Quote of the day

Just had to share this one from Toni:

“Bigots are a special kind of stupid.”

A compelling argument

Both Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Riley have publicly conceded that the religious right has lost the argument over marriage equality, according to an article on CNN online today.

Well.

I guess since two such august eminences as these have announced the outcome of the debate, we can all relax. But just to make things clear, it’s not reason that has prevailed. Poor ol’ Rush bemoans the fact that the conservatives “…lost the language on this. (Rush and his crones) lost the issue when (they) allowed the word ‘marriage’ to be bastardized.”

We've bastardized the language. This from the guy who gave us ‘feminazis’ to describe folks like my daughters who feel that their gender should not disqualify them for equitable treatment.

Hm-m-m…

O’Riley had an even more interesting take on things. "The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals," O'Reilly said Tuesday on Fox. "That's where the compelling argument is. 'We're Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.' That's a compelling argument, and to deny that, you have got to have a very strong argument on the other side."

Limbaugh is lost forever, I fear. But O’Riley – he actually got it right. The tragedy is that he truly does not know he got it right.

Just to make it crystal clear to everyone out there, and directly from the mouth of O’Riley…

The compelling argument is indeed as follows: “We’re Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.”

From O’Riley’s mouth to the Supremes’ ears… One can only hope.

Why Amy Tan?

In responding to this question from a bus riding friend who saw my book jacket cover, I guess the short answer is, because she makes me think.

I read a lot. Unless I’m at the gym or doing yard work, I’m hardly ever more than arm’s length from a book with an odd scrap of paper marking the furthest reach of my latest reading session.

 I love historical novels (Mitchener, Uris, etc). They tend to be my go-to for vacations or when I have the flu. Baldacci in paperback is good for airplanes because the time required to read one works out to the flight time from Seattle to D.C., deducting time for reading the prep materials for whatever meeting I’m heading toward.

I like to read U.S. Supreme Court dissents when I can get my hands on them. The prevailing opinions are interesting but the dissents usually give a clue to future shifts. Plus, they tend to be written with more passion.

I love biographies. Read one recently about Grace Murray Hopper and several other woman scientists  that was fascinating.  Carl Rowan’s Dream makers, Dream Breakers about the life and times of Thurgood Marshall was great.

I lived for each Harry Potter to come out and I’ve read all of Tolkien, as far as I can tell. Those are nightstand books. Time magazine comes to my mailbox but my reading of it is sporadic, with the result that sometimes I’m reading current affairs and other times reading old news. I love a more in-depth discussion of the topics of the day, which is probably closely related to my love for NPR’s All Things Considered and my disdain for TV ‘news.’

I occasionally pick up a woodworking magazine but these days, doing so just serves to remind me of unused tools gathering dust in the garage so – not so much.

I’m not particularly literary, not in the NewYork nose-in-the-air-we-all-went-to-Swarthmore-and-never-do-our-own-laundry sort of way. I can’t imagine why anyone ever reads F. ScottFitzgerald voluntarily. I refuse to apologize for reading what I read in lieu of what some critic thinks I should read.

So, why Amy Tan?

I can’t read one of her novels straight through. In fact, they’re perfect for the bus. Not because they’re easy to put down when we approach my stop but rather, because I never have to read more than a few pages without having come across something to think about.

The way she uses words makes me stop and think again and again. Words have different meanings, then different nuances within those meanings, overlaid with differences of point of view and context. I can spend the rest of the bus ride and odd moments through the day in rapt contemplation of threads she didn’t actually write down but that she’s tacitly invited me to explore on my own.

I suppose part of my fascination may arise from the cultural chasms between a petite Asian woman and an overfed, pale skinned Occidental male. We come from such vastly different cultural paradigms that being invited so warmly into hers is a treat of a kind I’d never have expected.

So, I’m less than halfway into The Bonesetter’s Daughter but already dreading being done with it. Fortunately, I’m also less than halfway through her titles.

I’ll keep reading Amy Tan. She makes me think.

Records

I came across an article about Skye Broberg today.  As I’m sure you all know, Skye holds the world record for fastest time to cram her body into a tiny box with the lid closed. You’ll probably recall that she accomplished her feat in 4.78 seconds.

