately.

( excerpts (*my comment);*  my emphases, from:
“This is what’s wrong with the rush to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza”
The LA Times 3-5-24 )

 

 

Department Of Why I Am Not Hopeful For Peace In The Mideast,
Even If Hamas Surrenders And Israel Stops Being A Butthead About The West Bank And Pursues A Palestinian Homeland/Two State Solution

Because: religion and regional history (which are one and the same).  Remove both sides’  adherence to their primitive scriptures which enshrine their “you are special/I gave this land to you” xenophobic deities’ proclamations, and there might be a chance….  As the late great Christopher Hitchens put it, “people will kill each other’s children for ancient caves and relics.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of “It’s Mine!  No, it’s Mine!”
Oh Crap, Do Y’all Have To So Brazenly Prove My Point?

“Carrying planks of plywood, a group of Israeli settlers pushed past soldiers guarding the barrier surrounding the Gaza strip and quickly got to work.  Within minutes, the young men had erected two small buildings – outposts, they said, of a future Jewish settlement in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Their movement had hungered for this moment for years, but now, after Oct. 7, they felt is was just a matter of time before Jews would be living in Gaza again.  ‘It is ours,’ said David Remer, 18.  ‘[God] said it is ours.’  “

(from “Israel’s religious right has a clear plan for Gaza:
‘We are occupying, deporting and settling.’ ”
Los Angeles Times, 3-13-24 )

“…This manifestly shows that the true heirs [of Palestine] will always be Muslims, and if it goes into the hands of some else at some point, such a possession would be similar to a scenario in which the mortgagor gives temporary control of their property to the mortgagee. This is the glory of Divine revelation, [and it shall surely come to pass]….”

(“What does the Quaran say about Israel and Palestine?”
 The Weekly Al Hakam )

 

 

*   *   *

Dateline Tuesday morning 7:50 AM, morning walk, listening to a No Stupid Questions podcast. At the end of each NSQ episode, the hosts play two to four comments that listeners have recorded and sent in regarding previous NSQ episodes, then give the names of those who sent in their comments. That episode had two comments, from (1) “a person who prefers to remain anonymous,” and (2) “Julia Roberts.”

My first thought upon hearing the commentor’s last name was, no – that’s incomplete.  That was her full name at some point in her life, perhaps when she was a wee lass.  But now, when answering the what is your name question, her full answer is likely, “Julia Roberts, yeah/no.”    [2]

 

“What do you mean, ‘Am I *that* Julia Roberts?’  I thought the name of the podcast was no stupid questions….”

 

*   *   *

Department Of…You Know….

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Fun With Podcasts: The Question I’m Not Asking

At the end of each episode of Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid blog, Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all of which have some relation to the idea of communication.  The questions have varied slightly over the years; the current crop:

* What do you wish you really understood?

* How do you tell someone that they have their facts wrong?

* What’s the strangest question anyone has ever asked you?

* How do you stop a compulsive talker?    [3]

* What gives you confidence?

* What book changed your life?

* How do you strike up a real, genuine conversation?

My favorite is the last question, which Alda often prefaces with a scenario: “Let’s say you’re seated at a dinner party next to someone you don’t know.  How do you strike up a real, genuine conversation?”

 

 

Moiself  was pleased to recall that, in my years of listening to the C+V podcast, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they ask the other person, “What do you do?”  That is a question I propose we eliminate from our introductory conversations.

I’ve had a lifelong distaste for that question, but first gave serious thought as to why over two decades ago, when a friend told me about his recent business trip to Europe, during which he had some interesting conversations with “the natives.” He shared the story of how, when he’d gotten to know a few of his foreign colleagues well enough, they felt comfortable enough (over a meal, comfort abetted by multiple glasses of the local red wine) to ask him some version of two “Why do Americans do this?”  questions.  The first, which I heard later on during several of my own European adventures, was,

“Why do Americans use the question, ‘How are you?,’ as a greeting. Why don’t they just say, Hello; Good morning; Good afternoon; Nice to meet you; etc.?  Because when I answer their question, it turns out they don’t really want to know how I am….”

 

 

That cracked me up – it’s something I’ve noticed for years (and I strongly agree with the Why Do Americans… questioners’ befuddlement on this issue).

The other question was why do Americans, within seconds of being introduced to or meeting you, ask what most Europeans considered to be a personal, even rude question:

“What do you do?”

My friend’s European colleagues said that the answer to the what-do-you-do query  – “do” meaning, your career/occupation – is seen as intrusive, and as a way of determining status.  And if you are temporarily/currently unemployed – as was the case for many at that time (when my friend was there, most countries in Europe were going through an economic downturn) then you are ranked lower on the totem pole.  Or, if their job is one they think Americans won’t respect or understand, they don’t know what to say to you.

I agree with those observations, have experienced them moiself…but mostly I think that what do you do is just not an interesting question, conversation-enhancing-wise.

 

 

Since the pandemic times I have mostly, but not exclusively, been around people I’ve known for years; thus, moiself  can’t remember the last time someone asked me what I do.  I do know that if asked What do you do?  I probably probably responded with one of my two stock answers:

(1)  When?

(2)  I call 911, then put out the fire as best I can.

Depending on how well I know the person asking the question, I usually hedge about revealing that moiself  is a writer.  This is due to years of experience; read: because of the responses that the I-am-a-writer answer usually produces – responses I’ve seen my artist friends endure receive as well. 

That is so wonderful – you’re a creative!?!

Uh…yeah?  The first time my writer-admission was met with that response,   [4]   moiself  kept waiting for the subject which usually follows the adjective.  Nope; it seems that creative has been noun-i-fied.  And yeah, I realize that that response is (usually) meant to be a compliment.  The thing is, I loathe that word being applied only to the artistic fields, and it usually is.  Some of the most creative people I’ve met/known/read about have been scientists, engineers, teachers, health care providers….

 

 

Then there is the ick/uncomfortable factor: many if not most people, immediately after finding out you are a writer/artist, heap praise upon you and ask you questions whose answers you have no way of knowing:

That is so great – I wish I could be that talented!
Have I read anything you’ve written/seen any of your paintings?

Without seeing or reading any of your work, the non-writers/non-artists make false assumptions, including that you must be some kind of celebrity and that you and your work are worthy of adoration and somehow “above” what they do…which indicates how very little they know about your profession.  This might seem petty, to complain about how revealing what you do gives many people an immediate positive, “You are so special/what you do is more interesting than what I do,” assessment of you, but it has always made me feel uncomfortable.

If your work/career is a passion and you chose it for interesting reasons, that will come out eventually.  The more interesting conversations are, IMO, initiated by something that gets you to know a person on a more personal level without being too personal.  Does that make sense? 

Finding out what people think is usually more interesting than finding out what they do for a living (unless the “do” answer is something really esoteric, like, “I repair the no-gravity toilets on the International Space Station.”).  Try variations on these questions:

* What are you thinking about lately/ What occupies your thoughts these days?

* What are you surprised by?

* Tell me about the last time you were surprised/scared/overjoyed/disgusted?  [5]

Or, simply start out by finding a commonality, as with the dinner table scenario (“So, what’s your connection to _____ [the host] – how did you meet?” )

Moiself  delights in hearing peoples’ stories, and over the years I’ve found the most efficient way to do that – to elicit stories from people, especially those who, by their temperaments might not initiate telling them – is to tell a story of your own.

 

 

In particular, try either sharing a story that doesn’t exactly put you in the best light or sharing a vulnerable moment – both kinds of stories preferably bracketed with self-effacing humor.  So, moiself’s  secret is out: my ulterior motive for posting family stories and personal experiences on Facebook (the only social media I am involved with), or relating them at dinner, parties, or other social engagements, is to be able to hear the stories I inevitably get in return. 

*   *   *

Department Of Technology Is Groovy, But There Are Things It Stifles…
And Some Of Those Things I Miss

Dateline:  last week, returning from morning walk, noticing a new (to moiself)  security camera affixed to a neighbor’s garage door.  For some reason my first thought was,

Dang!  Nnow their kids’ friends can’t toilet paper the house
without everyone knowing who did it.

I think of the (harmless, I swear) pranks of old (e.g., TP-ing a friend’s house; playing ding-dong ditch), as well as acts of intrigue and kindness (leaving May flowers and notes on the doorstep), that depended on anonymity.  I still think of/get inspired to pull such fun pranks, but am deterred by the fact that everyone has a camera everywhere (whether on their doorsteps or in their ever-present cellphones), and I don’t want to end up on someone’s youtube video.

 

But creating such a masterpiece might be worth the risk.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Cogent Warnings…

…found in my offspring’s alumni magazine.  As far as I know, my kids don’t read their college’s alumni publication, but I do.  Moiself  found a profound statement in the Ask the Expert feature in the latest issue of Arches, the quarterly magazine of  UPS.  The expert being asked was Ariela Tubert, a philosophy professor studying the ethics of AI.   In the interview Tubert was asked to explain the pros and cons, or the promise and pitfalls, of artificial intelligence and machine learning.  Her comment and cautions were sorted into five categories:

  1. Bots are not people;
  2. Separate the serious stuff;
  3. A force for good;
  4. Tools to try;

And the one which contained, IMO, the most crucial warning/reminder,

  1. Beware of biases:  “A system created and trained on human data can amplify biases…Historical data is not ethically perfect.”

 

( graphic from These robots were trained on AI. They became racist and sexist.
The Washington Post, 7-16-22 )

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“I never believed in God. No, I didn’t even as a little kid. I used to think even if he exists, he’s done such a terrible job.
It’s a wonder people don’t get together and file a class action suit against him.”
( Bob Dandridge, played by Alan Alda, in the movie Everyone Says I love You. )

*   *   *

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

I hate it when people think I’m Julia Roberts, even when they hear my correct name.  Happens all the time.

 

 

*   *   *

May you not have to explain, when stating your name, that you are not a famous person;
May you strive to ask what someone thinks rather than what they do;
May you dare to, just once more, TP a friend’s house;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The introduction to Hamas founding covenant:  “This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious … It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.”  After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. “The Day of Judgement will not come about,” it proclaims, “until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” (from “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology: A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions,” The Atlantic, 10-10-23, by Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University professor, Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations and Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.

[2] As in, “Julia Roberts; yeah, like the actor; no, I’m not her.”

[3] One of the best answers to this question – and probably one of the most effective strategies – came from writer/actor/comedian Sarah Silverman, who said she excuses herself, explaining that she has diarrhea. 

[4] It’s happened more than once.

[5] Yes, moiself  has posed these questions, to “total” strangers.

[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 Brain I’m Not Hard-Wiring

February 2, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Brain I’m Not Hard-Wiring

Department Of Not The Kind Of Story You Want To Start Your Day With
Sub-Department Of It’s Not “All In The Past”

 

( image from Newsweek story 9-18-19,
Illinois Opens 24 Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Cases That Were Never Investigated )

 

Dateline: last Wednesday, 6 AM, scrolling through LA Times headlines.  The words Orange County, where moiself  was born and lived most of my first 18 years, caught my eye; also, I thought I recognized the name of the reporter.   [1]  The article, by LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, is about the first big story Arellano covered as a cub reporter, that of a notorious Catholic priest and sexual abuser.

Father Eleuterio Ramos was a priest in Orange and LA Counties in the 1970s and 1980s.  Ramos was transferred from parish to parish by church officials who knew about Ramo’s history of molesting (in Ramos’s own words, “at least” 25) boys, but – surprise! – never notified the police or removed him from the priesthood.  Here is the entry  (my emphases)  for Ramos on bishopaccountability.org, a website which has documented the abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church since 2003.   

