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The Classic TV Sitcom Identity I’m Not Hiding

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Department Of, Curses – My Cover Has been Blown!

According to a rather irrelevant and batshit crazy deranged, ad hominem attack/comment someone made about moiself  on a Facebook group…

 

Can you believe it – someone said something nasty on social media?!

 

…I am…(gulp)…Gladys Kravitz.   [1]

(Which makes MH, Mr. Abner Kravitz.  Yep, I’ve been having fun with that all week).

 

Left: Gladys Kravitz; Right: Samantha Stevens

 

For those readers younger than 50, Gladys Kravitz was the nosy neighbor of the TV series Bewitched‘s protagonist, Samantha Stevens.  Gladys was convinced that there were extraordinary goings on in Stevens’ household, and was exasperated to the nth because she couldn’t prove her suspicions to her husband ( “Abbbnnneeeerrr!” )   [2]

Background to this startling revelation about my heretofore secret identity:  Dateline, Tuesday morning, circa 7:30 am.  I was at the coast, out for a morning walk…

But first, a relevant digression.  A long time ago…oh, no – here it comes again…

 

 

From my late high school years until my late twenties, I ran   [3]  between two to five miles, every day.  As recreational runners know, unleashed dogs and runners are not a good combination.   [4]   Every runner I’ve met has stories of being confronted, harassed and/or attacked by an unleashed/unaccompanied-by-its-human, aggressive dog.  The stories, and the avoiding-being-a-dog-bite-victim advice runners receive and pass on to other runners, are mostly similar, but sometimes divergent.

A person running triggers the prey instinct in many dogs; thus, the common wisdom shared amongst runners:  when approached by a dog whose posture and behavior…

* stiffening or freezing of the body;
* forward-leaning, hunched down, hunting/stalking posture;
* “whale eyes” (wide, with a lot of white showing);
* teeth baring; tense mouth/curled lips; wrinkled nose;
* ears laid flat against the skull or stiffly held straight up (not relaxed);
* barking, growling; “air-snapping”….

…indicates aggression, and there is no dog owner in sight, you should:

* stop running
* stay as calm as you can
* avoid eye contact (which can be seen as aggressive);
* speak to the dog in a calm, firm, but non-threatening voice;   [5]

* remain upright;
* don’t scream (or flail your limbs or panic or jump up and down);
* back into a corner or against a wall so the dog can’t get behind you;
* look for a tree or car to climb  [6]   and hope to f***’s sake the owner appears…

 

 

I faced the aggressive dog situation many times when I was running for exercise.  Those strategies worked for me, as they did for other runners…except when they didn’t.  I heard too many stories of someone who did everything right and got bitten anyway.

Fellow runners also shared the WTF?!?!? confusion of hearing sure-fire advice from so-called experts which contradicted advice shared by other experts. As in: ignore the dog; *don’t * stop running.  Continue what you’re doing, because some dogs will pay you no mind when you walk or run past them but if you stop, they “think” (okay, no human really knows what a dog thinks, we are trying to guess/interpret) you are a threat to them.

In other words, encountering an aggressive dog is situational and dog-specific: sorry, but there is no sure-fire, works-every-time, strategy.  But, human nature being what it is, there is this sure-fire reality:  there will always be some person who will tell you that, whatever you did, you should have done something else.

 

 

Back to the future background to the Mrs. Kravitz revelation:  Dateline: the Oregon coast (Manzanita); Tuesday morning, circa 7:30 am; out for my morning constitutional.  On that day I decided to walk north along the imaginatively named Ocean Road, which parallels the beach, then splits into two roads, one of which (Beulah Reed Road) continues along the coast and up into the streets winding around the base of Mt. Neahkahnie.

I walked along the road, noting the increasing number of vans and other vehicles I’d been seeing in my early morning walks – vans and campers parked alongside Ocean Road which look as if they’ve been there all night (as opposed to the vehicles whose drivers pull over, watch the waves and savor their morning coffee   [7]  before driving on to their jobs, or what/where ever).  Those been-there-overnight vehicles are situated in such a way to indicate that the occupants are camping there, despite the fact that it is illegal to do so, and despite the “No Parking between 11pm – 5am” signs posted along the road.

As I turned up Beulah Reed Road I saw two more looks-like-illegal-camping vehicles parked on the west side of the road.  Safety-conscious pedestrian that I am, when I am walking along a sidewalk-less road, I always walk facing traffic; thus, I passed close by both of the vans, whose occupants were presumably still inside/asleep (the vehicle’s windows had shades and other objects blocking the windows and windshields).  One of the vans stood out due to its color and décor: a green van festooned with white and yellow flowers, sporting a Nebraska license plate and a message  –  “love mother nature and she will love you back” – painted on the van’s rear window.

 

 

The Green Van was in the same spot on the west side of Beulah Reed Road where, in the past few months, I’d walked past other camping vehicles one of which provided moiself with a memorable visual a couple months ago.  The naked man who’d emerged from that vehicle and began urinating by the side of the road just as I was passing by was an unpleasant sight, but a minor startle compared to what happened Tuesday am.

I continued walking up Beulah Reed Road for a few more minutes, then headed back to Ocean Road.  As I neared the Green Van (this time, walking on the far side of the road) I saw a husky/malemute dog lying in the sand by the right rear of the GV.  The dog had not been there five minutes ago, when I’d first walked past the GV, and there was no sign of any humans (other than moiself ) about.  When I was about thirty feet away from the GV the dog’s eyes fixed on me; it got up and slowly began to cross the road toward me.

Oh, shit.  It takes minutes to type what flashed through my mind in nanoseconds Some of the nicest dogs I’ve met, and some of the meanest, have been husky/malemutes – and those two breeds consistently rank high on the Biting Dogs lists….   [8]

The dog was obviously not going to be one of the nice ones.  It slunk toward me, in a crouched position (the classic hunting posture – have you ever seen footage of wolves or other carnivores stalking their prey?).  Its approach was menacing, but silent…which I found more disturbing than barking.    [9]   If it had been barking, that would have (hopefully) alerted its owner.

 

“How’d ya like to see these teeth up close?”

 

I stop walking and spoke softly but firmly, remembering not to make eye contact.  I did all the “right things,” which had no effect on the dog’s aggressive body language and approach, so I slowly began to continue my walk.  The dog circled in front of me, blocking my path.  It growled, bared its teeth and walked stiff-legged toward me, then began to snarl and bark.  I put my walking poles between me and the dog and called out loudly: WHOSE  DOG  IS  THIS – COME  GET  YOUR  DOG.  I did this several times; finally, a woman appeared from the west-facing side of the van.  She had long, reddish hair and looked to be in her late 20s – early 30s.  She made no apologies for her menacing dog, but unenthusiastically attempted to

(1) assure me that her dog was not aggressive (“He just has a lot to say” she said,
as her dog began barking even louder, flattened his ears, and raised his hackles)
(2) get her dog under voice control.

She failed at both (1) and (2).

She held no leash (and with the dog’s thick fur I couldn’t tell if it even had a collar to which a leash could be attached).  She kept calling to the dog, which would turn to look at her, take two steps toward the GV, then turn around and bark and take three steps toward moiself.  As the dog continued to ignore the anemic “suggestions” of his owner to return to her, I swung one of my walking sticks at him, which temporarily stopped his advance (at that point he was less than two feet from me).

Oh, for some pepper spray, I thought – not for the dog, but to use on that pathetic excuse for a human being.  GV lady may make van-decoration-declarations on loving Mother Nature but she obviously doesn’t give an oyster’s ass about walking responsibly through Mother Nature’s land while respecting and protecting *all* of Ma Nature’s creatures, including bipedal ones.

 

This brand only works on German-speaking dogs.

 

I made firm, aggressive eye contact with the woman when she repeated her, “He’s not mean/he has a lot to say” bullshit excuse.  I replied, “Yeah, he’s saying a lot and none of it is nice – I’ve been bitten by a dog; I know when I’m being threatened.  You need to get your dog under control, RIGHT NOW.”  The insolent look on her face reminded me of a pouty adolescent whose parents had threatened to ground her until she cleared the dinner table.  “I am going this way,” I pointed toward Ocean Road, “and your dog needs to go that way. I pointed toward her van.

Which eventually happened. After the woman and her dog disappeared behind the other side of the van, I took a picture of the back of the GV.

I was seething when I got home (and really hungry).  I posted the GV picture on my FB page, along with a very brief description of the incident.  As I was doing so I remembered that on my way back I’d passed an elderly couple walking on Ocean Road, headed in the direction I’d come from.  Damn, I chastised moiself – should I have warned them about staying away from that van?  With that thought in mind I posted the same photo and incident description, with an “FYI” warning/introduction, on a FB page where locals post pictures and info about items of North Oregon coast interest.

I knew I should report what had happened to “the authorities.”  As I fixed my breakfast and mulled over whom to call (The town? The county? ) I was contacted by my Friend and Neighbor ®.   F&N had seen my post, and urged me to report the incident.  I called the police non-emergency number; the dispatcher who finally answered said that Beulah Road was under Tillamook County jurisdiction, and that she’d have a TC deputy contact me.

The TC deputy took down the details of my report, and then…oh my my (“Officer Chatty Cathy,” my mind soon nicknamed him).  He had a lot to say about what had happened to me, and about related incidents he had been/was currently dealing with.  I was apparently a sympathetic ear into which he unloaded his and his law enforcement colleagues’ frustrations with similar incidents and with “what’s going on in the county,” including:

* increased illegal camping
* increased reports of aggression between illegal campers and county residents
* illegal campers’ aggressive/unleashed dogs (who go after both people and other dogs)
* the overload of reports the county has to investigate without the staff to do so….

He said that TC had a backlog of *hundreds* of calls about illegal camping and other violations, but that because what happened to me involved menacing, he could prioritize my report, and would head for Beulah Road.  I thanked him, and noted that the van had probably moved on.  Actually…probably not, he said.  And, in his experience, if it did move it would likely move to somewhere nearby, and a green van with Nebraska plates would be easy to spot.  Should he find the van, he said he’d have an in-depth conversation with the van/dog owner.  How he handles these cases, he explained, is based on the dogs’ and or vehicles’ owners’ demeanor and response.  If they listen respectfully and are forthright and apologetic, he tries to educate them and lets them off with a warning.  If they are unapologetic and insolent, and even (as some people have done) go so far as to assert that they have no intention of abiding by the _____ (leash, parking/camping/trash disposal, etc.) laws, he’ll give them “as many citations as possible.”

He asked me to spread the word: please tell people to report these encounters, even as he acknowledged the perception that “They (law enforcement) will do nothing,” and so most incidents go unreported.  It’s true, we (local police/sheriff departments) are understaffed, he said, but people need to know that the reports, even if they cannot be immediately investigated, help them gather statistics in general, and make records in particular for individual menacing dogs and their owners, so that if (or as he put it, “unfortunately, when“) the dog harasses/attacks another person or pet, the dog owner can’t get away with, “Oh, he’s harmless/he’s never done that before….”

At one point in our conversation, I told him how I’d began my walk thinking about the increase in illegal parking/camping, and asked if he knew if that is indeed the case, or just my anecdotal impression? And is this uptick (in illegal beach camping) related to homelessness?  He told me the increase in numbers wasn’t my imagination, but that my assumption about the cause was incorrect.  He then asked me something which led to an “aha” turn to the conversation:  “Have you heard of the website, ‘vanlife’?”

“You’ve seen the hype around #vanlife. You’ve seen the stunning photos on social media. Now you want to throw everything to the wind, quit your job, build out a camper van, and live a carefree life of adventure….
This page is designed as a jumping-off point for your personal vanlife journey. We go over the pros and cons of this lifestyle, the reasons why full time van life is awesome… We answer the most frequently asked questions about living in a van – everything from bathrooms and showering…to finding sweet camping spots.”

(excerpts from the intro to Van Life How To: Complete Guide to Living in a Van Full Time,
my emphases )

 

“After we’ve posted this cool picture of ourselves can we go back to our penthouse and order takeout sushi?”

 

I said I knew of the site, but had never visited it.  I thought it was similar to  other sites I’d heard about, where people share information about RVing and/or traveling and living in trailers and vans.  It is that, Officer CC said, but has become so much more: it has become a source of the increased “incident” calls faced by local law enforcement.  He proceeded to express his frustration re the influence of the van-lifestyle sites, where people post info for others who’ve chosen to live in vans, sharing tips about where to travel and camp “for free” (but not necessarily legally).

More and more, Officer CC said, the people he speaks to and then warns and/or cites for illegal camping are mentioning (in some cases, boasting) that they were “referred” to the Oregon coast by vanlife and similar websites and online bulletin boards. And, he stressed, these people are *not* homeless– they seem well-funded (trust fund babies?) and/or are working remotely.  For whatever reasons, they have romanticized the idea of  public urination and defecation  [10]  life on the road.  They…

* find it glamorous to be house-less by choice;

* take pride in ridding themselves of the bourgeois trappings of consumerism:

* receive positive feedback from like-minded folk when they post
cool pictures on Instagram of their adventures in livin’ on the road;

* believe that dogs also “need freedom” and so they ignore local leash laws;

* tell him that they love livin’ “for free”…

which – surprise! – turns out to be anything but free for the people in the communities who pay the taxes that fund the services to clean up after those freedom lovin’ van lifers, who leave their trash and toxic waste behind as they move on – and the damage these love-nature-and-she’ll-love-you hypocrites do to natural habitat areas frustrates him to no end…

As he described his dealings with these voluntary nomads, more than once he referred to van-life enthusiasts as, “hippies.”  I could tell from Officer CC’s voice that he was much younger than moiself; it took all of my maturity (ahem) to refrain from correcting him:

“Actually, they aren’t hippies – that was an older generation.  Any surviving hippies are at home rubbing patchouli and/or CBD oil on their aching joints…I think y’all need to come up with a more contemporary epithet for the younguns whose lives and values you find disrespectful, or just fruity.”

 

 

I’m not criticizing or mocking the deputy.  He was amiable, empathetic, and eager to articulate the frustrations of law enforcement officers who cannot adequately fulfill their oath to serve and protect when they are overwhelmed by calls they cannot address.

Our talk turned to what people can do to protect themselves against aggressive dogs  (Officer CC said his wife is a runner, and that she and her running buddies frequently deal with unleashed and aggressive dogs).  I said that, due to my afore-mentioned, bitten-by-a-dog incident, I’d done my research, and ordered a cannister of citronella spray   [11]  and an air horn, for self-defense.   Before I could tell him I’d ruled out bear sprays/pepper sprays, he strongly advised that I tell my friends *not* to carry pepper sprays, because

* Unless you’re an expert who practices with pepper spray on a regular basis you can end up inadvertently spraying yourself, particularly when you’re under duress;
* At the beach, where gusts of wind can arise seemingly out of nowhere, pepper spray can backfire, as in, get blown back on *you.*

He said that while he hated having to recommend it (“Nobody wants to hurt an animal,”) carrying a club might be called for (I said thanks/no thanks, and mentioned my walking poles).  He expressed admiration for the air horn strategy: “What a great idea!” he enthused, noting that the loud noise would both startle the dog and alert nearby humans.

