Surgery and Updates

My husband went in for bladder cancer surgery on Thursday and is now home recovering nicely. It all went as well as it could have and they said they got all of it without it having spread elsewhere. During it all, I think he gets reminded of his mortality and perhaps, just a tiny bit, he’s reminded about who’s important? I, too, have had a complete rethink.

We have actually achieved a truce, of sorts. I’ve had to scale back emotionally and he’s living with the idea that he does not have my full attention any longer. Perhaps that’s for the best.  This article is one I came across accidentally, but it does help me understand the ideas behind things and why we are all bent on romanticism and the idea of one person for each of us until death. I have always fallen for the full romantic picture that we are taught as young women; there is one special person, your soul mate, whom you will meet, fall in love, and marry and live happily ever after in perfect bliss. Yeah, not so much.

I think now that people live to a very advanced age and it’s virtually impossible to ask someone to love one single human being throughout your life. It is entirely possible to love more than one person romantically. I’m doing it now. I love my ex-husband and I love my current husband. I see no contradiction. The contradiction only occurs in people’s minds when it comes to sex. Jealousy only really occurs when we think of people having sex with other than us.

I certainly don’t believe anymore that people are monogamous. The majority of evidence that I see around me in the people I know and in the news confirms to me that men especially are incapable of fidelity.  Yes, women too, but it is not as accepted in women as it is in men. I am certain that if two people work at it, non-monogamy can work, however BOTH people have to start at the same place and not try to fit it in afterwards. My problem is that I didn’t sign up for it from the beginning. If I had, I could have dealt with it all better.  If I’d been honest with myself as well, I could have been self-aware enough to know that I am NOT one for fidelity myself. My current relationship proves it! And, just because I have no interest in outside relationships right now, it does not mean I won’t in the future.  I’ve made it clear that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and the hubby accepts that.

The lesson learned here is to BE HONEST FROM THE BEGINNING. We all spend so much time hiding and lying to ourselves and to others about what we really want and then we try to force ourselves to live by a moral code that we did not create. Someone else said that this was our moral code and we accepted it. I told my husband, it’s not that he’s ACTUALLY seeing anybody else that’s the problem for me, it’s the lying about it that angers me more. The betrayal is making it seem that I’m not worth telling the truth to. True, I’ve made it difficult for him to be truthful by my outbursts, but I’ve learned, through scaling back emotionally, that my outbursts do not encourage honest dialogue. So there are learning curves all around.

Perhaps something can be salvaged after all. I feel better about it now that I give myself time to really think about it and the ramifications of certain choices. It’s not for everyone, but it might be for us.

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“Homosexuality and The Church”

Hackman’s Musings: Homosexuality and The Church.

Quote of Note:

I have heard many times in the past week (this is a big issue here in Utah at the moment) that those opposing homosexuality are just adhering to their morals. I would like to make a distinction here. Objecting to homosexuality, I believe, cannot be a universal moral. It is a religious conviction. I think for something to be considered a universal moral, and not merely a religious position, it has to be amenable to all faiths… and those without a faith. The bible says murder is wrong (although it acts it out more as a guideline than a rule) but I could also make a non-religious arguement as to why it is good for humanity to follow that position. On the contrary, I have yet to hear a valid argument against homosexuality that did not come back to a religious point and/or that individual’s personal “ick” factor with homosexuality.

Quote of the Day (even the Week!)

Image by iamthepinkcupcake via Flickr

“At the very least it would mean something about every day, to the best of my ability, resisting being a fake. Resisting the fake answer, the false front, the superficial conversation in favor of something more deeply human, more deeply connected to what really matters about being alive, whether it sounds religious or spiritual or correct or not. It means worrying less about being perfect and being concerned more with being authentic or real with other people. Much of the religion I was schooled in was about putting myself away, aside, behind me in order to become something holier and closer to God. In other words, to draw nearer to the Really Real I needed to be less me. Perhaps it was a mid-life revelation or just wearing out on that that led me to a different understanding that my humanity was God’s chief gift to me and that if I was going to find the Really Real it was going to be within that and not separating myself from that. It meant that the holiest thing I could be was the flawed human being God had made me to be.” (Barbara Brown Taylor)

Science Ate My Brain, But I Have a Theory About That

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Trolling the Twitter feed this morning I found this tweeted by Feminist.com:

Q from audience. What can we do to encourage girls to pursue science careers? A: Change their perception of science