Don’t recall Skye? Hm-m…Well, she did accomplish her feat in September 2011, so maybe you can be excused your forgetfulness.

I like records, sort of. I mean, I don’t really care about things like who hit the most home runs or ran the fastest mile. Not that I fail to be impressed, but they just don’t capture the imagination. I mean, we all know people play baseball so naturally someone is going to hold that record.

But the quirky records are kind of cool, to my mind.

The record for the fastest time to eat a 12” pizza - currently 1 minute, 9.36 seconds - is held by Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, but only because he didn’t drop the pizza on the floor in front of our small dog, Zoey. I’m confident she could sow down that pie in the 9.36 seconds and give him one minute in change.

There’s a cricket that can do the nasty more than 50 times in four hours, “all with the same female” according to Guinness.( Opportunities for snarky humor abound.)

On a more serious note, and actually of some interest is that Helen Gibson in 1914 became the first professional stuntwoman, performing as a stand-in for Helen Holmes in The Hazards of Helen. One of her stunts involved leaping from a motorcycle to a train while both were in motion.

The record for most naked riders on a theme park ride stands at 102. And for a dollar, I’ll tell you where the ride is located, so you can bring your whole-body rubber glove.

One must wonder what Mr. Timothy McCubbin was thinking when he grew a 5.97-inch nipple hair and then announced it to the world….

Helen Skelton paddled her kayak 2010 miles along the Amazon River, and followed that up with a 500-mile stroll to the South Pole.

More areas of endeavor for which I didn’t know before today that an official world record was…ahem…on record include:
Burrito throwing
Tinned pea eating
Farthest distance to roll a coin on a treadmill
Skidding a car into a parking place between two other cars
Oldest fossilized vomit (160 million years - I’m thinking this one is going to stand, for now)
Largest piñata
Fastest time to make a bed by a team of two. (Frankly, I’d be more intrigued by fastest time to totally UN-make a bed by a team of two but of course, that’s an entirely different sort of project.)
Largest paint brush
And a personal fave…fastest time to drink a bottle of ketchup.

NOTE TO READERS: Can you tell who just spent a half hour trolling the Guinness website?

A friend who's a Friend

Some years ago I was working at a job that paid the bills and added nicely to my resume but didn’t really fit in very well with my view of who I am. So, when the company was faced with laying some people off, I volunteered to be one of those who would take the hit. It was viewed by several of my co-workers as a selfless gesture but in reality, it was totally selfish.

I had been working on a degree centered on ethics at the time and it had come to my attention through a the grapevine that a prof named Bob Schultz was soon to retire. Now, I knew Dr. Schultz was a member of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and had been told by another prof I’d met and liked – Dr. Diane Gillespie – that I would probably be interested in Bob’s take on the world.  I checked the course catalog and sure enough, the good Dr. Schultz was about to teach his last course before retiring but it was a daytime course and I had a day job.

So, I took the hit at work, accepted my unemployment insurance and registered for the course. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my intellectual life.

Bob’s course was centered on ‘professionalism’ from a conceptual angle. What qualifies as a profession, as opposed to just an occupation or trade? Why must certain occupations require specific education and profession to standards of practice and a canon of ethics? Through discussion and a bit of lecture here and there and significant reading and then more discussion, we explored what it meant to profess. What separates MDs and lawyers and other professionals from the rest of us working schlubs? But frankly, although I enjoyed the subject matter, that wasn’t what grabbed me. What floated my boat was the discussion led by a guy who understood that you can’t find good answers if you don’t first think seriously about framing good questions.

Fast forward.

Today while sidelined by a bug I got to thinking about a recent comment by another friend to the effect that she was sick and tired of all the truly awful stuff out there on the Web. I have to agree with her – I find it difficult to wrap my mind around the apparent fact that numerous people recently used the Internet to share snarky comments about a brutal rape, even celebrating the hideous crime itself. I find this disappointing but not surprising - the web is replete with hate and porn and racism and misogyny and blatant disrespect.

It doesn’t have to be that way and it shouldn’t be. The Internet can and should become a tool of thinking people and an engine of positive social change. But the algorithms that bring us stories to read and sites to visit do so in large part by tracking the sites we visit and inferring an interest profile.