“Full name Eleuterio Victor Al Ramos, Jr. Priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles CA, then the Diocese of Orange when in was created in 1976. In and out of treatment, kept in ministry. Placed on leave in 1985. Sent to a Tijuana Mexico parish in 1985 and put in charge of a children’s ministry. Removed in 1991. Died in 2004. Personnel file released in 1/2013. Wrongful death suit filed in 3/2017 vs the Orange and L.A. dioceses by the widow of an alleged victim who died by suicide in 2015….The victim was altar boy who met Ramos at age 10.”

The story of Ramos, and of what happened to his victims and their attempts to bring him to justice, haunts Arellano to this day, both as a reporter and as a human being. 

“Ramos has cast such a specter over me that when I received a text from attorney John Manly that his firm had reached a large settlement in a clerical sex abuse case, I immediately guessed who the perpetrator was.

The plaintiff alleged that Ramos…molested him…during the 1970s and 1980s. Church leaders…did nothing to stop the abuse, despite repeated warnings from parishioners, staff and even a fellow priest, the lawsuit alleged.

The $10 million settlement…requires the Archdiocese of Los Angeles…to pay $500,000. The Orange diocese will cover the other $9.5 million….

… the plaintiff declined to speak to me. The Times does not identify victims of sexual abuse without their consent.

In a statement, spokesperson Jarryd Gonzales said that the diocese ‘deeply regrets any past incidences of sexual abuse,’ adding that ‘the allegations in this case date back more than 40 years and do not reflect the Diocese of Orange as it stands today.’ “

( excerpts from Arellano’s column, “A pedophile priest. A $10-million payout. A monster who won’t leave my life.”  ( LA times, 1-25-24 )

 

 

Moiself  is genuinely sorry that Arellano (and other reporters who’ve worked on the thousands of priest sexual abuse stories) continues to be haunted by the story he covered. What haunts me is the WTF?  WTF?!?!?   quote from that church spokesperson – about how the abuse “do not reflect what the diocese is today.” Okay, it doesn’t haunt me so much as it frosts my butt to think that people might read that obscene muddling statement and say, “Oh, well, yes, that was then and this is now.”  It’s a line I’ve read about from so many other Catholic church spokes-folks I figure it must be in the first chapter of their, “How to Handle Those Pesky Sex Abuse Settlements” handbook:

“The allegations in this case date back more than ___years and do not reflect the Diocese of ____ as it stands today.”

 

 

WRONG.   Excusez-moi, Mr. Spokesperson, but the abuse does in fact reflect what the diocese – what the Catholic church – is today.  Of course it does.  The whole point of your religion is that the past lives in the present, and that the stories and protocols of the past determine the future. 

Yep, this shill spokesdude wants us to believe that this darned abuse thing is “all in the past.”   Um, hello, the Catholic Church is *all about* the past!  Roman Catholicism is, as all Christian religions are, based on stories and mythologies from Iron Age, pre-scientific cultures, and as such, it struggles desperately to concoct and maintain its relevancy in the present and future.  The church clings to ancient legends and scriptures and bizarre rituals (e.g. the metaphorical cannibalism of the rite of communion), which they sometimes try to pass off as symbolic or allegorical despite their own theologies of literalism (i.e. transubstantiation).     [2]  

 

 

Their theologies and the power they hold over adherents come from the past; they continue to live in the past, and look how they react when their past catches up to them?

The Catholic church’s leaders have, for over a millennia, been appointed by a cabal of their brothers who claim to be voting in response to the spirit of their god.  This spirit led them to elect centuries of buffoons and also downright evil men, including but not limited to Pope Stephen VI  who ordered his deceased predecessor exhumed and his fingers cut off; Pope John XII, whose worldly ways included gambling, incest, murder (he himself was killed by the man who caught him in flagrante delicto with his wife); Pope Urban VI, who was disappointed that he didn’t hear enough screaming when the Cardinals who had turned against him were tortured.   [3]

The church leaders and their brotherhood continue to cling to misogynistic, homophobic, medieval policies which were formulated and are enforced by a hierarchy of, as a self-described recovering Catholic once told me, “Men who’ll dress like women but refuse to ordain them.”

 

 

The RC’s sexual abuse scandals and their aftermath are not in the past – they are in the here and now, and shall continue to be, until RC adherents say enough is enough, and take their arses and their checkbooks  ( how many RCs truly comprehend that their donations “to god” go to pay off priest sexual abuse lawsuits?    [4]   )  out of the pews and into the light.

Support groups include for those considering doing so include

* Catholics Anonymous

* Former Catholic

* FCC- Former Catholics Connect

* Live Journal

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of Everything You Know Is Wrong

Well, not everything, but it turns out….

“Psychology is a bit of a double-edged sword, because it is so intuitively interesting to all of us. And the positive side is that we’re all psychologists in everyday life.
We all know — or at least think we know — something about love and memory, and friendships and dreams and things like that. The downside though is that because something seems familiar it may sometimes seem understandable. There’s a very hungry, very receptive audience for psychological books on positive psychology, emotions, love, relationships, infidelity. That’s all good.
But the danger, I think, is we can very easily push our wonder buttons and push our interest buttons using pseudo-science rather than science.”

That teaser ( my emphases) is a quote from Scott Lilienfeld, clinical psychologist and  professor of psychology at Emory University, from his interview with host Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics podcast, “Five Psychology Terms You’re Probably Misusing” ( my emphases ).  Lilienfeld authored a paper called “Fifty Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid: a List of Inaccurate, Misleading, Misused, Ambiguous, and Logically Confused Words and Phrases,” and the book Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology.  For this interview, he (and other guest scientists and journalists) stick with a mere five common myths of psychology.  Dubner’s take on the book:

 “…this book is incredibly fun; I love it. It’s hugely enjoyable on the one hand, but also hugely sobering on the other…. Because basically you’re saying that all these things — all these ideas that people love to embrace and talk about and pass on — are somewhere between bogus and trumped up.“

  

 

The things-we-get-wrong include believing that the following concepts are true:

* statistically significant = statistically reliable
* bystander apathy
* personality type
* Some people are left-brained while other people are right-brained
* The brain is “hard-wired”

Sharon Begley, a journalist specializing in neuroscience and the neuroplasticity of the brain, joined the conversation to discuss this latter myth.

LILIENFELD:
I think in the overwhelming majority of cases in which it’s used, “hard-wired” is really misleading and I think sometimes potentially pernicious because it can lead people into assuming that certain behaviors cannot be changed….

BEGLEY:
If you say it’s hard-wired, implicitly — or actually not that implicitly, quite explicitly — the message is, you can’t change that.

Just as if you wanted to go into your computer’s hard drive with a teeny little screwdriver and start messing around with those integrated circuits to change something, that will not work out very well.

But the hard-wired idea didn’t originate with computing.
The history of neuroscience has shown us that even going back centuries, whatever was the prevailing cool mechanical machine, device, whatever, that was the metaphor that people appealed to. So the brain was compared to a counting machine, to a clock. And then computers burst on the scene and so people said, “Well, then the brain is like a computer.” But one of the most important discoveries in neuroscience over the last few years has been, in fact, that all that hard-wired stuff is completely wrong in very fundamental ways.

LILIENFELD:
There are very few — if any — psychological attributes that are strictly genetically determined, strictly hard-wired into the brain.

BEGLEY:
This realization has also led to treatments for major depressive disorder, because there’s a clear neurocircuitry underlying it. O.C.D., which reflects over-activity in a particular circuit, through the form of therapy called cognitive behavior therapy, the over-activity in that circuit can be quieted just as much as if people take the medications that are prescribed for O.C.D.

After a brief discussion of how the brain’s flexibility, including the fact that it can be trained to control different body parts after a stroke, Begley suggests it may be time to “trade in the hard-wired metaphor for a less misleading one.”

BEGLEY:
… The brain is more like an Etch-a-Sketch. You can seem to incise lines on it, and they look for all the world like they’re real, but with a little bit of shaking up, you can make significant changes.

 

 

I recommend a listen to this fascinating topic, presented with, as host Dubner puts it, “a dose of humility, along with a plea for good science.”  And, on the topic of bystander apathy, after the guests debunk much of the infamous Kitty Genovese story, Dubner has a cogent warning for us all:

“The moral of the story, I guess,
is to always be careful of what you think you know.”

*     *     *

 

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

“… the Vatican issued its first new policy statement since a torrent of sex abuse cases around the world began last year….

But what the new guidelines could have done, but failed to, was to require churches to report complaints of sexual abuse to law enforcement.  Nor do they set up any chain of accountability for church hierarchy who may abet sex abusers….

As if all that weren’t enough to make that vein on your forehead throb just a little more insistently, in among all the strong words for sex abusers and heretics was the classification of the ordination of women to a ‘grave crime,’ punishable by excommunication.
Let me think: women ministering the sacraments, priests raping children. Women ministering the sacraments, priests raping children. Still not seeing them on quite an equal level yet….”

Mary Elizabeth Williams, American writer, in
“The Vatican’s new sex abuse guideline misstep: The church’s tougher new stand on the issue still disappoints — and manages to insult women.”
salon.com 7-15-10 )

 

 

*   *   *

May we be careful of what we think we know;
May we stop thinking, How did it get to be February?;
May your brain be more organized than any of moiself’s Etch-a-sketch drawings;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Turns out, I didn’t.

[2] The doctrine of transubstantiation holds that “the bread and wine at the consecration become Christ’s actual body and blood.”  Yum!  If you want to delve deeper into this primitive, Jesus-is-the-ultimate-animal-sacrifice shit ritual, read the explanation in the primer written for Catholics by Catholics, in the website Catholic Answers:  Transubstantiation for Beginners

[3] More fun and links to the lives of “The Bad Popes” are just an internet search away, or here on Wikipedia.

[4]  In figures only through 2018, over $1.2 billion in the USA alone (from “Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases“, Wikipedia).

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

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

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

The Affirmations I’m Not Reciting

January 26, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, radio & podcasts, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Affirmations I’m Not Reciting

I’ve been doing yoga for almost forty years,  [1]  but it wasn’t until 2016 that moiself  actually went to a yoga studio and took a yoga class.

 

 

Moiself  has had a home yoga practice, which relied first on books and then on video tapes.  [2]   When I had the time (and $) to consider taking a class, I did some research before choosing a studio.  I came to love the studio, the teachers and classes, and the vibes from being around other yogis.  When the pandemic hit and the studio had to suspend classes, some of the studio’s teachers provided links of themselves leading a class (recorded at their home studios, and by studios I mean, their basements and rec rooms).  Not long after, the studio began offering the option of live-streaming classes, with teachers in the studio classroom (sans students) being filmed leading their various Vinyasa Level 1.5, Hatha, Hot Power, Gentle Restorative, etc. classes, at the same pre-pandemic days and times as the in-person classes had been held.

 

 

When the pandemic’s public gathering restrictions were lifted and a limited number of students were allowed back in class, the studio continued filming the classes for the live-streaming option for the next three years.  I took full advantage of the live-stream option, as did many students (including two I knew of who had moved out of town and would be unable to attend physically but who were delighted to still be able to practice “with” their favorite teachers).  I returned to the studio only once after that (as in, during the past three years); my schedule was such that I was out of town for at least one and often two of the three weekly classes I took, and it was more convenient to do the streaming: I wasn’t rushing last minute to do the drive – I felt more “responsible” in that I wasn’t driving (a help to The Environment, ® etc). 

Perhaps one day I’ll return to take some classes at that studio, or attend one of their workshops or special events.  I’d intended to renew my yearly membership this month, but was saddened and surprised when the studio owner informed me in late December that they were going to stop offering the streaming option  [3]   for classes.  [4]    After a few minutes of mourning, I figured there must be other options which don’t involve returning to a studio – I already knew there were, as I’ve copied links to a couple of really good one-hour classes that yoga teachers have posted online.  I do those classes whenever my studio’s streaming class is cancelled due to teacher illness or technical difficulties (their Zoom feed reliability has been…less than consistent), or whatever.

