Whistling Through the Clover of My Mind

Tags

ironies of life, life in the foothills, lifestyle, the GOP clowns

I’m not sure when it happened exactly. I don’t recall anything especial about the day.

What day?

Oh, the day I realized that I had the answer to most everything. When I got it all figured out, and knew that the remaining puzzle pieces were all gonna fit. In my picture of the world.

It should be a national holiday, shouldn’t it? And I know, now you are grabbing a blanket, some snacks and sitting down to listen carefully as I explain the answers  to all your hearts questions.

Sarah Palin continues to bring down the IQ level of the planet simply by breathing. She interjected herself and her simpleton daughter into the Duggar fray. She uses big words of which she knows not. Pedophilia comes to mind. Sarah, coming to a supermarket opening near you.

I ponder how profoundly the world changes. I mean, one doesn’t have to be a genius when it comes to history to understand that Jews and Arabs were natural allies for a good many HUNDREDS of years before they weren’t. Jews found some safety in Arab controlled lands at least when it came to the Christians who often slaughtered entire towns of them during the Crusading years. Muslims allowed them safe haven and allowed them to practice their faith largely unhampered.

And let us not forget that Jews fled places like Spain, often ending in Muslim held lands, to avoid  Torquemada and his forced “conversions” of Jews to Christianity. Muslims fared no better.

Yet today, we have a Middle East Muslim population determined (rationally or otherwise) to eradicate “Israel from the map”. Actually I think that refers more to the physicality of the state rather than all people Jewish, but still, a hell of a turn of events wouldn’t you say?

Is it in the water? No. It is the result of trying to pretend you’re holier than thou, when you are not. That’s why the GOP continues to find itself mired in the cesspool of sexuality wrongdoing virtually ALL the time. Hastert and the Duggars are simply the latest examples. We ain’t talkin’ your garden variety adultery ya know.

Like wrap your brain around the fact, that while wringing his holy hands in shock and dismay at Clinton’s adultery with Monica, the Speaker (Newty) was busy on his third serial adultery himself (and treating his ex in the despicable manner only a man who thinks of women as disposable arm candy can).

Newt stepped down in favor of Bob Livingston, who stepped down even before he formally took the gavel, having played around with as many as four women not his wives.

And then they settled on Dennis Hastert.

Well you know how that turned out. And then there was that guy who was pantin’ after pages. And the prostitutes, and the gay liaisons. And plenty of regular old adultery. It’s not that the Dems don’t engage in bad behavior, but it seldom flies in the face of their public hypocritical stances on gay rights, and the sanctity of marriage and all that other rot.

This sign should have been posted back in the fifties and sixties to most of the mothers giving birth to people like Santorum, Carson, Trump, Cruz, Walker, and so forth and so on and so on.

If I hear one more Republican strategist talk about the “wonderful field of candidates” we have this season, I’m gonna vomit.

Seriously do you paint crazy glue on your face so as to not crack up when saying that shit?

I read this and it seems accurate. The song says, “only the good die young.” That might well be true. I’m living proof. I ain’t good by design that’s for sure. My heart leads me to places that seem to rail at inequality, injustice, and all manner of dickish wrongitude, but it’s from no desire to be good. Just how it turned out. Education is a powerful teacher.

Speaking of which, living well is the best revenge I’m quite sure. And once I learned that, I spent my time trying to live well, which made living well much easier I gotta say. And knowin’ that the people who dislike me the most live these narrow mean little lives, well that’s my frosting.

My husband and I chatted the other night about how in our darker days (before we met or otherwise) when one sits and daydreams about the “perfect life”, well, reality caught up with us both. We are living it now. Both of us, rather blissful, sober in our assessment, very very aware of how lucky and blessed we are.

We love where we live (it ain’t called land of Enchantment for nothin” folks). We love our home and fitting it to our needs and desires as perfectly as possible. We love our companion pets whom we are privileged to care for. Most of all we love each other. After nearly sixteen years we still are never bored, and seldom disappointed. We laugh, and almost cry occasionally at how lucky we are.

