New Year Noodling

As sometimes happens in my inconsistent brain, I get several ideas that all pile up like cars on an icy highway. I want to write about each of them and usually start a few drafts, only to realize that the topic either departs from my usual fare, or I get bored with it or I read it back to discover that I have been far too preachy. 

During my freshman year of college I took an English writing class with a gravel-throated professor who looked like a heavy in a spaghetti western. Once a week he accepted stories or topic papers as extra credit and his motto for when students couldn't think of a single topic was, “If in doubt, potpourri!” So, obeying his dictum, this year's first essay will briefly cover several of those crowded topics.

New Year's Disillusions 

If I had a chance to stand up in front of a group and discourse on any subject, it would be how much I loathe the social and cultural pressure of New Year's resolutions. I think few things could be more nakedly Capitalist. They also tend to dig deep into the root of the American tendency toward self-loathing, body shame and ridiculous addiction to “healthy eating” which is a euphemism for “You're too fat”.

Mega-gyms run entire campaigns, including handing out swag at Time Square on New Year's Eve, to get people to start “new routines” that they have no mental power to stick to. The gyms make tons of money, either way, profiting in our unhappiness. By February, those gyms are still collecting their $10 per month fee, but we are not going anymore, having given up on our resolutions already. 

There is a better way. It takes time, effort, mental and physical endurance and discipline. That process is worth it only if our motivation is not from a fatuous holiday tradition. To make these big changes, it is necessary to believe in oneself, make a plan, stick to it as best one can. One day at a time is the only way to manage it, no matter what. And the great news is, we can start any time, not just with a new year.

Censoring Offence

I have been a subscriber to the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) for about fIve years. In that time I have been generally pleased with the work that this powerful non-profit has done to sure up the wall between church and state.

Recently, an LGBTQ+ advocate penned an article for the FFRF, outlining that a person's gender is defined less by biological factors and far more by lived experience and personal realities, stating that, “a woman can be anyone she wants to be”. I heartily agreed with the author's premise.

But gender is a hot-button topic and some people are still squeamish about having honest discussions about transgenderism and homosexuality. In response to the well-written article, biologist and prominent anti-religionist, Jerry A. Coyne wrote a rebuttal, stating that the former piece was not “grounded in science”. The outcry against his article was such that the FFRF took it down from their website. Within moments, Coyne resigned from the board of the foundation. Hours after that, other honorary board members for the foundation, Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins, also stepped down, all three bellowing “censorship”.

I had not been able to read Coyne's piece right away because of this and couldn't formulate my own position on either his piece or the foundation’s rapid removal of it. 

However, censorship is a topic I am familiar with and professionally interested in.  Any time we are forbidden from reading something because someone (or many people) are offended by it and it is removed from public access, that item has been censored. Can an organization that promotes free access and free inquiry also censor items?

Instead of taking the piece down, the FFRF might have given it a header warning that the piece might cause stress or emotional harm. They also might have thought more seriously about publishing it in the first place. They didn't handle this with the care it deserved.

The modern world is so polarized because we are allowed to hide away from ideas that challenge and criticize our own positions. When we are faced with something that offends us, we scream and cry until it is removed. This is not the soil in which robust civil  discourse grows. It isn't always a black and white issue, nor is it that both sides are equally valid. In this case the original article was far more valid because it came from a place of expression and not knee-jerk reaction. And yet, hiding from offence only promotes a one-sided position.

Coyne's piece finally went up on a “secular humanism” website that seems to be fully in his corner on the topic of gender—unsurprising. As I suspected, his article was tone deaf, even offensive, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't know his positions.

Had the FFRF published a piece critical of the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, and had the SBC screamed out that the piece was offensive, the foundation wouldn't have taken it down despite that outcry. It is not a perfect analogy, of course.

The LGBTQ+ community deserves to be respected and defended, but it cannot become a source of protection and freedom in itself if it cannot bear criticism or face primary challenges to its existence. I am an advocate for this community and reserve the right to be offended on its behalf but I want to know the argument so I can more fully understand. I knew, being familiar with his work, that Coyne's piece would upset me. It did. I think it would be better though, if we didn't run from offense or seek to censor it. That way lies trouble and the FFRF ought to know better and be more thoughtful in the future.