Uh, no, how about making science more interesting? I don’t buy into the argument that girls are “kept out” of science because they don’t see other girls interested in careers in science. I think, and everyone get their umbrage spatter glasses on, that some girls just find science boring as hell. I did and so did a lot of my friends, including guys. Oh not all science was boring. I found physical geography, earth science, and meteorology interesting, food science was fun and you got to eat the results, but anything that I had to learn statistics or geometry or physics for on a higher level than measuring cups? Forget it. My brain didn’t work that way. I’m an English major. I deal in story theory, literary tropes, and composition, not in facts. In fact, much like some of Alice’s friends in Wonderland, I can’t hold more than a few mathematical or scientific facts in my brain at one time. There’s just more interesting things out there. I found Algebra interesting in college but failed it in High School (ahem, this might have something to do with my other interests in high school… er.. boys). Algebra was interesting until we got into logarithms or matrices. Bleck. Math theory? BORING! English theory?? Hooray!!

No, I don’t believe girls are kept back from science. Girls keep themselves from science because some of us just aren’t interested. I also think we think differently because, and here’s a concept, we are different.  No one will ever convince me that the female brain is the same as the male brain because, and I am officially giving up my feminist “license” on this one, of one difference; hormones. Hormones are why there are effeminate men and masculine women. Testosterone and estrogen and the amounts that each of us are born with pretty much determine how we present ourselves in society and much of our likes and dislikes. I don’t know why this is so, but it is and I’ve lived long enough to observe some facts about that myself. Does that mean that women cannot do science? Lord, no! It means that some of us are so wired that science as a career sounds as boring as being an accountant (believe it or not I started to be an accounting major, but found it… surprise…very boring). I couldn’t imagine doing science or accounting for a living. So, no, I don’t think we can push the sexes to be other than they are, interested in their own areas of knowledge and expertise. Some things you just can’t even out or socially engineer because you wish it so.

Related Articles

• Geek Kids : Potato Chip Science Kit (thinkgeek.com)
• Women in science blogging | Martin Robbins (guardian.co.uk)
• There’s a lot more to science than space and dinosaurs | Alice Bell (guardian.co.uk)

Politics Isn’t Worth the Effort

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I must say that in all my 50 years, I’ve never been so disgusted with politics as I am now. I’ve always voted, but I’m not going to any longer. I’ve felt guilty for not voting, but no longer. I’ve kept abreast of events that have happened and read all sides of political arguments, but no longer.  The only thing that I can see clearly at this stage of my life is that politics breeds rancor and hatred. All of it is an age-old battle between those who think they are right vs. those who think they are right. There is no such thing as partisanship. There is no consensus and nothing moves forward. The less people knew the better. Now the internet has fueled a giant war of words and hatred ’round the world. The one interesting news story that caught my eye today was this one:

WESTCLIFFE, Colorado (AP) — A new road sign cautions drivers to watch for Amish horse-drawn carriages in the valley beneath Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo mountains. Highway pull-offs and dedicated horse-and-buggy paths are in the works.

Amid the serenity and isolation of southern Colorado, hamlets like Westcliffe, La Jara and Monte Vista are welcoming Amish families who are moving West to escape high land prices and community overcrowding back East in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“The reason we moved out West is the farm land is a little bit cheaper and it’s not as heavily populated, a little more open space and a little more opportunity for young people to get started with their own farms,” said Ben Coblentz, a 47-year-old alfalfa farmer from Indiana. “The general public seems to have a little slower pace of life than what it was back east. Everybody here respects us.”

And respect them I do. I respect anyone who stays above the factions of modern life and sticks to principles such as hard work, community building, and respect for one’s neighbor. They’ve been a consistent witness without ever saying a word in public for our consumption and I long for that kind of peace and silence. I started this blog to expose “the mystery of iniquity that doth now work…” and it seems to be working overtime. There’s something in society that’s rotting from the inside and I don’t want to be any part of it. I want to live life rather than observe it.

I see none of the peacefulness of the Amish while reading the news.  I see none of the ethics that religions espouse when I see vicious slander against public figures and groups purposely fomenting riots. I see no one with the wisdom to hold their tongues when it’s unwise to speak (me included!) I see people who cannot abide others who think differently. I see politically correct language police. And I see that none of it has made this country or this world better than it was 20 years ago. If anything it’s worse. Am I a curmudgeonly “old woman?” Perhaps, but the advantages of getting older is being able to speak one’s mind without fear of reprisal. There will always be haters. I don’t want to be one of them. I can no longer read that hateful mishmash called “news.” I can no longer go through an election cycle that drags hatefully on for years here in America. It wears on me and makes me mean, vindictive, and hateful. I can’t stand that about myself and about what makes me that way. One can never write honestly without being labeled. One can’t sympathize with those who are unjustly attacked without being equated with a particular “ism.” It’s like being in grade school again!.