I recall my father saying very sarcastically as he sat in his chair, his life fading away before his eyes, “And they call these my golden years.”

Well, they are truly golden for me, and I wake with such anticipation and such eagerness each day, fulfilling all my dreams and hopes for how I would live and do in these years after the working was finished.

But I’d still like a spare million should you have it. I can do more.

Beating a Dead or Dying Horse

Tags

classmates, Humor, life in the foothills, lifestyle

I hear from people now and again that the time of individual blogging has peaked. I don’t know if that’s true, and have no particular desire to investigate it either. I know that people who have  blogged have come and gone but I don’t think that is meaningful. That’s a lot like saying that when the inline skating craze erupted, millions of people joined in only later to discard it when they didn’t find it so fun six months later.

People who might have something to say but don’t care much about being a writer will naturally not stick with blogging.

There may be other reasons. People are, I suspect, rather sure that what they have to say is meaningful to others. Bloggers find out just how fickle this is. I’ve been doing this since 2007 or so, and while I’m okay with those who seem to read me, I never “took off” and certainly only a few find anything to comment upon except in a rare instance. I don’t do it for the public applause surely since there often isn’t any.

People who are not really interested in writing per se find Facebook useful enough to get their point across. I use it quite a lot myself, but it cannot take the place of a substantial piece.

I keep changing the focus of my blog, and no doubt that is not helpful, but little do I care. While politics consumes me, I’m far from the best spokesman around. There are, honestly, hugely better sources than moi.

If I pride myself on anything when it comes to the pen it is my ability to blend in a certain snarkiness that some find amusing. I love to twist and turn a phrase and catch people off guard. I’m not nearly as good as say Driftglass or Uncle Charlie Pierce I must say, but I try. If you have no idea of whom I speak, well, so much the poorer are you.

It seems we are headed for another damn war, one that I seriously don’t support. There is entirely too much drumming going on on the far right and that suggests to me that more is being made of this ISIL danger than is real. Most people figure our men and women will be risking their lives once again, and apparently nearly half seem okay with that.

I find that odd given that our government (whether one includes down to local city councils or not) is chock full of seriously stupid and demented people. I’m not sure what it says that so many are so willing to put their lives in the hands of lunatics who believe the earth was created 6,562 years ago, that Jesus rode dinosaurs, that climate change is just a hoax as reported to them by big oil and gas, that giving more money to the rich will someone make middle class people rich, and that God created a whole segment of people gay just to make them live a life of celibacy as some kind of statement to the Catholic Church that they too can learn to keep it in their pants.

I mean if you are that crazy, well, swamp lands abound that are yours for a few grand. i have the deeds.

What this all suggests to me, wasn’t clear to me until a while back, when again, I wondered why I continue to find a whole lotta people continuously reliving their “high school” days as the “best” times of their lives.

I mean seriously? Those were the best years?

Most people find the teen years tolerable at best, painful at worst. We were unsure of ourselves, unsure of the future, and subject to the incessant drum of peer pressure. I figure perhaps the truth of the matter is, is that those were the kings and queens, the quarterbacks and class presidents, are pretty much the Bricks of the day, relegated to drunken evenings reliving the glory days because life just has turned out as full of mendacity as Big Daddy suggested.

There is both irony in that and poetic justice, for to not live in that world of favored click drove us who lived on the outside to fear that our lives would never amount to anything, and that these pretty faces with their athletic prowess and perky breasts were destined to continue being “better” all our lives.

Perhaps that is why we rejects of the acceptable struck out to far-flung campuses and escaped the confines of the “scene of the crime” of our youth.

And when we returned figuratively or otherwise to “home” we were amazed at how small and provincial it all was, and how small and silly most of those lives lived then were.

While we found some of our old friends had weathered the years well, and were thinking and compassionate, all too many were shriveled and cold-hearted, predictably shallow in their thinking and unable to care about anyone but their own clan. Karma is a bitch as they say.