My searching led me to Yoga International. The site offers a variety of yoga classes on tape,  [5]  which you can filter according to class length, yoga style, level of experience and/or difficulty, teacher, etc.  I’ve been doing three of their classes per week since late December, trying a different class/teacher each time.   I’m sampling the wares, so to type, learning how what-I-like that jives with what they offer.  I’ve a couple of favorites already, and also several, “Hmmm, not for moiself.”

 

 

Here’s a prime takeaway, for moiself:  some of the classes are too slow (even though they are categorized as Vinyasa Level 2, which should, IMO, have a quicker pace). Also, some of YI’s teachers are way too chatty.  Of course, other yogis may like and even benefit from that, but for me, a *certain* kind of chattiness is…too much.

The certain too much comes in the form of the affirmation/motivation moments that some yoga teachers offer at the beginning of a class.  Many of the affirmations and phrases presented are – I’m not sure exactly how to say this, so I’ll name it what it feels like to moiself:  First-World cringeworthy-congratulatory.   [6]   

Teacher, I’m sure your intentions are genuine, but I am not going to praise moiself   for showing up on the mat today  and/or for taking the time to do something for myself, and thus claiming my power and reinforcing how I matter to the world and realizing that I have the right to take up space in this world.   My years studying and embracing the theorems of feminism supplied me with all of that and more, thanks.  I know that I would matter equally if, say, instead of being the fortunate American that I am, I was a poverty-stricken, indigenous Q’eqchi’ woman living in Guatemala.

This I-matter realization also carries with it a parallel insight: if I were that Q’eqchi’ woman, I’d be far less likely to have the time and money to allow me to take an hour out of my day for self-improvement, instead of having to toil in the coffee and/or banana and/or sugarcane fields, because as a Q’eqchi’ woman I am, like other indigenous Guatamalan females, “…marginalized from the economy, excluded from educational opportunities, and underrepresented in all spheres of political power.”

Ya get what I’m sayin’?  I neither need nor deserve props for showing up on the mat, when I have the *privilege* of being able to do so.

So, namaste, y’all, and on with the show.

 

Perhaps a show with a bit more structure than Irish yoga.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Useless But Fun Statistics

Late in 2017 I began keeping track of the movies I’d seen in an actual movie theater, as part of my quest to do that (go to theaters, not keep track of things) more often.  Last Sunday, as I made reservations online to see American Fiction on Monday, I saw that moiself  needed to start a new year in my computer’s Movies document, and also to note the count of previous years.  There is a definite pandemic influence.

Year / movies seen in a movie theater

* 2017 / 15 plus   [7]

* 2018 / 52

* 2019 / 54

* 2020 / 12

* 2021 / 29

* 2022 / 19

* 2023 / 16

There are fewer things I’d enjoy more than upping my total to 2081/2019 standards, but the studios need to release movies in the theaters which make me want to go to the theatres.  I’m not a fan of the horror or superhero or action-sequel-after-sequel genres…

 

With a notable exception for most all things Godzilla

 

…and my interest in and tolerance for animated films is very narrow.  So, can you guess which type of movies are the majority of offerings in the theaters?

And then there are the this-story-is-sooooo-important-we-can’t-tell-it-in-under-180-minutes  films.  I *do* want to see movies in a theater, but *I don’t* want to devote half a day to getting to and from there and then being there, which (counting the previews) is what you get if you see a 3 ½+ hour movie.  Thus, moiself  and MH waited to see Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon until we could stream them at home, with comfy chairs *and* convenient bathroom access.

 

 

BTW, my American Fiction review:

It’s really, really, really, really – and did I mention, really? – good.

 

 

Brief description/no spoilers:  T.M. Ellison is an academic and frustrated novelist who is fed up when his latest novel is rejected for not being “black enough.”   When he uses a pen name to write and submit a satirical novel filled with gangs/deadbeat dads drugs/violence ghetto/rap tropes, the fact that his tale is a very thinly-disguised *parody* seems to sail past publishers, readers and book reviewers alike, as his book becomes both a best seller and a darling of the (predominantly white) critics who praise its “authenticity.”

 

Ellison, astonished and disgusted by the turn of events in his life:  “The dumber I behave the richer I get.”

 

Much of that movie hit (a little too) close to home.  I am not the female version of Ellison – I’m not a well-educated black female professor and author whose editors eschew my literary fiction and ask for more “authentic” stories of my non-existent life as a poverty-stricken, drug-addicted, single teenaged mother.  Still, I’ve both seen and experienced the pigeonholing common to all authors – as well as the recent obsessions with authenticity vs. imagination and who has the right to tell stories of any kind.  I know how the publishing world all too often wants to define (read: confine) and stereotype authors, and I’ve experienced the fawning preciousness of literary events.  And even as I appreciated the wit, wisdom and winsomeness of American Fiction’s screenplay and dialog, the ache in my head by the end of the movie made me realize I’d been clenching my jaw while laughing at the all-too-real absurdities experienced by AF‘s protagonist.

A parallel plot line has Ellison dealing with family issues along with his sudden, batshit crazy literary fortune.  There are fractious, humorous, sweet, and everything-in-between family dynamics at play, as he is confronted by one family member’s unexpected death, another’s seeming abandonment of family responsibilities, another’s descent into dementia, and another’s unexpected joy at finding late-in-life love.  This is not just a one note movie, and I highly recommend it.

If American Fiction isn’t nominated for Best Screenplay, Best Movie and other Academy awards (including at least two acting nods), I’m going to fling…something.  At someone.  Large bones, perhaps.

 

 

Update:  No bone flinging necessary – the nominations have been released!

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“When you’re black there’s like no religion to turn to. It’s like, Christianity? I don’t think so. White people justified slavery and segregation through Christianity so a black Christian is like a black person with no f***king memory.”

( Chris Rock, outtake from the 1989 documentary short,  “Who Is Chris Rock?” )

 

 

*   *   *

May you see American Fiction  (and other movies) in a movie theater;
May you be mindful of the affirmations you are privileged to recite;
May you be making a list (and checking it twice) of fun things that you do;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Not all sequential – I took a ~4 year break when I had some elbow-soft tissue strains, which were aggravated by all those upward and downward dogs and certain other asanas.

[2] For anyone interested, I’ve kept a list of the over 100 yoga workout DVDs I’ve tried over the years, the ones that made it into my regular rotation and the “nope/are you kidding?/what qualifies you to teach yoga much less put out a DVD-you could kill yourself going into full bridge and wheel pose with no warmup”  ones that made it into my reject pile.

[3] You paid the same prices for in-class or streaming, whether you paid for individual classes or had monthly or yearly memberships.

[4] I can’t remember the reasons – wasn’t making economic sense or whatever, although they were still getting the same money per student per class – I think having someone in charge of the recording equipment and the Zoom feed was also an issue. 

[5] as well as courses in meditation, mindful living, and other similar disciplines

[6] Not very yoga of me, I suppose, to carp about this?  Guess there are still some things to learn after 35+ years.

[7] I began keeping tally midyear.

[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 Surname I’m Not Forsaking

January 19, 2024

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Surname I’m Not Forsaking

Department Of Yeah What He Said

MH forwarded a link this article, to moiself  and our offspring, with the comment,  “Why weren’t *we* interviewed for this article?”

Why Parents Give Their Children a Last Name Other Than the Father’s:
Some American parents have been breaking the patrilineal tradition for generations, but the number who do so remains small.
(Upshot, The NY Times 12-27-23)

Seems like everything lately is sending moiself  into a memory spiral.  Exhibit A B C D E F G: one of the first things I thought of, after reading the above article, was my Letter to the Editor which was published in, the (now defunct)  Brain, Child magazine.  I wrote the letter in response to an article in  Brain, Child’s “debate” section.  I remember joking to another editor that, given BC’s circulation, the letter probably garnered me more readership than most of my published stories.

 

 

Behold my missive, in its entirety:  [1]

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I get it!”
“How clever!”
“We’ll remember your family!”  (And guess what?  They do.).

It has caused us no trouble, or even inconvenience.   Even if it did, how long does it take to say, “I’m Robyn Parnell, Belle Wagnell’s mother” when you call the doctor or meet your kid’s teacher?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robyn Parnell
Hillsboro, OR

 

 

It’s been years since I’ve read that.  Looking back, perhaps I was a bit hard on LB, but, ahem:  she’d written the article for the BC section titled, *debate.*   So, I did.

In real life/practice, separate from our wider administrative world (that phrase still cracks me up), given moiself’s  passion re this issue one might wonder, what does moiself  think about the decisions my friends and family have made re this matter?

With a few exceptions, I am in the minority (re my female friends and family who’ve maintained their given surnames    [2] ).  Now, do I think my friends who took their husbands’ surnames are cowards, or anti-feminist, or under the thumb of The Man ®, or whatever?  No; of course not.

When it comes to personal life logistics, most of us wind up going for the easiest, everyone-does-it options.  Translation: we follow tradition/the past of least resistance, even as we may (at least theoretically) understand how problematic and stifling these paths and traditions have been.  When ideals meet up with technicalities and emotional issues in a dark alley, guess what side typically wins that mugging?

 

 

Also, there are *so* many variables.  I’ve met some righteous feminist warriors who have been happy to take on a new last name, due to their less-than-pleasant attachment (e.g., cultural or familial or parental estrangement and/or abuse) to their birth surname.  Some women recognize the limits of their energy and chose to battle on different/bigger fronts, and don’t t want to waste time and emotional wattage braving the criticism that comes from doing something different….and other women just never liked their original surname – perhaps it was awkward to pronounce or spell, or strange/embarrassing in some way   [3] – but they feared that changing it “on their own” would be insulting to their parents, while changing to their husband’s name was the easy out.

My own stance was both idealistic and personal.  My parents were pleased that my name remained my name –

 

Excuse the digression, but right here we have a prime example of male privilege:
99% of guys never even have to *think* of changing this basic part of their identity.

 

 

 

My parents were pleased that my name remained my name.  [4]   There was a wee bit o’ blowback from MH’s side of the family – two incidents – early on in our marriage.  The first was a letter from his maternal grandmother to the two of us, which she addressed to Mr. and Mrs. MH….

Come to think of it, we had a bit of that –  the misnaming of moiself  in post-marital correspondence from MH’s side of friends/family (from people with whom I had previously corresponded and/or met, people to whom I had been introduced by my first and last names, and then these same people introduced me to their friends and family using both of my names, so it’s not like they didn’t know my last name).  Moiself  and MH didn’t belabor the point but we’d made it clear, both in the wedding invitations and in the wedding itself, what our names would be.

Y’all are familiar with how at the end of a wedding ceremony, the officiant introduces the couple with something like, “It is my pleasure to introduce to you, for the first time as husband and wife….”?  Our wedding officiant, as per our instructions, expressed his pleasure at introducing us “…as husband and wife, MH and Robyn Parnell.”  An hour or so later, during our wedding reception, a friend-of-MH’s family good-naturedly ribbed moiself  about it – about how MH and I having two different surnames would be soooo hard for him to remember.  I got no small amount of WTF?  mileage from that comment:

This is amazing – What powers I possess!
By merely changing my marital status, I have somehow
reduced the memory capacity of the brains of grown-ass adults,
who are no longer able to recall the TWO syllables
of the last name which has always accompanied my first name.

 

How can she expect us to remember!  The horror!

 

Once again, I digress.

To continue with Incident 1:  MH’s grandmother never had any kind of problem with my name before I was married (and had written me thank you and other notes addressed to moiself’s  first and name).  Thus, when she pulled the Mr. and Mrs. thing, MH took point, seeing as how she was *his* relative.  He gently reminded her that my name was still my name; there was no harm and no foul, and she got it right from then on.