Like other bloggers who I respect greatly, I’m going to stop participating in the political game. It was intriguing for a while. In fact, I thought it would do some good to show up the misleading mischievousness and hatred of both sides. But pointing these things out doesn’t do that. It entrenches the camps. It only makes sides dig in further and flames of hatred burn hotter. And I’m only adding small sticks to the fire. Do people pay attention to what I write? Of course not, but I have to write this somewhere, and a small seed has to be planted somewhere.  I’ve seen some good examples from religious folk who stay above the fray: Amish, Quakers, Episcopalians, nuns, monks, etc. They’ve shown me that a personal ethic is all that is required to live an ethical life. It’s not my place to speak about injustice.  Some people have that role. I’m sure I don’t. My seed will be to refuse to add those sticks to the bonfire already raging. There are too many voices already; so many that it’s impossible to be heard. I think the internet has been a good thing for getting information out there, but I see that because of it, we are more polarized politically than ever. Good information is out there. Unfortunately, there is more bad information than good.

Will anyone notice my lack of posts about politics. Hell no! But I will, and what a relief that will be. I’m not sure what will be the focus of this blog with it’s main mission when I started it. Perhaps a few more reviews of books, movies, television. Perhaps I’ll blog about my family and my new life in another country. Or perhaps it’s really time to shelve it and move on. Not sure. I’ll take it one day at a time, hopefully silent ones.

Related Articles

• Amish Grace (beliefnet.com)
• Amish Population Growth: Numbers Increasing, Heading West (huffingtonpost.com)
• Amish are moving westward to find farmland, study shows (pennlive.com)
• Amish heading westward (dispatch.com)
• How Political Correctness Led to Pastor Jones: News, Switzerland (themoderatevoice.com)
• Do you care about the issues? (dailykos.com)

Quote of the Day

A Unique Male Perspective on Faith. Fannie’s Room on reading a male centered religious rant on WaPo’s On Faith blog:

This utter lack of consideration for the female woman’s perspective enables him to cockily categorize pro-choice feminism as a “wicked” religion and his anti-abortion opinions, the opinions of a man who completely ignores the female perspective in his philosophical pontifications, as True Faith….The religions that “spiritual men” create are either true or false, depending on which men have created them. (We can speculate where Reynolds stands on which are true and which are false). As for which religions are wicked, things get decidedly more simple. Any so-called religion that de-centers the male perspective and instead views women as fully human as men, possessing bodies and vantage points of their own, is a wicked one.

I Want to Be in This Man’s Skull

Thanks to my friend Alyce for a link to this wonderful site where I culled this gem of a paragraph from “Varioram of Classic Tracts and Pamphlets:”

At one time or another, the ills of the world have been blamed on everything from tight-fitting shoes to television. The Diggers wanted to abolish money, the Luddites wanted to destroy the machines. The majority of such sectarians has traditionally adopted the medium of printed matter to broadcast theories, positions, opinions. Social theorists have published provocative polemics about eugenics and population engineering. Crusading utopians and meliorists have generated a wealth of redemptive and rehabilitative circulars such as the memorably-titled Kill Your Television (anti-cathode tube), The Menace of Psychiatry (anti-mind modification), and Absinthe – Sapper of Souls (anti-alcohol). Feuding factions have produced pamphlets both pro and con concerning such issues as abortion, the legitimacy of monarchy, gun control, the right to privacy, methods for disposal of the dead, vegetarianism, even aesthetics. The germ and genesis of most of these is the impulse to air grievances. Gripes, beefs, cavils and carpings envenom the prose of leaflets, pamphlets, flyers, tracts and broadsides published by a panoply of political extremists, religious fanatics, eccentrics, radicals and zealots of every stripe. It is a long tradition dating to the early days of the printing press, and which persists even in the era of e-mail, facebook, and twitter and, although the pages of many of these impassioned documents have become brittle with age, many are still dripping wet with vitriol or, at least, with the perspiration of fervid conviction.

Good gosh almighty, can Gilbert Alter-Gilbert write! Sometimes a piece is so good, it almost doesn’t matter what the subject is, however in this case, the subject of tracts and pamphlets is also interesting. I’ve had a fascination with pamphlets since I picked up my first Jack Chick tract, one I’d found on the effluvia littered ground during my hometown’s July 4th carnival in the late 60s. Besides the blatant fundie drivel, anti-semitism, anti-catholicism, and other crude things about Chick’s tracts, reading it set me firmly on the path of appreciating the graphic novel, but that’s another story. Gilbert’s compendium of tracts and pamphlets is a look back at sociological/psychological warfare.