The Blog I'm Not Writing

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 Someone Who Obviously Did Not Reread What She’d
Posted After She Posted It

Background: There’s FB group wherein residents of our fair city post jobs offers, services sought, items for sale, etc.  Dateline:  Monday, 8 am-ish.  MH is scanning the afore-mentioned FB group, and reads me one particular post:

“Hi! I am looking for a professional mobile pet groomer.
I have two small dogs and all they need is nail trim/grind
and their anal gland expressed…. “

That’s *all*?  How did the poster possibly attain even quasi-sentient adulthood without realizing that the phrase, “All they need” – signaling a minimizing of the need which is to follow – is never, ever, appropriately associated with anything to do with anal gland expressions ?

*   *   *

Department Of Sounds Like A Holiday Themed Porno, If You Ask Moiself

And you did ask, didn’t you?

*   *   *

Department Of Petty But Important Grudges To Hold

Why I play the New York Times word game, Letterboxed, but refused to play their game Spelling Bee anymore:

Because when given the right letters in the right places, Letterboxed will let me enter a legitimate if touchy word, e.g., shat, where as Spelling Bee, despite providing the right letters to spell the name of a beautiful African wild cat, would not let me enter the word caracal, because this totally legitimate, not-at-all-controversial-nor-carrying-scatological undertones, is not on the game editor’s “curated list.”    [2]

“Curate *this*, NY Times.”

*   *   *

Department Of A High School Student Had To Sue Her School District To Do What?

That would be, she had to sue her school district to be able to have a table outside of her school’s cafeteria, with literature available on milk alternatives and plant-based milk options. That’s what Eagle Rock High School senior Marielle Williamson wanted to do.  She’d researched the negative impacts the dairy industry has on both the environment and animal welfare, and wanted her fellow students to know that there are milk alternatives.   

“… But administrators said she could only do so
if she promoted dairy milk as well…. 

(Despite the fact that the school is already promoting dairy products, with “…school hallways covered in ‘Got Milk?’ posters.”)

‘It was kind of like, Wow, this is serious,’ (Williamson) said.
‘The hold the dairy industry has over schools is so strong that I can’t even promote soy milk at my school.’

In May, Williamson, along with the advocacy group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, filed a federal lawsuit against her school administrators and the Los Angeles Unified School District, alleging that her 1st Amendment rights were violated when school officials barred her from sharing material about plant-based milk options without also including information on dairy milk.  The suit also named the U.S. Department of Agriculture….

(editorial comment: The suit was settled by the school – yay!)

The USDA, which did not join the settlement, has filed a motion to dismiss the case, Press said (Deborah Press, general counsel for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine), but Williamson and the committee intend to pursue it and challenge federal statutes that, in part, require schools in the National School Lunch Program to serve cow’s milk during meals as a condition to receive federal funding….

‘LAUSD wasn’t the problem here; they were doing their best to comply with these dogmatic federal rules,’ Press said….

In order to receive a dairy milk substitute, a student is required to provide a note from a doctor or parent citing a medical or dietary need to restrict the student’s choice of milk.

The federal policy also states that schools in the program ‘shall not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk products by the school’ at any time while on school premises or at school events. “

( excerpts, my emphases, from Got milk alternatives? Former student wins settlement from L.A. district over criticism of dairy products,
LA Times, 11-24-23 )

“WTF ?”

Yeah, WTF.  And, wow.  Who did the dairy industry screw pay off to get that statute into federal law in the first place (a statute I’m guessing few people were aware of, until the lawsuit)?

After the lawsuit was settled, Shannon Haber, a spokesperson for LAUSD, released a statement saying that, “Our Food Services Program follows USDA guidelines, and we continue to support our students with nutritious meals and healthy alternatives for those who have specific dietary requests and requirements.”

Scientists and nutritionists – at least those not employed/paid off by the dairy industry – have long known that “nutritious meals and healthy alternatives” do not need, and probably should not include, dairy products. And, as the article mentioned, “Black, Indigenous, Asian and Latino Americans are among those most likely to suffer from lactose intolerance, which can result in digestive issues including bloating, diarrhea and gas after consuming milk products.”

Got diarrhea milk?

Oh, and here’s the ethnic makeup of LAUSD students: 74% Hispanic/Latino, 7.3% Black, 5.7% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 0.1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.2% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 10% White.   Yep, nine out of ten LAUSD students are likely to have, to some degree, lactose intolerance or sensitivity. 

Just wondering:  why are we the only mammals who continue to consume milk products after we are weaned, and then, not even products (cheese/milk/cream) made using the milk of our own species?  And yes, this question is coming from someone who thinks Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese is as habit-forming as crack cocaine….   [3]

Well, Martha, actually not, but it sure is addictive.

*   *   *

Department Of Well Of Course A Middle Child Would Find This Interesting

Moiself  has long had an interest the theories of birth order and sibling relationships as tools to understand the complexities of family bonds.  My interest in this area of family dynamics was heightened when I recently came across a link to an article from The Atlantic on birth order and gender expectations:

“…a contingent of oldest sisters have described the stress of feeling accountable for their family’s happiness, the pressure to succeed, and the impression that they aren’t being cared for in the way they care for others. People have even coined a term for this, ‘eldest-daughter syndrome,’ which speaks to a real social phenomenon, according to Yang Hu, a professor of global sociology. In many cultures, oldest siblings as well as daughters of all ages tend to face high expectations from family members—so people playing both parts are especially likely to take on a large share of household responsibilities, and might deal with more stress as a result. ⁠⁠

