Department Of Good News First
Warning: Entering Parental Bragging Zone
On Tuesday I found out that daughter Belle, who works as Quality Assurance Manager for Schilling Cider, passed the exam [1] (which was given during the 2025’s CiderCon convention ) to become certified as a professional Pommolier.
My heart soars like a hawk. [2] Ya, hoo!!
A pommolier is the hard cider industry’s analog to a sommelier. This, from from the American Cider Association website’s “Meet Our Certified Pommoliers ® (where Belle will soon be listed):
“Becoming a Certified Pommelier is a remarkable achievement that celebrates dedication, perseverance, and a deep passion for the art and science of cider. It requires hours of rigorous study, sensory analysis practice, and a commitment to mastering the intricacies of cider. From learning about different apple varieties to understanding the complex flavors and aromas of ciders, Certified Pommeliers have honed their skills to expert levels. Their hard work and preparation not only showcase their knowledge and expertise but also exemplify their love for all things cider-related. Cheers to all Certified Pommeliers for their dedication and commitment to the craft!”
MH and I were impressed and also intimidated by the length and breadth of the knowledge Belle would be tested on, from the chemistry of brewing and fermentation to knowledge of/ability to identify obscure European apple varieties. The test was given in February; she was told results would take (at least) six weeks. As we neared the results deadline I was a teensy bit anxious for her (the test is designed to fail at least 80% of those who take it).
Monday noontime I was at my favorite sushi restaurant here in Hillsboro, waiting to meet a friend for lunch, when I got Belle’s text. I knew that she was at a local (Pacific Northwest) cider conference in Tacoma, and figured that, as she’d done earlier in the day, she was texting between symposiums to share conference stories. Apparently the involuntary squeal of delight I emitted when I read Belle’s text (“ HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT: I DID ITTTTTTTT ”) was loud enough for the two sushi chefs to hear, as they both looked up from slicing saki and maguro, nodded across the sushi bar at me, and said, “Congratulations.”
I thanked them (and the people sitting at the two tables on either side of moiself, who also smiled at/congratulated me), and explained that there indeed was good news, but it was about my daughter….and would you like to know what a pommolier is?
* * *
Department Of Seasonal News Second
Happy Vernal Equinox, y’all.
Hope you yogis were inspired to do 108 Sun salutations to mark the turning of the season.
* * *
Department Of Yet Another Sign Of The Impending Apocalypse
Dateline: Sunday 9:55-ish: MH and moiself are sitting in our respective Norwegian “stressless” recliner chairs, after having watched Ordinary People. Despite the admittedly comfy chairs’ claim to fame, we are actually stressed – as in, under emotional duress – as each of us has forgotten how achingly devastating the movie is. We exchange comments about that, then MH grows silent, looks out at his feet resting on his chair’s ottoman, and asks, “Do these socks make my feet look really long?”
* * *
Department Of Ugly Americans [3] Down Under
Sub-Department Of One Of The More Stupid Attempts At Self-Redemption/Justification Moiself Has Read In A Long Time…
…the source of which would be the story about an American “social media influencer” (Instagram handle, Sam Jones from Montana ) [4] who was visiting Australia. One evening while traveling on a remote road this influencer spotted a mother and baby wombat off the side of the road. Instead of acting like a normal/respectful person and taking a photograph of the animals, she exited her vehicle, snatched the baby from its mother and ran back to her car (where she apparently had a camera/phone mounted). She held the wriggling baby wombat up to record its distress, which she narrated, while both baby and mama wombat squealed their displeasure:
“ ‘Mama’s right there, and she’s pissed, ’ the woman said in a video posted online. She went on to release the joey [5] on the roadside in the darkness, illuminated only by her car’s headlights….
The indignation was bipartisan…Tony Burke, said officials would review the woman’s visa to see if any immigration laws had been breached, and that any future applications from her would receive intense scrutiny. The government did not release her name but Australian news media identified her as Samantha Strable.
The drumbeat of criticism included calls to deport the woman. On Friday morning, ABC Australia, the national broadcaster, sent out a news alert saying she had left Australia….
Mark Heinz, a reporter for the Wyoming-based Cowboy State Daily, said he believed the woman in question was…Ms. Strable, whom he had interviewed in 2023 about her enthusiasm for hunting….
In the interview with Mr. Heinz, Ms. Strable, then a resident of Pinedale, Wyo., recounted her adventures of having hunted red stag in Chile with a bow and killed pigs and wallabies in New Zealand. ….
Detailing her pig hunting experience in New Zealand, in which dogs corner wild pigs allowing for the hunter to plunge a knife into the animal’s heart, she said it was ‘intense.’
‘Honestly, I cried,’ she said in the interview. ‘I don’t like killing. I like the hunting, I like the chase. It’s not fun to see anything die.’ “
( excerpts, my emphases, from “Outrage in Australia After American Woman Grabs a Baby Wombat,” by Victoria Kim, NY Times, 3-14-25 )
No surprise ( to moiself ) that this self-aggrandizing, social media slut influencer who terrified and stressed an infant animal and its mother, is a hunter. And what a bummer to read that, after all the effort Strable put into her “adventures,” the hunter claims not to enjoy the end result of the hunt. What a shock, that it wasn’t fun for Ms. Strable to see the wild pig die – the living creature whom she’d sought out and terrorized by siccing dogs to chase and corner it – the living creature into whose heart she’d then plunged a knife ?!