 

Yeah; okay, are we ever gonna get to the Gladys Kravitz connection?

 

After my conversation with the deputy I drove to Hillsboro, where I had business to attend to.  While driving I received a voice mail from my Friend & Neighbor, and pulled over to return her call.  F&N said that my local/beach group FB posting had spawned a comment firestorm:  most were from people relating their own/similar incidents, and/or expressing sadness re what happened to me in particular and what they saw happening to their community.  Other posters engaged in unfounded and unsolicited second-guessing, reframing the incident, and even claiming to know the dog’s intentions, despite having not been there.    [12]  Several of those I-wasn’t-there-but-I-know-what-really-happened  posters also opined on what I *should* have done to avoid being menaced by the dog.

( Ladies, does this sound familiar?
“If you’d only done this/said that/worn that/walked this way,
you wouldn’t have been assaulted.” )

I’d read a few of the early comments, including two which asserted that “people should mind their own business” and “stop caring about who parks where or does what.”   [13]  The MYOB theme was picked up by a few other unbalanced strident posters.  How that became a thing, considering the context, was a mystery to moiself.  Translation: I found it bewilderingly irrational.  The afore-mentioned Gladys Kravitz remark came from one such poster, who addressed her remarks to moiself and fumed about why I was being Gladys Kravitz, and that I should have minded my own business….

 

 

Say what?  Minding my own business – exactly what I was doing.  I did not approach the dog and try to determine whether he was neutered.  My business, which I was minding, thanks for your concern, was walking.  I was out for a walk on a public road, enjoying the scent of the briny coastal air and minding my own beeswax, when an aggressive, unleashed canine decided to make his threats my business.

F&N and I had a giggle about how comments on my post had spiraled into many tangents.  I said that, after violating the never-feed-the-trolls rule (I corrected one unhinged commenter, who seemed to be reading comprehension-challenged and tried to rewrite my story to fit her outrage at…whatever), I’m not going to read any more comments on that group.   F&N said she’d keep me apprised of the more entertaining (read: whackadoodle) posts…although, I told her, the Gladys Kravitz epithet would be hard to top.

 

 

The next morning my phone rang: it was F&N’s update call.  Apparently, by the end of the previous day, “things got nasty,” as she put it.  She’d checked the FB local/beach site before bedtime: there were “248 or 258” comments, including a thread where people posted pictures of when they’d been bitten by an unleashed dog, and others posted either support or criticism for the bite victim.  Then a man mentioned that he might carry a gun when he goes to the beach, and lawdy mama, it took off from there, with about 40 more posts related to carring concealed weapons on the beach.  In the morning when F&N rechecked the site, about 40 of those packing-heat-on-the-beach posts had disappeared, taken down by the group moderator (or perhaps, I posited, by the posters who’d developed cooler heads overnight?).  F&N said the nastiness also included some posts which made blatant or tacit references to class warfare, claiming that heartless “rich people” at the beach hate “the rest of us” and harass people who have no choice but to live in their cars…in sharp contrast with the deputy’s testimony that the majority of the people he and his fellow deputies encounter and warn about/cite for illegal camping are neither destitute nor homeless, but self-obsessed, “van life” adventure seekers, whose idea of freedom is mooching off of public services they can well afford to pay for….

And moiself?  Oy vey.  I’d not even considered filing a report about illegal camping.

I just want to go for a walk, anywhere it’s safe and legal to do so, and not get bitten.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [14]

 

*   *   *

 

May you enjoy any/all outdoor activities free from dog (or human) harassment;
May you delight in observing online trolls but not in feeding them;
May you enrich the public discourse by coining a better word than “hippies”
to describe Gen Z…hippies;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Or at least, channeling her spirit.

[2] And of course, Gladys Kravitz turned out to be spot on:  Samantha Stevens *was* a witch.  Despite promising her mortal husband Darrin that she would *not* use her powers, just about every episode of Bewitched involved Samantha using witchcraft to create unusual happenings, or to try to undo the wacky situations created by her witch and warlock relatives, who would make mysterious arrivals and departures and mess with the mortals.  Mrs. Kravitz witnessed just enough to have her suspicions, which would always be explained away by Samantha or others.  Yep, Mrs. Kravitz was a nosy neighbor, but her suspicious were correct, and she was gaslighted.

[3] Or I could say, “I was a runner,” but I never took my identity from that; I ran for enjoyment and exercise, as opposed to training for the Olympics or whatever.

[4] Unless the dog belongs to the runner and is also running because…well, it usually isn’t the dog’s idea.

[5] This is not to make yourself the alpha or assert dominance, but to get as much control of yourself and the situation as possible, and to make any cues you give the dog – “sit; down; stay; go home” as understandable as possible.

[6] The strategy used by one elderly gentleman, in a neighborhood I used to live in, when he was attacked by two free-roaming dogs when he was doing his early morning neighborhood rounds, delivering advertising flyers.  The man and I had greeted each other when I went out for my morning run, and I was able to rescue him when I returned and saw that the dogs had treed – carred? – him. 

[7] Or sometimes, doobies…as I notice when I pass the vehicles and they have the windows down.

[8] Which I learned in my training for the animal rescue organizations for which I volunteered, and I confirmed this when I returned home, by searching for dog bite statistics. 

[9] Many a person who has survived a dog attack says that the silent ones, who approach you steadily, are more dangerous than the barkers.

[10] That was my snarky thought, not his.

[11] The smell of citronella is irritating/offensive to dogs, but not harmful.

[12] Perhaps there is a Canine Psychic Intentions website I am unaware of.

[13] Those comments seemed to be related to other posters who focused on the illegal parking and camping situation, not the aggressive dog.

[14] “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 Childhood Memoir I’m Not Publishing

Comments Off on The Childhood Memoir I’m Not Publishing

But if moiself  did publish such a book, it would have a chapter titled, “The Girls of Summer.”  Said chapter would be devoted to describing the elaborate role-playing [1]    games my grade school friends and moiself  played, in my backyard and/or garage, during summers, on the three-point-five days a week when we were *not* at the beach.  

The games we played on a regular basis included

* Dracula
(we were – surprise! – vampires, although no one ever played the titular Count.   [2] );

* Haunted House
(we transformed my family’s garage – in which my parents did not park their cars because doing so would have taken away a vital part of our play space – into a haunted castle, wherein we would haunt [read: terrorize] our younger siblings, aka “The Little Kids ®,” who were so desperate to play with us Big Kids ® that they’d do anything we’d say);

* Leopards
(we were a family of leopards, living harsh lives on the African plains and forests)

* Amazonian Women
( explanation forthcoming)

.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Hitherto Unexplained Connection
Between Barbies And Nuns

First, the Amazonian Women game explained, or at least outlined.

My childhood home’s backyard was a vegetation paradise, particularly during summer.  Our fruit-producing trees and shrubs included a lemon tree, a peach tree, a plum tree, a pomegranate bush, several banana trees,   [3]   and five apricot trees.  A huge, great-for-climbing pine tree of some sort (the sort that produced so much sap my mother kept a jar of Crisco, soley dedicated to sap removel, by the kitchen sink) was behind the garage.  The pine tree provided a good access point to the garage roof, which we kids were technically forbidden to climb onto, due to our (read: *my* ) tendency to play WWII paratrooper and jump off of the roof holding an umbrella.   [4]   Summer night bonus: If you climbed far enough up in the pine tree you could see the halo at Anaheim’s Angel Stadium light up when an Anaheim Angel hit a home run.   The view was definitely worth the sappy hands, arms, elbows, knees….

 

 

The perimeter of our yard’s back and side fences was lined with a variety of shrubbery.  Cascades of bougainvillea flowed up and down and around the backyard fence, and the vines’ vibrant magenta-colored flowers provided the perfect tropical aura for our Amazonian game:  we would drape a garden hose at the top of one of the vines and adjust the hose’s sprayer to the finest mist setting, which provided the proper, lounging-by-the-waterfall atmosphere, and also kept us cool.  You could work up quite a sweat in the summer as an Amazonian warrior, canoeing from island to island, hunting and fishing and gathering tropical fruits, fighting off dangerous wild animals, and planning excursions to either visit or plunder neighboring islands.

Our brothers and other neighborhood boys were welcomed for the tag games    [5]  my girl friends and siblings and I played on balmy summer evenings, but with the exception of having one boy join the Dracula or Haunted house game on a few occasions, the other games were all-female.  There were no literal male occupants of our Amazonian island; there were a never-specified number of men that we’d taken from neighboring islands and whom we kept in captivity.  My friends and I knew enough about mammalian reproduction to know that our species could survive as a single gender, so we kept these imaginary male captives for “breeding purposes” – the ultimate meaning of which was lost on us, but somehow, we knew we had to acknowledge that aspect of our culture.

 

 

My notes for my SoCal girlhood memoir have gathered dust; moiself  hadn’t thought of the Amazonian game in ages, until Monday, when friend CC and I saw the Barbie movie.  During our après-cinema lunch when we were discussing the movie,   [6]  I told CC about the Amazonian game, and how it fit into my theory of why so many girls  (especially those whose girlhoods were 40+ years ago) – girls who would either then or later identify as feminists – liked playing with Barbies, and also sometimes pretended to be nuns.

Hold on to y’alls wimples: it’s the long-awaited for, Barbies-Nuns Connection. ®

 

 

Like all the girls I knew when I was in grade school, my sisters and I were given, and played with, Barbie dolls.  I never received, nor wanted, a Ken doll.   [7]   I did have a few male dolls: I asked for, and received for Christmas one year, a G.I. Joe doll and a Johnny West cowboy doll (which came with a palomino steed, and a plastic vest and chaps and spurs wardrobe for Johnny!).  But as I discovered, a boy’s G.I. Joe was not to be called a doll, but an “action figure.”  You’d best not refer to any of a boy’s male play figurines as what they were – dolls –  lest the boy’s little dingus shrivel up and snap off at the mere suggestion that he played with a kind of toy commonly associated with girls.

Like many most of same girls with whom I played let’s-pretend we’re _____  games, we also played the We Are Nuns games.  This was not a The Sound of Music fantasy thing,    [8]  and with one exception these friends were *not* from Catholic families.  But there was a similar appeal to the world of Barbies, Amazonian island women, and nuns.

It’s not a complicated connection, not in the least.  The appeal was that those worlds (Barbies; Amazons; nuns) were composed solely of females.  Thus, girls got to do *everything.*  This was not the case when we played games with the neighborhood boys.

One of a bajillion examples:  One summer day I agreed to play “The Smith’s Home” (or some other family name) with my younger sister and our next-door neighbor boy.  Next Door Neighbor Boy and I were The Smith Family.  We were a recently married couple, with a dog and a cat and two hamsters and no children.  After we’d discussed the game parameters, NDNB announced that he was leaving our house (a fort we’d built in my backyard) to “go to work.”  I wanted to head out as well, but NDNB boy-splained to me that things didn’t work that way: as the wife, I had to stay home.  When he insisted on taking the family pet, a German Shepard (played by my sister), to work with him, I in turn explained to him that things didn’t work that way.  Husbands do not take the family pets with them to work – name one husband in the neighborhood who does that?!  And that was the end of The Smith Family game.

Now then: NDNB was a nice boy, of whom I was genuinely fond re his gentle disposition and kind heart.  But he, like the other neighborhood boys and the brothers (whether older or younger) of my friends, always tried to take over during the few times we let them join our games.  If the girls were starting a game of Blackbeard’s Buccaneers you didn’t want the boys to join in because they’d insist on being all of the pirates and you had to be…something else.

 

Who you callin’ a scullery maid?

 

As young females, we grew up seeing a world where males were in charge, of just about everything.  In television and movies men were the primary (if not the only) protagonists, with the women there as domestic/romantic supporting players.  I was no fan of Catholicism and steadily (if secretly) came to despise almost everything about any religious doctrine (including my own family’s moderate Lutheranism); still, nuns held a peculiar attraction for many girls such as moiself .   [9]

A convent, while admittedly mimicking the patriarchal structure of a hierarchical society, was an all-female world.  Nuns did everything in their society; being a nun was one of the few options for women wherein they could leave their parents’ (read: their fathers’) homes without having to go to another man’s home; i.e., marry and have children.  Women could have a “calling” – an occupation, a life’s work – that did not involve (and in fact precluded) tending to the needs of a husband and children.  Nuns (seemed as if they) had a life outside The Home. ©

 

 

Sure, nuns were “cloistered,” but at least a nunnery was a cloister of choice.  Girls grew up seeing few-or-no female counterparts to the much-envied, free-livin’, swingin’ bachelor: whether by choice or circumstance, females who remained single were portrayed as objects of pity.  “Spinsters” and “old maids” were the only terms for women who remained single and childfree.

Similarly, when you played with Barbie dolls, you could be the good egg, the louse, the protagonist and the hero and the side player and everything in between.  Our Barbies ran the house, earned the paychecks, planted and harvested the crops, designed fantastical machines, drove the stagecoaches between the OK Corall and Santa Fe, flew to the moon in shoebox rocket ships – whatever you wanted them to do, with no Ken to tell you that you couldn’t, or yeah, maybe just this once but you gotta ride…

 

“Sidesaddle my PVC ass, Ken.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait A Minute…

“The battle over legacy and donor admissions to college — the practice of giving special treatment to family of alumni and contributors — is about to heat up in California as critics take aim at what they see as a long-standing barrier for less privileged students to access elite institutions.

State Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) plans to renew efforts to deny state financial aid to any college or university that gives an admissions advantage to such applicants, who research has shown are overwhelmingly white and affluent.”
( “Battle over legacy and donor admissions preferences to heat up;
USC, Stanford could take hit.” LA Times 7-31 )

What the….

Moiself  is, of course, *highly* in favor of such a bill, even as I’m stunned (naive? ) by California’s need for it.  Since when did state financial aid go to private universities?

*   *   *

Department Of  And In A Related Story…

A long time in a galaxy far far away:   In the summer after son K’s junior year of high school, he began the first of several rounds of visiting colleges he was interested in applying to. Moiself  accompanied him on the first three campus visits, which were in California.   [11]   It was late June when K and I flew down to Sacramento, rented a car, then in the next three days toured UC Davis, Stanford, and UC Santa Cruz.

My Oregonian born and bred son, who was known to complain when the temperature rose above 72°, seemed to have had an weather-influenced relationship with the colleges we visited on that trip: the closer we got to the coast, the more he liked the school, inversely conflating the temperature of the area with what his academic experience would be.

When we deplaned in Sacramento the heat blast hit K in the face, and I remember thinking, “Yep, this is familiar…”  I am a UCD alum.  A couple of summers I stayed in Davis to work expanded hours at the student job I had during the school year.  I assured K that if he went to UCD he would probably not be staying during the summer, and that Davis had winters an Oregonian would appreciate. Nevertheless, looking back, I think all he “saw” of UCD was the heat.