After reading Sherree’s concerns (oops, I told) I got to thinking about intentionally altering how the algorithms view me. So instead of going to cnn.com or You Tube, I went into my favorite search engine and started looking up more pleasant things. And as I jumped from site to site, I came across mention of Bob’s name and looked up a couple of sites (links below) that interested me.

Professor Bob and I were never big buddies. I enjoyed his class and was thrilled to run into him accidentally in a Washington D.C. hotel lobby later that year. He was there for meetings relating to his involvement with FCNL and I was there for my work as an advocate for persons living with disabilities. I didn’t recognize him at first and mistook him for our bus driver. He laughed, I laughed and when he’d walked away, I found myself wishing I could have just one more class with him.

Bob is a retired prof and a respected speaker and thinker. But mostly, he’s just a nice guy. And I’m glad to see he’s still around being a nice guy.  There are lots of Bobs to be found on the Net if we just refuse to let ourselves be led to filth. I intend to search them out. Care to join me?

 

(NOTE: Dr. Bob wrote a “last lecture” that remains one of my favorite examples of the written word. I truly wish I had his permission to share it here. To learn a little about what Bob’s about, follow the links below. Turns out it’s easy to find posts about interesting and decent people trying to do right. You just have to know where to look.

http://ptforpeace.org/getinvolved.html  http://fcnl.org/assets/pubs/contacts/MayJune2009FINAL.pdf

Oh, and find some good links to send back to me, please.)

You gotta see this!

Me bro and his esposa are currently up in Fairbanks to see the Aurora Borealis and since they hit their timing right, they’ll also be checking out the finished works of the World Ice Art Championships. I was so hoping this would work out for them because I’ve been twice and I would go again every year if I could afford it.

The ice carving is nothing short of fantastic. Some themes are whimsical, some heroic, some classically influenced and some ultra modernistic. There are incredibly massive structures with intricate bas relief and incredible, delicate flights of fancy that seem to defy gravity.

I’m not usually real taken with fine art but when it’s rendered in ice, the whole thing takes on a different cast. Because this may be the shortest lived art you’ll ever see. I mean, even a live theatrical performance will be repeated the next evening. But this is fine art that melts and there’s something about the fact that makes it seem more precious to me.

Okay, enough pontificating. Please don’t take my word for this but rather, follow the link below and check it out for yourself.

And if you’ve ever the opportunity, go see it in person and at night. Oh, and wear warm clothing – this is, after all, ice sculpture.

http://www.icealaska.com/

Doors

A good friend of mine talked today about doors.

“Some issues are caused by doors. They have an impact on brains and change perceptions, memory and orientation.  A simple example is when you go through a door and forget what you went for or even that you went for something and get involved in something else.  It’s not you.  It’s the doorwaves.”

 Okay, I’m not sure I’m on board with the idea of doorwaves, per se. But I do think she’s on to something. Point of view is crucial and passing through a door always affects one’s point of view.

 Sure, physical doors have this affect. But passing through a metaphorical door is no less transformative. Sometimes the view from the other side teaches a lesson and sometimes brings regrets. Either way, you’ll notice a change. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but soon, and for the rest of your life.  (Sorry, couldn’t hep mysef…)

 But seriously, I’ve passed through a few doors of late, mostly for the good.  Time to stop and look around and decide where I go from here. Because my buddy is right about one thing – having passed through a portal, it’s difficult to recall how one felt or what one was thinking before stepping through.

 When you hear that click behind you, there’s no going back. And at this point in my life, that’s really just fine by me.

 Facing the sunrise. Eyes straight ahead.

Miscellany

So, I’m trolling the CNN site for bloggable ideas and I come across the following story teaser: Golfer falls into 18-foot sinkhole. I wish I could have been in the newsroom to hear the comments that didn’t make it onto the webpage.

Also in the news: Hostess has been bought and Twinkies are coming back this summer. For those of you who found themselves disconsolate at my earlier post about the demise of Hostess, this is a reprieve of sorts. For American kids already struggling with obesity, maybe reprieve isn’t the best word.

“Brutality in South Africa’s culture” doesn’t seem to be news, this being the country that gave us the Boer War, apartheid, necklacing and black-only ‘townships’ made of discarded cardboard.

