P.S. A Column On Things

My femininity

I was looking at the blurbs on the dust jacket of a book I got for Christmas, and one of them mentioned that empathy is stereotypically a feminine trait. I mentioned that to my psychotherapist wife, who said it is typically, but that since “you are evolved, you have feminine traits, including that one.”

The presence of my feminine traits has been a subject of hers for the entire length of our marriage. During our wedding ceremony, her readings included this from Tao te Ching – The Nature of Polarity by Alan Watts: “But the male individual must not neglect his female component, nor the female her male…. Knowing the male but keeping the female, one becomes a universal stream…”

I struggled with my feminine side during my youth; I was relentlessly mocked for feminine traits through grade school and high school. I would note here that my previous lovers now say they never saw this aspect of me, meaning it must have been controlled/hidden by adulthood.

Until this very week, I assumed I was ridiculed because I overdressed for school, was “too bookish” for a guy, preferred the company of girls to boys and neither played sports nor followed them closely.

Now it occurs to me that my lifelong habit of empathy may have been a more important factor in my maltreatment. I wasn’t one of the gang because I never participated when students who were “other” for any reason were mercilessly mocked; sometimes I even defended them. This has been true my whole life. Since the opening of my heart chakra last year, my empathy has been amplified several-fold, but it really marked a behavioral change of degree, not kind. Increased empathy hasn’t been as hard to get used to as some of the other changes, mostly because it wasn’t new for me. I highly recommend it, particularly in these difficult times.

My acceptance and acknowledgment of my ability to understand and respond to the feelings of others has finally laid to rest my lifelong concern that I might be an narcissist. An egotist, perhaps. But not a sociopath.

Hurrah for the USPS and USDS

If they have a fair bone in their bodies (a dubious proposition) the government haters will, this week, concede that the federal government CAN do something right. The free covid test kit web site did NOT melt down!

In part, that’s because of a government agency I’d never heard of, the U.S. Digital Service. A creation of Barrack Obama that Trump did not destroy, its goal, along with the U.S. Digital Corps is to bring computer-savvy people into government to improve its websites (among other things). Sort of a Peace Corps, connecting idealistic young people with government agencies instead of the world’s poor.

The Covid Test request site is, in my opinion, freaking brilliant. It is a joint effort between the US Postal Service and the USDS. It was crazy-smart to find the largest direct-to-consumer federal sales site―the post office―and tack a super-simple front end on it for requesting test kits. Color me impressed.

Heart Chakra Opening Day

My heart chakra opened on Saturday January 18, 2020. This is what I wrote in my journal that day: “Wow! I woke up this morning to another amazing moment. Treatment and prayer work! There was love in my heart, for those who I once felt "wronged" me. We are all children of god, and share one soul; I forget at my peril that we’re not going to Heaven because we never left it, and that this physical life is an illusion."

CMP: No Longer Angry and Bitter

I woke up this morning and realized that I am no longer angry and bitter about being tossed out of my 20-year dream job at CMP Media on Oct. 2, 2001. For years, I was angry and bitter that managers who knew me didn’t lift a finger to save my job (you know who you are). Whether it is the result of the opening of my heart chakra, or age, or the passage of time, I am not sure. But I know that harboring anger and bitterness are bad for your mental health. Which is why I no longer run an annual item on the anniversary of my sacking.

Besides, I have also come to realize that my termination, while extremely painful in the moment was, like the end of my last pre-marriage relationship, a blessing in disguise. Ellen Goodman understood this dynamic quite well when she wrote about the need for a Graceful Exit. She didn’t use these terms, but she was really writing about the acceptance of impermanence, and how helpful it is to see the shutting of one door as the opening of another.

Had CMP not kicked me to the curb, I never would have spent 10 years teaching U.S. history to 1,000 8^th graders. I am morally certain I had a positive impact on some of those young people, and I am proud of it. In the unlikely event I ever see any of those CMP managers again, instead of having an unpleasant exchange, I will shake their hands and thank them for letting me go.

My fond wish for you, dear reader, is that you move past any such feelings you are harboring, and that you don’t waste time on any new resentments in the future.

Right Column Redux: Ian Shoales: The Internet Years

The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a reminder of said content each week.

Ian Shoales: The Internet Years

The Nature of Impermanence

This is a folk tale that highlights the fact that you just never know.

Tamara Levitt on this site tells a version of this story:

A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbors cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbors shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

It is really impossible to tell whether anything that happens is good or bad.

Another Insult I Like

Shakespeare said it first, but I must say I am looking for a reason to refer to our former president and his colleagues as hempen homespuns. Ironically, it took a German native friend of mine, using the phrase in English to describe his own new government, to remind me of the phrase.

Mindfulness

For just over a year a now I have been on a mindfulness journey, including a 10-minute daily meditation. I think I now spend more time in the moment and that is important. They call it the present for a reason.

Looking back, I can see I had three hours a day of mindfulness practice for 11 years, but it wasn’t formal: that was the decade I spent teaching 8^th grade U.S. History half-time.

Teaching is without question mindfulness practice; the consequences of even a moment’s inattention can be major and disastrous.  And now, I am once again spending three mornings a week with my grandson while his parents WFH. That, too, is a mindfulness practice. Any moment I am “not there” is a moment wasted, and a possible step towards small-scale disaster. We should all take our mindfulness where we find it, because it’s good for you/me in so many ways.

Right Column Redux: WTBS Days

The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a reminder of said content each week.

From my WTBS days, 1970-1972

Sam Patch, The Greatest Story Ever Told So Far

The New Eugene Oregon Show

Jobs Redux 3: Summertime and the Living is Busy

1971

Another busy summer before my sophomore year at MIT. As I did the summer before, I worked weekdays at KGW-TV and weekends at KKEY radio. I also kept busy writing the pretentiously titled Great American Novel (a thinly fictionalized version of my freshman year), the Twilight Dome (a radio show for Michael Wildermuth that he didn’t have time to do, converted into the New Eugene Oregon Show) and I wrote a letter every day to Sherry Grobstein, with whom I fell in love that summer. Turns out being the transmitter operator at KKEY amounted to eight hours a day with a typewriter, an ample supply of paper, and about 10 minutes of actual work an hour.

1972

WHDH-TV lost its TV license, so WBZ-TV picked up the Red Sox, so they needed studio technicians to free up baseball camera operators. A lovely summer of 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. shifts out on Soldier’s Field Road.

1973

My first relevant summer job, as an intern at Portland’s afternoon daily newspaper, The Oregon Journal. I spent my spare time at the paper writing a letter every day to my new love, Beth Karpf.

1974

The summer after my senior year marked my last summer job, as production manager of The Tech. I was reluctant to take the job, but the production shop was the paper’s major source of revenue, and I loved the paper, so there I was. In August I started with the AP, and ever since my summer job has just been my fallwinterspring job, but in the summertime.