 

 

Neither MH nor I were the kind of parents who lobbied (nor even encouraged) our offspring to consider attending our respective alma maters. But in the fall of K’s junior year, one winter weekend afternoon when he and I were hiking in a local nature preserve, K mentioned his interest in studying entomology.  I told him there were not many colleges which offered an entomology major, and of those that did…things may have changed, but when I was at UC Davis it had the top-rated entomology program in the nation (when we returned home I did an internet search and confirmed that that was still the case).

I forget the reasons K had an interest in Stanford (his aunt, my younger sister, was a Stanford alum, but I don’t know if that was the influence);  he was curious about UC Santa Cruz for its connection to the Human Genome Project.  So: we planned our trip, signed up for the campus tours of and presentations by the respective colleges, and moved from east to west, starting with UC Davis, then Stanford, then UC Santa Cruz.

As moiself  mentioned, I don’t think K saw much of Davis but the heat.  UC Santa Cruz – he liked many things about it, although he agreed with my observation, as we did a bus tour around UCSC’s verdant campus, which is situated in the forested hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay, that it might be like going to college in summer camp.

 

 

As for Stanford, our visit there provided the most indelible, visiting-a-campus story.

We both enjoyed the Stanford campus tour, which was led by an enthusiastic student who was personable and articulate and knowledgeable and proud of his campus.  K was quite keen about Stanford after that tour.  Next on the agenda was a sit-down presentation for prospective students and their parents, given by Stanford’s Director of Admissions.  In 20 minutes K went from, “Wow, I really like this place; it’s definitely going to be on my application list,” to, “I wouldn’t go to this snobby, elitist, self-aggrandizing institution if *they* paid *me* to do it.”

One of many statements the Dude of Admissions made which K found off-putting was a dyad of contradictory statements, which he kept repeating:

” *Any* person can get into Stanford! “
(After saying this, he would give examples of students from lower income, and/or nonwhite and/or non-big city backgrounds who were Stanford alums)

” Stanford, as one of the top rate universities in the United States,
is very selective, and has one of the, if not THE, lowest acceptance rates
of any college in the world! “

 

 

Several times during his presentation Admissions Dude said that he wanted parents or students to ask questions at any time, about any Stanford-related subject.  After AD’s third repeating of his anyone-can-be-here/almost-no-one-gets-in couplet, a student raised his hand and asked how he might increase his odds of getting accepted to Stanford.  AD answered with what he obviously meant to be a humorous story:  “First of all, don’t do this….”  He proceeded to tell how a high school senior had marched into AD‘s office, unannounced, hours before the admissions deadline.  The student dismissively flung an admissions packet onto AD‘s desk and said, “Take care of it.”

I looked around the room, noting that both parents and students were snickering with “Oh, can you believe that arrogant wiseass?!” amusement.  Moiself  raised my hand, and when AD called upon me I asked him, “Was that student a legacy?”

Admissions Dude turned an impressive shade of white.   [12]   In a Very Serious Voice he stammered, “I can’t give any names; I can’t – uh, we can’t reveal any personal information about an applicant…”

To which I perkily replied, “I didn’t ask for his name; I asked if he was a legacy.”

Admissions Dude was quite flustered that I’d brought up an apparently taboo subject – as if no one present in the room had ever heard of legacy admission preferences before the big-mouth Oregon lady brought it up.  He squirmed with discernable discomfort – I thought he was in danger of pissing his Trussardi trousers.  The more the AD tried to act “plussed” the more nonplussed he became.  As he strove to change the subject, several parents seated in front of K and I turned around and flashed me knowing, sympathetic, and/or incredulous looks.

K ended up applying to six of the seven schools he visited that summer. He was accepted at all six, and chose to attend the University of Puget Sound.  He did not apply to Stanford.

 

Stanford LegacyGuide (The Koppleman Group)

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month 

 

 

It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself .  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [13] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [14]

“If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
( Anatole France 1844 – 1924, Parisian poet, journalist, writer )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have fond memories of your own childhood summer games;
May you be mindful of what popular foolish thing you believe;
May you enjoy your own reign as Employee of the Month;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] No, not today’s RPG.  It meant something different back then.

[2] For us, Dracula was synonymous with vampires.

[3] Probably akin to the Blue Java varietal, which we never let come to full ripeness before we’d pick (and ruin) them.

[4] Which did nothing to slow my descent.

[5] “Green Monster” was the favorite.

[6] As were three women sitting next to us at the sushi train bar counter…from what I could hear of their conversation.

[7] One of my friends was given a Ken doll by her parents, and she brought him to a few Barbie play sessions, but he stayed mostly on the sidelines.

[8] We were never, ever, singing nuns.

[9] One that was romanticized, of course, but what other options did we see?

[11] MH did the next three visits with K, to colleges in Washington, British Columbia, and Minnesota.  And K and I later made an overnight trip up to Tacoma to visit the University of Puget Sound, which is where he decided to go (as did his sister, Belle, three years later, and for similar reasons: they both had the experience, upon touring the campus, of “Oh, this is my place.”)

[12] Made even more impressive by the fact that he was not white.

[13] 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.

[14] “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 Cards I’m Not Mailing

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Department Of Ruminations On Appreciating The Practicality
Of A Certain Contraction Which Forms A Useful Pronoun

That would be, y’all.

y’all
pronoun
ˈyȯl
variant of YOU-ALL

chiefly Southern US
: YOU —usually used in addressing two or more persons
( Merriam-Webster online dictionary )

Paging longtime friend EK, to whom I owe an apology.  EK, whose family members hail from the Virginia/West Virginia area, was the first person who sought to change my mind regarding my dismissal of the legitimacy of the term.

Moiself  grew up thinking that the usage of y’all  was indicative of…well…an ignorant southerner.

 

 

Yeah, I know.  Then I had a face-palming moment about the need for a distinguishing term to indicate when I’m speaking to you singular or you plural.  Thus and now,   [1]   it’s a term I use all the time, in place of *you-all.*

The summer after third grade I spent three weeks in Tennessee with my parents and sisters,    [2]   visiting my father’s family for the first time in my life.  Moiself  recalls being teased by my SoCal neighbors and friends upon my return, about the southern accent I had acquired during my Tennessee time.  They actually howled with laughter when I let a y’all  slip out (and after that taunting I made a conscious effort to “speak normally”).

My childhood (and young adult) impressions of the South and southern culture   [3]    came from the television shows my parents watched in the mid 60s-early 1971,   [4]   in particular the CBS lineup of The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and Hee Haw.  Those hick-o-rama shows were inexplicably (to anyone with an IQ exceeding their inseam size) popular at the time, with adults of a certain age.   *I* wanted to watch cooler shows – more intellectual fare, like The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Laugh-In, and My Favorite Martian.

My father was also (inadvertently) partly responsible for giving me a negative impression of southern culture.  Several times during my childhood, after that first visit to Tennessee and later on when his family members came out to visit us in SoCal, I asked my father why he spoke so differently from his siblings.  He had almost no trace of an accent betraying his southern roots (but I noticed he’d “slip up” – i.e., his accent would slightly but noticeably resurface, when he was around his relatives).  He told me that when he’d joined the army he worked on losing his “family way” of speaking, as he’d noticed that “you were labeled a dump country boy hick,” if you spoke “that way.”

Thus, in the same way that I could never picture a nuclear physicist with a southern accent (“Y’all wanna split some atoms, or what?”), I grew up thinking that I couldn’t take someone seriously who used the term, y’all.  So, a well-deserved slap upside the head with the bigotry stick, for moiself.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Don’t Make Me Call Child Protective Services On Y’all

I refer to those adults allowing their younguns to enter a National Mullet competition.

“_____  and ____  are letting their hair down for a good cause. Each hopes to win a national mullet championship while raising money for wounded service veterans.

___ and ___ are competing in the 2023 USA Mullet Championships. ___ recently finished in the top third of the 1-4 year age group while ___ advanced among 9- to 12-year-olds. These age groups are guided by the old mullet saying, ‘Home room in the front, recess in the back.’ “

( excerpts from “2 Oregon boys vie for title of ‘best mullet in America’” Oregonlive.com
Names redacted by moiself  to protect those underage victims of abuse. )

 

 

Fer Chrissake (Chris as in Chris Waddle, the English footballer whose haircut was as famous as his soccer skills) – I thought it was the parent’s job to guide their youngsters *away* from disaster, and not have them compete for ignominy.

And don’t y’all love it when a sketchy event is (supposedly) justified by a noble cause?  Somewhere, there is a wounded service veteran thinking, “Wait a minute – I thought I fought for truth, justice, and the American Way, ® but no one told me I’d have my leg blown off in Afghanistan so that a young boy could have the right to commit fashion suicide….”

 

There are some tragedies in life – like gambling addiction, heart disease, and hemorrhoids – which should be adult-only.

*   *   *

Department Of They Even Have A Special Sticker For “Bullshit”

*They* would be the US Postal Service, who sent me returned mail – my nephew’s birthday card – with this sticker.

 

 

“Attempted – Not Known.”

That’s attempted crap, if not a known lie.  Putting it on a “professional” yellow sticker doesn’t make the crap any more professional.

The address is correct (moiself  triple checked); it’s the same address my nephew has had for several years; the same address to which I’ve send other cards, and packages, and this is the first time ever I’ve received return mail for that same address.

My nephew’s address has three residents on the property; he and his wife are the owners, the primary residents, in unit #1. “Attempted – Not Known” translation: the postal carrier, whether s/he was a newby or veteran incompetent, glanced at the address or house, and for whatever reason my nephew’s name wasn’t the first name the carrier noticed, and the carrier was too slothful or stupid to take the FIVE SECONDS it would have taken to actually make an *attempt* to figure out which slot to place the card in.

This is not the first time I’ve ranted made a rational case about the USPS decline in customer service standardsMoiself  understands that the paramilitary nature of the postal service is partially responsible for…for what?  For people no longer taking pride in their work (I’m stretching, here, trying to come up with excuses for such shoddy service).  But the USPS structure has been in place for decades, and the service complaints of moiself  and my family and friends and neighbors have arisen, gradually but steadily, in the last 10 – 15 years.

 

Yep, this is what you paid priority rate for.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Another Visit To Memory Lane   [5]

Herbie Hancock and Van Morrison.  This was moiself’s  response to friend’s posting of one of those FB memes I think of as “culture shock” questions.  The question: What was the first concert you attended?

 

 

Herbie Hancock was the opening act, and Van Morrison was the headliner.   Quite the doubleheader, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

It was my first rock concert,  [6]  and I didn’t know the protocol.   When I informed my parents that friends and I were going to a music concert my parents asked me about the dress code…and for the first time it occurred to me, having never been to a concert before, that I might need to wear something other than my standard blue jeans.

Since the word concert was used, I thought the event might be a tad more formal than I was used to.  Thus I donned what, for me, were my dress-up duds: pants that were not jeans and had no mustard stains (some kind of plaid bell bottoms, I bet)…

 

 

…and a white blouse I borrowed from my older sister.  The friend and friend-of-a-friend I went to the concert with dressed along the same lines; the F-O-A-F’s older brother, who had procured the tickets and who was a veteran rock concert attendee, wore jeans and a t-shirt. After my friends and I arrived at the concert venue and were seated, we glanced around the venue, and I said to the friend seated next to me, “We look like narcs.”

At one point early on in Hancock’s opening set someone passed a joint down the row where my friends and I were seated.  I slipped into cultural anthropologist mode, observing the ritual.  When it was passed to moiself  I did not partake, but felt like I should somehow participate.  Holding the lit joint in my left hand, I dug in my purse   [7]   with my right hand and retrieved the emergency snack I’d brought along. I peeled back the wrapper of the Tootsie Roll® and passed it down the row of seats, along with the doobie I had declined to smoke.  The subsequent partakees seemed to be…a bit confused. 

About the music:  I recall almost nothing  of what Herbie Hancock and his band played except for one song: a highly syncopated jazz number with staccato vocalizations (I remember thinking of it as, “the hiccup song”).  As for the headliner….

Although I liked much of Van Morrison’s music before that show (and after), I was not impressed with his performance.  Halfway through his opening number it became obvious that he was off his-northern-Irish-ass drunk, which IMO was incredibly disrespectful of his audience.  His band got even less respect from him: our seats were good ones, close enough to the stage that I could lip read the insults and obscenities Morrison traded with his band, as well as detect the musicians’ expressions of disgust and impatience when Morrison would start a song, forget the lyrics, then start a different song and snap at them if they delayed in following along.   When a few audience members called out for songs they wanted to hear, Morrison flashed them sneers of utter contempt – at one point he even spat on the stage when someone called out the lyrics to a song he’d stumbled over.

 

 

Van Morrison was being marketed then (and still, even now) as some kind of Celtic soul mystic.   Mystic soul, my arse.  Self-important, Paddy-whacking,    [8]   twerp-troll was the impression I came away with.

I still like his song Gloria;  I like even better that Patti Smith blew him out of the water with what she did with her version of it.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you seek psychiatric help should your hairstyle guidelines ever be something along the lines of, ‘Home room in the front, recess in the back;’
May you have memorable stories of attending *your* first concert;
May y’all come back now, here?
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] Thus and now – sounds like a good title for a book.  Except that I’ve already done something like that (my collection of short fiction, This Here and Now published a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, by Scrivenery Press).

[2] My younger brother would not be born until the following summer.

[3] Of which my father himself was not fond of, to tell the truth, and he “got out of there” as he put it, as soon as he could (by enlisting in the army in WWII).

[4]  All of those shows seemed get cancelled around 1971.

[5] Which, although I’m using the term metaphorically here, was/is the actual name of a street in Santa Ana, whence moiself originated.

[6] I was in grade 7 or 8; cannot recall which.

[7] Yeah, I took a purse to a rock concert.  I didn’t even take a purse to school….

[8] My ethnic heritage is 50% Irish; this, in our culture’s bizarre calculus of who can say what to whom, I’m entitled to diss my own.

[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 Incomplete List Of Summer Entertainment I’m Not Recommending

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Department Of Not That You Asked…

But if you did, perchance, query moiself  thusly – “Robyn, what’s a song with an inspiringly aspirational and quirky chorus to sing along to?” I’d recommend Ingrid Michaelson’s You and I:

♫  Oh, let’s get rich
And buy our parents homes in the South of France
Let’s get rich
And give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich
And build a house on a mountain, making everybody look like ants
From way up there
You and I, you and I  ♫

 

But let’s not give everybody sweaters like this.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Not That You Asked, The Sequel

It also didn’t occur to you to ask me for a what-to-watch-on-a-streaming-service recommendation.  But since you were so pleased with my sing-along recommendation, now you’re on to, “And what’s your recommendation for a good stand up comedy performance to give me the summer giggles?”  To which I enthusiastically reply:

Wanda Sykes‘ latest standup special, “I’m An Entertainer.”