Under the category of “slow news day,” I found a listing of Ten Vintage Girls’ Names You Don’t Hear Anymore and they included: Joyce, Roseanne, Hattie, Dorothy, Madeline, Willow, Pamela, Ann, Leona, and Janet. Okay, I’ll give you Hattie and possibly even Leona. But I know women who bear each of the other names and two of them are among my sisters. Ann? Really?

I see a posting on DexKnows that lists U.S. churches and includes the line, “Protestant and other Christian churches make up about 314,000 of those, while Catholic churches and Orthodox churches total about 24,000.” Uhm, are Catholic and Orthodox churches no longer Christian? Not that I have a dog in the fight but sheesh! Ya gotta wonder if Dex actually does know (anything).

Sorry. Slow night all around.

Dump away

A friend of mine is going through a rough patch just now.

Okay, I guess it’s likely that at any given moment, a number of people are going through rough times and I probably know some of them, call them friends, even.

What makes this friend’s current state of annoyance bloggable is that she dumped on me. Or I should say, dumped to me, since I didn’t feel dumped on at all. In my world, one of the greatest functions of friendship is acting as a whine bucket for someone you truly care about.

There have been so many times in my life when I felt my temples exploding and would have given anything to be able to just spew to someone who wouldn’t hate me for it. And might even pretend to care about my problems. For the last quarter century, Mary and I have been each other’s designated dumpees and it’s been invaluable. But I do recall my pre-Mary days and many situations in which I felt alone and vulnerable.

Alone and vulnerable sucks.

Dumping is a good thing. Dumpable buddies represent one of the absolute requirements if one is to remain sane.

Things I'll get around to, someday

I swear, someday I’m going to:

·         Finish and publish the novel

·         Learn frailing style on a banjo

·         Run again (working up to that)

·         Update my play list on the iPod I use at the gym and on airplanes

·         Rebuild the back fence

·         And the shed

·         Okay, and a dozen other DIY projects you probably don’t want to read about

·         Convert all the videos to digital

·         Ditto the pictures

·         And then, edit out the bad ones

·         Make at least three of the road trips on my ‘road trip list’

·         Contemplate my own ankles from a standing position

·         Visit with each of my daughters entirely on their own home turf and without a schedule

·         Convince the dogs not to bark at the kids next door (Yeah, that’ll happen…)

·         Remove from the house and garage every single thing for which we can identify no use

·         Build a wooden boat

·         Give someone a gift that they didn’t know they wanted but will come to understand they’ve always needed

·         Make it all the way to the bus without being asked for money or offered a tract

·         Figure out my own political beliefs

·         Spend a whole day without speaking

·         Or, better yet, spend a whole day listening

·         Figure out where I really want to go with this here blog thang

·         And some other stuff…

What’s on your list?

Three hundred posts

I went back through my blog posts last night and noticed that there are a few hanging chads out there. I’ve promised to follow up on this and that and utterly failed to do so. So I pledge in the near future to revisit this and also that.

I just topped three hundred posts and I can’t imagine how I had the cojones to start. But I’m glad I did. Not every post has been a barn burner but I do think we’ve shared a few worthwhile thoughts here and there.

A fair number of my posts have to do with our dogs and sure enough, as I tap this out in the rec room – or as I like to think of it, Pat and Patty’s and Sindy and Larry’s and Bill and Kim’s home away from home – Odin the Large is camped out snoozing on the carpet by the door to the garage. Zoey the Small and Annoying is upstairs helping Mary with her studies. The Furry Ones remain a big part of our lives and I’ll share more about them soon.

I’ve blogged about our daughters and why not – they are our raison d’etre and our best legacy to the world – not that I’m ready to be legated, doncha know.

My medical fubars have graced these pages and I swear I will at some point follow up on my promise to tell you how it felt and feels to have come close to the Great Divide. But not yet. I’m still standing in the shadow of that one.

I’ve shared lists and I will continue to do so. I like lists - can you tell?

I’ve tried to be light on the politics but I can’t guarantee my discretion in this regard will continue forever.

Geez, you guys, this is SO much better than a journal.

Talk to you again soon.