Music Notes

I love Jazz music. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Cannonball Adderly, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey for heaven's sake, are all on my list. The Bop and Hard Bop eras are on the top of that list. 

Of course, I like all music and have always had an eclectic taste and an archivist’s need to add to my catalogs and collections. Both of my parents, my good aunt, my brother and my cousins are all musical, if not all playing or performing, certainly by being fans, singing, listening and enjoying. I assumed that this was natural in our family. 

With our baby granddaughter in the house with us, though, I now believe that an affinity for music is, while obviously at some level genetic, formed by access and exposure. This child loves music of all kinds. She bops and wiggles with it. She sings along. She listens hard and is eager for the part of our evening where Mimi and PopPop put on music videos so we can let her listen and dance.

It has been so elevating to watch her respond to music that she really enjoys. And so far that has been every genre I can think of except for hip-hop, because she may be a bit too young for that, still. Even so, I have doubled down on trying hard to influence that affinity, and getting her as much exposure as her little spongy mind can take in. Especially Jazz music.

A Moose is Loose!

My good aunt sent me a picture over the holidays of her great-granddaughter peering out of a window at two huge moose. Her grandson Jonathan lives in Alaska and so moose are a part of life there.

My eldest cousin's son is used to the wilderness creeping in, because he lives, we might say, at the fringes of society, at least, where the wilderness is more prevalent than say downtown Los Angeles. And yet the picture put me in mind of something I hadn't really considered before. All of this civilization around us is incredibly recent.

Despite A.I. chatbots and fraught election cycles and fracking and billionaire-owned rockets and Netflix and electric vehicles and reality television, we all live way closer to nature than we realize. The wilderness is just below the hard candy shell of modern infrastructure. The bones of our ancestors lie just under the thin crust of mud and roots beneath our toes. 

Everyday we seem to turn our backs and staunch our ears to reality, and yet right around us, and even within us, nature thrives. My hope is that we can remember this pervasive and insistent fact, and begin to understand that, like my baby cousin's two moose (meese?), we are part of the web of nature, not apart from it and as a result we must behave ourselves with this in mind. 

Another Year of Essays

When I took up this “blog” again in April of ‘23, I had no real long-term expectations. Each time I have reflected on how many essays I have written, I get a little woozy. 

But my love of this format has been ratified by those of you who are subscribed. I have extended my number of readers this past year and am hopeful that this expansion will continue. For all of you who read even a tithe of what I put out, I am deeply grateful.

With this in mind, I have started a brief and tentative draft for a book. That's all I'm  saying just now. I have one or two draft readers, dependable, honest and trustworthy, giving me their input on the topic, format, subject matter and style. 

If I can write 43 essays in one year's time, we might assume that I could write one book with 43 chapters, right?

Lights Go Down

This past weekend, after a glorious and joy-filled holiday, I took down the outside Yule lights and we packed and hauled the other indoor lights and decorations back up into the attic. 

Taking all this stuff down has the same sensation as finishing an excellent book. As each day passes and each page is turned, we understand that things have to go back to being “blah” and unlit again. But in the meantime, it adds lovely charm.

This year, I feel a little different.  I'm a little glad that we're getting back to normal again. It is an odd realization for me, but with that normality the residuum of the upheaval and lack of routine of the holidays also get packed away. Suddenly, the easygoing regularity of ‘the rest of the year’ returns and with it the comfort of a stable status quo. 

With everybody coming to our house for Christmas, this year, we both looked forward to it with inordinate longing. Our youngest son, a resident of Oregon for over a year, came home for the first time, and it was wonderful to have all three boys and their significant others here to celebrate. 

Now, it is time to brace up and wade into the oncoming year, and do it without a tree in the house or extra brightly colored lights. A little sad perhaps. Redolent of finishing a good book and being a little blue it's over, true, but also, with the hopeful mindset that the year will be full of adventure, challenges, joys, celebrations and growth that must be enjoyed in the fullness of each day.

Happy New Year! See you Thursdays!