 

 

Worth the price of admission   [1]  alone are Syke’s bits where she incorporates her gift for physical comedy/pantomime along with her sharp observational wit.  There are too many such sketches to list here, but they include what really goes on in women’s restrooms, fantasizing about men’s men-o-pause afflictions, and where the frightened senators and representatives should have hidden on January 6 for maximum protection (suggestion: underneath Mitch McConnell‘s chin). Other Syke’s stories/observations range from the political to the personal and often a combination of the two, as in explaining white supremacy and privilege to her white family (her wife and two kids).

As for the latter, Sykes employs her ongoing, subtly hilarious (to moiself , at least) imitation of her French wife, which includes an ever-present “air cigarette.”   And as for the voice she assumes when pretending to speak as her wife…well…as Sykes herself might put it, Sykes cannot do a French accent to save her black ass.

Sidenote: Sykes has admitted  [2]    that her wife has un petit problème  with the way Sykes portrays her on stage.  She knows it’s for comic effect and mining the stereotype, but she (Sykes’ wife), in fact, does *not* smoke cigarettes.

About the black ass comment: you’ll hear a lot of strong, “adult” language in Syke’s routines.   If you’re not a fan of such…colloquialisms…moiself  hopes you can listen to what she is saying, instead of how she is saying it.    [3]  

 

French, oui; Wanda’s wife, non.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Not That You Asked, The Sequel To The Sequel

Ah, summer, the season of sun and fun and light entertainment.  And since you’ve been over the proverbial moon with my previous two recommendations, now you’re begging me for something a little more brain-stretching, such as:  “How’s about one of those sciency-type podcasts you listen to?”  Well, moiself  aims to please.

 

 

Ahem.

Get your ears and brains to the Hidden Brain podcast.  A recent episode, which I highly recommend, is titled, The Best Years of Your Life:

” Aging isn’t just a biological process. Our outlooks and emotions also change as we age, often in ways that boost our well-being. Psychologist Laura Carstensen unpacks the science behind this surprising finding, and shares what all of us can learn from older people.”

Early in the episode Carstensen tells the story of what led to her spending time with older people in care facilities, which caused her to realize her commonality with them and which also provided her with an aha moment:

“…the insight I had about aging…is that aging is a *biological* process, but it is driven and shaped by the *social* world.”

Moiself  has written, previously and more extensively, about the social prejudice against aging which is, as I see it, the most universal and illogical of prejudices.  Gender; economic class; nationality; ethnic background; worldview and/or religion – we will all be Old People® someday (unless we die when we’re younger. or, RIGHT NOW).  But this particular podcast episode isn’t so much about the prejudices re aging –  although of course, they are mentioned, as, for example, in the episode’s intro:

“Movies, tv shows, and the fashion industry, still worship at the altar of youth.  People around the word spend billions of dollars on potions, injections, and surgical interventions, to keep the signs of age at bay.  Clickbait ads on many websites show you what the stars of yesteryears look like today.  The message couldn’t be clearer:  Aging is a terrible thing; growing old is a horror show. “

 

( AARP image )

 

Like podcast guest Carstensen, the much-younger version of moiself  rarely considered the ramifications of aging.  Unlike the younger version of moiself , the younger Carstensen was in a horrific car crash at age 21.  In the months following the accident, when she was in hospital and rehab wards with very elderly women, Carstensen started to realize what she and they had in common and began to think about her future, as in, thinking about getting older. Later on, when Carstensen completed her education and began to do research, what she learned surprised her –  and others in her field –  when comprehensive studies began to contradict the myths of aging.

Eventually Carstensen became part of investigative teams involved in the largest study ever done on the psychopathology of aging.  Subsequent studies reaffirmed the surprising results – surprising as in, given the prejudices we’ve all been sold on what happends to aging minds.  The data overwhelmingly and repeatedly flew in the face of prejudice, intuition, and cultural beliefs, and showed that which came to be referred to as “the paradox of aging.”  Which is that, absent debilitating illness:

The older years are the happiest and most stable and psychopathology free for most people.    [4]

 

Carstensen:
“Increasingly, older people had less negative emotions – less fear; less anger; less disgust, and just as much happiness and joy and calm…. older people were happier in their day to day lives than younger people were….

The paradox really was that aging entails a lot of bad things: cognitively, people often do change, or feel their memory isn’t as good…not to mention the physical changes with age – most of us experience more aches and pains. And then we’re in the societal context: people aren’t taking us as seriously as they used to; there’s an invisibility people talk about, when they get old, that people walk almost right through them, and they just aren’t noticed…and so with all of that happening with aging…how can it be that older people, emotionally, are doing well?….”

Podcast host Shankar Vidantam:
“Social status; physical health…if all those things  (decline)…you would predict that the people would then have worse psychological health, and yet (the studies showed) that psychological well-being seemed to be improving.”

That’s enough of a preview – listen for y’alls selves, if the subject interests you.  Really, it’s great news for everyone…well, almost everyone.

This fact –  that as people age they become happier with their day to day lives than younger people – is not going to sell many anti-aging medications or procedures.  Unless, of course, the fear of living mongers geniuses in advertising reverse their strategy.  Instead of concentrating their efforts to convince ever-younger groups – people in their 30s and even 20s – that they need anti-aging procedures, they can start marketing *maturing* procedures:

“Everyone knows that the senior years are the best years of your life.  Don’t let the visible limitations of your youth determine how you and others see yourself.  Want to look years happier than you actually are?  Let us add a few laugh and smile lines to your sullen, immature, angst-ridden visage…”

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

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

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

“…. (Ricky Gervais) explained how he became an atheist, recounting an afternoon at home when he was about 8. His mother was ironing and he was drawing Jesus on the cross as part of his bible studies homework.  His brother, Bob, 11 years older than Ricky, asked him why he believed in God, a question which mortified their mother. Gervais remembered thinking,

‘Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a god and my faith was strong, it didn’t matter what people thought. Oh … hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour I was an atheist.’ “

(from FFRF’s Freethinker of the Day, Richy Gervais  )

 

 

 

*   *   *

May your peers (or your own self) recognize you as Employee of the Month;
May you be entertained by the art of Wanda Sykes and Ingrid Michaelson;
May we all aspire to “give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance;”
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Which is free, if you’re a Netflix subscriber.  Still…worth it.

[2] In previous standup specials or interviews, I can’t remember which.

[3] A practice we should all aspire to in our dealings with anyone, oui ?

[4] The surprising results only helped to affirm the results – as in, more scientists wanted to check the studies and do their own, because what the data showed refuted the “common wisdom.”  Which was, the guest noted, “the best thing for a scientist,” because having others check your work and do their own work is the best way to confirm data.

[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 Self I’m Not Controlling

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Department Of Listen To This, For Something Insightful To Consider
Chapter 347 In A Never-Ending Series

What could be more appropriate for Spring, the season of growth, renewal and new beginnings, than to consider what we think about, and how we pursue, happiness and contentment?

(intro to) Hidden Brain Podcast:  Happiness 2.0: The Path To Contentment.

“The conventional way most of us go about accomplishing anything, is to work hard at it.  When it comes to happiness, many of us say, ‘If this is something I really want, I need to go out and get it.’

This might be especially true in the United States, where the Declaration of Independence celebrates the ‘pursuit of happiness.’  The problem is, pursuing happiness can have the paradoxical effect of chasing happiness away.  Trying to elude unhappiness can be similarly counterproductive.

(in this episode we) kick off a month-long series we’re calling Happiness 2.0. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more elusive the harder we chase it, and what we can do instead to build a lasting sense of contentment.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Commander In Chief

What would moiself  do without podcasts?   [1]

Can’t remember where I heard this (a podcast, most likely), so moiself  apologizes for the lack of attribution….

Research into human nature  (aka the full employment strategy for psychologiss) has led to the tactic of *reframing* negative or tricky situations, which can be an effective solution to understanding and solving them.  For example, take the words self-control and self-command.

 

 

Talking about “self-control” seems to have fallen out of behavioral science vogue. What is become more popular is attributing bad habits and harmful behavior patterns to a combination of genetics, environment, etc. Certainly, these are all factors for any situation, positive or negative.  But if you have a problem with the concept of self-control (or even with the term itself), try reframing it to this: self-command.

But first, we at self-command central  [2]  need to define a term that is used in subsequent paragraphs:  Dead Food.

 

Oh, do you really?

 

 

“ ‘Dead food’ is the newest title given to food that has had the life packaged, preserved, or cooked out of it, to the point where it has become sadly void of virtually all nutritional value. Dead food refers to processed food or food without nutrients. It is called dead because it has been refined to a point that it is bereft of minerals, vitamins, and fibers.

These types of ‘foods’ are not foods!!!  Rather they are a series of synthetically derived ingredients that are mixed together into something that tastes OK, has a long shelf life and actually does more harm than good to our health. In recent times these health depriving ‘foods’ have become quite popular and often a staple in the Standard Western Diet. As such, we have seen an incredible rise in modern diseases like diabetes, obesity, autoimmune diseases, infertility, cancer and more….

 Live foods are foods that are consumed fresh, raw and/or in a condition as close as possible to their original, vibrant, living state. The basic idea behind all live foods is retaining the very best that natural foods have to offer, including live enzymes, antioxidants and other nutrients.
(dead food v. alive food, deepH.com )

 

Yep, I’m out to ruin Girl Scout cookies for you.

 

“There are numerous ways to classify food—low fat, high sodium, low fiber, high sugar, clean, gluten free, vegetarian, lactose free, to name a few. But what if you were told the path to good health was to eat only ‘alive’ food and avoid ‘dead’ food?

So, what exactly is a ‘dead’ food? If it can sit on your counter for days or weeks and not go bad, then it’s a dead food. These foods are refined, highly processed, often synthetic and have little-to-no nutritional value. Think about foods like cheese-flavored crackers, meal replacement bars, fruit snacks and flavored beverages. Chemicals? Check. Artificial colors and flavors? Check. Ingredients on the label that you can’t pronounce? Check.

Unfortunately, these processed, chemical-rich foods are pervasive in the American diet. We want fast, convenient and tasty food and there’s plenty on the supermarket shelves that fit the bill.”
( Alive food v. Dead food, ACE certification )

*Most of us know about (or are at least familiar with the concept of ) the nutritional ideal of the “perfect plate,” which consists of 50 % veggies and fruit, 25 % whole grains, and 25 % a lean/high fiber protein source.  [3]

* Most of us know, or at least have heard, that we should not drink our calories, and that sugar-laden soft drinks, milk shakes and sports drinks – even allegedly healthy smoothies – are awash in calories but don’t make you feel full, and that diet sodas and artificially sweetened beverages are no better than their full sugar counterparts and in fact are also linked to increased food cravings for high calorie foods and Type II diabetes    [4]….

* Most of us know, or at least have heard, that (as per the AARP’s phrasing) “ Your sainted mother  [5]  was wrong — it’s bad to clean your plate. The iron rule: Exercise more; eat less….”

 

Damn right I’m gonna eat more than one slice at the office potluck because I * deserve* it, and besides, my co-workers are all jerks….

 

*   *   *

 

We don’t necessarily let our meals be dominated by simple carbs (bread, white rice, white pasta, sugar, chips) and soft drinks, and all the synthetic snack foods, cereals, and other dead foods, because we’re lazy or incompetent or greedy.    [6]

But it’s likely we’ve  stopped commanding you own lives. Who is in charge?

Advertisers for the industrial/fast/dead food industries are trying to get us to eat when we’re not hungry, and to think that we’re hungry 24/7.  The entertainment industry wants us to park your badonkadonks on the sofa from dinner time to bedtime, stream our brains out and then brag about it later.  Remember when the word “binge” did not have positive connotations (“We ordered in and binged all episodes of ‘Housewives of Chernobyl’ last night…”)?

Self-command.  Who is calling the shots in your life, and what are the areas in your life  where the commander is anyone, anything, but yourself?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Back to Happiness and Contentment:
In Praise Of Simple Pleasures

There is simple yet insightful essay (recently referred to by  The Washington Post Columnist Carolyn Hax) that, although written some 18 years ago, addresses some of what we now might call gratitude awareness and mindfulness before those concepts got into the mainstream.

When I read the essay I was reminded of a phone call in January with daughter Belle.  After catching up with her goings-on, Belle asked MH and I about what we were doing, and I couldn’t really think of much to say, other than something like it was just another “uneventful normal day.”

Many “normal days” in a row, are, as the essay’s author points out, the bulk of days for most people.  Thus, since “most of life *is* normal days, to be in love with them is to be in love with life.”

To be in love with normal days is to be in love with life.

 

 

However much we await the arrival of fantastic things, or dread the tragedies and anticipate their passing…it all does pass, or at least change.  Meanwhile…

“How many of us pass our lives in anticipation? Of the larger homes, smaller bodies and fattened bank accounts of our dreams; of the losses and disasters of our nightmares? We’re so focused on what we pray will happen or on what we hope never will happen that we’re blind to what is.

What is, for most people, is normal days.

Days when you’re aware of being neither particularly sick nor well. When your relatives, friends and partners waver between buoying you up and sitting on your nerves; when you’re too busy to notice much of anything — except that you’re too busy. Days when people ask, “So what happened today?” and you pause, think and come up with squat.

Those are days worth loving.”
(excerpt from “The Dog’s Wet And Life Is Wonderful,”
Donna Britt, The Washington Post, June 16, 1995)

I found the essay both sweet and profound, and hope y’all check it out.

And in praise and recognition of simple pleasures, moiself  will confess to the first one that sprang to my normal (well, for me) mind:

I love it that my family knows I will appreciate (and use) a jar of “farty putty.”    [7]

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Secret To Eternal Youth

Dateline: Monday, North Coast Pinball.  I am playing one of the arcade’s newest – as in, most recently acquired – games.    [8]   A ~12 year old boy, whom I’d seen earlier playing some of the games, was playing chess with his sister (? they look like fraternal twins),  at the arcade’s games table, which is a few feet from the pinball machine I’m playing. He and his sister get up to leave, and he approaches me.  He looks at me shyly, glances down at his shoes, then looks up and smiles the sweetest bright-eyed smile I’ve seen in years.  He holds out two tokens in his right hand, and nods at me.

“For me?” I ask.  He nods again, and blushes.  I take the tokens and thank him.  The two kids leave the arcade, and I inform WI, the arcade owner, of this encounter.

“Awww,” WI says, raising his voice two octaves.  “ ‘Will you be my valentine?’ “

“It was so sweet,” moiself  gushes.  “Like being asked to go steady.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week 

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
 (Author E.B. White )

 

 

*   *   *

May you expeience the emotional equivalent of being asked to go steady;
May you strive to be in love with the life of normal days;
May you find a way to work the word  badonkadonks  into your next conversation;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Plenty, actually.  Just like I did, and continue to do, before this genre of news and entertainment existed.