Incident 2 came in the form of a letter, to moiself , from one of MH’s parents.  While MH was mortified by the letter   [5]   I actually welcomed it, as it allowed what was obviously a concern (for that person) to get out into the open, and also provided moiself  with the opportunity to share my opinions and reasoning.   [6]

 

 

I do not think any less of my friends or family re their surname choices; with the exception of this particular blog post, I do not think of it at all  in our interactions.

I do, however, occasionally think of the reaction of a long-time male friend re this matter.  This friend is a smart, kind, empathetic, funny, creative, across-the-board-feminist-and-human-rights-advocate and one of the Best Men I Know ® (and moiself  knows a lot of great men).  When he heard about a mutual acquaintance who was getting married and had announced that she’d be taking her husband’s last name,  [7]  the very first thing he blurted out was,

“How will women ever be taken seriously
if they don’t even keep their own names!?”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Lightbulb Moments

Dateline: several weeks ago, out for a walk, listening to a rebroadcast of an older Freakonomics podcast, subjec: religion and tithing and does it – (tithing; i.e., giving away money to religious organizations)  make you happy. Don’t ask moiself  if the podcast reached any conclusions on the matter, as my mind wandered away from the podcast and began to jostle around an aha! epiphany:

Churches are habituaries.

 

 

Churches are habituaries. Yes, I’m making up that word, because it needs to exist.

As in, churches (chapels, cathedrals, mosques, temples, gurdwaras, tabernacles, any houses of religious worship) are habituaries– places where one becomes habituated to churchy ideas.  A habituary is where one becomes habituated to intellectual and cultural fallacies; that is, to theologies and beliefs which you’d consider absurd at face value if they were coming from a *different* habituary.  [8]  But, in your habituary, your church, you get used to them – so used to them that you forget they are even there, and also what they look like to outsiders.  You sing the songs, repeat the liturgies, without thinking about what you are saying, without considering, Is this plausible?  Is this true?  Without applying the kind of reasoning you would to any other statements purporting to explain reality.

I think this is also true for many liberal and/or nominally religious believers.  [9]   Examples include the family who lives in a neighborhood with not-so-great public schools, and joins a Catholic church so that their children may attend the church sponsored school, despite the fact that they do not support the church’s stands on political and/or social issues…    [10]  or people who attend and even join a church because they enjoy the social club aspect (churchy term: “fellowship”), of having yet another venue for meeting people, outside of work/school/neighborhood connections.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

 

*   *   *

May you carefully consider the absurdities of any habituaries you might frequent;
May you have fun responding to invitations to debate;
May you enjoy (or at least tolerate) the names you have kept or chosen;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] The letter was marginally edited for publication.

[2] “Maiden name” is a term that belongs in the Middle Ages.  Don’t use it around me; respect yourself and don’t use it around anyone.

[3] My mother’s birth surname was Hole.  While her Norwegian father was proud of his heritage and claimed that, back in The Old Country, Hole was a surname of respected landowners, his four daughters lived in Minnesota, not Norway, and were saddled with “Ha, ha, hole in the ground; fell in a hole… [or worse] “  jibes until they married and took on their respective husbands’ surnames.

[4] Thinking (correctly, in one part) that I was honoring them.  My father went so far as to tell me, privately, how he’d wished (at least one of) my sisters had done the same.

[5] You bet I showed it to him.

[6] After I responded, kindly and firmly and “educationally” to the family member who had expressed their concerns to me, that person never brought it up again. 

[7] His surname name was rather…odd,  and her own was so great , as in, memorable – and it alliterated with her first name!

[8] Christians are very good at turning the critical eye of rationalism to the tenets of Islam (the absurdities of which include the micromanaging of all of life, such as – if you awake at night, wash your nose with water and blow it out three times because Satan stays in the upper part of everyone’s nose at night [Sahi Al-Bukhari Vol. 4, Bk. 54, No. 516] or those of, Hinduism with its karma and reincarnation and other irrationalities), but fail to recognize the absurdities within their own religion (e.g., to many outside the Christian faith the rite of communion = symbolic cannibalism), because they are *used to* them. 

[10] And so they hold their noses/try not to think about such things until their kids graduate or they move to a better public school district.

[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. 

No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Possible Hazards I’m Not Avoiding

January 12, 2024

Robyn Parnell annoyances, community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, hiking, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Possible Hazards I’m Not Avoiding

Department Of Imagine My Surprise

It’s been a while since I received any income from my writing; thus, when I received the yearly royalty statement from the publishing company that publishes the play I’ve written, moiself  was expecting the usual statement showing me the royalty I am owed.  Brief explanation for the folks who are how-publishing-works–impaired:   [1]    depending on the contract, publishing houses/companies, particularly those specializing in plays for off-off-off-off Broadway (as in, for schools, church groups, community theaters), may keep payments in escrow and may not issue a royalty check until the royalties earned are above a certain amount (usually a very, very, small amount).

I’ve had a piddling royalty rollover with that publishing company for years, since the last time someone bought the script for my play.  On December 28 my yearly statement informed me that a check for the June – December 2023 reporting period would be issued, and I received it in early January.  So, although I have writing income to report for 2023, the amount…well, I’m sure if there were actual humans involved in reading my e-filing tax returns, the response I might receive when said reader(s) come across lines 1-9 on my 1040  form might be akin to

 

*   *   *

Department Of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

After not having been to the coast for several weeks,  [2]  MH and I returned to see several “No Access” signs, posted at places which seemed to us to be bafflingly random.

I checked out some local news (social media) groups to find out more about the signs.  Amidst all of the  Seriously?/you’ve got to be kidding posts, someone noted

“(the signs) might have something to do with the lawsuit in Newport…
 Municipalities/counties/state had an injury lawsuit exemption for recreational trails. Someone was hurt on a bridge, sued and won on appeal. The closures are happening in other places as well.”

 

 

Now, this first no access sign we saw was on nothing we’d previously considered to be a trail; rather, it was by a path, at the end of a street about four blocks from our house, which leads ~ 50 feet through dune grass to the beach.

That FB poster is (was?) correct, moiself  thought: there’s a state law declaring that people who hike or bike or walk their dogs along the beach or prance through the forest or otherwise engage in recreational activities (“recreate”) do so at their own risk…I think? I found the statute:

ORS 105.682

Liabilities of owner of land used by public for recreational purposes….

(1) Except as provided by subsection (2) of this section, and subject to the provisions of ORS 105.688 (Applicability of immunities from liability for owner of land), an owner of land is not liable in contract or tort for any personal injury, death or property damage that arises out of the use of the land for recreational purposes,….

when the owner of land either directly or indirectly permits any person to use the land for recreational purposes,…. The limitation on liability provided by this section applies if the principal purpose for entry upon the land is for recreational purposes…

and is not affected if the injury, death or damage occurs while the person entering land is engaging in activities other than the use of the land for recreational purposes….

(2) This section does not limit the liability of an owner of land for intentional injury or damage to a person coming onto land for recreational purposes….

( excerpts; my emphases;  Oregon public statutes )

Another local news group commentor wrote,

“The change came about after someone in Newport got hurt on a city-maintained bridge that was on the WAY to the recreational area and sued.  This has had a huge ripple effect up and down the Coast (and probably throughout the state). Tillamook County closed two access roads to Oceanside, and at next week’s City Council meeting in Rockaway Beach, one of the key agenda items is whether to close all beach access….”

We looked for more information about this lawsuit and its effects in several news outlets.  Here’s the scoop as per the city newsletter, Manzanita Today (1-8-24):

Manzanita Avoids Most Beach Access And Other Trail Closures After Court Decision

“A 2022 decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals and affirmed by the state’s Supreme Court, has forced some coastal cities to close all beach access trails….
The consequences of the court case will likely lead to a legislative fix in the upcoming short session of the Oregon Legislature, but many coastal residents
and visitors may wonder how things got this far.
Here are the facts of the case.
Nicole Fields  [3]  regularly walked her dogs on Agate Beach in Newport and used a city-maintained access trail to reach the beach. One day, as Ms. Fields returned from the beach with her dogs and a friend, she slipped on a bridge and seriously injured her leg. She sued Newport for damages. Newport tried to assert ‘recreational immunity’ under an Oregon law intended to encourage landowners to allow recreational use of their land. Ms. Fields argued that walking on the beach access trail to engage in recreational walking on the beach was not itself recreational. She was just crossing the city’s property to start or finish her recreational activity of walking on the beach. The court decided that a trial court must, in effect, determine what Ms. Fields intended while walking on the trail. Was that part of her recreational activity or did she intend merely to use the trail to get back and forth to the beach?
Thus, whether the City of Newport (and its insurer, CIS Oregon) ultimately prevailed, they would still incur the substantial expense of a jury trial. CIS provides liability insurance to many cities and counties, including Manzanita and Tillamook County. Because of that potential liability, CIS has recommended closure of all improved trails used to access any recreational area….”

 

 

WTF, if only.

“The consequences of the court case will likely lead to a legislative fix in the upcoming short session of the Oregon Legislature.”  Yes, of course.  Unfortunately, human nature being what it is…

 

“It’s your fault I tripped over my own feet!”

 

… that won’t prevent someone from suing when they fall-down-go-boom.  Moiself  understands the no-access signs from a liability point of view (one such lawsuit could wipe out funds for coastal towns and villages).  Still, signs – and apparently, existing laws – mean nothing if someone is determined to sue others for their life choices and/or the random accidents that we are all at risk, from the moment we rise out of bed until we return to said bed at the end of the day.

That dog walker could have slipped on her own rain-slicked driveway, tripped over her shoelaces or down her own front porch stairs, or gotten tangled up in her dog’s leash…..  But, whatever caused her fall, she did it on the pedestrian bridge, and then got around the law by claiming that she was not *yet* recreating, but using the bridge as a passageway to get to where she was *going* to recreate…

 

 

Artful, isn’t it?  Congratulations to her scum-sucking ambulance chasing lawyer attorney for the legal and cognitive gymnastics on that one!

The city newsletter article went on to note that Manzanita’s Public Works Director attempted to limit the number of trail closures by inspecting and rating the condition of every trail within city limits.  He made a chart of city trails, which he ranked in five numerical categories:

1. Poor (many hazards noted);
2. fair (some hazards noted);
3. average (few hazards noted);
4. good (no hazards noted);
5. excellent (no hazards noted)

MH and I were familiar with them all, and know that many of the “trails” on this list are just beach access points and undeveloped road crossings, rather than actual hiking trails.  The chart showed “…the trails that will be closed and signed to warn users to walk at their own risk because of “possible hazards.”

MH beat me to the suggestion:

“Let’s find the most ‘dangerous’ trails and walk on all of them!”

And so we did. We girded our loins and, at our own risk, did all seven trails on the #1 and #2 (Poor and Fair) lists.  Barely escaped with our lives, lemme tell ya.

Possible hazards.

It’s a world of danger out there.  Some people should just never leave their house.

 

Be sure to have your lawyer’s number on speed dial the next time you leave your abode – something like this might be hiding behind the city trash can by the bridge on the way to the trail to the beach….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things We Probably Will Not See Changed In The New Year,
But It Would Be Nice To Try, If Only To Please Miss Manners

(  excerpts from “Miss Manners: What topic most grinds Miss Manners’ gears? Self-philanthropy.”  Oregonlive.com  1-1-24  )

DEAR MISS MANNERS: You must receive a lot of the same, or similar, questions. I’m just wondering: What are the most-asked ones?

GENTLE READER: Well, they are not, as may be supposed, about which fork to use. That is a question posed only by people wanting to declare that manners are trivial. Such people tend to be consistent in not having any….

There is also a topic that always shocks Miss Manners but has become increasing prevalent: blatant greed.