Poor baby.
Yo, Strable: None of the animals you killed had to die. The wild pig didn’t have to die, Ms. Strable. You could have just left it alone. Or enjoyed the challenge – without using tracking dogs to terrorize the poor creature – of getting close enough to the pig to take a picture of it. Or enjoyed the “chase” by chasing a living being (a fellow homo sapiens?) who voluntarily agreed to participate in it.
* * *
Department Of I Wanted Distraction While On The Elliptical;
What I Got Was An Aha Moment
I’ve been doing my pre-breakfast workout for the past few weeks while re-watching some Grey’s Anatomy seasons that I don’t have much memory of. Dateline: last Friday morning I’m on Season 11; it’s the heart-rending episode where Dr. April Kepper gives birth to her and her husband Dr. Jackson Avery’s doomed/premature baby. Relevant character background: April is a fervent evangelical Christian; [6] Jackson is an atheist.
April is distraught after an ultrasound at 24 weeks gestation gives bad news about her pregnancy. Further testing reveals that her fetus has the most severe form of a devastating genetic disorder, [7] which will cause it to die either before birth or shortly thereafter. April is gutted by the news, and after learning that her baby’s bones are already starting to break in utero, she opts for what her supportive husband and their OBs and pediatricians recommend as the least awful choice: to induce labor, and thus be able to hold their baby before it dies.
At one point, when April and Jackson are discussing their options, she is a walking open wound, ranting about how unfair it all is. She’s believed in her god all of her life; she has followed what she thought was her calling, from her god, to be a doctor and to heal the sick; she is a believer; she has tried to do good; she has prayed; she’s done everything right and this is so unfair, so unfair…. She rages on about the unfairness, then adds….
“…and it’s *cruel.”
All her husband can do is listen in supportive agony. And I found moiself wondering if [8] he was thinking what I was thinking: that while what has happened is certainly awful, it’s only *cruel* if you believe in (a) god.
It is only cruel because April believes in a god that made this world, and that she believes her god can and does act in this world, which leaves her with only cruel options:
* either her so-called loving god gave her baby this horrible death sentence, or
* seeing as how April has expressed how she believes her god is all-powerful and all loving and that all over the world, “miracles do happen,” that when no miracle happens it is because her god is choosing not to fix what it could fix.
Translation: What is cruel, actually, are her beliefs; what is cruel is her religious faith, which has filled her heart and mind with cruel, supernatural nonsense.
When people experience such tragedies they go through pain and mourning, the what-ifs, the sorrow, the frustration, the anger… This is true for people who hold any religious faith, as well as for people who are religion-free. All of us suffer when tragedy strikes.
But Humanists, Atheist, Freethinkers, Skeptics – we who are religion-free – do not have the added burden of the gut-twisting sense of betrayal, of second-guessing of what we could have or should have done re our faith-based rituals, of agonizing over what our supposedly all-powerful god did or did not choose to do. When tragedy strikes, we whose worldviews are free from superstition/religion/theology also suffer the same emotions of grief and loss, *except* for that huge one, because we acknowledge the truth of the natural world.
We know that we are neither punished/cursed by tragedy nor rewarded/blessed by prosperity; we know that when our loved one dies that there is no supernatural cause of, nor relief from, our suffering. We know that sometimes, shit just happens…which means that a core part of being human is to wade through the shit, relying on and accepting the comfort and support of our fellow human beings.
* * *
* * *
Department Of Things That Never Get Old [9]
Welcome to yet another new feature of the new year, which may continue on the third Friday of each month. Or…not.
When was the last time you rewatched Airplane! [10]
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [11]
“So I’m not really interested in the mental gymnastics that allow a person to believe
in both a loving god and baby cancer. Over and out.”
( anonymous poster on online religious debate bulletin board )
* * *
May you have reasons to be audibly delighted in sushi bars;
May you be free from the gut-twisting mental gymnastics of theism;
May you enjoy a joke/scene/song that never gets old;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] given by the American Cider Association, to cider professionals qualified/nominated to take it.
[3] The pejorative “Ugly American” originates from a 1958 novel of the same name. The book portrayed Americans’ attitudes ( be they tourists or business tycoons wishing to do business with/in foreign countries) toward non-Americans as those of ignorance, arrogance, and condescension. The term has come to mean a stereotype of loud, ill-mannered, insensitive American tourists who offend the citizens of the countries they travel to.
[4] There is a “title” or job description that has had its 15 minutes of bullshit fame and needs to go the way of leech collectors, phrenologists, caddy butchers, and other obsolete professions.
[5] A baby wombat. Yep, the same term is used for a baby kangaroo.
[6] Which doesn’t stop her from having fervent premarital sex with Jackson in hospital on call rooms – but this seems to be part of the contract those doctors working in Seattle have to sign.
[7] osteogenesis imperfecta II (aka “brittle bone disease”)
[8] Well, if that character were real….but, although that was fiction, thousands of people face such dilemmas every day, around the world.
[9] At least, to ever-youthful moiself.
[10] Best disaster film parody ever. In fact, I recall reading a comment from one film historian about how studios stopped making disaster films for a time after that movie’s release, because no one would take them seriously.
[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