[2] Okay; there’s no such thing, but I’m working on it.

[3] Plant-based, ideally!

[4] Artificial sweeteners lead to a reduction in the hormone that inhibits appetite, increase the risk of Type II diabetes and obesity (Multiple sources, including NPR 10-7-21

[5] Or grandparents, who lived through The Great Depression and had it hammered into them that you never know when (or if) your next meal is coming so you must eat all of whatever is offered to you.

[6] Or, perhaps a brutally frank self-assessment and/or some sessions with a trained counselor might indicate that, maybe, we *are* and now that we have identified these tendencies we can work on overcoming and/or managing them.

[7] Which is why I found one in last year’s Christmas stocking.

[8] Bally’s World Cup Soccer.  I love it when the machine’s voice yells, “GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAL!”

The Pretty I’m Not Owing You

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Department Of Guilty Pleasures

Strikethrough that!  What a lame expression. If it gives me joy, then it ain’t (and moiself isn’t) guilty.

Look what I’ve rented for three months.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Book I’m Not Recommending

…well, sorta, if not wholeheartedly:  Women Don’t Owe You Pretty,    [1]   by Florence Given.   However, I’m still thinking about the book, almost two weeks after finishing it.  So, for moiself , that counts as a recommendation.

WDOYP  was this month’s choice for the book group  [2]   moiself  hosts.   As described in this post, Book Club has themes for each month.  Seeing as how March is Women’s’ History Month, Feminist/pro-woman titles is this month’s theme.

One BC member said she had a problem getting into WDOYP, at first (me, too).  As in, it took us several chapters to get used to the Ms. Given’s prose patterns, and we (mistakenly, ultimately) felt that with regard to both content and style the book was aimed more towards young(er) women, and not cranky, been-around-the-block-and-back feminists like ourselves.  The afore-mentioned BC member, who grew to like and appreciate the book, nailed it in her description of the author’s tendency toward curt prose and didactic, bullet-point ideas: “I felt like I was being shouted at.”

 

 

Upon reflection, I’m thinking that many of the contradictions I found in the book are not so much contradictions as they are the author’s attempts to deal with the conundrums inherent in being a feminist in this or any society. Given decries the culture and political, social, and economic systems wherein women are raised to put their appearance at the forefront and to dress and behave for the male gaze– systems she wants to dismantle or at least overhaul.  Yet she stresses how we must not criticize women who do organize their appearance for the male gaze, because they have been socialized to do so.

As I was pondering this sticky wicket, for some reason I turned to the book’s back cover.  Checking out the authors’ photo is something I almost never do,   [3]  but this time I did, and I didn’t know whether to guffaw or smirk.  Was the picture that Given (and her editor/publisher?) chose – Given clad in a no-bra midriff top, her wide-eyed gaze smoldering beneath her Charlie’s Angels hairstyle –  meant to be ironic?  As in, was it an intentional a juxtaposition of the author’s premise and exposition – that women do not and should not present themselves for the male gaze – with an image of the author which references the most male-gazieest pop culture female characters ever?

 

 

Or perhaps, moiself  thought, she’s just young and vain?  In the book, Ms. Given mentions –  always in context to whatever she’s shouting writing about yet more often than I found necessary –  being aware of her privilege as a “slim, pretty, white woman.”  Sure, she’s committed to feminist principles…but she’s also an occupant of those here-I-am-look-at-me, Instagram Tik-Tok, self-promotion, social media worlds    [4]  which so many people her age   [5]  inhabit.  A quick search revealed to moiself  that Given is quite active on those sites – sites which, as many therapists and [other/older] feminists point out, promote unhealthy body images and are detrimental to the mental health of girls and women

Given makes you go, girl  type noises re women and girls who “choose” to dress in what might be seen as a provocative manner, as long as those females are doing it for “themselves” or because it’s what *they* like, and thus they are expressing their authentic, feminine selves… Yet how can they reliably know that those styles and modes – that *any* styles and modes – of dress and presentation are what they truly like?  How can you know what your “authentic” likes are/self is, when you’ve been propagandized (read: poisoned) all your life about what is appropriate female attire and physical presentation?

 

 

Case in point: high heels are  poor podiatric shoe choices bad for you – that’s a medical fact, not a style opinion.  My encounters with women who describe themselves as progressive and feminist yet still think stiletto heels are appropriate dress-up attire have always chapped my ass (and heels) – I want to grab those women by their shoulders (but caefully, because they might topple over) and sputter,

“ *Who*  told you these contraptions are appropriate and/or attractive?!?”

Your only excuse for such a “choice” of footwear would be if you were a native of the planet Cripfemme, where the females have only three toes: two short ones on the side and a very long pointy one in the middle.  Otherwise, do you expect moiself – and yourself – to believe that you came to this conclusion on your own, without any outside influences, and that this kind of shoe is practical and comfortable?

 

Something tells me the leader of Planet Cripfemme looks like this.

 

All in all, WDOYP was a good book for discussion and reflection (obviously, as I am still doing so).  Despite her overuse (IMO) of relationship buzzword descriptors  (e.g., “toxic”), the author has some insightful phrasings and framings of various issues, including the chapter wherein she delineates the “misogyny tax” women pay, and another chapter dealing with the prejudice against single women:

“ ‘Single’ doesn’t mean ‘waiting for someone.’
Choosing to be single is an autonomous choice, and a lot of men fear autonomous women and gender-nonconforming-people.  It reminds them that we have other purposes on this planet than to serve them….
When people make autonomous decisions about their bodies and their lifestyles, they are met with a whole spectrum of resistance, and this is particularly true for marginalized people.  Anything that deviates from the narrative society has written for and about you is shamed and unaccepted.”

Overall, I’m glad I read it.  Note:  WDOYP does contain trigger warnings on a couple of chapters dealing with sexual assault and harassment.    [6]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Adjective That Moiself  Does Not
Want To Hear Y’all Use As Noun

But it’s too late, as its informal usage has already entered certain dictionaries.   [7]

I’m talking about creative, when used for a person or an occupation.  We got your firefighters, we got your x-ray technicians, your IT specialists, your butchers and bakers and candlestick makers…and now we have Creatives ®.  It’s no longer a mere modifier (“What a creative floral arrangement” or “Those kids are full of creative energy.”) It is being used as a noun, and thus preceded by an indefinite article.

The hubris of those who would so refer to themselves, moiself  can scarcely imagine.  Except that I don’t need to imagine it, as twice this week I heard more than one person   [8]   do this (which is what sparked this rant post):

“As a creative, I…”

“I am a creative, and so I….”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Because We Are Sheep, That’s Why

I’m noticing a new thing at one of the grocery stores where I shop. Just inside the store’s entrance there will be a couple of young-ish men and women, standing alert and dressed more formally than most people do for picking up some produce. These folks try to make eye contact with shoppers who enter and exit the store, and when they do, they approach the shopper and ask, “One quick question?“ Whether you say yes or no, they proceed with the question:

“What is your current mobile service?”

I’m surprised and disappointed to have observed so many shoppers answer this question despite the uncomfortable, oh-please-leave-me-alone-I-just-want-to-get-some-salad-veggies looks on their faces. 

Why do people do that – answer questions from strangers, when they know what’s coming and don’t want to be subjected to a sales pitch?  They seemingly feel obliged to respond to that intrusive query…which, okay, is not as intrusive as, “What is your current underwear size?” but which is nonetheless personal. Your utility services and bills – that’s personal finance info, and none of anyone else’s business.  What is it about human nature that so many of us respond?  Oh yeah, because we are….

 

 

From what moiself  has observed, the Mobile Service Shillers®  work as partners: one stands near the entrance/exit doors, another about 20 feet inside the store.  I’ve seen them signal to each other, with eye and/or hand gestures and head nods, indicating (I deduced) a shopper they did not engage.  Thus, if the first one doesn’t “get “ you (or is talking to someone else) the other has a shot, either when you’re entering or leaving the store.

Up until recently I have observed the MSS-ers closely but never answered them, until the past two weeks when I grew tired of ignoring them and decided to engage.  Since then  I’ve been approached four times while pushing my cart on my way out of the store, and I’ve answered four times.

“Hello! Excuse me; what is your current mobile service?”

Time #1: Moiself  smiled perkily and said, “None of your business.”

Time #2:  I donned my best non sequitur expression and replied,  “Spatula.”

Time #3:  “As an all-natural family we communicate via strings tied to paper cups.”

Time #4:  This time, the MS Shiller®  got specific, and asked if my mobile service was____ or ____ (the two most common carriers in this area ).  “Neither,” I replied, opening my hand and mimicking the flip phone gesture Captain Kirk made when he was going to request Scotty to beam him up. “I use my Star Trek communicator.”

“A communicator!” Mobile Service Shiller®  overly enthusiastically gasped.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him signal to his partner with a shake of his head, as if to say, “Nope – leave this one alone.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week:

“Men often ask me, ‘Why are your female characters so paranoid?’
It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.”     [9]

( Margaret Atwood )

*   *   *

May you never confuse recognition with paranoia;
May you give yourself permission not to anawer shilllers of any kind ;
May you have a happy day celebrating being Irish in America;   [10]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Great title, BTW.

[2] (the oh-so-cleverly named, Book Club)

[3] Writers should be read and not seen ( Moiself  included).  I generally doesn’t care or want to know about an author’s physical appearance and/or personal life.

[4] Worlds which seem, IMO, to mainly consist of constantly posting images of yourself, over and over and over….

[5] She is 24.

[6] Although, thinking of a friend who appreciates those warnings, there was also material earlier in the book and outside of those chapters which I thought could be difficult for someone who’s been raped and/or abused.

[7] Misapply any word  long enough and it’ll get an entry.

[8] Radio news shows and podcast interviews.

[9] Why is there no footnote here?  Paranoid, who, me?

[10] St. Patrick’s Day…that’s what it essentially is, in the USA.

The Cartoonist(s) I’m Not Defending

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Dateline: Friday morning; watching a movie on TV while warming-up on my elliptical machine before my streaming yoga class. When Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone takes a commercial break, I discover a new (well, to moiself  ) tactic in the using-the-fear-of-living-to-sell-stuff  campaigns.  Along with “anti-aging” potions, there now is at least one skin product company that is promoting their products as “ageless.“ Hmmm  So, if you use their serums and creams and lotions you can be ageless.  Which, if I understand the meaning of the suffix -less, means you will no longer have age – you know, like people who don’t yet exist, or are dead.

 

Sign me up!

 

And what a convenient segue to…

Department Of Topical Topics

Dateline: Sunday 1:30 pm-ish; MH and I driving home after dining out.  During lunch we’d discussed our previous evening’s watching of the first three episodes of season 3 of Star Trek’s Picard.  We talked about what we liked and didn’t like plot-wise, and what we both found distracting and disturbing:  the “new face’ in the cast,   [1]  which was actually a familiar face, or should have been.  Translation: we were both saddened and disappointed by the draconian visage of actor Gates McFadden (Star Trek/TNG’s Dr. Beverly Crusher), yet another actor who oh-so-obviously had drastic self-mutilation “work done.”

How moiself  cringed to behold her…and I’d been looking forward to seeing her character again.  I’d just listened to McFadden’s most recent podcast: I’ve listened to many episodes of it, where I’ve learned that in addition to being an actor and choreographer, McFadden is also passionate about her work as a theater director and acting teacher.  I don’t know if she’s still teaching acting, but if she is, I’m wondering how she would counsel novice actors – in particular, female actors –  re the thespian principle of how your body is your instrument…and your face is attached to your body and is the most expressive part of your instrument, but so many actors now seem to view their face as an ornament – passive and decorative, not active and expressive – which needs periodic refurbishing.

 

 

McFadden and most of the TNG cast are making guest and/or recurring appearances on Picard.  Assuming McFadden’s fellow TNG actors hadn’t seen her in a while,    [2]   here’s another thing I wondered: one by one, as her former castmates are filming their scenes in which Dr. Crusher and their respective characters have roles, they see her grotesque altered appearance for the first time, backstage, and…how do they react?

They *are* actors, so it’s likely that, after a truly sincere, “It’s so good to work with you again!” they convincingly spew the obligatory, “You look great!”…or just change the subject.   [3]

I feel so bad for – nope, wait, I do not.  Not gonna apologize for my honest reaction.  I’m just so sad to know that if I were to have met her, I’d be stifling my What happened to you – you look terrible?!? Whatever you did, let it wear off and DON’T DO IT AGAIN reaction, which would be a cruel thing to say to anyone.  And after it’s done – when it’s “too late” – no one is likely giving her honest feedback. 

What kind of a shallow and shitty world makes her think that she had to do that to herself?  And who LIES to her (who lies to *anyone* who does these procedures?) after her face has been sliced the pulled and stitched and bloated and tells her she looks great, or at least somehow better?

It’s unfair/not nice, I know.   Female actors encounter a loss of work if they age naturally, then get criticized when they attempt to mask their age surgically.  But…oh, Ms. McFadden…Gates, Gates, Gates, girl…things aren’t going to change unless we decide to change them, by not capitulating to the sexism and agism which drive such decisions.  And if you’re not moved to rebel by realizing the dirty cultural and political standards that drive the plastic surgery industry, what about trying a dose of this reality:

* You don’t  look “better” after cosmetic surgery – no one who undergoes these procedures does.
* It calls attention to your aging, and your fear of it;
you look distorted, not younger.

 

Before

     

After

 

Après lunch I opened the LA Times app on my phone, and saw the latest Steve Lopez column.  Longtime journalist Lopez started a new project several months back, which the Times announced thusly:

“…we are thrilled to announce that Lopez is launching a new column, Golden State, which will explore the challenges, and occasional thrills, of aging.
Nearly 6 million people 65 and older live in California, and that number will nearly double by 2030. That growing demographic grapples daily with care-giving shortages, age discrimination, isolation and health issues. … They are negotiating relationships with adult children and with grandchildren. In some instances, they’re raising their grandchildren. At the same time, many people 65 and older continue to be at the top of their game….”

And the focus of Lopez’s most recent column? 

“We live in a society obsessed with youth, fearful of death and allergic to wrinkles.
But actress Mimi Rogers, who is 67, is having none of it….
It’s refreshing to see a big-name Hollywood actor age naturally and gracefully rather than grotesquely.”