While all that “talking about the old days” was fun for the moment, soon we find ourselves with little else to say, and we stand around much as we did at those awful sock hops, starring at the floor, wishing we could disappear. When we turn and walk away, and survey the world we now inhabit, we take a deep breath, smile, and chuckle at our good fortune at having escaped. Forever after we watch from the sidelines, bemused as we watch the chitchat continue of “remember when. . . .”

Who says the zoo has to have visible bars? We know who is free and who is not don’t we? The exhibits of “how it could have turned out” are both object lessons and light amusement.

Yes, karma indeed is a bitch.

I ponder when I hit my peak. Mostly I conclude that I haven’t yet, and probably will still be reaching it when I breathe my last. But damn, it does seem to get better and better, and that’s a hell of a lot to be grateful for.

I Think Therefore I Suffer

Tags

crap I didn't learn, crap I learned, life in the foothills, lifestyle, musings

I find the human condition dizzyingly complex. I’m not sure we’ll ever get it sorted out. I’m reasonable sure that you have to be slightly off (if you get my drift) to study the human mind, and I’m very sure that prolonged study causes intense breaks with reality meaning that research results become suspect the minute they are conceived.

I mean, I am one of your more ordinary types of “scheduled” persons. I do a whole host of things as part of a routine that can become quite rigid. I walk the dog at 6 a.m. If the weather does not cooperate, but it’s sunny and lovely at 9 a.m., well too bad dog, that window has closed until tomorrow.

If you have ever read a story whose main character is one of those routinized humans who eats the same lunch for twenty-five years while sitting on the same park bench across the street from their work location which is a tiny cubicle in a corner from which said subject does some routine mundane same-old-same-old day in and day out for forty-three glorious years returning home at precisely 5:47 p.m. to one of five carefully arranged TV dinners and then two hours of knitting before climbing into bed at the stroke of 10 p.m. to awaken precisely at 6 a.m. to do it all over again, and equate me as one of those persons, well, you would be mistaken.

You would be deeply mistaken.

I revel in setting up systems of order, but true order is nothing but neurotic obsession. I like knowing that there is a time for every purpose under heaven, but find it serves me best by allowing me to ignore the chores I wish to ignore if fate delivers me some altered time line. You see, I use order for the gifts of avoidance as much a for the gift of organization.

I never met a routine that couldn’t be tweeked.

I never met one that didn’t need major revisions at least twice a year.

Because my desire for orderly organization runs smack into my desire for something new.

It is why I struggle to have “a” hobby, rather than eight or so.

It is why I struggle to add yet another great recipe rather the fine grouping that I already have of tested and true.

It is why I sit puzzling for sometimes day as to “what to read next” because there is so much to choose from.

It is why new thoughts intrigue me rather than bore or frustrate me. Dazzle me with your ideas for my brain loves the challenge.

Why am I not satisfied with a job well done, repetitively? Why am I on this unrelenting quest to master yet another THING?

Who knows.

It may be part of what makes us human, or at least most of us? More than some of us at least, for I live by the theory that I am only original in my sum rather than my parts.

We are driven to conquer new things, we humans. It is what has taken us to the moon, Mars and beyond, which powers us to the Mariana Trench and to the North Pole. From this thing inside, we decided we should be able to fly like birds, and go faster than horses at a full gallop. It propels us ever onward, never satisfied with what is but rather focused on what might be.

I am not Einstein, nor Picasso; no Sophocles am I, no Hypatia, Gertrude Stein, or Curie. The drive to do something new is not limited to only the brightest and most noteworthy inventor or sophist  but resides somewhere beside that reptilian remnant in each braincase.

There is percolates a constant insistent demand or remains dormant throughout most of its life, or somewhere in between. What awakens it, or dampens it, whatever the case may be, is unknown to me for sure. It just surely is in me a sometimes annoying nagging that never ceases.