People have gotten shameless about demanding money from family, friends and strangers alike. Even the ubiquitous gift registry, with its transparent whitewash, is giving way to the outright demand for money. Any occasion will do –  birth, death and anything in between –  as an excuse for begging.

It seems to Miss Manners that there are enough serious causes that need addressing before solvent people are justified in engaging in self-philanthropy.”   [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Past Regrets Which Live In The Present

Moiself, after hearing a podcast in which a gay person spoke about not being out in high school due to a fear of being teased and/or bullied, had the following memory flash.

Dateline:

That would be my senior year in high school.  I can’t remember which pep squad member asked me to participate in a short skit the cheerleaders were planning for an end-of-year, Senior class only, school assembly.  I do remember being recruited with the we-need-someone-who’s-not-afraid-to-be-ridiculous-and-that’s-YOU enticement.  I was told that, along with the cheerleaders, the cast of the skit would be three students:  moiself; the school’s best drama student (male), and another male student.  There would be no rehearsal, but we could get out of class early to prepare and thus, since the assembly itself took up one class period, we could skip two classes – sign me up, I said.

We three students were given “costume” guidelines and the skit scenario/outline.  [5]  Within the scenario we could ad lib the rest (we had no dialogue).

Brief skit summary:  The curtain rose to reveal the auditorium stage, empty but for a bench at center stage, upon which sat a Dorky Boy.  Dorky Boy (the drama student) was tall and skinny, clad in highwater pants, a short sleeved, plaid shirt and bow tie, wore thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses and clutched a lunch box to his stomach.  A provocatively sleazily dressed girl (that’s moiself’s  cue) entered from stage right.

 

My costume was a slit-up-the-side cancan skirt and fishnet stockings, tight fitting sleeveless top (comically stuffed brassiere), too much makeup…similar to this on the classy scale.

 

Sleazy girl strutted across the stage, past the DB.  She turned back and begins to flirt with DB, but he was embarrassed/appalled and tried to ignore her.  She sat down on the bench, he scooted away from her, she scooted toward him…after a few seconds when it looked as if she might end up chasing him around the bench, a Sexy Stoner Surfer Dude®  swaggers in from stage left. SSS Dude had shoulder length, sun-streaked blond-red hair, wore mirror sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, a puka shell necklace, low-slung cutoff shorts which reveal his toned abs, and flip-flop sandals   [6]    SSSD did his own laidback stage strut toward the occupants of the bench.  Sleazy Girl immediately turned her attentions toward the SSSD who, after giving her the once-over, exchanged looks with DB, and the two boys linked arms and pranced off stage.  Sleazy Girl was flabbergasted, and flounced off stage in an indignant huff while the cheerleaders broke into a chorus of…I can’t remember the exact words, but the cheer ended with something like,

“gimme a Q and a U and a E-E-R,
Q-U-E-E-R is what you are.”

 

 

Really.

Yep.  Of course, that was then and this is now.  Still, doesn’t that count, as even a relatively mild case, of high school homophobia, no matter how unintentional (“it’s just supposed to be funny”)?  I knew of at least four teachers at our school, and several students, who were gay (and not out, in the case of the teachers, of course), and later would know of other students I went to school with who were gay but who were not out at the time (even to themselves, in some cases).  But I never thought of how they might react: I never considered that they might think the skit in any way was about targeting or even referring to them.  Here’s how clueless about Such Things®  I was, back then:  I thought the joke was on the character *I* was playing!  As in, she considered herself to be hot stuff, but the cool surfer dude found her so repulsively skanky he’d rather run off with the nerd.

Back to the future: I would like to ask one of those students what they thought of the skit.   [7]   Were they aware of their own sexual orientation at the time, and if so, did the skit make them uncomfortable, or hurt their feelings?  Perhaps they don’t even remember it (it was three minutes out of four years of school), and if so, will it be *my* bringing it up that causes the discomfort?  I have rarely recalled that skit in the decades since high school (I’ve rarely had reasons to do so); still, every ten years or so something sparks that memory, along with my regret for participating in something “comedic” that essentially amounted to punching down.

I don’t know who was responsible for the skit – was it a sketch the cheerleaders had been taught at cheer camp, or did they hear about it from another school’s pep squad?  The head cheerleader was a girl I’d known since junior high, although not well – I knew “of” her more than I knew her (we hung with different academic and friend groups).  We became better acquainted two+ decades after high school, and I was delighted to discover that she is one of the most life-positive, human rights-affirming, feminist, pro-woman, pro-people people I know – a person who would now renounce that skit (if she’d even remember it). Yet another example of how anyone can get caught up in the moment, in a “joke” that might not be so funny….   [8]

 

 

While such an organization was unimaginable when I was in high school, I did a search on the subject and, yee haw!, there is a GSA club in the Santa Ana school district (although, this is not their logo, and the club is now the QSA ).

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

“Religion tries to give us maps of sexuality that are no better than
 a 2,000-year-old map of my hometown.”

( Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality )

 

 

*   *   *

May you make it a goal to avoid self-philanthropy;
May you update both the physical and emotional maps of your hometown;
May you accept the fact that life is composed of possible hazards;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which is most anyone with an EQ greater than their inseam.

[2] due to finishing up with The Kitchen Remo That Ate Our Brains®

[3] The person suing was not mentioned in all of the reports I read, but it is part of the public record now, and I must confess that a part of me wants her to be shamed for this.  I’m sorry she injured her leg; I’m sorry for any person who inures themselves in any way, but sorry does not equal, “someone else’s fault/someone else pays.”

[4] My vote for term of the year…the year is young, I realize.

[5] To call it a plot would be too ambitious.

[6] The student they recruited for that role basically played himself.  No wardrobe changes for him; he even had the puka shells.

[7] I’m thinking of privately messaging him, and asking for his feedback, which I will include in next week’s post, anonymously and if I have his permission.

[8] Sorry; no footnote here.

[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 Dead Man I’m Not Praising

December 1, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Dead Man I’m Not Praising

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

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

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Dissing Remembering The Dead

Dateline:  11-21-23.  Longtime friend and college apartment-mate SB posted a link (on social media) to an obituary:  HG, a fiction writer and one of our college’s part-time professors, had died at age 99.

SB’s post sent me on the express train to memory-ville, and I commented with the first thought that came to mind when I read the news:

“Didn’t know he was still alive.”

But I’d edited moiself’s  reaction, which was, in its entirety:

“Didn’t know he was still alive…
I’d assumed he’d died decades ago,
crushed under the massive weight of his own self-regard.”

If I’d read HG’s obituary (I didn’t), I’m sure I’d have run across the compliments from those who liked HG and/or his work.  Still, I doubt that any of the praise and adoration typically cast upon the departed would have equaled or exceeded HG’s own high opinion of himself.

I’d not taken a class from HG, but two of my college apartment mates (SB, and GG) did, during Winter quarter of SB’s and my sophomore year.  During that quarter moiself  heard their stories of HG’s class.  Then, one oh-so-memorable night, I met HG when he came to dinner at our apartment, after which I thanked the gods and my lucky stars – none of which I believed in   [2]   ­– that I was not in his class.

Y’all may be thinking, Wait a minute: a professor came to his student’s apartment, for dinner – for any reason?  How did that happen?

 

 

Yep, he did.  And there’s a wee bit o’ backstory to the how did that happen  part.

 

 

Fall quarter of my sophomore year I took a beginning Creative Writing class.  During the last weeks of class its professor, FT, encouraged me to sign up for another CW course, this one taught by HG:  You have to apply for this class, by submitting a sample of your writing – check with the English department but really, any of your stories that you submitted in my class will get you in.    HG’s class was considered the next step up for those interested in writing fiction, FT told me, and he thought that that was the class for me (It’s obvious you’re no beginner).  I thanked FT for his compliment and encouragement, but told him that although his CW class satisfied a requirement and had fit into my schedule – not that I didn’t enjoy every moment! – I didn’t have room in my schedule for another class that either wasn’t required for my major or didn’t satisfy another degree requirement.

But you will have room for it – this class will be taught in the evening, FT countered.  He asked me about my major.  When I told FT that I was pre-law,   [3]   he affably ribbed me (You’re a writer, not a lawyer).   During the next couple of weeks FT kept asking me if I’d signed up for HG’s class.  I knew his persistence in the matter was in fact a compliment, but I didn’t like revealing my financial situation to those whose business it wasn’t.  The fourth or fifth time FT asked me if I needed a suggestion as to which story to submit for HG’s class application, I told him the truth.  It wasn’t just the class time I had to juggle; I was working to put myself through school.  My days were busy with classes and with my two jobs: my official job at the library, at which I worked both day and evening shifts, and my “unofficial” (read: under the table) job, typing term and research papers for other students   [4]  .  And I needed time for my own homework and papers and a sanity-preserving social life….

My teacher’s persistence hit a nerve.  I loved writing fiction, and he knew it – what better excuse to take the time to do so than to have a class where it was required?  A day or two before the deadline I went to the English department, filled out the very brief application for HG’s class, and gave The Secretary In Charge Of Such Things my sample story.  The secretary told me that HG would read the applicants’ stories by a certain date, and that I should check back on that day for the return of my story and the enrollment decision.

 

My interest in writing was as strong as my dislike of my own typos, as demonstrated in my high school’s journalism class office.

 

I had not asked FT which of my stories he thought I should use.  I decided to submit the one both FT and my CW classmates had voted as “the best,” in a class contest organized by FT.  Years later I would look back upon that contest win (which I found somewhat flattering and mostly embarrassing) as my introduction to that most ubiquitous and vile literary publishing practice: contests, for any and everything, on any and every subject (even on the personal and/or demographic characteristic of the writer), so that you – along with any and every writer, it seems – can, eventually, declare yourself to be “an award winning writer.”   [5]

Once again, I digress.

Two of my apartment mates, SB and GG, also applied to HG’s class.  I assumed that the majority of the applicants would be the Serious Writer® wannabes: pale young men in black turtlenecks who would be submitting their imitative, Cheever/Roth/Updike-styled novel excerpts in which their descriptions of suburban angst, vacant sexual encounters, and hipster misogyny would be mistaken for edgy, clear-eyed commentary on contemporary American mores.  I decided to go for something different.  Figuring HG would like a reprieve from all the derivative, Great American Novel aspirational prose, I submitted something shorter, and humorous (the story which had won my class’s contest).

When I returned to the English department on the appointed day the secretary flipped through the stack of students’ stories on her desk, handed me my mine, and said that I had not been chosen for the class.  I quickly flipped through the pages; my story was unmarked.  “Did HG give a note – any feedback, about why he didn’t like my story?” I asked.  “No,” she said, “it’s not that he didn’t like it.  He didn’t read it.”

“He didn’t even *read* it?” I sputtered.  The secretary’s eyes radiated equal parts pity and frustration as she pointed to several other stories in the pile, stories whose paper clips were stretched much further apart than the one holding my manuscript pages together.  “He didn’t read those stories, either.  All of these” – she gestured at the manuscript in my hand, then at the bulging tomes on her desk – “violated the guidelines.”  She reached into a manilla folder on her desk from which she withdrew the guidelines for HG’s class’s story submissions.  She placed the paper in front of me and tapped her index finger over the second line of the guidelines, as if trying to gain the attention of a third grader with ADHD.  I saw that the guidelines, which I’d not bothered to check, were that stories had to be between 1500 and 4000 words.    [6]   My story, as per the word count listed in the upper right corner of the title page, was 200 words short.

 

 

Part of me was embarrassed that I had been so careless and cavalier; part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t have to do even more time/schedule juggling. Another part of me was soon to become amused beyond expectation, when SB and GG both made it into HG’s class and began relating their experiences therein.     

After the first meeting of HG’s class, when SB shared her rundown of her classmates, it turned out I was right about the guys in black turtlenecks.  By week two of HG’s class, I’d noticed something else about the attire of another of HG’s students – a something else which both amused and confused me, as it was GG’s…outfits.