Mimi Rogers had contacted Lopez about another article he’d written. They corresponded, she agreed to be interviewed about her recent acting roles, and then…

… she was happy to speak her mind…about ageism, longstanding societal pressures on women to look young, the double standard for men, and ‘the plastic surgery nightmares we see all around us.’
‘This is me, this is my face,” Rogers says, ‘and I’m not going to show up with fish lips.
Rogers said she feels fortunate to have been able to consistently find work as she has aged, and she revels in her current role on Bosch: Legacy… a full-on, artful and talented lawyer who plays her age while fighting for her clients and her causes.
In many ways, Rogers said, this is a good time for older actors because streaming of high-quality shows has opened some doors. But biases and double standards are still firmly in place.
‘It goes back to when Cary Grant was cavorting with 22-year-olds’ on screen,’ Rogers said. ‘I think it’s better in Europe, but a lot of women talk about this idea that past a certain age, you become invisible. It’s like your sexual currency is gone, and that currency goes away much more rapidly for women.’
We’re at something of a ‘turnstile moment,’ says University of Michigan cultural critic Susan J. Douglas, author of “Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media.” Stereotypes about female aging persist, she said, but there’s been a pushback and ‘a visibility revolt’ in which actresses, including Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, ‘are still opening movies and TV shows, and political figures, including Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, are ‘staking a claim to be visible in public life.’

 

 

Moiself’s  insertion:  Yeah, stake that claim….even as people like CNN Newscaster Don Lemon (age 57) keep saying (and thinking) shit things like this:   [4]

CNN host Don Lemon shocked his co-host after saying that Nikki Haley, who recently announced her plan to run for president in 2024, and other women over the age of 50 aren’t in their “prime.”
On Thursday morning’s episode of CNN This Morning, Lemon and co-host Poppy Harlow discussed Haley’s recent comments about requiring competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.
“This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable. I think it’s the wrong road to go down. She says people, you know, politicians are suddenly not in their prime. Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry. When a woman is considered in her prime is in her twenties and thirties,” Lemon said.
(Newsweek 2-16-23)

 

 

More Lopez column excerpts (from “ ‘This is me, this is my face’: Actress Mimi Rogers on aging naturally, without cosmetic surgery,”
my emphases, LA Times 3-4-23 )

‘Mimi’s position is so important to the rest of us, because celebrity culture often sets the standard for everyday women — the standards of slimness and beauty and looking young,’ Douglas said.
Many women, Douglas continued, face a “punishing” dilemma — especially those in entertainment and public life. Wrinkles can threaten their livelihood, but ‘if you go under the knife and don’t look like yourself, you’re attacked for being narcissistic or wanting to hold on to the past. So it’s really hard to win.’
And then there’s the multibillion-dollar ‘anti-aging industrial complex’…diligently grooming the next cult of warriors in the fight against the inevitable.
“…it’s really quite a brilliant campaign,” said Douglas. ‘They are now marketing Botox to people in their 20s, and if you get people to be phobic about aging when they’re young, you have an ever-replenishing market for your products.’ “

 

*   *   *

Department Of Silly Moiself

  …for doubting that Yet Another Bonehead remark® could come prancing out of the mouth of Senator Ted Cruz.

Last Saturday morning, I saw this social media post from a friend who is a longtime activist   [5]  in the National Gay Pilots Association:

NGPA Stands with Transgender Aviation Community
On March 1, 2023, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “It gives no comfort to the flying public that their pilot might be a transgender witch but doesn’t actually know how to prevent a plane from crashing…”
The NGPA strongly condemns Sen. Cruz’s transphobic statement and welcomes the opportunity to educate Sen. Cruz and members of the Senate Commerce Committee on effective Crew Resource Management, how an inclusive flight deck is a safe flight deck, and how to be a supportive ally to Transgender aviators across the industry. Read the full press release here.

 

 

I had to look up the video (here it is) of Cruz’s comments; I thought the report of it might be an exaggeration, because I couldn’t quite believe that anyone would utter the words “transgender witches” with regard to anything FAA-related.

 

Someone needs to cast a spell on that man.

Also, as a member of the Flying Public ® (and therefore qualified to speak for ALL OF US), I know that witches have a millennia of skillful flying under their belts hats.  Thus, I’ve no problem with witches of any gender orientation being involved with aviation.  In case my opinion on the matter isn’t clear, behold my favorite of my car’s many bumper stickers:

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Speaking Of Boneheads

I don’t read many comic strips anymore, in part due to my (mostly but not exclusively) subscribing to online newspapers.  Even when MH and I subscribed to three “dead tree” newspapers and moiself  would scan the comics pages, I hadn’t paid attention to Dilbert in years if not decades.  I thought Dilbert was a clever idea when it started – the cubicle culture was a fresh and ripe venue for satire.  Eventually it seemed to me that Dilbert kept repeating itself.  [6]   I stopped checking it out because I found it boring; also, there was a certain undertone of…smugness(?)…I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Moiself  didn’t know the strip was still running until its creator, Scott Adams, got into a brouhaha after he got ahold of some wicked Maui Wowie decided that the world needed to hear his WTF?!? opinions on race relations he broadcasted on his YouTube channel.  [7]

Adams reportedly has a history of airing “problematic” views (including statements that can be taken as anti-COVID vaccination, claiming he lost job opportunities because he is white, and questioning the Holocaust death estimates).  On February 22 he posted a rant (YouTube livestream ) wherein, after referencing a poll by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Group that found only a slim majority of Black Americans agreed with the weirdly phrased statement, “It’s okay to be white,” Adams said that Black Americans are “a hate group” and advised white people to “get the hell away” from them.

 

Historical context:

“The phrase ‘it’s okay to be White’ was popularized in 2017 as a trolling campaign meant to provoke liberals into condemning the statement and thus, the theory went, proving their own unreasonableness. White supremacists picked up on the trend, adding neo-Nazi language, websites or images to fliers with the phrase….

‘Anyone who did know the history of it or who had a suspicion about the history of it might react to that Rasmussen question with some skepticism,’ said Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies racial attitudes and public emotions. ‘And that wouldn’t be a sign that they didn’t like White people.’
(“A poll asked if it’s ‘OK to be white.’ Here’s why the phrase is loaded.” The Washington Post, 2-28-23 )

 

Did Adams not know (or care) about that tricky phrase’s history? Did he wonder, even for a moment, about that poll’s question’s phrasing? 

I have no idea.  However, IMO what some other cartoonists have said is equally or more troubling than Adams’ rant.

( Excerpts from “Cartoonists say a rebuke of ‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams is long overdue,” my emphases, NPR news 2-28-23 ):

“…(other) cartoonists say Adams has a long history of spewing problematic views…
‘It begs the question, now that everyone is piling on him, what took so long?’ said Keith Knight, an illustrator known for his comic strips The Knight Life, (th)ink and The K Chronicles….
After receiving widespread pushback for his offensive rant, Adams described himself as getting canceled. But (some) cartoonists argue that he is simply being held accountable for his remarks.
‘By Adams saying he’s been canceled, its him not owning up to his own responsibility for the things he said and the effect they have on other people,’ said Ward Sutton, who has contributed illustrations to The New York Times, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone‘He’s trying to turn himself into a victim when he himself has been a perpetrator of hate.’
…Similarly, Hector Cantú, best known for his Latino-American comic Baldo, said he believes in freedom of speech, but not freedom from repercussions.
‘Don’t gloss this over by saying it’s politics or it’s cancel culture,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to offend people, you risk paying the price.’

 

 

Seriously?

Do some deep yoga breaths, Cantú, and consider this: How do you define what the “price” is?

A blanket statement like If you’re going to offend people, you risk paying the price could be used to justify anything, as long as someone feels “offended.”

* What about “the price” Salman Rushdie has paid ? After all, he “had an effect on” – he  “offended” –  many, many people.
* What about the attack on the French newspaper, Charlie Hebro (12 murdered ; 11 injured) by an Islamic terrorist group, after the satirical publication ran cartoons that many people found offensive?
* And what about Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who, in collaboration with Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali made a TV film which criticized conservative Muslim clergy for perpetuating views that are anti-women and anti-gay?  van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death on the streets of Amsterdam for his “offensive” views and films,   [8]  and Hirsi Ali received numerous death threats and had to go into hiding.

Look: It’s no surprise to moiself  that Adams’ rant makes him sound like a Major Dickhead.

 

That’s *General* Dickhead to you, ma’am!

 

There are reasons I chose to stop reading Dilbert.  And newspapers are, of course free, to choose which strips they will carry and which they won’t, for whatever reasons.  But, hello, I am greatly troubled by Cantú’s comment.  I believe Cantú’s attitude is a danger to intellectual liberty and freedom of expression – I suppose I should say I’m greatly *offended* by him, and then, what?  I could be justified in making Cantú risk paying the price…whatever price I decide is appropriate re the depth of my umbrage?

*   *   *

Department Of Must See TV

So much to complain about, this past week!

 

 

Thus, I was happy find something worthy of anti-complaint.  Moiself  did something I’ve never done before: I wrote a letter to the producer(s) of a TV show.  Here it is, in its entirety:

The 3-2-23 episode of Grey’s Anatomy (“All Star”) was a stunner, for me.  First, the obligatory listing of my commentary credentials:

* I worked for nine years in women’s reproductive health care; five of those in a private OB-GYN practice and four in various Planned Planned Parenthood clinics.
* I am a human being.

The episode’s storyline which inspired me to write featured a young mother who suffered intractable non-treatment-responsive, devastating, postpartum depression after the births of each of her two children.  She and her husband suffered a contraceptive failure and she was faced with a third, unplanned pregnancy.  She chose to terminate her pregnancy to save her own mental health and to be able to be a fully present mother to her two young children.

What was stunning for me was when I realized how rare it was – what I was seeing. How refreshing to see a storyline involving a woman’s decision to have an abortion presented so forthrightly – as in, not involving hysteria or judgment, but wherein a patient needing medical services was able to make the best choice for herself and her family, and was able to do so legally, and with competent and compassionate medical care.  Having worked in an abortion clinic, I also appreciated the depiction, once again competent and compassionate, of the abortion procedure itself.

Keep up the good work – and the story lines!

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [9]

 

*   *   *

May you be part of the aging naturally visibility revolt;
May you be wary of how you react when you are “offended;”
May you cherish the comical absurdity of terms like transgender witches;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I almost didn’t recognize her…except that she was identified as Dr. Crusher.

[2] They’ve all been pursuing other gigs since the series went off the air and the last TNG movie was made, which was over 20 years ago.

[3] And how many of the male cast has had cosmetic procedures? Hard to tell, although, typically, males are “allowed” their wrinkles (and can use facial hair to a certain extent to hide sagging chins and lip and mouth lines). Patrick Stewart, who plays Jean Luc Picard, certainly looks *near* his age, but his forehead is suspiciously taut.

[4] Yes, in 2023, not 1923.

[5] Founding member, if memory serves.

[6] Without announcing, “this strip is a rerun.”  Hey, everybody needs a vacation…

[7] Yep, I didn’t know Dilbert was still running and also didn’t know Adams had a YouTube channel.

[8] van Gogh was already dead when his murderer used a knife to pin a death threat to Ali on van Gogh’s chest.  Ali subsequently went into hiding under government protection.

[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 Long Lens Camera I’m Not Blaming

Comments Off on The Long Lens Camera I’m Not Blaming

Department Of Whatever Stupid Thing You’ve Done,
You’ll Feel Better About Yourself After Reading This

Dateline: Wednesday, ~ 8 am; trying to squeeze in some advance dinner prep – mixing up a plant-based Caesar salad dressing – before my 9 am streaming yoga class.

Usually, I turn the blender off, LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO, when I tap down/add more ingredients, etc.  But I was just going to scrape a bit of the dressing down the sides of the blender, and it was such a small spatula…

 

 

Before I knew it the blender blades grabbed the spatula, whirled it around and ejected it, along with most of the blender contents.  My hair and face were blotched with salad dressing, as were parts of the kitchen, including the ceiling, nearby cabinets and counters, appliances, the kitchen floor….  Lemon juice, caper brine, Dijon mustard and other acidic ingredients in the dressing stung my eyes  (and the next day I noticed blotches of acid burns on my face – hopefully, the marks will fade/heal in a few days).     [1]

After I rinsed my eyes and face and beheld the kitchen, moiself’s  heart sank.  Where to start?  I called upstairs to MH: “Uh, I need your help down here…”  He descended the stairs; I led him to the kitchen carnage and said, “Now, you can’t laugh, because I could have blinded myself.”

Later, after we’d cleaned up as best we could, MH tentatively asked, “Can we laugh now?”

This is my contribution to the never-ending, You think *you* did something stupid? Listen to this!, make-everyone-feel-better campaign.  This was a public service on my part.

I happened to have a haircut appointment that afternoon, and my haircutter got a kick out of my explaining why she might find bits of dried yellowish gunk in my hair.  I’d managed to clean most of it out, then stopped when I remembered, “Ah yes, I’m getting a haircut in a few hours and a professional is going to wash my hair….”

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yeah, We All Know How, Sooner Or Later, Drunks Who “Lose Their Way”
Decide To Defraud The Government And Buy A Lamborghini

(excerpts from “Orange County man who bought luxury cars with COVID relief funds sentenced to prison,” LA Times, 2-18-23, my emphases)

“An Orange County man who fraudulently obtained $5 million in pandemic relief loans and then spent the money on lavish vacations, luxury sports cars and his own personal expenses was sentenced Friday to 4½ years in prison….
Mustafa Qadiri…obtained the funds by submitting loan applications to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress created in March 2020 to provide emergency aid to small businesses struggling to survive amid COVID-19 related shutdowns and other business interruptions….
Qadiri…filed the applications…on behalf of four separate Newport Beach companies, none of which were actually in operation at the time…lied about the companies’ employee numbers, falsified bank balances and created fake tax returns….
Several friends who wrote character references for Qadiri…described him as a caring and generous man….successful in business early in life, then suffering from alcohol abuse in recent years — which caused him to lose his way.”

 

 

“I must have lost my way,” said the pope, when he woke up from his latest bender and found this new popemobile in his driveway.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m Still Thinking About This

Dateline: early eve, February 5. Texting with a friend who was watching the show, moiself  realized the Grammies were on and I’d forgotten about it. I quickly turned on the TV, but ended up switching back-and-forth between the telecast and a recording of the latest SNL, because the Grammy Awards show was, for the most part, IMO, rather tedious.

I know it’s not an award show these days unless someone gives a speech about how progressive and inclusive they or their idols are. So, there was that.  But another, unexpected drag was having that panel of non-industry folk (read: music fans) giving their take on why *their* favorite song should win the Record of the Year award.  Really? If I wanted to hear the opinion of average Joes re what song they like I’d get together with a bunch of my neighbors and we’d just talk about it.

When I’m watching a show celebrating the arts, I’m watching for the art being celebrated. If the show is (ostensibly) about celebrating popular music, I’m watching for the music performances, not the speeches.  Perform, y’all, not preach! I want to see the performers sing and play their songs, more than I care about whether or not they get an award.

And then:  the MF (Madonna’s face) brouhaha.

 

 

“Look, I don’t know exactly what has happened to Madonna’s face, but like the rest of you I can neutrally observe that most 64-year-olds do not emerge from the back-end of middle age with a brow line as smooth and hard as polished river rock. Earlier this week she appeared at the Grammys looking rather [insert your own kind or unkind adjectives; I’m not going to do it for you], and people noticed in a very big way, and by the next morning news outlets like the Daily Mail had lured in a whole scalpel of plastic surgeons to dissect what they believed had gone into the situation, and into Madonna.