So I go along in my routines sometimes happily for weeks, until it’s just not enough, and I scrounge around seeking some new challenge. To read the book I’ve long avoided because it was too hard, to attempt a new hobby or take an old one up a notch. To master something new, to add to my resumé offered with the last breath to the only possibly interested entity who common sense (let alone great theologically pondering) tells me has no such interest.

Yet I am so compelled as are countless others, to do SOMETHING, to create, categorize, expand the realm of knowledge, point out the failings of planetary systems be they political or religious. We are all compelled to DO, for no very good reason at all. After all, I am by thinking said Réne. What more needs be said or done?

This is not something morose and melancholy. Whatever you believe about God and death, it accommodates all. What is is, what will be will be, and not much I do changes any of that. But still I do.  Do that is. And with a happy and challenged heart for the doing excites and exhilarates, giving satisfaction beyond the completion of the thing itself.

I should much like to ask a chimpanzee if they experience this sort of thing at all. Is it better not to? I sense not, but I know not either. Perhaps there is a peacefulness that comes from life being sorted out ahead of you and only to be followed with death’s appearance earlier if you slip off the path into the gaping jaws of someone higher up the food chain.

Anyway, I’m busily re-organizing and it’s all so exciting and thrilling to have new challenges. For me it’s biking instead of walking and cooking in a new way driven by a body who has said “enough of that” now nourish me properly. It fills the days with a new expectation, new roads to travel, new discoveries.

The Contrarian views this all from his perch. His “drive” is significantly subdued. He chuckles a lot at my fever pitch, supportive but in his own comical way. He loves this new biking craze I’m starting. “Oh, my, but ANOTHER thing you will grow to hate to do every day!” But as he says, you may hate it but you can be damned determined to do it anyhow.

I am a closet full of discarded crafts away from being the most productive person I know.

So how weird am I?

Really, you can tell me.

Bookshelf Tag

Tags

Books, lifestyle

Well, I like doing stuff like this regarding books especially. There are so many. Too many. Never enough time to read all that I want, or even know all that I would like. And again, we are all so different. We all have such different and interesting lists. Following are my answers.

 

1- Is there a book that you really want to read but haven’t because you know that it’ll make you cry?

No, can’t say as I can think of a single one.

2- Pick one book that helped introduce you to a new genre.

Isaac Asimov’s I Robot. It hooked me on science fiction for a few years. I read simply tons of it, along with a few Sci-Fi magazines. Sold or gave away almost all of them, literally more than a hundred books. As I youngster I was fascinated by Rome, I devoured any book I could find that was set in that era, and eventually it became my favorite period of history, roughly the time between Julius and say Nero.

3- Find a book that you want to reread.

I am not much of a re-reader simply because there is so much out there not yet read. I did however re-read War and Peace and enjoyed it every bit as much the second time around. I can see myself re-reading Dostoyevsky. I love his stuff.

4- Is there a book series you’ve read but wish that you hadn’t?

I read North and South  by John Jakes and basically thought it fairly trite. I read fiction quite fast, always have, so series are always a boon for me.

5- If your house was burning down and all of your family and pets were safe, which book would you go back inside to save?

Well none actually since most everything is replaceable at this point, but certainly Shakespeare and Walter Breuggeman’s, Genesis are among books I treasure for the wealth of wisdom within. The bible of course. Perhaps Christology at the Crossroads by Jon Sobrino, or something by Gustavo Gutierrez such as  Liberation Theology

6- Is there one book on your bookshelf that brings back fond memories?

Probably The Five Books of Moses, a Matthew Fox translation of the first five books of the bible. I studied it when at Marygrove College, sure that I would one day be working on a doctorate in Biblical studies and a Dominican nun. Those were precious days studying under some of the best teachers I have ever had. If I am a grown-up Christian it is due to Father Tony and some of the Sisters who taught me to really understand the bible, and thus see God in a more realistic and beautiful way. The generated a life-long interest that has never waned.

 

7- Find a book that has inspired you the most.

Two actually, for similar reasons. Leon Uris’s  Mila 18 that probably helped me understand as no other book what it was like to live in Europe as a Jew in Hitler’s time. The other was Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, which made it clear to me that there was no glory in war. It was simply ugly, painful, and terrorizing every day, all day.