As GG left that evening for HG’s class I stopped moiself  from asking if she was skipping class and going to a party instead.  Week three, there it was again.  If this had been happening in modern times the present, I would’ve been surreptitiously taking pictures of her with my cell phone and having a petty giggle about it later with my boyfriend.  Instead, by weeks three and four I made sure to invite “witnesses” – select male friends who also knew GG –  over to our apartment, 30 minutes or so before GG left for class.  Their observations confirmed that it wasn’t just my imagination:  no matter what GG had been wearing during the day, she, uh, pimped her ride, as those wacky kids of today say.  Translation: she upscaled her clothing and makeup for HG’s class.

 

 

I tried to come up with a defense for GG to counter my friends’ snickered theories – which were all variations on the theme that either HG was flirting with/hitting on GG and she was responding to his attentions, or that *she* was the one soliciting her professor’s attention.    [7]   Maybe it’s…subconscious?  But soft-fuzzy, form-fitting sweaters, perfectly coiffed hair, makeup and *lipstick* (this was the late 70s; students didn’t dress up for anything, certainly not for class, and although GG had always spent a lot of time on her hair, there was no other class for which she wore *lipstick*)?  Such frills do not unintentionally adorn a person.  Subconscious?

 

Nice try. 

When SB would leave for HG’s class she’d look like her normal self (attractive, casually attired, jeans-and-tee student), while GG looked as if she were going to an audition for a glamour camp counselor.  And the more stories SB and GG told about HG’s class, the more I squirmed to consider that my witness-friends’ observations might be spot on.

The winter quarter rolled on; then one weekend GG announced that professor HG would be coming to our apartment for dinner later that week.  She would make dinner, and she wanted all four of us (SB, moiself, and our fourth apartment mate, LM) to be there.  Ummm…okay…?  GG was obviously eager to host HG; I tried to be supportive, and feigned enthusiasm even as I wondered why, after full day’s work  (or maybe not; I didn’t know HG’s schedule), a grown-ass professor would want to spend time (and have to eat an amateurishly cooked dinner) with four undergraduates….  Ah, yes.  Make that, four twenty-year-old *female* undergraduates.

 

 

Moiself’s  curiosity was stoked; I no longer needed to feign interest in meeting SB’s and GG’s professor.  Assuming my cultural anthropologist mode throughout the before/during/after dinner banter, I spent the evening taking mental notes more than I participated in the conversation.  [8]    Oh, did I mistakenly type, conversation?  It was more of a presentation, just short of a lecture, from HG.  HG was obviously used to and expectant of female adoration.  He evidently and thoroughly enjoyed holding court, attempting to impart his…what was he attempting to impart?  Yeah, okay, he’s been to so many Esalen Institute and other Big Sur retreats he’s lost count, but how indiscreet can he be to think that we are interested in his opinion of Joan Baez’s sexual preferences?  Every story he told practically megaphoned,

Can you believe how cool I am, who I’ve rubbed shoulders
(and other body parts) with; what I have seen and done…
and here I am, in *your* apartment, you lucky lasses !

HG was SB’s and GG’s teacher.  What did he teach that night?  Although I found HG’s demeanor and anecdotes jaw-droppingly pretentious at the time, my recollection of them did serve me, eventually.  Many years later I modeled a character in one of my stories after HG: “Patrick Glasson,” a professor of creative writing.  The story’s protagonist, Colleen Kiernan, a student in Glasson’s Advanced Fiction Seminar, incurs Glasson’s thinly disguised wrath by challenging his critiques, not being deferential to him, and mostly by being different from the rest of the graduate students in his class, the “pretty young things and scowling young men” who either worshipped Glasson or feared him.  In this excerpt, Colleen approaches Glasson at the end of the class to discuss one of her stories.

…. Glasson tossed Colleen’s manuscript on top of his desk. “What is this?”

Colleen Kiernan fingered the hollow between her collarbones. “The title is on the first page.”

The professor snorted. “So it is.”

Pretty young things and scowling young men gathered their papers and book packs. Colleen’s Seminar in Advanced Fiction comrades scuttled off to their three o’clock classes, pretending not to notice that, once again, their guru and his apostate were at his desk, at odds.

“It’s unfinished, obviously. You said initial drafts were acceptable if…”

“I should have chosen a smaller facility.  A class of thirteen hardly fills this cavernous hall, which might explain the echo. I hear myself reiterating our group’s paradigm — our mantra, if you will.  If you want to be ordinary, write ordinary.”  Professor Glasson exhaled lustily. “No academic preparation is needed for mainstream publication. There are a plethora of How to Write A Damn Fine Novel tutorials.  Check the trade magazines.”

“Check the trades.”  Colleen feigned writing a memo to herself.  “Almost forgot that one.” She set her briefcase on Glasson’s desk, and caught the glint in his bleary eyes. He made no attempt to mask his disdain for the tatty brown canvas attaché Colleen favored over the jewel-toned, Gore Tex shoulder bags that were the totes of choice for pretty young things.

“As I was saying, you said drafts were…”

“This is no class for the conventional. What I have been saying, what they are saying…” Glasson tapped his hirsute finger on the stack of books atop his desk, “is as profound as it is simple. Tell the stories that need telling.” Glasson steepled his fingertips in front of his nose. “If you’d been paying attention you’d have picked up at least the concept of narrative nuance. Post-Joycean streams of interior monologue do not a nuance make.”

Narrative nuance? Hard to discern these past weeks, over the thunderous crash of names dropping from lofty, literary heights. The adventures of Patrick Glasson, erstwhile Swingin’ Sixties Author and B-list celebrity. How many names fell from the Big Sur retreat, where our hero encountered a celebrated folk singer from yon times, and discovered that the angelic soprano was a lesbian predator who pursued pretty young things with banshee-like ferocity?…. We mustn’t forget our hero’s dialogue with the bards frequenting a Bay Area pub notorious for its clientele of IRA sympathizers, said pub having been named for an exploit of his, recorded in his first novel, in which he, his third wife, and a gaggle of second generation Beats revitalized San Francisco’s waning sex-for-poetry scene.

Reverent gazes, front and center. Imagine the thrill of being Him, back then.

 

 

Cutting to the chase:  moiself  found HG to be the most pompous, preening, gossipy, arrogant, name-dropping lech I’d ever met.  He was blatantly “after” GG; his practiced air of seduction gave me the impression that he’d pursued other females in his CW classes and would continue to do so.  The charm and panache he oozed seemed habitual; thus, he even (if ever-so-briefly) focused his powers of seduction on LM and moiself   [9]    after he caught LM shooting me a sympathetic eye roll when I failed to sufficiently mute my WTF  snort at the end of one of HG’s I-did-this-really-cool-thing/know-these-really-cool-people stories.  And by trying to win LM and I over, HG revealed his cards:  he was one of *those* kind of men.  Those Kind Of Men generally view and deal with womenfolk in one of three ways.  There are women they want to fuck, women they don’t want to fuck, and women who remind them of their (or other people’s) mothers.  HG wasn’t sexually interested in LM or moiself ; still, we were females, and had presented him with a challenge by indicating that we were in not in awe of his mere presence nor dazzled by his attentions.

What better way to secure the attentions of Pretty Young Things® who have an honest interest in creative writing than by telling them that he, a Published Author ® , thought that they had potential as a writer?  HG essentially broadcasted that modus operandi.  My feminist sensibilities were both annoyed and embarrassed by GG’s evident hero-worship…and a part of my heart ached for her.  GG had asked me to read several of the stories she’d written for HG’s class assignments.  I honestly liked the majority of what she showed me, even as I cringed on her behalf to imagine what HG was saying to her – how, in so many words and/or gestures and body language, he was giving her the impression that it was getting into her prose, and not into her pants, which interested him the most.

 

 

I hadn’t thought of that HG story in some time.  Today we have more information regarding gender exploitation and what in people’s backgrounds and circumstances makes them vulnerable to abuse (or to being the abuser).  I wish I’d had a more nuanced understanding of the situation, other than what went through my mind at the time, when I was concurrently concerned for and judgmental of a friend (“HG is a lecherous douchebag; why doesn’t GG see it?!”).

The MeToo movement brought the HG story to mind, and had me briefly wondering: if HG were still alive, would he be subject to scrutiny and outing from former students?  Or maybe…whether or not HG offered grades/privileges for sexual attention, maybe he was just a run of the mill/par for the course, approaching middle-age, narcissistic skirt-chaser, unaware of and/or unconcerned with the power imbalance dynamics and ethical violations inherent in pursuing his female students?

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [10]

 

( Taslima Nasrin, Bangladeshi author, physician, civil rights and freethought and  feminist activist, living in exile since 1994,
after receiving repeated death threats from Islamists and Al Qaeda-linked extremists. )

 

*   *   *

May you be able to speak your mind sans death threats;
May you have no heroes to worship;
May you always remember to check the *#!?%#* guidelines (geesh!);
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] Although it would be years until I was “out” as being religion-free, I was always openly “lucky star” free.

[3] Specifically, a Criminal Justice major.

[4] Looking back, I should have charged so much more for typing the papers for those students whose handwriting was practically illegible (surprisingly, they were mostly engineering majors, not pre-med).

[5] I lampooned the phenomena in one of the few non-fiction pieces I’ve published, the essay, “You Can Be (Or Already Are) An Award-Winning Writer!”  One editor to whom I submitted the essay said he liked it very much and wanted to publish it, but was overruled by his fellow journal editors, and because of that he felt he should warn me that “this will be impossible to publish — everyone (as in, literary journals and magazines) has a contest !!!  and they do not have a sense of humor about that…or themselves….”  Despite his warning I kept submitting the piece, and it was published twice, once heavily edited to remove much of the contest-related snark, and the second time in its original form.

[6] Or the range may have been 1200 – 4500… I can’t remember the exact numbers, only that in my rush to be concise and clever I’d forgotten to check the guidelines.

[7] One of them “asked around,” he told me, and had heard that HG had a reputation for…that.

[8] Yes, it can and has happened.

[9] Although not for a second did I think he would have been interested in us.

[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 Spell I’m Not Casting

October 20, 2023

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

Department Of Yeeeeeesssssss! Thought Of The Week

Dateline:  Tuesday morning 7:45 AM-ish; morning walk, stomping through wet leaves, on what promises to be a blustery day. Listening to a Clear + Vivid podcast episode (Laurel Braitman: Writing Wrongs).  Braitman is a writer whose interests and topics include grief, mental health and medicine, and the importance of self-expression and storytelling, especially for doctors and others working “on the frontlines of humanity.

At the end of every C+V podcast, host Alan Alda asks his guests seven quick questions, all connected with the concept of communication.  When he asked Braitman question #6, What gives you confidence?  She answered that being outside, in nature; “non-human nature” gives her confidence, and moiself  was intrigued by the way she phrased it:

“I never feel better than when I’m walking through a forest, with no mirror.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Surprising Moiself  By Honoring This Dead Celebrity

That would be Suzanne Somers, who died this week, on the day before her #77 birthday.