Soon the artist herself responded via Instagram. ‘Many people chose to only talk about Close-up photos of me Taken with a long lens camera By a press photographer that Would distort anyone’s face!!’ she wrote…”

 

 

“…and no, I do not understand her capitalization rules but I am reprinting them because with Madonna you never know when something is a mistake and when something is a curated message. ‘Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny That permeates the world we live in.’
She is right, of course, about the misogyny in particular. The takeaway from President Biden’s State of the Union speech was, his best performance in years, not what is going on with his eyelids? but the takeaway with Madonna — an icon who has been steering culture since Ronald Reagan was in office — was, did Madonna’s face eat Madonna’s face?”
(excerpts from “The unacceptable Look on Madonna’s face: We seem so horrified when women age, no matter how they try to do it.”
Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, 2-9-23  )

I was watching that part of the Grammies show, where Madonna (who apparently hasn’t toured/has stayed out of the public eye for a couple of years) introduced a couple of performers.  A part of me still wants proof that it is/was Madonna who did so.  Is DNA photo analysis a thing yet?  Had she not been introduced as Madonna, moiself  would not have recognized one of the most recognizable figures in pop music.  And I assumed the long-distance filming of her – not a still photographer’s shot, but the camera filming her, while she was speaking – was because the camera operators were equally appalled and thought that a closeup would be…well…even more cruel.

Of course, the pundits had to weigh in via the various news outlets.  Judging from what I read, some of the op-ed writers needed cognitive enhancement even more than Madonna thought she needed Botox.  I’m thinking of author Jennifer Weiner’s NY Times guest essay. Her essay title alone is worthy of a cosmetically enhanced face palm:
Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation

 

 

Oh, deary dear deary deary.  Ms. Weiner, y’all be trying to sell us a big festering turd on that one. That “new provocation” is the same old capitulation to the wolves of sexism and ageism wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of cosmetic “enhancement.”

 

 

(excerpt from Weiner’s essay)
“…Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it. Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side?….

Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves….

‘I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start,’ [Madonna] wrote on her Instagram on Tuesday. ‘I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.’

 

Thank you, oh great one, on behalf of all the women behind you, for taking this trailblazing burden upon yourself!

 

Moiself  will let a couple of letters-to-the-NYT-editors writers have a go:

Ms. Weiner quotes Madonna as saying, “I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.” I am curious, how does this represent trailblazing?
Cosmetic surgery for approval or attention, even self-approval, seems less like trailblazing and more like objectification. To see more women aging naturally in the media spotlight would be the definition of a trailblazing and daring example to set.
(ST, Los Angeles)

Jennifer Weiner writes, “I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.”
Please. As a 65-year-old woman, I can tell you: Having extreme surgery is certainly not a new way to “ ‘critique’…the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind” in which all older women find themselves….
It strikes me as extremely sad that so many beautiful women in their 40s, 50s and 60s think that erasing their years cosmetically — cutting themselves open, pulling or pushing their skin and rearranging their faces — is a reasonable approach toward getting older….
(IK, Brooklyn)

Here’s the thing, Weiner, and all y’all other defending-Madonna pundits:  I (duh and of course) am with you on the sexism and aging thing, and about criticizing the culture that “makes” women think that they have to cosmetically mutilate enhance themselves to hide the physical manifestations of continuing to live (i.e., aging).  But your opinions are only half correct. Yes, the culture blah blah blah, but cosmetic procedures are also an individual choice, especially for someone with as much money and influence as Madonna.

Does Madonna, or any other performer, sincerely want to be radical and provocative and trailblazing? Then show – *be* – an honest portrait of individual aging.  Madonna’s extensive work reinforces, rather than critiques, the unfairness and stereotypes of women and aging, and does *nothing* to change or challenge the ”impossible bind” re women and their appearance, nor does it recognize the power of the individual to dare to age publicly, gracefully, and even proudly.

 

 

I highly doubt that an Isis-backed, terrorist-funded, plastic surgeon’s team kidnapped Madonna at gunpoint.  No one forced her to do the procedures she chose. Societal pressures, schmessures – of course that exists.  But to somehow paint Madonna (or any woman who succumbs to the real and pervasive social coercion to erase wrinkles/dye hair/hide any evidence of aging) as a victim is infantilizing.  Would we do the same for men, in a slightly different but ultimately related topic – as in, would we excuse misogynistic behavior by noting that society was primarily responsible?  Would we accept the rationalization of the bricklayer who, when called out for cat-calling women who pass by his construction site, says in his defense, “Yeah, I know it’s not right, but this is the society I live in, and I was raised to see women this way.”

Sure, females in the public eye, from news anchors to performers to politicians, have been enculturated to see themselves and other women in a certain way…and in Madonna’s case she absolutely participated in setting up her ever-youthful, hyper-sexualized image that can only and ultimately boomerang and provide a then vs. now, comparison downfall. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

 

 

Consider poet/singer/songwriter/photographer/author, Patti Smith, who at age 76 continues to produce her art.  Not only is there no evidence that a surgeon’s scalpel or Botox syringe has ever penetrated her skin, Smith doesn’t even dye her graying hair.    [2]  But then, Smith never based her music and art on her appearance or sexual allure (as Madonna definitely did/does, whether or not you think that by her doing so she exploits or critiques the phenomenon).  Smith’s music and poetry – her body of work – have always focused on what’s beneath the surface, unlike so many female performers where their body of work is entangled with their the presentation of their physical bodies.

…and speaking of so many performers, when I beheld many of the other/younger female performers I saw on the Grammy show   [3]…. Oh, dear, I felt so old.

 

 

I felt like I wanted to be their Wise and Beloved Auntie® whom they invited backstage; I wanted to tap them on their shoulders, point to Madonna and say,

This could be you someday. Have you noticed how your male musicians/actors/emcees/performer peers are not showing as much skin as you are, and have you thought about why?
You’ve been lied to if you think that displaying your sexuality means you are taking control of it and are not in fact being defined and exploited by your appearance.  By creating this body of work that has more to do in some ways with your body than your work, although you may want to keep working on the work, your actual body will crease and change and fade…and then what?
When you make your face and your body such a vital focus in your presentation of your art, *that* will be what your audience will focus on.  They’ll be writing and talking and posting about *you* one day – and not about your work, but about how your face looks like a rhino’s ass.

 

Does your long camera lens make my butt look big?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [4]

 

(Warsan Shire, Somali-British poet, writer, teacher)

*   *   *

May you not need reminding to turn off a blender when you poke it;
May you never confuse greed with “losing your way;”
May you fight the misogynistic powers that tempt you to embrace “anti-aging”;   [5]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] They have…but not completely, yet.

[2] nor even combed it, as a snarky Rolling Stone magazine writer speculated many decades ago, in his profile of Smith.

[3] And the Oscars and Emmys and all of them.

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

[5] And remember that the only sure fire way not to age is to die.

The Label I Was Not Assigned

2 Comments

Department Of A Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do

Dateline: Sunday, 10:30 am-ish.  MH sits across from moiself  at our breakfast table, with his copy of Saturday’s NY Times crossword puzzle.  He’d started it yesterday but stopped when he couldn’t finish a small section of it.  As he’s revisiting the puzzle he tells me he’d made a mistake with one four letter answer, whose clue was “____ stage (concept in psychosexual development),” and that fixing that one answer allowed him to figure out the rest of the puzzle:

“I had to switch from oral to anal.”

I look up from my own (KenKen) puzzle; MH pauses for a moment, then says,

“I need to rephrase that.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Only A Certain Kind Of Geek Will Get This One

Good name for a punk band:

Edith Keeler Must Die.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Space, The Vinyl Frontier     [1]

MH and I – and MH and I translates as, MH – did a clearing-out-space-in the-attic project at the end of the year.  A significant portion of space-which-needed-clearing-out was taken up by a dozen or so crates of LPs. MH moved them to floor the Cat Wall Bedroom ®…

 

 

…where we could sort through them.  In the next couple of weeks, hundreds of albums were whittled down to a select eleven, set aside by MH and/or moiself  for sentimental reasons.  [2]  Almost all of those eleven you can get somewhere else…but since, for example, there’s no guarantee of finding this gem of mine online or elsewhere, it stays:

 

 

The LPs are gone, given away/donated, and the bed in the Cat Wall Room is now covered with hundreds of CDs awaiting a similar culling process.  We haven’t had a working turntable in two decades; up until a few years ago I’d still play CDS, but my new laptop doesn’t have a disk reader.  It feels like the end of an era, of sorts, as we’ve belatedly acknowledged that we no longer “consume” (shudder) music in the same ways we used to.  We still attend live music shows but listen to recorded music in different ways now.  [3]

Side observation:  as we were going through the records MH noted that the digitization of the everyday makes gift-giving more difficult:  it used to be that an album or a book was an easy and “safe” bet for a friend’s birthday present.   [4] 

There was one LP I came across which surprised both MH and I, as in, neither of us had *any* idea it was in our collection.  I have no memory of “making” this record   [5]  and MH has no memory of receiving it.  Its front and back covers:

 

 

The bean/peas theme, I assume, comes from a running joke between us, from our dating days.  One day, early in our courtship   [6]  when we were out driving Somewhere® on our way to do Some Thing, ® MH pointed out to me a bumper sticker (on the car ahead of us) which read, Visualize World Peace.  He said that whenever he saw or heard that slogan his mind turned it into, “Visualize whirled peas.”  Apparently, so did entrepreneurial others, for not long afterward I saw (and bought for him) a t-shirt…

 

 

…which he has to this day.

But wait – there’s more.

When I saw the album I’d made for him, moiself  removed the record from its sleeve and discovered that I’d also altered record’s label, with track listings fitting the cover theme.

Side B  

  1. I’ve Bean Working On The Railroad (Pete Seeger)
  2. I’ve Bean Lonely Too Long (The Rascals)
  3. You’ve Bean In Love Too Long (Bonnie Raitt)
  4. I’ve Bean Searching So Long (Chicago)
  5. I’ll Bean Back (The Beatles)
  6. Could This Bean The Magic? (Barry Manilow)

 

 

Side P

  1. Give Peas A Chance (John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band)
  2. Peas Of My Heart (Janis Joplin)
  3. Peas Train (Cat Stevens)
  4. Peas Peas Me (The Beatles)
  5. (What’s So Funny About) Peas, Love & Understanding (Elvis Costello)
  6. Peasful Easy Feeling (The Eagles)
  7. Peas Come To Boston (Dave Loggins)
  8. Peas Peas Peas (James Brown)

 

 

I’d done that at least 35 years ago. At this point, attempting to remove the labels and the album’s covers might damage both the alterations as well as what lies beneath; thus, it’ll have to remain a tantalizing mystery as to what record I bastardized blinged to make that compilation.   [7]    However, if we find a working turntable on which to play it….

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of A Worthy, If Unsettling, Read

“The New Puritans,” by Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic.  The article is over a year old but moiself  just got around to reading Applebaum’s thoughtful and disturbing thesis – on how mob social justice tramples democratic ideals and threatens intellectual freedoms. The article begins with a recollection of The Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne’s classic tale of Hester Prynne, a woman who bears a child out of wedlock.  Prynne is subsequently exiled by her Puritan peers, many of whom themselves are guilty of the same sin for which she is scorned: (excerpts from the article; my emphases):

“We read that story with a certain self-satisfaction: Such an old-fashioned tale! Even Hawthorne sneered at the Puritans, with their ‘sad-colored garments and grey steeple-crowned hats,’ their strict conformism, their narrow minds and their hypocrisy. And today we are not just hip and modern; we live in a land governed by the rule of law; we have procedures designed to prevent the meting-out of unfair punishment. Scarlet letters are a thing of the past.”

 

 

“Except, of course, they aren’t. Right here in America, right now, it is possible to meet people who have lost everything—jobs, money, friends, colleagues—after violating no laws, and sometimes no workplace rules either. Instead, they have broken (or are *accused of* having broken) social codes having to do with race, sex, personal behavior, or even acceptable humor, which may not have existed five years ago or maybe five months ago. Some have made egregious errors of judgment. Some have done nothing at all. It is not always easy to tell.

Yet despite the disputed nature of these cases, it has become both easy and useful for some people to put them into larger narratives. Partisans, especially on the right, now toss around the phrase cancel culture when they want to defend themselves from criticism, however legitimate. But dig into the story of anyone who has been a genuine victim of modern mob justice and you will often find not an obvious argument between ‘woke’ and ‘anti-woke’ perspectives but rather incidents that are interpreted, described, or remembered by different people in different ways, even leaving aside whatever political or intellectual issue might be at stake.…..

…Hawthorne dedicated an entire novel to the complex motivations of Hester Prynne, her lover, and her husband. Nuance and ambiguity are essential to good fiction. They are also essential to the rule of law: We have courts, juries, judges, and witnesses precisely so that the state can learn whether a crime has been committed before it administers punishment. We have a presumption of innocence for the accused. We have a right to self-defense. We have a statute of limitations.

By contrast, the modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. Yet the values of that online sphere have come to dominate many American cultural institutions: universities, newspapers, foundations, museums. Heeding public demands for rapid retribution, they sometimes impose the equivalent of lifetime scarlet letters on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime. Instead of courts, they use secretive bureaucracies. Instead of hearing evidence and witnesses, they make judgments behind closed doors.”

 

 

Journalist/historian Applebaum has previously studied and written   [8]  about how the political and social conformism and oppression of the early Communist period and other totalitarian dictatorships was the result “…not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure,” along with the fear of what will happen to you and your family if you violate the norms, and of how such fear leads to intellectual stifling.

But, the author notes, you don’t need government coercion to obtain the same results.  In our country, Applebaum writes, “…we don’t have that kind of state coercion. There are currently no laws that shape what academics or journalists can say; there is no government censor, no ruling-party censor. But fear of the internet mob, the office mob, or the peer-group mob is producing some similar outcomes. How many American manuscripts now remain in desk drawers—or unwritten altogether—because their authors fear a similarly arbitrary judgment? How much intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a poorly worded comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter?”

In her article Applebaum goes on to write about the people whose stories she investigated, whose violations of the sudden shifts in social codes in America led to their professional and/or personal “dismissal or…effective isolation.”  It is a disturbing read, to see what happens to a variety of disparate persons, whose only commonality is that they have been accused of breaking a social code, and subsequently find themselves at the center of a social-media storm because of something they said, or supposedly said:

“… no one quoted here, anonymously or by name, has been charged with an actual crime, let alone convicted in an actual court. All of them dispute the public version of their story. Several say they have been falsely accused; others believe that their ‘sins’ have been exaggerated or misinterpreted by people with hidden agendas. All of them, sinners or saints, have been handed drastic, life-altering, indefinite punishments, often without the ability to make a case in their own favor.