8- Do you have any autographed books? 

Yes, two that I can remember, possible more, but one is by a wonderful internet and blogging friend, Shannon O’Donnell’s Save the Bones, about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, and the other from Bart Ehrman, Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill,  Misquoting Jesus.

9- Find the book that you have owned the longest.

I have sold off hundreds of books and undoubtedly my oldest. But my Complete Works of Shakespeare is so old the cover is nearly half torn off. The oldest book I can remember actually reading was My Friend Flicka which had been my dad’s I think. It’s long gone.

10- Is there a book by an author that you never imagined you would read or enjoy?

Several. I didn’t expect to enjoy Don Quixote by Cervantes certainly. Nor Balzac, Voltaire, Virgil and Homer. All were surprises. The Greek playwrights were shockingly fun to read and I thought they would be mostly unintelligible today. I find generally many ancient classics are simply delightful even today.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

Tags

life in the foothills, lifestyle

I’m a bit of a student of humans. Being one, I find it helps me find my place in the herd.

I’m astoundingly and endlessly fascinated on why and how we grow up together, face the same national and international crises, yet see it all quite differently. Any parent will tell you that even identical twins are quite different in personality.

While I am perfectly unique, as you are, we share some attributes, therefore, given that there are over seven BILLION of us, nobody probably has any attribute or notion that is singular to only them.  Meaning we can all relate to somebody else about something.

Facebook is an perfect vehicle for looking at this phenomenon. Some people use it only to keep in touch with family and close friends. Some use it for business. Some use it as a voice for their beliefs. Some share everything including the kitchen sink with everyone, some with only some, some share very little that is personal. All have the absolute right to do as it suits them, and nobody has any business being critical of their choices.

Keep that last point firmly in mind. I am NOT criticizing anyone. I am not judging anyone. If anything I point to my own perceived flawed personality which makes me react differently that others do under similar circumstances. I do that because if I feel that way, undoubtedly others do too, and I wish to let them know that it is not wrong, just different. For there are no wrongs or rights here, just idiosyncrasies which we all have and in some cases share with others.

I refer to the issue of sharing life’s downsides with others, people perhaps that you have never had a face-to-face conversation. Now first I don’t want to make much of the face-to-face thing, since there are relationships that have been forged which are deep and abiding although the respective parties had not met. I use the phrase to mean more specifically, people whom you know on Facebook, but don’t really know, if you get my drift. You share something in common but that’s about it. You talk about THAT thing, but not about much else.

As far as I know, no one in my family is ill with any “serious” disease. Serious these days is relative since people are learning to live quite long and productive lives with a lot of things we thought of as fatal thirty years ago. But on Facebook, I know quite a number of folks who are battling serious debilitating illness and they talk openly and frankly about their struggles.

I’m always taken aback when I first read these accounts of “I just got diagnosed,” or “I got bad news with my test results,” because I would NEVER disclose such to hardly anyone. Seriously I wouldn’t likely have told my parents when they were still alive. Other than my husband, I doubt I would tell anyone at all.

Here’s why.

First of all I don’t believe in a God that “answers prayers” in the sense of changing an otherwise outcome. If God operates that way then God is cruel to some very deserving people I have known. I believe that prayer is my way of communicating with God, but I don’t believe God changes outcomes because a prayer ‘touches” Him where another doesn’t. I believe that knowing that people care enough to do that for you is helpful because good emotional response to disease is helpful to treatment, but that’s the line  I draw in the matter.

So proffers of prayers just comes to me as “gosh I’m sorry” and “boy I’m counting my blessings again”. In other words, I hear pity, because I  am  now separated from the herd of okay people and plunked in the “sick” group. Clearly I’m wrong in this, but it’s how I react.