Among Somers’ many ventures in life, her Wikipedia bio lists actor, author, businesswoman, and “health spokesperson.”  Let moiself  get that last, dubious moniker out of the way.  I don’t know whether or not that title was self-proclaimed, but Health personified certainly didn’t ask Somers to speak for or represent her, in any way.  And Somers’ crazy-ass nonsense controversial stands on the risks and efficacies of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, her conspiracy-laden critique of the ACA/“Obama care” (a “socialist Ponzi scheme,” really?)   [1]  and promotions of alternative cancer treatments raised the red flags among people who have studied those issues for decades – read: scientists, doctors, medical researchers – people who actually know what they are talking about.  (note: Somers died of a recurrence of breast cancer, for which she had refused the recommended chemotherapy).   [2]

However, she had moiself’s  admiration for two things: her ground-breaking (at the time) fight for salary equity, and her sense of humor.  As per the former, Somers is best known for playing Chrissy Snow, the (not-quite-so) Dumb Blonde®  on the sitcom Three’s Company.  TC was one of the highest rated TV shows in the late 70’s early 80’s, due in most part to the interplay of the three lead actors, and in particular, the between Somers’ and John Ritter’s characters.  When it was time for contract re-negotiations in season 5,  Somers demanded an increase in salary to match what co-star Ritter was making: $150,000 per episode (her salary was $30k/episode).  Nothing against Ritter, but he did not have five times the screen time nor five times as many lines to memorize as Somers – who had at least five times the magazine covers and other publicity ventures for the show.  Nevertheless, he was being paid *five times* what she was, for doing the same thing: costarring on a sitcom.

 

Sound familiar, ladies?

 

Those In Charge Of Such Things® (the network execs) set an example of what happens to women who seek salary equity: they offered Somers a $5k salary increase…and eventually fired her.  Somers went on to score other acting gigs and ascend the throne of informercials and entrepreneurship – she hawked everything from jewelry, clothing (the “Three-Way Poncho,”  [3]  skin care products….  Most memorably, she became the spokeswoman for the toning muscle exercise devices with the memorable names of the Thighmaster and the Buttmaster.  Her promotion of the latter was responsible for my admiration of her humorous timing.

 

 

In the early 90’s, when Somers was promoting the Buttmaster, she took the device everywhere with her. She promoted it on talk shows, in interviews, etc., even when she was doing the gig to ostensibly promote some other aspect of her life (e.g., her Las Vegas stage act). This was also around the time when then Pope John Paul II was touring the United States.  I remember reading about her interview with a reporter who, knowing Somers was raised Catholic, asked Somers what she would do if she were invited to meet the Pope – would she bring along the…uh…exercise device?  Somers said that she would.  Okay, the reporter pressed, but what would she do if the Pope noticed the device and asked her what it was?  Her reply:

“I’d say, ‘It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness.’ ”

 

“I swear to God, ‘Buttmaster.’ ”

 

*   *   *

Department Of The War I’m Not Avoiding Writing About

Except that I kinda/sorta am…because it makes me want to abandon all hope; because it makes moiself  want to apply a Buttmaster to the craniums of some very sincere, well-meaning, rubbish -spouting people, when I hear their responses to Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

“…excellent English translations of both the original Hamas Covenant and its successor can easily be found on the internet.

… the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions. Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives….

The covenant opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan…the document proclaims, ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it’….

After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about,’ it proclaims, ‘until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ ”

( “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology:  A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions.”
The Atlantic, 10-10-23 )

Truth#1: It is possible for reasonable, good-hearted folks to hold multiple opinions and feelings about this war; it is possible to empathize with a repressed minority, and realize that the injustices experienced by the Palestinians are a breeding ground for violent zealots to recruit hearts and minds to promote and carry out acts of terrorism.

Truth #2: The latter does not excuse the former; never never.  NEVER.

Still, the foreboding admonition (variously attributed to leaders, from President JFK to  MLK, Jr.) comes to mind:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible,
make violent change inevitable.”

I have strong opinions as to the wrongness, both morally and strategically, of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and have been frustrated for – crap, how old am I? – for as long as I can remember,   [4]  about the fact that the so-called leadership on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute attains and maintains power by fomenting fear of and hatred for The Other.  Each side also appeals to their respectively held tenets of their so-called Divine Right to occupy that disputed part of the world.  Neither side seems to fully comprehend that the *only* true security for both sides, for all sides, will be peace.

 

 

But, although left-leaning moiself  has done as much as I can to avoid exposure to such things, I still have heard and read about leftist groups and individuals declaring themselves pro-Palestinian in ways that seem to excuse, via “understanding,” the terrorist attacks by Hamas.  Again, I have been trying to avoid most of this butt-frostingly naive rhetoric, and cringe with embarrassment on behalf of those who lack enough self-awareness to know what they are supporting, when I hear them sanitize the barbarity of the Hamas terrorist attacks as, “anti-colonial resistance.”

To those who think they are supporting a repressed/colonized people: do not fool yourself for one moment into thinking that Hamas is pro-Palestinian.  Palestinians suffer greatly under Hamas.

Poor Palestinians; they can’t catch a break.  While “Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continued to face Israel’s oppression, domination, fragmentation and segregation under its brutal occupation and apartheid,” the Palestinian authorities continue to “…heavily restrict freedom of expression, association and assembly,” and hold “scores of people in arbitrary detention and subjected many to torture and other ill-treatment,” have carried out executions and committed war crimes, such as those in 2022 during three days of fighting with Israel, when Hamas used “…unguided rockets in populated civilian areas and killing at least seven Palestinian civilians.”    [5]

 

 

Good people of the Earth:  absolutely, advocate for the right of Palestinians to be able to have a homeland and to determine their own destiny.  And absolutely *open your eyes* and know that the radical régime of Hamas will have none of the latter, for anyone, least of all their own people, whom they oppress under the guise of governing.

What are the values you want to support, for all people, everywhere?

 * Civil rights; women’s rights; LGBTQ rights?

* Freedom of – and *from* –  religion?

* Democratic enfranchisement of all citizens?

* The right of children – boys *and* girls –  to be educated
(in subjects other than memorizing the Quran and Islamic doctrine)?

* The right of all people to live in peace?

Hamas supports None. Of. That.

Hamas supports Islamism, and sharia law.   [6]  But just not any kind of Islamism – it must be *their* flavor (Hamas are Sunni, and they have harassed and assaulted Palestinian Muslims who are Shia).

With Hamas, as with other extremist groups, the world is entirely binary.   [7]      You must be Muslim – and not even being Muslim is enough – you must be the right kind of Muslim,  [8]  you must *their* kind – or you are an infidel, worthy of death.

 

 

 

“If you’re an LGBTQ+ parent, you should worry about Hamas gunning down your kids. Did that get your attention? Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Guess what? Hamas feels the same way about LGBTQ+ people and their families as they do about Israelis. Let me make this crystal clear: If an LGBTQ+ family moved into Gaza, Hamas would kill them. LGBTQ+ Palestinians are afraid to let their families know they are gay for fear that they will be murdered. Many have been killed — or successfully escaped — as reported in PGN and in media around the world.

Hate is hate.

Like many of you watching the carnage in Israel this week, my sorrow and outrage were too much to bear. Seeing the bloodshed of toddlers having their throats slit; pictures of mothers, children, and Holocaust survivors being kidnapped; and whole villages being gunned down was more than any civilized person should witness. But it’s not just Israelis that Hamas hates. They hate you as well. And when I say ‘you,’ I mean ‘LGBTQ+ people.’ Much like how they feel about Israel, they believe we should not exist as well.

Yet, there are members of our community who are so full of self-hate or are so masochistic that they would love the person that would kill them? They praise Hamas and make apologies for their actions this week. Some go as far as to support what Hamas did this week. Think about that: Supporting the kidnapping of a woman who survived the Holocaust. Supporting an organization that wants, and has always wanted, the genocide of an entire race.”

( “Hamas hates you as well,” Philadelphia Gay News, 10-11-23 )

 

 

As I type this, the world awaits Israel’s responses,  short and long term.  Hamas gave no warning before their assaults upon Israeli civilians, because civilian carnage was what Hamas intended.  The Israeli government and military will go after Hamas – they *have to* go after Hamas.  Sadly but inevitably, there will be heavy civilian Palestinian casualties, despite Israel’s warning for civilians to evacuate.  The Hamas operatives will embed/hide among the civilian populace of their own people, because that’s what terrorists do.

 

 

A day or so after the Hamas attack I saw that someone had posted the above, an “inspirational” picture on FB – a picture which has been making its way around social media.  The picture showed three tween-age-ish boys, each looking somewhat awkwardly into the camera (as in, “my parents made me do this”), each dressed in the garb of and/or holding icons of their respective family’s religion:   [9]  Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the three monotheistic faiths which have historical ties to Jerusalem.   Somewhere in the text accompanying the first post moiself  saw was a request for “prayers for peace.”

Yeah, knock yourself out hearing those prayers, Yaweh, Jesus, and Allah.  Because that’s been working so well for seventy-five years.   [10]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If I Were A Witch And Had The World’s Most Powerful Wand
And The Greatest Spell-Casting Ability In History…

I’d wave my wand in the direction of the Middle East while muttering, Absurdum religioso evanesce, and turn all of its hatred-holding residents into a bucket full of gentle, contented baby sloths.

 

 

*   *   * 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

 

( Luke 12: 49-52 for context )

 

*   *   *

May you walk through a forest with no mirrors;
May you never excuse barbarity, even when enacted on behalf of the oppressed;
May you sieze the opportunity to say, “It’s a Buttmaster, Your Holiness;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] see The New Republic’s  Susanne Sommers is a dangerous medical hack for an entertaining summary of her stands on those issues.

[2] She did, however, allow some “conventional” treatment of her disease, including radiation therapy.

[3] Does that sound vaguely… suggestive…or is it just moiself ?

[4]  “As in, why is this fucking mess still such a fucking mess?!?!?!”  And in my less noble moments, I confess to having thoughts like “Put a dome over the entire area, let those who want/agree to live together in peace get out, and enclose the others and let them hate themselves to death and leave the rest of the world out of their violence and chaos….”

[5] Amnesty International, Palestine (state of).

[6] Islamism in the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia) The Islamic group Swords of Truth threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they didn’t wear strict Islamic dress. “We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation,” their statement said.

[7] And good luck being “gender queer,” or political or cultural queer, in that world – they allow for no such gray areas in sexuality (or just about any aspect of life). They will, however, allow for a red area, which will be around your throat or other parts of your body, after you are executed for “moral turpitude” (the Hamas term for homosexuality).

[8] Sunni, and not Shia, Whabbi, Salafi, Berelvi, Sufi, or Deobandiite….

[9] Notice I don’t say, “*his* faith…even though there is a 90+% chance those boys will take on the rites and superstitions of their parents, especially in that part of the world.  I think it’s a form of child abuse, to declare a child is a certain religion, when, realistically, children have no say in it, no independent choice in the matter.  It’s equally abusive/absurd to say, that an 11-year-old boy is a Republican, when he is a child of two registered Republican parents.

[10] The modern state of Israel was established by a UN resolution in 1948.

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

The Important Life Decision Change I’m Not Regretting

October 13, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, politics, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Important Life Decision Change I’m Not Regretting

Department Of Do Something Guaranteed To Make You Feel Smarter
(Or Maybe Just A Little Less Oblivious)

It’s much easier than you think.  Just listen the Ologies podcast (Cosmology: the Universe, Part I, with Katie Mack) in which host Alie Ward chats with theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack about way cool things about the universe and how cosmologists study them, including by using The Large Hadron Collider.

You’ve heard of the LHC; you vaguely recall that it’s that huge, circular, underground, atom-smashing thing, somewhere in Switzerland.

 

 

But wait, y’all protest:  “Uh…trying to understand that stuff will definitely *not* make me feel smarter – I remember atoms but haven’t been required remember specifics since high school.”  Not to worry.  Writer, actor, science geek and podcast host Ward has got your back.  In her own entertainingly profane inimitable way, she makes it easier for you, with her Cliff Notes® take on the LHC, which includes a story offering a bit of cosmic perspective (my emphases):

Alie Ward:
“… The Large Hadron Collider is…a circular tunnel…over 500 feet deep in some parts and is 17 miles around. It is the largest machine in the world. This thing consists of over 1,200 magnets, and they’re cooled to a temperature colder than outer space. The magnets accelerate protons to almost the speed of light and then the protons are bashed together….