 

 

The cases Applebaum cites show that cancel culture/mob condemnation can happen on all sides of the political sphere, and evince a tangible, nonpartisan lesson:

“No one—of any age, in any profession—is safe. In the age of Zoom, cellphone cameras, miniature recorders, and other forms of cheap surveillance technology, anyone’s comments can be taken out of context; anyone’s story can become a rallying cry for Twitter mobs on the left or the right. Anyone can then fall victim to a bureaucracy terrified by the sudden eruption of anger. And once one set of people loses the right to due process, so does everybody else…. Gotcha moments can be choreographed. Project Veritas, a well-funded right-wing organization, dedicates itself to sting operations: It baits people into saying embarrassing things on hidden cameras and then seeks to get them punished for it, either by social media or by their own bureaucracies.

But while this form of mob justice can be used opportunistically by anyone, for any political or personal reason, the institutions that have done the most to facilitate this change are in many cases those that once saw themselves as the guardians of liberal and democratic ideals. Robert George, the Princeton professor, is a longtime philosophical conservative who once criticized liberal scholars for their earnest relativism, their belief that all ideas deserved an equal hearing. He did not foresee, he told me, that liberals would one day “seem as archaic as the conservatives,” that the idea of creating a space where different ideas could compete would come to seem old-fashioned, that the spirit of tolerance and curiosity would be replaced by a worldview “that is not open-minded, that doesn’t think engaging differences is a great thing or that students should be exposed to competing points of view.”

(Excerpt from “The New Puritans,”
by Anne Applebaum, 8-31-21, The Atlantic, my emphases )

 

Three cheers for the old Puritans.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Make Me Smile Number 892 In The Series
Sup-Department Of Things That Make Me Love My Fellow Snarkers

From “The Week 2-10-23, a section of news blurbs listed under and heading Good week for/Bad week for:

Good week for:
Plain English, after the Associated Press amended a policy, advising staff to avoid “dehumanizing ‘the’ labels, such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French…”
Online wags had wondered if people in France should be called “people experiencing Frenchness” or people “assigned French at birth.”

 

Experiencing Frenchness Support Group.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you enjoy a trip down the Memory Lane of your own storage space;  [10]
May you steer your social justice passions clear of the New Puritanism;
May you, at some glorious point in your life, experience Frenchness;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sorry, but after the previous Star Trek reference I think I am owed at least one bad pun as a segue.

[2] Son K stopped by to take a few, thinking he might get a turntable…eventually.

[3] I for one still listen to music on my car’s radio.

[4] However, most people will still “tolerate” actual/physical books, as MH put it.

[5] Although of course it is something I would – and apparently did – do.

[6] I never would have used that word then but for some reason it’s fun to use it now.

[7] Probably/hopefully the album was one I found at the bargain bin at Tower records, an album for which I paid no more than $1.25 for and which deserved to be papered over, ala The Best of the Osmond Brothers or Havin’ My Baby – The Worst of Paul Anka.

[8] Her website and bibliography is 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

[10] An actual street in my actual hometown.  Actually.

The Rings I’m Not Wearing

Comments Off on The Rings I’m Not Wearing

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 If You’re Already Sick Of The Holiday Cheer…

Then this might be for you:  The entire L.A. City Council racist audio leak, transcribed and annotated by The Los Angeles Times.

 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-21/la-city-council-racist-audio-leak-transcription-annotation

 

 

Well, *listen* and weep….

 

Y’all may remember the scandal, which broke in October and which moiself  wrote about in my November 4 post.  Bare bones summary of a very complicated story:  someone(s)   [2] secretly recorded a behind-closed doors meeting of three Los Angeles City Council members and a local labor leader, wherein Council President Nury Martinez and other attendees slammed some of her fellow council members, gleefully made racist remarks, and spoke openly about how the city’s political districts should be carved up to advantage certain constituencies.

The council was thrown into turmoil, Martinez resigned, and some long-overdue rumination re revising and reckoning our “tribalism” in politics has been aired, including in a thoughtful op-ed by  LAT columnist Sandy Banks.

Banks opens her essay with the story of a hurtful incident which happened to her many years ago.  Riding a crowded bus and exhausted from a long day at a new job, Banks was  touched when a young Latina woman gesture to Banks to take the seat next to her.  The Latina woman had just herself been beckoned by an elderly Asian woman to take the seat beside her, but that same elderly woman reacted with visible disgust when the Latina in turn invited the Black woman to join them…and the Asian woman stood up and moved to another part of the bus.

…It has been several years since that episode, but the hurt, anger and shame it roused in me resurfaced last month when I listened to three of our city’s elected Latino leaders gleefully mocking and insulting Black people.
Their tirade made international news, because of the crude and racist language they used to describe Black, gay, Armenian, Jewish and Oaxacan people in a private meeting, secretly recorded, about increasing the political power of Latinos at the expense of other struggling groups.
Then, adding insult to injury in the days that followed, the politicians larded their pseudo apologies with references to serving “communities of color” — when the only color they really seem to care about is light brown. Their own.
And that got me thinking about whether the label has outlived its utility….
Maybe now is the time to scrap the “people of color” label and its “communities of color” twin — along with the pretense that all nonwhite groups can be seamlessly yoked together in the fight for equality by the color of our skin.

 

 

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the bonds between racial and ethnic groups in multicultural Los Angeles are weak. We may share economic stressors and even neighborhoods, but we have different priorities, challenges and needs — and apparently little regard for solidarity, given that the leaders of our city’s largest ethnic group were trying to hoard power by chopping other groups off at the knees.
The “people of color” frame began to take shape decades ago…. But research by UCLA political science professor Efrén Pérez has found that “the unity behind ‘people of color’ crumbles” when individual racial groups feel their unique challenges are being ignored.
“There is nothing natural about camaraderie among people of color,” Pérez wrote in a 2020 opinion piece for the Washington Post. “For every commonality, a point of difference intrudes on unity.”
Dropping the label wouldn’t mean giving up on the idea that there’s power in our collective energy. But it would allow us to scrap the fantasy that Black, Latino, Asian American and Indigenous people are the sum of our similarities, and should be willing to sublimate our own priorities to advance others’ needs.
And while “people of color” is part of the zeitgeist today, debate over the concept has long been robust in academic and political arenas….
“We have talked about this a lot over the years,” said USC law professor Jody Armour, who specializes in the intersection of race and justice. “I’ve always been skeptical of the ‘people of color’ category.’…. The POC category has replicated this country’s reductive colorism, which strands dark-skinned people at the bottom of its ‘people of color’ hierarchy. It’s become a way ‘of camouflaging anti-Blackness,” Armour says.
( excerpts from “Lessons of the audio leak: Solidarity is dead.
Let’s ditch the label ‘people of color,’ “
By Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times, 11-21-22 )

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Bored Of The Rings

Moiself  recently read an advice column wherein a man sought counsel on what, to him, seemed a vexing dilemma, and what to me was a “problem” worthy of wanting to give him and like-minded others face-palming so cosmic as to launch them into orbit.

 

“Incoming!”

 

The man wanted to propose marriage to his sweetie.  His dilemma, as he saw it, was that his partner makes so much more money than he does that any ring he would buy or pick out would not be as fancy or somehow as “deserving” as that which she could get for herself.  He did acknowledge in his letter that “she’s just not a fancy jewelry type person,”  and that they had already been discussing marriage, and she’d indicated she wouldn’t necessarily want an engagement ring at all.

 

 

Oh my… That took me back. But first, this public service announcement.

Men, women – we’ve all have been lied to. Diamonds are not a rare treasure, despite the fact that the jewelry industry in general and diamond pushers in specific want you to think so, and have worked damn hard to equate the color, carat, cut, clarity the of rock to the quality of your loooooooooove.  And no one works that scam angle quite like the Debeers company.

 

 

“The perfect diamond is a promise of the perfect relationship, because love is supposedly rare and so is this stone. We want the story that tells us our relationship is special. And we don’t want to accept that rarity isn’t all that meaningful.”
(“Diamonds Aren’t Special and Neither is Your Love,”
The Atlantic, 1-29-21)

Ahhh, the rings.  Wedding rings; sure, whatever.  But the whole engagement ring thing, where one person in the couple wears one but the other does not, reeks of sexism and the history of marriage as property transfer of a woman, from her birth family (read: father) to her husband. I suppose a ring is a more genteel way than pissing a circle around the woman to declare territorial rights, but it is still a pronouncement of ownership, and not any less creepy to me just because our culture has been injured to it.

Answer me this, moiself  asks rhetorically (because no one has been able to give a cogent reason when I’ve asked seriously):  Why is it the woman who wears an outward signal of “I’m ‘taken’ ”  [3]  and the man does not, when the couple are both engaged to be married?

Why are engagement rings still even a thing? It’s just…stupid.

Menfolk, the marketing that is aimed toward you with regard to this “tradition” is truly mind-numbing.  It is meant to get men to internalize the idea that the engagement rings they pick out are signifiers of their commitment and worth.  Also, let’s face it, the not-so-subliminal attachment message is that the bigger/more expensive the ring he can afford, the bigger the man’s…uh, manliness.

 

Are you man enough to give her this?

 

Interesting anecdote:  despite the stereotype of women being interested in such things, my “congratulations” to couples who announce their engagement is never followed with “Ooooh, lemme see the ring.”  Because I don’t give a flying fuck about such foolishness and wish we’d all move beyond that.  I do give a flying fuck about this very-interesting-fact-of-my-experience:  the only time an engagement ring has been proudly and insistently displayed to me in those announcement circumstances has been via the engaged dudes.  For example: on at least three different occasions – a work or holiday party, or other social gathering – when a couple’s engagement was announced, as I started to say something congratulatory to the couple, the man grabbed his fiancé’s left hand, shoved it in front of my face, and all but demanded that I praise the ring he’d given her.

I suppose that’s a more socially acceptable way to brag than for him to drop trou at the party and display his 14 karat manliness, but….

 

 

MH and I have been married for 30 something years now.   [4]    It should come as no surprise that I did not wear an engagement ring, nor was I given one by MH, because he knew my opinions on the matter.  When we were Getting Serious ® and discussing our future together, MH said, just to check, that he assumed I would not want an engagement ring?  I told him that I’d never worn rings of any kind, with the exception of my The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ® spy ring and my high school class ring, only one of which I treasured and both of which I lost after just a few weeks of wearing.  [5]

 

 

Also, I’d never worn much jewelry of any kind– rings, bracelets, necklaces – except for earrings.  I had my ears pierced when I was a junior in college, at the behest of one of my roommates who declared one holiday season that I was a difficult person to shop for and “Could you just please get your gawddamn ears pierced so I can always know what to get you for Christmas?”    [6]

MH and I laughed when I told him this story, and I joked, “Yeah, so, engagement earrings….”

Not long after that (what I assumed was a) throwaway remark, MH presented me with a pair of diamond “engagement earrings.”  [7]    I almost convinced him to get one of his ears pierced so we both could each wear one.  But he was still young enough and concerned enough with what his parents would think,   [8]   and respectfully declined my request.  Somehow, we both managed to survive our engagement without me wearing the traditional visible marker of such.  We chose matching wedding rings: simple gold bands engraved with a weave pattern.

Fast forward thirty years.  One evening at dinner MH said something along the lines of, “BTW, in case you’re wondering why I’m not wearing my wedding ring….” which caused me to look at his left hand and see that yep, his fourth finger was ringless. No, I hadn’t noticed.  He told me that in the past few weeks at work his fingers had started to ache and swell.  He’d visited his workplace’s occupational nurse, who couldn’t tell if the puffiness was the beginnings of arthritis or simply the results of too much clickety-clack time on keyboard, but advised that MH remove the ring now in case the swelling got so bad he had to have it cut off.    [9]

 

Yeah, don’t let it get to this point.

 

“Oh, that makes sense,” I replied. Then I immediately took off my wedding band and put it in a safe place. I assured MH that I did not do so out of spite or anything negative; rather, for parallel conformity. We are either both wearing wedding rings, or we aren’t.

 

 

In the weeks to come MH investigated ring alternatives, while I actually/kinda/sorta felt like I didn’t need it.  Sure, I’d worn one for almost 30 years at that point, but a part of me had never gotten used to wearing a ring, and I was always twisting it and found it cumbersome for handwashing.  I recalled to him, from my previous life of working in the medical profession, how over the years I’d met and talked with several patients and couples who did not wear wedding rings, typically for one of two reasons:

(1) occupational hazards; i.e. one or both of them had jobs in metalworking or sports or manufacturing jobs where avulsion (eeeewwww….ick)  was a risk, or

(2) a dermatologic allergy to the metals used in the ring bands.

Some of the couples fashioned their own bands out of various other materials; one couple chose not to wear rings; at least two couples I met had their wedding rings tattooed around their ring fingers.    [10]

MH did some online searching and found silicone bands he liked.  They are flexible, come in a variety of sizes, widths, colors and patterns– even camo, for the romantic military fanatic outdoorsman.  Bonus: they usually cost less than $30, so you don’t feel bad (and by you of course I mean moiself ) if you lose them.  It’s fun, to occasionally change the color and pattern.  After all, the only thing that separates us from our fellow primates is our ability to accessorize.  Anyway, that is what we have both worn ever since.

 

My current one is a dark purple.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“Instead of wondering why I don’t need god to be good, ask yourself why others do. Consider that true morality lies in doing what’s right without expectation of divine retribution or recompense for our actions.”
 ( Freethought Today, 11-22 excerpt from “Letter to a Mormon mother,” by Oliver Brown,
5th place winner of FFRF’s 2022 high school essay contest,    [12] )

*   *   *

May you reconsider your usage of POC and other group-signifying terms;
May you discover the cheap thrills of wearing colorful silicon rings;
May you get your gawddamm ears pierced as an easy gift receiving solution;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] who, as of this writing, have not been identified.

[3] Which is how one man mansplained engagements rings to me, when I wondered aloud about their meaning.

[4] Don’t ask me to do the math, which I have to do in order to remember.  Okay; it’s 34.

[5] My parents insisted I get my high school class ring, because I might regret *not* having one later…why they thought I would regret such a thing, I have no idea.  I lost the ring in a bodysurfing wipeout at Newport Beach.

[6] Yes, Sandra Banana, that was you.

[7] When the horrible news about diamond mining and the “blood” diamonds began emerging years later, I stopped wearing them, first “warning” MH of my intent.  I did not fault him, and neither did he:  he’d bought them in good faith and had no idea about how dirty the diamond industry was.

[8] After all, he was already dating and now engaged to this crazy older woman….

[9] The ring, not the finger.

[10] In discussing the various ring alternatives with our offspring, our generously tattooed daughter was – surprise! – highly in favor of the ink option.

[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

[12] The William Schulx High School Essay Contest for college-bound seniors had this prompt for 2022 contest entrants:  “Please write a letter to a religious friend, relative, classmate, teacher, etc., who buys the myth that one can’t be moral without believing in a god.”

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