Second, unlike a lot of really good people I know, I have people who detest me. I often say things knowing that I will anger, offend and piss people off. I do it because it seems right to point out bigotry, ignorance and willful lack of concern to people who need to know that they are not escaping notice. I admire people who are beloved by everyone, they are essential to the world, but I am not one of them. I have “enemies”, and nothing would please them more than to  tsk-tsk my misfortune as “finally getting what I deserved”. I am reminded often by fundamentalists that the price of my stubborn resistance to their “right way to live” will be eternal damnation, a prospect they enjoy thinking about, since they always smile when they say it.

I will not announce my illness simple because I will not give them the satisfaction.

I will share with you that I suffer from the “what might happen” syndrome to a far greater degree than is healthy or normal in my opinion. I am well aware that it’s silly and stupid and a waste of time, yet I struggle none the less, and I am blessed with a husband who helps prod me off dead center to get moving to address my fears and get the verdict. So far, it’s always been thumbs up, which makes me feel like a horse’s ass in the end, but doesn’t do much to cause me let it go the next time. I can dream up more bad outcomes than Carter had liver pills as they say.

Which all means exactly nothing much I guess. I am not ill. In fact, (a post I’ll be doing in the next week or so) my travels through the health system has turned out quite well indeed, if annoying at times.

Which might lead you to conclude that you can’t trust my professed happiness much of the time. Actually you can. When I’m not happy I tend to just not mention happiness. And it’s doesn’t mean I’ll never tell you about it. But it will be after the fact, when I have a perspective from which to offer hopefully something that might help somebody in similar circumstances. I wish I could be like you, and accept the tender embraces of friends near and far, but I cannot, and in I guess I’m pretty okay with that. Whether I am or not, it is what it is.

Which means that when you talk about your illness or loss, I do commiserate and I do empathize and most of all I appreciate your strength of character. You become my role model I guess. I have been in awe of the grace that so many of you show in battling these detours in life.

Aren’t we all just amazingly weird when you get right down to it?

Reasons Why

Tags

choices, feminism, lifestyle, Women's issues

This appeared on Facebook and I put it up on my wall with the caption: “Is this what parenthood does to a person! If so, I’m glad I escaped!”

While there weren’t many replies, one caught my interest and got me to thinking about what might lie behind the statement.

While it may have been meant innocently enough, the comment was “no this is not your normal situation and you did miss a lot.”

I took that, however meant, as a defensive lob, one meant to suggest that parenting is a great thing and I was much the poorer for having “missed” it.

Of course, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.

I chalked it up as another of those, subtle or not so subtle put-downs by those with children of those of us without. The other one that I remembered vividly was a discussion about corporal punishment by parents (or caregivers) and the suggestion that I was unfit to comment, “since as I recall, you didn’t have children did you?”

I think I know where the defensiveness and consequent “I’m really better than you because you don’t have children” comes from

Dial back the time machine to the late 60’s when I graduated from high school. The sexes were still pretty much set in stone. I knew that a number of my classmates would probably be married within a year or so, but I was off to college. It was the beginning of that “sweet spot” in time–the convergence of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the hippie movement, and the feminist movement. The Vietnam anti-war movement began in the mid-sixties and continued and escalated during the late 60’s and early 70’s. We marched on campuses, got tear-gassed, shut down campuses. Some campuses were more volatile than others, yet we all found ourselves involved in “teach-ins”  (where I first learned of the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes). 

Women were a big part of the movement but often relegated to second-class status behind the men. This mimicked that of the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks did not suddenly pop up one day on a bus in Montgomery Alabama, but had long been a worker in the field. She was of course kept much in the background in terms of leadership as were other African-American women of the day.

The Hippie movement, also a product of the 60’s was most renowned  for Haight-Asbury and Woodstock, but it signaled the advent of free-love, birth-control, and a defining break with the past and all it’s traditional values. The Hippies were also vehemently anti-war. The Beatles, most notably John Lennon became a major force for peace with “Imagine”.

Women in this movement two were pushed to the rear, often treated as secretaries and much needed lovers for the important work being done by the men in the “awakening”.  Angela Davis and others fought back.