…Matter is stuff. Molecules are some atoms stuck together. Atoms are made of a nucleus – a little cluster of neutrons and protons. Protons have a positive charge – pro. Electrons have an equal negative charge, and electrons are…zooming around…outside the nucleus. The neutrons and protons…in the nucleus, those are made of smaller particles called quarks. The quarks come in a couple different varieties.

What gives these particles their mass? What are they? Where do they come from? We’ve got all these tiny things that make up matter….
there is a field called the Higgs field….How a particle interact with the Higgs field gives it its mass, kind of like drag in water. Higgs bosons are particles that are an excitation of the Higgs field, kind of like a drop of water splashing from an ocean. The Large Hadron Collider smashed protons together to see if they could prove that the Higgs boson exists, and guess what, bitches? It does.  The Large Hadron Collider, one of the things it does: smashes protons together in to smaller things to figure out why matter has mass. There you go.

Also, the Large Hadron Collider accidentally has its name spelled wrong on its own website as ‘Large Hard-on Collider.’ Once would be mortifying, but what if they did it more than once? Like twice? Or five times? That’s impossible. Is it? Because a search on their site revealed they’d spelled it “Large Hardon Collider” ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE times!… . So whenever you’re like, ‘I don’t understand this stuff. Maybe I’m just not smart enough.’ Just think: someone typed in ‘Large Hardon Collider’ over 150 times. And they built the thing.”

 

(I decided against googling for a picture to illustrate a ‘large hard-on collider.’  Y’all will have to settle for this image of a hard-headed objects collision, which (fingers crossed) won’t get my internet search history forwarded to the FBI.)

 

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Department Of Sometimes Say Never To Never Saying Never

“Dyanna Volek was never someone who dreamed of becoming a mother.
From an early age, she knew deep down that she didn’t want children…. ‘I’m always looking forward to the next thing,’ said Volek, who works in local government in San Francisco. ‘Being a parent was never one of them.’ ”
( excerpts from “Why more women are choosing not to have kids,”
CNN 9-25-23 )

* I’m afraid that I’m going to end up like my biological mom.
* I don’t like the idea of giving birth and changing my body.
* I feel like I am too selfish to have a child.
* I don’t want to lose myself as an individual.
* Having kids would mean having to be in that caring position for the rest of my life.
* I think the world is going to shit.
* I don’t want to subconsciously become like my mother.
* Honestly? I don’t like most kids.
(excerpts, 19 Women Got Brutally Honest About Why They Don’t Want Kids; )

 

 

“I can’t stand the way social media has idealised motherhood
at the expense of women and children.”
( wearechildfree.com )

“There should be no guilt in choosing a life path without my own children, yet I still…can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing some vital part of womanhood because I have never felt ‘baby fever.’ … I will not have kids, and I believe the decision is the right one for me, full stop. ”
( excerpts from “I don’t want children, but sometimes I want to want them,”
insider.com )

“____explained that the main factor for her (in not wanting children) was the disproportionate amount of work she would have to do as a mother compared to if she was a father.  She explained that dads get to be the ‘cool parent’, while mothers are categorized by any number of misogynist tropes like being overly smothering or nagging.  And also, just having to do a lot more work.
‘People have always asked me, do you have kids?…they love asking me if I have kids.  And I say, ‘No, I will not be having kids. And would you like to know why?’  And they say, of course.  And I say, ‘I would love, love, love to be a parent. I would love to be a dad. I don’t get that choice.’ ”
( excerpts from Single Woman Explains why she doesn’t want kids…;   )

 

 

Moiself has been seeing a lot of these kind of articles recently.  [1]  Is it just my imagination, or is there an increase in stories written about young women deciding not to have children,   [2]  and articles written by the young women in question, defending/explaining their decisions to be childfree?

“I love children…. But I don’t plan on having any of my own.
It took me a long time to be able to say that out loud. And by ‘out loud’ I mean whispering it with a hint of uncertainty so as not to offend. Because when you’re a married woman of a certain age with no kids, people have questions. Fertility advice. Pity. Judgment. Lots of judgment….

…the pressure to procreate comes from so many directions I’m considering pitching a ‘Walking Dead’ spinoff where the child free are the living and everyone else are zombies trying to turn us. But it’s a comedy so no one dies, except on the inside….
My mom-friends often confide in me the inequities of motherhood — how the childcare duties fall mostly on them and their bodies have shifted to the side and down. They lament the loss of time for personal, career or creative pursuits of their own. So, when I told one friend in an uncertain whisper that I wasn’t planning to have children, I was shocked by her reaction: ‘Telling people you don’t want kids is like telling people you’re vegan. It’s not about your healthy choices. It’s about making other people feel bad about their choices.’ And then she prayed I’d change my mind because having kids is the best.

I promise she’s not a monster. She’s a zombie, and that’s just what zombies do….

Life is about choices. Having them (or not). Owning them. And sometimes regretting them — but I would argue even that’s a choice. Because often there’s really no right or wrong decision, there’s just the one you make and you do your best to be happy.”
(excerpts from Opinion: “I chose to be child free. (The correct response is ‘Congratulations!’)”  LA Times 8-19-23 )

I read these articles about and by young women explaining themselves – and BTW, it’s *always* women doing the explaining.  Men, too, can struggle over the decision to have children, but there are nowhere near the same cultural pressures and expectations for men to become fathers – it is not locked up with society’s definition-as-a-person as it is with women.

 

 

I understand, and agree with, many if not most of the reasons and observations, both personal and societal, that the I-am-not-going-to-procreate women recount in these articles.  And while I am supportive of these decisions, many of them often seem to be…missing something…in their reasoning.  And moiself  can’t help but compare and contrast the stories they tell to my own situation and decisions.

For the first three decades of my life moiself  declared (and honestly believed) that I did not want to/was not going to have children, and probably would not get married.  Then, I went and did both.  I met MH when I was 28; we married when I was 31, and welcomed our son K and then our daughter Belle    [3]   when I was in my mid-late thirties.

As MH and I raised our very-much-planned-and-wanted   [4]   kids, when it was age-appropriate to do so, moiself  shared with them Robyn’s Realities ®  about marriage and family:  There are no Everyone-must-do-this/live-like-this-to-be-fulfilled rules:

* You can be single and be happy;
* You can be single and be miserable;
* You can be married and be happy;
* You can be married and be miserable;
* You can be happy if you and your spouse have children;
* You can be happy if you and your spouse are childfree….   [5]

But it wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized something key about my earlier, I-will-not-be-a-parent mindset.  It was not that I merely changed my mind about a major life issue.   [6]  It was that I had based that decision on my life – from my teens to early thirties, and how I viewed the trajectory of that life – as the single person I was. It was a decision made totally out of context of being in a committed relationship, which is the only way I would have even remotely considered having and raising a child.  It was a decision based on what I (thought I) knew about moiself, and not moiself-and-MH…because there was no moiself-and-MH.   [7]

 

 

There are people, men as well as women, who claim to have known from an early age that being a parent is what they’ve always wanted.  There are women I’ve known who said they’d “always” wanted to have children, and if that opportunity did not arise within a relationship, they vowed to pursue single parenthood.  Then there are the rest – the majority, in my opinion and experience.  When it comes to having or not having kids, these not-yet-married-or-partnered girls and women express slight to strong preferences either way, but acknowledge their decision might ultimately depend on their relationship with their potential parental partner.

Let’s say you’re one of those women:  you are single, and when you consider parenthood or are asked by friends/family/coworkers/your doctor/your barista about your procreative plans,    [8]  you say that you would do so only within the context of marriage/a committed partnership.  As in, even if you had a strong preference for having and raising a child someday you know you will never pursue that as a single parent.  So, if you are single and you consider the option of having children and conclude, “I’m not going to have kids,” you are making the decision sans complete data.  That is, you are imagining something you would never do, so your imaginations are going to be negative – what you think about what being a mother would be like could only be about what it would be like for you, alone, because you have no parent-partner.  There is no Other Parent (yet), to imagine how you would be a family, together.

Am I making sense here?

 

 

When I met the man-who-would-become-MH, as our relationship deepened we began to talk about Such Things ®.  MH married me with the understanding that, although he would like us to have children, for moiself  it was not a sure thing.  I married MH with the understanding that, while I’d always thought being a mother was not for me, MH and I would consider this parenthood adventure thing.

Our decision to have children was an outgrowth of *our* relationship.  It was vital to moiself  to see how we worked together, as life partners.   [9]  In my years of working in women’s reproductive health care, I saw too many  [10]  married women who were essentially single moms, with regard to their husbands’ participation in the physical, intellectual, time and emotional investment in child-rearing.  After five years of marriage to MH, I was assured enough to take the reproductive plunge.  More significantly, I also anticipated the rewards, the adventure, of being “part of it all” with him, part of the circle of life (take it away, Elton!), which is why all of us are here in the first place.

 

 

Despite having no time travel/alternate reality technology with which I can confirm this belief I am about to state, I believe that I would have had equally significant – just different –  highlights and low points in my life if I’d remained childfree (whether with MH, or another partner, or as a single person).  That being said, raising my offspring – watching them become the kind, intelligent, curiosity-filled, artistic, witty, science-oriented, free-thinking, compassionate, nature-appreciating, cat-loving, do-the-right-thing people that they are – has been a, if not the, highlight of my life.  I look forward to knowing them for as long as I can:  it has been has been and is a challenging, rewarding, exhausting, energizing, surprising, sometimes agonizing, and more often kick-ass-fun, pee-your-pants-with-laughter  experience, and remains an ongoing source of joy. 

When I read these I-am-never-going-to-have-kids articles, having been there moiself  I can identify with many if not most of the sentiments expressed therein.  I also understand that few things can be more irritating that the smug, condescending responses which are all too commonly flung at the declared child-free woman:  “Oh, you’ll change your mind, after all I/she/they did….”  I moiself have had those experiences and heard those comments (and I moiself  have changed my mind, moiself ).  Even so, I’d advise any young woman who would ask to keep an open mind: never say never….and congratulations, on whatever you decide.

 

 

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [11]

“The main goal of education should always be to learn how to learn, to become an independent thinker….
…evangelism of children seeks to cut off the process of independent thought before it begins. It’s this aspect of religious indoctrination that is most unacceptable—the idea that doubt is bad, that unquestioning acceptance is good, that there is only one possible right answer, and that someone else has already figured out what that answer is…
(1) Always question authority;
(2) when in doubt, see rule 1.”

( professor, writer, philanthropist Dale McGowan; excerpts from
Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion )

 

 

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May you carefully consider the contexts of your major life decisions;
May you enjoy your own particular dance steps in The Circle of Life;
May you be daring enough to do an internet search for “large hard-on collider”
(and discreetly let moiself  know the results);
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] Some of these articles are written about demographic studies that show that “nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s.” (Pew Research center)

[2] As opposed to having no children due to infertility issues.

[3] They are three years apart, lest you think this was some kind of Irish twins situation.

[4] More than one longtime acquaintance of myself, knowing I’d never expressed any interest in parenthood, when hearing the news of my pregnancies had a kneejerk reaction of spewing something along the lines of, “Uh, was this intentional –oops, sorry, of course it was, or must have been…I mean, she worked for Planned Parenthood…okay, I’ll just shut up now….”

[5] And I always refer to the state thusly, instead of the vile (IMO), lacking-something label, “childless.”

[6] as I have done throughout my life and doubtless will do again.

[7] I had other boyfriends/potential life partners pre-MH, most of whom made it known that they wanted, eventually, to have kids.

[8] And if you are a grown-ass woman who has not yet had a child, someone will always ask you.

[9] And If I had married someone else, it is entirely possibly I’d also be happily married at this point and be childfree.

[10] Any is too many.

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

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