The caregiving tendency isn’t an inevitable quality of eldest daughters; rather…it tends to be imposed by family members who are part of a society that presumes that eldest daughters should act a certain way. Birth order does not impact your personality, but it can impact how your family views you. Eldest kids aren’t necessarily more responsible than their siblings; instead, they tend to be given more responsibilities because they are older. Expectations are also influenced by gender. Daughters in particular can be seen as ‘kin keepers,’ performing invisible labor that keeps a family together. ⁠⁠

( excerpts, my emphases, from “The Plight of the Eldest Daughter:
Women are expected to be nurturers.
Firstborns are expected to be exemplars. Being both is exhausting.”
By Sarah Sloat, The Atlantic )

The complexities inherent in birth order theories have always intrigued moiself.  There are sooooooo many variables – the number and gender of the children; the spacing between their births, a child whose mental and/or physical health issues drain monetary, emotional and time resources from the other children, the family’s financial situation….[4] –  too many variables for the theories to be subject to any kind of testing that will hold scientific water, so to speak.

“Older children are ____.  Only children are _____.  Middle children are ____.“

These generalizations seem to touch some observational keystones, amongst both psychology professionals and us layfolk.  But there are also a bajillion exceptions to the attempts at classification, such as this example: [5]

You are not your parent’s oldest child; you are the fourth of their six children.  But there was such a large gap between their first four the second two offspring (you and your baby sister are the,“Ooops I guess it wasn’t menopause after all!” babies) that your older sisters and brothers were out of the house before you had anything resembling a sibling relationship with them:  throughout your life, they’ve been more like aunts/uncles/distant cousins.  Thus, *experientially,* instead of being a middle or younger/est child, you are the oldest child in a family of two children.

Fitting with everything I’ve read on the subject, The Atlantic article says the research shows that birth order does not confirm personality traits, but it *does* affect how people view you, and treat you, and what their expectations are of you.  And it is fairly well-established that how people treat us impacts how we view and treat ourselves.

My father was from a family of six children, and he’d told me how his parents’ relations with his siblings influenced how he wanted to raise his own children.   [6]   Several decades ago, when I first started reading articles about how parents respond to different children, I was fascinated by the studies, and they got me to consider my own family experiences.  On more than one visit to my parents’ house I tried to have a conversation with my father about it – get his opinion, basically.  But he would have none of it.

My father was a person with many fine qualities; however, introspection wasn’t one of them, and he wasn’t well-educated.  Despite my attempted explanations to the contrary, I think he took my wanting discuss the subject – of birth order/different expectations; parents’ relationships to different children –  as my wanting an answer to a question that had never occurred to me to ask.  He seemed to think I was implying that he (and our mother) loved certain of their children “more” than others.  No matter how I phrased my questions/observations, he would respond with variations of, “We love you all the same.”

“Your love was never in question,” I tried to assure him.  Finally, in good-natured exasperation (but exasperation nonetheless), I sighed, “You’re not listening….”   [7]   But it was a lost cause.

Years later, after observing friends and family members have and raise their children, and then after MH and I had our own two offspring, I have come to this opinion:

If you truly believe you “love your children all the same,”
then you don’t really love them – or see them – for who they are.

You can’t love your children *all the same* because your children are not *all the same.*  They need different things from you at different times.

One Of My Siblings (OOMS) has a good life now but had a very difficult time for many years, due in part/IMO to the fact that our parents loved us “all the same.”  Translation:  they parented us all the same, even though we were four different kids and OOMS had different challenges than the other three.  But because the rest of their kids didn’t have those challenges, my parents just didn’t see (or didn’t want to see) the struggles OOMS was going through.  Not to cast blame; they, along with 99% of their peers,   [8]  were simply ignorant re behavioral and mental health issues.  OOMS needed more guidance, more attention, a firmer hand, so to speak.  OOMS wasn’t as self-starting, self-regulating, and motivated and organized as the other three; OOMS was flailing, in many ways.  But this idea of theirs, that they “loved us the same,” led them to assume that OOMS would, eventually, turn out the same.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists
and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.”

( Ernestine Louise Rose, (January 13, 1810 – August 4, 1892)
a…”suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker who has been called the ‘first Jewish feminist.’ )

*   *   *

May you not try to love everybody “all the same”;
May you steer clear of curated word lists;
May you never need a note from your parent to choose oat milk, FFS;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] I know because I emailed the editor after this had happened to me, and he replied.

[3] Not that moiself  is familiar with crack cocaine, or any kind of highly addictive anesthetic (except for that prescribed me for wisdom teeth extraction all those many years ago), but hey, I like, read things….

[4] “Oldests” and “Onlys” get more of their parents’ time and resources (both are finite qualities, and must be divvied up with the arrival of more children) – this one observation is a fact (one of the few in birth order hypotheses), not a theory. The parents may be financially struggling with the first child, and then get established in their careers and be more economically secure as the years go by…OR, if they have “too many” children (as in more than they can support and/or they get laid off from work….), the financial circumstances can go in the opposite direction…. Just one of the variables to the “rules” of what Oldest and Only get.

[5] From more than one family I’ve known.

[6] That is, he vowed to do things “differently.”

[7] That was a common theme, for conversations with my parents which involved subject matter deeper than the weather or what the kids are doing in school.  If there was any issue that might make them the tiniest bit uncomfortable – and those issues could be difficult to impossible to anticipate – they would reframe what I had said/asked into a question they felt comfortable answering (even if *they* were the ones who’d brought up the uncomfortable issue in the first place!)…or they’d just change the subject.

[8] 99% of any and all of us, at that time.

[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