Women looked to each other during this period and Betty Freidan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem,  Kate Millet, Shirley Chisholm, and Bella Abzug were the emerging role models for women like myself who were just starting to look higher than the secretarial typewriter for our future. We read with relish The Feminine Mystique, and Sexual Politics. Later, immersed in the Church, I would cling to In Memory of Her and She Who Is, as the patriarchal stereotypes of the bible began to be dismantled by women of faith but also biblical expertise. Women like  Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Elizabeth Johnson became household names.

I was in that first wave of women admitted in law school in large numbers. We leaned on each other, we learned, and we excelled. Because we were steeped in the injustices of the past, we were angry, defensive, and could spot a “sexist pig” at twenty paces. Offering to hold a door for us was likely to be met with a angry look, and a statement like, “I am more than capable of opening my own door, thank you.”

Plenty of men retreated before us “ball-busting bitches” and sought more traditional women to welcome them home at night and bear their children.

That is the world out of which I emerged into my late 20’s, a time when most women start to realize that if parenthood is on their agenda, one best get busy.

As a look back at the cadre of young women I worked along side of I can recall what we talked about and how we felt quite vividly. We were in our late twenties, still working more often with men than with other women. Most judges were still male, most prosecutors, most defense attorneys, most cops. We were not insignificant, but we were far from a majority. Mostly we were treated with fairness, although there was a lot of what today would be unacceptable sexual harassment. To us it was business as usual. We slipped the grasp of unwanted advances (mostly from judges who somehow thought that being a judge’s mistress must be our dream????), and commanded salaries the likes of which our hardworking fathers (mothers of course didn’t even come close) had never attained in their working lifetimes.

Among those of us who were single, (most of us) the issue of children inevitably comes up. And of course it came up more regularly for single women than married, since we were single mostly by choice. Men were wonderful, but unnecessary as a financial crutch so mostly we were looking to take our time. I don’t count myself as being usual in having had good half dozen serious affairs, and my share of brief flings. There was no reason not to.

As best I can tell, we split about 50-50 on the child thing. About half arranged by any number of methods to get pregnant and have a child with no intent to have the father play any significant role in the raising of the child. The other half, myself included, opted out.

I can say that during my now more than sixty-four years, I spent roughly eight months considering the idea seriously, but I have to say it probably had more to do with the man I was seeing at the time than on the biological clock ticking. I cannot say what was the key reason I chose not to have children, only that it was a combination of over-population around the globe, the desire not to have my own free-wheeling lifestyle disrupted, a serious question whether I would be a “good” parent–having no real role model, and some lack of “mothering” instincts, that I felt should be stronger than they were.

Looking back, I recognize that children bring a certain joy, apparently some sense of accomplishment (though again why escapes me pretty much), and I think some security? about the future that is perceived rather than necessarily experienced. It seems to feed some egos, though not all from what I have seen. I think children are marvelous creatures, and I think being good at parenting is a very hard thing, a thing most people take for granted and therefore don’t do a very good job at. I’m glad I didn’t do it, but I am in awe of some people I know who have.

I definitely think it ought to be way harder to qualify to be a parent. It’s amazing to me that so many people turn out as well as they do given their crummy experience with parents. I wonder how amazing this world might be if so many people didn’t have to spend so much time overcoming their poor upbringing.

At one time, we in the feminist movement disliked our sisters who chose the traditional roles. We thought they made it hard for those of us who wanted to be treated equally in jobs, advancement and pay. I think that time has long past. We, or at least I, recognize that the ultimate freedom is to chose the life you wish, and it is certainly an honorable and important choice to choose parenting.

The opposite is also true. To not choose parenting can be smart, noble, and a recognition that it is a special profession, one not suited to everyone, and not simple the thing “most everyone can do”. It is not an accomplishment, but a sacred responsibility one should take on with eyes wide open.

I think it all points to the fact, that while all of us may have had the same “historical” background, we responded to it differently. It imprinted on us quite dis similarly and we apparently made different judgements about it. That is what makes us human I suspect and why we thrive overall. If Aristotle was right that there is a set of absolute moral precepts, we will, it seems, go on arguing forever about just what they are.

Once Upon a Time on the Internet

Tags

Internet chat, life in the foothills, lifestyle

The Internet and I go back a long way.

Not to the beginning, but at a time when you could actually go to the bookstore and buy books containing “online sites”. Yes there was a time that online sites numbered in the tens of thousands and not tens of millions.

I soon discovered that there was a thing called “IRC” which stands for Internet Relay Chat. It’s actually still in existence and there are claims that worldwide millions still use it.

Basically you downloaded a MIRC program, attached to a server and entered the realm of make-believe. Virtual “rooms” were created and then peopled by anyone who happened to have an interest in the subject matter. While many were no doubt benign, “Quilter’s Corner”, many if not a whole lot were sexually oriented.

It gave birth to a whole new genre of talent called “virtual sex” where folks paired off in whatever couplings that suited them and publicly “wrote” out their sexual encounter. Meanwhile all sorts of conversations ensued in the room, having everything, nothing, or nearly nothing to do with the sexual “story” or “stories” that were unfolding. The text went by in a blur, and there were also ways to have private conversations while participating or watching the main room.

Some rooms were sexual by name, but never had any sex, people just talked back and forth, making jokes, and so forth. Channel operators controlled the room, having the ability to “kick out” people who were disturbing the peace and fun of the rest. Pictures were sent back and forth from individual to individual, music segments, and so forth.

I was a participant in one and for a couple of years, spent a lot of hours talking. I got to know a lot of people very well. I later met some of them.

But we all knew that lurking in any room was the possibility of a fake. A fake was person who pretended to be other than they really were. Oh  I don’t mean just fatter or balder, older or something like that, but gender benders were common. Men who pretended to be women, and I suppose the opposite.

Since we got to know people over a long period, it was fairly shocking to discover when you had been taken in. One guy talked to a woman for months, sent her mail. They were “in love” and planning to marry. He went to surprise her at her home, in another state for her birthday, only to be met by a husband at the door. She later explained, that it was only “pretend”, and she hadn’t meant any harm. Well as he told me some months later, it sure harmed him. He sat in a hotel room alone for several days waiting for his return flight, completely broken.

In our room, there was one girl who was the “life” of the party every night. Always fun and friendly. After months, one night a man claiming to be her brother came in and informed us she had been killed in a car accident. He had discovered “the room” on her computer while packing up her things to remove from her apartment.

Some weeks later we learned that “she” was a he, and had been simply gaming everyone from the start.

There were probably not a lot of these folks. As I said, I met quite a few, and certainly talked to more on the phone. There were conversations of others getting together and obviously groups didn’t get together to engage in this display of pretense, so most people were legit. (People organized meet ups for weekends across the country were a “rooms” participants would get together.)

One always wonders why people do this.

I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. My husband and I first met through “newsgroups” on the Internet, moved to IRC and then met. But all that happened within about two months. That was nearly 15 years ago.

Today I ran into an article entitled “The Weird Reasons Why People Make Up False Identities on the Internet” and that got me curious again. Most of the stories in the article are about people not engaged in chat so much as using the Internet and the capability of false personas to improve their own bottom line. Others are more curious, involving much time to invent and continue. Why would someone create a young girl with cancer and then have her die? Why a lesbian reporter in Syria who gets arrested?

I remember the “girl” who turned out to be a guy from IRC. I remember the “memorial room” we set up and gathered at to remember her. I remember how angry we were when we found out.

I guess I’m missing the pay off to the liar. I still don’t get that.

But I will tell you one thing. A number of those people were mighty fine folks. I remember them to this day and the one’s I met were the same in person as online. I often wonder what has become of Sayten and Angus, of Jules, and Floppy. Maybe they are still there. But I doubt it.

Funny how an article triggers such memories of times so long ago. What weird memories. Now the fake Facebook personality is common I guess. I still don’t get the point.